dill -illlHI 
 
 H 
 
 Hi I if 
 
a I B R.AR.Y 
 
 OF THE 
 UN IVLRSITY 
 Of ILLINOIS 
 
 8^3 
 H 552. Wi 
 
 v. I 
 
WILD KOSE 
 
 & Jiamanre. 
 
 JOHN HILL 
 
 Sah ein Knab' ein Roslein stehn, 
 Roslein auf der Heiden, 
 
 War so jung und morgenschon, 
 
 Lief er schnell es nahzusehen, 
 
 Sail's mit vielen Freuden 
 
 Roslein, Roslein, Roslein roth 
 Roslein auf der Heiden.' 
 
 J. W. v. Goethe. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 TINSLEY BROTHERS, 8, CATHERINE STREET, 
 
 STRAND. 
 
 1882. 
 
8&3 
 
 Jltbirattb 
 
 TO MY FRIEND, 
 
 E. S. C, 
 
 WHO APPRECIATES 
 
 WILD EOSES 
 
CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 
 
 CHAPTER • PAGE 
 
 I. PRELIMINARY .... 1 
 
 II. BAPTISM IN WINE AND FIRE . . 35 
 
 III. EAVE LODGE, WINTERDALE . . 52 
 
 IV. JACK MILLER . . . .92 
 
 V. JACK'S ACADEMIC LIFE . . .105 
 
 VI. ALMA PIA— DURA MATER . . 117 
 
 VII. ROSA ENTERS SOCIETY . . .138 
 
 VIII. DOMESTIC . . . .155 
 
 IX. MAX LAURENCE . . . .169 
 
 X. WHAT JACK SAW IN CHURCH . . 207 
 
 XL ARTHUR RADFORD — MILES GLORIOSUS . 226 
 
WILD ROSE 
 
 ^< 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PRELIMINARY. 
 
 It was early in the morning one Sep- 
 tember some years ago. during the first 
 decade of the Second Empire, in the 
 Boulevard St. Michel, in Paris; early 
 enough for industrial and professional 
 Paris only to be awake or astir. Work- 
 men, robust, rubicund and sun-tanned, in 
 blouses, were going in that leisurely con- 
 versational style peculiar to workmen when 
 going toward their task — to build, to found 
 and to destroy in the world of stone and 
 vol. i. 1 
 
WILD ROSE. 
 
 cement, minute particles of the latter rest- 
 ing on the black bristles of their unshaven 
 cheeks, serving as an unmistakable trade- 
 mark. Cabmen and carters were standing 
 in the doorways or leaning on the zinc- 
 covered counters of Commerces des Vins, 
 talking and pondering, in all probability, on 
 the inadvisability of ever doing work, and 
 critically watching the laden tramcars that 
 jingled ponderously past them, bearing 
 other workmen, clerks and the like, whose 
 work was on one side of the Seine, and 
 their abode on the other. Neatly dressed 
 girls, inheritors of the position of the now 
 extinct grisettes, were walking toward their 
 sewing-rooms, cigar counters, or other and 
 manifold scenes of labour, carefully avoid- 
 ing the puddles of the night's production, 
 which the sun, shining through a washed 
 blue sky, with white clouds storm-torn 
 like combed- out wool, had as yet not the 
 strength to efface. It could display stains, 
 
PRELIMINAR Y. 
 
 discolorations, and defilements, but, like 
 many a reformer, stopped at that, not 
 having the power or energy to remove 
 them. The Seine itself was a misty 
 mirror, fading into aerial perspective, with 
 each further bridge and tall pile of old city 
 buildings looking more hazily mysterious 
 than the nearer. The mist was over the 
 surface of the water everywhere, and 
 seemed like the breath of sleeping Paris. 
 
 Pleasure-seeking Paris was asleep — in- 
 dustrious, discontented, revolution-making 
 Paris was, as usual, wide awake ; but the 
 time had not arrived for the latter to 
 strangle the former as it slept, and pay off 
 old debts so. 
 
 The Boulevard St. Michel is, as the 
 reader to whom Paris is familiar well 
 knows, one of those large, new and rigid 
 roads of the south side of the river, divert- 
 ing and collecting the dark and crowded 
 streams of people from the dark and crowded 
 
 1—2 
 
WILD ROSE. 
 
 roam arteries of the Quartier Latin, such 
 as the Rue St. Jaques, or the Rue cle la 
 Harpe. The Boulevard St. Germain is 
 just such another, nearly at right angles to 
 it. These two are the forerunners of the 
 great work of destruction so ably begun 
 under Napoleon III., and other rulers and 
 their talented advisers, destined ultimately 
 to eliminate antiquity and picturesqueness 
 from the Latin Quarter (which they now, 
 with their mathematical and statistical 
 precision choose to split into the Arron- 
 dissements du Pantheon and du Luxem- 
 bourg), and with them the oldest historical 
 streets, and the shades of the great de- 
 parted — Musset, Mtirger, Mimi Pin son, 
 et hoc genus omne — and all the literary 
 and romantic halo which the mighty 
 and the darling dead have left behind 
 them. They are gone. Their memory 
 clings to the dear, dirty, tall old streets. 
 Why not leave them for one generation 
 
PRELTMINAR Y. 
 
 more at least, till we have all been turned, 
 by compulsory education and modern utili- 
 tarianism, into mathematicians, moralists, 
 and meddlesome monomaniacs of sanitary 
 reform, ready to sacrifice all beauty and 
 poetry to remodelled drainage, and all 
 artistic irregularity and Gothic quaintness 
 to canons of art, in which every element of 
 art except rigid perspective is omitted ? 
 
 It is possible that the engineers or archi- 
 tects of the old streets drew the designs 
 when their hands were in a state of 
 bibulous tremor, and that the workmen 
 faithfully copied the pattern (both of archi- 
 tecture and conduct therewith). It is pos- 
 sible that they showered down chimneys 
 out of a supernatural and Brobdignagian 
 pepper-castor, letting them stick where 
 they would on the roofs, totally irrespec- 
 tive of the needs of the coal-consuming 
 population below them, thus obliging these 
 last to bore holes in the walls, and stick 
 
WILD ROSE. 
 
 black tubes through to let the smoke out, 
 and thus giving extra opportunites for 
 sentimental sufferers to suicidally suffocate 
 themselves. It is possible that drains were 
 as the mystery of iniquity and the abomi- 
 nation of desolation to these mediaeval 
 constructors. Still, face to face with these 
 mighty and manifold faults, which a 
 carping criticism could carry further, and 
 indefinitely multiply, an irresistible, un- 
 reasonable and unreasoning affection, like 
 that of man for woman, unites those who 
 know the quarter, or what remains of it 
 through its poetic past, to that region of 
 learning and love, gaiety and despair, 
 fame and destitution, poetry and painting, 
 folly and vice, kindness and brotherly 
 affection, and eternal romance, on the south 
 side of the Seine. 
 
 In the Boulevard St. Michel, in the 
 midst of the said region, are many cafes 
 and brasseries, patronised mainly by the 
 
PRELIMINARY. 
 
 students of the University, and the mis- 
 cellaneous literary and artistic population 
 of the neighbourhood. These are different 
 from the cafes to which you, wealthy and 
 aristocratic Briton, sojourning in the Land 
 of Philistia and plenty on the ' other side,' 
 are accustomed, and unless you can put up 
 with seedy apparel, pipes, saucy female 
 waiters who will be happy to share your 
 breakfast, and the rather free and 'realistic' 
 conversation of the quarter, principally 
 consisting of medical and legal 'shop/ the 
 fair sex, and the theatres, you had better 
 stay on the ' other side/ and not intrude 
 your spectacled nose into society incom- 
 prehensible to you, whose shibboleths are 
 as hieroglyphics to you, and then write an 
 article on the depravity of the French. 
 
 In one of these cafes, two men — not 
 workmen this time — are sitting, eagerly 
 conversing with one another. The pur- 
 pose of this chapter is not, as the reader 
 
WILD ROSE. 
 
 supposes, to diffuse opinions on archi- 
 tectural and social reform, but to explain 
 who these two individuals are, why they 
 are there, and what they are talking about. 
 To effect this, we will, if you please, go 
 back half an hour or so into the earlier 
 part of this September morning, and enter 
 a studio on the fourth floor of an old house 
 in the Rue de la Harpe, on whose door is 
 nailed a visiting card : 
 
 'Paul Felix, 
 
 Artiste — Peintre.' 
 
 Through the studio, which is untidy, large, 
 and full of work mostly unfinished, we 
 will walk, and find ourselves in the bed- 
 room (if your sense of propriety has not 
 already made you hesitate, not knowing 
 him as I do) of the said Paul Felix, and 
 behold him, in a shirt and a pair of 
 trousers, leisurely balancing on the side of 
 his bed, with a cigarette dangling lazily 
 from the corner of his mouth. The sun 
 
PRELIMINARY. 
 
 shines fully and cruelly on the not un- 
 comely but worn face of a quite young man, 
 remorselessly displaying a complexion indi- 
 cative of late hours, and those habits 
 usually described by the vague euphemism 
 ' irregular.' His hair is long, leonine and 
 curly, and deep red ; a moustache feline 
 and bristly decorates his upper lip. His 
 cheeks and chin are, or rather soon will be, 
 shaved, his nose is aquiline, and his eyes 
 brown. The whole expression looks care- 
 less, sensible to humour, and unutterably 
 lazy, if you can imagine all that packed 
 into one expression. On a chair sits his 
 friend, Dr. Ivor Taylor, an American 
 Parisian, completely enfant cle Paris, but 
 preserving always, throughout his fluent 
 French, inaccuracy of accent and grammar, 
 and his American straightforward, hit-and- 
 slash style of diction. His appearance is 
 as antithetic as possible to that of Felix. 
 He is perhaps a year older, but his dark 
 
10 WILD ROSE. 
 
 grizzled hair and the eternal Parisian 
 moustache, also iron grey, wrinkled eyelids, 
 and thin lantern-jawed face, not unhand- 
 some withal, and a pair of spectacles, give 
 him the air of at least ten years' seniority. 
 His frame is strongly built, and he looks 
 the personification of force, candour, and 
 energy — something about him always sug- 
 gesting a calm and courageous house-dog 
 of massive proportions and gentle eyes. 
 His close-cropped hair adds to the illu- 
 sion. Their conversation was of course in 
 French, but as this story is English, not 
 French, it is advisable to translate it, 
 
 ' Well, now that you have deprived me 
 of hours of my well-deserved rest,' began 
 the painter, ' what have you to tell me ? 
 Is there any news \ or did you merely 
 come to annoy me, by protruding before 
 me the horrible regularity and industry of 
 your life, as an example which you know I 
 never can or will follow ?' 
 
PRELIMINAR Y. 1 1 
 
 1 1 haven't any news, except that it rained 
 last night. I came to see you and ask 
 how you were getting along.' 
 
 1 Then I suppose all the news and con- 
 versation must come from me. Take a 
 cigarette, and I will tell you a romance — 
 such a one as your fog and filth beladen 
 country never will or can produce/ 
 
 ' I think you are mixing up my country 
 with England. You evidently know little of 
 either, so go on with the story — glad to 
 hear some new thing.' 
 
 'Well, I have discovered a new belle amieY 
 
 ' Nothing new or surprising about that. 
 Happens about once a week, don't it V 
 
 ' ' — Whom you will not presume to make 
 cumbrous American love to, or I will slay 
 you. I fence better than you.' 
 
 1 Better not show her to me, then.' 
 
 1 But the whole glory and advantage of 
 a belle amie consists in showing her, and 
 boasting of her. 
 
12 WILD ROSE. 
 
 It is as if you had successfully coloured 
 a meerschaum pipe. It is no satisfaction 
 except to draw the envious admiration of 
 your friends. 
 
 ' All very well in pipes ; not my notion 
 to treat girls quite the same way.' 
 
 ' Why not ? They are very much alike 
 — both pretty — both easily go to destruc- 
 tion, and both you get tired of when you 
 have burned the beauty out of them !' 
 
 'Well, we won't discuss ethics. We shan't 
 alter the eternal unfitness of things much, 
 that way, I guess. Where's the story V 
 
 ' The story ? Ah, yes. By the way 
 your visit, you know, has charmed me in 
 every respect, but it has not removed my 
 appetite. Suppose we go and breakfast ? 
 The story will go better with a glass of 
 wine and a cigarette, preceded by, we'll say, 
 bread and butter, and perhaps cheese as 
 you are with me — for which meal, and for 
 this occasion only, I will permit you to 
 
PRELIMINAR Y. 13 
 
 pay, my own resources having an unusual 
 strain upon them at this moment. Shall 
 we go V 
 
 1 Do you think of going as you are V 
 
 ' Why not % It is picturesque, and has 
 a certain savage beauty about it, which it 
 takes a true artist to appreciate.' 
 
 ' I, not being a true artist, would press 
 you to a little less picturesque, and a little 
 more civilised, if I am going to walk out 
 with you/ 
 
 ' I sacrifice myself to prejudice and 
 Philistinism. Come into the studio a minute. 
 I have a surprise for you. ' 
 
 Felix got up and strode from the bed- 
 room to the studio, where he stooped over 
 and appeared to unravel a kind of nest, 
 composed mainly of blanket, and disclosed 
 in this, in the seat of his own arm-chair, a 
 minute, pallid, brown-eyed infant, of the 
 female sex. ' You wanted to see my 
 newly discovered belle amie. There she is ! 
 
14: WILD ROSE. 
 
 Whether she can accommodate herself to 
 an atmosphere of carbonate of lead, varnish, 
 cognac and caporal tobacco, I know not. 
 We are going to try.' 
 
 Dr. Taylor put on his glasses and in- 
 spected it minutely, as if it were a sea- 
 anemone, or a cancer. It feebly and 
 helplessly waved small tentacle-like limbs, 
 and finally anchored its fingers in his 
 grizzly black moustache, and hauled at it. 
 1 Not the first of its sex that's done that, 
 mon cher,' remarked the painter, laughing. 
 
 ' Where in thunder did he get that V 
 exclaimed the bewildered American in his 
 native tongue. 
 
 ' Entirely my own opinion,' replied the 
 other, in his native tongue. 
 
 ' What's this V asked Taylor, relapsing 
 into French. 'A human being; young 
 specimen ; sex, female. Rare in this 
 locality — at that age, at any rate.' 
 
 ' Where did you get it V 
 
PRELIMINARY. 15 
 
 ' That, ray friend, is the story.' 
 
 Dr. Taylor gazed at it with an expres- 
 sion of gloom and embarrassment, and 
 after some silence remarked : 
 
 ' I suppose it's pretty V 
 
 ' Pretty ? Good heavens, she's per- 
 fectly beautiful ! But it takes an artist's 
 eye — mine, for example — to see that.' 
 
 1 Doubtless. I don't know anything 
 about that kind of being, except profes- 
 sionally. 
 
 * Except professionally. Of course, 
 neither do I ; but then my profession 
 leads me to study the outsides of beings, 
 yours merely the insides ; which re- 
 minds me that our own insides require 
 speedy replenishment. Therefore I, will 
 adorn myself ; I am about to shave. 
 Now don't speak to me, or make me 
 laugh, or bang the door, or stick pins into 
 the infant, or anything calculated to make 
 me cut my throat.' 
 
16 WILD ROSE. 
 
 Some moments passed ; after which 
 Felix appeared in a rather ancient frock- 
 coat, his hair combed, and on his head a 
 tall hat, slightly on one side, and bearing 
 an appearance of antiquity equal at least 
 to that of the coat, and wearing round 
 his neck a flowing crimson handkerchief, 
 which toned down the rather conflagration - 
 suggesting hue of his hair. 
 
 ' How do I look now ?' asked he, turning 
 up his moustaches and striking an atti- 
 tude. 
 
 * Just the same hopeless mixture of 
 vagabond and baby that you always do ; 
 come along.' 
 
 You, aristocratic Briton from the ' other 
 side,' whom I have previously had the 
 honour of apostrophising, had you seen 
 Paul Felix, would have pronounced him a 
 thorough cad. That only shows that you 
 are too hasty in forming judgments from 
 external appearances, and have not a suffi- 
 
PRELIMINAR Y. 1 7 
 
 ciently wide acquaintance with mankind 
 to possess sympathy and largeness of 
 mind. For Paul Felix was nothing of 
 the sort ; and could enjoy a Greek play 
 as much and more than an opeVa bouffe, 
 and that is more than you can say. 
 Excuse plain language. 
 
 1 Now we will go into the Boulevard, to 
 Madame Triboulet, and have coffee, and 
 ask Cesarine's advice. I will take your 
 arm, as that seems to irritate you more 
 than anything else in public/ 
 
 As they walked along the pavement, in 
 the morning sunlight, Taylor said : 
 
 ' Has it ever occurred to you to ask 
 yourself what is going to become of you ? 
 What are you going to do ? How are you 
 going to live ? You can't keep up this 
 sort of existence for ever, you know/ 
 
 ' I never speculate on such a very unsafe 
 and unpleasant subject as my future ; and 
 no one but an outspoken old bear like 
 
 VOL. I. 2 
 
18 WILD ROSE. 
 
 yourself would have wounded me by 
 alluding to it. I am having an idle fit 
 just now. I sometimes do.' 
 
 'I believe your last idle fit has lasted 
 about three-and-twenty years.' 
 
 1 Idleness is necessary to the artistic 
 temperament.' 
 
 1 Artistic blague!' 
 
 1 Besides, I have not been idle. What 
 was I to do ! I came here, ostensibly, to 
 study medicine — at least such was the 
 intention of my guardians, who hoped that 
 some day the Faculty, in a fit of temporary 
 aberration of intellect, might make me a 
 doctor. But dissections and operations 
 had not the attraction for me they have 
 for more fortunate and more utilitarian 
 minds, and I devoted myself to human and 
 mental physiology, giving my attention 
 chiefly to its phenomena as manifested by 
 the other sex — also to the consumption of 
 the excellent beer and tobacco of the 
 
PRELIMINAR Y. 1 9 
 
 Quarter. I hoped that by continually 
 absenting myself from the Amphitheatre 
 of Anatomy, I might learn to long for it 
 — long separation is said to produce such 
 longing. It apparently has not been 
 long enough, as yet, though. Then, as 
 you are perhaps not aware, my versatile 
 genius longed for an outlet somewhere, 
 and thought it had found it in jour- 
 nalism. I joined myself to two un- 
 washed enthusiasts, who were pleased to 
 style themselves editor and staff (I don't 
 remember which took the part of the staff 
 now), and wrote a feuilleton for their paper, 
 the Evening Bat. This journal was started 
 ostensibly to convince the inhabitants of 
 Belleville of the fatal effects which a 
 government, laws, and police must neces- 
 sarily have on such a humanly perfect 
 community as that of the Parisian working- 
 class ; really, to provide a little bread and 
 meat and cheap wine to the parties who 
 
 2—2 
 
20 WILD ROSE. 
 
 produced the journal. My story was of a 
 nature calculated to wither to the marrow 
 and shake on their thrones all the crowned 
 heads of Europe — if they had only read it, 
 which they, in their blindness, failed to do. 
 I imitated Victor Hugo, and wrote in 
 short, possibly pithy sentences, and talked 
 about the giants and spectres of '93 on 
 every other page. Here, however, the 
 resemblance ceased. Victor Hugo did not 
 write to inform me that I was an 
 Apocalypse, though the sub-editor forged 
 a letter from him to that effect. Gambetta 
 did not give me the notice and patronage 
 due to my influence and sentiments. The 
 crowned heads remained on their thrones, 
 and the paper fell through from lack of 
 support before the editor had time to 
 realise his pet ambition of getting im- 
 prisoned for sedition, which would have 
 sold the paper a thousand a day. A fine 
 would have been nothing to him. You 
 
PRELIMINARY. 21 
 
 cannot fine a man who has no money. So 
 I came to the conclusion that literature 
 was not the path provided for me by the 
 fates, and returned to my old study of 
 human psychology, and here I am. I've 
 
 got an idea ' 
 
 1 You have got a tongue, anyhow. Now, 
 suppose you listen to me. I am not moral 
 and all that sort of thing, as you know, but 
 I have certain sentiments, and prejudices 
 as you will call them, and I've been in the 
 world a trifle longer than you have, and 
 I'll tell you this much. Paris is not the 
 whole world, as you seem to think, and 
 my sympathies spread beyond the Barriere 
 de l'Etoile, even across the Atlantic, 
 where I know certain old folks at home 
 — not educated like us, though they had 
 me educated ; not looking at things the 
 way we do, perhaps, but seeing the world 
 through old-fashioned spectacles — have 
 sent me here at their expense, with 
 
22 WILD J?OS£. 
 
 the money they've worked for and I 
 haven't, to learn things, and come back 
 from Europe a better and a wiser man. 
 They think I'm working hard, and be- 
 having proper, and going to church with a 
 high hat on Sundays. Well, I can't go 
 to church now. You and your modern 
 thought and scepticism and progress and 
 all that have taken away from me all that 
 the old folks believe in ; but I am entirely 
 blasted if I don't do something — not much, 
 but what I can — to come up to their ex- 
 pectations. No one ever does come up to 
 his parents' expectations, but I guess J'm 
 trying. How am I to account for my grey 
 hairs and knowledge of the world to my 
 mother ? Just think of that. You know 
 how one gets grey hairs here. You know 
 what sort of a world one gets knowledge of 
 here, and I confess I like that world. But 
 you can enjoy life and work too. Now, 
 just chuck off that cursed don't care, don't 
 
PREL1MINAR Y. 23 
 
 believe sort of tone you are putting on, and 
 put yourself in the same position with 
 regard to your relations, and honestly 
 
 say if you ain't behaving like a d d 
 
 ungrateful young fool !' 
 
 ' My dear sir, your words contain all 
 the rude wisdom of the Bible, together 
 with all the impracticable principles of 
 that valuable work. You, in spite of 
 your dissections and nasal accent, are a 
 poet, minus the power of writing verse. 
 I know you like sunsets, for you never go 
 into eloquent rapture when you see one, 
 but keep still. You also love humanity 
 and revere women, in spite of your rather 
 inconsistent behaviour to them. Now, with 
 all this, it is perfectly natural that your 
 sentiments should be what they are. I 
 am not of the same constitution ; I do not 
 feel any particular affection for humanity 
 at large, and I believe the feeling is pretty 
 mutual. As regards obligations to others, 
 
24 WILD ROSE. 
 
 I have no such embarrassments as ex- 
 pectant fathers and mothers ; and the 
 only relations I have, would say, with a 
 sigh of relief, " I told you so !" if I were 
 guillotined at three this afternoon. So 
 that objection to my conduct falls to the 
 ground. Your world may go beyond 
 Paris. Mine does not. At least, not 
 farther than Asnieres by steamboat on 
 Sunday afternoons. My whole life is 
 bound up with Paris. Have I never had 
 any human feelings % Good heavens, yes 
 — but they have been cauterised out of 
 me. Did you ever see the only girl you 
 ever loved, when you believed in love, 
 lying on a marble table in the Amphi- 
 theatre of Anatomy, with a score of 
 students grinning at the exhibition through 
 eyeglasses, and saying, "You knew her, 
 Felix, didn't you V Now you can realise 
 that I do not feel vehemently attracted 
 towards that place. I don't respect 
 
PRELIMINAR Y. 25 
 
 women. There is very little to respect about 
 them. They, like men, follow their desires 
 and feelings, and do not succeed in veiling 
 that fact so easily as men — that is the 
 only difference. The devil alone knows 
 what there is in your society that always 
 makes me serious and sentimental. Here 
 is our cafe ; come in, and change the 
 subject.' 
 
 Here .they entered one of the above 
 alluded to brasseries, solitary at this early 
 hour, but destined to be filled later in the 
 day, and most of all later in the night, 
 with a jovial, laughing, reckless crowd of 
 students, and those flirting waitresses 
 who are such a characteristic of such 
 places, some of whom are attractive, all 
 of whom possess ready tongues and eyes 
 — and, I may add, ready appetites, and 
 an eternal thirst', and who make their 
 breakfasts, dinners and suppers, and sundry 
 interposed and miscellaneous courses of 
 
26 WILD ROSE. 
 
 refreshments, off the charity of their sworn 
 friend, allies and protectors, the students. 
 
 Of these only one, Cesarine, was present, 
 fixing on an apron leisurely before a 
 mirror, and rectifying the set of her hair, 
 her mouth full of pins. Her Felix 
 accosted : 
 
 1 Cesarine, thou of the classical name, 
 wilt thou bring us certain portions of 
 bread, butter, cheese, salt and wine — as 
 usual ? The only unusual element about 
 the repast is, that it will be paid for, and 
 that by our learned friend here.' 
 
 ' What will you have yourself, Cesarine V 
 asked Dr. Taylor. 
 
 Cesarine confessed a longing for her 
 favourite beverage, ' Vermouth gommeV 
 
 Dr. Taylor said : 
 
 1 Very bad for you so early. However, 
 it is no use, I supjDOse, to tell you that. 
 Bring it quick, with the other things — 
 there's a dear.' 
 
PRELIMINARY. 27 
 
 Cesarine disappeared, and quickly re- 
 appeared bearing a tray, whose contents, 
 viz. the desired breakfast, she arranged at 
 a table, and sat down with the two sons 
 of Bohemia, and clinked glasses with them. 
 Having eaten with the voracious appetite 
 and unimpaired and omnipotent digestion 
 of a schoolboy plunging for the first time 
 into dissipation, Felix said : 
 
 ' Now for the story. Listen to it, 
 Cesarine, and bear out the truth, if neces- 
 sary, by your testimony.' 
 
 'That depends if there is any truth to bear 
 out,' replied she, mindful of previous confi- 
 dential revelations from the young painter. 
 
 ' It is the privilege of your sex to be 
 impertinent, Last night, near midnight, I 
 was here, with the intention of enjoying 
 Strasbourg beer and mademoiselle here's 
 charming conversation. But seeing that 
 she was already engrossed by other and 
 doubtless more attractive friends ' 
 
28 WILD ROSE. 
 
 1 Hear, hear !' from Cesarine. 
 
 ' I lit a cigarette, turned up the collar of 
 my coat, and strolled out under the stars 
 into the wide world, especially that portion 
 of it bordering on the Seine. I paused 
 under a lamp-post, ostensibly with the aim 
 of looking at my watch, really to look at a 
 remarkably pretty woman who was passing 
 under the lamp at the same time. She 
 carried a bundle, and wore one of those 
 coffee-coloured mantles which forty thou- 
 sand other women wear just now, and 
 which consequently is no identification. 
 She went on to the Pont St. Michel. So 
 did I. She deposited the bundle on the 
 pavement in the middle of the bridge. I 
 looked at it, It was an infant. Of course 
 I picked it up, overtook her, took off my 
 hat, and observed : " Pardon, but madam 
 has dropped something." 
 
 ( She looked at me and it in some sur- 
 prise, and replied : " Monsieur is exceed- 
 
PRELIMINARY. 29 
 
 ingly polite. As a consideration for his 
 attention, I make over to his charge and 
 protection that," pointing to the bundle. 
 
 ' " May I inquire madame's name and 
 address V 
 
 ' " I regret that circumstances prevent 
 my giving either the one or the other, and 
 would suggest that I will trust to the sense 
 of chivalry which monsieur has already 
 shown he possesses, to prevent his follow- 
 ing me further. Good-night/' 
 
 ' What was I to do ? In your own 
 poetic language, I vow, it was a " go." 
 Figure to yourself me, alone and unpro- 
 tected, in the middle of the night, in the 
 clutches of a remorseless baby ! To drop 
 it quietly over the parapet, and stroll away 
 whistling as I passed the police, would 
 have been convenient, but a crime — besides, 
 these things are always found out. I put 
 my hat forward, rounded my back, limped 
 and tried to look as much like some one 
 
30 WILD ROSE. 
 
 else as possible, in case any friend should 
 find me in such compromising society, and 
 put up an umbrella, although it was not 
 raining, and got into the first cab I met 
 and went home. The infant complicated 
 matters by beginning to wail and lament. 
 Now it is in my armchair, and will soon 
 die of inanition if you don't tell me what 
 I am to give it. I offered it brandy and 
 beer, last night — excellent beer, but it 
 rejected it with some violence. I ask your 
 advice, as a friend, Cesarine.' 
 
 Cesarine, choking with laughter at the 
 idea of a young bachelor of the Quartier 
 ' raising ' an infant on beer, said : l Give it 
 milk.' 
 
 ' How much V 
 
 ' Oh, as much as it will take, I suppose. 
 I don't know.' 
 
 1 Go and get some, will you ? You must 
 come and see and criticise it, and display 
 that mad and animal idolatry which all 
 
PRELIMINAR Y. 3 1 
 
 young women have for the very young of 
 their species.' And the good-natured girl 
 disappeared, to inquire if such a fluid ex- 
 isted in the establishment. When she was 
 gone, Felix said : 
 
 'Now I have a proposition to make. 
 Don't be surprised or come out w T ith ob- 
 jections till I have done. It is that you 
 and I, under the direction and advice of 
 Cesarine, do undertake herewith and hence- 
 forward the up-bringing, physical and 
 moral, of the said female child, now re- 
 siding in an armchair, fourth floor, No 25, 
 Rue de la Harpe, Quartier Latin, Paris. 
 Your medical knowledge will be occasion- 
 ally useful. More than this. You know 
 what sort of life, and education, and morals, 
 girls in this quarter usually acquire. They 
 are like the flowers fallen from the jasmine 
 tree, that I saw at Asnieres this autumn, 
 some still fair, and fresh and beautiful 
 lying there, some utterly withered and 
 
32 WILD ROSE. 
 
 destroyed, but with enough of the flower's 
 soul and body about them to remind one 
 that they were once beautiful jasmine blos- 
 soms, filling the summer with scent. Now 
 I want to protect her, with your help, from 
 all this. I want to carve out for her an 
 ideal, artistic existence, untainted alike by 
 the prejudices of the rigidly righteous or 
 the foulness of the hopelessly fallen ; and I 
 want you to enter into a bargain or con- 
 tract with me, that whichever of us lives 
 longest is to continue to care for and pre- 
 serve our small jasmine flower, who pro- 
 mises to be pretty, and whom the fates 
 have cast in our path. Will you do 
 this V 
 
 ' By the Lord in whom I don't believe, 
 I will ! Shake hands, sir ; there's a man 
 alive in your body yet.' 
 
 ' We will give her a name : I will bap- 
 tize her in champagne, which Madame 
 Triboulet here will give on tick for such a 
 
PRELIMINAR Y. 33 
 
 charitable, not to say religious, purpose, 
 and the provision for her future will be a 
 stimulus to us to work hard, and a slight 
 recompense to her sex for the many wrongs 
 we have done them, and the many hard 
 things we have said of them/ 
 
 Cesarine here entered with a dark wine- 
 bottle, through which came the greenish 
 gleams of milk. 
 
 ' Hum ! doesn't look nice. No account- 
 ing for tastes,' commented Felix. ' You're 
 a, good fellow, Cesarine ; proud to 
 know you — give me a kiss.' And he 
 told her his plan with the eloquence of a 
 sincere man, and casting aside his habitual 
 tone of bantering flippancy. 
 
 Cesarine was silent for a while, then 
 said: 
 
 1 I'll help where I can.' 
 
 She was thinking of her own life, though 
 Felix purposely spared any allusions which 
 might bring her lost past too prominently 
 
 vol. i. 3 
 
3t WILD ROSE. 
 
 before this frivolous foam-born girl of the 
 Quarter, 
 
 The whole undertaking was strange, 
 original, and to an unimaginative 
 mind impracticable. It was founded by 
 two men, purely and solely out of their 
 own instincts, uncontrolled by sense of 
 duty, morality, or religion, and as such 
 would surely be predicted to fail. Whether 
 it did or not we shall see. Felix took Ivor 
 Taylor's arm under his own on one side, 
 and the black bottle under the other, and 
 went away. 
 
 Cesarine observed to old Madame Tri- 
 boulet, the proprietress, who was engaged 
 in the useful if prosaic occupation of peeling 
 potatoes in an inner room : 
 
 1 1 think, M. Paul Felix is rather mad, 
 but I like him all the same.' 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 BAPTISM IN WINE AND FIRE. 
 
 The baby discovered by Paul Felix came 
 
 to have the name of Rosa. ' Rosa la Rose/ 
 
 as Paul remarked, with a reminiscence of 
 
 Latin grammar in his head. Surnames 
 
 are not absolutely necessary commodities 
 
 among the inhabitants of the Quartier 
 
 Latin. They are often ignored, and do 
 
 not always exist. This rule holds more 
 
 particularly among the female portion of 
 
 the community. So it was not thought 
 
 necessary by Paul to invent one for his 
 
 small charge. 
 
 She was baptized ' Rosa la Rose ' by a 
 
 3—2 
 
36 WILD ROSE. 
 
 select company of Paul's most intimate 
 friends in his studio, he himself of course 
 officiating. He produced champagne and 
 handed it round in glasses, accompanied 
 by cigarettes. Cesarine obtained a holi- 
 day, and was present. She took an 
 immense interest in the child, and con- 
 stituted herself marraine. Paul made a 
 short speech, of course. No action was 
 satisfactory or complete with him unless 
 accompanied by a short speech. He ex- 
 plained his purpose with regard to the 
 just then sleeping Rosa, and invited them 
 all to co-operate and constitute themselves 
 her guardians. They waved their glasses 
 and exclaimed, ' Nous le jurons !' 
 
 The presence of the unconscious child 
 seemed to recall everything that was pure, 
 virtuous, past and gone and for ever out 
 of their reach to the three or four reckless, 
 billiard-playing, Bullier-frequenting young 
 men present, and they really meant in all 
 
BAPTISM IN WINE AND FIRE. 37 
 
 honour to be moral guardians to Rosa. 
 Paul went on : 
 
 1 1 now baptize thee, Rosa la Rose, 
 with the first foam of my wine, in hopes 
 that you may grow to be like the glorious 
 mother of gods and men who was born 
 from the foam of the ocean. May your 
 life be happy. I call you Rosa — 
 
 1 " Parceque les plus belle choses, 
 Comme les lis et les roses, 
 N'ont qu'un saison d'ete." 
 
 Vive Rosa, fille du Quartier Latin !' 
 
 1 Vive Rosa, fille du Quartier Latin f 
 
 replied everyone, emptying his glass. 
 Rosa awoke. She looked round at all 
 
 the strange faces with a stare of surprise. 
 ' Oughtn't some one to kiss her V asked 
 
 a student, whose acquaintance with the 
 
 ancient and religious ceremony of baptism 
 
 was somewhat rudimentary and vague in 
 
 details. 
 
WILD ROSE. 
 
 ' Xo man of us shall kiss her/ said Paul, 
 ' until she can give him leave or signify 
 her wish that he should C6b rine 
 
 may, if she lik 
 
 1 1 had rather not/ said Cesarine, rather 
 sadly. ' I would like to. I am not more fit 
 to kiss her than anyone here, simply be- 
 cause I am a woman and you are all men/ 
 [She went and looked at Rosa, lying in the 
 armchair of honour. Rosa knew best who 
 was fit to kiss her, and stretched out her 
 arms towards Cesarine's neck and 
 
 saline overcame all scruples, and em- 
 braced the baby Rosa in that _ 
 manner peculiar to women dealing with 
 children or other animals of whom they 
 are specially fond.] ' I wonder it' 
 will show as much charity to one like 
 me when you are older/ said Cesarine, 
 laughing. 
 
 'I think the godfather-. Taylor and 
 myself/ said Paul, ' ought to kiss the 
 
BAPTISM IN WINE AND FIRE. 3D 
 
 godmother as a natural part of the cere- 
 mony. 
 
 He saw Cesarine was depressed and 
 saddened about something. It was pos- 
 sible to guess what, and wanted to change 
 the subject. 
 
 ■ I fail to see the doctrine of .that,' said 
 the student, who had previously spoken, 
 who was not a godfather. Paul began 
 elaborately to argue the point, and 
 threatened to appeal to the Fathers, when 
 Cesarine settled the matter by saying " au 
 revoir, messieurs !' and leaving the room. 
 
 ' So Posa has become Rosa,' remarked 
 Paul. ' Now the question remains, what in 
 the world is to become of her further % Can 
 we control a destiny, or is she to control 
 ours ? It seems rather like the latter' 
 hitherto. Taylor, I shall depend on you 
 to assist in her education and amusement. 
 I w T ill work — I have been promised a con- 
 nection with a comic paper of importance 
 
40 WILD ROSE. 
 
 — and shall sell pictures, and work like a 
 fever. On Sundays we will take her to 
 the Luxembourg and the Tuileries.' 
 
 ' Shall we buy a perambulator V asked 
 Dr. Taylor. 
 
 ' 1 think not. You would look very well, 
 though, disguised as a bonne. They often 
 have moustaches.' 
 
 ' We can bring her up to speak two lan- 
 guages,' said the other. ' You always 
 speak French to her, and I will always 
 speak American.' 
 
 This really happened. Rosa learned 
 gradually both these languages. 
 
 Rosa gradually grew to the age of ten. 
 Dr. Taylor postponed his return to America 
 till he had heard her speak distinct and 
 intelligible American, and then found him- 
 self obliged to leave. He and Paul took 
 the child, then aged about eight, for their 
 last excursion together to the Champs 
 Ely sees one Sunday afternoon. She rode 
 
BAPTISM IN WINE AND FIRE. 41 
 
 in a carrousel. They rode too, merely of 
 course to encourage her. In the interval 
 between one of these rides, Taylor made 
 the new and original observation : 
 
 1 What an extraordinary couple we are !' 
 
 I We are/ replied Paul solemnly. He 
 then added : * But how is Rosa to 
 keep up her American when you are 
 gone V 
 
 ' I don't know. Depends on luck. I 
 will come and see her again some day. 
 Look here, if any necessity arises, you send 
 to me, will you V 
 
 I I will. You are Rosa's other god- 
 father, and I believe she likes us both 
 equally. I do not know what sort of a 
 girl she will turn into, after our bringing 
 her up. It seems to me inculcating moral 
 principles is not our line. Her morality is 
 our morality — that is, nothing particular. 
 Her rules of life are ours, that one must do 
 what one is compelled to do, and if one 
 
42 WILD ROSE. 
 
 likes it, so much the better. When there 
 is any choice, do what is pleasantest.' 
 
 ' She is going to be pretty, too/ said 
 Taylor. 
 
 Rose was small and dark, with a pale 
 face and brown eyes. She looked as if she 
 would be pretty, later. 
 
 1 Well, my friend, we have done what we 
 could. It may have been a Quixotic 
 undertaking, and probably was ; but it has 
 made her happy, and, 1 think, has made us 
 rather different. Fate and the future will 
 do what they please.' 
 
 Dr. Ivor Taylor went home to the 
 United States. Rosa sat on Paul's knee, 
 and cried a good deal quietly, in the cab 
 that brought them back from the railway- 
 station. 
 
 She then became more than ever the 
 attached friend of Paul. She had always 
 loved him, and the studio, the pictures, and 
 the armchair which had been given up to 
 
BAPTISM IN WINE AND FIRE. 43 
 
 her ; but had an almost equal affection for 
 Ivor Taylor, who had taken immense 
 trouble to amuse and educate her in a 
 fashion of his own, and took her to 
 theatres, and cafes, and cirques, not 
 perhaps the best selected entertainments 
 for a young girl, but which certainly had 
 the effect of giving her enjoyment. 
 
 This extra burden was handed over 
 to Paul, who had now become staid and 
 respectable and industrious, not of course 
 from an ordinary point of view, but com- 
 pared to his former and younger self. His 
 adult life might indeed be divided into two 
 epochs, that before and that after the dis- 
 covery of Rosa. His pictures sold, and his 
 studio was less of a den, and his furniture 
 grew gradually more and more plentiful 
 and comfortable. He rented a small bed- 
 room for Rosa, and was in a fair way to 
 become a rising young painter. 
 
 Rosa learned to eat chocolate and bon- 
 
44 WILD ROSE. 
 
 bons generally, and to regard them as the 
 more serious and necessary ingredients of 
 life. At the age of ten she smoked 
 cigarettes. 
 
 At this period the happiness and tran- 
 quillity of Paris was rather marred by the 
 advance of the German army upon that 
 city, little as they believed, in Paris, in an 
 ultimate German success. Still, annihilated 
 as they were doubless destined to be by a 
 patriotic nation rising en masse to defend 
 its hearths and homes, the Prussians con- 
 trived in the meantime, during the winter 
 of '70, to give Paris considerable em- 
 barrassment by surrounding it, taking its 
 star-forts, and occasionally dropping shells 
 into its suburbs, and, worst of all, cutting 
 off its supplies. 
 
 All this was of course new and interest- 
 ing to Posa. Paul told her she was going 
 to enjoy all the advantages of a real war, 
 with real obuses, which really damaged 
 
BAPTISM IN WINE AND FIRE. 45 
 
 bricks and mortar and imprudent human 
 beings, and that it was all far superior, 
 from an artistic standpoint, to the Battle 
 of Solferino at the Circus. 
 
 Rosa quite fell in with this view, un- 
 aware that Paul sold half his portion of 
 daily food to buy her chocolate, and rather 
 enjoyed the siege, until one day, walking 
 out for some purpose or other with Cesarine, 
 she saw some soldiers carrying a hideously 
 mutilated mass, clothed in a torn uniform, 
 into a church. This was the remains of a 
 sentry who had been standing in the range 
 of a shell battery, on the ramparts. This 
 was the first real symptom of war Rosa 
 had seen. She had heard guns in the 
 distance, and knew that Paris looked 
 rather different and more dull than usual, 
 but on seeing the horrible reality of that 
 wounded man, she woke up to a conscious- 
 ness that war was nob wholly picturesque. 
 
 Matters gradually grew worse. Instead 
 
46 WILD ROSE. 
 
 of the bright boy-like man that Paul the 
 painter had been, Rosa now saw a gaunt, 
 grizzly-bearded, sad-looking creature, who, 
 as Paul the National Guard, went peri- 
 odically to do sentry on snowy ramparts 
 under that unsympathetic starry winter 
 sky, which shines its brightest on human 
 sorrow and woe. He sat over the stove 
 in the studio, occasionally becoming jocular 
 in a spasmodic way when Rosa was present, 
 and smoked cigarettes when he could get 
 them. Rosa took this occasion, when 
 nourishment was so scarce, to grow a good 
 deal and become rather weak. She also 
 dreamed frequently that Paul would be 
 brought home like that wounded soldier, 
 some night from his post. The fact of 
 being a sentinel brought him home with a 
 renewed appetite, given him by the frosty 
 air. He once said : ' If I had known Ion ^ 
 ago how easy it was to get a healthy 
 hunger in the morning, I should have tried 
 
BAPTISM IN WINE AND FIRE. 47 
 
 it before. I shall recommend a siege as 
 an excellent remedy to persons suffering 
 from dyspepsia and loss of appetite.' 
 
 So matters went on, week after week, 
 until a catastrophe came. 
 
 A sortie was made from Paris : a very 
 badly made sortie, one among many such, 
 and an utterly ineffectual one. Paul 
 Felix went out in it, and came back with 
 a bullet in his chest. He was brought to 
 a church full, like the rest, of wounded. 
 Cesarine was in some manner made aware 
 of it, and came to fetch Rosa. 
 
 1 What does he look like V asked Rosa, 
 shivering with terror ; ' is he like that man 
 we saw V 
 
 ' I don't^know. He has a bullet in the 
 chest. That ought not to show much.' 
 
 Rosa silently'put on some clothes, to pro- 
 tect her from] the cold, as if she were 
 going out for a walk — a furred jacket Paul 
 had given her, as he had given her most 
 
48 WILD ROSE. 
 
 other things — and went off with Cesarine. 
 It was a long walk, and they did not speak 
 much by the way. They found the 
 church. At the door a sentry asked what 
 they wanted. Rosa spoke. 
 
 1 We want to see Paul Felix V 
 
 A young doctor was talking to a Sister 
 of Charity in the doorway. He looked 
 round, and said : 
 
 ' You can admit her, entry : it is Rosa 
 la Rose. Paul Felix is her father.' 
 
 This was not true, but it served its 
 purpose, and Rosa and Cesarine went in. 
 
 'You will find him at the other end, 
 near the altar, on the left-hand side. You 
 had better look neither to the right nor 
 to the left till you get there. Poor child !' 
 he added to himself. 
 
 It was one of the students who had been 
 present at Rosa's baptism. Rosa shut her 
 eyes and took Cesarine's arm. The atmo- 
 sphere of chloroform, carbolic acid, and other 
 
BAPTISM IN WINE AND FIRE. 49 
 
 miscellaneous 'and worse odours, confined 
 by want of ventilation, were sufficient to 
 bear, without seeing what lay to the right 
 and left of her. A well-known voice at 
 last came from the dark heap near the 
 altar, saying in a feeble tone : 
 
 1 Rosa !' 
 
 Rosa saw the poor painter lying on his 
 back, with great hollow eyes, into which 
 the old gay smile came as he looked at her. 
 An overcoat was lying on his body. He 
 then said : 
 
 1 The game is played out. So am I. 
 
 Cesarine, you will write, or telegraph, as 
 
 soon as possible to Taylor, in New York, 
 
 and tell him all this. Are you warm 
 
 enough, Rosa, in that fur thing \ 
 
 1 " Car o'est l'etui d'une perle fine 
 La robe de Mimi Pinson." 
 
 Tell Taylor that is the last song I sang. 
 
 Tell him I am gone to meet Miirger, and 
 
 Musset, and Mimi, and Musette in such a 
 
 vol. i. 4 
 
50 WILD ROSE. 
 
 Quartier Latin as they may have in 
 Tartarus. Doctor says I am to die — 
 could not have done it better than now — 
 Listen ! I beg to correct myself, Cesarine. 
 
 Tell Taylor this is the last song I sang ' 
 
 And the noise of a passing crowd of 
 soldiers, hurrying to the ramparts, was 
 heard shouting the memorable and formid- 
 
 able words : 
 
 1 Aux armes, citoyens ! 
 Formez vos bataillons !' 
 
 Paul raised himself on both elbows, and 
 sang with a blaze of joy in his dark eyes : 
 
 1 " Marchons, 5a ira ! 
 Marchons, 5a ira ! 
 Qu'un sang impur 
 Abreuve nos sillons."' 
 
 And then the blood came up into his 
 mouth, and he fell back dead. Cesarine 
 was crying quietly. Rosa was not. She 
 was very pale, and in a cold perspiration. 
 Cesarine took her away. She fainted 
 
BAPTISM IN WINE AND FIRE. 51 
 
 when they got home, and then lay face 
 downwards on her bed and cried for a long 
 time. And this was the end of Paul 
 Felix. 
 
 4—2 
 
 
CHAPTEK III. 
 
 EAVE LODGE, WINTERDALE. 
 
 1 1 want a hero ; an uncommon want 
 "When every year and month sends forth a new one/ 
 
 Byron. 
 
 In a county in the south of England, the 
 name of which is immaterial — say Damp- 
 shire or Dirtshire — there is an antique little 
 town, once of historic importance, but now 
 almost completely insignificant from a public 
 point of view, called Winterdale. It con- 
 tains a gaol, a cathedral, a barrack, a bishop, 
 several minor canons, four churches, four- 
 teen chapels, and at least forty public- 
 houses. The churches and chapels are full 
 on one day in the week, the public-houses 
 on six, the gaol on seven. The barrack is 
 
EAVE LODGE, WINTERDALE. 53 
 
 never quite full, as it has to contribute to 
 keep the other above-mentioned institutions 
 filled, in varying proportions. The bishop 
 is, or was when Winterdale became involved 
 in this story, a tall, dignified man, of com- 
 manding and ascetic presence, and possess- 
 ing a resonant voice. He gave garden- 
 parties, and sermons and addresses ; was 
 bullied by his junior clergy, was very 
 affable, and in every respect resembled any 
 other commonplace bishop, and signed him- 
 self John James Hiemval. His real name 
 was Green, but it is a customary piece of 
 episcopal playfulness to name one's self after 
 the diocese, translating the name of the 
 latter into dubious Latin, which imposes 
 on the unlettered (who constitute the 
 majority of the population of any diocese), 
 and would cause much honest mirth to any 
 ancient Roman who might read it, and 
 recognise the fine, old, widespread canine 
 dialect to be found pervading ecclesiastic 
 
54 WILD ROSE. 
 
 literature throughout all the years in which 
 there was any church at all that had a 
 literature. 
 
 The cathedral was mostly in the early 
 perpendicular style, with a stumpy square 
 tower in the middle. 
 
 The gaol was in the modern rectangular 
 and utilitarian style, of black-brick walls, 
 and apertures richly ornate with iron- 
 work usually taking the form of bars and 
 spikes. 
 
 The streets of Winterdale were quaint 
 and irregular, and contained comfortable- 
 looking inns of indefinite age, with court- 
 yards and wooden or brick colonnades, 
 under which persons might, and frequently 
 did, sit round tables when the temperature 
 permitted. When some of the soldiers con- 
 tinually being localised in Winterdale were 
 seen standing about and swaggering with 
 boots and whips in the doorways, or gathered 
 round beer in the verandas of these old 
 
EA VE LODGE, WINTERDALE. 55 
 
 inns, they had an exceedingly characteristic 
 and picturesque appearance. The beer and 
 other entertainment there provided was 
 usually very good, so much as to be rather 
 celebrated in the county. 
 
 On Saturday afternoon, when a market 
 was held, the streets and alehouses became 
 especially lively, and every lane was full of 
 yokels and soldiers striving their rather 
 feeble best to 'keep in de middle ob de 
 road,' by closing-time on Saturday evenings. 
 There was on such occasions plenty of the 
 honest home-brewed ale floating about that 
 the old school of novelists affect so much, 
 and plenty of honest home-brewed head- 
 ache and biliousness with it, assisted by the 
 more deleterious and less honest spirits, 
 which are theoretically manufactured in 
 Nantes or Holland by the unscrupulous 
 foreigner, which the British publican is too 
 honest to manufacture, and can conscienti- 
 ously only permit himself to sell, and that 
 
56 WILD ROSE, 
 
 at a considerable profit. All the features 
 of fine old English life, which have passed 
 away in many places to such a lamentable 
 extent, were to be found here. The coun- 
 trymen wore smock-frocks, discarded else- 
 where save by men who pick pockets in 
 Fleet Street, and the associate of the 
 thimble -rigger and the stage. 
 
 They observed with superstitious re- 
 verence and wonderful saturnalia the great 
 Christian and Protestant festival of what 
 they called 'Guyfox-day,' and the less im- 
 portant and pagan one of Yule-tide. They 
 had holidays, made a hideous din with all 
 the available church-bells, burned fires ; 
 cheered and sang, and eat and drank far 
 too much on both of these occasions. 
 Their idea of outward and visible manifes- 
 tation of joy or religious exaltation took 
 the form of excessive eating and drinking. 
 
 These were their religious festivals ; re- 
 ferring of course to that portion of the 
 
EAVE LODGE, WINTERDALE. 57 
 
 population which patronised the market 
 and the alehouse. The other and minor 
 portion of Winterdale society, consisting of 
 the clergy, military (active and retired), 
 and gentry, might observe harvest thanks- 
 givings and such things if they liked, which 
 the bulk of the rural population did not 
 'hold with.' They felt that the harvest 
 was entirely a merit of their own, to be 
 grumbled at if bad, and sold as dear as 
 possible if good, and failed to see what was 
 the use of the clergy and gentry coating 
 the churches internally with corn enough 
 to make a rick, and grapes, and apples, and 
 potatoes, and such other fruits as the season 
 yielded, and then holding services in the 
 midst of all this profusion, which were 
 attended by everyone except those inter- 
 ested and concerned in the production of a 
 harvest. They scornfully tolerated such 
 things, and observed, perhaps in lofty in- 
 dignation : ' If passon don't know no better 
 
53 WILD ROSE. 
 
 what to clo with the earn and that, than to 
 make a litter and dirty mess with it in t' 
 church, he can give 'em to me/ 
 
 Society at Winterdale, as has been 
 hinted, consisted of the clergy, a few re- 
 tired officers with families, and some 
 scattered country gentlemen whose pro- 
 fession in the main was to own land, chase 
 vermin with horses and dogs, and fill 
 * chairs ' at sessions, and meetings of 
 Guardians, and Local Boards, and such 
 like distinguished and intelligent bodies, 
 and to give each other large dinner-parties. 
 
 The younger portion of society, the 
 tennis - playing, dancing, flirting portion, 
 consisted entirely and almost exclusively 
 of curates and young officers, and those 
 who hoped to be curates or young officers 
 some day, with very few exceptions. The 
 difference between the curates and the 
 officers was not great, consisting mainly in 
 the difference of uniform, and of the fact 
 
EAVE LODGE, WINTERDALE. 50 
 
 that the lieutenants flirted and didn't 
 many, and the curates married and didn't 
 flirt. At any rate so it appeared. It is 
 difficult to say which were of the most 
 use to the community, for both were of so 
 little. Both were conceited, both were 
 ignorant and opinionated, and constantly 
 had to be ' sat upon ' by their superiors, and 
 both dressed very conspicuously. Here, 
 however, the followers of Mars had the 
 advantage. They came with their men to 
 the cathedral on Sunday in full uniform, 
 and although the curates came too, and 
 bedecked and bedraped themselves with 
 every wonderful and fearful bedizenment 
 that folly can devise or conceit wear, ten 
 pair of female eyes went to the military 
 figures, motionless, upright and brilliant, 
 to one that sought those of the curates. 
 
 The old retired officers, of both arms of 
 the service, and the older clergy, were, in 
 the main, foolish young ones grown up, 
 
60 WILD ROSE. 
 
 and overpowered with the consequence of 
 themselves and their opinions. There 
 was a club at Winterdale, where the local 
 gentry met, and talked long, eagerly and 
 fiercely about nothing, for hours ; or, a less 
 innocent amusement, dissected their neigh- 
 bour's characters and financial upright- 
 ness, and circulated with the most innocent 
 and sincere intentions most fearful and 
 atrocious lies, w r hich no one was responsible 
 for, which did perhaps some little harm, 
 but did not usually obtain any notice or 
 credit. 
 
 The most entertaining and intelligent 
 man actually in Winterdale was old Mr. 
 Andrew McSwiney, M.D. (T.C.D.), the 
 ( Doctor.' He was a short, sturdy man of 
 the globular type, had a burnt, weather- 
 beaten face like a coastguard, and a bald 
 head, and a fringe of iron-grey hair round 
 it. He was the life and soul of any 
 entertainment or conversation. To ladies 
 
EAVE LODGE, WINTERDALE. 61 
 
 he was kind and polite ; and with the men 
 he could relate stories over tobacco and 
 Kinahan's L.L., till they nearly choked 
 with laughter. He never got drunk, but 
 could calmly absorb wine and spirits like a 
 large round sponge, or like any of Mr. 
 Charles Lever's Irish country gentlemen. 
 He was very kind and charitable, rather 
 impulsive, but withal possessed of great 
 acuteness and self-reliance; was no re- 
 specter of persons, feared not Dean or 
 Devil or Disease, and was universally 
 abused, laughed at, and loved. 
 
 About a mile outside Winterdale city, 
 among the rising downs and undulating 
 meadow and woodland, in the district of 
 St. Wotan, was an old country house, 
 called Eave Lodge, of lichenous grey lime- 
 stone, patched in many places with ivy, 
 and roofed with thin slabs of shaly 
 stone. 
 
 The date of the house was uncertain, 
 
62 WILD ROSE. 
 
 likewise the style of architecture. It stood 
 on a piece of grass-ground which rose 
 eastward, where the wind came from, into 
 a small down, and westward stretched 
 level, with irregularly placed trees and 
 shrubs till it developed into a group of fir 
 trees, on a slight eminence, which sent 
 their stiff, slender spires and branches 
 straight athwart the sunsets. 
 
 A path, paved accidentally with brown 
 needles and fir-cones, led under these over- 
 arching firs to an old wooden five-barred 
 gate, covered with worm-tracks and snail- 
 trails, with names encarven by the knife 
 of youth, and softened and beautified by 
 the lichen of age. A person leaning on 
 this gate could see undulating, corn-pro- 
 ducing country extending far to the west, 
 and ending in cloudy woods on the distant 
 horizon. 
 
 The grass grew right up to the walls of 
 the house, and except for one square patch 
 
EAVE LODGE, WINTERDALE. 63 
 
 of shaven lawn, intersected by a mystic 
 pattern of white-washed lines for lawn- 
 tennis, was allowed to grow freely and 
 long away under the yews and cypresses. 
 Yellow irises, tall lilies, and thistles and 
 sunflowers, and the miscellaneous herbage 
 known generally to gardeners as ' weeds/ 
 grew in the grass, under the trees, and 
 fringing this square lawn, in their seasons. 
 There was also on one side of the house 
 an old rose-garden with grass walks and 
 wooden seats, and beyond it an old apple- 
 orchard. 
 
 The house was fortified on the north- 
 west corner by a stone terrace, extending 
 round portions of the western and northern 
 side, on to which French windows opened 
 from the house. On its walls and parapet- 
 hung heavy, rich clusters of jasmine, 
 clematis, and passion-flower. Theoretically 
 this terrace was destined by the architect, 
 no doubt, to be walked on when the grass 
 
64 WILD ROSE. 
 
 was too wet. As a matter of fact, the 
 grass was usually the first to dry after 
 rain, since the old stone pavement was 
 hollowed, separated and broken into a 
 series of receptacles for puddles, only to be 
 removed by the beneficent natural law of 
 evaporation. 
 
 Just now, September, 1871, autumn was 
 beginning to make itself very apparent 
 around Eave Lodge. This was an annual 
 occurrence, although from the seemingly 
 surprised and unprepared state of the 
 neighbourhood, one might be led to sup- 
 pose that such was not the case. 
 
 Old Diggory, who was called the 
 gardener here, and who condescended to 
 accept wages for occasionally visiting and 
 severely criticising, spade in hand, the 
 garden, if it might be so called, remarked 
 sententiously that the ' days was gettin' 
 in/ by which mysterious announcement 
 he doubtless imagined himself to be con- 
 
EAVE LODGE, WINTERDALE. 65 
 
 veying information of a new and useful 
 description. He also delicately referred 
 to the advent of rheumatism in what he 
 was pleased to term his ' lines/ and person 
 generally ; and admitted, on cross-exami- 
 nation, that port-wine, or even rum (for 
 strictly external application), would not be 
 wholly unacceptable as a remedy. 
 
 The deciduous trees were becoming* 
 bronze, and the evergreens looked greener 
 in contrast. The sun set gradually more 
 to the southward of west. The mornings 
 began with a chill mist, developing into a 
 calm cool fine day, ending in a shower and 
 a sunset behind scattered, ragged-edged 
 black clouds, with glimpses of golden, red, 
 and peach* coloured light at their under- 
 edges, or through wind-torn holes, on a 
 ground of white sky, becoming pale blue 
 towards the zenith. Or else, perhaps, it 
 blew hard, and acorns and leaves descended 
 in heaps, and the heaven became grey and 
 
 vol. i. 5 
 
6Q WILD ROSE. 
 
 overcast, the wind south-east, and the 
 temper of the fraction of humanity sub- 
 jected to such weather deteriorated. 
 
 The fire-places, filled during the summer 
 months with that truly awful form of de- 
 coration in which housemaids appear to 
 delight, made of strips of paper of various 
 colours and tinsel, became brilliant and 
 inviting with burning coal and wood ; and 
 it became almost comforting, as the weeks 
 wore on, to read descriptions of disastrous 
 fires in the papers, ascents of Mount 
 Vesuvius, and sermons on eternal punish- 
 ment. 
 
 Having so far touched on the external 
 appearance and surroundings of Eave 
 Lodge and its neighbourhood, it will now 
 perhaps be as well to examine the internal 
 or soul-part of the house, and the aspect 
 of its inhabitants. It will be favourable to 
 do so, and will give a characteristic view 
 of these, by glancing at the drawing-room 
 
EAVE LODGE, WINTERDALE. 07 
 
 at five-o'clock tea-time on a Sunday after- 
 noon in this autumn of 1871 . 
 
 It is the room that opens by French 
 windows (these framed with roses) on 
 to the terrace — a long, rectangular, low 
 room, with pale yellow walls, a high 
 carven mantelpiece, supporting multi- 
 tudinous china of many shapes and colours, 
 and doubtless of incalculable age, pourtray- 
 ing— 
 
 1 Tales undoubtedly true 
 In the reign of the Emperor Hwang,' 
 
 and furnishing capital lurking-places for 
 dust and leaves and deceased spiders to 
 get brushed together into heaps in by 
 careful housemaids. 
 
 Various pictures, mostly modern and a 
 little above the average of quality, and a 
 few really charming etchings were on the 
 walls. There was a piano in one corner. 
 The furniture was dark-looking, of modern 
 
 5—2 
 
6S WILD ROSE. 
 
 manufacture, and expressed comfort rather 
 than any rigid adherence to high-art dicta- 
 tion. Little tables stood around, bearing 
 the materials for afternoon-tea, which was 
 administered in charmingly minute china 
 cups, always a cause of trembling to the 
 nervous visitor, unwilling to destroy his 
 neighbours' goods. 
 
 Brackets and shelves in corners bore 
 various useful and ornamental objects, such 
 as brass candlesticks with ecclesiastical- 
 looking, twisted stems, and cup-shaped 
 upper extremities with scalloped edges ; 
 also bronze figures, flower-vases, Pompeian 
 lamps, match-holders ; and lastly, a clock, 
 of some dark, polished and heavy-looking 
 material, apparently of mineral origin, so 
 constructed as to give the public a painful, 
 if not indecent, insight into its throbbing 
 vital organs — a sort of Alexis St. Martin 
 among clocks. 
 
 Of course, a few ' library ' books were 
 
EAVE LODGE, WINTERDALE. CD 
 
 lying about, together with the Contem- 
 porary Review, Punch, and the Illustrated 
 London News. 
 
 Now let us glance at the occupants of 
 this room in detail. There was, first of all, 
 in an arm-chair on one side of the fire- 
 place, an elderly gentleman of spare frame 
 and strikingly intelligent appearance, and 
 having rather long grey hair, grizzled 
 brown whiskers clipped short, a long face, 
 aquiline nose, bright blue eyes and rough 
 grey-brown eyebrows, and a rather wide, 
 thin-lipped mouth, with the wrinkles pro- 
 duced by frequent speech and laughter at 
 the corners, and a prominent, gracefully 
 shaped chin and lower maxillary bone. 
 This was Professor John Miller, the owner 
 of the house, a great comparative ana- 
 tomist, and recently retired from a pro- 
 fessorship he had for some years held in 
 the medical faculty of a celebrated and 
 ancient Scotch university. He occupied 
 
WILD ROSE. 
 
 himself in writing treatises for the scientific 
 periodicals, and in enjoying the society of 
 his family. A man of great general 
 attainments, Scotch, kind-hearted, humor- 
 ous, carelessly good-natured, and afraid of 
 no man's opinion or of anything else. He 
 was regarded as a man of some consequence 
 by the scientific world, as a genius by his 
 family, and as a kind of harmless lunatic 
 by the majority of Winterdale society. 
 
 Conversing with him on a paper on 
 Evolution in the review that lay between 
 them on a table, sat a man of near his own 
 age, tall, portly, bald, with regular features, 
 long expressive dark eyes, and a long black 
 beard. He was laying down the law with 
 that decision peculiar to people imperfectly 
 acquainted with their subject. This was 
 Mr. James Exeter, vicar of the new parish 
 of St. Wotan. 
 
 He and Professor Miller had been 
 fellow-students at an English universit}^ 
 
EAVE LODGE, WINTERDALE. 71 
 
 together. They were so very antithetic in 
 their tastes, opinions, and pursuits that 
 they became fast friends. 
 
 James Exeter in those days pronounced 
 John Miller to be a loose freethinker, 
 though a pleasant enough fellow and 
 clever in his way. 
 
 John Miller spoke of James Exeter as 
 a good fellow, and clever in his way and 
 well-read, though extraordinarily supersti- 
 tious, and impervious to a joke. 
 
 James Exeter learned Hebrew and 
 other ancient tongues, and became ac- 
 quainted intimately with the Fathers, the 
 Talmud, and the Septuagint, and studied 
 decorative religious art, and crawled about 
 the floors of old churches with a long 
 sheet of paper, taking impressions of 
 brasses ; and grew into a country vicar of 
 apostolic and picturesque appearance. 
 
 John Miller plunged into acids and 
 dissections and German poets and philo- 
 
72 WILD ROSE. 
 
 sophers all at once, drank beer, sat up 
 all night smoking clay pipes and singing 
 songs with kindred spirits, made love to 
 every available pretty girl, and grew into 
 a retired professor, rather invalided, but 
 with the fire of intellect burning fierce in 
 his grey head, and keen and kindly fun 
 glancing out of his Scotch blue eyes. 
 
 He had married an English lady, who 
 was now present, a handsome old lady 
 with white hair and black eyebrows, con- 
 versing with her sister the Marquise de 
 Tortoleone, who had married a French- 
 man, and was very French indeed, even 
 to her accent, in consequence, and was as 
 young, beautiful, and fashionable as human 
 efforts could make her, though only a 
 few years younger in reality than Mrs. 
 Miller. She had been staying in England 
 lately, in consequence of the war of the 
 Commune in Paris. Her sod, a regular- 
 featured, dark, expressionless lad of fifteen 
 
EAVE LODGE, WINTERDALE. 73 
 
 was silently devouring currant- cake in a 
 corner. 
 
 Professor Miller had a son, now aged 
 eighteen — a handsome, fair, slender youth, 
 with his father's long face and blue eyes 
 and determined jaw, and his mothers 
 straight nose — who just now was lounging 
 against the mantelpiece with a cup of tea 
 in his hand, and gazing through the 
 window at the sunset. He was just at 
 the end of his school career, and had been 
 a pupil of Mr. Exeter's for some little 
 time, with the aim of going in the ensuing 
 October to the university. 
 
 It is worth while to look carefully at 
 this youth with the far-gazing eyes, the 
 short yellow hair, and the invisible mous- 
 tache which he nervously feels for, for he, 
 if any, is the hero of this story. 
 
 His sister, one year younger than him- 
 self, was occupied in the practice, which 
 since the publication of ' Werther ' has be- 
 
74 WILD ROSE. 
 
 come memorable, of cutting thin slices of 
 brown bread and butter. She was a pretty 
 girl, with light-brown hair plaited into a 
 tail, with the dignified air of one who 
 imagines herself grown up, having just 
 got past the uninteresting stage of girl- 
 hood and arrived at that physical change 
 late, as is usual in fair persons, which pro- 
 duces all that natural development in a 
 girl which changes her from an uninterest- 
 ing and ungraceful nonentity to a very 
 interesting and graceful entity. She was 
 a good-natured, rather lazy girl, brought 
 up at home, very properly and religiously, 
 under her mother's eye, as any girl in 
 early life ought to be, and instructed 
 tolerably in the French and German lan- 
 guages — not in the Stratford-atte-Bow 
 style, but by natives and visits to the 
 various countries — also in music and 
 ordinary drawing. She was generally 
 liked, and few ventured to say a word 
 
EAVE LODGE, WINTERDALE. 75 
 
 against her, as yet, even in Winter- 
 dale. 
 
 When Professor Miller's children were 
 born, he was strongly inclined to endow 
 them with scientific names, and threatened 
 to have them christened Epiphysis and 
 Diaphysis, or Incus and Mallea, or Auri- 
 cula and Ventriculus ; but these and their 
 like encountered such violent feminine 
 opposition that he was fain to let them 
 be named, after their parents, John and 
 Helen ; the boy being invariably known as 
 Jack to the world ; Helen the Professor 
 affectionately addressing always by the first 
 syllable of her name, at first, it is believed, 
 with the motive of shocking the vicar of 
 Winterdale, so that it ultimately became 
 a recognised practice and attracted no 
 attention. 
 
 Mr. Exeter was an object of great ad- 
 miration and esteem to Mrs. Miller and 
 Hel. First of all, because he was ' papa's 
 
76 WILD ROSE. 
 
 old friend ;' and then because both their 
 heads were replete with that earnest tragi- 
 comic muddle of noble aspirations and 
 formal trivialities which it pleases some 
 ladies to term religion, and Mr. Exeter 
 was just the man to encourage them. He 
 was picturesque and grandiloquent in the 
 pulpit, and his services were consummately 
 supreme. Do not let it be supposed from 
 this that Mrs. Miller was a fool. Gott 
 bewahre ! She was an estimable lady of 
 more than average abilities, but, as her son 
 respectfully remarked, ' Her one loose slate 
 is religion, alias High Churchism.' 
 
 Mr. Exeter was not married. He had 
 believed in the celibacy of the clergy ever 
 since a young lady, an object of particular 
 admiration to him in his curate days, had 
 cruelly thrown him over in favour of a tall 
 gentleman with very short hair, a very 
 long, very drooping, and very ' silky ' 
 moustache (vide feminine romance of the 
 
EAVE LODGE, WINTERDALE. 77 
 
 day, passim), large stand-up collars, and 
 an uncontrollable habit of saying 'By 
 Jove !' whose profession was to defend his 
 country, or attack some one else's if ordered 
 by his sovereign. Mr. Exeter, by an 
 exquisite cruelty of the Parcae, had been 
 asked to assist in joining these two to- 
 gether at St. George's, Hanover Square, 
 a labour which one clergyman appeared 
 insufficient to perform. He had still a 
 vivid recollection of hearing the bride- 
 groom mutter an audible ( By Jove !' 
 when he (James Exeter) pronounced in due 
 course ' that these two be man and wife 
 together.' 
 
 If Mr. Exeter had perused the maxims 
 of the impious but amusing M. de la 
 Rochefoucauld, he would have discovered 
 another reason why he remained celibate : 
 ' If we resist our passions it is because 
 they are weak, rather than because we are 
 strong.' 
 
7S WILD ROSE. 
 
 It is apparently a law of nature that 
 disappointed lovers should take to dissipa- 
 tion of some form, sometimes of more than 
 one form, as a temporary relief to the 
 feeling. Some choose l Our Lady of 
 Pain/ others brandy, both more or less 
 rapid forms of moral suicide if persisted in. 
 James Exeter plunged into the fiercest 
 excesses of Anglo-Catholicism. 
 
 His mind and time were now pretty 
 fully occupied with services, sermons, 
 Sunday - schools, and sundry such like 
 forms of duty, and he had withal the con- 
 soling conviction that his time was being 
 usefully as well as pleasantly spent. 
 
 He had found some of his parishioners 
 largely prepared to assist in the practical 
 carrying out of his views, as any enthusi- 
 astic good-looking man will find supporters, 
 particularly among the females of a com- 
 munity, if even to get up a Guild for the 
 Propagation of 'Hymns Ancient and 
 
EAVE LODGE, W1NTERDALE. 70 
 
 Modern ' in the Moon. So Mrs. and Miss 
 Miller taught in the Sunday-school, of 
 which the little boys and girls of the parish 
 were the victims. The said Sunday- 
 school, by dint of illustrated 'tickets,' 
 treats, teas, buns, bunting, bands, and pro- 
 cessions, and sermons ' plain for children ' 
 (and coloured for adults, added the flippant) 
 became well attended, to the intense 
 gratitude of the parents who got rid in this 
 way of their noisy and rowdy offspring for 
 a fraction of the day. 
 
 The Yicar also played cricket, without 
 being in the least a ' muscular Christian,' 
 though decidedly muscular and undeniably 
 a Christian. This endeared him to the 
 older lads of the parish, who respected him 
 far more because he could bowl them out 
 than because he was — according to his 
 pulpit assertions — a successor of the 
 apostles. 
 
 Finding Professor Miller apparently too 
 
80 WILD ROSE. 
 
 lazy this afternoon to contradict him on 
 Huxley and Darwin, Mr. Exeter adapted 
 his conversation to the supposed scale of 
 intelligence of a female audience, and 
 inquired if Miss Miller were going to the 
 Bishop's garden-party. Miss Miller hoped 
 so, but w r as not sure ; it depended on how 
 mamma was. ' Would Mr. Exeter have 
 another cup of tea ¥ 
 
 1 Thank you, if you please ; half a cup 
 will be plenty. Yes ; I w T as going to say, 
 Miss Miller, that you must persuade your 
 mamma to abstain from all risks of ail- 
 ments till then. I should be sorry for 
 you to miss it. The Bishop is to give an 
 address.' 
 
 1 And when it is over and my duty 
 as chaperon done/ said Mrs. Miller, 'I 
 suppose I am at liberty to relapse again 
 into neuralgia and quietude to my heart's 
 content V 
 
 ' I believe,' said Jack, ' Hel never 
 
WINTERDALE. 
 
 discovered that parents were of any use 
 in life till just now, when she is always 
 wanting chaperons. 5 
 
 The Professor's quick Scotch tones were 
 heard retorting : 
 
 1 And you, Jack, have not found a use 
 for us at all yet, except the one that 
 occurred to you in earliest infancy, that 
 we were a ready source of cash. Just 
 think, Exeter, he began by soliciting pence 
 to buy bull's-eyes and chocolate, on the 
 ingenious pretext that they were for Hel 
 or a beggar, or some equally deserving 
 person, just to take away any lurking sus- 
 picion of greed on his own part, which of 
 course had never entered our heads. Then 
 he grew older, and required shillings for 
 materials wherewith to compound fire- 
 works and for other eminently scientific 
 purposes. Six months ago he became 
 ambitious to ride a bicycle, and having 
 surreptitiously obtained one, permitted the- 
 
 vol. i. 6 
 
82 WILD ROSE. 
 
 bill to fall into my hands. I admit, with 
 some pleasure, that he suffered a good deal 
 in learning to ride it, and has not succeeded 
 in destroying the instrument yet. He 
 has recently discovered that colouring, 
 and incidentally breaking, clay pipes is a 
 manly and desirable accomplishment ; and 
 I have reason to suppose has undergone 
 much private anguish in acquiring it. 
 It is a cheap amusement, however ' 
 
 1 I say, draw it mild, father/ said Jack, 
 laughing. ' You can't invent many more 
 examples of extortion.' 
 
 ( I do not think,' said Mr. Exeter 
 gravely and pleadingly, ' that your son is 
 quite so mercenary as you seem to think.' 
 
 Mr. Exeter wonders to this day why 
 both Jack and his father laughed so much 
 at this reply. 
 
 ' We were just discussing when you 
 came in, Exeter,' continued the Professor, 
 in a different tone, ' what to do with this 
 
WINTERDALE. 83 
 
 long youth — what profession he ought to 
 adorn.' 
 
 1 What profession do you feel inclined 
 to, Jack V said Mr. Exeter. 
 
 ' I'm not exactly sure. I might try 
 medicine. I rather like the idea. What 
 I really would like best would be to be 
 an artist.' 
 
 ' I think he had better study the pre- 
 liminaries of medicine at Oxbridge,' said 
 the Professor. ' He will learn a great 
 deal there that is useful to know; and if he 
 is to be a painter, the knowledge so 
 obtained will be useful all the same. He 
 wants to have some proper scientific train- 
 ing, and to see how people really work at 
 these things, instead of solitary dabblings 
 in hand-books and water-colours. After 
 Oxbridge, it is my wish and his own, 
 whatever be his subsequent profession, 
 that he should go to Paris.' 
 
 • The best thing he can do, Professor !' 
 
 6—2 
 
84 WILD ROSE. 
 
 exclaimed the Marquise, who had been 
 hitherto rather silent. 
 
 1 Do you really think so, madam V in- 
 quired the Vicar, with some hesitation. 
 1 Do you not think that would be leading 
 a young man into many and unnecessary 
 temptations V 
 
 1 Perhaps ; but it would give him the 
 best education in medicine or in art, and 
 civilise him. I do not know what English 
 universities are like, but imagine they 
 must be rather — ' barbarous, she was about 
 to say, had she not suddenly recollected 
 that the Professor, and probably his friend, 
 were English university men, and so modi- 
 fied her termination to ' different,' which 
 was rather weak. 
 
 ' Ah !' said the Vicar ; ' I often wish for 
 my three years at the dear old college 
 over again. You know, madam ' (he was 
 dubious how to address a marquise, and 
 ' fluked ' along), ' Professor Miller and my- 
 
W1NTERDALE. 85 
 
 self were fellow-students at Oxbridge, and 
 we, or at any rate I, have the pardonable 
 opinion that in an English university is 
 found the best intellectual and social 
 education for a young man/ 
 
 1 Yes ; and a moral one,' added the 
 Professor. ' I found it so ; ■ didn't I, 
 Exeter V 
 
 The Vicar smiled faintly, and shook his 
 head reprovingly. 
 
 ' I did contemplate sending him to 
 Leipzig and Berlin, where I was myself 
 once ; but I incline to Paris now, and so 
 does he. It is always well to study in a 
 European as well as an English or Scotch 
 university. It tends to remove the too 
 prevalent impression of the immeasurable 
 superiority of Great Britain in matters 
 social and intellectual.' 
 
 'Besides,' said the Marquise, 'in Paris 
 I can keep an eye on him.' 
 
 ' Two, if you like/ replied the Professor, 
 
86 WILD ROSE. 
 
 'though I fancy by that time it will be 
 considered immaterial by him whose eye is 
 fixed on him.' 
 
 'Not altogether, I hope,' said Mrs. 
 Miller gravely. 
 
 ' Hadn't I better leave the room,' in- 
 terposed Jack, with the delightful pertness 
 of an only son, 'if you are all going to 
 spend the afternoon talking about me V 
 
 ' If there is any painting in him/ said 
 the Professor, ' it will break out of its own 
 accord, and in the meantime a little 
 general scientific education — on the top 
 of your -ZEschylus and Horace, Exeter — 
 will be no disadvantage, and may be even 
 an assistance in other professions than 
 medicine. Anatomy now, for example ' 
 
 Here the Marquise hastily changed the 
 conversation, well aware what was likely 
 to follow if her terrible and scientific 
 brother-in-law once got the conversational 
 bit in his teeth on anatomy, by asking : 
 
WINTERDALE. 87 
 
 4 Do you have a musical service here, 
 Mr. Exeter ? You know I am a Catholic, 
 but I take a great interest in these matters ' 
 (' She didn't the least, half-an-hour ago/ 
 muttered the snubbed Professor), 'and 
 would be happy to give any assistance I 
 could/ 
 
 1 Certainly. We do what we can with 
 our little choir. There is nothing we 
 should welcome so much as a lady's voice 
 in the singing. You, perhaps, would be 
 unaccustomed partly to our music and style 
 of chant, but that would come readily after 
 a few practices. We have a full choral 
 service twice on Sundays, and an incom- 
 pletely choral matins every week-day at 
 8 a.m. Besides which, we have, of course, 
 the frequent occasional festivals, with which 
 you must be as well acquainted as we, to 
 enlighten the comparatively monotonous 
 week, as well as the weddings and funerals. 
 Ah, what a lovely funeral was that last 
 
88 WILD ROSE. 
 
 Thursday ! I fancy you were not there, 
 Miller V 
 
 ' I fancy not, Exeter. I have given up 
 assisting professionally at parish death-beds 
 now. Probably the next funeral I per- 
 sonally attend will be my own. Good 
 that ! Personally conducted funerals I 
 Might advertise an agency for them, a la 
 Cook/ 
 
 'You are incorrigibly flippant, Pro- 
 fessor. May I ask/ proceeded Mr. Exeter 
 to the Marquise, 'if we may expect you 
 in our little church to-morrow — Sunday % 
 The Bishop will preach, and it will be 
 rather a favourable occasion for gaining a 
 first impression.' 
 
 ' Oh, certainly — thank you very much/ 
 replied the Marquise, as if accepting an 
 invitation to dinner. e I have no doubt 
 my sister will have great pleasure in taking 
 me there/ 
 
 Hel and Jack were now sitting on a 
 
W1NTERDALE. 
 
 sofa, displaying their discretion by talking 
 about their visitor, as was perfectly obvious 
 from their low and cautious tones and fur- 
 tive glances at the object of their discourse. 
 Mr. Exeter startled them by asking, during 
 a lull in the conversation, if Miss Helen 
 would not favour him with a song, and 
 made remarks about Ulvsses and the 
 sirens, intending, of course, to institute a 
 comparison between Miss Miller and a 
 siren, it following naturally that he repre- 
 sented the subtle and travelled Greek. 
 
 1 But I hope you are not going to stop 
 your ears, Mr. Exeter,' replied Hel. 
 
 ' I think I am right in saying that 
 Ulysses stopped the ears of his crew and 
 kept his own open. I shall follow his 
 example and dispense with a crew.' 
 
 1 Of course, Hel ! Wrong again, as 
 usual,' remarked Jack with masculine de- 
 cision, calculated to display the superiority 
 of the British boy's acquaintance with the 
 
90 WILD ROSE. 
 
 ancient literature of Greece over that of 
 the British girl. 
 
 Hel darted a fiery glance at her brother, 
 and observed gravely, ' I am forgetting my 
 Homer dreadfully/ as if Bentley, Wolff, 
 Gladstone, and the inevitable Scholiast 
 were her intimate friends, and with the 
 satisfied tone of one who could readily tell 
 you the shades of difference between two 
 avrap £7ra's in two consecutive sentences. 
 As a matter of fact, she had once opened 
 Pope's ' Homer's Iliad ' in the course of her 
 existence, and in five minutes pronounced 
 it heavy and stupid — to which opinion, as 
 she journeys through life, she will find 
 many adherents. 
 
 Hel arranged herself before the piano. 
 Her particular enthusiasm just then was 
 Germany, so she gave in a clear, expres- 
 sive, though not powerful soprano, a 
 German song — a common song enough, 
 but beautiful when heard seldom. This 
 
WINTERDALE. 91 
 
 was Uhland's l Es zogen drei Burschen 
 wohl ueber den Bhein/ telling how the 
 three students went in one after the other 
 to gaze on the body of the poor dead girl, 
 the ' Wirthin's Tochterlein,' and how the 
 lirst said he had loved her many a year ; 
 the second that if she were not dead, he 
 would begin loving her from that day ; 
 while the third went up to the bier, and 
 kissed her cold pale mouth, and said : 
 
 1 Dich liebte ich immer, Dich. lieb' icli noch Heut', 
 Dich werd' ich lieben in Ewigkeit.' 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 i 
 
 JACK MILLER. 
 
 ' No, no ; I'd send him out betimes to college, 
 For there it was I picked up my own knowledge.' 
 
 Byron. 
 
 It is now time to devote a, few special 
 words to our young friend Jack Miller, 
 who will be a figure of some importance in 
 these pages. 
 
 He was sent to school at the age of 
 nine, where he remained till he was six- 
 teen. It does not much signify which 
 school; they are much alike. We will 
 call it Whippingham. But Jack was not 
 constructed quite after the pattern of all 
 English schoolboys. He worked with 
 
JACK MILLER. 93 
 
 facility, and spent his spare time in help- 
 ing his friends. Of active games he was 
 not over- fond. He preferred loafing in 
 summer with a novel, to playing cricket. 
 Cricket meant fielding to him, as he was a 
 sorry batsman and could not bowl. In 
 winter he occasionally played football with 
 valour and violence, but without attaining 
 much skill. 
 
 He read a Waverley novel at the age of 
 nine, mispronouncing half the names, and 
 gaining a somewhat hazy conception as to 
 the meaning and point of some of the 
 action ; but, nevertheless, extracting a 
 good deal of entertainment to himself 
 therefrom. He organised bands of outlaws 
 among the lower boys, who assembled at 
 the sound of a whistle from the leafy 
 glades of Sherwood (Sherwood consisting 
 of a clump of laurels). He besieged Tor- 
 quilstone, and repulsed the captors of Rob 
 Roy with hard fallen chestnuts — one of 
 
94 WILD ROSE. 
 
 which nearly put another boy's eye out — and 
 so forth, until the dramatic representation 
 of the Waverley novels was summarily 
 prohibited, Dirk Hatteraick having sur- 
 reptitiously procured a real pistol and shot 
 one of his invaders in the left hand. 
 
 At the age of twelve he read some 
 Tennyson, and pronounced it stupid and 
 affected — an opinion he had heard some 
 one else enounce. At seventeen he thought 
 it beautiful, and was constantly discovering 
 imaginary ( Mauds ' in the most common- 
 place people twice his age. 
 
 Shakespeare he found an unfathomable 
 mine of delight. He had a great deal of mis- 
 cellaneous literature at his hand at home. 
 
 He read popular science, and messed 
 with nitric acid and fireworks. He pur- 
 chased a small work on logic, at the insti- 
 gation of nobodv when he was fifteen : 
 and what is more, read it. 
 
 He found his father's collection of 
 
JACK MILLER. 95 
 
 books on anatomy (especially the morbid 
 branch), and on disease, and surgery, ex- 
 tremely interesting, and read them here 
 and there in a patchy style, and gave him- 
 self credit for knowing a good deal more 
 than he really did. Examinations took 
 that out of him in later life. He was very 
 fond of novels. At school he preferred 
 the sensational and incidental style, as re- 
 presented by 'trappers/ redskins, Mexicans 
 who said ' Car-ramba !' and gentlemen who 
 rode about with their heads under their 
 arms. Later on, he became more fastidious, 
 and demanded a clever and bold style in 
 which ideas ranked above incidents. As a 
 boy, he wrote plays, of which the plots 
 were a result of accident rather than 
 design, and seldom arrived at a definite 
 denouement. He had given that up. 
 
 Professor Mills had said : 
 
 ' Jack, you can't write plays. Your 
 dramatis persona are a fortuitous con- 
 
96 WILD ROSE. 
 
 course of actors from the novels you have 
 read, and your blank verse is decidedly in- 
 ferior to that of Shakespeare, whatever 
 you may think to the contrary. You can 
 draw, and you can work at science. Don't 
 have too many irons in the fire, and don't 
 be too sure of anything.' 
 
 Jack, temporarily annihilated, and wrath- 
 ful, saw in time that there was sense and 
 truth in his father's words, and ceased to 
 be a dramatic author. He went, however, 
 to the Winterdale School of Art, where 
 he worked hard, made many friends, and 
 acquired what skill in manipulation the 
 place could give him, which, plus his natural 
 talent, gave him a respectable power of re- 
 presentation. 
 
 At sixteen or seventeen he left school, 
 and became a pupil of Mr. Exeter, residing 
 of course at home. Naturally, his mind 
 was not what is usually understood by 
 pure, innocent, and moral. No one except 
 
JACK MILLER. 97 
 
 his mother could believe that an English 
 schoolboy of seven years' standing could be 
 all or any of these. If a proved specimen 
 is to be found, I should like to see it. He 
 had a certain code of ethics, such as never 
 to tell a lie except to shield a friend, or on 
 such like urgent necessity ; never to hurt 
 other people if avoidable without loss of 
 prestige. He was with difficulty provoked, 
 and took most things pretty calmly. He 
 was not shy — 
 
 1 C'etait la son moindre defaut.' 
 
 But he could not be called forward or ill- 
 mannered, and was seldom impertinent. 
 He had a strong sense of justice, and 
 logic and Euclid combined to give him a 
 very clear insight into arguments. Rever- 
 ence he was almost absolutely devoid of, 
 though he might admire and respect certain 
 persons and things. 
 
 Religion had been represented to him 
 vol. i. 7 
 
98 WILD ROSE. 
 
 at home, as well as at school, as a matter 
 of authority, a foregone conclusion, a 
 matter of coarse. His father had decided 
 not to dictate to him in favour of, or 
 against, distinct articles of belief, meaning 
 to assist him when old enough to come to 
 rational conclusions by using his own 
 judgment. His mother had, of course, 
 decided nothing of the kind, and instructed 
 him, contemporaneously with his ABC, 
 on the Bible and religion of the Church 
 as matters to be believed, staggered and 
 horrified as she might be by his occasional 
 naive matter-of-fact questions. All the 
 preachers he had ever heard had done the 
 same. 
 
 But at sixteen, logic, Euclid, curiosity and 
 a strong bias for fact had set the stone of 
 free thought rolling in Jack's active brain, 
 and authority in matters of opinion and fore- 
 gone conclusions sank and were shattered 
 beneath it. His mind at first got into a 
 
JACK MILLER. 99 
 
 quasi-religious, quasi-sceptical muddle. He 
 endeavoured to worry out evidence, and 
 think for himself. The result was that 
 articles of faith became more and more 
 pulverised, until the question came, Why 
 believe at all \ Know, or confess ignorance 
 and absence of proof. And faith went 
 overboard after its component parts. The 
 result was, that Jack Miller at eighteen 
 put on a tall hat and went to church, 
 purely because he knew it pleased his 
 mother that he should do so. She had 
 prayed always that he might be an effective 
 minister of the church. It caused her 
 great grief to be so disappointed. This 
 Jack was sorry for, but could not of course 
 help, and restrained himself from pointing 
 the case out as an example of the efficacy 
 of prayer. 
 
 His character was pretty fully developed. 
 Like many only sons of solitary habits 
 and a fondness for reading, he had grown 
 
 7—2 
 
100 WILD ROSE. 
 
 up a little too early. His tastes were not 
 yet fully developed. He had been ac- 
 quainted with, many intelligent persons, 
 among whom perhaps the most important 
 was his own father, and was capable of 
 sustaining a conversation with spirit and 
 sense. He could speak and read French 
 and German moderately well. It may 
 be further added, for the benefit of the 
 curious, that his hair was short, yellow, 
 and parted in the middle ; his eye- 
 brows not white, as everyone feared they 
 would ; that he was five feet ten inches 
 high, well shaped, though slender, and 
 fond of bird's-eye. He could draw and 
 colour well. At school he had covered 
 his books with devices and designs, to the 
 great ire of his masters. All schoolboys 
 convert their books into repositories for 
 superfluous ink, but few can draw be- 
 yond, perhaps, a rude representation of a 
 human figure depending stiffly from a 
 
JACK MILLER. 101 
 
 gibbet, with the inscription, 'This is old 
 So-and-so.' 
 
 In the year 1870, the Emperor of the 
 French endeavoured to invade Germany, 
 and in doing so gave the King of Prussia 
 an opportunity of invading France and 
 of becoming Emperor of Germany. So 
 much European history relates. But 
 European history omits to mention that 
 in that year Jack Miller fell in love, as 
 far as it is possible at least for a youth of 
 seventeen to fall. This was as important 
 a page of history to him as the invasion 
 of France to William von Hohenzollern. 
 It was less important to the object of his 
 admiration, though she too found amuse- 
 ment in it. 
 
 She was a barmaid at the Winterdale 
 railway buffet. She was really pretty, 
 and only three-and- twenty. Nothing par- 
 ticular came of it. except an inordinate 
 expenditure on Jack's part on unwhole- 
 
102 WILD ROSE. 
 
 some food and beverages between meals, 
 which the stomach of a ' man reading at 
 Exeter's/ aged seventeen, could easily 
 tolerate ; so the consequences were not as 
 serious as mothers might fear and doctors 
 hope. 
 
 The idea of marriage flitted, perhaps, 
 vaguely through his brain. It was, how- 
 ever, only what a savant calls 'a certain 
 marshalling and re-marshalling of the 
 atoms' in his cranial cavity, and never 
 gave itself vent in articulate speech. In 
 his literary lessons in the gai science, more- 
 over, all the gay Lothario characters and 
 French musketeers, and countless such- 
 like, held marriage in ridicule and aversion, 
 and he felt that he must adhere to the 
 lofty ideal thus portrayed, and not lower 
 himself by travelling in the well-worn ruts 
 of the wain of virtue and respectability. 
 Such a step as marriage here, he had also, 
 apart from the Don Juan affectation, sense 
 
JACK MILLER. 103 
 
 enough to perceive to be not only impos- 
 sible and to the public eye wrong, but 
 what is more intolerable than wrong, ridi- 
 culous. 
 
 He occasionally presented a sketch to 
 his barmaid, who admired them, and rather 
 admired him, in a shallow way. She never 
 went for walks with him, or committed 
 herself in any way ; and the Winterdale 
 people knew little about Jack's affairs and 
 cared less, though of this he was not 
 aware. He fancied himself the observed of 
 all observers. 
 
 After a few months she was called to 
 some other bar, and Jack saw her face no 
 more. Jack's heart was not broken, and 
 the muddy depths of the neighbouring 
 ponds were cleft by no suicidal plunge. 
 Up to his eighteenth year, he had no 
 more serious sentimental affair than this ; 
 and it was now decided that he had suffi- 
 ciently advanced in learning to matriculate 
 
104 WILD ROSE. 
 
 at St. Audit College, in the university 
 usually described by Thackeray as ' Ox- 
 bridge,' though its manners and customs, 
 spirit and style of learning, have somewhat 
 developed and differentiated since the 
 days of Pendennis, Foker, Magnus Char- 
 tors, et hoc genus omne. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 jack's academic life. 
 
 ' Yivat Acadeuiia ! 
 Vivant Professores !'■ 
 
 Old Students' Song. 
 
 Jack had not the advantage of an uncle 
 like Major Pendennis to guard his moral 
 well-being, and introduce him to the 
 university. Even his father was too unwell 
 at the time of his starting to accompany 
 him, so he had to march into the world by 
 himself, armed with a letter of introduc- 
 tion to Dr. Scalpel, the then Professor 
 of Pathology at Oxbridge (Oxbridge, 
 unlike the sister university of Camford, 
 possessed an active Faculty of Medicine 
 
106 WILD ROSE. 
 
 and a large hospital), who promptly 
 asked him to dinner on his arrival, and 
 made him welcome to the new life, and 
 made him feel that he had a friend he 
 could respect and trust. Jack never forgot 
 the kindness of Professor Scalpel to a 
 freshman in a strange world. 
 
 As has been already hinted, Oxbridge 
 was not then what it was in the reign of 
 Thackeray and his friend George the 
 Fourth. The work was harder, more 
 extensive, and more rationally conducted 
 than in the old days, the average of culture 
 slightly higher, the general spirit rather 
 more secular. The advance of learning, 
 civilisation, and toleration had made the 
 tone of the insular university more 
 European, and some at least of the old 
 prejudices had fled into the eternal limbo 
 prepared for such things. One great 
 change had taken place almost before 
 Jack's very eyes, and one of which the 
 
JACK'S ACADEMIC LIFE. 107 
 
 result was, that many now held lecture- 
 ships, fellowships, and professorships who 
 formerly would have been expelled, or 
 never allowed to enter, for their opinions. 
 
 Jack took with mighty zeal at first to 
 the dissecting-room and the laboratory. 
 His perceptions were keen, and his mind 
 intensely realistic, and these studies took 
 his fancy thoroughly. 
 
 It is not our intention to minutely 
 investigate and describe Jack Miller's 
 academic career. The moral to the story 
 would be difficult to find. A general 
 sketch will suffice to indicate the direc- 
 tions of his spiritual development in these 
 three or four years. In his first year, he 
 was an ' advanced thinker,' admired 
 Buddha and Confucius, and read trans- 
 lations of the Rig- Veda, and announced 
 that the ' Zeitgeist had made him an 
 erifant du Steele*' This may have been 
 true. At any rate, it was an advantage to 
 
10S WILD ROSE. 
 
 be able to state the interesting fact in so 
 many modern languages. After bis first 
 year, be saw through bis own ambition 
 little pieces of affectation, and began to 
 look the great realities of nature and joy 
 and svoe in the face. He could find 
 delight in the scarlet autumn blaze of 
 a Virginian vine, or the dark, graceful, 
 stiff-twigged fir-trees outlined against the 
 green pallor of the western sky at his 
 home, as well as in the refined and wearied 
 sensuousness of the marble-faced Dionysos, 
 with vine-leaves wreathing his drooped 
 head in the Art Museum at Oxbridge, or 
 in the less refined though perhaps equally 
 weary legs of burlesque, * moving to the 
 music of passion, with a lithe and lascivious 
 regret,' in a Hall of Varieties in Leicester 
 Square. For, be it remembered, a uni- 
 versity education is incomplete in these 
 latter days without frequent visits to the 
 Metropolis, and to the various ' shrines 
 
jack's ACADEMIC LIFE. 109 
 
 where a sin is a prayer.' He was com- 
 pletely of the earth, earthy, and was not 
 ashamed of it, but considered it as a 
 natural and inevitable fact that he should 
 be so. He said : ' If I ou^ht to be other- 
 wise than I am, I should have been made 
 otherwise. I am a man, and act as fully 
 as possible up to my nature. What else 
 can you expect V 
 
 He attended his college chapel occasion- 
 ally. This fact, combined with his home 
 religious education, possibly in some part 
 accounts for the dislike he felt to the 
 popular religion of England. For irre- 
 ligious, it is to be feared, Jack Miller 
 certainly was, and, lamentable as it may 
 sound, found many congenial spirits at 
 Oxbridge who sincerely and entirely dis- 
 believed everything that deans hold 
 sacred. 
 
 He got to have friends of all sorts and 
 descriptions, Christian and Parsee, German 
 
110 WILD ROSE. 
 
 and French, industrious and idle, worthless 
 and worthy ; but gradually, in the lapse of 
 time, he got more intimate with what some 
 called the 'modern fast set.' This was 
 a small circle, and utterly distinct from 
 the ancient fast set, which is composed of 
 rich or noble idlers, appetitous athletes tt 
 hoc genus omne, and which is as old and 
 respected an academic institution as the 
 'varsity sermon. 
 
 No. Jack's friends were men of 
 moderate, some less than moderate, 
 means, who worked hard, mostly in his 
 own line of study, some senior and some 
 junior to himself, possessing plenty of 
 talent and wit, little or no religion, and 
 delighting in the ancient classics, Shake- 
 speare, the Elizabethan and .Restoration 
 dramatists, Theophile Gautier, Baudelaire 
 Hu^o, and a certain school of modern 
 English poets : not that they were all 
 alike, of course, in these respects — a general 
 
JACK'S ACADEMIC LIFE. Ill 
 
 arid suggestive type merely is here por- 
 trayed. 
 
 The man with whom Jack was perhaps 
 most of all confidential and intimate was 
 one Maximilian Laurence, the son of an 
 English doctor who wedded a Hungarian 
 actress at Vienna. He had studied at the 
 university of Vienna, as representing a 
 cheap and enjoyable life, for a few years, 
 and then, on the strength of his excellent 
 English and his good education, came to 
 seek, and won, a scholarship at St. Audit's, 
 Oxbridge, at his father's advice. His 
 father gave him an infinitesimal allowance, 
 and left him to cast his own nets in the 
 world's fishery. At Audit, of course, 
 living was a different matter to what it 
 was in Austria. But here the organism 
 managed to adapt itself to the environ- 
 ment, and got literary employment in 
 London, which, together with the scholar- 
 ship, gave him a tolerable subsistence. 
 
112 WILD ROSE. 
 
 He was some years older than Jack, 
 and possessed more experience of the 
 world, and had more pronounced opinions 
 in consequence. He was naturally en- 
 dowed with a capacity for languages, and 
 was familiar with all Jack's favourite 
 authors, and a great many more beside. 
 He appreciated nature, music, and poetry 
 keenly, and they seemed to be the romantic 
 element in his nature, and the symptoms 
 of the Hungarian blood. Perhaps it was 
 his Teutonic education that was responsible 
 for his attachment to pure reason and free 
 speculation, unfettered by the authority of 
 men's opinions and traditions. The English 
 element in his composition came out in his 
 love of comfort, of cavendish, and of 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 In the details of the political and religious 
 disputes of the day he took but slight 
 interest. He was not overjoyed or afflicted 
 at the existence of an Established Church in 
 
JACK'S ACADEMIC LIFE. 113 
 
 England, though he thought it contrary to 
 the principles of pure reason. He said : 
 
 ' If I hoped or struggled to see England 
 governed by pure reason, I should wear 
 out my body and mind, and leave England 
 such as I found it.' 
 
 If you replied to him that if everyone 
 used such arguments there would be no 
 progress at all, he would say : 
 
 ' Perhaps. But everyone does not use 
 such arguments/ 
 
 As long as there existed good theatres, 
 painters, musicians and poets, tobacco, 
 girls and beer, he said an Established Church 
 or an established anything else in no way 
 affected the stream of his life. And a 
 sparkling, joyous, and intelligent stream it 
 was. He enjoyed life intensely, and almost 
 every man and woman who knew him liked 
 him, and every animal. 
 
 He was quite fearless in enunciating his 
 opinions, though he did not do so on un- 
 
 vol. i. 8 
 
114 WILD ROSE. 
 
 called for occasions, and was careful to 
 avoid giving unnecessary offence in his talk. 
 To sum Maxmilian Laurence up, he was 
 one of those keen-minded, strong-bodied, 
 refined and enlightened young beings of this 
 latter day, for whose existence we may 
 largely thank, if thanks be due, the authors 
 of the new revolution — Voltaire, Goethe, 
 Musset, Heine, and multitudinous others, 
 whose names will readily occur to the 
 reader, whose chief ally, it may be added, 
 in the spiritual regeneration (or revolution, 
 whichever the reader likes) may be safely 
 asserted to be the older mediaeval spirit 
 that so often asserts itself in fierce abuse 
 against them. 
 
 Some of Laurence's Oxbridge friends 
 called him ' Der Geist der stets verneint ;' 
 and others, ' Der Kritik der rein en Ver- 
 nunft.' 
 
 His influence enlarged Jack's literary 
 taste, and stimulated him to study the 
 
JACK'S ACADEMIC LIFE. 115 
 
 works of those whom Heine calls the 
 'children of light/ and 'soldiers in the 
 liberation war of humanity. ' 
 
 He also introduced Jack to the circle of 
 rather Bohemian friends he possessed in 
 London, and showed him a few of the re- 
 alities of that jovial, happy-go-lucky or 
 unlucky life, of which he had hitherto 
 gleaned his ideas from books. Jack began 
 to have a real affection for the tall and 
 dingy streets of Bloomsbury, the Totten- 
 ham Court Road, and the strange half-foreign 
 cafes and restaurants, of which there are so 
 many, where good cookery and economy 
 prevail, and remembered many years after 
 the reckless, shag-smoking, lager-drinking, 
 song-making men — authors, actors, medical 
 students, aye, and actresses as well — that 
 he bad known in his student days. Through 
 Max Laurence, Jack came to see a good 
 deal of a rather strange and not un-attrac- 
 tive section of human society, though it is 
 
 8—2 
 
116 WILD ROSE. 
 
 doubtful if his parents would have felt all 
 the gratitude to his guide that Jack him- 
 self felt. So progressed his academic life. 
 It is unnecessary to do more than just give 
 one real extract from his career there, 
 tending to give more definite ideas of Ox- 
 bridge and its associations for Jack than 
 would be given by pages of description. 
 To this a separate chapter is due, which 
 will bring us to the termination of his third 
 academic year, and the twenty-first and 
 twenty-second of his life. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ALMA PIA DURA MATER. 
 
 1 It is just possible to become tired of 
 Oxbridge, isn't it ¥ asked Jack of Max, as 
 they walked slowly arm-in-arm, in the 
 dusk of a March evening, towards the 
 latter's rooms, where he had invited a few 
 friends to a sort of formal farewell assem- 
 blage, previous to their both leaving Ox- 
 bridge, and subsequently to their both 
 having taken their degrees. 
 
 1 1 think it is possible at certain moments 
 to absolutely hate it,' the other replied. 
 ' However, this is our last Bammel in 
 these streets. Let us look at it with a 
 kindly and pitying eye.' 
 
118 WILD ROSE. 
 
 It was a Saturday evening, about half- 
 past eight, and the sky was clear and star- 
 lit after a very wet afternoon, which had 
 left a thin layer of sticky, dark slime on 
 the pavement, interrupted at intervals by 
 a puddle glittering in the gaslight, through 
 which the numerous passers-by splashed 
 carelessly. The large gutters, for which 
 Oxbridge is so famous, were filled to over- 
 flowing with rushing clear water, and the 
 oath of some one accidentally treading in 
 one was occasionally audible. 
 
 Jack and Laurence were in a long 
 irregular street which extends from the 
 heart of the town to its uttermost outskirt, 
 and whose pavement in the evening, par- 
 ticularly Saturday evening, is usually 
 crowded. At every step they were jostled 
 by old peasants in long smock-frocks, who 
 were going home from their marketing, 
 usually slightly unsteady from beer and 
 gin ; undergrown youths from shops, from 
 
ALMA PI A — DURA MATER. 116 
 
 workrooms, and heaven knows where else ; 
 young women from the low suburb of 
 Watergate, whose ansemic and hectic 
 complexions, and attempts at fashionable 
 attire, and audacious expressions, contrasted 
 strongly with the coarsely healthy, thickly- 
 built, red-faced countrywomen, also re- 
 turning from market, some on foot, some 
 in jerky carts with bad springs and much- 
 whipped horses ; and groups of university 
 students, mostly freshmen, walking slowly 
 and looking round from time to time, 
 occupying a great deal of pavement, wear- 
 ing very soft, drooping caps, and occasion- 
 ally turning into a public-house or billiard- 
 room. 
 
 To the right or left, every now and 
 then, between the late open shops, one 
 could catch glimpses of narrow, tall, dusky 
 passages, with dark indications of clothes 
 hung out to dry across them ; generally 
 also containing a group of two or three 
 
120 WILD ROSE. 
 
 young girls, leaning with their backs to 
 the wall, talking, laughing, and addressing 
 remarks of a personal and ' chaffy ' nature 
 to passing students. Now and then a 
 hussar was visible, from the neighbouring 
 garrison-town of Shoredale, in a great 
 cloak, with crimson legs showing under it 
 much spur and swagger, and, of course, 
 like the rest of the world on such an even 
 ing, slightly drunk. 
 
 At one side of the street was the bril- 
 liant gas-lit descent to a skating-rink, 
 where the sounds of a bad piano and fiddle 
 were faintly audible, playing a well-known 
 and popular polka, nearly drowned in the 
 grinding of the wheels of the skaters. If 
 one were to glance inside, one would see a 
 crowd of men in four-cornered caps, and 
 girls set free from their shop -counters, etc., 
 for the evening, going round and round 
 their prescribed course, like the heavenly 
 bodies, in a hot, gassy atmosphere, which 
 
ALMA PI A— DURA MATER, 121 
 
 appeared to have permanently deprived the 
 poor, pale, deformed pianist of a com- 
 plexion. In its entrance-passage more 
 youths in square caps were to be seen, 
 smoking cigarettes and drinking beer sent 
 in large shining pewter pots from a neigh- 
 bouring public-house. (As a matter of 
 fact, there was always a ' neighbouring ' 
 public-house and a ' neighbouring 7 to- 
 bacconist in any part of Oxbridge.) 
 
 ' By Jove !' said Jack, ' I think we really 
 have slummed along these streets about 
 enough. About as much as the exigencies 
 of our education demand. It is rather 
 terrible, isn't it, to think how much time 
 men waste here V 
 
 1 Pity that idea doesn't occur to the 
 would-be dissipated freshman a little earlier 
 in his academic career,' said the other. 
 * Let's go home.' 
 
 And they went to Laurence's rooms in 
 St. Audit's College — large, comfortable 
 
122 WILD ROSE. 
 
 rooms, with an artistic and refined look 
 about them, and containing a great number 
 of books and a piano. Laurence was an 
 enthusiastic and talented musician. Regi- 
 ments of claret bottles were on a side-table, 
 flanked by squadrons of soda-water bottles. 
 On a table in the middle of the room were 
 large beakers of glass, borrowed from one 
 of the laboratories, to hold claret-cup, 
 which Laui'ence and Jack, denuded of their 
 coats, were hastening to make. The kettle 
 was boiling on the fire, and an empty china 
 bowl for the later manufacture of whisky- 
 punch was in the background. The 
 1 groceries ' strewed the table. The latter- 
 day paganism, with all its culture, does 
 not despise the ancient and jovial institu- 
 tions of cup and punch and ringing song, 
 nor even pipes and tobacco, a box of which 
 was open on the table. Just as Laurence 
 had lit a magnificent German porcelain 
 pipe, with a stem of immense length, the 
 
guests turned up in a noisy crowd, with 
 pipes hanging from the corners of their 
 mouths. A loud and confused conversation 
 arose, medicine and examinations at first 
 being the prevailing topic, until some one 
 cried out : 
 
 1 Oh, hang shop ! We get enough in 
 the day-time. There is a time for all 
 things. Tempus est dapibus.' 
 
 1 Yes,' said Jack. ' Decidedly damn 
 skin-diseases and exams. There are a 
 variety of other instructive topics. Fine 
 arts, drama, girls, politics/ 
 
 ' Politics are distinctly objectionable. 
 Leave them to the Union/ said another 
 voice. 
 
 Soon, the voice of a fiery little 
 lecturer on anatomy, or prosector, was 
 heard in a corner laying down the law, 
 with an amusing ferocity, on the follies of 
 theology, and sundry jocular remarks about 
 deans and doctrines might be heard. A 
 
124 WILD ROSE. 
 
 tall, bearded handsome man, who had just 
 been giving his ideas on egoistic Hedo- 
 nism, Hegal and 'uvver fings,' suddenly said : 
 
 1 By the way, apropos of Hedonism, was 
 anyone at Thompson's drunk, day before 
 yesterday V 
 
 ' No; were you V 
 
 ' Oh yes. I am thinking of writing a 
 " College Drinking-party " in emulation of 
 George Eliot's " College Breakfast-party," 
 which, as you all know, gives such a truly 
 accurate and realistic notion of the way 
 men converse, here, on such occasions.' 
 
 1 What was the drunk like, Yillars V 
 asked Jack ; ' was it interesting, or was 
 there anything original about it ? Bather 
 surprised, you know, to hear that you 
 should have connection with such a per- 
 formance.' 
 
 * Well,' said Villars, ■ it is not a frequent 
 amusement of mine, as you are aware. 
 Thompson, you know, has recently made a 
 
ALMA P1A—DURA MATER. 125 
 
 valiant and praiseworthy attempt to take a 
 degree in honours, which has met with that 
 cruel form of repulse from the examiners, 
 popularly called a " plough." In honour 
 apparently of this, he decided to have a 
 " wine/' and invited me among others. I 
 had no decent excuse for refusing, and 
 not to hurt his feelings, went. It was 
 crowded, as anything of that sort given in 
 lodgings is likely to be. There was a 
 great deal of the brutal athlete element 
 present, more particularly in the form of 
 Sloane. Know Sloane, don't you \ enor- 
 mous man whose rooms are furnished 
 principally with rowing and athletic 
 photos V 
 
 ' I know,' said Jack ; ' great pal of Lily 
 Jones of the Pig and Whistle bar, in 
 Watergate Lane.' 
 
 1 1 know nothing of his amorous ex- 
 ploits, but I can readily suppose it. I 
 only know that he got fearfully on at this 
 
126 WILD ROSE. 
 
 entertainment I am speaking of very early 
 in the evening, and it took many men 
 and much labour to keep him within some 
 bounds.' 
 
 1 1 believe that man will have D.T. 
 soon/ said Jack ; ' he can't do an hour's 
 reading without bottled beer, even in the 
 morning. His fingers speak alcoholism in 
 every attempt to lift a glass or light a 
 pipe.' 
 
 ' He amused himself for a few minutes,' 
 continued Villars, ' in throwing chairs 
 downstairs, and his conversation was of 
 the most hair-raising description.' 
 
 ' I'll bet it was/ said the little demon- 
 strator of anatomy, taking his short black 
 pipe from his mouth, and blowing an 
 additional puff of the perfume of burnt 
 shag through the already clouded atmo- 
 sphere/ 
 
 1 After a while, when one or two rather 
 quiet men had gone, Dawkins went to the 
 
ALMA PI A — DURA MATER. 127 
 
 piano, and there were a series of songs, 
 each more illustrative than the last of the 
 unutterable, and the putrefaction of poetic 
 idea with which the undergraduate mind, 
 in vinous moments, is capable of solacing 
 itself.' 
 
 * I wish some one would cause a wave 
 of oblivion to obliterate utterly, those 
 " rhymes " and Sporting Gazette anecdotes 
 from the brain of man,' observed Laurence. 
 ' Anything more depressing could scarcely 
 be conceived than the effect of hearing 
 them over and over again from the mouths 
 of different men, all alike in their brain- 
 less, shapeless want of originality.' 
 
 ' I think some men's brain-cavities are 
 filled with marmalade, or putty, or some 
 equally potent composition/ observed the 
 demonstrator. 
 
 * Sloane runs to cerebellum a good deal,' 
 said Jack. 
 
 ' The most exciting part of the per- 
 
123 WILD ROSE. 
 
 formance was getting Sloane home,' went 
 on Villars. ' He had firmly decided, with 
 that determination which is so strong in a 
 drunken man, that going home was a 
 foolish and unnecessary proceeding, and 
 argument and persuasion had very little 
 effect. He placed his great back against a 
 wall, and set his beastly dog at us. He 
 lives in some back street, to which the 
 route is rather involved, and it took some 
 three quarters of an hour before we could 
 get him into the hands of a philanthropic 
 policeman somewhere in his neighbour- 
 hood, who promised to see him home. I 
 hope he enjoyed the job/ 
 
 1 1 hope it hasn't demoralised you, and 
 given you that taste for vinous excess 
 Horace so viciously encourages V asked 
 Jack. 
 
 ' I hope not. When are you going 
 down V 
 
 1 To-morrow morning. This is — I say it 
 
ALMA PIA-DURA MATER. 129 
 
 with some feeling, made up of a little 
 pride, some pain, and much satisfaction — 
 the last night of my Oxbridge career. 
 Max and I go to town to-morrow.' 
 t ' The devil you do !' said Villars. 
 'Where you are going to be Faust and 
 Mephistopheles, Max and Moritz, com- 
 panions in iniquity, I suppose/ 
 
 ' Oh yes, go on Villars : David and 
 Jonathan, Crosse and Black well, Hell 
 and Tommy/ cried some voice from the 
 corner of a sofa. 
 
 ' We have what the knights of old called 
 a quest,' said Laurence, ' to follow for a 
 few days. After that, Cms ingens — 
 scire nefas? 
 
 1 What's the quest in this case V asked 
 
 the demonstrator, with a smile in his dark, 
 
 vivacious eyes. 
 
 ' " Nous songeons qu'a nous rejouir ; 
 La grande affaire est le plaisir." ' 
 
 ' And the nature of that pleasure V 
 
 VOL. I. 9 
 
130 WILD ROSE. 
 
 1 "Soyons toujours amoureux 
 C'est le moyen d'etre heureux.'" 
 
 1 Ah, I went in for that sort of thing 
 when I was your age.' 
 
 ' Really ? That must be about two 
 years ago, when you were my present age.' 
 
 1 You are very full of quotation to-night ; 
 what have you been reading V 
 
 6 A work entitled " M. de Pourceaugnac " 
 by Moliere. Would you like one more 
 short moral lesson from the same?' 
 
 ' I'm not very keen on it, but I suppose 
 you will not be satisfied till you have 
 emitted it.' 
 
 1 " Aimons jusque au trepas 
 La raison nous y convie 
 Helas ! si Ton n'aimait pas 
 Que serait-ce de la vie ! 
 Ah ! perdons plutot le jour, 
 Qui se perdre notre amour." ' 
 
 ' Hear, hear !' said Jack. 
 ' Almost thou persuadest me to be a 
 heathen,' said Villars, ' on your pattern.' 
 
ALMA PI A— DURA MATER. 131 
 
 ' Thought you were one,' said Jack. 
 
 1 I am afraid I'm not quite so advanced 
 as you and " Der Geist der stets verneint." ' 
 
 1 Der Geist der stets verneint ' hung up 
 his pipe, and said : 
 
 ' Will any oblige with music or song V 
 
 ' Won't you yourself, Max V 
 
 1 Well, I don't mind doing one thing to 
 start you with, but I protest against occu- 
 pying my own piano for long. I'll sing 
 you a song — you must not mind if it is 
 German. It is the song of a student 
 taking leave of his comrades — leaving his 
 student life, the fights, and songs, and 
 beer, and Liebchen, to go homewards, and 
 become a sober Philistine and professional 
 man.' 
 
 And he sang ' Bemooster Bursche 
 ziehe ich aus.' Others followed, and 
 English ballads came, in whose chorus 
 everyone could join, and the melody floated 
 out by the open windows, and wandered 
 
 9—2 
 
132 WILD ROSE. 
 
 through the still night, startling stray 
 
 passers and policemen, for the rooms 
 
 looked on to the street. 
 
 Between the songs came general refresh- 
 es <~> 
 
 ment and confused jocular conversation, in 
 the midst of which Laurence began to 
 make the punch, and a sprightly young 
 Frenchman, after distinguishing himself in 
 a contest w T ith Jack with a pair of foils, 
 sat down to the piano and began the well- 
 known old song : 
 
 ' " Mon pere est a Paris, 
 
 Ma mere est a Yersaille, 
 Et moi je suis ici 
 
 Me couchant sur la paille." ' 
 
 Just as the deafening chorus of ' L'amour, 
 la nuit comme le jour ' was being rendered 
 by the whole force of the company, the 
 punch was placed on the table, and the 
 college porter came to the door to request 
 mitigation of the row. 
 
 4 Who sent you V asked Laurence. 
 
ALMA PI A— DURA MATER. 133 
 
 ' The master, sir !' 
 
 1 Take this glass of punch for yourself, 
 and tell the master, if he has any complaint 
 to make to me he can make it in person at 
 King's Cross to-morrow, at 11.30, where 
 I shall be. In any case, tell him to ' 
 
 1 " faire ■ 
 
 L'amour, 
 La nuit comme le jour !" ' 
 
 shouted the multitude. The porter 
 grinned, swallowed his punch and withdrew. 
 Some one volunteered to drop a mouse 
 through the letter-slit in the masters door, 
 arid was restrained with some difficulty 
 from carrying out the project, which would 
 have perilled his prospects rather, as he 
 would be certain to be detected in his 
 present condition. 
 
 Laurence filled glasses round, and the 
 old English song ' Three Jolly Post-boys ' 
 followed, and several more. Finally, 
 * Auld Langsyne ' was sung with very un- 
 
134 WILD ROSE. 
 
 steady ' Highland honours/ and the party 
 broke up, and went whooping home on a 
 continuous slide, the street having frozen 
 in the night. Max and Jack instantly 
 calmed down, closed the piano, and sat 
 pensively smoking in armchairs before the 
 fire. 
 
 ' Strange ! isn't it V observed the former ; 
 1 any visitor would have fancied himself 
 strayed into a barrack or a private asylum, 
 who had come here half an hour ago, and 
 would never have guessed that some of the 
 best and cleverest fellows in the 'varsity 
 were here, joking, drinking punch, and 
 generally raising Hades in the way they 
 did. Villars will get a professorship of 
 metaphysics in Scotland ; Smith is a 
 lecturer, and prosector and fellow of his 
 college already ; the other men are going to 
 get high places, if they have not got them, 
 except you and I, who remain and lament 
 Mimi Pinson, and the temps perduJ 
 
ALMA PI A— DURA MATER. 135 
 
 ' It isn't perdu a bit,' said Jack. ' We've 
 put twice the enjoyment and profit into 
 our time that the senior wranglers and 
 double-firsts, who go the same ground 
 every afternoon and eat quarts of marma- 
 lade, have.' 
 
 'Perhaps. It's all oyer now, anyhow. 
 We've done our little strut in bachelors' 
 gowns, and have seen the best and the 
 worst of Oxbridge ; the best is not very 
 good, and the worst is very brutal. I 
 shall not forget the sights we have some- 
 times seen here, of unbridled authoritv 
 exerting itself; of virulent virtue with 
 bands and bull-do^s crushing venomous 
 vice with such exemplary austerity that 
 makes the hands tingle and the blood 
 boil; we shall not forget the morality of 
 our authorities, that permits the same man 
 to fine you for smoking in the street, and 
 to preside in the college hall at a boat-club 
 drunk. We shall not forget the tutors 
 
136 WILD ROSE. 
 
 whom we pay to do nothing except send 
 us down if necessary, and the chaplains 
 that make services a caricature of religion, 
 and the deans who would force us to 
 attend them.' 
 
 ' And we shall not forget the few good 
 friends we have made, and the real good 
 times we have had/ 
 
 ' Have you packed up ?' 
 
 'No.' 
 
 1 When do you mean to \ Because the 
 train's at ten, and you won't be in a hurry 
 to rise to-morrow, " when later larks give 
 warning;" the later lark being regarded 
 as just over.' 
 
 1 Oh, I'll manage in time. I'm not 
 drunk, and there's a whole night yet.' 
 
 ' Stay with me, and help make some 
 anchovy toast and coffee.' 
 
 ' It's one a.m. I'm not such a bird of 
 night as you.' 
 
 1 You'd better stay. I want to show 
 
ALMA PIA—DURA MATER. 137 
 
 you some new books — Spinoza in Dutch 
 — linguistic exercise.' 
 
 4 Spinoza be d d, at this hour in the 
 
 morning; as he probably is from a theo- 
 logical standpoint. No, sir ! I'm going 
 to pack and sleep — perchance to dream. 
 Then there's my tub ! We will meet at 
 Philippi — that is to say, in my rooms, where 
 you will breakfast later in the course of 
 the morning. Good-night.' 
 
 4 Good-night.' 
 
 And Laurence sat up reading Spinoza 
 among the remains of claret-cup, punch, 
 bits of lemon, and tobacco ashes. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ROSA ENTERS SOCIETY. 
 
 After the German war, Dr. Taylor, on 
 receipt of a letter from Cesarine, and a 
 posthumous one from Felix, written in case 
 of his death, sailed for Europe vid Ham- 
 burg, and went, as he said, ' as straight as 
 railroad cars could take him ' to the Rue de 
 la Harpe, and the Boulevard St. Michel, 
 and found Rosa, overjoyed to see him, 
 grown into a tall, lithe girl of fourteen, 
 with the experiences of war and starvation 
 on her pale face and thin limbs, and look- 
 ing at him with unlimited affection out of 
 hollow large brown eyes. He at once 
 
ROSA ENTERS SOCIETY. 139 
 
 prescribed tonics, food, and amusements, 
 which soon restored her frame to its healthy 
 status quo ante helium. 
 
 Cesarine had grown into a handsome, 
 slightly faded woman between thirty and 
 forty. Fourteen years had made little 
 difference to Taylor himself. The man 
 who looks forty at four-and-twenty does 
 not usually look any older at eight-and- 
 thirty. 
 
 As soon as Paris was habitable for 
 ladies, Dr. Taylor's sister and brother- 
 in-law, Colonel and Mrs. Maston G. 
 Frankland, sailed also for Europe, via 
 Liverpool, and came to Paris, where the 
 Colonel was attached to the American 
 Legation. 
 
 Dr. Taylor, observing that Bosa was 
 rapidly turning from a girl of fourteen into 
 a woman of fifteen, determined, to his own 
 infinite regret, and to that of Cesarine, 
 and of Rosa herself, that it was time for 
 her to leave the Quartier; and he looked 
 
140 WILD ROSE. 
 
 after some protector of her own sex, more 
 efficient, though none could be more willing 
 or kind-hearted, than C^sarine. He ex- 
 plained this to the latter as delicately as 
 possible, and she assented, with some 
 tears, on the condition that she was to be 
 occasionahy visited by Rosa. 
 
 So Rosa was transferred to the care of 
 Mrs. Maston Frankland, who was the 
 acme of elegance and propriety, and who, 
 after listening to the true story of Rosa, as 
 told by her brother — who, in his direct, 
 simple-minded way, expected the same 
 enthusiastic approval from this lady-like 
 sister of his that he got from Cesarine, the 
 brasserie waitress — said : 
 
 ' Well, if you ain't the oddest kind, Ivor ! 
 However, I suppose I must try what I can 
 do/ 
 
 Mrs. Frankland was too weak to refuse to 
 do what she was even slightly unwilling to 
 do. Taylor went on, in a hesitating voice : 
 
ROSA ENTERS SOCIETY. 141 
 
 1 Say, you'll dress her properly, won't 
 you — way other smart girls are dressed ? 
 I'll stand that ; and, see here, she's learnt 
 a whole crowd of things already — I don't 
 know that it's exactly necessary that she 
 should go to school — see V 
 
 ' I see/ , 
 
 ' And you'll give her a good time, as 
 much as you can V 
 
 < I'll try.' 
 
 And Rosa came, shy and anxious-look- 
 ing, to a new and, to her eyes, magnificent 
 quarter of Paris, and drove about in one of 
 those carriages she had sometimes admired 
 and envied, as they splashed her while 
 crossing the Boulevard des Capucines. 
 Mrs. Frankland liked Hose in her own 
 gelatinous, lazy way, but was a little afraid 
 of her direct fearless eyes, and direct fear- 
 less questions and sayings. Rosa had been 
 brought up to habits of outspoken sincerity 
 from the example of Taylor himself, and it 
 
142 WILD ROSE. 
 
 made Mrs. Frankland lament that she had 
 not had the charge of her sooner, so as to 
 have made her more ' elegant ' and ' high- 
 toned ' in her opinions. She resolved that 
 it must be still possible to reform Rosa, and 
 turn her into an elegant and high-toned 
 girl, with proper respect for rank and 
 fashion and money. She believed in 
 dollars, did Mrs. Frankland, and had 
 plenty of them, and had no objection to 
 expending them on Rosa's improvement. 
 She firmly believed that money, generously 
 and judiciously laid out, could, in some 
 mysterious way, instil a spirit of proper 
 opinion and proper reverence for great and 
 good things, such as dresses, dinners, 
 dances and dollars, into Rosa's mind, and 
 resolved to have a consultation with her 
 friend the Marquise de Tortoleone on the 
 subject. 
 
 The Marquise de Tortoleone, on her 
 marriage, was not the prettiest woman in 
 
ROSA ENTERS SOCIETY. 143 
 
 Paris ; but she thought she was, and years 
 failed to dispel the illusion. She was four- 
 and-twenty at the time of her discovery by 
 the Marquis, which is really rather young 
 for a married woman, and passes readily for 
 nineteen for some years with judicious 
 management. Her personal appearance 
 was undoubtedly striking, as the Marquis 
 was aware to his cost — to his cost ad- 
 visedly ; for a striking face and figure 
 require, as no one can dispute, striking 
 dresses and decorations as auxiliaries, 
 which must be frequently varied, and 
 always half an inch ahead of the prevail- 
 ing fashion. They attract, moreover, the 
 notice of the world, and a moth-like crowd 
 of male worshippers and cavalieri servente 
 calculated to disturb the peace of mind of 
 a husband. 
 
 Fortunately for the Marquis, it took a 
 good deal to disturb his mental equanimity. 
 He was distinctly aware that all pecuuiary 
 
144 WILD ROSE. 
 
 supplies were under his control, and that 
 the Marquise's love of flirtation was too 
 universal, and her discretion too great, to 
 permit her, under the circumstances, to go 
 in any sense too far. Besides, he could 
 find means of consoling himself, while 
 living so long apart from her and un- 
 noticed by her, as he generally did. 
 
 The Marquis was French. Before he 
 became, by right of purchase, the possessor 
 of the Italian estate and title of Tortoleone, 
 his name had been Jean Bouvier. He was 
 a lucky speculator, a man ignorant in all 
 matters outside the Bourse, and in society 
 the perfection of snobbery. The Bourse 
 was his Paradise, and the demoniac yells of 
 the frequenters of that institution were to 
 him as angels' songs. The god he wor- 
 shipped was called * Rentes,' and was a 
 near relation, with modern improvements, 
 of the deity to which Shadrach, Meshach, 
 and Abednego refused to bow down on the 
 
ROSA ENTERS SOCIETY. 145 
 
 plain of Dura. Society sneered at him' 
 but tolerated him. His means were an 
 apology for his manners. He knew the 
 celebrity one can gain from being the pro- 
 prietor of a pretty wife, when one can 
 afford to pay M. Worth and his like to 
 dress her, and, on the strength of this 
 knowledge and his own affluence, he went 
 into the i Babylonian market,' and, after 
 some bargaining, procured the article re- 
 quired. The new speculation was a 
 success. People grew tired of asking who 
 the Marquise was, because no one could 
 answer the question. But she was unde- 
 niably a beauty. After looking at her and 
 talking to her in a surprised and almost 
 reverent way for a few days, the Marquis 
 returned to his old love, the Bourse, and 
 left his wife to amuse herself in her own 
 way, which she was not slow to do. In 
 due time the Marquise became the mother 
 of a son. This was Alfred de Tortoleone, 
 vol. i. 10 
 
146 WILD ROSE. 
 
 who has been noticed slightly in a former 
 chapter. 
 
 After five years of conjugal bliss, the 
 Marquis disappeared entirely, leaving a 
 polite note to say that pressing business 
 required his immediate presence in a part 
 of the world which he vaguely described 
 as 'the East.' The uncharitable, and par- 
 ticularly his creditors, hinted that the 
 business alluded to was carried on in the 
 Levant, or consisted in raising a harem 
 somewhere in Roumelia. The affliction of 
 the Marquise at his loss was not over- 
 whelming, and was alleviated by the fact 
 that he had settled a comfortable income 
 on her, on her wedding-day. She showed 
 a glimmer of common sense by sending 
 her boy to be educated in England, saying 
 that if he were sent to a French school 
 he would grow up an insufferable little 
 fool : a rash prediction, perhaps, and 
 founded on a hasty generalisation from 
 
ROSA ENTERS SOCIETY. 147 
 
 the particular Parisian young gentlemen 
 under the Empire with whom she hap- 
 pened to be acquainted. Therefore 
 Alfred, in due time, became an English 
 schoolboy, and an object of curiosity and 
 diversion to his companions. Not because 
 there was anything particularly curious or 
 diverting about him, but because he was a 
 foreigner. He arrived, by the way, with 
 the impression that he would be addressed 
 as ' Marquis,' and was somewhat sur- 
 prised to find that a vile and vulgar 
 foreign democracy at once named him 
 1 Frenchy,' varied occasionally by the 
 equally witty and pungent nickname of 
 ' Froggy.' He very soon became as 
 English and commonplace as any of them. 
 Jack Miller, who was his schoolfellow, 
 was supposed to look after and protect 
 his young cousin, which we will hope 
 he did. 
 
 The Marquise was addicted to reading 
 
 10—2 
 
148 WILD ROSE. 
 
 witty comedies and 'proverbes/ and fancied 
 herself to resemble the charming and 
 epigrammatic marquises and countesses 
 with which they were populated. She 
 had a ' salon ' and receptions, and endea- 
 voured to be a species of female Maecenas. 
 She was not unpopular. Her talents were 
 few, but the greatest of them was one of a 
 nature calculated to win popularity. 
 
 This was a marvellous capacity of simu- 
 lating an enthusiasm for whatever might 
 interest the person she was conversing 
 with, and dexterously inserting compli- 
 ments at the same time. Her friends 
 called this capacity amicability and large- 
 mindedness. It was what is known in 
 the Sister Isle as ' blarney,' and in this 
 country by the more downright if more 
 coarse name of ' humbug.' 
 
 It was to this lady that Mrs. Frankland 
 went for advice in her difficulty about 
 Hosa, and laid her case confidently before 
 
ROSA ENTERS SOCIETY. 149 
 
 her. The Marquise said she perfectly 
 comprehended the whole situation, and 
 advised the sending of Rosa to a con- 
 ventual educational institution with which 
 she was acquainted. This was just what 
 Mrs. Frankland wanted an excuse and en- 
 couragement for doing, and the Marquise 
 soon persuaded her that it would be a 
 most benevolent act, and one in no way 
 coming under Dr. Taylors prohibition 
 anent schools. The two ladies embraced, 
 and parted with expressions of mutual 
 esteem. Rosa was unsuspectingly led to 
 suppose, in a vague way, that she was 
 going where Dr. Taylor thought proper, 
 and entered this pension, conducted by 
 religieases. 
 
 The brilliant success of this step 
 on Mrs. Frankland's part may be sur- 
 mised from the following letter from the 
 Mother Superior, received a week after 
 the entrance of Rosa, which reached Mrs. 
 
150 WILD fiOSE. 
 
 Frankland at breakfast, sent her into wild 
 dismay and disarray : 
 
 1 Chere Madame, 
 
 ' Mademoiselle your ward has this 
 afternoon left us, after defiantly refusing to 
 perform a punishment set her, on the plea 
 that it w r as unjust ; which assertion in the 
 mouth of one of her years to her superiors, 
 is in itself an act of insubordination. Where 
 she has gone I know not ; but, dear Madame, 
 I feel it my painful duty to add, that find- 
 ing Mademoiselle Rosa Taylor to be with- 
 out religion, or a distinct code of disciplinary 
 morality, I cannot readmit her here, as 
 such a step would imply the total demora- 
 lisation of my other charges, who have 
 already a tendency to sympathise with the 
 rebellious conduct of Mademoiselle Taylor. 
 
 ' Agree, Madame, my considerations the 
 most distinguished, and believe me, 
 ' Your always devoted 
 
 1 Olivia, Mere Superieure.' 
 
ROSA ENTERS SOCIETY. 151 
 
 This missive Mrs. Frankland looked at 
 as if it were an obus that had sailed in at 
 the window, and exploded on the break- 
 fast-table. It was quickly followed by an 
 irruption of heavy infantry, in the form of 
 Dr. Ivor Taylor, who stood with his back 
 to the fire, and said in a gentle, low drawl : 
 
 1 Now see here, Alexandra G. Frank! and. 
 I believe I told you it would not be neces- 
 sary to send Rosa to a boarding-school. I 
 imagine you assented to that proposition. 
 Is that so V 
 
 ' I didn't send her to a boarding-school/ 
 
 1 If you will draw the delicate distinction 
 that divides a boarding, school from a con- 
 ventual pension you will be more clever 
 than I ever took you for. I guess it's 
 some smarter person than you that thought 
 of that scare.' 
 
 1 It is different, anyway.' 
 
 ' It is, a little. But the difference is for 
 the worse. If Rosa ain't educated enough, 
 
152 WILD ROSE. 
 
 I don't mean to have the finishing of her 
 run by nuns — see % I have given her over 
 to you to have her kept pure, and if that is 
 your notion of how to do it, she might just 
 as well come back to the Quartier. I don't 
 suppose it's your fault. Your mind ain't 
 strong enough to take such a decided 
 step alone, but I'm particularly grateful to 
 whoever put it into your head, and would 
 like to have an opportunity of expressing 
 my feelings to her — it must be her — a 
 
 man wouldn't be such a Well, all 
 
 right. I'm not going to cuss, don't put on 
 that scared face. Do you like Rosa ? Do 
 you and she get along together V 
 
 'I like her ver}^ much. I think she 
 likes me.' 
 
 Mrs. Frankland here sobbed. 
 
 Her brother said : 
 
 ■ I've seen a good many cases of hysteria 
 and weeping women, in hospitals and out 
 of 'em, and they don't alter my feelings 
 
ROSA ENTERS SOCIETY. 153 
 
 much by now. If you want to have Rosa 
 back, you shall ; but on the distinct under- 
 standing that you keep her with yourself. 
 She did quite right to leave that place you 
 sent her to, and an elegant scare she's 
 given them. They don't quite know what 
 a Yankee-bred girl means yet, there, I 
 fancy — kind of new and dangerous animal; 
 might encourage the French girls to be 
 riotous and playful, and shy their rosaries 
 at one another's heads. Perhaps you'll 
 write to them to send back her traps. I've 
 already sent them the stamps for the 
 quarter's pay, so they can't complain that 
 Rosa defrauded, them any. Do you under- 
 stand me V 
 
 ' Yes/ (Mrs. Frankland was frightened, 
 thrown off her dignity, and thoroughly 
 subdued.) ' Well, I'll send her back.' 
 
 Rosa came back. The only remark she 
 ever condescended to make about her short 
 school experience was : ' They all liked 
 
154 WILD ROSE. 
 
 me ; the girls, I mean. I believe they 
 thought I was a sort of boy.' 
 
 She and Mrs. Frankland got used to 
 one another in time, and got on quietly 
 and amicably. Rosa soon understood her 
 guardian. Mrs. Frankland soon gave up 
 trying to understand Rosa. 
 
 A few years later, when Rosa became 
 sixteen, Colonel Frankland suddenly died; 
 and Mrs. Frankland, at the recommenda- 
 tion of her mentor, the Marquise, deter- 
 mined to go to England. 
 
CHAPTEK VIII. 
 
 DOMESTIC. 
 
 Jack and Hel Miller were sitting together 
 in the room consecrated by the former to 
 the pursuit of the fine arts and the con- 
 sumption of tobacco. It was about a 
 quarter to midnight on Easter-eve. Jack 
 had come home after taking his degree, 
 and enjoying a few days and nights of 
 festivity with Laurence and other friends 
 in London, and was for the present re- 
 posing on his laurels, or rather on a 
 rocking-chair, and sucking pensively at a 
 large dark-looking pipe. He had invited 
 Hel to assist him in discussing his next 
 
156 WILD ROSE. 
 
 step, or rather to form an audience while 
 he ponrted out to her the merits and 
 demerits of various schools of medicine, 
 and laid down the law on other things on 
 which she was not competent to dis- 
 pute. 
 
 He w T as determined to go to Paris ; and 
 when he was determined that a thing 
 should happen, it somehow generally did 
 happen. Having announced his various 
 projects and their reasons, and discovered 
 the way in which his parents were likely 
 respectively to regard them, he went on 
 to more general matters, in which Hel 
 could take a greater interest. Laurence 
 w T as expected at Eave Lodge next day. 
 Jack had to answer numerous questions 
 about him, and give a minute description 
 of him to his sister. 
 
 ' I wonder if I shall like him V said she. 
 
 1 1 fancy you will : you ought. Most 
 girls only care as long as a man is good- 
 
DOMESTIC. 157 
 
 looking. Max is undeniably good-looking, 
 and has got some wits as well.' 
 
 1 What a strange way you have of 
 talking of " most girls/' as if they were a 
 class of inferior animal whose habits you 
 had been studying !' 
 
 1 Just the state of the case. And very 
 nice little animals they are ! What have 
 they done to prove the contrary ? I grant 
 you they have ambition — Lucifer's own ; 
 but what does it produce \ Members of 
 school-boards, Girtonites in sap-green with 
 silver chains round their wrists and double 
 eye-glasses. I believe in the higher cul- 
 ture of women, because it makes them 
 more agreeable to men. They recognise 
 themselves, perhaps unconsciously, the 
 truth in a certain sense of the saying, 
 "The woman was made for the man." 
 One of the most prominent female artists 
 of our country devotes herself to the glori- 
 fication on canvas of men, particularly men 
 
158 WILD ROSE. 
 
 engaged in an unintellectual and savage 
 profession.' 
 
 1 But soldiers needn't be unintellectual !' 
 ' Who mentioned soldiers ? However, 
 as you have assumed, presumably from the 
 accuracy of my description, that I meant 
 soldiers, I may add that I didn't say 
 soldiers were necessarily without intellect. 
 I said that the profession was eminently 
 savage, a profession only existing in virtue 
 of the imperfection of civilisation, like that 
 
 of the clergy ' 
 
 < Oh, Jack !' 
 
 ' Like that of the clergy, and conse- 
 quently only advancing men's minds in 
 the direction of ingenuity of destruction 
 or subjugation of other men, mind and 
 body — the soldiers the body, the clergy the 
 mind.' 
 
 ' I don't think that's quite fair.' 
 ' Well, no, perhaps not. I apologise to 
 all your military and clerical partners in 
 
DOMESTIC. 159 
 
 waltzes or lawn-tennis, for undue heat. 
 Talking of undue heat reminds me that 
 this is an uncommonly warm April, and 
 that that is an uncommonly ditto fire, and I 
 mean to open the window/ 
 
 Jack got up from his rocking - chair, 
 heavy meerschaum pipe in mouth (a birth- 
 day present that five chorus-maidens of the 
 Park Lane Theatre had once subscribed 
 for), stretched, looked in the glass that 
 hung over the mantelpiece, and walked 
 over to the window, drew up the Venetian 
 blinds, opened both windows, leaned on the 
 sill of one, and gazed out. The full moon 
 was behind the grove of firs in the west, 
 among streaks of horizontal cloud. The 
 trees were black, distinct and beautiful, 
 as he had seen them at times before. 
 That sight was an embodiment to him of 
 his whole childhood and youth, spent in 
 reach of that grove. In the distance lay 
 a black foggy mass with dots of light in it, 
 
160 WILD ROSE. 
 
 havinga squarish protuberance in its middle. 
 This was Winterdale and its cathedral ; 
 fields and downs were moderately bright, 
 going away into grey and foggy per- 
 spective. Above all was the starlit sky. 
 
 ' Come and look at all this, Hel !' Jack 
 was drinking in the wonderful though 
 melancholy and thought-bringing beauty 
 of the scene. 
 
 Hel came to the window-sill alongside 
 him, and looked out. 
 
 1 Es stehen unbeiveglich die Sterne in der 
 Hohe,' quoted Jack. ' Heine might have 
 known/ he added, laughing ; ' that the 
 stars are not immovable at all. However, 
 they are immovable to human joy and 
 sorrow. In his sense it is true. They are 
 the pitiless and passionless eyes of heaven.' 
 
 1 That doesn't sound quite original, some- 
 how,' observed Hel gently. 
 
 Jack looked at his watch. 
 
 ' Three minutes past twelve. One 
 
DOMESTIC. 161 
 
 begins to feel like Faust. It is Easter 
 morning. Let us listen for the chorus of 
 angels.' And they were both momentarily 
 silent. A long low wailing shriek came 
 borne upon the still air, from some distance. 
 Hel started, and said : 
 
 < What's that V 
 
 1 The mail coming into Winterdale. 
 Seven minutes late, too. I should think 
 you might know a railway whistle this 
 time in the nineteenth century. So much 
 for that century's answer to Faust.' 
 
 ' I think the nineteenth century has 
 advanced to that stage properly called bed- 
 time,' said Hel. ' Wait till my pipe's 
 done. Well, yes, I'll go to Paris. 
 Necessary part of my education — also 
 to bed, necessary part of my physical 
 maintenance — to sleep, perchance to dream 
 — perchance not/ 
 
 These short, disjointed remarks were 
 emitted alternately with smoke-clouds. 
 
 vol. i. 11 
 
162 WILD ROSE. 
 
 Jack then carefully knocked out and 
 otherwise extracted ashes and oily refuse 
 from his pipe, stroked it with a silk 
 handkerchief, and laid it in its case. 
 
 'I think you'll like Max/ he said, as 
 they separated for the night. 
 
 'Perhaps I shall. I hope so. Good- 
 night/ 
 
 Just at this time another conclave had 
 been dissolved in another smoking-room, or 
 rather study in which smoking was prac- 
 tised. Professor Miller sat in his writing- 
 chair, in a dressing-gown, with a long 
 German pipe in his hand. Opposite to 
 him on the wall, was a copy of Rem- 
 brandt's 'Anatomy Lesson.' Around the 
 walls stood shelves bearing bottles of what 
 Mrs. Miller and Hel called 'things,' in 
 spirits, which gave the room a vague air of 
 alchemy, the Black Art, and general 
 horror to unscientific Winterdale. Of 
 course there was a book-case, with several 
 
DOMESTIC. 163 
 
 skulls — infant, pre-historic, negro, and the 
 inevitable 'Ancient Briton' — on its top. 
 One or two pairs of schlagers, another 
 German pipe, and a photograph of Heidel- 
 berg Castle, were the only other adorn- 
 ments of the walls. The room was in a 
 mysterious twilight, which a decaying fire 
 and a setting moon united to produce, and 
 was not wholly unlike the opening scene 
 of Faust, except that it was not Gothic, 
 and the occupant had a rather contented 
 humorous expression, and was, with nine- 
 teenth-century irreverence, smoking Dutch 
 Kanaster tobacco, instead of meditating 
 on the eternal unfitness of things. 
 
 He was also aware that it was Easter- 
 eve, and past midnight, and was delivering 
 a discourse on Faust to Mrs. Miller, who 
 wanted to go to bed. 
 
 ' There is an immense deal in what you 
 say, Nellie. Going early to bed is an 
 excellent rule, and one I never observe. 
 
 11—2 
 
1G4 WILD ROSE. 
 
 If Faustus had gone to bed at the proper 
 time, instead of talking blank verse all 
 night about things he didn't understand, 
 matters would have taken a very different 
 course, and a great deal of misfortune 
 would have been averted. He would 
 have discovered the elixir of life, and 
 swallowed a dose. The funeral would 
 probably have taken place next day, and 
 the will would have been found to devise 
 his whole hypothec, consisting of a furnace, 
 two skulls, his manuscripts, and a small 
 phial of poison, with directions ' for in- 
 ternal application,' to Wagner — who would 
 richly deserve it all, particularly the last 
 item. Gretchen would have continued to 
 attend public worship, clothed in a white 
 dress and a bag, and would have married 
 some respectable young Philister, who 
 also habitually went to church, and would 
 have been the mother of twelve children. 
 Valentine would have lived to be a general, 
 
DOMESTIC. 165 
 
 and would come home and tell stories of 
 the wars to his nephews and grand- 
 nephews — fine old crusted lies which they 
 knew by heart, and he nearly believed at 
 last himself. What ¥ 
 
 ' 1 thought you were going to talk about 
 Jack.' 
 
 Poor Mrs. Miller had patiently borne 
 the comparative merits of German and 
 English poetry, and incidentally pipes ; 
 some funny remarks about the Bishop of 
 Winterdale, which somehow contrived to 
 get into the conversation, and the import- 
 ance of visceral arches in relation to the 
 segmentation of the skull ; and finally Faust, 
 as a last straw, hoping all the time that he 
 would give her an opportunity of uttering 
 advice and predictions concerning Jack. 
 
 'Jack? He wants to go to Paris. I 
 suppose he'd better go in the autumn.' 
 
 ' Don't you think it rather a mistake to 
 let him go so far by himself, and so unpro- 
 
166 WILD ROSE. 
 
 tected, into the way of all sorts of tempta- 
 tions V 
 
 ' He would have just as much temptation 
 in London, and of a less civilised kind. He 
 must learn medicine somewhere, and it 
 cant very well be here.' 
 
 ' Couldn't we go to Paris, too, for a 
 while ? It would do Hel good to get an 
 outing, and we could then have Jack with 
 us.' 
 
 ■ And keep an eye on him, and see that 
 he doesn't go to theatres on Sundays ? 
 He'd thank you. You didn't want to keep 
 an eye on him at Oxbridge V 
 
 ' But that is England, and so dif- 
 ferent.' 
 
 1 Unless Oxbridge has altered l largely 
 since my time, there are just as good 
 opportunities there as anywhere for trans- 
 gression of all laws moral and divine. 
 Temptations, as people are pleased to call 
 them, are to be met with in large numbers. 
 
DOMESTIC. 167 
 
 Yet Jack does not appear to be hopelessly 
 depraved. He is rather conceited, though 
 not conspicuously so, and has learned a 
 good deal since he went there, and has 
 altogether developed, mentally and physi- 
 cally, into a more presentable member of 
 society.' 
 
 ' Of course I have some confidence in 
 him ; and his principles I hope are still 
 strong in him, though he is very irre- 
 ligious.' 
 
 ' Well, can't you extend that confidence 
 across the Channel, and along the Chemin 
 de Fer du Nord, as far as Paris V 
 
 Mrs. Miller's fear for, and confidence and 
 pride in, Jack were struggling together; and 
 she finally gave in, as she invariably did, to 
 her husband, and fetched a bedroom 
 candle. As she was lighting it, the Pro- 
 fessor said : 
 
 1 1 say, there's that young fellow that 
 Jack expects to-morrow; we ought to do 
 
168 WILD ROSE. 
 
 something for his amusement. Let's invite 
 the Franklands to dinner.' 
 
 'We'll see.' 
 
 And Eave Lodge slept. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 MAX LAURENCE. 
 
 On Easter-day, a brilliant day, with an 
 east wind and dust, Mrs. Miller and Hel 
 deserted Mr. Exeter's church in the morn- 
 ing for the cathedral at Winterdale. As 
 they came out of it, at the end of the ser- 
 vice, they met two young men, in ulsters 
 and hard round felt hats, with pipes in 
 their mouths. 
 
 One of these was Laurence, the other 
 was Jack. The former asked the latter in 
 an undertone, ' Who is that V as he saw 
 Hel, in a new olive-green costume, looking 
 quietly charming, with that submissive sort 
 
170 WILD ROSE. 
 
 of expression that young ladies wear on 
 Sundays, and slightly flushed with the 
 warm, impure atmosphere of the crowded 
 cathedral, and just in that kitten-like pur- 
 suit of her train which always took place 
 at church doors. 
 
 Jack replied by approaching his relations 
 and saying : 
 
 € Allow me to introduce Mr. Laurence ; 
 — my mother and sister.' 
 
 Max hastily pocketed a hot pipe and 
 took off his hat. Mrs. Miller asked him if 
 his luggage were disposed of, and Jack 
 explained that it had gone on to Eave 
 Lodge, and that they proposed walking 
 home. Mrs. Miller engaged Laurence in 
 a conversation about the weather and his 
 journey, and Jack talked to Hel. 
 
 Max's last remark to Jack had been : 
 
 ' You know, it is an entirely new ex- 
 perience to me to be in an English family 
 residence. I don't know how I shall 
 
MAX LAURENCE. 171 
 
 behave. You must tell me if I commit 
 any solecisms.' 
 
 Jack had replied : 
 
 1 Oh, I think you will find you have not 
 fallen among the Philistines.' 
 
 Max Laurence was just a little puzzled 
 and afraid at first of Mrs. Miller, but 
 soon became comfortable on finding in her 
 the quiet kindness and good-nature of a 
 really good Englishwoman, described in 
 the recognised slang of the age as a ' lady/ 
 To her, Laurence was a rather striking, 
 foreign-looking young man, who spoke 
 directly to the point, and was not em- 
 barrassed, though a little shy. She soon 
 got him to talk about Vienna by observ- 
 ing : 
 
 ' I think you have lived a good deal 
 abroad, have you not, Mr. Laurence V 
 
 ' I am a Hungarian or an Englishman 
 by birth/ replied he, ' whichever you like. 
 My father was English and my mother 
 
172 WILD ROSE. 
 
 Magyar. I was a student for some two or 
 three years in Vienna/ 
 
 Mrs. Miller then talked about Vienna, 
 and society there, and scenery, in a general 
 way. She had been there once for a week, 
 and made excursions into the environs. 
 Scenery Laurence knew a good deal about, 
 and the features of the neighbourhood. 
 Society he knew only by sight and reputa- 
 tion (or the absence of it), but as Mrs. 
 Miller did not know even that much, 
 he was equal to the situation. He 
 said : 
 
 1 You see, a student does not know any 
 society in the English sense, unless he is a 
 prince, or very noble, or very rich, and I 
 was none of these. But I can be a guide- 
 book to you to every cafe, theatre, pro- 
 menade, and music and art curiosity in the 
 place, if you should wish to obtain infor- 
 mation before visiting Vienna again ; but 
 I dare say you know much of this already.' 
 
MAX LAURENCE. 173 
 
 1 1 am afraid not much. And how do 
 you like Oxbridge ? Jack seems very well 
 pleased with it. I should think it 
 must be rather different to you after 
 Vienna.' 
 
 ' I thought so, certainly. At first, the 
 costumes and the ancient character of the 
 place struck and enchanted me. I seemed 
 to have lighted on an island of Middle 
 Age in the midst of a sea of Nineteenth 
 Century. I soon found that the form only 
 was mediaeval, and the spirit modern. 
 Modern, at least, after allowing for in- 
 sular peculiarities of idea and method of 
 study and amusement. There seems still 
 to be a great deal of religious spirit in 
 existence, however, for a modern uni- 
 versity/ 
 
 This was a slip of Max's, as he felt the 
 moment he had said it. He thought : 
 ' How could I say this to a woman just 
 coming 1 out of an English cathedral on a 
 
174 WILD ROSE. 
 
 Sunday !' and waited anxiously for the 
 result. 
 
 'Well, I hope so,' said Mrs. Miller, 
 ' though I am afraid there is none too 
 much of it. I suppose there is very little 
 religion in the German universities V 
 
 i Oh, very little, except in the faculties 
 of theology, it always seemed to me,' re- 
 plied this young philosopher, in a calm and 
 satisfied tone. ' I think,' he added, ' they 
 are at a stage of thought in England 
 which has already been gone through by 
 Germany.' 
 
 Here Mrs. Radford passed with a bow 
 and a sweet smile, and explained to her 
 husband, at lunch, that those Millers had 
 got a queer-looking young man with them ; 
 and that young Miller smoked pipes on 
 Sunday, and close to the cathedral door 
 too ; and that she was so sorry for them, 
 .as she had a real regard for Mrs. Miller. 
 But it was to be expected, when their 
 
MAX LAURENCE. 175 
 
 parish clergyman was a Ritualist, and 
 Dr. Miller was an infidel, or the next 
 thing to it. 
 
 Mrs. Miller talked then of English 
 country life, of which Max knew nothing, 
 and was fully prepared to enjoy, mud and 
 all ; and so conversing, they arrived at 
 Eave Lodge, with which the young 
 stranger was charmed. The Professor 
 welcomed him cordially, and said lunch 
 was waiting. Mrs. Miller said it had been 
 so beautiful out of doors, that they had 
 not liked to hurry through it. Hel went 
 upstairs to take off her ' things.' Jack took 
 charge of his friend, and the Professor 
 stood on the grass outside, looking at the 
 sunshine, which glittered through his long 
 grey hair, and showed every detail of his 
 wrinkled but grand old face. He walked 
 up and down with hands in his pockets. 
 He was still lame, permanently so, it 
 seemed, but not severely. He was dressed 
 
176 WILD ROSE. 
 
 in an old brown suit, which might be called 
 a shooting-suit, if there had been the 
 slightest trace of evidence to show that he 
 had ever shot anything in his life, except a 
 fox that once managed to effect a raid on 
 Hel's chickens when she was a small girl. 
 (Which action, it is hardly necessary to 
 remark, confirmed the county gentry in 
 the opinion that ' that ' Miller w T as a 
 beastly Radical and an Atheist.) 
 
 He was wondering why the pelvic girdle 
 in some fish is anterior to the pectoral, at 
 this moment, and also why an east wind 
 w^as so detrimental to the equanimity of his 
 temper. These questions occupied him 
 until the lunch-bell rang:. Hel fetched 
 him in. 
 
 During the meal they all had an oppor- 
 tunity of studying their guest. Mrs. 
 Miller was relieved to find that he ate 
 with a fork, and did not look surprised 
 when it and his knife were renewed at 
 
MAX LAURENCE. 177 
 
 each course, her notions of German habits 
 and customs being derived from tahles- 
 dliote. She saw in Laurence a well-man- 
 nered, well-informed young man, with a 
 pleasant face, and perhaps slight symptoms 
 of rather advanced ideas, with a quiet, self- 
 convinced decision about most things that 
 he said that sometimes surprised her. 
 
 Hel, of course, noticed his appear- 
 ance first. This was not of a style to 
 which she was accustomed, but im- 
 pressed her favourably, notwithstanding. 
 She saw a pale, well-shaped face with a 
 straight nose (which she described as 
 Grecian subsequently), dark eyes, deeply 
 placed under black eyebrows, a low wide 
 forehead, and quantities of curly wavy 
 black hair, rather longer than the prevail- 
 ing fashion in England permitted. The 
 mouth was a little wide, with good regular 
 white teeth, and surmounted by a small 
 black moustache, scarcely deserving the 
 
 vol. i. 12 
 
178 WILD ROSE. 
 
 name. Then his body, though thin, was 
 well-shaped, and his hands were white, 
 and his fingers long. When he talked 
 she thought he must be very clever, and 
 seemed to know a good deal about places 
 and subjects of which she knew very little. 
 This impressed her with a sense of his 
 superiority. In short, Hel approved of 
 the man instinctively, though she knew 
 very little about him. 
 
 The Professor thought Laurence was a 
 youth with some brains. He drew from 
 him information concerning the present 
 state of learning in Oxbridge, the personal 
 appearance now of this and that professor 
 in Germany whom he had known years 
 ago, and incidentally got scraps of opinion 
 from him on many topics, which made the 
 Professor say to himself : 
 
 ' You'll some day run that good-looking 
 head of yours against the rock of British 
 Philistinism, young man, that Matthew 
 
MAX LAURENCE. 179 
 
 Arnold talks about.' After looking at 
 him, and listening to him a little longer, 
 the Professor mentally added, l But I 
 shouldn't wonder if you made rather a hole 
 in that rock before it crushed you.' 
 
 Laurence, of course, was forming opinions 
 of his entertainers. They ran rather like 
 this (at least, this is how they appeared in 
 a letter of his to a confidential friend) : 
 
 ' Herr Papa. — Professor ; a Scotchman. 
 Almost a " child of light " — eccentric, 
 paternal, and a man I really like. 
 
 'Frau Mamma. — Pleasant, kind, reli 
 gious — not very Philister, as English 
 mothers probably go. 
 
 ' Die Mamsell Scaur. — An English girl, 
 pure and innocent, and moderately well- 
 educated — hold tend schon und rein. Ought 
 to have more Goethe and Heine and 
 Grecism instilled into her, to counterbalance 
 the medievalism of maternal teaching. 
 Religious, certainly, but more plastic 
 
 12—2 
 
180 WILD ROSE. 
 
 mind and younger ideas than mother ; 
 naturally comes of association with the 
 nineteenth-century brother.' 
 
 After lunch, Jack proposed going out of 
 doors to smoke, and asked Hel to come. 
 
 1 Take a plaid, dear,' said Mrs. Miller ; 
 ' you know there is an east wind ' 
 
 Hel obtained a plaid, and set out with 
 her brother and Laurence for the fir-grove. 
 This rendered their tread silent, with its 
 carpet of reddish -brown fir-needles mixed 
 with broken branches and fallen cones. 
 Where the tall, stiff stems of the trees 
 were not covered with rough scaly bark, 
 they were light-red in the sunlight, where 
 it arrived at them through the interstices 
 of the branch-roof. They arrived at the 
 grey wooden five-barred frontier-gate, and 
 stopped and leaned on it, sheltered from 
 the wind. The three found themselves 
 looking westward and north-westward over 
 a far extending valley, with fields near 
 
MAX LAURENCE. 181 
 
 and woods and downs in the distance, 
 looking far-off and still, with the warm 
 spring mist upon them. Church-bells and 
 sheep-bells were mingling together in the 
 distance, calling their several flocks, as 
 Jack irreverently remarked. 
 
 I Let us stay here awhile,' said he, 
 immediately after this, f and talk of some- 
 thing sensible, and take in the scenery.' 
 
 I I am not surprised,' said Laurence, 
 after a long look at the prospect, c that 
 England has produced nature-poets like 
 Shelley and Keats. And this is all so 
 English. Except these fir-trees. They 
 carry one to Germany, in the mind, quicker 
 than the magic cloak of Mephistopheles. 
 Have you been in Germany, Miss Miller V 
 
 1 1 have been up the Rhine once. It 
 was beautiful. , 
 
 ' Did you read the Rhine stories and 
 the " Nibelungen Lied" then % That was 
 the time to do it.' 
 
182 WILD ROSE. 
 
 ' I am afraid my German was not good 
 enough; and we had so many things to 
 think about that we hadn't time to think 
 at all.' 
 
 ' We thought of time-tables, tariffs, and 
 tables-dliote I believe principally/ said 
 Jack. 
 
 ' You read German, however, now V 
 asked Laurence of Hel. 
 
 1 Yes ; but I haven't read much. I 
 read with a governess at first, and she 
 didn't select the nicest pieces, I fancy. 
 I don't suppose the " Thirty Years' War " 
 is exactly the most interesting thing to a 
 girl that Schiller ever wrote, and I had 
 to read it. It took so long — almost as 
 long as the war, I think — that I haven't 
 had time to do much else but recover 
 from it since.' 
 
 < Goethe V 
 
 'The "Erl-Konig," set to the piano. 
 The rest was pronounced beyond my — that 
 
MAX LAURENCE. 183 
 
 is, the governess's — powers of appreciation, 
 and often of doubtful moral tendencies.' 
 
 ' Hel's governess,' said Jack, ' divided 
 German authors into two great classes — 
 the proper and the improper. Under the 
 first head came the " Thirty Years' War," 
 and the " Tragedy of Wallenstein ;" under 
 the second, the rest of Teutonic literature.' 
 
 ' Now that you are emancipated,' went 
 on Max to Hel ; ' will you not begin upon 
 a new ground — on that of freedom of 
 choice, guided by taste V 
 
 1 I should like to ; but I haven't got 
 any taste. It is all unknown country to 
 me. Where ought I to begin V 
 
 1 Tf I might presume to advise, I should 
 say begin with Goethe's short songs and 
 poems. To me they convey the whole 
 beauty and art of Goethe, in his interpreta- 
 tion of life and nature, in a particularly 
 attractive way. With that, " Dichtung 
 und Wahrheit " as his best prose. Later, 
 
184 WILD ROSE. 
 
 when you have lived a little longer, you 
 will read Heine. You will not so much 
 care for him yet. He is Goethe's suc- 
 cessor in literature.' 
 
 ' I dare say I will begin soon,' replied 
 Hel. ' I think papa has Goethe's and 
 Schiller's works.' 
 
 ' Probably. You have perhaps many 
 things to do in the household which occupy 
 your time, however % In Germany young 
 ladies do not have too much time to give 
 to literature.' 
 
 ' I have been decorating the church a 
 good deal lately. It has occupied me 
 nearly all the morning and all the after- 
 noon for several days. You see, there 
 were so few people to do it. We would 
 have made you help if you had been 
 there.' 
 
 6 Decorate the church ? What for V 
 asked this young heathen. 
 
 Hel's turn to instruct now came. 
 
MAX LAURENCE. 185 
 
 ' This is Easter Day, you know/ she 
 exp]ained gently, as one breaking some 
 rather startling tidings to an unprepared 
 person.' 
 
 ' And you decorate your church at 
 Easter ? How is it done ? Might I 
 see it V 
 
 1 Yes ; you can come this afternoon, if 
 you like, when the service is over. We 
 collect flowers and evergreens, make 
 wreaths, bouquets and crosses, and arrange 
 them about the church. Jack is made to 
 go up very high ladders, to put up what 
 we can't reach. Have you never been 
 to an English church at Easter, Mr. 
 Laurence V asked she suddenly, w 7 ith an 
 inexplicable feeling of sympathy for what 
 was to her a strange and foreign variety 
 of indefinitely dreadful outer darkness. 
 
 ' I do not remember any such occasion,' 
 replied he. 
 
 ' Don't they decorate your chapels at 
 
186 WILD ROSE. 
 
 Oxbridge ? I should think it would be a 
 nice occupation for you.' 
 
 1 1 am afraid it is not seen in that light 
 at Oxbridge. I believe it is not usual fco 
 decorate college chapels ; but I cannot say 
 for certain what deans, in their poetic and 
 vacation moments, may be capable of 
 doing. I seldom enter them myself.' 
 
 c Will you come to church with us 
 some day, here V asked Hel. 
 
 Max was in a dilemma. Pure reason 
 within him said : ' Going to church is a 
 performance which you must admit to be 
 idiotic, and therefore unnecessary. It is 
 only to encourage the old, dark, dead 
 creeds into galvanic life. You cannot 
 possibly gain aught by such a proceeding.' 
 
 He listened to pure reason for a moment, 
 and then looked at Hel's eyes. They 
 looked anxious, interested, and blue. 
 There is nothing in pure reason that tells 
 why one will obey eyes like these, and 
 
MAX LAURENCE. 187 
 
 disobey if they be reddish, with white 
 lashes and red lids. The result of 
 the conflict was what it always has been 
 when antagonism has existed between 
 a girl's eyes and pure reason on a young 
 mans mind. Pure reason was invited to 
 go to the devil. Laurence's reply was : 
 
 ' Will you read Goethe V 
 
 ' Yes ; if you will make it a bargain.' 
 
 ' Very well, I am ready to come to 
 church. We will see which wins.' He 
 thought to himself, ' church or Goethe.' 
 
 1 Shall we go to-night V said Jack. ' No 
 one but ourselves will be going from the 
 house, and we shall be able to do comfort- 
 ably, and have a moonlight evening to 
 look at.' 
 
 ' You must not miss this fir-grove by 
 moonlight, Mr. Laurence,' said Hel. ' It 
 will be still more like Germany then.' 
 
 ' I wasn't aware that Germany lay under 
 a perpetual moonlight,' said Jack. 
 
18S WILD fiOSE. 
 
 1 It is said to be the mother-land of 
 moonshine/ observed Max. ' Read Hegel, 
 and you will be convinced.' 
 
 Maximilian Laurence and Helen Miller 
 — each was a new experience to the other, 
 and likely to be such continually, in conse- 
 quence of some newly apparent quality or 
 feature in either, which only appeared 
 when summoned by occasion. 
 
 He was so entirely different to all the 
 young men she had known, who were 
 principally young officers in regiments 
 stationed at Winterdale, and curates. The 
 fact that it was almost exclusively tot hes e 
 that he was compared and contrasted was 
 naturally much to Laurence's advantage. 
 
 He had brought new elements into con- 
 versation, which was always a relief at 
 Winterdale, where the barometer (known 
 of course as the ' glass '), and approaching 
 or past dances, and remarks about the 
 peculiarities of appearance and conduct of 
 
MAX LAURENCE. 189 
 
 one's neighbours, were the prevailing in- 
 gredients of social intercourse. He ap- 
 peared to Hel as one a long way above 
 her in the intellectual world, and a person 
 of some condescension to talk to her about 
 Rhine stories and church decorations, 
 when he nnVht have talked to the Pro- 
 fessor, or even Jack, about bones, or 
 Hegel, or something more congenial to his 
 mental tastes, and more on his intellectual 
 level. 
 
 She still held to the doctrine of the 
 omniscience of papa in matters philosophic, 
 having had no opportunity of exercising 
 the critical faculty, from want of know- 
 ledge of the subjects. Jack she thought 
 clever, but a little too conscious of it, and 
 a little too fond of what he called ' sitting 
 on ' other people who were unfortunate 
 enough to differ from him in opinion ; but, 
 nevertheless, more fit than herself to con- 
 verse with one like the young Anglo- 
 
190 WILD ROSE. 
 
 Magyar. The fact that the latter had a 
 good-looking, as well as an intelligent face, 
 probably had, after all, some undefined in- 
 fluence in his favour. Then came that 
 sense of pity for one evidently ' brought 
 up ' without any religion. Hel had no doubt 
 he would be religious if it was only ex- 
 plained to him and put before him in an 
 attractive form. She had unconsciously 
 put before him religion in what he tempo- 
 rarily thought its most attractive form — 
 herself. She hoped, however, by the 
 seductions of Easter decoration, and Mr. 
 Exeter's persuasive harangues (and her 
 own influence, perhaps, a little), to effect a 
 conversion. Elle nest pas la 'premiere. 
 
 Laurence was almost for the first time 
 brought into the society of a pure and in- 
 nocent, and, one may add, a High Church, 
 girl. The circumstances of his birth had 
 excluded him from society in Vienna, and 
 the opportunity of associating with English 
 
MAX LAURENCE. 191 
 
 ladies had never before been given to him 
 — at any rate, not for more than half an 
 hour at some garden-party at Oxbridge. 
 He was totally unaccustomed to making 
 conversation for the benefit of this special 
 form of audience, and thus talked in some 
 fashion as he might to another man, 
 which made a much better impression, in 
 all likelihood, than any attempt at choos- 
 ing topics presumably suitable to the tastes 
 and comprehension of a ' young lady.' Of 
 women he had known a good number, but 
 they were certainly neither religious, nor, 
 in the usually accepted senses of the words, 
 pure and innocent. Her religion interested 
 and amused him, and her little efforts at 
 conversation were flattering, as betraying a 
 sympathy for his condition. 
 
 They wandered along the sides of fields, 
 under the shades of tall hedges, talking of 
 everything under the sun, Laurence talk- 
 ing experiences of walking tours in the 
 
192 WILD ROSE. 
 
 more beautiful parts of Germany and 
 Austria, of mountain inns, and moun- 
 taineer and huntsman innkeepers, of 
 students sitting together in crowds, on the 
 green glades of the Thiiringer Wald, among 
 the fir-trees, round wooden tables with huge 
 hrugs of beer, and long pipes, singing a 
 chorus of farewell to the departing sun, 
 and shouting out their freedom and youth 
 and love to the listening starlight. Also 
 perhaps to the listening village girls, if 
 any. Then he talked of the Harz and 
 of the districts of Schirke and Elend, 
 where he had wandered with a friend the 
 whole night on the first of May, one year, 
 and described the appearance of the place, 
 and told the story of the Walpurgisnacht. 
 Jack made remarks now and then, 
 but w r as rather silent. Hel was much 
 interested. German student life was some- 
 thing distant, mediaeval and romantic to 
 her, knowing it only by scraps of allusion 
 
MAX LAURENCE. 193 
 
 in novels, songs, and her father's occasional 
 anecdotes. Legends too, had a great 
 fascination for her, especially if well told ; 
 and Max's were always lucidly and grace- 
 fully told, with occasional interruption 
 from that dreadful realist Jack, who brought 
 down upon everything his irresistible sense 
 of the ridiculous. 
 
 So much time passed in this way that 
 the conversation was interrupted by a 
 sound in the distance, which at first was 
 mistaken for one of the numerous sheep- 
 bells, but which was found on nearer in- 
 vestigation to be produced by the Pro- 
 fessor, who was standing on the lawn, 
 swinging the domestic tocsin, with some 
 vigour, to announce to straying members 
 of the household that the season of after- 
 noon tea was come. Hel, Max and 
 Jack walked into the drawing-room, to 
 find there Mrs. Radford. Jack shook 
 hands with a well simulated appearance 
 vol. i. 13 
 
194 WILD ROSE. 
 
 of intense joy and cordiality, and ' Mr. 
 Laurence' was introduced. 
 
 Mrs. Radford had several serious reasons 
 for calling, on this particular afternoon. 
 The principal was curiosity, to know some- 
 thing about the new young man. She 
 participated in the very laudable desire for 
 news, which was such a distinctive feature 
 among the later Athenians, but did not 
 possess that reverence for accuracy of 
 detail, without which, the possession of 
 new information, however desirable a thing 
 in itself, may become not only a snare to 
 the possessor, but a bane to society at 
 large. In other words, Mrs. Hadford 
 delighted in accumulating hypotheses about 
 her neighbours, and distributing them as 
 facts. This sort of person is called a 
 gossip by the vulgar and those of low 
 culture. A liar by the very vulgar, and 
 the utterly destitute of culture. 
 
 The Professor treated her with the 
 
MAX LAURENCE. 195 
 
 critical courtesy which is usually extended 
 to the circulators of myth in ancient litera- 
 ture, observing that she had an irresistible 
 sense of the value and charm of allegory 
 and fable, as tending to impart moral 
 lessons. Mrs. Miller, with her all pervad- 
 ing amiability, said she was a really good 
 and pious woman, though a little narrow- 
 minded ; Jack, in heated moments, alluded 
 to her as ' that frightful old cat, Sapphir.i 
 Radford ;' Hel had always instinctively 
 disliked her because she insisted from the 
 earliest day of acquaintance on kissing 
 that 'dear, pretty, creature,' (meaning her, 
 Hel). 
 
 Of course Mrs. Radford wished to know 
 who this young man was, staying appa- 
 rently with the Millers. He was intro- 
 duced to her as Mr. Maximilian Laurence. 
 This gave very little information. She 
 asked in a momentary lull of discourse if 
 he had recently arrived from abroad — with 
 
 13-2 
 
196 WILD ROSE. 
 
 the idea of a nobleman or prince in dis- 
 guise or exile flitting through her head. 
 Max replied in excellent English that he 
 had just arrived from Oxbridge, thus leav- 
 ing his nature and antecedents still a matter 
 of speculation. Mrs. Kadford gave him up 
 for the present, and turned to other topics. 
 
 ' Have you called on those Franklands, 
 Mrs. Miller V she inquired. ' I have not 
 yet, though every one seems to.' 
 
 ' Mrs. Frankland came with a letter of 
 introduction from my sister in Paris, so I 
 have naturally called/ 
 
 1 Ah ! then you can perhaps tell me, 
 which no one seems to know, who is Mrs. 
 Frankland ? I know they are American, 
 and they seem to like her ; but that is 
 about the extent of my information.' (Mrs. 
 Had ford was one of those people who 
 always use an ambiguous mixture of pro- 
 nouns.) 
 
 ' Colonel Frankland was attached to the 
 
MAX LAURENCE. 197 
 
 American Legation in Paris before he 
 died for some time. I do not know Mrs. 
 Frankland very well yet ; but I think she 
 is very nice, and I think ladylike, though 
 Americans are rather different from us in 
 some things.' 
 
 Jack listened hard. ■ He had intended 
 to ask who these new people were who 
 had arrived while he was up at Oxbridge. 
 
 1 Yes, to be sure. I have seen very 
 few, but they seem to have such strange 
 ways of looking at some things. And 
 the girl, now do you know, is she Miss 
 Frankland ? — for, if so, she is very unlike 
 her mother ! People say all sorts of 
 things about her here, but I daresay with- 
 out foundation. My servants have it that 
 she was picked up in Paris, during the 
 war, by Mrs. Frankland, and that she was 
 seen carrying a flag amongst the Com- 
 munists and all sorts of things, but one 
 can't believe these things. I make it a 
 
198 WILD ROSE. 
 
 rule never to believe gossip. I always 
 tell my servants not to repeat things they 
 hear in this way.' 
 
 The Professor chuckled grimly, and 
 said : 
 
 ' The young lady speaks very good 
 American for a Parisian " petroleuse," and 
 I clo not know that there were any of that 
 profession at the age of about thirteen, as 
 she must have been at the time.' 
 
 1 I think I can explain/ said Mrs. Miller. 
 ' She is Mrs. Frankland s niece, daughter 
 of her brother, Dr. Taylor, who lived in 
 Paris.' 
 
 ' Oh, indeed !' replied Mrs. Eadford, 
 apparently rather offended at the discovery 
 of Miss Taylor s comparatively res]:>ectable 
 origin. ' Well,' added she, ' I think we 
 will call. Dear Arthur has been urging me 
 to do so for some time ; and he generally 
 has the right opinion after all, dear boy. 
 I depend a good deal on him for advice. 
 
MAX LAURENCE. 199 
 
 He is going up for his examination next 
 month. Mr. Croker, his tutor, says he is 
 not certain of his passing ; but I know my 
 boy best, and I have every confidence in 
 him.' 
 
 Jack tried to remain perfectly grave. 
 He was quite aware, as were most other 
 people and Croker in particular, that 'Dear 
 Arthur' was about us nearly an idiot as a 
 legally sane person could be, and that 
 Mrs. Radford always contrived, as she had 
 in this case, to brin^ him into conversa- 
 tion, however inapropos he might at the 
 moment be, and to dwell upon him for the 
 rest of her visit. This aim Jack endea- 
 voured to defeat, by asking if she had 
 been to church that morning. She replied : 
 
 ' I was at the cathedral ; but that is a 
 question I might ask you, Master Jack. 
 Were you at church V 
 
 Jack hated being called ' Master Jack' 
 by Mrs. Radford. He subsequently said : 
 
200 WILD ROSE. 
 
 ' I don't see why an old beast like 
 that should presume that, because she 
 has known you from infancy, she may say 
 any stupid impertinence she pleases on 
 that account. It's not the least funny, 
 and very ineffective, if she thinks it is 
 going to rouse my temper/ 
 
 This was exactly what it did. Jack replied 
 at this moment, in a matter of course, 
 cheerful tone, which he trusted would 
 irritate his interlocutrix : 
 
 ' Oh no ; I seldom go.' 
 
 Mrs. Radford became serious and said : 
 
 1 Don't you think that is rather a bad 
 preparation for that Sabbath which we are 
 told will be eternal V 
 
 ' But we aren't told it will be an English 
 Sabbath, or that the whole week will be 
 spent in a cathedral, listening to the ser- 
 mons of bishops, the reading of canons, 
 and the singing of choirs in rhythmical 
 monotony.' 
 
MAX LAURENCE. 201 
 
 Mrs. Miller saw a storm was brewing, 
 and said : 
 
 ' Don't be silly, Jack ;' and then rapidly, 
 to prevent Mrs. Radford's crushing rejoin- 
 der : ' Let me give you another cup of tea V 
 
 ' Thank you ; I will take just one cup 
 more.' 
 
 Max was talking to Hel quietly, and 
 being told that afternoon tea was a usual 
 meal in English families, and telling her 
 how German families took meals. Hel felt 
 slightly uncomfortable from the conscious- 
 ness that Mrs. Radford had an eye upon 
 her, and would talk about her in associa- 
 tion with Laurence. This made her defi- 
 antly confidential and attentive to him, 
 from a mere feeling of irritation. 
 
 It was a long time before the elimination 
 of Mrs. Radford could be effected. She 
 had a petition to the Home Secretary 
 advising him, as he valued his position and 
 the stability of the Cabinet, to at once 
 
'202 WILD ROSE. 
 
 suppress entirely what the document some- 
 what tautologically described as the vivi- 
 section of live animals. This was to be 
 signed by women on]y she explained. 
 
 1 Don't you allow children to sign it V 
 asked the Professor. 
 
 i Oh, I don't suppose the poor dear dogs 
 and things will get much sympathy from 
 you, Dr. Miller! But I thought Mrs 
 Miller and Miss Miller, and some of your 
 servants might have a little more feeling 
 There is a pamphlet, Mrs. Miller, that 
 ought to go with the petition ; it has illus- 
 trations, which ought to convince anyone 
 who hesitated to sign.' And she handed 
 all the documents, which resided tempora- 
 rily in her black reticule, to Mrs. Miller 
 for inspection. 
 
 They certainly ought, as Mrs. Radford 
 remarked, to have convinced any wavering 
 sympathiser with the oppressed animal 
 kingdom. 
 
MAX LAURENCE. 203 
 
 The doctor looked over his wife's shoulder 
 at the heart-rending scenes of torture de- 
 picted, with a pleased smile, and remarked: 
 
 ' I cannot help sympathising with the 
 Romans, in their passion for gladiatorial 
 shows. I am sure there is a subtle, strong, 
 and strange charm in actual cruelty for 
 cruelty's sake. I think I should like to 
 have been a Spanish inquisitor. The only 
 real gratification left to us, which you 
 would take away, is the torture of animals, 
 whether by physiologists or farmers, or 
 fox-hunters. We shall soon only be able 
 to gratify our tastes pictorially by the 
 assistance of Gustave Dore and the Police 
 News! 
 
 Mrs. Miller trembled at this speech, and 
 the transformations and developments 
 which experience led her to foresee it 
 would undergo, under the able and 
 practised guidance of Mrs. Radford's 
 tongue. Mrs. Miller respected public 
 
204: WILD ROSE. 
 
 opinion, in matters not precisely what she 
 would call l of conscience.' Her husband 
 did not, and amused himself in giving Mrs. 
 Radford, who had a faint but irritating sus- 
 picion that she was being made fun of, 
 opportunities of describing him in glowing 
 Satanic colours, to the rather extensive 
 circle of her acquaintance. 
 
 Jack simply looked the superb contempt 
 which propriety prevented him from ex- 
 pressing otherwise than guardedly. Laura 
 was being shown roses by Hel, and talking 
 about them. 
 
 Mrs. Radford got up to go, after the 
 doctor's startling remarks, anent the inqui- 
 sition, looking rather warm — a phenomenon 
 for which the tea and the east wind were 
 perhaps responsible. Having ceremoniously 
 conducted her to the door, and carefully 
 shut it, Jack returned, performing a sort of 
 cancan diabolique intended to express super- 
 abundant joy, and generally relieve his 
 
MAX LAURENCE. 205 
 
 mind from the oppression and irritation 
 under which it usuallv suffered, in the 
 presence of their departing visitor. Hel 
 made an onslaught on the piano, forgetful 
 of the day, and began a vivacious mazurka. 
 
 Mrs. Miller mildly said : ' Hush, dear/ 
 
 Hel revolved on the stool and said : 
 
 ' You must not suppose, Mr. Laurence, 
 that all our friends are like that.' 
 
 ' I think this lady was rather interesting,' 
 he replied with a faint laugh. 
 
 ' That's what I thought once, by Jove P 
 said Jack. ' It's wonderful how time tires 
 us of things. What rather fetched me was 
 her extreme curiosity to have details as to 
 your individuality, Max. I am rather 
 sorry I didn't give her some.' 
 
 ' I am not.' 
 
 ' How do you young people propose to 
 amuse yourselves this evening V asked the 
 doctor. 
 
 ' By going to church, I believe,' £aid 
 
206 WILD ROSE. 
 
 Jack, ' for the edification of Max's Pagan 
 mind. By the way, Hel, you had better 
 go and get ready, as your pleasing sex 
 generally takes some time to do so. Put 
 that fur thing on your shoulders — it will 
 be cold coming back, and we shall have 
 a tendency to loiter and look at the moon, 
 and smoke pipes, I know.' 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 WHAT JACK SAW IN CHURCH. 
 
 ' Oh, she doth teach the torches to burn bright !' 
 
 The evening saw Hel, Max, and Jack on 
 their way to church. They went out of 
 the firgrove by the gate, along a field path, 
 and through a long lane lined with larches 
 on either hand, through whose delicate 
 lace-like foliage the evening gold was 
 glimmering. It was now April, and the 
 sun had contracted the habit of setting 
 somewhere between six and seven. Rooks 
 were flying home, cawing with the ob- 
 trusive loudness and pertinacity which 
 those birds usually affect, under the im- 
 
208 WILD ROSE. 
 
 pression, apparently, that it is vitally- 
 important to make their conversation as 
 public as possible. Several villagers were 
 walking leisurely to church, in the pictur- 
 esque Sunday garb of the British peasant, 
 so suited to the sort of Sabbath he usually 
 spends, consisting of very shiny black 
 clothes, a tall hat, and a thick umbrella 
 with a thin cane stalk, with a weak looking 
 hooked handle. Jack, Hel, and Max 
 walked in a row. Hel in the middle, 
 listening to the mixture of sounds filling 
 the air — cawings of rooks, singing of larks, 
 and chimes of churches resounding faintly 
 through the still evening air, all the way 
 from Winterdale, to which the small 
 edifice over which Mr. Exeter presided, 
 replied with a rather weak, though de- 
 termined and defiant tinkle. 
 
 Hel looked very pretty, with the green 
 boughs above her, and the grass grown 
 ground at her feet, with spots and flashes 
 
WHAT JACK SAW IN CHURCH. 209 
 
 and strokes of yellow horizontal sunlight 
 on her at intervals. She wore a black fur 
 tippet, which sat well on her rather square 
 shoulders, and harmonised pleasingly with 
 the dark green dress she wore, whose 
 train she bore in one hand, the other 
 being, of course, occupied with a prayer- 
 book. 
 
 Her face wore a rather happy ex- 
 pression. Why not ? Was she not guid- 
 ing the pale and handsome world-tired 
 young heathen by her side into the ways 
 of righteousness and the paths of peace ? 
 Though it must be acknowledged that she 
 was listening with interest to a story from 
 him at this moment of how the heroes of 
 the Nibelungen-Lied rode to rescue Kriern- 
 hilde, and how they accomplished their 
 task by miscellaneous and abundant slaugh- 
 ter, giving a ground for the minstrels to 
 construct the great epic of their death. 
 All this was enchanting, no doubt, but 
 vol. i. 14 
 
210 WILD ROSE. 
 
 scarcely a good preliminary for an Easter 
 evening service. 
 
 Laurence now felt himself quite at home 
 with Hel, and had lost his embarrassing 
 fear of saying that which he ought not, 
 finding it quite easy to converse with 
 an intelligent young English girl, even 
 when she lay under the disadvantages of 
 comparative innocence and a sweet and 
 amiable superstition. 
 
 Jack was knocking the vegetation about 
 viciously with an ash stick, and wondering 
 what had come over Max, to make him 
 loiter off to church in this lamb-like manner, 
 as a way of spending the best part of the 
 evening. 
 
 It scarcely occurred to him that Hel, 
 although his own sister, was not Max's 
 sister. 
 
 ' Don't suppose you will find the temp- 
 tation sufficient to make you repeat the 
 performance,' he observed ; ' old Exeter 
 
WHAT JACK SAW IN CHURCH. 211 
 
 will be about up to' his usual form, I sup- 
 pose, and launch out long paragraphs on 
 the inimitable virtues of the early Fathers, 
 and the by no means inimitable vices of 
 modern sons.' 
 
 1 Which to you, Jack, will of course be 
 painfully personal,' said Hel, laughing. 
 
 1 It think it is a pity,' went on Jack, 
 ' that some of those later Roman emperors 
 did not carry out the principle of perse- 
 cution more widely and systematically, and 
 thus have taken away from sensible young 
 men like St. Augustine the opportunity of 
 degenerating in later life into " Fathers," 
 and flooding the world with their unin- 
 teresting opinions.' 
 
 ' They have their revenge now,' said 
 Max ; ' the latter-day heathen, that once 
 were the stronger party, have to listen 
 patiently to quotations from the men 
 whom their spiritual ancestors would have 
 suppressed promptly with pitch, straw and 
 
 14—2 
 
212 WILD ROSE. 
 
 sulphur, or any other of those devices that 
 their talented minds were so rich in/ 
 
 ' It was Nero, wasn't it/ said Hel, ' that 
 used to burn people with straw and sul- 
 phur V 
 
 ' I believe so/ replied Max. ' He was 
 not a lovable character, though some were 
 of the contrary opinion at the time.' 
 
 1 Still, there is something rather mag- 
 nificent, though no doubt horrible, about 
 him,' said Jack. i I can easily imagine the 
 ladies of the period to have all had a sort 
 of sneaking admiration for Nero, uttered 
 or unexpressed — principally the latter.' 
 
 ' Here we are at church,' said Hel ; 
 ' Perhaps we shall hear some more about 
 it.' 
 
 ' Take a farewell look at the sunlight !' 
 exclaimed Jack, as he removed his hat. 
 
 ' Hullo, Miller !' said a voice in the porch. 
 ' Didn't know you went in for church.' 
 
 Jack turned round and observed the 
 
WHAT JACK SAW IN CHURCH. 213 
 
 solid form and brick-coloured face of young 
 Radford, who has been already partially 
 alluded to under the title of ' dear 
 Arthur.' 
 
 1 Well, I don't go in for it as a rule, but 
 I am going in to it now. How are you ? 
 How's the General V 
 
 I Oh, I'm all right, so is the governor. 
 Croker is going to preach to-night, so I 
 thought he'd like me to come.' Generous 
 young man, to sacrifice yourself to please 
 your poor hard-working curate-coach ! 
 Artful young man, to apologise and 
 invent a motive for your presence ! 
 
 I I am sure Croker will consider it a 
 graceful attention,' said Jack, as he followed 
 his sister into the church. ' By Jove !' 
 whispered he to young Radford, 'who is 
 that V 
 
 1 Who ? Where V replied he, in a very 
 audible tone, with the true tact of British 
 youth, ' Oh ! that's those American 
 
214 WILD ROSE. 
 
 people, I believe/ he added, in a tone of 
 uninterested uncertainty. 
 
 ' I see,' said Jack, as they walked up the 
 aisle. * Well, I must go to my stall. See 
 you between the acts. Hope you'll enjoy 
 Croker's discourse.' 
 
 ' What the devil brings Jack Miller 
 and that other fellow here ? I wonder 
 who the other fellow is. Some beastly 
 clever London fellow, I suppose — intellect 
 and all that !' were Mr. Arthur Radford's 
 reflections, as he found a seat whence he 
 could see ' those American people,' of 
 whose identity he had just expressed a 
 careless uncertainty. 
 
 It is perhaps almost superfluous to re- 
 mark that they were what brought him to 
 church, and that a desire to have his mind 
 improved by the Rev. Chrysostom Croker 
 was but a flimsy veil to conceal a deeper- 
 rooted and more sentimental motive. 
 
 When Jack inquired ' Who is that V in 
 
WHAT JACK SAW IN CHURCH. 215 
 
 a surprised tone, ' that ' referred to a 
 young girl, sitting beside a lady not pre- 
 cisely young, but scarcely old enough to be 
 the parent of her seventeen-year-old com- 
 panion. The older lady was Mrs. Frank- 
 land, relict of the late Colonel Frankland, 
 U.S.A., and was one of those graceful, 
 faded American women, of whom there 
 are so many, well-dressed, and possessing 
 marvellously minute hands and feet and 
 ears, and pretty fair hair, and having gene- 
 rally a rather foreign style and get-up. The 
 younger, Jack's 'that,' was a pale com- 
 plexioned girl, with clear brown eyes 
 with a slight brown tinge on the skin 
 round them, thin black eyebrows, and a 
 very pretty, rather ' decided ' face, wear- 
 ing, it must be remarked, rather a sulky 
 expression. Although evidently very 
 young, she was ' grown up,' and dressed 
 accordingly in a closely fitting dress of 
 black cashmere, and the only symptom of 
 
216 WILD ROSE. 
 
 juvenility about her was the fact that her 
 curly black-brown hair was allowed to re- 
 main on her back, in the shape of a sort of 
 half-open fan, being tied in at the back of 
 her small sun-burnt neck with a piece of 
 crimson ribbon. 
 
 She had taken off a long pair of black 
 gloves, and was employing a pair of small 
 tawny hands in abstracting bon-bons from 
 a box which lay on the book-shelf in front 
 of her. Jack called Max's attention to her, 
 who looked at her awhile, and then said : 
 
 < Half kitten and half snake. " Hilt' 
 dich, mein Freund, vor grimmen Teufels 
 Fratzen. Doch schlimmer sind die sanften 
 Engelsfratzchen." ' 
 
 This was Kosa. 
 
 Mr. Croker's sermon may have been 
 distinctly edifying, and may have con- 
 tained new facts, new ideas, and new 
 opinions of the greatest solemnity and 
 significance, though it is highly probable, 
 
WHAT JACK SAW IN CHURCH. 217 
 
 judging from precedent, that it was nothing 
 of the sort. Either way, it was entirely 
 thrown away upon Jack, as well as on 
 Mr. Arthur Radford, in spite of its having 
 been the ostensible inducement to the 
 latter to come to church ; for neither of 
 them had the slightest idea what it had 
 been about when they came out. Jack 
 said to Hel, as soon as they got outside 
 the door : 
 
 ' They are coming to dine with us, I 
 think some one said, aren't they V 
 
 ' Who % Oh yes ! Those American 
 people. To-morrow. You noticed them 
 in church, I suppose V 
 
 * Yes. " Dear Arthur " called my atten- 
 tion to them. I suppose he is awfully 
 gone on the girl — Miss Frankland V 
 
 1 Miss Taylor. I really don't know, 
 I can't say that I feel much interest in his 
 attachments. I shouldn't wonder if you 
 were " awfully gone " on her yourself soon/ 
 
218 WILD ROSE. 
 
 1 What a charming sunset it is !' observed 
 Jack in reply. 
 
 Tt was. It consisted of a glowing golden 
 ground, cross streaked by numerous 
 narrow nebulous grey and purple bars of 
 many shades and shapes, finding their way 
 into the south-western blue, on the one 
 side, and the northern leaden grey on the 
 other. Laurence was gazing abstractedly 
 into it, looking apparently for something he 
 had lost there. He was suddenly brought 
 back again to earth by a question from Hel. 
 
 * Mr. Laurence !' 
 
 ■ Fraulein V 
 
 1 How did you like the service V 
 
 ' That is a difficult question to entirely 
 answer. I have not been able to com- 
 pletely analyse my opinions and reduce 
 them to intelligibility, or to separate the 
 accidental from the essential features of 
 the entertainment, as it is one to which I 
 am not accustomed.' 
 
WHAT JACK SAW IN CHURCH. 219 
 
 ' But why do you call it an entertain- 
 ment ?' 
 
 ' I certainly should not find it one if I 
 went often, I think. For once, and that 
 for the first time, I did think it rather 
 amusing. But the decorations were ex- 
 ceedingly tasteful and charming, espe- 
 cially those in the neighbourhood of the 
 orchestra/ 
 
 ' Choir, please. Mr. Laurence, this is 
 perfectly shocking/ 
 
 His remark was satisfactory in one sense, 
 though not in another. 
 
 Though Hel regretted the lack of 
 impression the service and poor Croker s 
 sermon had made on Max — and unfor- 
 tunately, on this occasion, on herself — she 
 was pleased by his praise of the ' orchestra' 
 decorations, being naturally unaware that 
 he had carefully ascertained from Jack 
 what share she had herself taken in the 
 adorning of the church. 
 
220 WILD ROSE. 
 
 ' I am afraid it is/ replied he ; 'I 
 certainly feel more moved by that sky 
 than anything I have heard this evening 
 in the church.' 
 
 1 A sky like that/ said Jack, ' always 
 makes me despair of ever being able to 
 paint.' 
 
 ' It is wonderful how intimately asso- 
 ciated with the joy and sorrow of one's 
 life the sky becomes/ observed Laurence. 
 
 1 You speak as if you had known 
 both V 
 
 ( I have had a little of both. I have 
 often sought the one — I have often found 
 the other. Do you know the lines of the 
 song — 
 
 1 " Man schafft so gem nach Sorg' und Miih', 
 Sucht Dornen auf, und findet sie " V 
 
 ' Oh yes ! It always seemed to me that 
 most of those German songs were very 
 sentimental and unreal, though they have 
 very pretty tunes, it is true.' 
 
WHAT JACK SAW IN CHURCH. 221 
 
 ' You find that % I congratulate you. 
 Many of us find them only too real/ 
 
 1 Do you ever write songs V asked Hel 
 suddenly, while Jack was staying behind to 
 light a pipe. 
 
 Max looked into her blue eyes, with 
 their interested expression of inquiry, and 
 said : 
 
 ' Sometimes.' 
 
 ' Are they visible to the public V 
 
 ' They are. They exist in print on a 
 remote bookseller's shelves in London, 
 and thence they disappear very slowly. I 
 fancy you would call them sentimental and 
 unreal, and they have not the compensating 
 advantage of tunes.' 
 
 'You must give me an opportunity of 
 judging for myself.' 
 
 < Thank you, I will.' 
 
 Jack's prediction concerning the proba- 
 bility of the evening being spent in loiter- 
 ing and smoking was distinctly fulfilled. 
 
222 WILD ROSE. 
 
 Hel suggested of her own accord that 
 they should go for a short walk. Max ' 
 said he should like to see the country 
 under the evening light. So they walked 
 over fields, and alongside hedges, and under 
 trees, listening for nightingales, which were 
 to be heard in large numbers at this time 
 of the year, and talking of various things, 
 Laurence being the principal speaker, as 
 Hel had more interest in listening, and 
 had not quite so much to say, and not 
 quite as large an experience to extract 
 illustrations from. Jack pulled away 
 silently at a pipe, which gave out a 
 gurgling sound at every suck, and had 
 small beady drops of liquid matter on the 
 outside. Hel said it was a horrid thing. 
 Jack retorted that it was ' Fine !' Jack 
 was not communicative. At last he in- 
 quired : 
 
 1 Who is coming to dinner to-morrow 
 besides these Americans V 
 
WHAT JACK SAW IN CHURCH. 223 
 
 ' Mr. Exeter/ 
 
 1 Ah, of course ! I might have guessed 
 that. I wonder if we could give a dinner, 
 if we tried, without asking him ? Not 
 that he lends any lustre to the entertain- 
 ment.' 
 
 1 He is a very good man.' 
 
 1 Possibly. But he is not amusing, 
 except in the pulpit.' 
 
 'Well, it is not the whole duty of a 
 rector to amuse you.' 
 
 ' Hang the rector ! What is the 
 " front name " of that little American 
 girl V 
 
 ' I don't know. You had better ask her 
 to-morrow.' 
 
 * I will.' 
 
 1 Your brother seems very much struck 
 with this young lady,' observed Max. 
 
 * Oh, he always is with every new face 
 he sees.' 
 
 ' I wonder a girl of your pious up-bring- 
 
224 WILD ROSE. 
 
 ing does not draw the line at least at 
 perjury,' said Jack. 
 
 Thus they walked on, until the moon 
 became very brilliant and the sky very 
 pale, with purple clouds streaked across it. 
 This was all that remained of that flaming 
 golden sunset with grey bars. Hel gave 
 the word of command to go back to Eave 
 Lodge. Max went into low-voiced, con- 
 fidential raptures over the beauties of the 
 scene, and Hel looked at his face and 
 listened. He looked paler than ever in 
 the twilight, and his eyes darker. He was 
 rather like a marble Dionysos, with nine- 
 teenth century clothes on a Greek mind 
 and body. Jack said he looked like an 
 evil spirit who was meditating on passing 
 an examination for re-admission to Para- 
 dise, and trying to assume the proper 
 expression. 
 
 When they reached the house, Hel 
 said : 
 
WHAT JACK SAW IN CHURCH. 225 
 
 1 1 am sure you must be hungry, Mr. 
 Laurence. You have had a long walk, 
 preceded by— an entertainment to which 
 you are not accustomed,' she added, with a 
 quiet and rather sly smile. 
 
 1 Food had not entered into my 
 head ' 
 
 1 Mouth, you mean,' said Jack. 
 
 ' Into my ideas, till you mentioned it. 
 It has been a beautiful walk, and one I 
 shall remember. The " entertainment " I 
 shall hope to repeat some day.' 
 
 1 Will you help me to translate some of 
 Goethe to-morrow, if I find the book V 
 asked Hel shyly, as they went through the 
 now darkened hall. 
 
 ' Of course.' 
 
 vol. i. 15 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 ARTHUR RADFORD — MILES GLORIOSUS. 
 
 Mrs. Radford was sitting at her Daven- 
 port writing letters, an occupation which 
 generally occupied her Monday mornings. 
 Very long letters they generally were, 
 and crossed to a bewildering extent, for 
 that mysterious reason that makes all 
 women cross letters, although their means 
 allow them unlimited supplies of paper. 
 When Mrs. Radford wrote letters, Winter- 
 dale might tremble. The amount of ex- 
 traordinary information, usually of a per- 
 sonal and unreliable nature, conveyed about 
 the British Isles by that fine, sloping, neat, 
 
ARTHUR RADFORD. 227 
 
 illegible hand- writing, was something start- 
 ling. People discussed the eccentricities 
 of Winterdale on Tuesdays in Tunbridge 
 Wells, in Bath, in Clifton, in Byde, and 
 in all places where people are idle and un- 
 intelligent, and take an interest in the moral 
 dissection of their acquaintances, thanks 
 to this indefatigable correspondent. On 
 Wednesday or Thursday they discussed 
 them at Cannes, and Nice, and Baden- 
 Baden. In a few weeks they discussed 
 them at Simla and Puna. Mrs. Badford 
 might have called herself an ' Agency for 
 the Dissemination of Unreliable Informa- 
 tion.' 
 
 Her son, Arthur, was sitting in an arm- 
 chair, gazing steadily at a book which 
 endeavoured to make clear the to him 
 incomprehensible and vindictively various 
 peculiarities of ' similar triangles/ Arthur 
 really deserves some notice, if not pity. 
 He had been what is customarily called 
 
 15—2 
 
228 WILD ROSE. 
 
 educated in England at a public school, 
 and had been two years at Camford, where 
 he had succeeded, after great struggles, 
 in passing ' Mods/ which would save him 
 his preliminary examination for the armj 7 ". 
 His friends there had nicknamed him the 
 1 Muscular Christian.' There is no deny- 
 ing that they were justified in using the 
 first adjective. He once ran a narrow 
 risk of rowing in the University eight, 
 and was great in football, cricket and 
 athletics, appearing occasionally at Winter- 
 dale sports in costumes of striking colours, 
 and doing unheard-of things in high 
 jumps. 
 
 It was perhaps unfortunate that the 
 physical element had predominated over 
 the mental in his education ; but that was 
 better than having neither. Not only 
 Latin, and Greek, and mathematics, but 
 ordinary literature, in most of its aspects, 
 with the exception of a certain class of 
 
ARTHUR RADFORD. 229 
 
 novels and newspapers, dealing largely in 
 technical sporting terms, and ' incidents of 
 flood and field,' were to him unfamiliar, and 
 by him unappreciated. 
 
 Society, in its usually accepted sense, 
 was not his element. 
 
 Of ladies he was possessed as a rule of 
 a wholesome dread, and was usually dumb 
 in their presence, oppressed by the con- 
 sciousness that they must ba either laugh- 
 ing at him, or ' pumping ' him, or shocked 
 at him. This was, indeed, frequently the 
 case. He had gradually formed an 
 opinion — and when Arthur Radford took 
 the effort to form an opinion, no power, 
 natural or supernatural, could alter it — 
 that if ' ladies,' were replaced by barmaids 
 — with bars — in the circle in which he 
 moved, life, freed from the galling re- 
 straint of conventionality and decorum, 
 would be far more worth living. 
 
 The greatest failing in his philosophy of 
 
230- WILD ROSE. 
 
 life, and the one which caused him even 
 more mental discomfort and disappoint- 
 ment than even the slowness of develop- 
 ment of his moustache, was the firm con- 
 viction that the ' world was his oyster,' 
 and no one else's oyster, and only an 
 oyster. His own self and the oyster were 
 a life-long antithesis. He consumed the 
 beer, beef and tobacco of the oyster, and 
 gave it nothing in return. It laughed, 
 knowing that it would laugh last, by- 
 and-by. 
 
 Arthur considered himself the important 
 side of the antithesis. The oyster was of 
 the contrary opinion, and in its eternal 
 god-like scorn laughed on, contenting 
 itself with occasionally nipping him be- 
 tween the shells. 
 
 In plain English, Arthur Radford was 
 rather selfish, rather conceited, and rather 
 stupid, and was by no means unique among 
 young Englishmen in those respects. 
 
ARTHUR RADFORD. ■ 231 
 
 He was rather a trial to Jack Miller, 
 who was impulsive, and careless about the 
 effect of his words, as long as he thought 
 them pointed, or neatly scornful, and some- 
 times very nearly roused the abusive wrath 
 of Arthur, whom of course he had known 
 from their not-far-distant boyhood. They 
 quarrelled on an average about once a 
 week, and made it up, and smoked pipes 
 and played billiards after. 
 
 Arthur, having one of those minds which 
 are so constituted as to be independent of 
 such terrestrial restrictions as logic, thought 
 fit, in spite of this, to indulge frequently 
 and fiercely in political discussions, and to 
 advertise his opinions in a dogmatic and 
 challengeful manner. He stated that he 
 was a Conservative, and nothing annoyed 
 and puzzled him so much as the cheerful 
 way in which Jack, and sometimes Dr. 
 Miller, played conversational 'tip- cat' 
 with Church and State, and all the institu- 
 
232 WILD ROSE. 
 
 tions which he held in deepest reverence 
 — the English public schools and Uni- 
 versities, for example. 
 
 Arthur, with all his short-sightedness 
 for the nature and merits of others, was 
 obliged to admit to himself that Jack was 
 clever, after his fashion, and knew and 
 spoke of topics which were as cuneiform 
 inscriptions to him. 
 
 He had a firm belief in consistency, as a 
 virtue by itself. Consequently his opinions 
 resembled, as has been hinted, those often- 
 quoted laws of the Medes and Persians. 
 The proposition that it may be sometimes 
 consistent to change a belief, he regarded 
 as a subtle and dangerous sophism. He 
 was much distracted by the freedom of 
 speech which Jack permitted himself in 
 political and religious questions, and would 
 listen to some half-nonsensical, half-serious 
 tirade of the latter against some respect- 
 able and recognised principle, which he 
 
ARTHUR RADFORD. 233 
 
 (Jack) would be heard vigorously defend- 
 ing a week afterwards, and reproduce it 
 triumphantly, and brandish it in his 
 antagonist's face, with the prelude : 
 
 ' Why, the other day you were say- 
 ing ' 
 
 On which Jack would reply : ' Was I \ 
 What then V 
 
 This crippled Arthur momentarily. He 
 would soon, however, retort : 
 
 'Well, which do you expect us to 
 believe V and look round for applause at 
 his artful dilemma. 
 
 ' Whichever you like.' 
 
 I But don't you mean what you say V 
 
 I I have never completely satisfied my- 
 self on that point. I generally leave it to 
 the person I am talking to, to find out.' 
 
 ' Well then, I suppose you don't care 
 whether you are telling the truth or not V 
 
 This gratuitous assumption indicated 
 rapid rise of temper on Arthur's part, and 
 
234 WILD ROSE. 
 
 that a consequent descent to personalities 
 might be expected. 
 
 ' What is the particular object of telling 
 the truth ? We should lose an immense 
 deal of the charm of this life if everyone 
 did. Fancy if no one said anything that 
 he did not know to be true ! Results : 
 sudden disappearance of novels, " latest 
 intelligence," and " special correspon- 
 dence ;" dead silence at afternoon teas and 
 Dorcas meetings ; total cessation of compli- 
 ment and civility in conversation. Some 
 will say that there would be indisputably 
 beneficial results, for instance — sermons 
 would dwindle ; speeches in the Houses 
 of Legislature would be shorter ; promises 
 would cease to be made by candidates to 
 constituencies. In a general way, there 
 would be a refreshing silence about the 
 wide earth, wherein one could more easily 
 pursue intellectual occupations.' 
 
 e Do you mean that you think it would 
 
ARTHUR RADFORD. 235 
 
 be a bad thing or a good thing if everyone 
 spoke the truth V Arthur would persist, 
 with terrifically literal straightforwardness, 
 having in his head the beginning of the 
 discussion, which Jack certainly had not. 
 
 ' " That," as the cabmen say, " I leaves 
 to you." I have put both sides before 
 you, like an advocate. You, with the 
 superior dignity of judge, must choose 
 between them. By the way, under our 
 reign of truth, real advocates would have 
 to shut their " traps" a good deal, wouldn't 
 they V 
 
 This is a comparatively peaceful example 
 of the sparring and baiting which went 
 on frequently between the two. Under 
 strong stimulation, Arthur was capable 
 of pouring out torrents of incoherent 
 wrath from those conversational reservoirs 
 which answer very much to the concise 
 and graceful metaphor of ' vials.' 
 
 It is now only due to him to state that 
 
236 WILD ROSE. 
 
 he was a very hardworking, honest fellow, 
 who never had told a lie since boyhood — 
 at least, very seldom ; who was afraid of 
 nothing in this world, and would probably 
 make a capital soldier if the inquisitors of 
 the Civil Service Commission permitted 
 him to become one ; that he had a bass 
 voice and could sing music-hall songs (and 
 practised them alone, in secluded woods, 
 with the ' spokens '), and had a very grate- 
 ful and amiable disposition, though his 
 wrath was easily evoked. Just now he 
 was in a new and peculiar condition. He 
 yawned, and put his Euclid face down- 
 wards on a footstool, and said : 
 
 ' Mother !' 
 
 'Yes, dear/ 
 
 ' Have you called on the Franklands yet V 
 
 ' The who, dear ? Oh, those American 
 people ! — no, not yet/ 
 
 ' Then why the ■ I mean, why don't 
 
 you?' 
 
ARTHUR RADFORD. 237 
 
 1 1 don't think there is any hurry. You 
 see, I hardly know who they are yet.' 
 
 ' Well, it's not for want of asking, any- 
 how/ 
 
 ' That is rude and uncalled-for, Arthur. 
 If I like to be sure that my acquaintances 
 are proper sort of people, I think it is only 
 right. Besides, they have hardly had 
 time to settle down yet.' 
 
 1 I don't know what you mean by 
 " settling down." They have had time 
 to go and see the Millers and go to 
 church, and go out walks and buy things 
 in the shops in Winterdale. The Millers 
 seem to think them all right. They have 
 asked them to dinner to-night.' 
 
 - The Millers are excellent people, but 
 they have very strange ideas.' 
 
 1 Well, they've got some ideas ! Wish I 
 had Jack's head for some things.' 
 
 Mrs. Radford's maternal pride was fired: 
 1 I'm sure, dear, you could do very well if 
 
238 WILD ROSE. 
 
 you tried. I hope you will never grow up 
 like young Miller. He has very loose 
 ideas, and an impertinent mocking way of 
 expressing them, which gives a very bad 
 impression. He has a reckless, dissipated 
 appearance ' 
 
 ' Oh, come now, draw it mild, mother !' 
 
 ' I repeat it. I am very sorry for him, 
 continued Mrs. Radford, in a cheerful tone, 
 ' and for his mother. Do you know who 
 that strange - looking young man with 
 them is V 
 
 ' Queer, long-haired, pallid fellow ? No, 
 not the least. Some Oxbridge -man — ■ 
 hasn't quite got the " 'Varsity" cut about 
 him — at least, our " 'Varsity" cub.' 
 
 ' No, dear, he has not. Miss Hel seems 
 to find something in him, though.' 
 
 'Well, about the Franklands. They 
 have heaps of tin, I know. I was talking 
 
 to a fellow in Winterdale ' (Arthur just 
 
 prevented himself from saying ' the bil- 
 
ARTHUR RADFORD. 239 
 
 Hard -marker ' in time), ' who told me they 
 had made the house they've taken quite 
 different inside, and brought all sorts of 
 rum foreign things into it.' 
 
 1 Money ? Things in the house % Ah ! 
 to be sure ; Americans in Europe generally 
 are rich. The best- classes are the ones 
 that come across the Atlantic. I always 
 thought Mrs. Frankland a very lady-like, 
 distinguished-looking person.' 
 
 ' Did you V said Arthur, in a tone of 
 innocent wonderment at his parent's 
 changed tone — the result of his accidental 
 lucky hit of the billiard-marker's informa- 
 tion. Arthur was not diplomatist enough 
 to have said that on purpose. 
 
 1 Yes. I think we might call soon.' 
 
 1 All right,' in a tone of suppressed glee. 
 1 What awful rot Euclid is !' 
 
 As may be without difficulty divined, 
 Arthur had conceived a silent passion for 
 Rosa. 
 
240 WILD ROSE. 
 
 Indeed, he had some excuse. Having 
 seen nothing but barmaids and the young 
 ladies of the neighbourhood, who were, 
 with the exception of Hel, not very at- 
 tractive, it is not surprising if he fell in 
 love, to such extent as his matter-of- 
 fact soul was able, with the rare and to 
 the sense enticing little morsel of humanity 
 put before him. He had a notion of 
 getting acquainted with her before Jack 
 had had the opportunity to do so, which 
 would give him, as it were, a starting 
 handicap, in case Jack should feel at- 
 tracted in the same direction. He in- 
 tended to strike while the iron was hot, 
 and induce his mother to call, of course 
 with him, that very afternoon. 
 
 We will now, with the kind permission 
 of the reader, change the scene to the 
 sitting - room of Seymour Villa, Mrs. 
 Frankland's new habitation. The time is 
 early on the same afternoon. It is a very 
 
ARTHUR RADFORD. 241 
 
 warm April Monday. The room was ex- 
 ceedingly attractive and cool-looking. The 
 walls were dark green, with yellowish- 
 brown * decorative ' flowers, with very long 
 stalks and very curious leaves, wandering 
 almost imperceptibly over it, and bore 
 several small and strange pictures, mostly 
 the work of Paul Felix and brother artists. 
 The French windows were wide open, and 
 displayed a fringe of white roses round 
 their apertures, and a pretty sloping lawn, 
 covered with yew and cypress, bushes of 
 lilac and trees of laburnum, under which 
 were chairs of comfortable form, apparently 
 sunning themselves. 
 
 In the room Mrs. Frankland was sitting 
 at a grand piano, playing through Gounod's 
 1 Faust ' with practised hands. On a dark 
 green velvet sofa, Rosa, in a black dress, 
 with her hair in an untidy but charming 
 curly mat, was lazily lying, smoking 
 cigarettes, and watching white clouds 
 
 vol. i. 16 
 
142 WILD ROSE. 
 
 wander slowly over the blue sky, occa- 
 sionally taking gulps of very strong black 
 coffee from a very pretty Dresden cup, 
 intermittently with sips of maraschino from 
 a liqueur glass. 
 
 Mrs. Frankland left off playing, and 
 said : 
 
 ' Say, Rosie, give me another cup, will 
 you V 
 
 Rosa, after a moment's pause, rose and 
 poured out the desired coffee, and brought 
 it over to the piano. Mrs. Frankland 
 added : 
 
 ' Sorry to run against your principle of 
 not making yourself useful, of course. 
 Wonder what these English neighbours of 
 ours would say, if they came and found us 
 living like this ¥ 
 
 ' It don't much matter, anyway, what 
 they would say or think,' replied Rosa. 
 
 Her French accent was getting almost 
 entirely obliterated, and being replaced by 
 
ARTHUR RADFORD. 243 
 
 the American one of Ivor Taylor and his 
 sister. Sometimes the two mixed them- 
 selves curiously together. Rosa replaced 
 herself on the couch, and said : 
 
 ' I've never been to an English dinner- 
 party before. What is it like ? The books 
 describe it as very stupid.' 
 
 ' It isn't la vie de Boheme certainly, 
 but I expect it won't be bad chez these 
 Millers. They seem very good sort of 
 people. If they don't invite any of the 
 inhabitants here, it will be enjoyable. I 
 rather hope that absurd rector will come, 
 though. He is entertaining. I like to 
 shock him mildly now and then. That 
 girl of the Millers is pretty, isn't she V 
 
 ' Yes. I suppose that was her brother 
 in church yesterday — the fair one of those 
 two young men that were with her. He 
 is good-looking too.' 
 
 ' Is he % I didn't look. I don't believe 
 you ever do anything but look for good- 
 
 16—2 
 
244 WILD ROSE. 
 
 looking young men's faces in church, 
 Rosie.' 
 
 ' What else is there to do ? But I don't 
 find them here much, anyhow. Mr. 
 Miller — if that's him — looks nice. I ex- 
 pect he would be rather jolly to talk 
 to.' 
 
 1 Well, you will find out to-night. He 
 is safe to take you in to dinner.' 
 
 Here a ring at the bell was heard. 
 
 1 Do for gracious sake, Rosie, get off 
 that sofa, and make yourself a little less 
 like a tame panther ! There's some one 
 calling. Throw that cigarette away/ 
 
 ' It don't matter if they do see me 
 smoking,' replied Rosa, at the same time, 
 however, obeying. ' If people disapprove 
 of one for things like that, they can't be 
 worth much for friends, anyway.' 
 
 'Mrs. and Mr. Radford ' were announced 
 as the door opened, and Arthur was intro- 
 duced to the new world. 
 
ARTHUR RADFORD. 245 
 
 Mrs. Radford began with the time- 
 honoured common-place of first visits 
 anent the weather and the neighbourhood 
 and hoped she did not in any way disturb 
 Mrs. Frankland, who replied : 
 
 ' Oh, not in the least. We were just in 
 that stage of languid stupidity which one 
 generally gets into after a late breakfast ' 
 (it was half past two), ' and are only too 
 glad to see some friends to arouse our 
 sleeping intellects.' 
 
 Mrs. Radford opened her eyes at the 
 word * breakfast,' and said : 
 
 1 I suppose you have been accustomed to 
 keeping very late hours in Paris ?' 
 
 'Why, yes. You see one seldom gets 
 to bed there before one or two ; and here, 
 although there is no particular reason for 
 sitting up late, one does it out of habit, 
 and from inability to sleep early. Very 
 sad, isn't it V 
 
 ' Well, we are all rather early here, 
 
:46 WILD ROSE. 
 
 except, perhaps, the Millers. I think you 
 know them % And they are out, I believe, 
 at all sorts of strange hours, when the stars 
 are out, and everyone else is in bed and 
 asleep, or ' 
 
 ' Or ought to be V added Mrs. Frank- 
 land, smiling. ' Well, I am afraid our 
 habits are rather irregular. I confess I 
 am glad to find that there is some one else 
 rather like us in that way here ; one won't 
 feel so kind of strange and Bohemian.' 
 
 1 Oh, I think it is quite interesting,' said 
 Mrs. Radford, who was willing to excuse 
 anybody's eccentricities who could afford 
 to have them. 
 
 Rosa was entertaining Arthur, and on 
 discovering that he was reading for the 
 army — a piece of information he thought 
 fit to volunteer, said : 
 
 ' Oh, I like soldiers awfully ; if I had 
 been a man, I should have gone into the 
 army.' 
 
ARTHUR RADFORD. 247 
 
 The young soldier in posse appropriated 
 this compliment to soldiers in esse to him- 
 self, and radiated all over, only to be 
 morally snuffed out by the next ques- 
 tion : 
 
 ' Do you know young Mr. Miller V 
 
 ' Oh yes — great pal of mine !' 
 
 ' Really! What does he do? Is he 
 going into the army too V 
 
 1 No. He is a sort of medical student. 
 He has taken his degree at Oxbridge.' 
 
 ' Oh, I shall enjoy getting to know 
 English students. I have spent a good 
 many years with Paris students — jolly 
 fellows !' 
 
 ' What can she mean V thought Arthur. 
 
 ' Do you like Mr. Miller 1 What sort of 
 a fellow is he V 
 
 ' Clever kind of a chap ; but he is rather 
 a rum sort. I believe he is rather fast. 
 My mother says he looks reckless and 
 dissipated.' Arthur was rather given to 
 
248 WILD ROSE. 
 
 making statements beginning with ' My 
 mother says.' ' He doesn't care much 
 what he says or does.' 
 
 Arthur's generously conceived attempt 
 to prepossess Rosa against Jack did not 
 meet with entire success. 
 
 ' I like men like that — not afraid to 
 join in any sort of lark, I suppose V 
 
 1 Oh no ; I believe he spent most of his 
 time at Oxbridge in " joining in larks." 
 He knows a lot, and could pass exams., 
 and have plenty of time to muck about 
 as well.' 
 
 ' Now, do please tell me, Mr. Radford, 
 what is Oxbridge, and what is " mucking 
 about r ' 
 
 Arthur opened his eyes and mouth at 
 this unheard-of ignorance. 
 
 1 You know I am in England for the 
 first time, and want to know all about 
 everything.' 
 
 1 Oh, Oxbridge is the university. The 
 
ARTHUR RADFORD. 249 
 
 other one, you know/ remarked Arthur 
 lucidly. 
 
 ' I see. I guess " mucking about " is 
 English for knocking around, isn't it V 
 
 ' Very likely.' 
 
 Arthur was getting rather tired of con- 
 versation on Jack Miller. It was cruel of 
 Rosa ; but then she did not know, and if 
 she had known, would not have particu- 
 larly cared. 
 
 ' What a charming place this is !' said 
 Mrs. Radford. ' I have never been here 
 before.' 
 
 ' Well, T hope you'll come again, Mrs. 
 Radford,' said Mrs. Frankland, good- 
 naturedly. ' We have very few friends at 
 present here.' 
 
 1 1 hope we shall see you at our place 
 soon, when you have had a little more 
 time to look about you. I dare say you 
 will find the neighbours a little cold and 
 
250 WILD ROSE. 
 
 restrained at first. They generally are 
 Avith strangers.' 
 
 1 Well, I guess we'll bear it. We have 
 the Millers, who are among the best 
 people I've ever met in England — not 
 much of the Continental ideal of the 
 English about them.' 
 
 1 No, indeed. They are old friends of 
 ours ; though I can't help saying ' (' Why 
 can't you help it V thought Mrs. Frank- 
 land) ' that the children have been rather 
 loosely brought up. It is a pity.' 
 
 ' Oh, do you think that ? I thought 
 Miss Miller looked quite a sweet girl, and 
 the pink of propriety, when her mother 
 brought her round here. To be sure, I 
 don't know anything about the young 
 man. Young men are always odd 
 creatures. But I know nothing against 
 him.' 
 
 ' Jack is a dear good fellow, isn't he, 
 Arthur V said Mrs. Radford. 
 
ARTHUR RADFORD. 251 
 
 Arthur gave a languid 'Yes.' It was 
 fated apparently that everyone should 
 din the merits of Jack Miller into his 
 ears. 
 
 1 But/ continued Mrs. Radford, whose 
 praise was invariably followed by a 'but/ 
 ' he is a little too old for his age, and has 
 lived a little too much from home, I think. 
 He seldom goes to church, and I believe 
 has very loose views on very serious 
 subjects. So, for the matter of that, has 
 Dr. Miller, though of course, for him, poor 
 man, it is different. Still, there is always 
 the responsibility, and then it is such a 
 pity, for they are really nice people, and 
 very well off.' 
 
 ' Good gracious !' silently ejaculated 
 Mrs. Frankland. Audibly, she said : 
 
 s Can't Rosie give you some coffee, Mrs. 
 Radford V 
 
 Mrs. Radford, who never eat or drank 
 between meals 4 on principle/ declined 
 
252 WILD ROSE. 
 
 with thanks. Arthur, to his own and his 
 mother's surprise, had the audacity to ac- 
 cept. How could he refuse when Rosa said : 
 ' You are going to have some, aren't 
 you V with the coffee-pot in her small sun- 
 tanned hands ? He looked round for the 
 milk, and not seeing any, silently resigned 
 himself to the novel sensation of cafe noir 
 (the coffee provided by Mrs. Radford at 
 breakfast beinsf of the wateriest and milki- 
 est description, also ' on principle '), looking 
 forward to a subsequent discourse from his 
 mother on the unhealthy effects of strong 
 coffee on the nerves and body generally. 
 He fortified himself for this with a glass 
 of maraschino. Rosa smiled, and remarked 
 to herself ' Duffer !' as she saw him blink 
 at the first mouthful. She was restrain- 
 ing herself with difficulty from beginning 
 a second cigarette out of pure defiance. 
 Mrs. Radford, at this stage of the proceed- 
 
ARTHUR RADFORD. 253 
 
 ings, thought fit to withdraw herself and 
 son, who departed with obvious unwilling- 
 ness, and ventured, on the strength of the 
 maraschino, to say to Rosa he hoped to 
 see her again soon, to which she re- 
 plied : 
 
 ' Oh, you're sure to see lots of us. We 
 are going to be here some time — good- 
 bye.' 
 
 Mrs. Radford disapproved of Rosa all 
 the way home, and discovered that her 
 heels were absurdly high, and stated the 
 important aesthetic fact that when she was 
 a girl (Arthur was used to references to 
 this rather remote period, as a criterion for 
 everything in feminine manners and cos- 
 tumes) young ladies never wore their hair 
 in untidy fringes on the tops of their heads. 
 Arthur silently wished that there were 
 more heels (and feet generally) like those 
 in Winterdale, and that Jack Miller had 
 
254 WILD ROSE. 
 
 obtained the position of physician-in-or- 
 dinary to the Emperor of Brazil, involving 
 immediate residence in that or any other 
 remote and antipodal land. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 RILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUJLDFORD AND LONDON. 
 
mm iiiiiiiiiinii i i