ITHEWHEELOFT1ME 
 
 COLLABORATION 
 
 OWENWJNGRAVE
 
 I 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 The Wheel of Time 
 
 Collaboration 
 
 OwenWingrave 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY JAMES 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 
 1893
 
 Copyright, 1893, by HARPER & BROTHERS. 
 
 All rigfits nset-vcd.
 
 SRIF 
 
 PS 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 3 
 
 COLLABORATION 99 
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 147 
 
 1201205
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 I 
 
 " AND your daughter ?" said Lady Greys- 
 wood ; " tell me about her. She must be 
 nice/' 
 
 "Oh yes, she's nice enough. She's a 
 great comfort." Mrs. Knocker hesitated a 
 moment, then she went on: "Unfortunate 
 ly, she's not good-looking not a bit." 
 
 "That doesn't matter, when they're not 
 ill-natured," rejoined, insincerely, Lady 
 Greyswoorl, who had the remains of great 
 beauty. 
 
 " Oh, but poor Fanny is quite extraordi 
 narily plain. I assure you it does matter. 
 She knows it herself; she suffers from it. 
 It's the sort of thing that makes a great 
 difference in a girl's life." 
 
 " But if she's charming, if she's clever !"
 
 4 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 said Lady Greyswood, with more benevo 
 lence than logic. " I've known plain wom 
 en who were liked." 
 
 " Do you mean me, my dear ?" her old 
 friend straightforwardly inquired. " But I'm 
 not so awfully liked." 
 
 "You?" Lady Greyswood exclaimed. 
 "Why, you're grand !" 
 
 " I'm not so repulsive as I was when I 
 was young, perhaps ; but that's not saying 
 much." 
 
 " As when you were young !" laughed 
 Lady Greyswood. " You sweet thing, you 
 are young. I thought India dried people 
 up." 
 
 " Oh, when you're a mummy to begin 
 with !" Mrs. Knocker returned, with her 
 trick of self-abasement. "Of course I've 
 not been such a fool as to keep my children 
 there. My girl is clever," she continued, 
 "but she's afraid to show it. Therefore 
 you may judge whether, with her unfortu 
 nate appearance, she's charming." 
 
 " She shall show it to me! You must let 
 me do everything for her." 
 
 "Does that include finding her a hus-
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 5 
 
 band ? I should like her to show it to 
 some one who'll marry her." 
 
 "/'ll marry her," said Lady Greyswood, 
 who was handsomer than ever when she 
 laughed and looked capable. 
 
 "What a blessing to meet you this way 
 on the threshold of home ! I give you no 
 tice that I shall cling to you. But that's 
 what I meant ; that's the thing the want of 
 beauty makes so difficult as if it were not 
 difficult enough at the best." 
 
 " My dear child, one meets plenty of ugly 
 women with husbands," Lady Greyswood 
 argued, " and often with very nice ones." 
 
 " Yes, mine is very nice. There are men 
 who don't mind one's face, for whom beauty 
 isn't indispensable, but they are rare. I 
 don't understand them. If I'd been a man 
 about to marry I should have gone in for 
 looks. However, the poor child will have 
 something," Mrs. Knocker continued. 
 
 Lady Greyswood rested thoughtful eyes 
 on her. " Do you mean she'll be well off ?" 
 
 " We shall do everything we can for her. 
 We're not in such misery as we used to be. 
 We've managed to save in India, strange to
 
 say, and six months ago my husband came 
 into money (more than we had ever dreamed 
 of) by the death of his poor brother. We 
 feel quite opulent (it's rather nice !), and \ve 
 should expect to do something decent for 
 our daughter. I don't mind it's being 
 known." 
 
 " It shall be known," said Lady Greys- 
 wood, getting up. " Leave the dear child 
 to me." The old friends embraced, for the 
 porter of the hotel had come in to say that 
 the carriage ordered for her ladyship was at 
 the door. They had met in Paris by the 
 merest chance, in the court of an inn, after 
 a separation of years, just as Lady Greys- 
 wood was going home. She had been to 
 Aix-les-Bains early in the season, and was 
 resting on her way back to England. Mrs. 
 Knocker and the General, bringing their 
 eastern exile to a close, had arrived only 
 the night before from Marseilles, and were 
 to wait in Paris for their children, a tall girl 
 and two younger boys, who, inevitably dis 
 sociated from their parents, had been for 
 the past two years with a devoted aunt, 
 their father's maiden sister, at Heidelberg.
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 7 
 
 The reunion of the family was to take place 
 with jollity in Paris, whither this good lady 
 was now hurrying with her drilled and de 
 moralized charges. Mrs. Knocker had come 
 to England to see them two years before, 
 and the period at Heidelberg had been 
 planned during this visit. With the termi 
 nation of her husband's service a new life 
 opened before them all, and they had plans 
 of comprehensive rejoicing for the summer 
 plans involving, however, a continuance 
 for a few months of useful foreign opportu 
 nities, during which various questions con 
 nected with the organization of a final home 
 in England were practically to be dealt with. 
 There was to be a salubrious house on the 
 Continent, taken in some neighborhood that 
 would both yield a stimulus to plain Fanny's 
 French (her German was much commended), 
 and permit of frequent "running over" for 
 the General. With these preoccupations 
 Mrs. Knocker, after her delightful encoun 
 ter with Lady Greyswood, was less keenly 
 conscious of the variations of destiny than 
 she had been when, at the age of twenty, 
 that intimate friend of her youth, beautiful,
 
 8 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 loveable, and about to be united to a noble 
 man of ancient name, was brightly, almost 
 insolently alienated. The less attractive of 
 the two girls had married only several years 
 later, and her marriage had perhaps empha 
 sized the divergence of their ways. To-day, 
 however, the inequality, as Mrs. Knocker 
 would have phrased it, rather dropped out 
 of the impression produced by the somewhat 
 wasted and faded dowager, exquisite still, 
 but unexpectedly appealing, who made no 
 secret (an attempt that in an age of such 
 publicity would have been useless), of what 
 she had had, in vulgar parlance, to put up 
 with, or of her having been left badly off. 
 She had spoken of her children she had 
 had no less than six but she had evidently 
 thought it better not to speak of her hus 
 band. That somehow made up, on Mrs. 
 Knocker's part, for some ancient aches. 
 
 It was not till a year after this incident 
 that, one day in London, in her little house 
 in Queen Street, Lady Greyswood said to 
 her third son, Maurice the one she was 
 fondest of, the one who on his own side had 
 given her most signs of affection :
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 9 
 
 " I don't see what there is for you but to 
 marry a girl of a certain fortune." 
 
 " Oh, that's not my line ! I may be an 
 idiot, but I'm not mercenary," the young 
 man declared. He was not an idiot, but 
 there was an examination rather stiff, in 
 deed to which, without success, he had 
 gone up twice. The diplomatic service was 
 closed to him by this catastrophe; nothing 
 else appeared particularly open ; he was ter 
 ribly at leisure. There had been a theory, 
 none the less, that he was the ablest of the 
 family. Two of his brothers had been 
 squeezed into the army, and had declared 
 rather crudely that they would do their best 
 to keep Maurice out. They were not put to 
 any trouble in this respect, however, as he 
 professed a complete indifference to the 
 trade of arms. His mother, who was vague 
 about everything except the idea that peo 
 ple ought to like him, if only for his extraor 
 dinary good looks, thought it strange there 
 shouldn't be some opening for him in politi 
 cal life, or something to be picked up even 
 in the City. But no bustling borough so 
 licited the advantage of his protection, no
 
 10 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 eminent statesman in want of a secretary 
 took him by the hand, no great commercial 
 house had been keeping a stool for him. 
 Maurice, in a word, was not " approached " 
 from any quarter, and meanwhile he was as 
 irritating as the intending traveller who al 
 lows you the pleasure of looking out his 
 railway -connections. Poor Lady Greys- 
 wood fumbled the social Bradshaw in vain. 
 The young man had only one marked taste, 
 with which his mother saw no way to deal 
 an invincible passion for photography. He 
 was perpetually taking shots at his friends, 
 but she couldn't open premises for him in 
 Baker Street. He smoked endless ciga 
 rettes she was sure they made him languid. 
 She would have been more displeased with 
 him if she had not felt so vividly that some 
 one ought to do something for him ; never 
 theless she almost lost patience at his remark 
 about not being mercenary. She was on 
 the point of asking him what he called it to 
 live on his relations, but she checked the 
 words, as she remembered that she herself 
 was the only one who did much for him. 
 Nevertheless, as she hated open professions
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME II 
 
 of disinterestedness, she replied that that 
 was a nonsensical tone. Whatever one 
 should get in such a way one would give 
 quite as much, even if it didn't happen to 
 be money ; and when he inquired in return 
 what it was (beyond the disgrace of his fail 
 ures) that she judged a fellow like him 
 would bring to his bride, she replied that 
 he would bring himself, his personal quali 
 ties (she didn't like to be more definite about 
 his appearance), his name, his descent, his 
 connections good honest commodities all, 
 for which any girl of proper feeling would 
 be glad to pay. Such a name as that of the 
 Glanvils was surely worth something, and 
 she appealed to him to try what he could do 
 with it. 
 
 " Surely I can do something better with 
 it than sell it," said Maurice. 
 
 " I should like, then, very much to hear 
 what," she replied, very calmly, waiting 
 reasonably for his answer. She waited to 
 no purpose ; the question baffled him, like 
 those of his examinations. She explained 
 that she meant of course that he should care 
 for the girl, who might easily have a worse
 
 12 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 fault than the command of bread and butter. 
 To humor her, for he was always good- 
 natured, he said, after a moment, smiling : 
 
 " Dear mother, is she pretty ?" 
 
 " Is who pretty ?" 
 
 " The young lady you have in your eye. 
 Of course I see you've picked her out." 
 
 She colored slightly at this she had 
 planned a more gradual revelation. For an 
 instant she thought of saying that she had 
 only had a general idea, for the form of his 
 question embarrassed her; but on reflection 
 she determined to be frank and practical. 
 "Well, I confess I am thinking of a girl 
 a very nice one. But she hasn't great 
 beauty." 
 
 " Oh, then it's of no use." 
 
 " But she's delightful, and she'll have 
 thirty thousand pounds down, to say noth 
 ing of expectations." 
 
 Maurice Glanvil looked at his mother. 
 "She must be hideous for you to admit 
 it. Therefore, if she's rich, she becomes 
 quite impossible ; for how can a fellow have 
 the air of having been bribed with gold to 
 marry a monster ?"
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 13 
 
 " Fanny Knocker isn't the least a monster, 
 and I can see that she'll improve. She's 
 tall, and she's quite strong, and there's 
 nothing at all disagreeable about her. Re 
 member that you can't have everything." 
 
 " I thought you contended that I could !" 
 said Maurice, amused at his mother's de 
 scription of her young friend's charms. He 
 had never heard any one damned, as regards 
 that sort of thing, with fainter praise. He 
 declared that he would be perfectly capable 
 of marrying a poor girl, but that the prime 
 necessity in any young person he should 
 think of would be the possession of a face 
 to put it at the least that it would give 
 him positive pleasure to look at. " I don't 
 ask for much, but I do ask for beauty," he 
 went on. " My eye must be gratified I 
 must have a wife I can photograph." 
 
 Lady Greyswood was tempted to answer 
 that he himself had good looks enough to 
 make a handsome couple, but she withheld 
 the remark as injudicious, though effective, 
 for it was a part of her son's amiability that 
 he appeared to have no conception of his 
 plastic side. He would have been disgusted
 
 14 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 if she had put it forward ; if he had the 
 ideal he had just described, it was not be 
 cause his own profile was his standard. 
 What she herself saw in it was a force for 
 coercing heiresses. She had, however, to be 
 patient, and she promised herself to be 
 adroit ; which was all the easier, as she 
 really liked Fanny Knocker. 
 
 The girl's parents had at last taken a 
 house in Ennismore Gardens, and t-he friend 
 of her mother's youth had been confronted 
 with the question of redeeming the pledges 
 uttered in Paris. This unsophisticated and 
 united family, with relations to visit and 
 school-boys' holidays to outlive, had spent 
 the winter in the country and had but lately 
 begun to talk of itself, extravagantly, of 
 course, through Mrs. Knocker's droll lips, 
 as open to social attentions. Lady Greys- 
 wood had not been false to her vows ; she 
 had, on the contrary, recognized from the 
 first that, if he could only be made to see it, 
 Fanny Knocker would be just the person to 
 fill out poor Maurice's blanks. She had 
 kept this confidence to herself, but it had 
 made her very kind to the young lady. One
 
 THE WHEEL OF TLME 15 
 
 of the forms of this kindness had been an 
 ingenuity in keeping her from coming to 
 Queen Street until Maurice should have 
 been prepared. Was he to be regarded as 
 prepared, now that he asserted he would 
 have nothing to do with Miss Knocker ? 
 This was a question that worried Lady 
 Greyswood, who at any rate said to herself 
 that she had told him the worst. Her idea 
 had been to sound her old friend only after 
 the young people should have met, and 
 Fanny should have fallen in love. Such a 
 catastrophe for Fanny belonged, for Lady 
 Greyswood, to that order of convenience 
 that she could always take for granted. 
 
 She had found the girl, as she expected, 
 ugly and awkward, but had also discovered 
 a charm of character in her intelligent timid 
 ity. No one knew better than this observ 
 ant woman how thankless a task in general 
 it Was in London to " take out " a plain girl ; 
 she had seen the nicest creatures, in- the 
 brutality of balls, participate only through 
 wistful, almost tearful eyes ; her little draw 
 ing-room, at intimate hours, had been shaken 
 by the confidences of desperate mothers.
 
 16 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 None the less she felt sure that Fanny's 
 path would not be rugged ; thirty thousand 
 pounds were a fine set of features, and her 
 anxiety was rather on the score of the ex 
 pectations of the young lady's parents. Mrs. 
 Knocker had dropped remarks suggestive 
 of a high imagination, of the conviction 
 that there might be a real efficacy in what 
 they were doing for their daughter. The 
 danger, in other words, might well be that no 
 younger son need apply a possibility that 
 made Lady Greyswood take all her precau 
 tions. The acceptability of her favorite 
 child was consistent with the rejection of 
 those of other people on which, indeed, it 
 even directly depended. She remembered, 
 on the other hand, the proverb about taking 
 your horse to the water; the crystalline 
 spring of her young friend's homage might 
 overflow, but she couldn't compel her boy 
 to drink. The clever way was to break 
 down his prejudice to get him to consent 
 to give poor Fanny a chance. . Therefore, if 
 she was careful not to worry him, she let 
 him see her project as something patient 
 and deeply wise ; she had the air of waiting
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 17 
 
 resignedly for the day on which, in the ab 
 sence of other solutions, he would say to 
 her : " Well, let me have a look at my fate !" 
 Meanwhile, moreover, she was nothing if not 
 conscientious, and as she had made up her 
 mind about the girl's susceptibility, she had 
 a scruple against exposing her. This ex 
 posure would not be justified so long as 
 Maurice's theoretic rigor should remain un 
 abated. 
 
 She felt virtuous in carrying her scruple 
 to the point of rudeness ; she knew that 
 Jane Knocker wondered why, though so at 
 tentive in a hundred ways, she had never 
 definitely included the poor child in any 
 invitation to Queen Street. There came a 
 moment when it gave her pleasure to sus 
 pect that her old friend had begun to ex 
 plain this omission by the idea of a positive 
 exaggeration of good faith an honest recog 
 nition of the detrimental character of the 
 young man in ambush there. As Maurice, 
 though much addicted to kissing his mother 
 at home, never dangled about her in public, 
 he had remained a mythical figure to Mrs. 
 Knocker ; he had been absent (culpably
 
 l8 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 there was a touch of the inevitable incivility 
 in it) on each of the occasions on which, 
 after their arrival in London, she and her 
 husband dined with Lady Greyswood. This 
 astute woman knew that her delightful Jane 
 was whimsical enough to be excited good- 
 humoredly by a mystery ; she might very 
 well want to make Maurice's acquaintance 
 in just the degree in which she guessed that 
 his mother's high sense of honor kept him 
 out of the way. Moreover, she desired in 
 tensely that her daughter should have the 
 sort of experience that would help her to 
 take confidence. Lady Greyswood knew 
 that no one had as yet asked the girl to 
 dinner, and that this particular attention 
 was the one for which her mother would be 
 most grateful. No sooner had she arrived 
 at these illuminations than, with deep diplo 
 macy, she requested the pleasure of the 
 company of her dear Jane and the General. 
 Mrs. Knocker accepted with delight she 
 always accepted with delight so that noth 
 ing remained for Lady Greyswood but to 
 make sure of Maurice in advance. After 
 this was done she had only to wait. When
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 19 
 
 the dinner, on a day very near at hand, 
 took place (she had jumped at the first 
 evening on which the Knockers were free) 
 she had the gratification of seeing her pre 
 vision exactly fulfilled. Her whimsical Jane 
 had thrown the game into her hands, had 
 been taken at the very last moment with 
 one of her Indian headaches and, infinitely 
 apologetic and explanatory, had hustled 
 poor Fanny off with the General. The girl, 
 flurried and frightened by her responsibility, 
 sat at dinner next to Maurice, who behaved 
 beautifully not in the least as the victim 
 of a trick ; and when a fortnight later Lady 
 Greyswood was able to divine that her mind 
 from that evening had been filled with a 
 virginal ecstasy, she was also fortunately 
 able to feel serenely, delightfully guitless. 
 
 II 
 
 SHE knew this fact about Fanny's mind, 
 she believed, some time before Jane 
 Knocker knew it; but she also had reason 
 to think that Jane Knocker had known it
 
 20 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 for some time before she spoke of it. It 
 was not till the middle of June, after a suc 
 cession of encounters between the young 
 people, that her old friend came one morn 
 ing to discuss the circumstance. Mrs. 
 Knocker asked her if she suspected it, and 
 she promptly replied that it had never oc 
 curred to her. She added that she was ex 
 tremely sorry, and that it had probably in 
 the first instance been the fault of that inju 
 dicious dinner. 
 
 " Ah, the day of my headache my mis 
 erable headache ?" said her visitor. "Yes, 
 very likely that did it. He's so dreadfully 
 good-looking." 
 
 " Poor child, he can't help that. Neither 
 can I !" Lady Greyswood ventured to add. 
 
 " He comes by it honestly. He seems 
 very nice." 
 
 " He's nice enough, but he hasn't a far 
 thing, you know, and his expectations are 
 nil." They considered, they turned the 
 matter about, they wondered what they had 
 better do. In the first place there was no 
 room for doubt ; of course Mrs. Knocker 
 hadn't sounded the girl, but a mother, a
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 21 
 
 true mother, was never reduced to that. If 
 Fanny was in every relation of life so pain 
 fully, so constitutionally awkward, the still 
 depths of her shyness, of her dissimulation 
 even, in such a predicament as this, might 
 easily be imagined. She would give no 
 sign that she could possibly smother, she 
 would say nothing and do nothing, watch 
 ing herself, poor child, with trepidation ; but 
 she would suffer, and some day, when the 
 question of her future should really come 
 up it might, after all, in the form of some 
 good proposal they would find themselves 
 beating against a closed door. That was 
 what they had to think of ; that was why 
 Mrs. Knocker had come over. Her old 
 friend cross-examined her with a troubled 
 face, but she was very impressive with her 
 reasons, her intuitions. 
 
 " I'll send him away in a moment, if 
 you'd like that," Lady Greyswood said at 
 last. " I'll try and get him to go abroad." 
 
 Her visitor made no direct reply to this, 
 and no reply at all for some moments. 
 " What does he expect to do what does he 
 want to do ?" she asked.
 
 22 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 " Oh, poor boy, he's looking he's trying 
 to decide. He asks nothing of any one. If 
 he would only knock at a few doors ! But 
 he's too proud." 
 
 "Do you call him very clever?" Fanny's 
 mother demanded. 
 
 " Yes, decidedly ; and good and kind and 
 true. But he has been unlucky." 
 
 "Of course he can't bear her !" said Mrs. 
 Knocker, with a little dry laugh. 
 
 " Lady Greyswood stared ; then she 
 broke out : " Do you mean you'd be 
 willing ?" 
 
 " He's very charming.'' 
 
 " Ah, but you must have great ideas." 
 
 " He's very well connected," said Mrs. 
 Knocker, snapping the tight elastic on her 
 umbrella. 
 
 " Oh, my dear Jane ' connected !' " Lady 
 Greyswood gave a sigh of the sweetest irony. 
 
 " He's connected with you, to begin with." 
 
 Lady Greyswood put out her hand and 
 held her visitor's for a moment. " Of 
 course it isn't as if he were a different sort 
 of person. Of course I should like it !" she 
 added.
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 23 
 
 " Does he dislike her very much ?" 
 Lady Greyswood looked at her friend 
 with a smile. " He resembles Fanny he 
 doesn't tell. But what would her father 
 say ?" she went on. 
 " He doesn't know it." 
 " You've not talked with him ?" 
 Mrs. Knocker hesitated a moment. " He 
 thinks she's all right." Both the ladies 
 laughed a little at the density of men ; 
 then the visitor said : " I wanted to see 
 you first." 
 
 This circumstance gave Lady Greyswood 
 food for thought ; it suggested comprehen 
 sively that, in spite of a probable deficiency 
 of zeal on the General's part, the worthy 
 man would not be the great obstacle. She 
 had begun so quickly to turn over in her 
 mind the various ways in which this new 
 phase of the business might make it pos 
 sible the real obstacle should be sur 
 mounted that she scarcely heard her com 
 panion say next : " The General will only 
 want his daughter to be happy. He has 
 no definite ambitions for her. I dare say 
 Maurice could make him like him." It
 
 24 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 was something more said by her compan 
 ion about Maurice that sounded sharply 
 through her reverie. " But unless the idea 
 
 O 
 
 appeals to him a bit there's no use talking 
 about it." 
 
 "At this Lady Greyswood spoke with de 
 cision. " It shall appeal to him. Leave it 
 to me ! Kiss your dear child for me," she 
 added, as the ladies embraced and sepa 
 rated. 
 
 In the course of the day she made up her 
 mind, and when she again broached the 
 question to her son (it befell that very even 
 ing) she felt that she stood on firmer 
 ground. She began by mentioning to him 
 that her dear old friend had the same 
 charming dream for the girl that she 
 had ; she sketched with a light hand a pict 
 ure of their preconcerted happiness in the 
 union of their children. When he replied 
 that he couldn't for the life of him imagine 
 what the Knockers could see in a poor beg 
 gar of a younger son who had publicly 
 come a cropper, she took pains to prove 
 that he was as good as any one else, and 
 much better than many of the young men
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 25 
 
 to whom persons of sense were often willing 
 to confide their daughters. She had been 
 in much tribulation over the circumstance 
 announced to her in the morning, not know 
 ing whether, in her present enterprise, to 
 keep it back or put it forward. If Maurice 
 should happen not to take it in the right 
 way, it was the sort of thing that might dish 
 the whole experiment. He might be bored, 
 he might be annoyed, he might be horrified 
 there was no limit in such cases to the 
 perversity, to the possible brutality of even 
 the most amiable man. On the other hand 
 he might be pleased, touched, flattered if 
 he didn't dislike the girl too much. Lady 
 Greyswood could indeed imagine that it 
 might be unpleasant to know that a person 
 who was disagreeable to you was in love 
 with you ; so that there was just that risk 
 to run. She determined to run it only if 
 there should be absolutely no other card to 
 play. Meanwhile she said : " Don't you see, 
 now, how intelligent she is, in her quiet way, 
 and how perfect she is at home without 
 any nonsense or affectation or ill -nature? 
 She's not a bit stupid, she's remarkably
 
 26 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 clever. She can do a lot of things ; she has 
 no end of talents. Many girls with a quar 
 ter of her abilities would make five times 
 the show." 
 
 " My dear mother, she's a great swell ; I 
 freely admit it. She's far too good for me. 
 What in the world puts it into your two 
 heads that she would look at me ?" 
 
 At this Lady Greyswood was tempted to 
 speak ; but after an instant she said, instead : 
 " She has looked at you, and you've seen 
 how. You've seen her several times now, 
 and she has been remarkably nice to you." 
 
 " Nice ? Ah, poor girl, she's frightened 
 to death !" 
 
 "Believe me I read her," Lady Greys- 
 wood replied. 
 
 " She knows she has money, and she 
 thinks I'm after it. She thinks I'm a rav 
 ening wolf, and she's scared." 
 
 " I happen to know, as a fact, that she's 
 in love with you !" Before she could check 
 herself Lady Greyswood had played her 
 card, and though she held her breath a lit 
 tle after doing so, she felt that it had been 
 a good moment. " If I hadn't known it,"
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 27 
 
 she hastened further to declare, " I should 
 never have said another word." Maurice 
 burst out laughing how in the world did 
 she know it ? When she put the evidence 
 before him she had the pleasure of seeing 
 that he listened without irritation ; and this 
 emboldened her to say : " Don't you think 
 you could try to like her ?" 
 
 Maurice was lounging on a sofa opposite 
 to her ; jocose but embarrassed, he had 
 thrown back his head, and while he 
 stretched himself his eyes wandered over 
 the upper expanse of the room. " It's very 
 kind of her and of her mother, and I'm 
 much obliged and all that, though a fellow 
 feels rather an ass in talking about such a 
 thing. Of course, also, I don't pretend be 
 fore such a proof of wisdom that I think 
 her in the least a fool. But, oh, dear !" 
 And the young man broke off with laughing 
 impatience, as if he had too much to say. 
 His mother waited an instant, then she 
 uttered a persuasive, interrogative sound, 
 and he went on : " It's only a pity she's so 
 awful !" 
 
 " So awful ?" murmured Lady Greyswood.
 
 28 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 " Dear mother, she's about as ugly a 
 woman as ever turned round on you. If 
 there were only just a touch or two less 
 of it !" 
 
 Lady Greyswood got up ; she stood look 
 ing in silence at the tinted shade of the 
 lamp. She remained in this position so 
 long that he glanced at her he was struck 
 with the sadness in her face. He would 
 have been in error, however, if he had 
 suspected that this sadness was assumed 
 for the purpose of showing him that she 
 was wounded by his resistance, for the re 
 flection that his last words caused her to 
 make was as disinterested as it was melan 
 choly. Here was an excellent, a charming 
 girl a girl, she was sure, with a rare ca 
 pacity for devotion whose future was re 
 duced to nothing by the mere accident, in 
 her face, of a certain want of drawing. A 
 man could settle her fate with a laugh, 
 could give her away with a snap of his fin 
 gers. She seemed to see Maurice administer 
 to poor Fanny's image the little displeased 
 shove with which he would have disposed 
 of an ill-seasoned dish. Moreover, he great-
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 29 
 
 ly exaggerated. Her heart grew heavy with 
 a sense of the hardness of the lot of women, 
 and when she looked again at her son there 
 were tears in her eyes that startled him. 
 " Poor girl poor girl !" she simply sighed, 
 in a tone that was to reverberate in his mind 
 and to constitute in doing so a real appeal 
 to his imagination. After a moment she add 
 ed : " We'll talk no more about her no, no !" 
 All the same she went three days later to 
 see Mrs. Knocker and say to her : " My 
 dear creature, I think it's all right." 
 " Do you mean he'll take us up ?" 
 " He'll come and see you, and you must 
 give him plenty of chances." What Lady 
 Greyswood would have liked to be able to 
 say, crudely and comfortably, was, " He'll 
 try to manage it he promises to do what 
 he can." What she did say, however, was, 
 " He's greatly prepossessed in the dear 
 child's favor." 
 
 " Then I dare say he'll be very nice." 
 " If I didn't think he'd behave like a gen 
 tleman I wouldn't raise a finger. The more 
 he sees of her the more he'll be sure to like 
 her."
 
 3 o THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 "Of course with poor Fanny that's the 
 only thing one can build on," said Mrs. 
 Knocker. " There's so much to get over." 
 
 Lady Greyswood hesitated a moment. 
 " Maurice has got over it. But I should 
 tell you that at first he doesn't want it 
 known." 
 
 " Doesn't want what known ?" 
 
 "Why, the footing on which he comes. 
 You see it's just the least bit experimental." 
 
 " For what do you take me ?" asked Mrs. 
 Knocker. "The child shall never dream 
 that anything has ever passed between us. 
 No more of course shall her father." 
 
 " It's too delightful of you to leave it 
 that way," Lady Greyswood replied. " We 
 must surround her happiness with every 
 safeguard." 
 
 Mrs. Knocker sat pensive for some mo 
 ments. " So that, if nothing comes of it, 
 there's no harm done ? That idea that 
 nothing may come of it makes one a little 
 nervous," she added. 
 
 " Of course I can't absolutely answer for 
 my poor boy !" said Lady Greyswood, with 
 just the faintest ring of impatience. " But
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 31 
 
 he's much affected by what he knows I 
 told him. That's what moves him." 
 " He must of course be perfectly free." 
 "The great thing is for her not to 
 know." 
 
 Mrs. Knocker considered. " Are you very 
 sure ?" She had apparently had a profound- 
 er second thought. 
 
 " Why, my dear with the risk !" 
 " Isn't the risk, after all, greater the other 
 way? Mayn't it help the matter on, mayn't 
 it do the poor child a certain degree of 
 good, the idea that, as you say, he's pre 
 possessed in her favor? It would perhaps 
 cheer her up, as it were, and encourage her, 
 so that by the very fact of being happier 
 about herself she may make a better impres 
 sion. That's what she wants, poor thing 
 to be helped to hold up her head, to take 
 herself more seriously, to believe that peo 
 ple can like her. And fancy, when it's a 
 case of such a beautiful young man who's 
 all ready to !" 
 
 "Yes, he's all ready to," Lady Greys- 
 wood conceded. " Of course it's a ques 
 tion for your own discretion. I can't advise
 
 32 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 you, for you know your child. But it seems 
 to me a case for tremendous caution." 
 
 " Oh, trust me for that !" said Mrs. Knock 
 er. " We shall be very kind to him," she 
 smiled, as her visitor got up. 
 
 " He'll appreciate that. But it's too nice 
 of you to leave it so." 
 
 Mrs. Knocker gave a hopeful shrug. " He 
 has only to be civil to Blake !" 
 
 " Ah, he isn't a brute !" Lady Greyswood 
 exclaimed, caressing her. 
 
 After this she passed a month of no little 
 anxiety. She asked her son no question, 
 and for two or three weeks he offered her 
 no other information than to say two or 
 three times that Miss Knocker really could 
 ride ; but she learned from her old friend 
 everything she wanted to know. Immedi 
 ately after the conference of the two ladies 
 Maurice, in the Row, had taken an oppor 
 tunity of making up to the girl. She rode 
 every day with her father, and Maurice rode, 
 though possessed of nothing in life to put a 
 leg across ; and he had been so well re 
 ceived that this proved the beginning of a 
 custom. He had a canter with the young
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 33 
 
 lady most days in the week, and when they 
 parted it was usually to meet again in the 
 evening. His relations with the household 
 in Ennismore Gardens were indeed not left 
 greatly to his initiative , he became on the 
 spot the subject of perpetual invitations and 
 arrangements, the centre of the friendliest 
 manoeuvres ; so that Lady Greyswood was 
 struck with Jane Knocker's feverish energy 
 in the good cause the ingenuity, the bri 
 bery, the cunning that an exemplary mother 
 might be inspired to practise. She herself 
 did nothing, she left it all to poor Jane, and 
 this perhaps gave her for the moment a 
 sense of contemplative superiority. She 
 wondered if she would in any circumstances 
 have plotted so almost fiercely for one of 
 her children. She was glad her old friend's 
 design had her full approbation , she held 
 her breath a little when she said to herself: 
 " Suppose I hadn't liked it suppose it had 
 been for Chumleigh !" Chumleigh was the 
 present Lord Greyswood, whom his mother 
 still called by his earlier designation. Fanny 
 Knocker's thirty thousand would have been 
 by no means enough for Chumleigh. Lady
 
 Greyswood, in spite of her suspense, was 
 detached enough to be amused when her 
 accomplice told her that " Blake " had said 
 that Maurice really could ride. The two 
 mothers thanked God for the riding 
 the riding would see them through. Lady 
 Greyswood had watched Fanny narrowly in 
 the Park, where, in the saddle, she looked 
 no worse than lots of girls. She had no 
 idea how Maurice got his mounts she knew 
 Chumleigh had none to give him ; but there 
 were directions in which she would have en 
 couraged him to incur almost any liability. 
 He was evidently amused and beguiled ; he 
 fell into comfortable attitudes on the soft 
 cushions that were laid for him and partook 
 with relish of the dainties that were served , 
 he had his fill of the theatres, of the opera 
 entertainments of which he was fond. 
 She could see he didn't care for the sort of 
 people he met in Ennismore Gardens, but 
 this didn't matter ; so much as that she 
 didn't ask of him. She knew that when he 
 should have something to tell her he would 
 speak ; and meanwhile she pretended to be 
 a thousand miles away. The only thing
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 35 
 
 that worried her was that he had dropped 
 photography. She said to Mrs. Knocker 
 more than once : " Does he make love ? 
 that's what I want to know !" to which this 
 lady replied, with her incongruous drollery, 
 " My dear, how can I make out ? He's so 
 little like Blake !" But she added that she 
 believed Fanny was intensely happy. Lady 
 Greyswood had been struck with the girl's 
 looking so, and she rejoiced to be able to 
 declare, in perfectly good faith, that she 
 thought her greatly improved. " Didn't I 
 tell you ?" returned Mrs. Knocker to this 
 with a certain accent of triumph. It made 
 Lady Greyswood nervous, for she took it to 
 mean that Fanny had had a hint from her 
 mother of Maurice's possible intentions. 
 She was afraid to ask her old friend directly 
 if this were definitely true ; poor Fanny's 
 improvement was, after all, not a gain suffi 
 cient to make up for the cruelty that would 
 reside in the sense of being rejected. 
 
 One day, in Queen Street, Maurice said, 
 in an abrupt, conscientious way, " You were 
 right about Fanny Knocker she's a re 
 markably clever and a thoroughly nice girl;
 
 36 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 a fellow can really talk with her. But oh, 
 mother !" 
 
 " Well, my dear ?" 
 
 The young man's face wore a strange 
 smile. " Oh, mother !" he expressively, quite 
 tragically repeated. "But it's all right!" 
 he presently added, in a different tone, and 
 Lady Greyswood was reassured. This con 
 fidence, however, received a shock a little 
 later, on the evening of a day that had been 
 intensely hot. A torrid wave had passed 
 over London, and in the suffocating air the 
 pleasures of the season had put on a purple 
 face. Lady Greyswood, whose own fine 
 lowness of tone no temperature could affect, 
 knew, in her bedimmed drawing-room, ex 
 actly the detail of her son's engagements. 
 She pitied him she had managed to keep 
 clear ; she had in particular a vision of a 
 distribution of prizes, by one of the prin- 
 . cesses, at a big horticultural show ; she saw 
 the sweltering starers (and at what, after 
 all ?) under a huge glass roof, while there 
 passed before her, in a blur of crimson, the 
 glimpse of uncomfortable cheeks under an 
 erratic white bonnet, together also with the
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 37 
 
 sense that some of Jane Knocker's ideas of 
 pleasure were of the oddest (she had such 
 lacunes), and some of the ordeals to which 
 she exposed poor Fanny singularly ill-chosen. 
 Maurice came in, perspiring but pale, (noth 
 ing could make him ugly !) to dress for din 
 ner; and though he was in a great hurry, he 
 found time to pant : " Oh, mother, what I'm 
 going through for you !" 
 
 " Do you mean rushing about so -in this 
 weather? We shall have a change to 
 night." 
 
 " I hope so ! There are people for whom 
 it doesn't do at all ; ah, not a bit !" said 
 Maurice, with a laugh that she didn't fancy. 
 But he went up-stairs before she could think 
 of anything to reply, and after he had dress 
 ed, he passed out without speaking to her 
 again. The next morning, on entering her 
 room, her maid mentioned, as a delicate 
 duty, that Mr. Glanvil, whose door stood 
 wide open, and whose bed was untouched, 
 had apparently not yet come in. While, 
 however, her ladyship was in the first fresh 
 ness of meditation on this singular fact, the 
 morning's letters were brought up, and as it
 
 38 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 happened that the second envelope she 
 glanced at was addressed in Maurice's hand, 
 she was quickly in possession of an expla 
 nation still more startling than his absence. 
 He wrote from a club, at nine o'clock the 
 previous evening, to announce that he was 
 taking the night train for the Continent. He 
 hadn't dressed for dinner, he had dressed 
 otherwise, and having stuffed a few things 
 with surreptitious haste into a Gladstone 
 bag, had slipped unperceived out of the 
 house and into a hansom. He had sent 
 to Ennismore Gardens, from his club, an 
 apology a request he should not be waited 
 for; and now he should just have time to 
 get to Charing Cross. He was off he didn't 
 know where, but he was off he did know 
 why. " You'll know why, dear mother, too, 
 I think," this wonderful communication con 
 tinued ; " you'll know why, because I haven't 
 deceived you. I've done what I could, but 
 I've broken down. I felt to-day that it was 
 no use ; there was a moment, at that beastly 
 exhibition, when I saw it, when the ques 
 tion was settled. The truth rolled over me 
 in a stifling wave. After that I made up
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 39 
 
 my mind there was nothing to do but to 
 bolt. I meant to put it off till to-morrow, 
 and to tell you first ; but while I was dress 
 ing to-day it struck me irresistibly that my 
 true course is to break now never to enter 
 the house or go near her again. I was 
 afraid of a scene with you about this. I 
 haven't uttered a word of ' love ' to her 
 (Heaven save us !), but my position this 
 afternoon became definitely false, and that 
 fact prescribes the course I am taking. You 
 shall hear from me again in a day or two. 
 I have the greatest regard for her, but I 
 can't bear to look at her. I don't care a 
 bit for money, but, hang it, I must have 
 beauty ! Please send me twenty pounds, 
 paste rest ante, Boulogne." 
 
 "What I want, Jane, is to get at //>," 
 Lady Greyswood said, later in the day, with 
 an austerity that was sensible even through 
 her tears. " Does the child know, or doesn't 
 she, what was at stake ?" 
 
 " She hasn't an inkling of it how should 
 she ? I recognized that it was best not to 
 tell her and I didn't." 
 
 On this, as Mrs. Knocker's tears had also
 
 40 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 flowed, Lady Greyswood kissed her. But 
 she didn't believe her. Fanny herself, how 
 ever, for the rest of the season, proved 
 inscrutable. " She's a character !" Lady 
 Greyswood reflected, with admiration. In 
 September, in Yorkshire, the girl was taken 
 seriously ill. 
 
 Ill 
 
 AFTER luncheon at the Crisfords' the 
 big Sunday banquets of twenty people and 
 a dozen courses the men, lingering a little 
 in the dining-room, dawdling among dis 
 placed chairs and dropped napkins, while 
 the ladies rustled away, ended by shuffling 
 in casual pairs up to the studio, where coffee 
 was served, and where, presently, before the 
 cigarettes were smoked out, Mrs. Crisford 
 always reappeared to usher in her contin 
 gent. The studio was high and handsome, 
 and luncheon at the Crisfords' was, in the 
 common esteem, more amusing than almost 
 anything else in London except dinner. It 
 was Bohemia with excellent service Bo-
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 41 
 
 hernia not debtor but creditor. Up-stairs 
 the pictures, finished or nearly finished, and 
 arranged in a shining row, gave an obvious 
 ness of topic, so that conversation could 
 easily touch bottom. Maurice Glanvil, who 
 had never been in the house before, looked 
 about and wondered; he was struck with 
 the march of civilization the rise of the 
 social tide. There were new notes in Eng 
 lish life, which he caught quickly with his 
 fresh sense ; during his long absence 
 twenty years of France and Italy all sorts 
 of things had happened. In his youth, in 
 England, artists and authors and actors 
 people of that general kind were not near 
 ly so " smart." Maurice Glanvil was forty- 
 nine to-day, and he thought a great deal of 
 his youth. He regretted it, he missed it, he 
 tried to beckon it back ; but the differences 
 in London made him feel that it had gone 
 forever. There might perhaps be some 
 sudden compensation in being fifty, some 
 turn of the dim telescope, some view from 
 the brow of the hill ; it was a round, gross, 
 stupid number, which probably would make 
 one pompous, make one think one's self
 
 42 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 venerable. Meanwhile, at any rate, it was 
 odious to be forty-nine. Maurice observed 
 the young now more than he had ever done ; 
 observed them, that is, as the young. He 
 wished he could have had a son, to be 
 twenty with again ; his daughter was only 
 eighteen ; but fond as he was of her, he 
 couldn't live instinctively into her girlish- 
 ness. It was not that there was not plenty 
 of it, for she was simple, sweet, indefinite, 
 without the gifts that the boy would have 
 had, the gifts what had become of them 
 now ? that he himself used to have. 
 
 The youngest person present, before the 
 ladies came in,was the young man who had sat 
 next to Vera, and whom, being on the same 
 side of the long table, he had not had under 
 his eye. Maurice noticed him now, noticed 
 that he was very good-looking, fair and fresh 
 and clean, impeccable in his straight smooth 
 ness ; also that, apparently knowing none of 
 the other guests and moving by himself 
 about the studio with visible interest in the 
 charming things, he had the modesty of his 
 age and of his position. He had, however, 
 something more besides, which had begun
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 43 
 
 to prompt this observer to speak to him in 
 order to hear the sound of his voice a 
 strange, elusive resemblance, lost in the pro 
 file, but flickering straight out of the full 
 face, to some one Maurice had known. For 
 a minute Glanvil was worried by it he had 
 a sense that a name would suddenly come 
 to him if he should see the lips in motion ; 
 but as he was on the point of laying the 
 ghost by an experiment Mrs. Crisford led 
 in her companions. His daughter was 
 among them, and in company, as he was 
 constantly anxious about her appearance 
 and her attitude, she had at moments the 
 faculty of drawing his attention from every 
 thing else. The poor child, the only fruit 
 of his odd, romantic union, the coup defoudre 
 of his youth, with her strangely beautiful 
 mother, whose own mother had been a Rus 
 sian, and who had died in giving birth to 
 her his short, colorless, insignificant Vera 
 was excessively, incorrigibly plain. She 
 had been the disappointment of his life, but 
 he greatly pitied her. Her want of beauty, 
 with her antecedents, had been one of the 
 strangest tricks of fate \ she was acutely con-
 
 44 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 scious of it, and being good and docile, 
 would have liked to please. She did some 
 times, to her father's delight, in spite of 
 everything; she had been educated abroad, 
 on foreign lines, near her mother's people. 
 He had brought her to England to take her 
 out, to do what he could for her; but he 
 was not unaware that in England her man 
 ners, which had been thought very pretty on 
 the Continent, would strike some persons 
 as artificial. They were exactly what her 
 mother's had been ; they made up to a cer 
 tain extent for the want of other resem 
 blance. An extreme solicitude, at any rate, 
 as to the impression they might make, was 
 the source of his habit, in London, of watch 
 ing her covertly. He tried to see at a given 
 moment how she looked, if she were happy; 
 it was always with an intention of encourage 
 ment, and there was a frequent exchange 
 between them of little invisible affectionate 
 signs. She wore charming clothes, but she 
 was terribly short ; in England the girls 
 were gigantic, and it was only the tallest 
 who were noticed. Their manners, alas, 
 had nothing to do with it many of them
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 45 
 
 indeed hadn't any manners. As soon as he 
 had got near Vera he said to her, scanning 
 her through his single glass from head to 
 foot : 
 
 "Who is the young man who sat next you? 
 the one at the other end of the room." 
 
 " I don't know his name, papa I didn't 
 catch it." 
 
 " Was he civil did he talk to you ?" 
 
 "Oh, a great deal, papa about all sorts 
 of things." 
 
 Something in the tone of her voice made 
 him look with greater intensity and even 
 with greater tenderness than usual into her 
 little dim green eyes. 
 
 "Then you're all right you' re getting on?'' 
 
 She gave her effusive smile the one that 
 perhaps wouldn't do in England. "Oh, 
 beautifully, papa every one's so kind." 
 
 She never complained, was a brave little 
 optimist, full of sweet resources ; but he had 
 detected to-day, as soon as he looked at 
 her, the particular shade of her content. It 
 made him continue, after an hesitation : 
 " He didn't say anything about his relations 
 anything that could give you a clew ?"
 
 46 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 Vera thought a moment. " Not that I 
 can remember unless that Mr. Crisford is 
 painting the portrait of his mother. Ah, 
 there it is!" the girl exclaimed, looking 
 across the room at a large picture on an 
 easel, which the young man had just ap 
 proached, and from which their host had re 
 moved the drapery that covered it. Mau 
 rice Glanvil had observed this drapery, and 
 as the artist unveiled the canvas with a 
 flourish he saw that he had been waiting for 
 the ladies to show it, to produce a surprise, 
 a grand effect. Every one moved towards 
 it, and Maurice, with his daughter beside 
 him, recognized that the production, a por 
 trait, was striking, a great success for Cris 
 ford the figure, down to the knees, with an 
 extraordinary look of life, of a tall, hand 
 some woman of middle age, in full dress, in 
 black. Yet he saw it for the moment vaguely, 
 through a preoccupation, that of a discovery 
 which he had just made, and which had re 
 called to him an incident of his youth his 
 juxtaposition, in London, at a dinner, to a 
 girl, insurmountably charmless to him, who 
 had fallen in love with him (so that she was
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 47 
 
 nearly to die of it), within the first five 
 minutes, before he had even spoken ; as he 
 had subsequently learned from a communi 
 cation made him by his poor mother a re 
 minder uttered with a pointless bitterness 
 that he had failed to understand, and accom 
 panied with unsuspected details, much later 
 too late, long after his marriage and shortly 
 before her death. He said to himself that 
 he must look out, and he wondered if poor 
 Vera would also be insurmountably charm 
 less to the good-looking young man. " But 
 what a likeness, papa what a likeness!" 
 he heard her murmur at his elbow with sup 
 pressed excitement. 
 
 " How can you tell, my dear, if you 
 haven't seen her ?" 
 
 " I mean to the gentleman the son." 
 Every one was exclaiming, " How won 
 derfully clever how beautiful !" and under 
 cover of the agitation and applause Maurice 
 Glanvil had drawn nearer the picture. The 
 movement had brought him close to the 
 young man of whom he had been talking 
 with Vera, and who, with his happy eyes on 
 the painted figure, seemed to smile in ac-
 
 48 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 knowledgment of the artist's talent and of 
 the sitter's charm. 
 
 " Do you know who the lady is ?" Mau 
 rice said to him. 
 
 He turned his bright face to his inter 
 locutor. " She's my mother Mrs. Tregent. 
 Isn't it wonderful ?" 
 
 His eyes, his lips, his voice flashed a light 
 into GlanviPs uncertainty the tormenting 
 resemblance was simply a prolonged echo 
 of Fanny Knocker, in whose later name, 
 precisely, he recognized the name pro 
 nounced by the young man. Maurice Glan- 
 vil stared in some bewilderment ; this state 
 ly, splendid lady, with a face so vivid that 
 it was handsome, was what that unfortunate 
 girl had become ? The eyes, as if they 
 picked him out, looked at him strangely 
 from the canvas ; the face, with all its dif 
 ference, asserted itself, and he felt himself 
 turning as red as if he had been in the pres 
 ence of the original. Young Tregent, pleased 
 and proud, had given way to the pressing 
 spectators, placing himself at Vera's other 
 side; and Maurice heard the girl exclaim 
 to him, in one of her pretty effusions :
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 49 
 
 " How beautiful she must be, and how 
 amiable !" 
 
 " She is indeed It's not a bit flattered." 
 And while Maurice still stared, more and 
 more mystified for "flattered, flattered!" 
 was the unspoken solution in which he had 
 instantly taken refuge his neighbor con 
 tinued : " I wish you could know her you 
 must ; she's delightful. She couldn't come 
 here to-day they asked her ; she has people 
 lunching at home." 
 
 "I should be so glad; perhaps we may 
 meet her somewhere," said Vera. 
 
 "If I ask her, and if you'll let her, I'm sure 
 she'll come to see you," the young man re 
 sponded. Maurice had glanced at him while 
 the face of the portrait watched them with 
 the oddest, the grimmest effect. He was 
 filled with a confusion of feelings, asking 
 himself half a dozen questions at once. 
 Was young Tregent, with his attentive man 
 ner, " making up " to Vera ? was he going 
 out of his way in answering for his mother's 
 civility ? Little did he know what he was 
 taking on himself ! Above all, was Fanny 
 Knocker to-day this extraordinary figure
 
 50 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 extraordinary in the light of the early plain 
 ness that had made him bolt ? He became 
 conscious of an extreme curiosity, an irresist 
 ible desire to see her. 
 
 " Oh, papa," said Vera, " Mr. Tregent's 
 so kind ; he's so good as to promise us a 
 visit from his mother." 
 
 The young man's friendly eyes were still 
 on the child's face. " I'll tell her all about 
 you. Oh, if I ask her, she'll come !" he re 
 peated. 
 
 "Does she do everything you ask her?" 
 the girl inquired. 
 
 " She likes to know my friends !" 
 
 Maurice hesitated, wondering if he were 
 in the presence of a smooth young hum 
 bug to whom compliments cost nothing, or 
 in that of an impression really made made 
 by his little, fluttered, unpopular Vera. He 
 had a horror of exposing his child to risks, 
 but his curiosity was greater than his cau 
 tion. " Your mother mustn't come to us 
 it's our duty to go to her," he said to Mr. 
 Tregent ; " I had the honor of knowing her 
 a long time ago. Her mother and mine 
 were intimate friends. Be so good as to men-
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 51 
 
 tion my name to her, that of Maurice Glanvil, 
 and to tell her how glad I have been to 
 make your acquaintance. And now, my 
 dear child," he added, to Vera, "we must 
 take leave." 
 
 During the rest of that day it never oc 
 curred to him that there might be an awk 
 wardness in his presenting himself, even after 
 many years, before a person with whom he 
 had broken as he had broken with Fanny 
 Knocker. This was partly because he held, 
 justly enough, that he had never committed 
 himself, and partly because the intensity of 
 his desire to measure with his own eyes the 
 change represented misrepresented per 
 haps by the picture was a force greater 
 than any embarrassment. His mother had 
 told him that the poor girl had cruelly suffer 
 ed, but there was no present intensity in that 
 idea. With her expensive portrait, her grand 
 air, her handsome son, she somehow em 
 bodied success, whereas he himself, standing 
 for mere bereavement and disappointment, 
 was a failure not to be surpassed. With Vera 
 that evening he was very silent; she saw 
 him smoke endless cigarettes, and wondered
 
 52 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 what he was thinking of. She guessed in 
 deed, but she was too subtle a little person 
 to attempt to fall in with his thoughts, or to 
 be willing to betray her own, by asking him 
 random questions about Mrs. Tregent. 
 She had expressed, as they came away from 
 their luncheon-party, a natural surprise at 
 the coincidence of his having known the 
 mother of her amusing neighbor, but the 
 only other words that dropped from her on 
 the subject were contained in a question 
 that, before she went to bed, she put to him 
 with abrupt gayety, while she carefully 
 placed a marker in a book she had not been 
 reading. 
 
 " When is it, then, that we're to call upon 
 this wonderful old friend ?" 
 
 He looked at her through the smoke of 
 his cigarette. " I don't know. We must 
 wait a little, to allow her time to give some 
 sign." 
 
 " Oh, I see !" And Vera took leave of 
 him with one of her sincere little kisses.
 
 IV 
 
 HE had not long to wait for the sign from 
 Mrs. Tregent ; it arrived the very next 
 morning in the shape of an invitation to 
 dinner. This invitation was immediately 
 accepted, but a fortnight was still to inter 
 vene a trial to Maurice GlanviPs patience. 
 The promptitude of the demonstration gave 
 him pleasure it showed him no bitterness 
 had survived. What place was there in 
 deed for resentment, since she married and 
 had given birth to children, and thought 
 sufficiently well of the face God had given 
 her to desire to hand it on to her posterity ? 
 Her husband was in Parliament, or had 
 been that came back to him from his 
 mother's story. He caught himself revert 
 ing to her with a frequency that surprised 
 him ; he was haunted by the image of that 
 bright, strong woman on Crisford's canvas, 
 in whom there was just enough of Fanny
 
 54 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 Knocker to put a sort of defiance into the 
 difference. He wanted to see it again, and 
 his opportunity was at hand in the form of 
 a visit to Mrs. Crisford. He called on this 
 lady, without his daughter, four days after 
 he had lunched with her, and finding her 
 at home, he presently led the conversation 
 to the portrait and to his ardent desire for 
 another glimpse of it. Mrs. Crisford grati 
 fied this eagerness perhaps he struck her 
 as a possible sitter. It was late in the after 
 noon, and her husband was out ; she led 
 him into the studio. Mrs. Tregent, splen 
 did and serene, stood there as if she had 
 been watching for him. There was no 
 doubt the picture was a masterpiece. 
 Maurice had mentioned that he had known 
 the original years before and then had lost 
 sight of her. He questioned his hostess 
 with artful detachment. 
 
 " What sort of a person has she become 
 agreeable, popular ?" 
 
 " Every one adores her she's so 
 clever." 
 
 " Really remarkably ?" 
 
 "Extraordinarily one of the cleverest
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 55 
 
 women I've ever known, and quite one of 
 the most charming." 
 
 Maurice looked at the portrait at the 
 super-subtle smile which seemed to tell 
 him Mrs. Tregent knew they were talking 
 about her; a kind of smile he had never 
 expected to live to see in Fanny Knocker's 
 eyes. Then he asked : " Has she literally 
 become as handsome as that ?" 
 
 Mrs. Crisford hesitated. " She's beauti 
 ful." 
 
 " Beautiful ?" Maurice echoed. 
 
 "What shall I say? It's a peculiar 
 charm ! It's her spirit. One sees that her 
 life has been beautiful in spite of her sor 
 rows !" Mrs. Crisford added. 
 
 " What sorrows has she had ?" Maurice 
 colored a little as soon as he had spoken. 
 
 "Oh, lots of deaths. She has lost 
 her husband ; she has lost several chil 
 dren." 
 
 "Ah, that's new to me. Was her mar 
 riage happy ?" 
 
 " It must have been for Mr. Tregent. If 
 it wasn't for her, no one ever knew." 
 
 " But she has a son," said Maurice.
 
 56 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 "Yes, the only one such a dear. She 
 thinks all the world of him." 
 
 At this moment a message was brought 
 to Mrs. Crisford, and she asked to be ex 
 cused while she went to say a word to 
 some one who was waiting. Maurice Glan- 
 vil in this way was left alone for five min 
 utes with the intensity of the presence 
 evoked by the artist. He found himself 
 agitated, excited by it ; the face of the por 
 trait was so intelligent and conscious that 
 as he stood there he felt as if some strange 
 communication had taken place between 
 his being and Mrs. Tregent's. The idea 
 made him nervous ; he moved about the 
 room and ended by turning his back. Mrs. 
 Crisford reappeared, but he soon took leave 
 of her ; and when he had got home (he had 
 settled himself in South Kensington, in a 
 little undiscriminated house which he had 
 hated from the first,) he learned from his 
 daughter that she had had a visit from young 
 Tregent. He had asked first for Mr. Glan- 
 vil, and then, in the second instance, for 
 herself, telling her when admitted, as if to 
 attenuate his possible indiscretion, that his
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 57 
 
 mother had charged him to try to see her, 
 even if he should not find her father. Vera 
 had never before received a gentleman alone, 
 and the incident had left traces of emotion. 
 " Poor little thing !" Maurice said to him 
 self ; he always took a melancholy view of 
 any happiness of his daughter's, tending to 
 believe, in his pessimism, that it could only 
 lead to some refinement of humiliation. 
 He encouraged her, however, to talk about 
 young Tregent, who, according to her ac 
 count, had been extravagantly amusing. 
 He had said, moreover, that his mother 
 was tremendously impatient to renew such 
 an old acquaintance. " Why in the world 
 doesn't she, then ?" Maurice asked himself ; 
 " why doesn't she come and see Vera ?'' 
 He reflected afterwards that such an expec 
 tation was unreasonable, but it represented 
 at the moment a kind of rebellion of his 
 conscience. Then, as he had begun to be 
 a little ashamed of his curiosity, he liked to 
 think that Mrs. Tregent would have quite 
 as much. On the morrow he knocked at 
 her door she lived in a " commodious " 
 house in Manchester Square and had the
 
 58 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 satisfaction, as he had chosen his time care 
 fully, of learning that she had just come in. 
 Up-stairs, in a high, quiet, old-fashioned 
 drawing-room, she was before him. What 
 he saw was a tall woman in black, in her 
 bonnet, with a white face, smiling intensely 
 smiling and smiling before she spoke. 
 He quickly perceived that she was agitated 
 and was making an heroic effort, which 
 would presently be successful, not to show 
 it. But it was above all clear to him that 
 she wasn't Fanny Knocker was simply 
 another person altogether. She had nothing 
 in common with Fanny Knocker. It was 
 impossible to meet her on the ground of 
 any former acquaintance. What acquaint 
 ance had he ever had with this graceful har 
 monious, expressive English matron, whose 
 smile had a singular radiance ? That rascal 
 of a Crisford had done her such perfect jus 
 tice that he felt as if he had before him the 
 portrait of which the image in the studio 
 had been the original. There were, never 
 theless, things to be said, and they said them 
 on either side, sinking together, with friend 
 ly exclamations and exaggerated laughs, on
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 59 
 
 the sofa, where her nearness seemed the 
 span of all the distance that separated her 
 from the past. The phrase that hummed 
 through everything, to his sense, was his own 
 inarticulate " How could I have known ? how 
 could I have known ?" How could he have 
 foreseen that time and life and happiness 
 (it was probably more than anything happi 
 ness) would transpose her into such a dif 
 ferent key ? Her whole personality revealed 
 itself from moment to moment as something 
 so agreeable that even after all these years 
 he felt himself blushing for the crass stupid 
 ity of his mistake. Yes, he was turning red, 
 and she could see it and would know why ; 
 a perception that could only constitute for 
 her a magnificent triumph a revenge. All 
 his natural and acquired coolness, his ex 
 perience of life, his habit of society, every 
 thing that contributed to make him a man 
 of the world, were of no avail to cover his 
 confusion. He took refuge from it almost 
 angrily in trying to prove to himself that she 
 had, on a second look, a likeness to the ugly 
 girl he had not thought good enough in 
 trying to trace Fanny Knocker in her fair,
 
 60 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 ripe bloom, the fine irregularity of her feat 
 ures. To put his finger on the identity 
 would make him feel better. Some of the 
 facts of the girl's crooked face were still 
 there conventional beauty was absent ; but 
 the proportions and relations had changed, 
 and the expression and the spirit ; she had 
 accepted herself or ceased to care had 
 found oblivion and activity and appreci 
 ation. What Maurice mainly discovered, 
 however, in this intenser observation was an 
 attitude of hospitality towards himself which 
 immediately effaced the presumption of " tri 
 umph." Vulgar vanity was far from her, 
 and the grossness of watching her effect 
 upoji him ; she was watching only the lost 
 vision that had come back, the joy that, if 
 for a single hour, she had found again. She 
 herself had no measure of the alteration 
 that struck him, and there was no sub 
 stitution for her in the face that her deep 
 eyes seemed to brush with their hovering. 
 Presently they were talking like old friends, 
 and before long each was in possession of 
 the principal facts concerning the other. 
 Many things had come and gone, and the
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 6l 
 
 common fate had pressed them hard. Her 
 parents were dead, and her husband and 
 her first-born children. He, on his side, had 
 lost his mother and his wife. They matched 
 bereavements and compared bruises, and in 
 the way she expressed herself there was a 
 charm which forced him, as he wondered, 
 to remember that Fanny Knocker had at 
 least been intelligent. 
 
 " I wish I could have seen your wife 
 you must tell me all about her," she said. 
 " Haven't you some portraits ?" 
 
 " Some poor little photographs. I'll 
 show them to you. She was very pret 
 ty and very gentle ; she was also very 
 un - English. But she only lived a year. 
 She wasn't clever and accomplished like 
 you." 
 
 "Ah, me; you don't know me/" 
 
 " No, but I want to oh, particularly. I'm 
 prepared to give a good deal of time to the 
 study." 
 
 " We must be friends," said Mrs. Tregent. 
 " I shall take an extraordinary interest in 
 your daughter." 
 
 " She'll be grateful for it. She's a good
 
 62 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 little reasonable thing, without a scrap of 
 beauty." 
 
 "You care greatly for that," said Mrs. 
 Tregent. 
 
 He hesitated. " Dont you ?" 
 
 She smiled at him with her basking can 
 dor. " I used to. That's my husband," she 
 added, with an odd, though evidently ac 
 cidental inconsequence. She had reached 
 out to a table for a photograph in a silver 
 frame. "He was very good to me." 
 
 Maurice saw that Mr. Tregent had been 
 many years older than his wife a prosper 
 ous, prosaic, parliamentary person whom 
 she couldn't impose on a man of the world. 
 He sat an hour, and they talked of the mu 
 tilated season of their youth ; he wondered 
 at the things she remembered. In this little 
 hour he felt his situation change some 
 thing strange and important take place ; he 
 seemed to see why he had come back to 
 England. But there was an implication that 
 worried him it was in the very air, a rever 
 beration of that old assurance of his mother's. 
 He wished to clear the question up it 
 would matter for the beginning of a new
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 63 
 
 friendship. Had she had any sense of injury 
 when he took to his heels, any glimpse of 
 the understanding on which he had begun 
 to come to Ennismore Gardens ? He couldn't 
 find out to-day except by asking her, which, 
 at their time of life, after so many years and 
 consolations, would be legitimate and even 
 amusing. When he took leave of her he 
 held her hand a moment, hesitating; then 
 he brought out : 
 
 " Did they ever tell you a hundred years 
 ago that between your mother and mine 
 there was a great question of our marry 
 ing?" 
 
 She stared she broke into a laugh. 
 " Was there ?" 
 
 " Did you ever know it ? Did you ever 
 suspect it?" 
 
 She hesitated, and for the first time since 
 he had been in the room ceased for an in 
 stant to look straight at him. She only an 
 swered, still laughing however, " Poor dears 
 they were altogether too deep !" 
 
 She evidently wished to convey that she 
 had never known. Maurice was a little dis 
 appointed ; at present he would have pre-
 
 64 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 ferred her knowledge. But as he walked 
 home across the park, through Kensington 
 Gardens, he felt it impossible to believe in 
 her ignorance. 
 
 AT the end of a month he broke out to 
 her. " I can't get over it, it's so extraordi 
 nary the difference between your youth 
 and your maturity !" 
 
 " Did you expect me to be an eternal 
 child ?" Mrs. Tregent asked, composedly. 
 
 "No, it isn't that." He stopped it 
 would be difficult to explain. 
 
 " What is it, then ?" she inquired, with 
 her systematic refusal to acknowledge a 
 complication. There was always, to Mau 
 rice Glanvil's ear, in her impenetrability 
 to allusion, the faintest, softest glee, and 
 it gave her on this occasion the appear 
 ance of recognizing his difficulty and being 
 amused at it. She would be excusable to 
 be a little cold-blooded. He really knew, 
 however, that the penalty was all in his own 
 reflections, for it had not taken him even a
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 65 
 
 month to perceive that she was supremely, 
 almost strangely indulgent. There was noth 
 ing he was ready to say that she might not 
 hear, and her absence of coquetry was a re 
 markable rest to him. 
 
 " It isn't what I expected it's what I 
 didn't expect. To say exactly what I mean, 
 it's the way you've improved." 
 
 " I've improved ? I'm so glad !" 
 
 " Surely you've been aware of it you've 
 been conscious of the transformation." 
 
 " As an improvement ? I don't know. 
 I've been conscious of changes enough of 
 all the stages and strains and lessons of 
 life. I've been aware of growing old, and 
 I hold, in dissent from the usual belief, that 
 there's no fool like a young fool. One is 
 never, I suppose, such a fool as one has 
 been, and that may count, perhaps, as amel 
 ioration. But I can't flatter myself that 
 I've had two different identities. I've had 
 to make one, such as it is, do for everything. 
 I think I've been happier than I originally 
 supposed I should be and yet I had my 
 happiness, too, as a girl. At all events, if 
 you were to scratch me, as they say, you'd
 
 66 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 still find " She paused a moment, and 
 he really hung upon her lips ; there was 
 such a charm of tone in whatever she said. 
 " You'd still find, underneath, the blowzy 
 girl " With this she again checked her 
 self and, slightly to his surprise, gave a 
 nervous laugh. 
 
 " The blowzy girl ?" he repeated, with an 
 artlessness of interrogation that made her 
 laugh again. 
 
 " Whom you went with that hot day to 
 see the princess give the prizes." 
 
 "Oh yes that dreadful day!" he an 
 swered, gravely, musingly, with the whole 
 scene pictured by her words, and without 
 contesting the manner in which she quali 
 fied herself. It was the nearest allusion 
 that had passed between them to that crud 
 est conception of his boyhood, his flight 
 from Ennismore Gardens. Almost every 
 day for a month he had come to see her, 
 and they had talked of a thousand things ; 
 never yet, however, had they made any ex 
 plicit mention of this remote instance of 
 premature wisdom. Moreover, if he now 
 felt the need of going back, it was not to
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 67 
 
 be apologetic, to do penance ; he had noth 
 ing to explain, for his behavior, as he con 
 sidered it, still struck him, given the cir 
 cumstances, as natural. It was to himself 
 indeed that explanations were owing, for 
 he had been the one who had been most 
 deceived. He liked Mrs. Tregent better 
 than he had ever liked a woman that is, 
 he liked her for more reasons. He had 
 liked his poor little wife only for one, which 
 was, after all, no reason at all : he had been 
 in love with her. In spite of the charm that 
 the renewal of acquaintance with his old 
 friend had so unexpectedly added to his 
 life, there was a vague torment in his rela 
 tion with her, the sense of a revenge (oh, a 
 very kind one !) to take, a haunting idea 
 that he couldn't pacify. He could still feel 
 sore at the trick that had been played him. 
 Even after a month the curiosity with which 
 he had approached her was not assuaged ; 
 in a manner indeed it had only borrowed 
 force from all she had insisted on doing for 
 him. She was literally doing everything 
 now ; gently, gayly, with a touch so familiar 
 that protestations on his part would have
 
 68 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 been pedantic, she had taken his life in 
 hand. Rich as she was, she had known how 
 to give him lessons in economy ; she had 
 taught him how to manage in London on 
 his means. A month ago his servants had 
 been horrid ; to-day they were the best he 
 had ever known. For Vera she was plainly 
 a providence ; her behavior to Vera was 
 transcendent. 
 
 He had privately made up his mind that 
 Vera had in truth had her coup defoudre 
 that if she had had a chance she would 
 have laid down her little life for Arthur 
 Tregent; yet two circumstances, he could 
 perceive, had helped to postpone, to atten 
 uate even somewhat, her full consciousness 
 of what had befallen her. One of these in 
 fluences had been the prompt departure of 
 the young man from London ; the other 
 was simply the diversion produced by Mrs. 
 Tregent's encompassing art. It had had 
 immediate consequences for the child ; it 
 was like a drama in perpetual climaxes. 
 This surprising benefactress rejoiced in her 
 society, took her " out," treated her as if 
 there were mysterious injustices to repair.
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 69 
 
 Vera was agitated not a little by such a 
 change in her life ; she had English kindred 
 enough, uncles and aunts and cousins ; but 
 she had felt herself lost in her father's fam 
 ily, and was principally aware, among them, 
 of their strangeness and their indifference. 
 They affected her mainly as mere number 
 and stature. Mrs. Tregent's was a perform 
 ance unpromised and uninterrupted, and 
 the girl desired to know if all English peo 
 ple took so generous a view of friendship. 
 Maurice laughed at this question and, with 
 out meeting his daughter's eyes, answered in 
 the negative. Vera guessed so many things 
 that he didn't know what she would be 
 guessing next. He saw her caught up to 
 the blue like Ganymede, and surrendered 
 her contentedly. She had been the occu 
 pation of his life, yet to Mrs. Tregent he 
 was willing to part with her ; this lady was 
 the only person of whom he would not have 
 been jealous. Even in the young man's 
 absence, moreover, Vera lived with the son 
 of the house and breathed his air ; Man 
 chester Square was full of him, his photo 
 graph was on every table. How often she
 
 70 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 spoke of him to his mother Maurice had no 
 means of knowing, nor whether Mrs. Tre- 
 gent encouraged such a topic ; he had rea 
 son to believe indeed that there were re 
 serves on either side, and he felt that he 
 could trust his old friend's prudence as 
 much as her liberality. The attitude of for 
 bearance from rash allusions, which was 
 Maurice's own, could not at any rate keep 
 Arthur from being a presence in the little 
 drama which had begun for them all, as the 
 older man was more and more to recognize 
 with nervous prefigurements on that occa 
 sion at the Crisford's. 
 
 Arthur Tregent had gone to Ireland to 
 spend a few weeks with an old university 
 friend the gentleman, indeed, at Cam 
 bridge, had been his tutor who had lately, 
 in a district classified as " disturbed," come 
 into a bewildering heritage. He had chosen, 
 in short, for a study of the agrarian ques 
 tion on the spot the moment of the year 
 when London was most absorbing. Maurice 
 Glanvil made no remark to his mother on 
 this anomaly, and she offered him no ex 
 planation of it ; they talked in fact of al-
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 71 
 
 most everything except Arthur. Mrs. Tre- 
 gent had to her constant visitor the air of 
 feeling that she owed him in relation to her 
 son an apology which she had not the ma 
 terials for making. It was certainly a high 
 standard of courtesy that would suggest to 
 her that he ought to have put himself out 
 for these social specimens ; but it was ob 
 vious that her standard was high. Maurice 
 Glanvil smiled when he thought to what 
 bare civility the young man would have 
 deemed himself held had he known of a 
 certain passage of private history. But he 
 knew nothing Maurice was sure of that ; 
 his reason for going away had been quite 
 another matter. That Vera's brooding pa 
 rent should have had such an insight into 
 the young man's motives is a proof of the 
 amount of reflection that he devoted to 
 him. He had not seen much of him, and, 
 in truth, he found him provoking ; but he 
 was haunted by the odd analogy of which 
 he had had a glimpse on their first en 
 counter. The late Mr. Tregent had had 
 " interests in the north," and the care of 
 them had naturally devolved upon his son,
 
 72 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 who, by the mother's account, had shown 
 an admirable capacity for business. The 
 late Mr. Tregent had also been actively po 
 litical, and it was fondly hoped, in Man 
 chester Square at least, that the day was 
 not distant when his heir would, in turn, and 
 as a representative of the same respectabil 
 ities, speak reported words in debate. Mau 
 rice himself, vague about the House of 
 Commons, had nothing to say against his 
 making a figure there. Accordingly, if these 
 natural gifts continued to remind him of 
 his own fastidiously clever youth, it was 
 with the difference that Arthur Tregent's 
 cleverness struck him as much the greater 
 of the two. If the changes in England 
 were marked, this indeed was in general 
 one of them, that the sharp young men 
 were still sharper than of yore. When they 
 had ability, at any rate they showed it all ; 
 Maurice would never have pretended that 
 he had shown all his. He had not cared 
 whether any one knew it. It was not how 
 ever this superior intensity which provoked 
 him, and poor young Tregent could not be 
 held responsible for his irritation. If the
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 73 
 
 circumstance in which they most resembled 
 each other was the disposition to escape 
 from plain girls who aspired to them, such 
 a characteristic, as embodied in the object 
 of Vera's admiration, was purely interesting, 
 was even amusing, to Vera's father ; but it 
 would have gratified him to be able to as 
 certain from Mrs. Tregent whether, to her 
 knowledge, her son thought his child really 
 repulsive, and what annoyed him was the 
 fact that such an inquiry was practically 
 impossible. Arthur was provoking, in short, 
 because he had an advantage an advan 
 tage residing in the fact that his mother's 
 friend couldn't ask questions about him 
 without appearing to indulge in hints and 
 overtures. The idea of this officiousness 
 was odious to Maurice Glanvil ; so that he 
 confined himself to meditating in silence on 
 the happiness it would be for poor Vera to 
 marry a beautiful young man with a fortune 
 and a future. 
 
 Though the opportunity for this recre 
 ation it engaged much of his time should 
 be counted as one of the pleasant results 
 of his intimacy with Mrs. Tregent, yet
 
 74 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 the sense, perverse enough, that he had a 
 ground of complaint against her subsisted 
 even to the point of finally steadying him 
 while he expressed his grievance. This 
 happened in the course of one of those 
 afternoon hours that had now become in 
 dispensable to him hours of belated tea 
 and egotistical talk in the long summer 
 light and the chastened roar of London. 
 
 " No, it wasn't fair," he said ; " and I 
 wasn't well used a hundred years ago. 
 I'm sore about it now ; you ought to have 
 notified me, to have instructed me. Why 
 didn't you, in common honesty? Why didn't 
 my poor mother, who was so eager and 
 shrewd ? Why didn't yours ? She used to 
 talk to me. Heaven forgive me for saying 
 it, but our mothers weren't up to the mark ! 
 You may tell me they didn't know; to which 
 I reply that mine was universally supposed, 
 and by me in particular, to know everything 
 that could be known. No, it wasn't well 
 managed, and the consequence has been 
 this odious discovery, an awful shock to 
 a man of my time of life, and under the 
 effect of which I now speak to you, that
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 75 
 
 for a quarter of a century I've been a 
 fool." 
 
 "What would you have wished us to do?" 
 Mrs.Tregent asked, as she gave him another 
 cup of tea. 
 
 " Why, to have said, ' Wait, wait at any 
 price; have patience and hold on !' They 
 ought to have told me, you ought to have 
 told me, that your conditions at that time 
 were a temporary phase, and that you would 
 infallibly break your shell. You ought to 
 have warned me, they ought to have warned 
 me, that there would be wizardry in the case, 
 that you were to be the subject, at a given 
 moment, of a transformation absolutely mi 
 raculous. I couldn't know it by inspiration; 
 I measured you by the common law how 
 could I do anything else ? But it wasn't 
 kind to leave me in error." 
 
 Maurice Glanvil treated himself without 
 scruple to this fine ironic flight, this soph 
 istry which eased his nerves, because though 
 it brought him nearer than he had yet come 
 to putting his finger, visibly to Mrs. Tregent, 
 on the fact that he had once tried to believe 
 he could marry her and had found her too
 
 76 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 ugly, their present relation was so extraor 
 dinary and his present appreciation so lib 
 eral as to make almost any freedom excus 
 able, especially as his companion had the 
 advantage of being to all intents and pur 
 poses a different person from the one he 
 talked of, while he suffered the ignominy of 
 being the same. 
 
 "There has been no miracle," said Mrs. 
 Tregent, after a moment. " I Ve never known 
 anything but the common, ah, the very com 
 mon law, and anything that I may have 
 become only the common things have made 
 me." 
 
 He shook his head. " You wore a dis 
 figuring mask, a veil, a disguise. One fine 
 day you dropped them all and showed the 
 world the real creature." 
 
 " It wasn't one fine day it was little by 
 little." 
 
 " Well, one fine day I saw the result ; the 
 process doesn't matter. To arrive at a goal 
 invisible from the starting-point is no doubt 
 an incident in the life of a certain number 
 of women. But what is absolutely unprece 
 dented is to have traversed such a distance."
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 77 
 
 " Hadn't I a single redeeming point ?" 
 Mrs. Tregent demanded. 
 
 He hesitated a little, and while he hesi 
 tated she looked at him. Her look was but 
 of an instant, but it told him everything; 
 told him, in one misty moonbeam, all she 
 had known of old. She had known per 
 fectly she had been as conscious of the 
 conditions of his experiment as of the in 
 vincibility of his repugnance. Whether her 
 mother had betrayed him didn't matter ; 
 she had read everything clear and had had 
 to accept the cruel truth. He was touched 
 as he had never been by that moment's 
 communication , he was, unexpectedly, al 
 most awe -struck, for there was something 
 still more in it than he had guessed. " I 
 was letting my fancy play just now," he an 
 swered, apologetically. " It was I who was 
 wanting it was I who was the idiot !" 
 
 " Don't say that. You were so kind." 
 And hereupon Mrs. Tregent startled her 
 visitor by bursting into tears. 
 
 She recovered herself indeed, and they 
 forbore, on that occasion, in the interest of 
 the decorum expected of persons of their
 
 78 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 age and in their circumstances, to rake over 
 these smouldering ashes ; but such a con 
 versation had made a difference, and from 
 that day onward Maurice Glanvil was awake 
 to the fact that he had been the passion of 
 this extraordinary woman's life. He felt 
 humiliated for an hour, but after that his 
 pleasure was almost as great as his wonder. 
 For wonder there was plenty of room, but 
 little by little he saw how things had come to 
 pass. She was not subjected to the ordeal 
 of telling him, or to the abasement of any 
 confession, but day by day he sounded, with 
 a purity of gratitude that renewed, in his 
 spirit, the sources of youth, the depths of 
 everything that her behavior implied. Of 
 such a studied tenderness as she showed 
 him the roots could only be in some un 
 speakably sacred past. She had not to ex 
 plain, she had not to clear up inconsisten 
 cies, she had only to let him be with her. 
 She had striven, she had accepted, she had 
 conformed ; but she had thought of him 
 every day of her life. She had taken up 
 duties and performed them, she had ban 
 ished every weakness and practised every
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 79 
 
 virtue ; but the still, hidden flame had never 
 been quenched. His image had interposed, 
 his reality had remained, and she had never 
 denied herself the sweetness of hoping that 
 she should see him again and that she 
 should know him. She had never raised a 
 little finger for it, but fortune had answered 
 her prayer. Women were capable of these 
 mysteries of sentiment, these intensities of 
 fidelity, and there were moments in which 
 Maurice Glanvil's heart beat strangely be 
 fore a vision really so sublime. He seemed 
 to understand now by what miracle Fanny 
 Knocker had been beautified the miracle 
 of heroic docilities and accepted pangs and 
 vanquished egotisms. It had never -come 
 in a night, but it had come by living for 
 others. She was living for others still ; it 
 was impossible for him to see anything else 
 at last than that she was living for him. 
 The time of passion was over, but the time 
 of service was long. When all this became 
 vivid to him he felt that he couldn't recog 
 nize it enough, and yet that recognition 
 might only be tacit and, as it were, cir 
 cuitous. He couldn't say to her, even hu-
 
 80 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 morously, " It's very kind of you to be in 
 love with such a donkey," for these words 
 would have implied somehow that he had 
 rights an attitude from which his reno 
 vated delicacy shrank. He bowed his head 
 before such charity, and seemed to see 
 moreover that Mrs. Tregent's desire to be 
 friend him was a feeling independent of any 
 prospect of gain and indifferent to any 
 chance of reward. It would be described 
 vulgarly, after so much had come and gone, 
 as the state of being " in love " the state 
 of the instinctive and the simple, which they 
 both had left far behind ; so that there was 
 a certain sort of reciprocity which would 
 almost constitute an insult to it. 
 
 VI 
 
 HE soared on these high thoughts till, 
 towards the end of July (Mrs. Tregent stayed 
 late in town she was awaiting her son's 
 return), he made the discovery that to some 
 persons, perhaps indeed to many, he had 
 all the air of being in love. This image
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 8 1 
 
 was flashed back to him from the irreverent 
 lips of a lady who knew and admired Mrs. 
 Tregent, and who professed amusement at 
 his surprise, at his artless declaration that he 
 had no idea he had made himself conspicu 
 ous. She assured him that every one was 
 talking about him though people after all 
 had a tenderness for elderly romance ; and 
 she left him divided between the acute 
 sense that he was comical (he had a horror 
 of that) and the pale perception of some 
 thing that he could " help " still less. At 
 the end of a few hours of reflection he had 
 sacrificed the penalty to the privilege , he 
 was about to be fifty, and he knew Fanny 
 Knocker's age no one better , but he cared 
 no straw for vulgar judgments, and more 
 over could think of plenty of examples of 
 unions admired even after longer delays. 
 For three days he enjoyed the luxury of ad 
 mitting to himself without reserve how in 
 dispensable she had become to him ; as the 
 third drew to a close he was more nervous 
 than really he had ever been in his life, for 
 this was the evening on which, after many 
 hinderances, Mrs. Tregent had agreed to
 
 82 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 dine with him. He had planned the oc 
 casion for a month he wanted to show 
 her how well he had learned from her how 
 to live on his income. Her occupations 
 had always interposed she was teaching 
 him new lessons ; but at last she gave him 
 the joy of sitting at his table. At the 
 evening's end he begged her to remain 
 after the others, and he asked one of the 
 ladies who had been present, and who was 
 going to a pair of parties, to be so good as 
 to take Vera away. This, indeed, had been 
 arranged in advance, and when, in the dis 
 composed drawing-room, of which the win 
 dows stood open to the summer night, he 
 was alone with his old friend, he saw in her 
 face that she knew it had been arranged. 
 He saw more than this that she knew 
 what he was waiting to say, and that if, after 
 a visible reluctance, she had consented to 
 come, it was in order to meet him, with 
 whatever effort, on the ground he had chosen 
 meet him once, and then leave it forever. 
 This was why, without interrupting him, but 
 before he had finished, putting out her hand 
 to his own, with a strange clasp of refusal,
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 83 
 
 she was ready to show him, in a woful but 
 beautiful headshake to which nothing could 
 add, that it was impossible at this time of 
 day for them to marry. She stayed only a 
 moment, but in that moment he had to ac 
 cept the knowledge that by as much as it 
 might have been of old, by so much might 
 it never be again. After she had gone he 
 walked up and down the drawing-room half 
 the night. He sent the servants to bed, he 
 blew out the candles ; the forsaken place 
 was lighted only by the lamps in the street. 
 He gave himself the motive of waiting for 
 Vera to come back, but in reality he threshed 
 about in the darkness because his cheeks 
 had begun to burn. There was a sting for 
 him in Mrs. Tregent's refusal, and this sting 
 was sharper even than the disappointment 
 of his desire. It was a reproach to his deli 
 cacy ; it made him feel as if he had been an 
 ass for the second time. When she was 
 young and free his faith had been too poor 
 and his perceptions too dense ; he had 
 waited to show her that he only bargained 
 for certainties and only recognized success. 
 He dropped into a chair at last and sat
 
 84 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 there a long time, his elbows on his knees, 
 his face in his hands, trying to cover up his 
 humiliation, waiting for it to ebb. As the 
 sounds of the night died away, it began to 
 come back to him that she had given him 
 a promise to which a rich meaning could be 
 attached. What was it that, before going 
 away, she had said about Vera. in words he 
 had been at the moment too disconcerted to 
 take in ? Little by little he reconstructed 
 these words with comfort ; finally, when after 
 hearing a carriage stop at the door he 
 hastily pulled himself together and went 
 down to admit his daughter, the sight of 
 the child on his threshold, as the brougham 
 that had restored her drove away, brought 
 them all back in their generosity. 
 " Have you danced ?" he asked. 
 She hesitated'. " A little, papa." 
 He knew what that meant she had 
 danced once. He followed her up-stairs in 
 silence ; she had not wasted her time she 
 had had her humiliation. Ah, clearly she was 
 too short ! Yet on the landing above, where 
 her bedroom candle stood, she tried to be 
 gay with him, asking him about his own
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 85 
 
 party, and whether the people had stayed 
 late. 
 
 " Mrs. Tregent stayed after the others. 
 She spoke very kindly of you." 
 
 The girl looked at her father with an 
 anxiety that showed through her smile. 
 "What did she say?" 
 
 He hesitated, as Vera had done a mo 
 ment before. " That you must be our com 
 pensation." 
 
 His daughter's eyes, still wondering, turn 
 ed away. " What did she mean ?" 
 
 "That it's all right, darling!" And 
 he supplied the deficiencies of this ex 
 planation with a long kiss for good 
 night. 
 
 The next day he went to see Mrs. Tre 
 gent, who wore the air of being glad to 
 have something at once positive and pleas 
 ant to say. She announced immediately 
 that Arthur was coming back. 
 
 " I congratulate you." Then, as they ex 
 changed one of their looks of unreserved 
 recognition, Maurice added : " Now it's for 
 Vera and me to go." 
 
 " To go ?"
 
 86 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 " Without more delay. It's high time we 
 should take ourselves off." 
 
 Mrs. Tregent was silent a moment. 
 " Where shall you go ?" 
 
 " To our old haunts abroad. We must 
 see some of our old friends. We shall spend 
 six months away." 
 
 " Then what becomes of my months ?" 
 
 " Your months ?" 
 
 "Those it's all arranged she's to spend 
 at Blankley." Blankley was Mrs. Tregent's 
 house in Derbyshire, and she laughed as 
 she went on : " Those that I spoke of last 
 evening. Don't look as if we had never 
 discussed it and settled it !" 
 
 " What shall I do without her ?" Maurice 
 Glanvil presently demanded. 
 
 " What will you do with her?" his hostess 
 replied, with a world of triumphant mean 
 ing. He was not prepared to say, in the 
 sense of her question, and he took refuge 
 in remarking that he noted her avoidance 
 of any suggestion that he, too, would be wel 
 come in Derbyshire; which led her to con 
 tinue, with unshrinking frankness, " Certain 
 ly, I don't want you a bit. Leave us alone."
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 87 
 
 " Is it safe ?" 
 
 " Of course I can't absolutely answer for 
 anything, but at least it will be safer than 
 with you" said Mrs. Tregent. 
 
 Maurice Glanvil turned this over. " Does 
 he dislike me ?" 
 
 " What an idea !" 
 
 But the question had brought the color to 
 her face, and the sight of this, with her eva 
 sive answer, kindled in Maurice's heart a sud 
 den relief, a delight almost, that was strange 
 enough. Arthur was in opposition, plainly, 
 and that was why he had so promptly quitted 
 London ; that was why Mrs. Tregent had re 
 fused Mr. Glanvil. The idea was an instant 
 balm. " He'd be quite right, poor fellow !" 
 Maurice declared. "I'll go abroad alone." 
 
 " Let me keep her six months," said Mrs. 
 Tregent. " I'll try it I'll try it !" 
 
 " I wouldn't interfere for the world." 
 
 " It's an immense responsibility ; but I 
 should like so to succeed." 
 
 " She's an angel !" Maurice said. 
 
 " That's what gives me courage." 
 
 " But she mustn't dream of any plot," he 
 added.
 
 88 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 " For what do you take me ?" Mrs. Tre- 
 gent exclaimed, with a smile which lightened 
 up for him intensely that far-away troubled 
 past as to which she had originally baffled 
 his inquiry. 
 
 The joy of perceiving in an aversion to 
 himself a possible motive for Arthur's ab 
 sence was so great in him that before he 
 took leave of her he ventured to say to his 
 old friend, " Does he like her at all ?" 
 
 " He likes her very much." 
 
 Maurice remembered how much he had 
 liked Fanny Knocker and been willing to 
 admit it to his mother ; but he presently ob 
 served, " Of course he can't think her in the 
 least pretty." 
 
 "As you say, she's an angel," Mrs. Tre- 
 gent rejoined. 
 
 " She would pass for one better if she 
 were a few inches taller." 
 
 " It doesn't matter," said Mrs. Tregent. 
 
 " One must remember that in that respect, 
 at her age, she won't change," Maurice pur 
 sued, wondering after he had spoken whether 
 he had pressed upon the second pronoun. 
 
 " No, she won't change. But she's a dar-
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 89 
 
 ling !" Mrs. Tregent exclaimed ; and it was 
 in these meagre words, which were only half 
 however of what passed between them, that 
 an extraordinary offer was made and ac 
 cepted. They were so ready to understand 
 each other that no insistence and no profes 
 sions now were necessary, and that Maurice 
 Glanvil had not even broken into a murmur 
 of gratitude at this quick revelation of his 
 old friend's beautiful conception of a nobler 
 remedy the endeavor to place their union 
 outside themselves, to make their children 
 know the happiness they had missed. They 
 had not needed to teach each other what 
 they saw, what they guessed, what moved 
 them with pity and hope, and there were 
 transitions enough safely skipped in the 
 simple conversation I have preserved. But 
 what Mrs. Tregent was ready to do for him 
 filled Maurice Glanvil, for days after this, 
 with an even greater wonder, and it seemed 
 to him that not till then had she fully shown 
 him that she had forgiven him. 
 
 Six months, however, proved much more 
 than sufficient for her attempt to test the 
 plasticity of her son. Maurice Glanvil went
 
 go THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 abroad, but was nervous and restless, wan 
 dering from place to place, revisiting old 
 scenes and old friends, reverting, with a 
 conscious, an even amused incongruity, and 
 yet with an effect that was momentarily 
 soothing, to places at which he had stayed 
 with his wife, but feeling all the while that 
 he was really staking his child's happiness. 
 It only half reassured him to feel that 
 Vera would never know what poor Fanny 
 Knocker had been condemned to know, for 
 the daily contact was cruel from the mo 
 ment the issue was uncertain ; and it only 
 half helped him to reflect that she was not 
 so plain as Fanny, for had not Arthur Tre- 
 gent given him the impression that the 
 young man of the present was intrinsically 
 even more difficult to please than the young 
 man of the past ? The letters he received 
 from Blankley conveyed no information 
 about Arthur beyond the fact that he was 
 at home ; only once Vera mentioned that 
 he was " remarkably good " to her. Tow 
 ards the end of November he found him 
 self in Paris, submitting reluctantly to social 
 accidents which put off from day to day his
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME gi 
 
 return to London, when, one morning in the 
 Rue de Rivoli, he had to stop short to per 
 mit the passage of a vehicle which had 
 emerged from the court of an hotel. It was 
 an open cab the day was mild and bright 
 with a small quantity of neat, leathery 
 luggage, which Maurice vaguely recognized 
 as English, stowed in the place beside the 
 driver luggage from which his eyes shifted 
 straight to the occupant of the carriage, a 
 young man with his face turned to the al 
 lurements of travel and the urbanity of fare 
 well to bowing waiters still visible in it. 
 The young man was so bright and so on his 
 way, as it were, that Maurice, standing there 
 to make room for him, felt for the instant 
 that he, too, had taken a tip. The feeling 
 became acute as he recognized that this hu 
 miliating obligation was to no less a per 
 son than Arthur Tregent. It was Arthur 
 who was so much on his way it was Arthur 
 who was catching a train. He noticed his 
 mother's friend as the cab passed into the 
 street, and, with a quick demonstration, 
 caused the driver to pull up. He jumped 
 out, and under the arcade the two men met
 
 9 2 
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 with every appearance of cordiality, but with 
 conscious confusion. Each of them colored 
 perceptibly, and Maurice was angry with 
 himself for blushing before a boy. Long 
 afterwards he remembered how cold, and 
 even how hard, was the handsome clearness 
 of the young eyes that met his own in an 
 artificial smile. 
 
 "You here? I thought you were at 
 Blankley." 
 
 " I left Blankley yesterday ; I'm on my 
 way to Spain." 
 
 " To Spain ? How charming !" 
 
 " To join a friend there just for a month 
 or two." 
 
 " Interesting country well worth seeing. 
 Your mother's all right ?" 
 
 " Oh, yes, all right. And Miss Glanvil " 
 Arthur Tregent went on, cheerfully. 
 
 "Vera's all right?" interrupted Maurice, 
 with a still gayer tone. 
 
 " Every one, everything's all right !" Ar 
 thur laughed. 
 
 "Well, I mustn't keep you. Bon voy 
 age!" 
 
 Maurice Glanvil, after the young man had
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 93 
 
 driven on, flattered himself that in this brief 
 interview he had suppressed every indication 
 of surprise ; but that evening he crossed the 
 Channel, and on the morrow he went down 
 to Blankley. " To Spain to Spain !" the 
 words kept repeating themselves in his ears. 
 He, when he had taken flight in a similar 
 conjunction, had only got, for the time, as 
 far as Boulogne ; and he was reminded 
 afresh of the progress of the species. When 
 he was introduced into the drawing-room at 
 Blankley a chintzy, flowery, friendly ex 
 panse Mrs. Tregent rose before him alone 
 and offered him a face that she had never 
 shown before. She was white, and she 
 looked scared ; she faltered in her move 
 ment to meet him. 
 
 " I met Arthur in Paris, so I thought I 
 might come." 
 
 Oh, yes ; there was pain in her face, and 
 a kind of fear of him that frightened him, 
 but their hands found each other's hands 
 while she replied : " He went off I didn't 
 know it." 
 
 " But you had a letter the next morning," 
 Maurice said.
 
 94 
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 She stared. " How did you know that ?" 
 " Who should know better than I ? He 
 wrote from London, explaining." 
 
 "I did what I could I believed in it!" 
 said Mrs. Tregent. " He was charming, for 
 a while." 
 
 " But he broke down. She's too short, 
 eh ?" Maurice asked. 
 
 "Don't laugh; she's ill." 
 " What's the matter with her ?" 
 Mrs. Tregent gave the visitor a look in 
 which there was almost a reproach for the 
 question. " She has had a chill ; she's in 
 bed. You must see her." 
 
 She took him up-stairs and he saw his 
 child. He remembered what his mother 
 had told him of the grievous illness of Fanny 
 Knocker. Poor little Vera lay there in the 
 flush of a feverish cold, which had come on 
 the evening before. She grew worse, from 
 the effect of a complication, and for three 
 days he was anxious about her ; but even 
 more than with his alarm he held his breath 
 before the distress, the disappointment, the 
 humility of his old friend. Up to this hour 
 he had not fully measured the strength of
 
 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 95 
 
 her desire to do something for him, or the 
 intensity of passion with which she had 
 wished to do it in the particular way that 
 had now broken down. She had counted 
 on her influence with her son, on his affec 
 tion, and on the maternal art, and there was 
 anguish in her compunction for her failure, 
 for her false estimate of the possible. Mau 
 rice Glanvil reminded her in vain of the 
 consoling fact that Vera had known nothing 
 of any plan, and he guessed, indeed, the 
 reason why this theory had no comfort. No 
 one could be better aware than Fanny Tre- 
 gent of how much girls knew who knew 
 nothing. It was doubtless this same sad 
 wisdom that kept her sombre when he ex 
 pressed a confidence that his child would 
 promptly recover. She herself had had a ter 
 rible fight and yet, with the physical vic 
 tory, had she recovered ? Her apprehen 
 sion for Vera was justified, for the poor 
 girl was destined finally to forfeit even the 
 physical victory. 
 
 She got better, she got up, she quitted 
 Blankley, she quitted England with her 
 father ; but her health had failed, and a
 
 g6 THE WHEEL OF TIME 
 
 year later it gave way. Overtaken in Rome 
 by a second illness, she succumbed ; unlike 
 Fanny Knocker, she was never to have her 
 revenge.
 
 COLLABORATION
 
 COLLABORATION 
 
 I DON'T know how much people care for 
 my work, but they like my studio (of which, 
 indeed, I am exceedingly fond myself), as 
 they show by their inclination to congregate 
 there at dusky hours on winter afternoons, 
 or on long, dim evenings, when the place 
 looks well with its rich combinations and 
 low- burning lamps, and the bad pictures 
 (my own) are not particularly visible. I 
 won't go into the question of how many of 
 these are purchased, but I rejoice in the 
 distinction that my invitations are never 
 declined. Some of my visitors have been 
 good enough to say that on Sunday even 
 ings in particular there is no pleasanter 
 place in Paris where so many places are 
 pleasant none friendlier to easy talk and 
 repeated cigarettes, to the exchange of 
 points of view and the comparison of ac-
 
 100 COLLABORATION 
 
 cents. The air is as international as only 
 Parisian air can be ; women, I surmise, think 
 they look well in it; they come, also, because 
 they fancy they are doing something Bohe 
 mian, just as many of the men come because 
 they suppose they are doing something cor 
 rect. The old heraldic cushions on the di 
 vans, embossed with rusty gold, are favor 
 able both to expansion and to contraction 
 that, of course, of contracting parties and 
 the Italian brocade on the walls appeals to 
 one's highest feelings. Music makes its 
 home there, though I confess I am not quite 
 the master otthat house; and when it is go 
 ing on in a truly receptive hush, I enjoy 
 the way my company leans back and gazes 
 through the thin smoke of cigarettes up at 
 the distant Tiepolo in the almost palatial 
 ceiling. I make sure the piano, the tobacco, 
 and the tea are all of the best. 
 
 For the conversation, I leave that mostly 
 to take care of itself. There are discussions, 
 of course, and differences sometimes even 
 a violent circulation of sense and sound ; 
 but I have a consciousness that beauty flour 
 ishes and that harmonies prevail in the end.
 
 COLLABORATION IQI 
 
 I have occasionally known a visitor to be 
 rude to me because he disliked another vis 
 itor's opinions I had seen an old habitue' 
 slip away without bidding me good-night on 
 the arrival of some confident specimen of 
 les jeunes ; but as a general thing we have it 
 out together on the spot the place is really 
 a chamber of justice, a temple of reconcilia 
 tion : we understand each other, if we only 
 sit up late enough. Art protects her chil 
 dren, in the long run she only asks them 
 to trust her. She is like the Catholic Church 
 she guarantees paradise to the faithful. 
 Music, moreover, is a universal solvent; 
 though I've not an infallible ear, I've a suf 
 ficient sense of the matter for that. Ah, 
 the wounds I've known it to heal the 
 bridges I've known it to build the ghosts 
 I've known it to lay ! Though I've seen 
 people stalk out, I've never observed them 
 not to steal back. My studio, in short, is 
 the theatre of a cosmopolite drama, a com 
 edy essentially " of character." 
 
 One of the liveliest scenes of the perform 
 ance was the evening, last winter, on which 
 I became aware that one of my compatriots
 
 102 COLLABORATION 
 
 an American, my good friend Alfred Bo 
 nus was engaged in a controversy some 
 what acrimonious, on a literary subject, with 
 Herman Heidenmauer, the young composer 
 who had been playing to us divinely a short 
 time before, and whom I thought of neither 
 as a disputant nor as an Englishman. I 
 perceived in a moment that something had 
 happened to present him in this combined 
 character to poor Bonus, who was so ardent 
 a patriot that he lived in Paris rather than 
 in London, who had met his interlocutor for 
 the first time on this occasion, and who ap 
 parently had been misled by the perfection 
 with which Heidenmauer spoke English he 
 spoke it really better than Alfred Bonus. 
 The young musician, a born Bavarian, had 
 spent a few years in England, where he had 
 a commercial step-brother planted and more 
 or less prosperous a helpful man who had 
 watched over his difficult first steps, given 
 him a temporary home, found him publish 
 ers and pupils, smoothed the way to a stu 
 pefied hearing for his first productions. He 
 knew his London and might at a first glance 
 have been taken for one of its products ; but
 
 COLLABORATION 103 
 
 he had, in addition to a genius of the sort 
 that London fosters but doesn't beget, a 
 very German soul. He brought me a note 
 from an old friend on the other side of the 
 Channel, and I liked him as soon as I looked 
 at him ; so much, indeed, that I could for 
 give him for making me feel thin and em 
 pirical, conscious that he was one of the 
 higher kind whom the future has looked in 
 the face. He had met through his gold 
 spectacles her deep eyes, and some mutual 
 communication had occurred. This had 
 given him a confidence which passed for 
 conceit only with those who didn't know 
 the reason. 
 
 I guessed the reason early, and, as may 
 be imagined, he didn't grudge me the knowl 
 edge. He was happy and various as little 
 as possible the mere long-haired music- 
 monger. His hair was short ; it was only 
 his legs and his laughter that were long. 
 He was fair and rosy, and his gold specta 
 cles glittered as if in response to the exam 
 ple set them by his beautiful young golden 
 beard. You would have been sure he was 
 an artist without going so far as to decide
 
 104 COLLABORATION 
 
 upon his particular passion ; for you would 
 have been conscious that whatever this pas 
 sion might be, it was acquainted with many 
 of the others and mixed with them to its 
 profit. Yet these discoveries had not been 
 fully made by Alfred Bonus, whose occupa 
 tion was to write letters to the American 
 journals about the way the " boys " were 
 coming on in Paris ; for in such a case he 
 probably would not have expected such 
 nebulous greatness to condense at a mo 
 ment's notice. Bonus is clever and critical, 
 and a sort of self-appointed emissary or agent 
 of the great republic. He has it at heart to 
 prove that the Americans in Europe do get 
 on taking for granted on the part of the 
 Americans at home an interest in this sub 
 ject greater, as I often assure him, than any 
 really felt. " Come, now, do / get on ?" I 
 often ask him ; and I sometimes push the 
 inquiry so far as to stammer, " And you, my 
 dear Bonus, do you get on ?" He is apt to 
 look a little injured on such occasions, as if 
 he would like to say, in reply : " Don't you 
 call it success to have Sunday evenings at 
 which I'm a regular attendant ? And can
 
 COLLABORATION 105 
 
 you question for a moment the figure I make 
 at them ?" It has even occurred to me that 
 he suspects me of painting badly on purpose 
 to spite him that is, to interfere with his 
 favorite dogma. Therefore, to spite me in 
 return, he's in the heroic predicament of re 
 fusing to admit that I'm a failure. He takes 
 a great interest in the plastic arts, but his 
 intensest sympathy is for literature. This 
 sentiment is somewhat starved, as in that 
 school the boys languish, as yet, on a back 
 seat. To show what they are doing, Bonus 
 has to retreat upon the studios, but there is 
 nothing he enjoys so much as having, when 
 the rare chance offers, a good literary talk. 
 He follows the French movement closely 
 and explains it profusely to our compatriots, 
 whom he mystifies, but who guess he's rath 
 er loose. 
 
 I forget how his conversation with Hei- 
 denmauer began ; it was, I think, some dif 
 ference of opinion about one of the English 
 poets that set them afloat. Heidenmauer 
 knows the English poets, and the French, 
 and the Italian, and the Spanish, and the 
 Russian ; he is a wonderful representative
 
 io6 ''COLLABORATION 
 
 -4 
 
 of that Germanism which consists in the 
 negation of intellectual frontiers. It is the 
 English poets that, if I'm not mistaken, he 
 loves best, and probably the harm was done 
 by his having happened to say so. At any 
 rate, Alfred Bonus let him have it, without 
 due notice, perhaps, which is rather Alfi^d's 
 way, on the question (a favorite one with ray 
 compatriot) of the backward state of litera 
 ture in England, for which, after all, Heiden- 
 mauer was not responsible. Bonus believes 
 in responsibility the responsibility of oth 
 ers an attitude which tends to make some 
 of his friends extremely secretive, though 
 perhaps it would have been justified as to 
 this I'm not sure had Heidenmauer been, 
 under the circumstances, technically British. 
 Before he had had time to explain that he 
 was not, the other persons present had be 
 come aware that a kind of challenge had 
 passed that nation, in a sudden, startled 
 flurry, somehow found itself pitted against 
 nation. There was much vagueness at first 
 as to which of the nations were engaged, 
 and as to what their quarrel was about ; the 
 question coming presently to appear less
 
 COLLABORATION 107 
 
 simple than the spectacle (so easily con 
 ceivable) of a German's finding it hot for 
 him in a French house a house French 
 enough, at any ra.te, to give countenance to 
 the idea of his quick defeat. 
 
 How could the right cause fail of protec 
 tion in any house of which Madame de 
 Brindes and her charming daughter were 
 so good as to be assiduous frequenters ? 
 I recollect perfectly the pale gleam of joy 
 in the mother's handsome face when she 
 gathered that what had happened was that 
 a detested Germart was on his defence. 
 She wears her eternal mourning (I admit 
 it's immensely becoming) for a triple woe, 
 for multiplied griefs and wrongs, all spring 
 ing from the crash of the Empire, from the 
 battle-fields of 1870. Her husband fell at 
 Sedan, her father and her brother on still 
 darker days ; both her own family >and that 
 of M. de Brindes, their general situation in 
 life, were, as may be said, creations of the 
 Empire, so that from one hour to the other 
 she found herself sinking with the wreck. 
 You won't recognize her under the name I 
 give her, but you may none the less have
 
 I08 COLLABORATION 
 
 admired, between their pretty lemon-colored 
 covers, the touching tales of Claude Lor- 
 rain. She plies an ingenious, pathetic pen, 
 and has reconciled herself to effort and 
 privation for the sake of her daughter. I 
 say privation, because these distinguished 
 women are poor, receive with great modesty, 
 and have broken with a hundred of those 
 social sanctities that are dearer to French 
 souls than to any others. They have gone 
 down into the market-place, and Paule de 
 Brindes, who is three-and-twenty to-day, and 
 has a happy turn for keeping a water-color 
 liquid, earns a hundred francs here and 
 there. She is not so handsome as her 
 mother, but she has magnificent hair, and 
 what the French call a look of race, and is, 
 or at least was till the other day, a frank 
 and charming young woman. There is some 
 thing exquisite in the way these ladies are 
 earnestly, conscientiously modern. From 
 the moment they accept necessities they 
 accept them all, and poor Madame de 
 Brindes flatters herself that she has made 
 her dowerless daughter one of us others. 
 The girl goes out alone, talks with young
 
 COLLABORATION 109 
 
 men and, although she only paints land 
 scape, takes a free view of the convenances. 
 Nothing can please either of them more 
 than to tell them they have thrown over 
 their superstitions. They haven't, thank 
 Heaven ; and when I want to be reminded 
 of some of the prettiest in the world of a 
 thousand fine scruples and pleasant forms, 
 and of what grace can do for the sake of 
 grace I know where to go for it. 
 
 It was a part of this pious heresy much 
 more august in the way they presented it 
 than some of the aspects of the old faith 
 that Paule should have become "engaged," 
 quite like a jeune mees, to my brilliant 
 friend Felix Vendemer. He is such a 
 votary of the modern that he was inevitably 
 interested in the girl of the future and had 
 matched one reform with another, being 
 ready to marry without a penny, as the 
 clearest way of expressing his appreciation, 
 this favorable specimen of the type. He 
 simply fell in love with Mademoiselle de 
 Brindes and behaved, on his side, equally 
 like one of us others, except that he begged 
 me to ask her mother for her hand. I was
 
 HO COLLABORATION 
 
 inspired to do so with eloquence, and my 
 friends were not insensible of such an op 
 portunity to show that they now lived in 
 the world of realities. Vendemer's sole 
 fortune is his genius, and he and Paule, 
 who confessed to an answering flame, 
 plighted their troth like a pair of young 
 rustics or (what comes for French people 
 to the same thing) young Anglo-Saxons. 
 Madame de Brindes thinks such doings at 
 bottom very vulgar ; but vulgar is what she 
 tries hard to be, she is so convinced it is the 
 only way to make a living. Vendemerhadhad 
 at that time only the first of his successes, 
 which was not, as you will remember and 
 unfortunately for Madame de Brindes of 
 this remunerative kind. Only a few peo 
 ple recognized the perfection of his little 
 volume of verse ; my acquaintance with 
 him originated in my having been one of 
 the few. A volume of verse was a scanty 
 provision to marry on, so that, still like a 
 pair of us others, the luckless lovers had to 
 bide their time. Presently, however, came 
 the success (again a success only with 
 those who care for quality, not with the
 
 COLLABORATION m 
 
 rough-and-ready public) of his comedy in 
 verse at the Frangais. This charming 
 work had just been taken off (it had been 
 found not to make money), when the various 
 parties to my little drama met Heidenmauer 
 at my studio. 
 
 Vendemer, who has, as indeed the others 
 have, a passion for music, was tremendously 
 affected by hearing him play two or three 
 of his compositions, and I immediately saw 
 that the immitigable German quality was a 
 morsel much less bitter for him than for 
 the two uncompromising ladies. He went 
 so far as to speak to Heidenmauer frankly, 
 to thank' him with effusion, an effort of 
 which neither of the quivering women 
 would have been capable. Vendemer was 
 in the room the night Alfred Bonus raised 
 his little breeze ; I saw him lean on the 
 piano and listen with a queer face, looking 
 however rather wonderingly at Heiden 
 mauer. Before this I had noticed the in 
 stant paleness (her face was admirably 
 expressive) with which Madame de Brindes 
 saw her prospective son - in - law make up, 
 as it were, to the original Teuton, whose
 
 H2 COLLABORATION 
 
 national character was intensified to her 
 aching mind, as it would have been to that 
 of most Frenchwomen in her place, by his 
 wash of English color. A German was 
 bad enough but a German with English 
 aggravations ! Her senses were too fine to 
 give her the excuse of not feeling that his 
 compositions were interesting, and she was 
 capable, magnanimously, of listening to 
 them with dropped eyes ; but (much as it 
 ever cost her not to be perfectly courteous) 
 she couldn't have made even the most 
 superficial speech to him about them. 
 Marie de Brindes could never have spoken 
 to Herman Heidenmauer. It was a narrow 
 ness, if you will, but a narrowness that to 
 my vision was enveloped in a dense atmos 
 phere a kind of sunset bloom of enrich 
 ing and fortifying things. Herman Heiden 
 mauer himself, like the man of imagination 
 and the lover of life that he was, would 
 have entered into it delightedly, been 
 charmed with it as a fine case of bigotry. 
 This was conspicuous in Marie de Brindes ; 
 her loyalty to the national idea was that of 
 a devote to a form of worship. She never
 
 COLLABORATION 113 
 
 spoke of France, but she always made me 
 think of it, and with an authority which 
 the women of her race seem to me to have 
 in the question much more than the men. 
 I dare say I'm rather in love with her, 
 though, being considerably younger, I've 
 never told her so as if she would in the 
 least mind that ! I have indeed been a 
 little checked by a spirit of allegiance to 
 Vendemer ; suspecting always (excuse my 
 sophistication) that in the last analysis it is 
 the mother's charm that he feels or origi 
 nally felt in the daughter's. He spoke of 
 the elder lady to me in those days with the 
 insistence with which only a Frenchman 
 can speak of the objects of his affection. 
 At any rate, there was always something 
 symbolic and slightly ceremonial to me in 
 her delicate cameo face and her general 
 black-robed presence : she made me think 
 of a priestess or a mourner, of revolu 
 tions and sieges, detested treaties and ugly 
 public things. I pitied her, too, for the 
 strife of the elements in her for the way 
 she must have felt a noble enjoyment muti 
 lated. She was too good for that, and yet
 
 H4 
 
 COLLABORATION 
 
 she was too rigid for anything else ; and 
 the sight of such dismal perversions made 
 me hate more than ever the stupid terms 
 on which nations have organized their in 
 tercourse. 
 
 When she gathered that one of my guests 
 was simply cramming it down the throat of 
 another that the English literary mind was 
 not even literary, she turned away with a 
 vague shrug and a pitiful look at her 
 daughter for the taste of people who took 
 their pleasure so poorly ; the truth in ques 
 tion would be so obvious that it was not 
 worth making a scene about. Madame de 
 Brindes evidently looked at any scene be 
 tween the English and the Americans as 
 a quarrel proceeding vaguely from below- 
 stairs a squabble sordidly domestic. Her 
 almost immediate departure with her daugh 
 ter operated as a very lucky interruption, 
 and I caught for the first time in the 
 straight, spare girl, as she followed her 
 mother, a little of the air that Vendemer 
 had told me he found in her, the still 
 exaltation, the brown uplifted head that we 
 attribute, or that at any rate he made it
 
 COLLABORATION 115 
 
 visible to me that he attributed, to the 
 dedicated Maid. He considered that his in 
 tended bore a striking resemblance to Jeanne 
 d'Arc, and he marched after her on this 
 occasion like a square-shouldered armour- 
 baarer. He reappeared, however, after he 
 had put the ladies into a cab, and half an 
 hour later, the rest of my friends, with the 
 sole exception of Bonus, having dispersed, 
 he was sitting up with me in the empty 
 studio for another bout de causerie. At first 
 perhaps I was too occupied with reprimand 
 ing my compatriot to give much attention 
 to what Vendemer might have to say; I 
 remember at any rate that I had asked 
 Bonus what had induced him to make so 
 grave a blunder. He was not even yet, it 
 appeared, aware of his blunder, so that I had 
 to inquire by what odd chance he had taken 
 Heidenmauer for a bigoted Briton. 
 
 " If I spoke to him as one, he answered 
 as one; that's bigoted enough," said Alfred 
 Bonus. 
 
 " He was confused and amused at your 
 onslaught : he wondered what fly had stung 
 you."
 
 Il6 COLLABORATION 
 
 " The fly of patriotism," Vendemer sug 
 gested. 
 
 " Do you like him a beast of a German ?" 
 Bonus demanded. 
 
 " If he's an Englishman he isn't a German 
 ilfautopter. We can hang him for the one 
 or for the other; we can't hang him for both. 
 I was immensely struck with those things he 
 played." 
 
 "They had no charm for me, or doubt 
 less I, too, should have been demoralized," 
 Alfred said. " He seemed to know noth 
 ing about Miss Brownrigg. Now Miss 
 Brownrigg's great." 
 
 " I like the things and even the people 
 you quarrel about, you big babies of the 
 same breast. C'esf d se tordre /" Vendemer 
 declared. 
 
 " I may be very abject, but I do take an 
 interest in the American novel," Alfred 
 rejoined. 
 
 "I hate such expressions ; there's no such 
 thing as the American novel." 
 
 " Is there by chance any such thing as 
 the French ?" 
 
 "Pas d'avantage for the artist himself;
 
 COLLABORATION Iiy 
 
 how can you ask ? I don't know what is 
 meant by French art and English art and 
 American art ; those seem to me mere cata 
 loguers' and reviewers' and tradesmen's 
 names, representing preoccupations utterly 
 foreign to the artist. Art is art in every 
 country, and the novel (since Bonus men 
 tions that) is the novel in every tongue, 
 and hard enough work they have to live up 
 to that privilege, without our adding another 
 muddle to the problem. The reader, the 
 consumer, may call things as he likes, but 
 we leave him to his little amusements." I 
 suggested that we were all readers and con 
 sumers ; which only made Vendemer con 
 tinue : "Yes, and only a small handful of us 
 have the ghost of a palate. But you and I 
 and Bonus are of the handful." 
 
 "What do you mean by the handful?" 
 Bonus inquired. 
 
 Vendemer hesitated a moment. " I mean 
 the few intelligent people, and even the few 
 people who are not " He paused again 
 an instant, long enough for me to request 
 him not to say what they were " not," and 
 then went on : " People, in a word, who have
 
 Il8 COLLABORATION 
 
 the honor to live in the only country worth 
 living in." 
 
 "And pray what country is that ?" 
 
 "The land of dreams the country of 
 art." 
 
 " Oh, the land of dreams ! I live in the 
 land of realities !" Bonus exclaimed. "What 
 do you all mean then by chattering so about 
 le roman russe T" 1 
 
 " It's a convenience to identify the work 
 of three or four, la-bas, because we're so far 
 from it. But do you see them writing ' le 
 roman russe ?' " 
 
 " I happen to know that that's exactly 
 what they want to do, some of them," said 
 Bonus. 
 
 " Some of the idiots, then ! There are 
 plenty of those everywhere. Anything born 
 under that silly star is sure not to count." 
 
 "Thank God I'm not an artist !" said 
 Bonus. 
 
 " Dear Alfred's a critic," I explained. 
 
 " And I'm not ashamed of my country," 
 he subjoined. 
 
 " Even a critic perhaps may be an artist," 
 Vendemer mused.
 
 COLLABORATION 1 19 
 
 " Then, as the great American critic, Bonus 
 may be the great American artist," I went on. 
 
 " Is that what you're supposed to give us 
 ' American ' criticism ?'' Vendemer asked, 
 with dismay in his expressive, ironic face. 
 " Take care, take care, or it will be more 
 American than critical, and then where will 
 vou be ? However," he continued, laughing 
 and with a change of tone, "I may see the 
 matter in too lurid a light, for I've just been 
 favored with a judgment conceived in the 
 purest spirit of our own national genius." 
 He looked at me a moment and then he re 
 marked, "That dear Madame de Brindes 
 doesn't approve of my attitude." 
 
 " Your attitude ?" 
 
 "Towards your German friend. She let 
 me know it when I went down-stairs with 
 her told me I was much too cordial, that I 
 must observe myself." 
 
 " And what did you reply to that ?" 
 
 " I answered that the things he had played 
 were extraordinarily beautiful." 
 
 " And how did she meet that?" 
 
 " By saying that he's an enemy of our 
 country."
 
 120 COLLABORATION 
 
 "She had you there," I rejoined. 
 
 " Yes, I could only reply, ' Che re madame, 
 voyons /' " 
 
 " That was meagre." 
 
 " Evidently, for it did no more for me 
 than to give her a chance to declare that he 
 can't possibly be here for any good, and that 
 he belongs to a race it's my sacred duty to 
 loathe." 
 
 "I see what she means." 
 
 "I don't, then where artists are con 
 cerned. I said to her, '^4/i, madame, vous 
 savez que pour moi il n'y a que I' art!' '' 
 
 " It's very exciting !" I laughed. " How 
 could she parry that ?" 
 
 " ' I know it, my dear child but for 
 him 1 ' That's the way she parried it. 
 ' Very well, for him ?' I asked. ' For him 
 there's the insolence of the victor and 
 a secret scorn for our incurable illu 
 sions !' " 
 
 " Heidenmauer has no insolence and no 
 secret scorn." 
 
 Vendemer was silent a moment. " Are 
 you very sure of that ?" 
 
 " Oh, I like him ! He's out of all that,
 
 COLLABORATION 121 
 
 and far above it. But what did Mademoi 
 selle Paule say ?" I inquired. 
 
 " She said nothing she only looked at 
 me." 
 
 " Happy man !" 
 
 "Not a bit. She looked at me with 
 strange eyes, in which I could read, ' Go 
 straight, my friend go straight !' Oh, les 
 femmes, les femmes !" 
 
 " What's the matter with them now ?" 
 
 " They've a mortal hatred of art !" 
 
 " It's a true, deep instinct," said Alfred 
 Bonus. 
 
 " But what passed further with Madame 
 de Brindes ?" I went on. 
 
 " She only got into her cab, pushing her 
 daughter first ; on which I slammed the door 
 rather hard and came up here. Cela m'a 
 porte sur les nerfs" 
 
 "I'm afraid I haven't soothed them," 
 Bonus said, looking for his hat. When he 
 had found it he added : " When the Eng 
 lish have beaten us and pocketed our mill 
 iards I'll forgive them ; but not till then !" 
 And with this he went off, made a little un 
 comfortable, I think, by Vendemer's sharper
 
 122 COLLABORATION 
 
 alternatives, while the young Frenchman 
 called after him, " My dear fellow, at night 
 all cats are gray !" 
 
 Vendemer, when we were left alone to 
 gether, mooned about the empty studio 
 a while and asked me three or four questions 
 about Heidenmauer. I satisfied his curiosity 
 as well as I could, but I demanded the 
 reason of it. The reason he gave was that 
 one of the young German's compositions 
 had already begun to haunt his memory; 
 but that was a reason which, to my sense, 
 still left something unexplained. I didn't, 
 however, challenge him, before he quitted 
 me, further than to warn him against being 
 deliberately perverse. 
 
 " What do you mean by being deliberate 
 ly perverse ?" He fixed me so with his in 
 tensely living French eye that I became 
 almost blushingly conscious of a certain in 
 sincerity and, instead of telling him what I 
 meant, tried to get off with the deplorable 
 remark that the prejudices of Mesdames de 
 Brindes were, after all, respectable. " That's 
 exactly what makes them so odious !" cried 
 Vendemer.
 
 COLLABORATION 123 
 
 A few days after this, late in the after 
 noon, Herman Heidenmauer came in to see 
 me and found the young Frenchman seated 
 at my piano trying to win back from the 
 keys some echo of a passage in the Abend- 
 Hed we had listened to on the Sunday even 
 ing. They met, naturally, as good friends, 
 and Heidenmauer sat down with instant 
 readiness and gave him again the page he 
 was trying to recover. He asked him for 
 his address, that he might send him the 
 composition, and at Vendemer's request, as 
 we sat in the firelight, played half a dozen 
 other things. Vendemer listened in silence, 
 but to my surprise took leave of me before 
 the lamp was brought in. I asked him to 
 stay to dinner (I had already appealed to 
 Heidenmauer to stay), but he explained that 
 he was engaged to dine with Madame de 
 Brindes d la maison, as he always called it. 
 When he had gone Heidenmauer, with whom 
 on departing he had shaken hands without 
 a word, put to me the same questions about 
 him that Vendemer had asked on the Sun 
 day evening about the young German, and 
 I replied that my visitor would find in a
 
 124 COLLABORATION 
 
 small volume of remarkable verse published 
 by Lemerre, which I placed in his hands, 
 much of the information he desired. This 
 volume, which had just appeared, contained, 
 besides a reprint of Vendemer's earlier pro 
 ductions, many of them admirable lyrics, 
 the drama that had lately been played at 
 the Frangais, and Heidenmauer took it with 
 him when he left me. But he left me late, 
 and before this occurred, all the evening, 
 we had much talk about the French nation. 
 In the foreign colony of Paris the exchange 
 of opinions on this subject is one of the most 
 inevitable and by no means the least inter 
 esting of distractions ; it furnishes occupa 
 tion to people rather conscious of the burden 
 of leisure. Heidenmauer had been little in 
 Paris, but he was all the more open to im 
 pressions ; they evidently poured in upon 
 him and he gave them a generous hospitality. 
 In the diffused white light of his fine German 
 intelligence old colors took on new tints to 
 me, and while we spun fancies about the 
 wonderful race around us I added to my 
 little stock of notions about his own. I saw 
 that his admiration for our neighbors was a
 
 COLLABORATION 125 
 
 very high tide, and I was struck with some 
 thing bland and unconscious (noble and 
 serene in its absence of precautions) in the 
 way he let his doors stand open to it. It 
 would have been exasperating to many 
 Frenchmen ; he looked at them through his 
 clear spectacles with such an absence of sus 
 picion that they might have anything to for 
 give him, such a thin metaphysical view of 
 instincts and passions. He had the air of 
 not allowing for recollections and nerves, 
 and would doubtless give them occasion to 
 make afresh some of their reflections on the 
 tact of ces gens-la. 
 
 A couple of days after I had given him 
 Vendemer's book he came back to tell me 
 that he found great beauty in it. " It speaks 
 to me it speaks to me," he said, with his 
 air of happy proof. " I liked the songs I 
 liked the songs. Besides," he added, " I 
 like the little romantic play it has given 
 me wonderful ideas ; more ideas than any 
 thing has done for a long time. Yes yes." 
 
 "What kind of ideas?" 
 
 "Well, this kind." And he sat down to 
 the piano and struck the keys. I listened
 
 126 COLLABORATION 
 
 without more questions, and after a while I 
 began to understand. Suddenly he said, 
 " Do you know the words of Mat?" and be 
 fore I could answer he was rolling out one 
 of the lyrics of the little volume. The poem 
 was strange and obscure, yet irresistibly 
 beautiful, and he had translated it into 
 music still more tantalizing than itself. He 
 sounded the words with his German accent, 
 barely perceptible in English, but strongly 
 marked in French. He dropped them and 
 took them up again ; he was playing with 
 them, feeling his way. " This is my idea !" 
 he broke out ; he had caught it, in one of its 
 mystic mazes, and he rendered it with a 
 kind of solemn freshness. There was a 
 phrase he repeated, trying it again and 
 again, and while he did so he chanted the 
 words of the song as if they were an illumi 
 nating flame, an inspiration. I was rather 
 glad on the whole that Vendemer didn't 
 hear what his pronunciation made of them, 
 but as I was in the very act of rejoicing I 
 became aware that the author of the verses 
 had opened the door. He had pushed it 
 gently, hearing the music ; then hearing also
 
 COLLABORATION 127 
 
 his own poetry he had paused and stood 
 looking at Heidenmauer. The young Ger 
 man nodded and laughed and, ineffectively, 
 spontaneously, greeted him with a friendly 
 " Was sagen Sie dazu ?" I saw Vendemer 
 change color ; he blushed red, and, for an 
 instant, as he stood wavering, I thought he 
 was going to retreat. But I beckoned him 
 in, and on the divan beside me patted a 
 place for him to sit. 
 
 He came in, but didn't take this place ; 
 he went and stood before the fire to warm 
 his feet, turning his back to us. Heiden 
 mauer played and played, and after a little 
 Vendemer turned round ; he looked about 
 him for a seat, dropped into it, and sat with 
 his elbows on his knees and his head in 
 his hands. Presently Heidenmauer called 
 out, in French, above the music, " I like 
 your songs I like them immensely !" but 
 the young Frenchman neither spoke nor 
 moved. When, however, five minutes later 
 Heidenmauer stopped, he sprang up with 
 an entreaty to him to go on, to go on, for 
 the love of God. "Foil* -foila /" cried the 
 musician, and with hands for an instant sus-
 
 128 COLLABORATION 
 
 pended he wandered off into mysterious 
 worlds. He played Wagner, and then Wag 
 ner again a great deal of W T agner ; in the 
 midst of which, abruptly, he addressed him 
 self again to Vendemer, who had gone still 
 farther from the piano, launching to me, 
 however, from his corner a " Dieu, que c*est 
 beau /" which I saw that Heidenmauer 
 caught. " I've a conception for an opera, 
 you know I'd give anything if you'd do the 
 libretto !" Our German friend laughed out, 
 after this, with clear good -nature, and the 
 rich appeal brought Vendemer slowly to his 
 feet again, staring at the musician across the 
 room and turning this time perceptibly pale. 
 
 I felt there was a drama in the air, and it 
 made me a little nervous ; to conceal which I 
 said to Heidenmauer : " What's your con 
 ception ? What's your subject ?" 
 
 " My conception would be realized in the 
 subject of M. Vendemer's play if he'll do 
 that for me in a great lyric manner !" And 
 with this the young German, who had stopped 
 playing to answer me, quitted the piano, and 
 Vendemer got up to meet him. "The sub 
 ject is splendid it has taken possession of
 
 COLLABORATION 
 
 129 
 
 me. Will you do it with me ? Will you 
 work with me ? We shall make something 
 great !" 
 
 " Ah, you don't know what you ask !" 
 Vendemer answered, with his pale smile. 
 
 " I do I do ; I've thought of it. It will 
 be bad for me in my country ; I shall suffer 
 for it. They won't like it they'll abuse 
 me for it they'll say of me pis que 
 pendre." Heidenmauer pronounced it bis 
 que bendre. 
 
 "They'll hate my libretto so?" Vendemer 
 asked. 
 
 "Yes, your libretto they'll say it's im 
 moral and horrible. And they'll say /';;/ 
 immoral and horrible for having worked 
 with you," the young composer went on, 
 with his pleasant, healthy lucidity. " You'll 
 injure my career. Oh yes, I shall suffer !" 
 he joyously, exultingly cried. 
 
 " Et moi done T Vendemer exclaimed. 
 
 " Public opinion, yes. I shall also make 
 you suffer I shall nip your prosperity in 
 the bud. All that's des bttises tes petisses" 
 said poor Heidenmauer. " In art there are 
 no countries."
 
 130 COLLABORATION 
 
 "Yes, art is terrible, art is monstrous," 
 Vendemer replied, looking at the fire. 
 
 " I love your songs they have extraor 
 dinary beauty." 
 
 " And Vendemer has an equal taste for 
 your compositions," I said to Heidenmauer. 
 
 " Tempter !" Vendemer murmured to me, 
 with a strange look. 
 
 "C'est juste! I must'nt meddle which 
 will be all the easier as I'm dining out and 
 must go and dress. You two make your 
 selves at home and fight it out here." 
 
 " Do you leave me ?" asked Vendemer, 
 still with his strange look. 
 
 " My dear fellow, I've only just time." 
 
 " We will dine together he and I at 
 one of those characteristic places, and we 
 will look at the matter in its different re 
 lations," said Heidenmauer. "Then we will 
 come back here to finish your studio is so 
 good for music." 
 
 "There are some things it wwVgood for," 
 Vendemer remarked, looking at our com 
 panion, 
 
 " It's good for poetry it's good for truth," 
 smiled the composer.
 
 COLLABORATION 131 
 
 " You'll stay here and dine together," I 
 said; "my servant can manage that." 
 
 " No, no we'll go out and we'll walk to 
 gether. We'll talk a great deal," Heiden- 
 mauer went on. " The subject is so com 
 prehensive," he said to Vendemer, as he 
 lighted another cigar. 
 
 " The subject ?" 
 
 "Of your drama. It's so universal." 
 
 "Ah, the universe // riy a qne fa /" I 
 laughed, to Vendemer, partly with a seally 
 amused sense of the exaggerated woe that 
 looked out of his poetic eyes and that 
 seemed an appeal to me not to forsake him, 
 to throw myself into the scale of the asso 
 ciations he would have to stifle, and partly 
 to encourage him, to express my conviction 
 that two such fine minds" couldn't in the 
 long run be the worse for coming to an 
 agreement I might have been a more 
 mocking Mephistopheles handing over his 
 pure spirit to my literally German Faust. 
 
 When I came home at eleven o'clock I 
 found him alone in my studio, where, 
 evidently, for some time, he had been 
 moving up and down in agitated thought.
 
 132 COLLABORATION 
 
 The air was thick with Bavarian fumes, 
 with the reverberation of mighty music and 
 great ideas, with the echoes of that "uni 
 verse " to which I had so mercilessly con 
 signed him. But I judged in a moment 
 that Vendemer was in a very different phase 
 of his evolution from the one in which I 
 had left him. I had never seen his hand 
 some, sensitive face so intensely illumined. 
 
 " Qa y est fa y est /" he exclaimed, stand 
 ing there with his hands in his pockets 
 and looking at me. 
 
 "You've really agreed to do something 
 together ?" 
 
 " We've sworn a tremendous oath we've 
 taken a sacred engagement." 
 
 " My dear fellow, you're a hero." 
 
 " Wait and see ! C 'est tin t res-grand 
 esprit." 
 
 " So much the better !" 
 
 " C'est un bien beau genie. Ah, we've 
 risen we soar ; nous sommes dans les 
 grandes espaces /" my friend continued, with 
 his dilated eyes. 
 
 " It's very interesting because it will 
 cost you something."
 
 COLLABORATION 
 
 133 
 
 " It will cost me everything !" said Felix 
 Vendemer, in a tone I seem to hear at this 
 hour. " That's just the beauty of it. It's 
 the chance of chances to testify for art to 
 affirm an indispensable truth." 
 
 " An indispensable truth ?" I repeated, 
 feeling myself soar, too, but into the splen 
 did vague. 
 
 " Do you know the greatest crime that 
 can be perpetrated against it ?" 
 
 "Against it?" I asked, still soaring. 
 
 " Against the religion of art, against the 
 love for beauty, against the search for the 
 Holy Grail ?" The transfigured look with 
 which he named these things, the way his 
 warm voice filled the rich room, was a rev 
 elation of the wonderful talk that had 
 taken place. 
 
 " Do you know for one of us the really 
 damnable, the only unpardonable, sin ?" 
 
 " Tell me, so that I may keep clear 
 of it !" 
 
 " To profane our golden air with the 
 hideous invention of patriotism." 
 
 " It was a clever invention in its time !" 
 I laughed.
 
 134 COLLABORATION 
 
 " I'm not talking about its time I'm 
 talking about its place. It was never any 
 thing but a fifth-rate impertinence here. In 
 art there are no countries no idiotic 
 nationalities, no frontiers, nor douanes, nor 
 still more idiotic fortresses and bayonets. It 
 has the unspeakable beauty of being the 
 region in which those abominations cease, 
 the medium in which such vulgarities 
 simply can't live. What, therefore, are we 
 to say of the brutes who wish to drag them 
 all in to crush to death with them all the 
 flowers of such a garden, to shut out all the 
 light of such a sky ?" I was far from desir 
 ing to defend the " brutes " in question, 
 though there rose before me even at that 
 moment a sufficiently vivid picture of the 
 way, later on, poor Vendemer would have 
 to face them. I quickly perceived, indeed, 
 that the picture was, to his own eyes, a still 
 more crowded canvas. Felix Vendemer, 
 in the centre of it, was an admirable, a 
 really sublime figure. If there had been 
 wonderful talk after I quitted the two poets, 
 the wonder was not over yet it went on 
 far into the night for my benefit. We
 
 COLLABORATION 135 
 
 looked at the prospect in many lights, 
 turned the subject about almost every way 
 it would go ; but I am bound to say there 
 was one relation in which we tacitly agreed 
 to forbear to consider it. We neither of 
 us uttered the name of Paule de Brindes 
 the outlook in that direction would be too 
 serious. And yet if Felix Vendemer, ex 
 quisite and incorruptible artist that he was, 
 had fallen in love with the idea of " testify 
 ing," it was from that direction that the 
 finest part of his opportunity to do so would 
 proceed. 
 
 I was only too conscious of this when, 
 within the week, I received a hurried note 
 from Madame' de Brindes, begging me, as a 
 particular favor, to come and see her with 
 out delay. I had not seen Vendemer 
 again, but I had had a characteristic call 
 from Heidenmauer, who, though I could 
 imagine him perfectly in a Prussian helmet, 
 with a needle-gun, perfectly, on definite oc 
 casion, a sturdy, formidable soldier, gave 
 me a renewed impression of inhabiting, in 
 the expansion of his genius and the exer 
 cise of his intelligence, no land of red tape,
 
 136 COLLABORATION 
 
 no province smaller nor more pedantically 
 administered than the totality of things. I 
 was reminded afresh too that he foresaw no 
 striking salon-picture, no chic of execution 
 nor romance of martyrdom, or at any rate 
 devoted very little time to the considera 
 tion of such objects. He doubtless did 
 scant justice to poor Vendemer's attitude, 
 though he said to me of him, by-the-way, 
 with his rosy deliberation : "He has good 
 ideas he has good ideas. The French 
 mind has, for me, the taste of a very de 
 lightful bon-bon !" He only measured the 
 angle of convergence, as he called it, of 
 their two projections. He was, in short, not 
 preoccupied with the personal gallantry of 
 their experiment ; he was preoccupied with 
 its "aesthetic and harmonic basis." 
 
 It was without her daughter that Madame 
 de Brindes received me, when I obeyed her 
 summons, in her scrap of a quatrieme in the 
 Rue de Miromesnil. 
 
 " Ah, cher monsieur, how could you have 
 permitted such a horror how could you 
 have given it the countenance of your roof, 
 of your influence ?" There were tears in
 
 COLLABORATION 
 
 137 
 
 her eyes, and I don't think that for the 
 moment I have ever been more touched by 
 a reproach. But I pulled myself together 
 sufficiently to affirm my faith as well as to 
 disengage my responsibility. I explained 
 that there was no horror to me in the mat 
 ter, that if I was not. a German neither was 
 I a Frenchman, and that all I had before 
 me was two young men inflamed by a great 
 idea and nobly determined to work together 
 to give it a great form. 
 
 "A great idea to go over to ces gens-la?" 
 
 "To go over to them ?" 
 
 "To put yourself on their side to throw 
 yourself into the arms of those who hate us 
 to fall into their abominable trap !" 
 
 "What do you call their abominable 
 trap ?" 
 
 " Their false bonhomie, the very impu 
 dence of their intrigues, their profound, 
 scientific deceit, and their determination to 
 get the advantage of us by exploiting our 
 generosity." 
 
 "You attribute to such a man as Heiden- 
 mauer too many motives and too many cal 
 culations. He's quite ideally superior !"
 
 138 COLLABORATION 
 
 "Oh, German idealism we know what 
 that means ! We've no use for their supe 
 riority; let them carry it elsewhere let them 
 leave us alone. Why do they thrust them 
 selves in upon us and set old wounds 
 throbbing by their detested presence ? We 
 don't go near them, or ever wish to hear 
 their ugly names or behold their visages de 
 bois ; therefore the most rudimentary good 
 taste, the tact one would expect even from 
 naked savages, might suggest to them to 
 seek their amusements elsewhere. But 
 their taste, their tact I can scarcely trust 
 myself to speak !" 
 
 Madame de Brindes did speak, however, 
 at considerable further length and with a sin 
 cerity of passion which left one quite without 
 arguments. There was no argument to meet 
 the fact that Vendemer's attitude wounded 
 her, wounded her daughter, jusqu" 1 au fond 
 de I'dme, that it represented for them 
 abysses of shame and suffering, and that 
 for himself it meant a whole future com 
 promised, a whole public alienated. It was 
 vain, doubtless, to talk of such things ; if 
 people didn't feel them, if they hadn't the
 
 COLLABORATION 139 
 
 fibre of loyalty, the high imagination of 
 honor, all explanations, all supplications 
 were but a waste of noble emotion. M. 
 Vendemer's perversity was monstrous she 
 had had a sickening discussion with him. 
 What she desired of me was to make one 
 last appeal to him, to put the solemn truth 
 before him, to try to bring him back to 
 sanity. It was as if he had temporarily 
 lost his reason. It was to be made clear to 
 him, par exemple, that unless he should re 
 cover it Mademoiselle de Brindes would 
 unhesitatingly withdraw from her engage 
 ment. 
 
 " Does she really feel as you do ?" I 
 asked. 
 
 "Do you think I put words into her 
 mouth ? She feels as a fille de France is 
 obliged to feel !" 
 
 " Doesn't she love him then ?" 
 
 " She adores him. But she won't take 
 him without his honor." 
 
 " I don't understand such refinements !" 
 I said. 
 
 "Oh, vous autres /" cried Madame de 
 Brindes. Then with eyes glowing through
 
 140 COLLABORATION 
 
 her tears she demanded : " Don't you know 
 she knows how her father died ?" I was on 
 the point of saying, "What has that to do 
 with it?" but I withheld the question, for, 
 after all, I could conceive that it might have 
 something. There was no disputing about 
 tastes, and I could only express my sincere 
 conviction that Vendemer was profoundly 
 attached to Mademoiselle Paule. "Then 
 let him prove it by making her a sacrifice !" 
 my strenuous hostess replied ; to which I 
 rejoined that I would repeat our conversa 
 tion to him and put the matter before him 
 as strongly as I could. I delayed a little 
 to take leave, wondering if the girl would 
 not come in I should have been so much 
 more content to receive her strange recan 
 tation from her own lips. I couldn't say 
 this to Madame de Erindes; but she 
 guessed I meant it, and before we sep 
 arated we exchanged a look in which our 
 mutual mistrust was written the suspicion 
 on her side that I should not be a very 
 passionate intercessor and the conjecture 
 on mine that she might be misrepresenting 
 her daughter. This slight tension, I must
 
 COLLABORATION 141 
 
 add, was only momentary, for I have had a 
 chance of observing Paule de Brindes since 
 then, and the two ladies were soon satisfied 
 that I pitied them enough to have been 
 eloquent. 
 
 My eloquence has been of no avail, and 
 I have learned (it has been one of the most 
 interesting lessons of my life) of what tran 
 scendent stuff the artist may sometimes be 
 made. Herman Heidenmauer and Felix 
 Vendemer are, at the hour I write, immersed 
 in their monstrous collaboration. There 
 were postponements and difficulties at first, 
 and there will be more serious ones in the 
 future, when it is a question of giving the 
 finished work to the world. The world of 
 Paris will stop its ears in horror, the Ger 
 man Empire will turn its mighty back, and 
 the authors of what I foresee (oh, I've been 
 treated to specimens !) as a perhaps really 
 epoch-making, musical revelation (is Heid- 
 enmauer's style rubbing off on me ?) will 
 perhaps have to beg for a hearing in com 
 munities fatally unintelligent. It may very 
 well be that they will not obtain any hear 
 ing at all for years. I like, at any rate, to
 
 I 4 2 COLLABORATION 
 
 think that time works for them. At present 
 they work for themselves and for each other, 
 amid drawbacks of several kinds. Separat 
 ing after the episode in Paris, they have met 
 again on alien soil, at a little place on the 
 Genoese Riviera, where sunshine is cheap 
 and tobacco bad, and they live (the two to 
 gether) for five francs a day, which is all they 
 can muster between them. It appears that 
 when Heidenmauer's London step-brother 
 was informed of the young composer's un 
 natural alliance he instantly withdrew his 
 subsidy. The return of it is contingent on 
 the rupture of the unholy union and the de 
 struction by flame of all the manuscript. 
 The pair are very poor, and the whole thing 
 depends on their staying power. They are 
 so preoccupied with their opera that they 
 have no time for pot-boilers. Vendemer is 
 in a feverish hurry, lest perhaps he should 
 find himself chilled. There are still other 
 details which contribute to the interest of 
 the episode, and which, for me, help to ren 
 der it a most refreshing, a really great little 
 case. It rests me, it delights me, there is 
 something in it that makes for civilization.
 
 COLLABORATION 143 
 
 In their way they are working for human 
 happiness. The strange course taken by 
 Vendemer (I mean his renunciation of his 
 engagement) must, moreover, be judged in 
 the light of the fact that he was really in 
 love. Something had to be sacrificed, and 
 what he clung to most (he's extraordinary, I 
 admit) was the truth he had the opportuni 
 ty of proclaiming. Men give up their love 
 for advantages every day, but they rarely 
 give it up for such discomforts. 
 
 Paule de Brindes was the less in love of 
 the two ; I see her often enough to have 
 made up my mind about that. But she's 
 mysterious, she's odd ; there was, at any 
 rate, a sufficient wrench in her life to make 
 her often absent-minded. Does her imagi 
 nation hover about Felix Vendemer? A 
 month ago, going into their rooms one day 
 when her mother was not at home (the bonne 
 had admitted me under a wrong impression) 
 I found her at the piano, playing one of Hei- 
 denmauer's compositions playing it with 
 out notes and with infinite expression. How 
 had she got hold of it ? How had she learn 
 ed it ? This was her secret she blushed so
 
 144 
 
 COLLABORATION 
 
 that I didn't pry into it. But what is she 
 doing, under the singular circumstances, 
 with a composition of Herman Heiden- 
 mauer's ? She never met him, she never 
 heard him play, but that once. It will be 
 a pretty complication if it shall appear that 
 the young German genius made on that oc 
 casion more than one intense impression. 
 This needn't appear, however, inasmuch as, 
 being naturally in terror of the discovery by 
 her mother of such an anomaly, she may 
 count on me absolutely not to betray her. 
 I hadn't fully perceived how deeply suscep 
 tible she is to music. She must have a 
 strange confusion of feelings a dim, haunt 
 ing trouble, with a kind of ache of impa 
 tience for the wonderful opera somewhere 
 in the depths of it. Don't we live fast, 
 after all, and doesn't the old order change ? 
 Don't say art isn't mighty ! I shall give 
 you some more illustrations of it yet.
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 I 
 
 "UPON my honor, you must be off your 
 head!" cried Spencer Coyle, as the young 
 man, with a white face, stood there panting 
 a little, and repeating, " Really, I've quite 
 decided," and " I assure you I've thought 
 it all out." They were both pale, but Owen 
 Wingrave smiled in a manner exasperating 
 to his interlocutor, who, however, still dis 
 criminated sufficiently to see that his gri 
 mace (it was like an irrelevant leer) was 
 the result of extreme and conceivable nerv 
 ousness. 
 
 " It was certainly a mistake to have gone 
 so far; but that is exactly why I feel I 
 mustn't go farther," poor Owen said, wait 
 ing mechanically, almost humbly (he wished 
 not to swagger, and indeed he had nothing
 
 148 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 to swagger about), and carrying through the 
 window to the stupid opposite houses the 
 dry glitter of his eyes. 
 
 " I'm unspeakably disgusted. You've 
 made me dreadfully ill," Mr. Coyle went 
 on, looking thoroughly upset. 
 
 " I'm very sorry. It was the fear of the 
 effect on you that kept me from speaking 
 sooner." 
 
 "You should have spoken three months 
 ago. Don't you know your mind from one 
 day to the other ?" 
 
 The young man for a moment said noth 
 ing. Then he replied, with a little tremor : 
 " You're very angry with me, and I expect 
 ed it. I'm awfully obliged to you for all 
 you've done for me. I'll do anything else 
 for you in return, but I can't do that. Ev 
 ery one else will let me have it, of course. 
 I'm prepared for it I'm prepared for every 
 thing. That's what has taken the time : to 
 be sure I was prepared. I think it's your 
 displeasure I feel most and regret most. 
 But, little by little, you'll get over it." 
 
 "You'll get over it rather faster, I sup 
 pose !" Spencer Coyle satirically exclaimed.
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 149 
 
 He was quite as agitated as his young 
 friend, and they were evidently in no con 
 dition to prolong an encounter in which 
 they each drew blood. Mr. Coyle was a 
 professional "coach;" he prepared young 
 men for the army, taking only three or four 
 at a time, to whom he applied the irresisti 
 ble stimulus of which the possession was 
 both his secret and his fortune. He had 
 not a great establishment; he would have 
 said himself that it was not a wholesale 
 business. Neither his system, his health, 
 nor his temper could have accommodated 
 itself to numbers ; so he weighed and meas 
 ured his pupils, and turned away more ap 
 plicants than he passed. He was. an artist 
 in his line, caring only for picked subjects, 
 and capable of sacrifices almost passionate 
 for the individual. He liked ardent young 
 men (there were kinds of capacity to which 
 he was indifferent), and he had taken a 
 particular fancy to Owen Wingrave. This 
 young man's facility really fascinated him. 
 His candidates usually did wonders, and he 
 might have sent up a multitude. He was a 
 person of exactly the stature of the great
 
 1 5 o OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 Napoleon, with a certain flicker of genius 
 in his light blue eye . it had been said of 
 him that he looked like a pianist. The tone 
 of his favorite pupil now expressed (without 
 intention, indeed) a superior wisdom, which 
 irritated him. He had not especially suf 
 fered before from Wingrave's high opinion 
 of himself, which had seemed justified by 
 remarkable parts ; but to-day it struck him 
 as intolerable. He cut short the discussion, 
 declining absolutely to regard their relations 
 as terminated, and remarked to his pupil 
 that he had better go off somewhere (down 
 to Eastbourne, say, the sea would bring 
 him round) and take a few days to find his 
 feet and pome to his senses. He could af 
 ford the time, he was so well up when 
 Spencer Coyle remembered how well up he 
 was he could have boxed his ears. The 
 tall, athletic young man was not physically 
 a subject for simplified reasoning ; but there 
 was a troubled gentleness in his handsome 
 face, the index of compunction mixed with 
 pertinacity, which signified that if it could 
 have done any good he would have turned 
 both cheeks. He evidently didn't pretend
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 151 
 
 that his wisdom was superior ; he only pre 
 sented it as his own. It was his own ca 
 reer, after all, that was in question. He 
 couldn't refuse to go through the form of 
 trying Eastbourne, or at least of holding his 
 tongue, though there was that in his man 
 ner which implied that if he should do so it 
 would be really to give Mr. Coyle a chance 
 to recuperate. He didn't feel a bit over 
 worked, but there was nothing more natural 
 than that, with their tremendous pressure, 
 Mr. Coyle should be. Mr. Coyle's own in 
 tellect would derive an advantage from his 
 pupil's holiday. Mr. Coyle saw what he 
 meant, but he controlled himself; he only 
 demanded, as his right, a truce of three 
 days. Owen Wingrave granted it, though, 
 as fostering sad illusions, this went vis 
 ibly against his conscience ; but before 
 they separated the famous crammer re 
 marked : , 
 
 " All the same, I feel as if I ought to see 
 some one. I think you mentioned to me 
 that your aunt had come to town ?" 
 
 " Oh yes ; she's in Baker Street. Do go 
 and see her," the boy said, comfortingly.
 
 152 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 Mr. Coyle looked at him an instant. 
 " Have you broached this folly to her ?" 
 
 " Not yet to no one. I thought it right 
 to speak to you first." 
 
 " Oh, what you ' think right !' " cried Spen 
 cer Coyle, outraged by his young friend's 
 standards. He added that he would proba 
 bly call on Miss Wingrave ; after which the 
 recreant youth got out of the honse. 
 
 Owen Wingrave didn't however start 
 punctually for Eastbourne; he only direct 
 ed his steps to Kensington Gardens, from 
 which Mr. Coyle's desirable residence (he 
 was terribly expensive and had a big house) 
 was not far removed. The famous coach 
 "put up " his pupils, and Owen had men 
 tioned to the butler that he would be back 
 to dinner. The spring day was warm to his 
 young blood, and he had a book in his 
 pocket which, when he had passed into the 
 gardens, and, after a short stroll, dropped 
 into a chair, he took out with the slow, soft 
 sigh that finally ushers in a pleasure post 
 poned. He stretched his long legs and 
 began to read it ; it was a volume of 
 Goethe's poems. He had been for days in
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 153 
 
 a state of the highest tension, and now that 
 the cord had snapped the relief was propor 
 tionate; only it was characteristic of him 
 that this deliverance should take the form 
 of an intellectual pleasure. If he had thrown 
 up the probability of a magnificent career, 
 it was not to dawdle along Bond Street nor 
 parade his indifference in the window of a 
 club. At any rate, he had in a few mo 
 ments forgotten everything the tremend 
 ous pressure, Mr. Coyle's disappointment, 
 and even his formidable aunt in Baker 
 Street. If these watchers had overtaken 
 him there would surely have been some ex 
 cuse for their exasperation. There was no 
 doubt he was perverse, for his very choice 
 of a pastime only showed how he had got up 
 his German. 
 
 "What the devil's the matter with him, 
 do you know?" Spencer Coyle asked that 
 afternoon of young Lechmere, who had 
 never before observed the head of the es 
 tablishment to set a fellow such an example 
 of bad language. Young Lechmere was 
 not only Wingrave's fellow -pupil, he was 
 supposed to be his intimate, indeed quite
 
 154 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 his best friend, and had unconsciously per 
 formed for Mr. Coyle the office of making 
 the promise of his great gifts more vivid by 
 contrast. He was short and sturdy, and, as 
 a general thing, uninspired, and Mr. Coyle, 
 who found no amusement in believing in 
 him, had never thought him less exciting 
 than as he stared now out of a face from 
 which you could never guess whether he 
 had caught an idea. Young Lechmere con 
 cealed such achievements as if they had 
 been youthful indiscretions. At any rate 
 he could evidently conceive no reason why 
 it should be thought there was anything 
 more than usual the matter with the com 
 panion of his studies ; so Mr. Coyle had to 
 continue : 
 
 " He declines to go up. He chucks the 
 whole thing !" 
 
 The first thing that struck young Lech- 
 mere in the case was the freshness it had 
 imparted to the governor's vocabulary. 
 
 " He doesn't want to go to Sandhurst ?" 
 
 " He doesn't want to go anywhere. He 
 gives up the army altogether. He objects," 
 said Mr. Coyle, in a tone that made young
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 155 
 
 Lechmere almost hold his breath, "to the 
 military profession." 
 
 "Why, it has been the profession of all 
 his family !" 
 
 " Their profession ? It has been their re 
 ligion ! Do you know Miss Wingrave ?" 
 
 " Oh yes. Isn't she awful ?" young Lech- 
 mere candidly ejaculated. 
 
 His instructor demurred. 
 
 " She's formidable, if you mean that, and 
 it's right she should be ; because somehow 
 in her very person, good maiden lady as 
 she is, she represents the might, she repre 
 sents the traditions and the exploits of the 
 British army. She represents the expan 
 sive property of the English name. I think 
 his family can be trusted to come down on 
 him, but every influence should be set in 
 motion. I want to know what yours is. 
 Can you do anything in the matter ?" 
 
 " I can try a couple of rounds with him," 
 said young Lechmere, reflectively. " But he 
 knows a fearful lot. He has the most ex 
 traordinary ideas." 
 
 "Then he has told you some of them 
 he has taken you into his confidence ?"
 
 156 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 " I've heard him jaw by the yard," smiled 
 the honest youth. " He has told me he 
 despises it." 
 
 " What is it he despises ? I can't make 
 out." 
 
 The most consecutive of Mr. Coyle's 
 nurslings considered a moment, as if he 
 were conscious of a responsibility. 
 
 "Why, I think, military glory. He says 
 we take the wrong view of it." 
 
 " He oughtn't to talk to you that way. 
 It's corrupting the youth of Athens. It's 
 sowing sedition." 
 
 " Oh, I'm all right !" said young Lech- 
 mere. " And he never told me he meant to 
 chuck it. I always thought he meant to see 
 it through, simply because he had to. He'll 
 argue on any side you like. It's a tremen 
 dous pity I'm sure he'd have a big career." 
 
 " Tell him so, then ; plead with him ; 
 struggle with him for God's sake !" 
 
 " I'll do what I can I'll tell him it's a 
 regular shame." 
 
 " Yes, strike that note insist on the dis 
 grace of it." 
 
 The young man gave Mr. Coyle a more
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 157 
 
 perceptive glance. " I'm sure he wouldn't 
 do anything dishonorable." 
 
 " Well it won't look right. He must be 
 made to feel that work it up. Give him a 
 comrade's point of view that of a brother- 
 in-arms." 
 
 " That's what I thought we were going to 
 be !" young Lechmere mused, romantically, 
 much uplifted by the nature of the mission 
 imposed on him. " He's an awfully good 
 sort." 
 
 " No one will think so if he backs out !" 
 said Spencer Coyle. 
 
 "They mustn't say it to me!" his pupil 
 rejoined, with a flush. 
 
 Mr. Coyle hesitated a moment, noting his 
 tone and aware that in the perversity of 
 things, though this young man was a born 
 soldier, no excitement would ever attach to 
 his alternatives save, perhaps, on the part of 
 the nice girl to whom at an early day he was 
 sure to be placidly united. " Do you like 
 him very much do you believe in him ?" 
 
 Young Lechmere's life in these days was 
 spent in answering terrible questions; but 
 he had never been subjected to so queer an
 
 158 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 interrogation as this. " Believe in him ? 
 Rather !" 
 
 "Then save him !" 
 
 The poor boy was puzzled, as if it were 
 forced upon him by this intensity that there 
 was more in such an appeal than could ap 
 pear on the surface ; and he doubtless felt 
 that he was only entering into a complex 
 situation when, after another moment, with 
 his hands in his pockets, he replied hope 
 fully but not pompously : " I dare say I can 
 bring him round !" 
 
 II 
 
 BEFORE seeing young Lechmere, Mr. Coyle 
 had determined to telegraph an inquiry to 
 Miss Wingrave. He had prepaid the an 
 swer, which, being promptly put into his 
 hand, brought the interview we have just 
 related to a close. He immediately drove 
 off to Baker Street, where the lady had 
 said she awaited him, and five minutes after 
 he got there, as he sat with Owen Win- 
 grave's remarkable aunt, he repeated over
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 159 
 
 several times, in his angry sadness and with 
 the infallibility of his experience : " He's so 
 intelligent he's so intelligent!" He had 
 declared it had been a luxury to put such a 
 fellow through. 
 
 " Of course he's intelligent, what else 
 could he be ? We've never, that I know of, 
 had but one idiot in the family !" said Jane 
 Wingrave. This was an allusion that Mr. 
 Coyle could understand, and it brought 
 home to him another of the reasons for the 
 disappointment, the humiliation as it were, 
 of the good people at Paramore, at the same 
 time that it gave an example of the conscien 
 tious coarseness he had on former occasions 
 observed in his interlocutress. Poor Phil 
 ip Wingrave, her late brother's eldest son, 
 was literally imbecile and banished from 
 view ; deformed, unsocial, irretrievable, he 
 had been relegated to a private asylum 
 and had become among the friends of the 
 family only a little hushed lugubrious le 
 gend. All the hopes of the house, pictu 
 resque Paramore, now unintermittently old 
 Sir Philip's rather melancholy home (his in 
 firmities would keep him there to the last),
 
 160 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 were therefore collected on the second 
 boy's head, which nature, as if in compunc 
 tion for her previous botch, had, in addi 
 tion to making it strikingly handsome, filled 
 with marked originalities and talents. These 
 two had been the only children of the old 
 man's only son, who, like so many of his 
 ancestors, had given up a gallant young life 
 to the service of his country. Owen Win- 
 grave the elder had received his death-cut, 
 in close-quarters, from an Afghan sabre ; 
 the blow had come crashing across his skull. 
 His wife, at that time in India, was about 
 to give birth to her third child ; and when 
 the event took place, in darkness and an 
 guish, the baby came lifeless into the world 
 and the mother sank under the multiplica 
 tion of her woes. The second of the little 
 boys in England, who was at Paramore with 
 his grandfather, became the peculiar charge 
 of his aunt, the only unmarried one, and 
 during the interesting Sunday that, by ur 
 gent invitation, Spencer Coyle, busy as he 
 was, had, after consenting to put Owen 
 through, spent under that roof, the cele 
 brated crammer received a vivid impression
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE j6l 
 
 of the influence exerted at least in intention 
 by Miss Wingrave. Indeed, the picture of 
 this short visit remained with the observant 
 little man a curious one the vision of an 
 impoverished Jacobean house, shabby and 
 remarkably "creepy," but full of character 
 still and full of felicity as a setting for the 
 distinguished figure of the peaceful old sol 
 dier. Sir Philip Wingrave, a relic rather 
 than a celebrity, was a small, brown, erect 
 octogenarian, with smouldering eyes and a 
 studied courtesy. He liked to do the di 
 minished honors of his house, but even 
 when with a shaky hand he lighted a bed 
 room candle for a deprecating guest, it was 
 impossible not to feel that beneath the sur 
 face he was a merciless old warrior. The 
 eye of the imagination could glance back 
 into his crowded Eastern past back at 
 episodes in which his scrupulous forms 
 would only have made him more terrible. 
 
 Mr. Coyle remembered also two other fig 
 ures a faded, inoffensive Mrs. Julian, do 
 mesticated there by a system of frequent 
 visits as the widow of an officer and a par 
 ticular friend of Miss Wingrave, and a re-
 
 
 162 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 markably clever little girl of eighteen, who 
 was this lady's daughter, and who struck the 
 speculative visitor as already formed for 
 other relations. She was very impertinent 
 to Owen, and in the course of a long walk 
 that he had taken with the young man, and 
 the effect of which, in much talk, had been 
 to clinch his high opinion of him, he had 
 learned (for Owen chattered confidentially) 
 that Mrs. Julian was the sister of a very 
 gallant gentleman, Captain Hume-Walker, 
 of the Artillery, who had fallen in the Ind 
 ian Mutiny, and between whom and Miss 
 Wingrave (it had been that lady's one 
 known concession) a passage of some deli 
 cacy, taking a tragic turn, was believed to 
 have been enacted. They had been en 
 gaged to be married, but she had given way 
 to the jealousy of her nature had broken 
 with him and sent him off to his fate, which 
 had been horrible. A passionate sense of 
 having wronged him, a hard eternal remorse 
 had thereupon taken possession of her, and 
 when his poor sister, linked also to a soldier, 
 had by a still heavier blow been left almost 
 without resources, she had devoted herself
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 163 
 
 charitably to a long expiation. She had 
 sought comfort in taking Mrs. Julian to live 
 much of the time at Paramore, where she 
 became an unremunerated though not un- 
 criticised house-keeper, and Spencer Coyle 
 suspected that it was a part of this comfort 
 that she could at her leisure trample on her. 
 The impression of Jane Wingrave was not 
 the faintest he had gathered on that in 
 tensifying Sunday an occasion singularly 
 tinged for him with the sense of bereave 
 ment and mourning and memory, of names 
 never mentioned, of the far-away plaint of 
 widows and the echoes of battles and bad 
 news. It was all military indeed, and Mr. 
 Coyle was made to shudder a little at the 
 profession of which he helped to open the 
 door to harmless young men. Miss Win- 
 grave, moreover, might have made such a 
 bad conscience worse so cold and clear a 
 good one looked at him out of her hard, 
 fine eyes, and trumpeted in her sonorous 
 voice. 
 
 She was a high, distinguished person ; 
 angular but not awkward, with a large fore 
 head and abundant black hair, arranged
 
 164 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 like that of a woman conceiving, perhaps 
 excusably, of her head as " noble," and 
 irregularly streaked to-day with white. If, 
 however, she represented for Spencer Coyle 
 the genius of a military race, it was not that 
 she had the step of a grenadier or the 
 vocabulary of a camp-follower ; it was only 
 that such sympathies were vividly implied 
 in the general fact to which her very pres 
 ence and each of her actions and glances 
 and tones were a constant and direct 
 allusion the paramount valor of her fam 
 ily. If she was military, it was because she 
 sprang from a military house and because 
 she wouldn't for the world have been any 
 thing but what the Wingraves had been. 
 She was almost vulgar about her ancestors ; 
 and if one had been tempted to quarrel 
 with her, one would have found a fair pre 
 text in her defective sense of proportion. 
 This temptation, however, said nothing to 
 Spencer Coyle, for whom, as a strong char 
 acter revealing itself in color and sound, 
 she was as a spectacle, and who was glad to 
 regard her as a force exerted on his own side. 
 He wished her nephew had more of her
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 165 
 
 narrowness instead of being almost cursed 
 with the tendency to look at things in their 
 relations. He wondered why, when she 
 came up to town, she always resorted to 
 Baker Street for lodgings. He had never 
 known nor heard of Baker Street as a resi 
 dence he associated it only with bazaars 
 and photographers. He divined in her a 
 rigid indifference to everything that was 
 not the passion of her life. Nothing really 
 mattered to her but that, and she would 
 have occupied apartments in Whitechapel 
 if they had been a feature in her tactics. 
 She had received her visitor in a large, cold, 
 faded room, furnished with slippery seats 
 and decorated with alabaster vases and 
 wax-flowers. The only little personal com 
 fort for which she appeared to have looked 
 out was a fat catalogue of the Army and 
 Navy Stores, which reposed on a vast, 
 desolate table-cover of false blue. Her 
 clear forehead it was like a porcelain 
 slate, a receptacle for addresses and sums 
 had flushed when her nephew's crammer 
 told her the extraordinary news ; but he 
 saw she was fortunately more angry than
 
 166 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 frightened. She had essentially, she would 
 always have, too little imagination for fear, 
 and the healthy habit moreover of facing 
 everything had taught her that the occasion 
 usually found her a quantity to reckon with. 
 Mr. Coyle saw that her only fear at present 
 could have been that of not being able to 
 prevent her nephew from being absurd, and 
 that to such an apprehension as this she 
 was in fact inaccessible. Practically, too, 
 she was not troubled by surprise ; she 
 recognized none of the futile, none of the 
 subtle sentiments. If Philip had for an hour 
 made a fool of himself, she was angry dis 
 concerted as she would have been on learn 
 ing that he had confessed to debts or 
 fallen in love with a low girl. But there re 
 mained in any annoyance the saving fact 
 that no one could make a fool of her. 
 
 " I don't know when I've taken such an 
 interest in a young man I think I never 
 have, since I began to handle them," Mr. 
 Coyle said. " I like him, I believe in him 
 it's been a delight to see how he was 
 going." 
 
 "Oh, I know how they go!" Miss Win-
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 167 
 
 grave threw back her head with a familiar 
 briskness, as if a rapid procession of the 
 generations had flashed before her, rattling 
 their scabbards and spurs. Spencer Coyle 
 recognized the intimation that she had 
 nothing to learn from anybody about the 
 natural carriage of a Wingrave, and he even 
 felt convicted by her next words of being, 
 in her eyes, with the troubled story of his 
 check, his weak complaint of his pupil, 
 rather a poor creature. " If you like him," 
 she exclaimed, " for mercy's sake, keep him 
 quiet !" 
 
 Mr. Coyle began to explain to her that 
 this was less easy than she appeared to 
 imagine; but he perceived that she under 
 stood very little of what he said. The 
 more he insisted that the boy had a kind 
 of intellectual independence, the more this 
 struck her as a conclusive proof that her 
 nephew was a Wingrave and a soldier. It 
 was not till he mentioned to her that Owen 
 had spoken of the profession of arms as of 
 something that would be " beneath " him, 
 it was not till her attention was arrested by 
 this intenser light on the complexity of the
 
 168 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 problem, that Miss Wingrave broke out, after 
 a moment's stupefied reflection: "Send him 
 to see me immediately !" 
 
 "That's exactly what I wanted to ask 
 your leave to do. But I've wanted also to 
 prepare you for the worst, to make you 
 understand that he strikes me as really 
 obstinate, and to suggest to you that the 
 most powerful arguments at your command 
 especially if you should be able to put 
 your hand on some intensely practical one 
 will be none too effective." 
 
 "I think I've got a powerful argument." 
 Miss Wingrave looked very hard at her 
 visitor. He didn't know in the least what 
 it was, but he begged her to put it forward 
 without delay. He promised that their 
 young man should come to Baker Street 
 that evening, mentioning, however, that he 
 had already urged him to spend without 
 delay a couple of days at Eastbourne. This 
 led Jane Wingrave to inquire with surprise 
 what virtue there might be in that expensive 
 remedy, and to reply, with decision, when 
 Mr. Coyle had said, "The virtue of a little 
 rest, a little change, a little relief to over-
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 169 
 
 wrought nerves," " Ah, don't coddle him 
 he's costing us a great deal of money ! 
 I'll talk to him, and I'll take him down to 
 Paramore ; then I'll send him back to you 
 straightened out." 
 
 Spencer Coyle hailed this pledge super 
 ficially with satisfaction, jjut before he quit 
 ted Miss Wingrave he became conscious that 
 he had really taken on a new anxiety 
 a restlessness that made him say to him 
 self, groaning inwardly^ " Oh, she is a 
 grenadier at bottom, and she'll have no 
 tact. I don't know what her powerful argu 
 ment is; I'm only afraid she'll be stupid and 
 make him worse. The old man's better 
 he's capable of tact, though he's not quite an 
 extinct volcano. Owen will probably put 
 him in a rage. In short, the difficulty is that 
 the boy's the best of them." 
 
 Spencer Coyle felt afresh that evening at 
 dinner that the boy was the best of them. 
 Young Wingrave (who, he was pleased to 
 observe, had not yet proceeded to the sea 
 side) appeared at the repast as usual, look 
 ing inevitably a little self-conscious, but not 
 too original for Bayswater. He talked very
 
 1 7 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 naturally to Mrs. Coyle, who had thought 
 him from the first the most beautiful young 
 man they had ever received ; so that the 
 person most ill at ease was poor Lechmere, 
 who took great trouble, as if from the 
 deepest delicacy, not to meet the eye of his 
 misguided mate. Spencer Coyle, however, 
 paid the penalty of his own profundity in 
 feeling more and more worried ; he could so 
 easily see that there were all sorts of things 
 in his. young friend that the people of Para- 
 more wouldn't understand. He began even 
 already to react against the notion of his 
 being harassed to reflect that, after all, 
 he had a right to his ideas to remember 
 that he was of a substance too fine to be 
 in fairness roughly used. It was in this 
 way that the ardent little crammer, with 
 his whimsical perceptions and complicated 
 sympathies, was generally condemned not 
 to settle down comfortably either into his 
 displeasures or into his enthusiasms. His 
 love of the real truth never gave him a 
 chance to enjoy them. He mentioned to 
 Wingrave after dinner the propriety of an 
 immediate visit to Baker Street, and the
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 171 
 
 young man, looking "queer," as he thought 
 that is, smiling again with the exaggerated 
 glory he had shown in their recent inter 
 view went off to face the ordeal. Spencer 
 Coyle noted that he was scared he was 
 afraid of his aunt , but somehow this didn't 
 strike him as a sign of pusillanimity. He 
 should have been scared, he was well 
 aware, in the poor boy's place, and the 
 sight of his pupil marching up to the battery 
 in spite of his terrors was a positive sug 
 gestion of the temperament of the soldier. 
 Many a plucky youth would have shirked 
 this particular peril. 
 
 " He has got ideas !" young Lechmere 
 broke out to his instructor after his comrade 
 had quitted the house. He was evidently 
 bewildered and agitated he had an emo 
 tion to work off. He had before dinner 
 gone straight at his friend, as Mr. Coyle 
 had requested, and had elicited from him 
 that his scruples were founded on an over 
 whelming conviction of the stupidity the 
 "crass barbarism" he called it of war. 
 His great complaint was that people hadn't 
 invented anything cleverer, and he was deter-
 
 172 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 mined to show, the only way he could, that 
 he wasn't such an ass. 
 
 " And he thinks all the great generals 
 ought to have been shot, and that Napoleon 
 Bonaparte in particular, the greatest, was a 
 criminal, a monster for whom language has 
 no adequate name !" Mr. Coyle rejoined, 
 completing young Lechmere's picture. " He 
 favored you, I see, with exactly the same 
 pearls of wisdom that he produced for me. 
 But I want to know what jw* said." 
 
 " I said they were awful rot !" Young 
 Lechmere spoke with emphasis, and he was 
 slightly surprised to hear Mr. Coyle laugh 
 incongruously at this just declaration, and 
 then after a moment continue : 
 
 " It's all very curious I dare say there's 
 something in it. But it's a pity!" 
 
 " He told me when it was that the ques 
 tion began to strike him in that light. Four 
 or five years ago, when he did a lot of 
 reading about all the great swells and their 
 campaigns Hannibal and Julius Caesar, 
 Marlborough and Frederick and Bonaparte. 
 He has done a lot of reading, and he says 
 it opened his eyes. He says that a wave of
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 173 
 
 disgust rolled over him. He talked about 
 the 'immeasurable misery' of wars, and 
 asked me why nations don't tear to pieces 
 the governments, the rulers that go in for 
 them. He hates poor old Bonaparte worst 
 of all." 
 
 " Well, poor old Bonaparte was a brute. 
 He was a frightful ruffian," Mr. Coyle un 
 expectedly declared. " But I suppose you 
 didn't admit that." 
 
 "Oh, I dare say he was objectionable, 
 and I'm very glad we laid him on his 
 back. But the point I made to Wingrave 
 was that his own behavior would excite 
 no end of remark." Young Lechmere 
 hesitated an instant, then he added : " I 
 told him he must be prepared for the 
 worst." 
 
 " Of course he asked you what you meant 
 by the 'worst,'" said Spencer Coyle. 
 
 " Yes, he asked me that; and do you know 
 what I said ? I said people would say that 
 his conscientious scruples and his wave 
 of disgust are only a pretext. Then he 
 asked, ' A pretext for what ?' " 
 
 "Ah, he rather had you there !" Mr. Coyle
 
 174 
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 exclaimed, with a little laugh that was mysti 
 fying to his pupil. 
 
 " Not a bit for I told him." 
 
 " What did you tell him ?" 
 
 Once more, for a few seconds, with his 
 conscious eyes in his instructor's, the young 
 man hung fire. 
 
 " Why, what we spoke of a few hours ago. 
 The appearance he'd present of not hav 
 ing " The honest youth faltered a mo 
 ment, then brought it out : " The military 
 temperament, don't you know? But do 
 you know what he said to that ?" young 
 Lechmere went on. 
 
 "Damn the military temperament!" the 
 crammer promptly replied. 
 
 Young Lechmere stared. Mr. Coyle's tone 
 left him uncertain if he were attributing the 
 phrase to Wingrave or uttering his own 
 opinion, but he exclaimed : 
 
 " Those were exactly his words !" 
 
 " He doesn't care," said Mr. Coyle. 
 
 "Perhaps not. But it isn't fair for him to 
 abuse us fellows. I told him it's the finest 
 temperament in the world, and that there's 
 nothing so splendid as pluck and heroism."
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 175 
 
 " Ah ! there you had him.''' 
 
 " I told him it was unworthy of him to 
 abuse a gallant, a magnificent profession. 
 I told him there's no type so fine as that of 
 the soldier doing his duty." 
 
 "That's essentially your type, my dear 
 boy." Young Lechmere blushed ; he couldn't 
 make out (and the danger was naturally un 
 expected to him) whether at that moment 
 he didn't exist mainly for the recreation of 
 his friend. But he was partly reassured by 
 the genial way this friend continued, laying 
 a hand on his shoulder : " Keep at him that 
 way! we may do something. I'm extremely 
 obliged to you." Another doubt, however, 
 remained unassuaged a doubt which led 
 him to exclaim to Mr. Coyle, before they 
 dropped the painful subject, 
 
 " He doesn't care ! But it's awfully odd 
 he shouldn't !" 
 
 " So it is ; but remember what you said 
 this afternoon I mean about your not ad 
 vising people to make insinuations to yoti" 
 
 "I believe I should knock a fellow down!" 
 said young Lechmere. Mr. Coyle had got 
 up ; the conversation had taken place while
 
 176 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 they sat together after Mrs. Coyle's with 
 drawal from the dinner-table, and the head 
 of the establishment administered to his dis 
 ciple, on principles that were a part of his 
 thoroughness, a glass of excellent claret. 
 The disciple, also on his feet, lingered an 
 instant, not for another " go," as he would 
 have called it, at the decanter, but to wipe 
 his microscopic mustache with prolonged 
 and unusual care. His companion saw he 
 had something to bring out which required 
 a final effort, and waited for him an instant 
 with a hand on the knob of the door. Then, 
 as young Lechmere approached him, Spen 
 cer Coyle grew conscious of an unwonted 
 intensity in the round and ingenuous face. 
 The boy was nervous, but he tried to be 
 have like a man of the world. " Of course, 
 it's between ourselves," he stammered, "and 
 I wouldn't breathe such a word to any one 
 who wasn't interested in poor Wingrave as 
 you are. But do you think he funks it ?" 
 
 Mr. Coyle looked at him so hard for an 
 instant that he was visibly frightened at 
 what he had said. 
 
 " Funks it ! Funks what ?"
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 177 
 
 "Why, what we're talking about the 
 service." Young Lechmere gave a little 
 gulp, and added, with a naivete almost pa 
 thetic to Spencer Coyle, " The dangers, you 
 know !" 
 
 " Do you mean he's thinking of his skin?" 
 
 Young Lechmere's eyes expanded appeal- 
 ingly, and what his instructor saw in his 
 pink face he even thought he saw a tear 
 was the dread of a disappointment shocking 
 in the degree in which the loyalty of admi 
 ration had been great. 
 
 " Is he is he afraid?' repeated the hon 
 est lad, with a quaver of suspense. 
 
 " Dear no !" said Spencer Coyle, turning 
 his back. 
 
 Young Lechmere felt a little snubbed and 
 even a little ashamed; but he felt still more 
 relieved. . 
 
 Ill 
 
 LESS than a week after this Spencer 
 Coyle received a note from Miss Wingrave, 
 who had immediately quitted London with 
 her nephew. She proposed that he should
 
 I 7 8 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 come down to Paramore for the following 
 Sunday Owen was really so tiresome. On 
 the spot, in that house of examples and 
 memories, and in combination with her 
 poor dear father, who was "dreadfully an 
 noyed," it might be worth their while to 
 make a last stand. Mr. Coyle read between 
 the lines of this letter that the party at Par 
 amore had got over a good deal of ground 
 since Miss Wingrave, in Baker Street, had 
 treated his despair as superficial. She was 
 not an insinuating woman, but she went so 
 far as to put the question on the ground of 
 his conferring a particular favor on an af 
 flicted family ; and she expressed the pleas 
 ure it would give them if he should be ac 
 companied by Mrs. Coyle, for whom she 
 enclosed a separate invitation. She men 
 tioned that she was also writing, subject to 
 Mr. Coyle's approval, to young Lechmere. 
 She thought such a nice, manly boy might 
 do her wretched nephew some good. The 
 celebrated crammer determined to embrace 
 this opportunity ; and now it was the case 
 not so much that he was angry as that he 
 was anxious. As he directed his answer to
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 179 
 
 Miss Wingrave's letter he caught himself 
 smiling at the thought that at bottom he 
 was going to defend his young friend rather 
 than to attack him. He said to his wife, 
 who was a fair, fresh, slow woman a per 
 son of much more presence than himself 
 that she had better take Miss Wingrave at 
 her word : it was such an extraordinary, 
 such a fascinating specimen of an old Eng 
 lish home. This last allusion was amicably 
 sarcastic ; he had already accused the good 
 lady more than once of being in love with 
 Owen Wingrave. She admitted that she 
 was, she even gloried in her passion ; which 
 shows that the subject, between them, was 
 treated in a liberal spirit. She carried out 
 the joke by accepting the invitation with 
 eagerness. Young Lechmere was delighted 
 to do the same ; his instructor had good- 
 naturedly taken the view that the little 
 break would freshen him up for his last 
 spurt. 
 
 It was the fact that the occupants of 
 Paramore did indeed take their trouble 
 hard that struck Spencer Coyle after he 
 had been an hour or two in that fine old
 
 l8o OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 house. This very short second visit, begin 
 ning on the Saturday evening, was to con 
 stitute the strangest episode of his life. As 
 soon as he found himself in private with his 
 wife they had retired to dress for dinner 
 they called each other's attention, with ef 
 fusion and almost with alarm, to the sinister 
 gloom that was stamped on the place. The 
 house was admirable with its old gray front, 
 which came forward in wings so as to form 
 three sides of a square ; but Mrs. Coyle 
 made no scruple to declare that if she had 
 known in advance the sort of impression 
 she was going to receive she would never 
 have put her foot in it. She characterized 
 it as " uncanny," she accused her husband 
 of not having warned her properly. He 
 had mentioned to her in advance certain 
 facts, but while she almost feverishly 
 dressed she had innumerable questions to 
 ask. He hadn't told her about the girl, 
 the extraordinary girl, Miss Julian that is, 
 he hadn't told her that this young lady, 
 who in plain terms was a mere dependent, 
 would be in effect, and as a consequence 
 of the way she carried herself, the most
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 181 
 
 important person in the house. Mrs. Coyle 
 was already prepared to announce that she 
 hated Miss Julian's affectations. Her hus 
 band, above all, hadn't told her that they 
 should find their young charge looking five 
 years older. 
 
 " I couldn't imagine that," said Mr. 
 Coyle, " nor that the character of the crisis 
 here would be quite so perceptible. But I 
 suggested to Miss Wingrave the other day 
 that they should press her nephew in real 
 earnest, and she has taken me at my word. 
 They've cut off his supplies they're trying 
 to starve him out. That's not what I meant 
 but, indeed, I don't quite know to - day 
 what I meant. Owen feels the pressure, 
 but he won't yield." The strange thing 
 was that, now that he was there, the versa 
 tile little coach felt still more that his own 
 spirit had been caught up by a wave of 
 reaction. If he was there it was because 
 he was on poor Owen's side. His whole 
 impression, his whole apprehension, had 
 on the spot become much deeper. There 
 was something in the dear boy's very resist 
 ance that began to charm him. When his
 
 182 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 wife, in the intimacy of the conference I 
 have mentioned, threw off the mask and 
 commended even with extravagance the 
 stand his pupil had taken (he was too good 
 to be a horrid soldier, and it was noble of 
 him to suffer for his convictions wasn't 
 he as upright as a young hero, even though 
 as pale as a Christian martyr ?) the good 
 lady only expressed the sympathy which, 
 under cover of regarding his young friend 
 as a rare exception, he had already recog 
 nized in his own soul. 
 
 For, half an hour ago, after they had had 
 superficial tea in the brown old hall of the 
 house, his young friend had proposed to 
 him, before going to dress, to take a turn 
 outside, and had even, on the terrace, as 
 they walked together to one of the far ends 
 of it, passed his hand entreatingly into his 
 companion's arm, permitting himself thus 
 a familiarity unusual between pupil and 
 master, and calculated to show that he had 
 guessed whom he could most depend on to 
 be kind to him. Spencer Coyle on his 
 own side had guessed something, so that he 
 was not surprised at the boy's having a
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 183 
 
 particular confidence to make. He had 
 felt on arriving that each member of the 
 party had wished to get hold of him first, 
 and he knew that at that moment Jane 
 Wingrave was peering through the ancient 
 blur of one of the windows (the house had 
 been modernized so little that the thick 
 dim panes were three centuries old) to see 
 if her nephew looked as if he were poison 
 ing the visitor's mind. Mr. Coyle lost no 
 time therefore in reminding the youth (and 
 he took care to laugh as he did so) that he 
 had not come down to Paramore to be cor 
 rupted. He had come down to make, face 
 to face, a last appeal to him he hoped it 
 wouldn't be utterly vain. Owen smiled 
 sadly as they went, asking him if he thought 
 he had the general air of a fellow who was 
 going to knock under. 
 
 " I think you look strange I think 
 you look ill," Spencer Coyle said, very 
 honestly. They had paused at the end of 
 the terrace. 
 
 " I've had to exercise a great power of 
 resistance, and it rather takes it out of 
 one."
 
 1 84 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 " Ah, my dear boy, I wish your great 
 power for you evidently possess it were 
 exerted in a better cause !" 
 
 Owen Wingrave smiled down at his small 
 instructor. "I don't believe that!" Then 
 he added, to explain why : " Isn't what you 
 want, if you're so good as to think well of 
 my character, to see me exert most power, 
 in whatever direction ? Well, this is the 
 way I exert most." Owen Wingrave went 
 on to relate that he had had some terrible 
 hours with his grandfather, who had de 
 nounced him in a way to make one's hair 
 stand up on one's head. He had expected 
 them not to like it, not a bit, but he had 
 had no idea they would make such a row. 
 His aunt was different, but she was equally 
 insulting. Oh, they had made him feel 
 they were ashamed of him ; they accused 
 him of putting a public dishonor on their 
 name. He was the only one who had ever 
 backed out he was the first for three 
 hundred years. Every one had known he 
 was to go up, and now every one would 
 know he was a young hypocrite who sudden 
 ly pretended to have scruples. They talked
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 185 
 
 of his scruples as you wouldn't talk of a 
 cannibal's god. His grandfather had called 
 him outrageous names. " He called me 
 he called me " Here the young man 
 faltered, his voice failed him. He looked 
 as haggard as was possible to a young man 
 in such magnificent health. 
 
 "I probably know !" said Spencer Coyle, 
 with a nervous laugh. 
 
 Owen Wingrave's clouded eyes, as if they 
 were following the far-off consequences of 
 things, rested for an instant on a distant 
 object. Then they met his companion's, 
 and for another moment sounded them 
 deeply. " It isn't true no, it isn't. It's 
 not that /" 
 
 " I don't suppose it is ! But what do you 
 propose instead of it?" 
 
 " Instead of what ?" 
 
 "Instead of the stupid solution of war. 
 If you take that away, you should suggest at 
 least a substitute." 
 
 " That's for the people in charge, for 
 governments and cabinets," said Owen 
 Wingrave. " They'M^. arrive soon enough at 
 a substitute, in the particular case, if they're
 
 186 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 made to understand that they'll be hung 
 if they don't find one. Make it a capital 
 crime that'll quicken the wits of minis 
 ters !" His eyes brightened as he spoke, 
 and he looked assured and exalted. Mr. 
 Coyle gave a sigh of perplexed resignation 
 it was a monomania. He fancied after 
 this for a moment that Owen was going to 
 ask him if he too thought he was a coward ; 
 but he was relieved to observe that he 
 either didn't suspect him of it or shrank 
 uncomfortably from putting the question to 
 the test. Spencer Coyle wished to show 
 confidence, but somehow a direct assurance 
 that he didn't doubt of his courage ap 
 peared too gross a compliment it would be 
 like saying he didn't doubt of his honesty. 
 The difficulty was presently averted by 
 Owen's continuing : "My grandfather can't 
 break the entail ; but I shall have nothing 
 but this place, which, as you know, is small 
 and, with the way rents are going, has 
 quite ceased to yield an income. He has 
 some money- not much, but such as it is 
 he cuts me off. My aunt does the same 
 she has let me know her intentions. She
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 187 
 
 was to have left me her six hundred a year. 
 It was all settled ; but now what's settled 
 is that I don't get a penny of it if I give up 
 the army. I must add, in fairness, that I 
 have from my mother three hundred a year 
 of my own. And I tell you the simple 
 truth when I say that I don't care a rap for 
 the loss of the money." The young man 
 drew a long, slow breath, like a creature in 
 pain ; then he subjoined : " Thafs not what 
 worries me !" 
 
 " What are you going to do ?" asked 
 Spencer Coyle. 
 
 " I don't know ; perhaps nothing. Noth 
 ing great, at all events. Only something 
 peaceful!" 
 
 Owen gave a weary smile, as if, worried 
 as he was, he could yet appreciate the hu 
 morous effect of such a declaration from a 
 Wingrave ; but what it suggested to his 
 companion, who looked up at him with a 
 sense that he was after all not a Wingrave 
 for nothing, and had a. military steadiness 
 
 under fire, was the exasperation that such a 
 programme, uttered in such a way and strik 
 ing them as the last word of the inglorious,
 
 188 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 might well have engendered on the part of 
 his grandfather 'and his aunt. " Perhaps 
 nothing " when he might carry on the great 
 tradition ! Yes, he wasn't weak, and he was 
 interesting; but there was a point of view 
 from which he was provoking. " What is 
 it, then, that worries you?" Mr. Coyle de 
 manded. 
 
 " Oh, the house the very air and feeling 
 of it. There are strange voices in it that 
 seem to mutter at me to say dreadful 
 things as I pass. I mean the general con 
 sciousness and responsibility of what I'm 
 doing. Of course it hasn't been easy for 
 me not a bit. I assure you I don't enjoy 
 it." With a light in them that was like a 
 longing for justice, Owen again bent his 
 eyes on those of the little coach ; then he 
 pursued : " I've started up all the old 
 ghosts. The very portraits glower at me on 
 the walls. There's one of my great-great 
 grandfather (the one the extraordinary story 
 you know is about the old fellow who hangs 
 on the second landing of the big staircase) 
 that fairly stirs on the canvas just heaves 
 a little when I come near it. I have to go
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 189 
 
 up and down stairs it's rather awkward ! 
 It's what my aunt calls the family circle. 
 It's all constituted here, it's a kind of inde 
 structible presence, it stretches away into 
 the past, and when I came back with her 
 the other day Miss Wingrave told me I 
 wouldn't have the impudence to stand in 
 the midst of it and say such things. I had 
 to say them to my grandfather; but now 
 that I've said them, it seems to me that the 
 question's ended. I want to go away I 
 don't care if I never come back again." 
 
 " Oh, you are a soldier ; you must fight 
 it out !" Mr. Coyle laughed. 
 
 The young man seemed discouraged at 
 his levity, but as they turned round, stroll 
 ing back in the direction from which they 
 had come, he himself smiled faintly after an 
 instant and replied : 
 
 " Ah, we're tainted all !" 
 
 They walked in silence part of the way 
 to the old portico ; then Spencer Coyle, 
 stopping short after having assured himself 
 that he was at a sufficient distance from the 
 house not to be heard, suddenly put the 
 question : "What does Miss Julian say?"
 
 igo OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 " Miss Julian ?" Owen had perceptibly 
 colored. 
 
 " I'm sure she hasn't concealed her opin 
 ion." 
 
 "Oh, it's the opinion of the family circle, 
 for she's a member of it, of course. And 
 then she has her own as well." 
 
 " Her own opinion ?" 
 
 " Her own family circle." 
 
 " Do you mean her mother that patient 
 
 J' iy?" 
 " I mean more particularly her father, who 
 1 in battle. And her grandfather, and his 
 :her, and her uncles and great -uncles 
 ;y all fell in battle." 
 " Hasn't the sacrifice of so many lives 
 been sufficient? Why should she sacrifice 
 you r 
 
 11 Oh, she hates me !" Owen declared, as 
 ' they resumed their walk. 
 
 "Ah, the hatred of pretty girls for fine 
 young men !" exclaimed Spencer Coyle. 
 
 He didn't believe in it, but his wife did, 
 it appeared perfectly, when he mentioned 
 this conversation while, in the fashion that 
 has been described, the visitors dressed for
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE igi 
 
 dinner. Mrs. Coyle had already discovered 
 that nothing could have been nastier than 
 Miss Julian's manner to the disgraced youth 
 during the half-hour the party had spent in 
 the hall; and it was this lady's judgment that 
 one must have had no eyes in one's head 
 not to see that she was already trying out 
 rageously to flirt with young Lechmere. It 
 was a pity they had brought that silly boy ; 
 he was down in the hall with her at that 
 moment. Spencer Coyle's version was dif 
 ferent; he thought there were finer elements 
 involved. The girl's footing in the house 
 was inexplicable on any ground save that of 
 her being predestined to Miss Wingrave's 
 nephew. As the niece of Miss Wingrave's 
 own unhappy intended she had been dedi 
 cated early by this lady to the office of heal 
 ing, by a union with Owen, the tragic breach 
 that had separated their elders ; and if, in 
 reply to this, it was to be said that a girl of 
 spirit couldn't enjoy in such a matter hav 
 ing her duty cut out for her, Owen's en 
 lightened friend was ready with the argu 
 ment that a young person in Miss Julian's 
 position would never be such a fool as really
 
 IQ2 
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 to quarrel with a capital chance. She was 
 familiar at Paramore, and she felt safe ; there 
 fore she might trust herself to the amuse 
 ment of pretending that she had her option. 
 But it was all innocent coquetry. She had a 
 curious charm, and it was vain to pretend 
 that the heir of that house wouldn't seem 
 good enough to a girl, clever as she might 
 be, of eighteen. Mrs. Coyle reminded her 
 husband that the poor young man was pre 
 cisely now not of that house ; this problem 
 was among the questions that exercised 
 their wits after the two men had taken the 
 turn on the terrace. Spencer Coyle told his 
 wife that Owen was afraid of the portrait of 
 his great-great-grandfather. He would show 
 it to her, since she hadn't noticed it, on 
 their way down-stairs. 
 
 "Why of his great-great-grandfather more 
 than of any of the others ?" 
 
 " Oh, because he's the most formidable. 
 He's the one who's sometimes seen." 
 
 " Seen where ?" Mrs. Coyle had turned 
 round with a jerk. 
 
 " In the room he was found dead in the 
 
 f^^f^^^ 
 
 White Room they've always called it."
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 193 
 
 " Do you mean to say the house has a 
 ghost f Mrs. Coyle almost shrieked. " You 
 brought me here without telling me ?" 
 
 " Didn't I mention it after my other 
 visit ?" 
 
 "Not a word. You only talked about 
 Miss Wingrave." 
 
 " Oh, I was full of the story you have 
 simply forgotten." 
 
 " Then you should have reminded me !" 
 
 " If I had thought of it I would have held 
 my peace, for you wouldn't have come." 
 
 " I wish, indeed, I hadn't !" cried Mrs. 
 Coyle. " What is the story ?" 
 
 " Oh, a deed of violence that took place 
 here ages ago. I think it was in George the 
 First's time. Colonel Wingrave, one of their 
 ancestors, struck in a fit of passion one of 
 his children, a lad just growing up, a blow 
 on the head, of which the unhappy child 
 died. The matter was hushed up for the 
 hour some other explanation was put about. 
 The poor boy was laid out in one of those 
 rooms on the other side of the house, and 
 amid strange, smothered rumors the funeral 
 was hurried on. The next morning, when
 
 194 
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 the household assembled, Colonel Wingrave 
 was missing ; he was looked for vainly, and 
 at last it occurred to some one that he might 
 perhaps be in the room from which his child 
 had been carried to burial. The seeker 
 knocked without an answer then opened 
 the door. Colonel Wingrave lay dead on 
 the floor, in his clothes, as if he had reeled 
 and fallen back, without a wound, without 
 a mark, without anything in his appearance 
 to indicate that he had either struggled or 
 suffered. He was a strong, sound man 
 there was nothing to account for such a 
 catastrophe. He is supposed to have gone 
 to the room during the night, just before 
 going to bed, in some fit of compunction or 
 some fascination of dread. It was only after 
 this that the truth about the boy came out. 
 But no one ever sleeps in the room." 
 
 Mrs. Coyle had fairly turned pale. " I 
 hope not ! Thank Heaven they haven't put 
 us there !" 
 
 " We're at a comfortable distance ; but 
 I've seen the grewsome chamber." 
 
 " Do you mean you've been in it ?" 
 
 " For a few moments. They're rather
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 195 
 
 proud of it, and my young friend showed it 
 to me when I was here before. 
 
 Mrs. Coyle stared. " And what is it 
 like ?" 
 
 " Simply like an empty, dull, old-fashioned 
 bedroom, rather big, with the things of the 
 ' period ' in it. It's panelled from floor to 
 ceiling, and the panels evidently, years and 
 years ago, were painted white/ But the 
 paint has darkened with time, and there are 
 three or four quaint little ancient ' samplers,' 
 framed and glazed, hung on the walls." 
 
 Mrs. Coyle looked round with a shudder. 
 " I'm glad there are no samplers here ! I 
 never heard anything so jumpy ! Come 
 down to dinner." 
 
 On the staircase, as they went down, her 
 husband showed her the portrait of Colonel 
 Wingrave rather a vigorous representation, 
 for the place and period, of a gentleman 
 with a hard, handsome face, in a red coat 
 and a peruke. Mrs. Coyle declared that 
 his descendant Sir Philip was wonderfully 
 like him ; and her husband could fancy, 
 though he kept it to himself, that if one 
 should have the courage to walk about the
 
 196 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 old corridors of Paramore at night one might 
 meet a figure that resembled him roaming, 
 with the restlessness of a ghost, hand in 
 hand with the figure of a tall boy. As he 
 proceeded to the drawing-room with his wife 
 he found himself suddenly wishing that he 
 had made more of a point of his pupil's 
 going to Eastbourne. The evening, however, 
 seemed to have taken upon itself to dissi 
 pate any such whimsical forebodings, for 
 the grimness of the family circle, as Spencer 
 Coyle had preconceived its composition, 
 was mitigated by an infusion of the "neigh 
 borhood." The company at dinner was re 
 cruited by two cheerful couples one of 
 them the vicar and his wife, and by a silent 
 young man who had come down to fish. 
 This was a relief to Mr. Coyle, who had 
 begun to wonder what was after all expected 
 of him, and why he had been such a fool as 
 to come, and who now felt that for the first 
 hours at least the situation would not have 
 directly to be dealt with. Indeed, he found, 
 as he had found before, sufficient occupa 
 tion for his ingenuity in reading the various 
 symptoms of which the picture before him
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 197 
 
 was an expression. He should probably 
 have an irritating day on the morrow; he 
 foresaw the difficulty of the long, decorous 
 Sunday, and how dry Jane Wingrave's ideas, 
 elicited in a strenuous conference, would 
 taste. She and her father would make him 
 feel that they depended upon him for the 
 impossible, and if they should try to associ 
 ate him with a merely stupid policy he might 
 end by telling them what he thought of it 
 an accident not required to make his visit a 
 sensible mistake. The old man's actual 
 design was evidently to let their friends see 
 in it a positive mark of their being all right. 
 The presence of the great London coach 
 was tantamount to a profession of faith in 
 the results of the impending examination. 
 It had clearly been obtained from Owen, 
 rather to Spencer Coyle's surprise, that he 
 would do nothing to interfere with the ap 
 parent harmony. He let the allusions to his 
 hard work pass and, holding his tongue 
 about his affairs, talked to the ladies as 
 amicably as if he had not been " cut off." 
 When Spencer Coyle looked at him once 
 or twice across the table, catching his eye,
 
 198 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 which showed an indefinable passion, he 
 saw a puzzling pathos in his laughing face ; 
 one couldn't resist a pang for a young lamb 
 so visibly marked for sacrifice. " Hang him 
 what a pity he's such a fighter!" he 
 privately sighed, with a want of logic that 
 was only superficial. 
 
 This idea, however, would have absorbed 
 him more if so much of his attention had 
 not been given to Kate Julian, who, now 
 that he had her well before him, struck him 
 as a remarkable and even as a possibly fas 
 cinating young woman. The fascination re 
 sided not in any extraordinary prettiness, 
 for if she was handsome, with her long 
 Eastern eyes, her magnificent hair, and her 
 general unabashed originality, he had seen 
 complexions rosier and features that pleased 
 him more ; it resided in a strange impression 
 that she gave of being exactly the sort of 
 person whom, in her position, common con 
 siderations, those of prudence and perhaps 
 even a little those of decorum, would have 
 enjoined on her not to be. She was what 
 was vulgarly termed a dependant penni 
 less, patronized, tolerated ; but something in
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 199 
 
 her aspect and manner signified that, if her 
 situation was inferior, her spirit, to make 
 up for it, was above precautions or submis 
 sions. It was not in the least that she 
 was aggressive, she was too indifferent for 
 that; it was only as if, having nothing either 
 to gain or to lose, she could afford to do as 
 she liked. It occurred to Spencer Coyle 
 that she might really have had more at stake 
 than her imagination appeared to take ac 
 count of ; whatever it was, at any rate, he had 
 never seen a young woman at less pains to 
 be on the safe side. He wondered inevit 
 ably how the peace was kept between Jane 
 Wingrave and such an inmate as this ; but 
 those questions of course were unfathom 
 able deeps. Perhaps Kate Julian lorded it 
 even over her protectress. The other time 
 he was at Paramore he had received an im 
 pression that, with Sir Philip beside her, the 
 girl could fight with her back to the wall. 
 She amused Sir Philip, she charmed him, 
 and he liked people who weren't afraid ; be 
 tween him and his daughter, moreover, there 
 was no doubt which was the higher in com 
 mand. Miss Wingrave took many things
 
 200 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 for granted, and most of all the rigor of 
 discipline and the fate of the vanquished 
 and the captive. 
 
 But between their clever boy and so orig 
 inal a companion of his childhood what odd 
 relation would have grown up? It couldn't 
 be indifference,and yet on the part of happy, 
 handsome, youthful creatures it was still 
 less likely to be aversion. They weren't 
 Paul and Virginia, but they must have had 
 their common summer and their idyl ; no 
 nice girl could have disliked such a nice 
 fellow for anything but not liking her, and 
 no nice fellow could have resisted such pro 
 pinquity. Mr. Coyle remembered indeed 
 that Mrs. Julian had spoken to him as if the 
 propinquity had been by no means constant, 
 owing to her daughter's absences at school, 
 to say nothing of Owen's ; her visits to a 
 few friends who were so kind as to " take 
 her" from time to time; her sojourns in 
 London so difficult to manage, but still 
 managed by God's help for "advantages," 
 for drawing and singing, especially drawing, 
 or rather painting in oils, in which she had 
 had immense success. But the good lady
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 2OI 
 
 had also mentioned that the young people 
 were quite brother and sister, which was a 
 little, after all, like Paul and Virginia. 
 Mrs. Coyle had been right, and it was ap 
 parent that Virginia was doing her best to 
 make the time pass agreeably for young 
 Lechmere. There was no such whirl of 
 conversation as to render it an effort for 
 Mr. Coyle to reflect on these things, for the 
 tone of the occasion, thanks principally to 
 the other guests, was not disposed to stray 
 it tended to the repetition of anecdote 
 and the discussion of rents, topics that 
 huddled together like uneasy animals. He 
 could judge how intensely his hosts wished 
 the evening to pass off as if nothing had 
 happened ; and this gave him the measure 
 of their private resentment. Before dinner 
 was over he found himself fidgetty about 
 his second pupil. Young Lechmere, since 
 he began to cram, had done all that might 
 have been expected of him ; but this 
 couldn't blind his instructor to a present 
 perception of his being in moments of re 
 laxation as innocent as a babe. Mr. Coyle 
 had considered that the amusements of
 
 202 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 Paramore would probably give him a fillip, 
 and the poor fellow's manner testified to 
 the soundness of the forecast. The fillip 
 had been unmistakably administered ; it 
 had come in the form of a revelation. The 
 light on young Lechmere's brow announced 
 with a candor that was almost an appeal 
 for compassion, or at least a deprecation of 
 ridicule, that he had never seen anything 
 like Miss Julian. 
 
 IV 
 
 IN the drawing-room after dinner the girl 
 found an occasion to approach Spencer 
 Coyle. She stood before him a moment, 
 smiling while she opened and shut her fan, 
 and then she said, abruptly, raising her 
 strange eyes : " I know what you've come 
 for ; but it isn't any use." 
 
 "I've come to look after you a little. 
 Isn't that any use ?" 
 
 " It's very kind. But I'm not the ques 
 tion of the hour. You won't do anything 
 with Owen."
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 203 
 
 Spencer Coyle hesitated a moment. 
 " What will you do with his young friend ?" 
 
 She stared, looked round her. 
 
 " Mr. Lechmere ? Oh, poor little lad ! 
 We've been talking about Owen. He ad 
 mires him so." 
 
 " So do I. I should tell you that." 
 
 " So do we all. That's why we're in such 
 despair." 
 
 " Personally, then, you'd like him to be a 
 soldier ?" Spencer Coyle inquired. 
 
 " I've quite set my heart on it. I adore 
 the army, and I'm awfully fond of my old 
 playmate," said Miss Julian. 
 
 Her interlocutor remembered the young 
 man's own different version of her attitude ; 
 but he judged it loyal not to challenge the 
 girl. 
 
 " It's not conceivable that your old play 
 mate shouldn't be fond of you. He must 
 therefore wish to please you ; and I don't 
 see why between you you don't set the 
 matter right." 
 
 " Wish to please me !" Miss Julian ex 
 claimed. " I'm sorry to say he shows no 
 such desire. He thinks me an impudent
 
 204 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 wretch. I've told him what I think of him, 
 v and he simply hates me." 
 
 " But you think so highly ! You just told 
 me you admire him." 
 
 " His talents, his possibilities, yes ; even 
 V- > his appearance, if I may allude to such a mat 
 ter. But I don't admire his present behavior." 
 
 " Have you had the question out with 
 him ?" Spencer Coyle asked. 
 
 " Oh yes ; I've ventured to be frank the 
 occasion seemed to excuse it. He couldn't 
 like what I said." 
 
 " What did you say ?" 
 
 Miss Julian, thinking a moment, opened 
 and shut her fan again. 
 
 "Why, that such conduct isn't that of a 
 gentleman !" 
 
 After she had spoken her eyes met Spen 
 cer Coyle's, who looked into their charm 
 ing depths. 
 
 " Do you want, then, so much to send him 
 off to be killed ?" 
 
 " How odd for you to ask that in such a 
 way !" she replied, with a laugh. " I don't 
 understand your position ; I thought your 
 line was to make soldiers !"
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 205 
 
 " You should take my little joke. But, 
 as regards Owen Wingrave, there's no 
 , 'making' needed," Mr. Coyle added. "To 
 ' my sense" the little crammer paused a 
 moment, as if with a consciousness of re 
 sponsibility for his paradox "to my sense 
 he is, in a high sense of the term, a fighting 
 man." 
 
 " Ah, let him prove it !" the girl ex- 
 "claimed, turning away. 
 
 Spencer Coyle let her go ; there was 
 something in her tone that annoyed and 
 even a little shocked him. There had evi 
 dently been a violent passage between these 
 young people, and the reflection that such 
 a matter was, after all, none of his business 
 only made him more sore. It was indeed 
 a military house, and she was, at any rate, a 
 person who placed her ideal of manhood 
 (young persons doubtless always had their 
 ideals of manhood) in the type of the 
 belted warrior. It was a taste like an 
 other ; but, even a quarter of an hour later, 
 finding himself near young Lechmere, in 
 whom this type was embodied, Spencer 
 Coyle was still so ruffled that he addressed
 
 206 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 the innocent lad with a certain magisterial 
 dryness. " You're not to sit up late, you 
 know. That's not what I brought you 
 down for." The dinner-guests were taking 
 leave and the bedroom candles twinkled in 
 a monitory row. Young Lechmere, how 
 ever, was too agreeably agitated to be ac 
 cessible to a snub : he had a happy pre 
 occupation which almost engendered a grin. 
 
 "I'm only too eager for bedtime. Do 
 you know there's an awfully jolly room ?" 
 
 " Surely they haven't put you there ?" 
 
 " No, indeed ; no one has passed a night 
 in it for ages. But that's exactly what I 
 want to do it would be tremendous fun." 
 
 " And have you been trying to get Miss 
 Julian's permission ?" 
 
 " Oh, she can't give leave, she says. But 
 she believes in it, and she maintains that 
 no man dare." 
 
 " No man shall ! A man in your critical 
 position in particular must have a quiet 
 night," said Spencer Coyle. 
 
 Young Lechmere gave a disappointed 
 but reasonable sigh. 
 
 " Oh, all right. But mayn't I sit up for a
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 207 
 
 little go at Wingrave ? I haven't had any 
 yet." 
 
 Mr. Coyle looked at his watch. 
 " You may smoke one cigarette." 
 He felt a hand on his shoulder, and he 
 turned round to see his wife tilting candle- 
 grease upon his coat. The ladies were go 
 ing to bed, and it was Sir Philip's inveterate 
 hour; but Mrs. Coyle confided to her hus 
 band that after the dreadful things he had 
 told her she positively declined to be left 
 alone, for no matter how short an interval, 
 in any part of the house. He promised to 
 follow her within three minutes, and after 
 the orthodox hand-shakes the ladies rustled 
 away. The forms were kept up at Para- 
 more as bravely as if the old house had no 
 present heartache. The only one of which 
 Spencer Coyle noticed the omission was 
 some salutation to himself from Kate 
 Julian. She gave him neither a word nor a 
 glance, but he saw her look hard at Owen 
 Wingrave. Her mother, timid and pitying, 
 was apparently the only person from whom 
 this young man caught an inclination of the 
 head. Miss Wingrave marshalled the three
 
 208 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 ladies her little procession of twinkling 
 tapers up the wide oaken stairs and past 
 the watching portrait of her ill-fated ances 
 tor. Sir Philip's servant appeared and of 
 fered his arm to the old man, who turned a 
 perpendicular back on poor Owen when the 
 boy made a vague movement to anticipate 
 this office. Spencer Coyle learned afterwards 
 that before Owen had forfeited favor it had 
 always, when he was at home, been his priv 
 ilege at bedtime to conduct his grandfather 
 ceremoniously to rest. Sir Philip's habits 
 were contemptuously different now. His 
 apartments were on the lower floor, and he 
 shuffled stiffly off to them with his valet's 
 help, after fixing for a moment significantly 
 on the most responsible of his visitors the 
 thick red ray, like the glow of stirred em 
 bers, that always made his eyes conflict 
 oddly with his mild manners. They seemed 
 to say to Spencer Coyle, " We'll let the 
 young scoundrel have it to-morrow !" One 
 might have gathered from them that the 
 young scoundrel, who had now strolled to 
 the other end of the hall, had at least 
 forged a check. Mr. Coyle watched him an
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 209 
 
 instant, saw him drop nervously into a chair, 
 and then with a restless movement get up. 
 The same movement brought him back to 
 where his late instructor stood addressing 
 a last injunction to young Lechmere. 
 
 " I'm going to bed, and I should like you 
 particularly to conform to what I said to 
 you a short time ago. Smoke a single 
 cigarette with your friend here, and then 
 go to your room. You'll have me down 
 on you if I hear of your having, during 
 the night, tried any preposterous games." 
 Young Lechmere, looking down with his 
 hands in his pockets, said nothing he only 
 poked at the corner of a rug with his toe ; 
 so that Spencer Coyle, dissatisfied with so 
 tacit a pledge, presently went on, to Owen : 
 " I must request you, Wingrave, not to 
 keep this sensitive subject sitting up and, 
 indeed, to put him to bed and turn his key 
 in the door." As Owen stared an instant, 
 apparently not understanding the motive of 
 so much solicitude, he added : " Lechmere 
 has a morbid curiosity about one of your 
 legends of your historic rooms. Nip it in 
 the bud."
 
 210 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 "Oh, the legend's rather good, but I'm 
 afraid the room's an awful sell !" Owen 
 laughed. 
 
 " You know you don't believe that, my 
 boy !" young Lechmere exclaimed. 
 
 " I don't think he does," said Mr. Coyle, 
 noticing Owen's mottled flush. 
 
 " He wouldn't try a night there himself !" 
 young Lechmere pursued. 
 
 " I know who told you that," rejoined 
 Owen, lighting a cigarette in an embar 
 rassed way at the candle, without offering 
 one to either of his companions. 
 - "Well, what if she did?" asked the 
 younger of these gentlemen, rather red. 
 " Do you want them all yourself ?" he con 
 tinued, facetiously, fumbling in the cigarette- 
 box. 
 
 Owen Wingrave only smoked quietly ; 
 then he exclaimed : 
 
 " Yes what if she did ? But she doesn't 
 know," he added. 
 
 " She doesn't know what ?" 
 
 " She doesn't know anything ! I'll tuck 
 him in !" Owen went on gayly, to Mr. 
 Coyle, who saw that his presence, now that
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 211 
 
 a certain note had been struck, made the 
 young men uncomfortable. He was cu 
 rious, but there was a kind of discretion, 
 with his pupils, that he had always pretend 
 ed to practise ; a discretion that, however, 
 didn't prevent him as he took his way up 
 stairs from recommending them not to be 
 donkeys. 
 
 At the top of the staircase, to his sur 
 prise, he met Miss Julian, who was appar 
 ently going down again. She had not be 
 gun to undress, nor was she perceptibly 
 disconcerted at seeing him. She neverthe 
 less, in a manner slightly at variance with 
 the rigor with which she had overlooked 
 him ten minutes before, dropped the words, 
 "I'm going down to look for something. 
 I've lost a jewel." 
 
 "A jewel?" 
 
 " A rather good turquoise, out of my lock 
 et. As it's the only ornament I have the 
 honor to possess " And she passed down. 
 
 " Shall I go with you and help you ?" 
 asked Spencer Coyle. 
 
 The girl paused a few step below him, 
 looking back with her Oriental eyes.
 
 212 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 " Don't I hear voices in the hall ?" 
 
 "Those remarkable young men are 
 there." 
 
 " They'll help me." And Kate Julian de 
 scended. 
 
 Spencer Coyle was tempted to follow her, 
 but remembering his standard of tact, he re 
 joined his wife in their apartment. He de 
 layed, however, to go to bed, and though he 
 went into his dressing-room, he couldn't 
 bring himself even to take off his coat. He 
 pretended for half an hour to read a novel ; 
 after which, quietly, or perhaps I should 
 say agitatedly, he passed from the dressing- 
 room into the corridor. He followed this 
 passage to the door of the room which he 
 knew to have been assigned to young Lech- 
 mere, and was comforted to see that it was 
 closed. Half an hour earlier he had seen 
 it standing open ; therefore he could take 
 for granted that the bewildered boy had 
 come to bed. It was of this he had wished 
 to assure himself, and having done so, he 
 was on the point of retreating. But at the 
 same instant he heard a sound in the room 
 the occupant was doing to the window
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 213 
 
 something which showed him that he might 
 knock without the reproach of waking his 
 pupil up. Young Lechmere came in fact 
 to the door in his shirt and trousers. He 
 admitted his visitor in some surprise, and 
 when the door was closed again Spencer 
 Coyle said : 
 
 " I don't want to make your life a bur 
 den to you, but I had it on my conscience 
 to see for myself that you're not exposed 
 to undue excitement." 
 
 " Oh, there's plenty of that !" said the in 
 genuous youth. " Miss Julian came down 
 again." 
 
 " To look for a turquoise ?" 
 
 " So she said." 
 
 " Did she find it ?" 
 
 " I don't know. I came up. I left her 
 with poor Wingrave." 
 
 " Quite the right thing," said Spencer 
 Coyle. 
 
 " I don't know," young Lechmere re 
 peated, uneasily. " I left them quarrelling." 
 
 "What about?" 
 
 ' I don't understand. They're a quaint 
 pair !"
 
 214 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 Spencer Coyle hesitated. He had, fun 
 damentally, principles and scruples, but 
 what he had in particular just now was a 
 curiosity, or rather, to recognize it for what 
 it was, a sympathy, which brushed them 
 away. 
 
 " Does it strike you that she's down on 
 him ?" he permitted himself to inquire. 
 
 " Rather ! when she tells him he lies !" 
 
 " What do you mean ?" 
 
 " Why, before me. It made me leave 
 them ; it was getting too hot. I stupidly 
 brought up the question of the haunted 
 room again, and said how sorry I was that 
 I had had to promise you not to try my 
 luck with it." 
 
 " You can't pry about in that gross way 
 in other people's houses you can't take 
 such liberties, you know !" Mr. Coyle inter 
 jected. 
 
 " I'm all right see how good I am. I 
 don't want to go near the place !" said 
 young Lechmere, confidingly. "Miss Julian 
 said to me, ' Oh, I dare say yoifd risk it, 
 ^ but' and she turned and laughed at poor 
 Owen ' that's more than we can expect of
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 215 
 
 a gentleman who has taken his extraordi 
 nary line.' I could see that something had 
 already passed between them on the sub 
 ject some teasing or challenging of hers. 
 It may have been only chaff, but his chuck 
 ing the profession had evidently brought 
 up the question of his pluck." 
 
 " And what did Owen say ?" 
 
 " Nothing at first ; but presently he 
 
 ^ brought out very quietly : ' I spent all last 
 night in the confounded place.' We both 
 stared and cried out at this, and I asked 
 him what he had seen there. He said he 
 had seen nothing, and Miss Julian replied 
 that he ought to tell his story better than 
 that he ought to make something good of 
 it. ' It's not a story it's a simple fact,' 
 said he ; on which she jeered at him and 
 wanted to know why, if he had done it, he 
 hadn't told her in the morning, since he 
 knew what she thought of him. 'I know, 
 but I don't care,' said Wingrave. This 
 made her angry, and she asked him, quite 
 seriously, whether he would care if he 
 should know she believed him to be trying 
 to deceive us."
 
 216 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 " Ah, what a brute !" cried Spencer 
 Coyle. 
 
 "She's a most extraordinary girl I don't 
 know what she's up to." 
 
 " Extraordinary indeed to be romping 
 and bandying words at that hour of the 
 night with fast young men !" 
 
 Young Lechmere reflected a moment. 
 "I mean because I think she likes him." 
 
 Spencer Coyle was so struck with this un 
 wonted symptom of subtlety that he flashed 
 out : " And do you think he likes her?"' 
 
 But his interlocutor only replied with a 
 puzzled sigh and a plaintive " I don't know 
 I give it up ! I'm sure he did see some 
 thing or hear something," young Lechmere 
 added. 
 
 " In that ridiculous place ? What makes 
 you sure ?" 
 
 " I don't know he looks as if he had. 
 He behaves as if he had/' 
 
 " Why, then, shouldn't he mention it ?" 
 
 Young Lechmere thought a moment. " Per 
 haps it's too grewsome !" 
 
 Spencer Coyle gave a laugh. "Aren't 
 you glad, then, you're not in it ?"
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 217 
 
 " Uncommonly !" 
 
 " Go to bed, you goose," said Spencer 
 Coyle, with another laugh. " But, before you 
 go, tell me what he said when she told him 
 he was trying to deceive you." 
 
 " ' Take me there yourself, then, and lock 
 me in !' " 
 
 " And did she take him ?" 
 
 " I don't know I came up." 
 
 Spencer Coyle exchanged a long look 
 with his pupil. 
 
 " I don't think they're in the hall now. 
 Where's Owen's own room ?" 
 
 " I haven't the least idea." 
 
 Mr. Coyle was perplexed ; he was in equal 
 ignorance, and he couldn't go about trying 
 doors. He bade young Lechmere sink to 
 slumber, and came out into the passage. 
 He asked himself if he should be able to 
 find his way to the room Owen had for 
 merly shown him, remembering that, in com 
 mon with many of the others, it had its ancient 
 name painted upon it. But the corridors 
 of Paramore were intricate ; moreover, some 
 of the servants would still be up, and he 
 didn't wish to have the appearance of roam-
 
 2l8 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 ing over the house. He went back to his 
 own quarters, where Mrs. Coyle soon per 
 ceived that his inability to rest had not 
 subsided. As she confessed for her own 
 part, in the dreadful place, to an increased 
 sense of " creepiness," they spent the early 
 part of the night in conversation, so that a 
 portion of their vigil was inevitably beguiled 
 by her husband's account of his colloquy 
 with little Lechmere, and by their exchange 
 of opinions upon it. Towards two o'clock 
 Mrs. Coyle became so nervous about their 
 persecuted young friend, and so possessed 
 by the fear that that wicked girl had availed 
 herself of his invitation to put him to an 
 abominable test, that she begged her hus 
 band to go and look into the matter, at 
 whatever cost to his own equilibrium. But 
 Spencer Coyle, perversely, had ended, as 
 the perfect stillness of the night settled 
 upon them, by charming himself into a trem 
 ulous acquiescence in Owen's readiness to 
 face a formidable ordeal an ordeal the 
 more formidable to an excited imagination, 
 as the poor boy now knew from the experi 
 ence of the previous night how resolute an
 
 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 2ig 
 
 effort he should have to make. " I hope he 
 is there," he said to his wife ; "it puts them 
 all so in the wrong !" At any rate, he couldn't 
 take upon himself to explore a house he 
 knew so little. He was inconsequent he 
 didn't prepare for bed. He sat in the 
 dressing-room with his light and his novel, 
 waiting to find himself nodding. At last, 
 however, Mrs. Coyle turned over and ceased 
 to talk, and at last, too, he fell asleep in his 
 chair. How long he slept he only knew 
 afterwards by computation ; what he knew, 
 to begin with, was that he had started up, in 
 confusion, with the sense of a sudden ap 
 palling sound. His sense cleared itself 
 quickly, helped doubtless by a confirmatory 
 cry of horror from his wife's room. But he 
 gave no heed to his wife ; he had already 
 bounded into the passage. There the sound 
 was repeated it was the " Help ! help !" of 
 a woman in agonized terror. It came from 
 a distant quarter of the house, but the quar 
 ter was sufficiently indicated. Spencer Coyle 
 rushed straight before him, with the sound 
 of opening doors and alarmed voices in his 
 ears, and the faintness of the early dawn
 
 220 OWEN WINGRAVE 
 
 in his eyes. At a turn of one of the pas 
 sages he came upon the white figure of a 
 girl in a swoon on a bench, and in the viv 
 idness of the revelation he read as he went 
 that Kate Julian, stricken in her pride too 
 late with a chill of compunction for what 
 she had mockingly done, had, after coming 
 to release the victim of her derision, reeled 
 away, overwhelmed, from the catastrophe 
 that was her work the catastrophe that the 
 next moment he found himself aghast at on 
 the threshold of an open door. Owen Win- 
 grave, dressed as he had last seen him, lay 
 dead on the spot on which his ancestor had 
 been found. He looked like a young sol 
 dier on a battle-field. 
 
 THE END
 
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