LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 U N IVERSITY 
 
 or ILLI NOIS 
 
 82.3 
 W24.ccr 
 
f°l 
 
 / 
 
 Z il> . 
 
RECENT 
 
 NOVELS. 
 
 Real 
 
 Two 
 
 By 
 
 L.I ). 
 
 NATURE'S NURSLING. A Romance from 
 Life. By Lady Gertrude Stock. Three Vols. 
 
 THE OLD CORNER HOUSE. By L. H. 
 Vols. 
 
 MY DUCATS AND MY DAUGHTER. 
 Hay Hunter and Walter Whyte. Three Yob 
 
 DONAL GRANT. By George Mac Donald, T 
 Three Vols. 
 
 London: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co. 
 
7 60 f- "5 
 
 COLONEL EXDERBYS WIFE 
 
COLONEL ENDERBY'S WIFE 
 
 A NOVEL 
 
 LUCAS MALET 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 MRS. LORLMER, A SKETCH IN BLACK AND WHITE 
 
 "Lequcl de nous u'a <?a terre promise, son jour d'extase, et sa tin dans 
 l'exil?"— Amiel 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON 
 
 KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH & CO., 1, PATERNOSTER SQUARE 
 
 1885 
 
{The rights of translation and of reproduction are reserved.) 
 
SU 3 
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 
 
 
 BOOK FIRST. 
 
 
 
 FATHER AND SON. 
 
 
 <j IJAl'TKR 
 
 6 I- 
 
 "Le Eur est Moet"... 
 
 3 
 
 . II. 
 
 "Vive le Koi !"... 
 
 30 
 
 «? ITI. 
 
 Retrospective 
 
 51 
 
 BOOK SECOND. 
 
 4 7TST OJ 7 FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 ■*• I. The Threads begin to cross ... ... 83 
 
 II. Beaumont Pierce-D awn ay's Widow 106 
 
 III. In which the Colonel takes Stock oe 
 
 his Position ... ... ... 125 
 
 IV. ''Le Dessous des Cartes" ... 14" 
 V. Jessie suggests a Remedy ... ... 167 
 
 VI. A Search for a Vocation ... Itio 
 
vi si CONTENTS. 
 
 BOOK THIRD. 
 LOVER ANI) MISTRESS. 
 
 I BAPTER 'AUI 
 
 I. In which Philip makks an Important 
 
 Discovery ... ... ... 211 
 
 II. A Spring Night ... ... 236 
 
 III. The Joys of Reunion ... ... 256 
 
 IV. Mr. Ames finds himself Unequal to the 
 
 Occasion ... ... ... 283 
 
BOOK FIRST. 
 FATHER AND SON 
 
 VOL. i. 
 
COLONEL ENDEKBTS WIFE. 
 
 CHAPTEK I. 
 
 LE EOI EST MORT." 
 
 The house at Bassett Darcy lies low. From 
 around it the well-timbered park rises on 
 three sides, in gentle undulations, towards 
 the stretch of high table-land forming the 
 south-eastern corner of the county. On the 
 fourth side, broad lawns slope down to the 
 banks of the Tull — a quiet, uneventful 
 stream, that wanders indolently through mile 
 after mile of rich meadow land, past osier- 
 beds and alders, and long lines of pollarded 
 willows ; under the wide arches of old brown 
 sandstone bridges ; by Tillages of quaint 
 half-timbered houses, and spinneys, where 
 the rooks congregate and nightingales sing 
 
4 COLONEL ENDEEBY S WIFE. 
 
 in the earl}' summer ; and by waste places — 
 pleasant spots in which Nature has her own 
 way still, and refuses to he put in harness 
 and to labour for the general good of man- 
 kind in any more direct manner than by an 
 offering of sweet scents and colours — places 
 overgrown with meadow-sweet, and yellow 
 flags, and pink willow-herb, and tall spikes 
 of purple loosestrife, and docks, and nodding 
 grasses — by these the river wanders to 
 mingle its current at last — some few miles 
 west of the bright little modern watering- 
 place of Tullingworth — with that of the 
 historic Avon, and so find its w r ay to the 
 Severn, and the far distant unknown sea. 
 
 The Tull is anything but dramatic. It in- 
 dulges in no sparkling races over rounded 
 boulders, no splashings into deep pools, no 
 roar and rush, no petulance or bubbling 
 laughter. The steady monotonous repose of 
 the Midlands lies upon it. Like the men and 
 women who live in the green pastoral country 
 beside it banks, it is moderate, neutral- 
 tinted, slow, self-absorbed, and silent. At 
 first sight it appears to be somewhat want- 
 ing in individual character. Yet this quiet 
 
FATHER AND SOX. 5 
 
 midland stream is capable of yielding very 
 pretty effects of light and shade, of form 
 and colour to those who will take the trouble 
 to look for them. And undoubtedly its 
 neighbourhood lends a singular charm to 
 the grounds at Bassett Darcy. 
 
 Just below the garden front of the stately 
 Jacobean mansion it makes a sharp curve 
 away to the right, round a thickly wooded 
 spit of land ; and, thanks to an artificial 
 widening of the river bed, presents to the 
 eye quite an imposing expanse of smooth 
 shimmering water. 
 
 The house itself shares in great measure 
 the restrained and unemotional aspect of 
 the river. It is a large square building of 
 the yellow-brown sandstone of the country ; 
 with rectangular windows and doorways, 
 and a low-pitched slated roof, but just 
 visible over the Hue of the parapet. This 
 style of architecture is singularly innocent of 
 surprises ; it is full of solidity and sobriety. 
 and is altogether too dignified to pander to 
 a frivolous taste for the superficially pic- 
 turesque. The only incident in the serious 
 facade at all claiming attention is the great 
 
COLONEL ENDERBY'S WIFE, 
 
 double flight of stone steps leading up to 
 the hall door. These steps are pleasant 
 to contemplate. There is a generousness 
 about the descending curve of the massive 
 balustrade, and an air of easy hospitality 
 about the broad stairway that proves de- 
 cidedly encouraging to the guest arriving 
 at Bassett Darcy. 
 
 Here the Enderbys have lived for man}' 
 generations — a strong vigorous race, with 
 
 but little tendency to dwindle down to an 
 unsatisfactory point in the person of one 
 female representative. There is a certain 
 virility, a healthy coarseness of fibre about 
 most of them, which promises to the fat 
 family acres — even in these thin, eager, 
 somewhat over-civilized times — a long con- 
 tinuance in the possession of heirs male. 
 A mellow canvas in a carved and gilded 
 frame, hanging in the dining-room at Bas- 
 sett, sets forth in its most agreeable and 
 impressive aspect the true Enderby type. 
 It represents a large fresh-complexioned 
 gentleman in a curled wig, with a round 
 solid head, short nose — wide across the 
 nostrils and slightly inclining to aquiline — a 
 
FATHER AND SON. 7 
 
 long, full upper lip, pouting mouth, large 
 lower jaw, with plenty of what — for the 
 want of a better word — one must needs call 
 jowl, and prominent light-brown eyes under 
 slightly arched eyebrows. His neck is thick, 
 and is encircled by a voluminous neckcloth 
 of the finest India muslin. The glint of a 
 steel cuirass show T s under his scarlet coat 
 bountifully adorned with gold lace. The 
 picture is by Sir Joshua Eeynolcls ; and, 
 doubtless, " Philip Enderby, Esq., Major- 
 General of His Majesty's Forces, Colonel of 
 the 204th Eegiment of Foot, and Governor 
 of Fort George, in North Britain" — as an 
 inscription runs under a print from the 
 original picture — fared very well at the hands 
 of that most courteous and genial of portrait- 
 painters. You cannot avoid a suspicion that 
 a few too powerful lines have been gently 
 obliterated; that the gallant general's eyes 
 were not quite so clear, and that his com- 
 plexion was a few shades deeper in tone. 
 You feel pretty sure that he must have been 
 a man of strong animal passions ; straight- 
 forward and honest in character, but also not 
 a little obstinate, arrogant, and tyrannical. 
 
8 COLONEL ENDEKBY'S WIFE. 
 
 A person rather inordinately sensible of his 
 own importance in the universal order of 
 things ; kind-hearted, yet disposed to bully 
 and bluster, and eminently unfitted to ap- 
 preciate the best of jokes, if made at his 
 own expense. 
 
 Most of the Enderby men have adhered 
 pretty closely to the above type; and, 
 perhaps consequently, have not created for 
 themselves a very definite place in history. 
 The eldest son of the house has usually 
 gone into the army ; but with the exception 
 of General Philip, whose portrait hangs in 
 the dining-room, the Enderbys, until the 
 present generation, have not contributed 
 any conspicuously distinguished soldiers to 
 the service of their country. Perhaps 
 Bassett Darcy is somewhat to blame in this 
 matter, and has helped to check the full 
 development of the family genius. Advanced 
 thinkers tell us that the possession of a per- 
 fectly secure social position and the prospect 
 of a comfortable inheritance are apt to 
 paralyze ambition, and strangle those finer 
 emotions w T hich inspire a man to forge his 
 w r ay upw T ard in the world. No doubt it is 
 
FATHER AND SOX. ^ 
 
 u no mean happiness to be seated in the 
 mean ; " but it is a species of happiness 
 liable, the}' say, to be cherished somewhat 
 to the exclusion of distinct progress and 
 high endeavour. 
 
 It may be broadly stated, then, that most 
 of the En derby s have lived uneventful lives 
 enough ; have mixed freely in the best local 
 society, have married young, ridden hard to 
 hounds, quarrelled hotly over county politics, 
 consumed a very fair portion of first-rate 
 wine ; have been reckoned considerably 
 important— an opinion they were disposed 
 to share in sincerely themselves — within a 
 radius of some twenty or thirty miles ; and 
 when, after a long and usually respectable, 
 if not brilliant, career, Death has called for 
 them, they have prepared — perhaps a trifle 
 unwillingly — to obey his summons, and 
 ascend to some not too spiritually minded 
 or ecstatic quarter of the New Jerusalem. 
 
 Occasionally, however, even in the most 
 physically and mentally conservative of races 
 there occurs a sudden deflection from the 
 accustomed type. It is probably only a 
 ease of reversion, of a return to an older 
 
10 COLONEL ENDERBY'S WIFE. 
 
 strain of blood. Be that as it may, the 
 individual exhibiting these unusual qualities 
 and tendencies appears to have a dash of 
 original genius. He is tempted to emerge, 
 to take a new departure, and, consequently, 
 runs the risk of becoming confusing, if not 
 downright objectionable, in the eyes of his 
 near relations. 
 
 It is a case of the kind which forms 
 the basis of this unpretentious chronicle. 
 Scientifically considered, this is the history 
 of a deviation — of a doubtfully successful 
 exception to a safe, though unexciting, 
 general rule. 
 
 One evening, towards the close of October, 
 1876, a peculiar stillness seemed to reign 
 at Bassett Darcy. It was a stillness of 
 expectation rather than of repose ; and 
 Dr. Mortimer Symes, sitting in the wide 
 window-seat of the big blue bedroom over 
 the hall, was curiously sensible of the silent 
 pause which penetrated the atmosphere of 
 the large house, and a23peared even to spread 
 itself over the face of the serious landscape 
 outside. The rolling pasture land of the 
 park showed a dull green, with a sandy 
 
FATHER AND SOX. 11 
 
 blooia upon it here and there from the 
 stalks of the withered spare-grass. In the 
 distance long beds of pale mist lay across 
 it, out of which rose the trees and scattered 
 clumps of hawthorn bushes. It was too 
 dark clearly to see the colour of these 
 latter; but you might perceive a warm 
 russet tinge over their dark foliage. Along 
 the top of the hill, just outside the park 
 wall and about half a mile distant, the trees 
 and cottages in Priors Bassett village rose 
 in a dense mass against the sky, the twisted 
 chimneys and gable-ends showing sharp and 
 black against the light behind them. The 
 sky itself, a pale opaque blue, shading into 
 a bank of dove-coloured earth-mist below, 
 was covered to the westward beyond the 
 village, where the bare upland met the sky- 
 line, with a fine network of delicate crimson 
 and flame- coloured cloud. 
 
 Dr. Synies was given to observation in 
 many departments besides the strictly pro- 
 fessional one. He was fond of perceiving- 
 analogies and correspondences between 
 natural and spiritual phenomena. He had 
 also cultivated a power of double conscious- 
 
12 COLONEL ENDERBY S WIFE. 
 
 ness ; and though acutely aware of every 
 sound that came from the great blue-cur- 
 tained bedstead, where lay old Mr. Matthew 
 Enderby — his strong vigorous life slowly 
 ebbing, sinking, failing, like the failing day 
 — the doctor was also quite sufficiently 
 unabsorbed to note both the quiet of the 
 house and effects of the waning sunset out- 
 side. He wished, if possible, to drive back 
 to Tullingworth that night ; but he had 
 half-promised Mr. Jack Enderby to stay to 
 the end. He did not think the end was 
 very far off now; and, meanwhile, he felt 
 quite at liberty to entertain himself with 
 a calm, if sympathetic, observation of his 
 surroundings. 
 
 Poor Jack Enderby, on the other hand, 
 sitting at the farther side of the bed, and 
 w T atching in the growing dimness, was any- 
 thing but calm. He found himself in the 
 unfortunate position of a man who has a dis- 
 agreeable message to deliver, and who dreads 
 almost equally the opportunity and the 
 absence of an opportunity for delivering it. 
 
 Jack was really an excellent fellow, 
 and, notwithstanding a short, reddish- 
 
FATHER AND SOX. 13 
 
 yellow beard and a white tie, realized very 
 completely the true Enderby type. He had 
 
 plenty of pluck — of nothing tangible or 
 material was he for an instant afraid ; but 
 not even the influences of his sacred pro- 
 fession had supplied his original lack of 
 moral courage. He went in mortal fear of 
 what is best described as a scene or a 
 situation. There was nothing gloomy, 
 sacerdotal, prophetic, or denunciatory about 
 him ; and, unless he happened to be per- 
 sonally offended — like most persons of his 
 complexion, he was a trifle hot-tempered — 
 few things were less congenial to him than 
 admonishing backsliders, pointing sternly 
 to the path of duty, and foretelling the 
 plagues justly following on all wilful harden- 
 ing of the heart. I am afraid it must be 
 admitted that Mr. Jack Enderby had not 
 any special vocation for the priesthood, and 
 that the exercise, during a period of some 
 twenty years, of his spiritual calling had not 
 made him different, in any sensible degree, 
 to the ordinary run of English provincial 
 gentl emen 
 At last there was a movement on the 
 
14 COLONEL ENDEEBY's WIFE. 
 
 part of old Matthew Enclerby. He shifted 
 his position slightly, and began speaking in 
 a thick unmodulated voice. There was an 
 evident struggle and difficulty about his 
 articulation, and at first the w T ords spoken 
 were barely intelligible. 
 
 Jack moved uneasily in his chair, and 
 cleared his throat with a touch of nervous- 
 ness. He glanced inquiringly up at Mortimer 
 Byrnes as he did so ; but the doctor sat 
 quite still, his high conical head, hooked 
 nose, long shaven upper lip and straight 
 chin, with its straggling and grizzled im- 
 perial, silhouetted against the light back- 
 ground of the window. Jack, looking 
 up at him suddenly, was forcibly struck 
 by the eminent medical man's resem- 
 blance to a goat ; and then felt a little 
 ashamed of himself for having ventured to 
 think of anything at all amusing under 
 existing circumstances. 
 
 " The scent's cold," murmured old 
 Matthew Enderby, huskily, " cold — cold. 
 It's no use trying any more. Better give 
 up and get away home. Don't you see, 
 it's getting dark?" 
 
FATHEE AND SOX. 15 
 
 Jack held aside the blue stuff curtain of 
 the great old-fashioned four-post bed, and 
 leant forward. 
 
 " Can you hear rue, sir ? " he asked. 
 
 "Yes, I can hear you well enough, 
 Jack," answered the old man, in the same 
 thick, monotonous voice. " Pity they made 
 a parson of you, Jack ; but you'll have it all 
 your own way soon, parson or not. None 
 of 'em can prevent that. You're a regular 
 Enderby, Jack — eyes and jaw and all. But 
 the scent's cold," he went on, " and it's 
 getting dark and late." 
 
 Mr. Jack Enderby was one of those easy- 
 going, kindly natured, unimaginative men 
 who are never quite prepared for the deeper 
 and sadder experiences of life. They never 
 get over a sensation of surprise at the 
 neighbourhood of sickness and death. Their 
 own superabundant vitality makes these 
 two things appear so extremely impro- 
 bable to them. Jack did not certainly 
 love his father with any very exuberant 
 affection ; but, as he put it himself, he " felt 
 awfully cut up at seeing the old gentleman 
 lying there," and this state of feeling made 
 
16 COLONEL ENDEKLY'S WIFE. 
 
 it all the more difficult to deliver messages 
 Avliich he was pretty well convinced would 
 prove highly unacceptable. 
 
 "Never mind about me, sir," he said, 
 with a certain effort, and speaking as dis- 
 tinctly as he could. " I don't want you to 
 think about me just now, but about my 
 brother." 
 
 He paused, hoping that the words might 
 awaken a train of sleeping memories, and 
 thereby make what had still to be said 
 easier in the saying of it. But Matthew 
 Enderby's intelligence — never a very active 
 one — was clouded with the mists of weak- 
 ness and approaching death. His thoughts, 
 as so often happens just at the close, 
 wandered back to the days of youth and 
 early manhood. 
 
 " Brother," he asked slowly, "which 
 brother? There was poor Darc}~, he was 
 drowned at sea; and there was Godfrey- 
 lighting Enderby, they used to call him — 
 never saw a better man with the gloves in 
 my life. He fought a bargee down in 
 Barnwell one Saturday night, and sewed 
 him up so that he couldn't move for a 
 
FATHER AND SOX. 17 
 
 month. Bless me ! lie was a fine fellow; 
 but your mother never liked hint, somehow. 
 He hasn't been here this long while. Is 
 he dead too, Jack?" he added suddenly in 
 a sharper tone. 
 
 U I didn't want to speak to you about 
 poor Uncle Godfrey, sir," Jack Enderby 
 answered — " not about your brother, 
 but " 
 
 " All ! he's gone, I remember," inter- 
 rupted the old man, speaking faster and 
 more clearly. " They're all gone — my 
 brothers and my old friends. God help 
 'em ! you don't see such men nowadays. 
 And Matt's gone. And your mother's gone 
 too, Jack. Ah, dear me ! " 
 
 The tears came in Jack's eyes, and ran 
 down over his fresh-coloured cheeks. All 
 this was horribly painful to him. He would 
 have liked to say something gentle and 
 comforting to Mr. Enderby at that moment ; 
 but a feeling of diffidence, perhaps of false 
 shame, held him back. His relations with 
 his father had always been of a rather 
 rough-and-ready sort. " I wish to goodness 
 Augusta was here," he thought. "Women 
 
 VOL. I. C 
 
18 COLONEL ENDEKBY B WIFE. 
 
 are so rnucli better at saying appropriate 
 things than we are." 
 
 Matthew Enderby stretched his right arm 
 out stiffly, and felt down over the bed-clothes 
 for the head of an old w T ire-haired terrier, 
 that lay sleeping, rather uneasily, on the 
 bed beside him. 
 
 " They're all gone," he repeated, slowly 
 and sadly. Then he fondled the old dog's 
 head with feeble, uncertain fingers. 
 
 Dr. Symes got up from his place in the 
 w r indow. He was a short thick-made man, 
 and limped a good deal in walking. He 
 came across to the bedside, and stood there 
 for a moment, looking narrowly at Matthew 
 Enderby, who lay with his eyes half shut. 
 
 "I do not wish to distress you unneces- 
 sarily, my dear Mr. Enderby," he said in 
 a low voice, glancing across at Jack, " but 
 I fear the time granted you for speaking — 
 pardon my alluding to private matters — is 
 likely to be limited. I cannot counsel 
 delay." And with that he retired to his 
 seat in the window again. 
 
 Jack bent over the bed. As the saying- 
 is, he took his courage in both hands. 
 
FATHER AND SON. 19 
 
 "Father," lie said, "you remember my 
 brother? — you remember Philip ? " 
 
 Matthew Enderby opened his eyes, and 
 turned his head sharply on the pillows. 
 
 "iind what about Philip?" he asked 
 curtly, almost angrily. 
 
 "He's here, sir. He's downstairs. He 
 came early this morning ; but you've been 
 sleeping a good deal, and we couldn't tell 
 you sooner. He wants to see you. Won't 
 you see him, sir, just for five minutes — just 
 once before ' ' 
 
 Jack stopped abruptly. His words had 
 produced an effect he had not looked for. 
 
 Old Matthew Enderby, filled with sudden 
 strength, sat bolt upright in bed, his face 
 firm, high-coloured, passionate as it had 
 ever been in the fulness of his manly 
 vigour. 
 
 "I sent your brother Philip out of this 
 house three-and-twenty years ago, and 
 dared him ever to come back to it ! " he 
 cried in a loud, vibrating voice. "He 
 broke your mother's heart. By her death- 
 bed I swore I would never forgive him ; and 
 I will never forgive him, never ! " 
 
20 COLONEL ENDERBY's WIFE. 
 
 Jack was shocked, pained, altogether 
 amazed. He stood up. 
 
 " Upon my word, sir " he began. 
 
 But a rapid change came over Matthew 
 Enderby. He stretched out both arms with 
 a sudden convulsive gesture, as though he 
 was pushing aw r ay from him an actual and 
 visible presence. 
 
 " Ah ! " he cried hoarsely. " Good God ! 
 what — what's this ? " 
 
 Then he fell back heavily against the 
 pillows. The old terrier awoke with a 
 start, and uttering a low whimpering howl, 
 its hair bristling, and its tail between its 
 legs, crouched shivering up against the high 
 footboard of the bedstead. 
 
 Dr. Symes came from the window again. 
 He bent down over his patient, and laid 
 his hand on his wrist for a few seconds in 
 silence. 
 
 " The end has come even sooner than 
 I had anticipated, Mr. Enderby," he said at 
 last, looking up at Jack, who stood waiting. 
 
 The doctor turned his head and glanced 
 at the dog cowering down at the foot of the 
 bed. 
 
FATHER AND SON. 21 
 
 " Singular," lie said, half aloud, and with 
 a slight lifting of the eyebrows, "very 
 singular indeed." 
 
 Meanwhile, Philip Enderby, the subject 
 of the foregoing conversation, waited, with 
 what patience he could muster, downstairs, 
 hoping for a summons to his father's bed- 
 side. It was melancholy work enough, 
 pacing up and down the gloomy panelled 
 saloon, with its tall rectangular windows, 
 and dark old-fashioned furniture, in the dim 
 twilight. The room had that indescribable 
 odour and chill about it which is wont to 
 haunt rarely used chambers. The outlook 
 from the window w T as certaiuly ill-calculated 
 to dispel the depressing influences that 
 reigned within. The white fog hung low 
 and dense over the river, and crept up the 
 sloping lawns towards the house. A black 
 mass of trees — oaks and beeches — rose out 
 of it just by the bend of the stream on the 
 left ; and beyond the long flat stretch of 
 the park faded away into misty uncertainty 
 under the growing darkness. 
 
 After many years of absence this was 
 hardly a cheerful home-coming for Colonel 
 
22 COLONEL ENDEEBl 7 \s WIFE. 
 
 Enderby. The place seemed full of ghosts, 
 and ghosts are rarely good company. The 
 Colonel had come back longing for peace, 
 hoping for a final reconciliation which 
 might wipe out bitter memories of the past ; 
 but as one half-hour after another slipped 
 by without sound or movement in the large 
 house, and as the evening deepened towards 
 the night, his hopes died slowly and sadly 
 away, and deep disappointment and regret 
 possessed him. 
 
 For Philip, though he had knocked about 
 the world more than most men, and was 
 by no means a weak or over-sentimental 
 person, had a great singleness of purpose, 
 and the keenness of feeling which almost 
 invariably goes with singleness of pur- 
 pose. His experience of life had been of 
 a somewhat stern and practical nature, 
 making demands upon the more sturdy 
 masculine virtues, and giving but small 
 opportunity for delicate self-analysis or 
 self-culture. Yet there was a very genuine 
 vein of poetry in him too — a clinging in 
 thought to this same old home, a deep 
 desire for re-union w 7 ith his father and his 
 
FATHEE AXD SOX. 23 
 
 family, a great capacity for enjoyment of 
 the gentler, quieter, more domestic sides of 
 life. Perhaps the Colonel's reverence for 
 natural, simple, homely joys had only heen 
 deepened by a certain denial and thwarting 
 of desire that had befallen him. His emo- 
 tions were none the less vivid because, so 
 far, they had been voiceless and unsatisfied, 
 kept in check by the hand of unpropitious 
 circumstance. 
 
 He had, among other tendencies which 
 people will praise or blame according to 
 their own taste in such matters, an almost 
 quixotic indifference to his own material 
 advantage. Hearing of old Mr. Enderby's 
 serious illness, he came to Bassett, not 
 impelled by any desire to secure a pos- 
 sibly forfeited inheritance, but with the 
 simple purpose of entreating for pardon and 
 for a renewal of affection, before death 
 should have made all such renewal impos- 
 sible. Good-natured Jack Enclerby, with 
 his handsome wife and herd of noisy 
 children, might move over from the ram- 
 shackle rectory house at Cold Enderby, 
 and reign at Bassett in peace and plenty, 
 
24 COLONEL ENDERBY's WIFE. 
 
 and Philip would bear them no grudge in 
 the future. All he begged for was au 
 assurance that he was no longer an out- 
 cast, unforgiven, perhaps even forgotten, 
 without place or part in his father's 
 memory. But as time drew on, while the 
 Colonel paced to and fro, stern and silent, 
 in the cold, dusky saloon downstairs, he 
 knew that all hope of reconciliation grew 
 fainter and fainter. He felt sick at heart. 
 
 At last there was a sound of footsteps 
 crossing the hall, and of two men talking- 
 just outside. Colonel Enderby drew him- 
 self up rather stiffly, and stood waiting in 
 the middle of the room. 
 
 Dr. Symes entered first, composed and 
 professional, limping slightly, and making a 
 little stumping noise with his gold-headed 
 walking-stick. 
 
 u If I might order my carriage imme- 
 diately, my dear Mr. Enderby, I should be 
 extremely glad," he said, turning to Jack, 
 who followed him into the room. " If you 
 will kindly permit me I will ring at once," 
 he added, moving across as he spoke to the 
 fireplace. 
 
FATHER AND SON. 25 
 
 The two other men were left standing 
 opposite to each other. Colonel Enderby 
 looked hard at his younger brother ; hut it 
 was too dark for him to make out the 
 expression of his face. 
 
 " Well ? " he asked, rather hoarsely. 
 
 "My dear fellow, it's all over," answered 
 Jack, in a broken voice. 
 
 The Colonel bowed his head. There was 
 a silence for some minutes. Then Jack 
 Enderby did an extremely unromantic thing. 
 The long watching, and the final scene 
 upstairs had upset him considerably, and 
 his taste at no time was over-refined. He 
 was conscious, too, that his troubles in the 
 way of delivering disagreeable messages was 
 by no means yet over. He poured himself 
 out a couple of glasses of sherry, from a 
 decanter that stood on one of the bare 
 tables, and gulped them down hastily one 
 after the other. His hand shook a good 
 deal ; he felt all to pieces, so to speak. 
 
 Dr. Synies glanced at him and then at 
 the Colonel, who waited, erect and silent. 
 Notwithstanding certain superficial affecta- 
 tions and vanities, Mortimer Symes was an 
 
2G COLONEL ENDEEBY'S WIFE. 
 
 eminently kind-hearted man. He was also, 
 as has already been stated, a pretty shrewd 
 observer and something of a diplomatist. 
 He never could see the object of telling 
 people truths of an unpalatable description 
 unless it was absolutely necessary to do so. 
 Just now he perceived that Jack Enderby 
 was screwing up his courage with a view 
 to blurting out information calculated to 
 give acute pain to the living, and reflect no 
 small discredit upon the dead. He decided 
 to intervene. 
 
 " The end was extremely sudden, Colonel 
 Enderby," he said, folding his arms, and 
 speaking with that fulness of utterance 
 which argues distinct satisfaction on the 
 part of the speaker at the sound of his own 
 voice. " A long period of coma, followed 
 by a brief interval of consciousness — the 
 mind even then considerably clouded. An 
 inclination to dwell on the past, — remini- 
 scences of former friendships and interests, 
 an awaking of early impressions, but no 
 active appreciation of immediate surround- 
 ings. A momentary flash of the old re- 
 markable vigour, and then," added Dr. 
 
FATHER AND SOX. 27 
 
 Syrnes, extending his hand with a slow 
 downward movement, " a final quenching 
 of the light. Your brother naturally was 
 greatly affected. Even a man like myself, 
 whose professional duties so often bring 
 scenes of this nature before him, could 
 hardly remain entirely unmoved. I need 
 not enlarge on the subject to you, Colonel 
 Enderby, who must so frequently have wit- 
 nessed death in its most distressing forms, 
 the horror of it aggravated by hideous and 
 repulsive surroundings. Familiarity fails to 
 rob death of its terrors. But I own I am 
 greatly relieved," he continued, with a re- 
 lapse into an easier conversational manner 
 — " sincerely relieved. With your father's 
 remarkably strong constitution, I had feared 
 a painful struggle at the last. I am thankful 
 to say we were spared anything of that kind." 
 The Colonel bowed a sort of general assent 
 to the worthy doctor's statements. It would 
 be indelicate, he felt, to ask for intimate 
 explanations before a third person. His 
 native reticence, and an innate dignity 
 which belonged to him, put all further 
 inquiries out of the question. 
 
28 COLONEL ENDERBY's WIFE. 
 
 Jack, meanwhile, was not slow to perceive 
 the way of escape which Dr. Byrnes' dis- 
 course had opened to him. He stifled any 
 conscientious scruples that assailed him. 
 
 "I did what I could, Philip," he said, in 
 a slightly apologetic tone. "But it was 
 just as Dr. Symes says. My father wasn't 
 quite himself, you know. He was wander- 
 ing a good deal, and one couldn't make him 
 understand anything out of the common 
 run." 
 
 " No, no ; of course not," replied Colonel 
 Enderhy. 
 
 He spoke as thoroughly accepting the 
 position, and even setting the matter 
 aside ; hut there was a sharp bitterness 
 at his heart. He was repulsed. His last 
 chance was gone. Philip was not with- 
 out a measure of pride. He turned away, 
 walked across to the window, and stood 
 looking out into the misty twilight, while 
 the doctor indulged in a series of ap- 
 propriate and somewhat wordy reflections, 
 to which Jack answered with incoherent 
 monosyllables. — His father was dead, and in 
 dying had given no sign. He himself was 
 
FATHER AXD SOX. 29 
 
 unpardoned. The injustice of the thing, as 
 well as the sorrow of it, cried out in Philip 
 Enderby. He could not bring himself to 
 remain in a house where his coming had 
 been so unwelcome. He turned away from 
 the window, went up and spoke to his 
 brother. 
 
 " I must get back to Aldershot to-night,'' 
 he said quietly. "I suppose I can catch 
 the night mail at Slowby. I'll come down 
 for the funeral, of course, if you'll let me 
 know the day and hour." 
 
 " Oh ! but you know, my dear fel- 
 low " began Jack Enderby. 
 
 The Colonel interrupted him. 
 
 " All right," he said. " I know you're 
 very kind, Jack ; but, under the circum- 
 stances, I had better go all the same, 
 thanks." 
 
30 COLONEL ENDERBY's WIFE. 
 
 CHAPTEK II. 
 
 " VIVE LE EOI ! " 
 
 On the morning after his father's funeral 
 Philip Enderby was up and out early. He 
 had passed a night in his old home for the 
 first time for over twenty years, and sleep 
 had been difficult of attainment. There 
 was very much to think about ; much that 
 was painful ; difficult to forgive ; to submit 
 to patiently. A sense of unjust wrong is 
 not an agreeable bedfellow. The Colonel 
 was glad enough when the light of a 
 stormy dawn began to glimmer in through 
 his window shutters ; he would get up and 
 go out, and try to find good counsel out of 
 doors. 
 
 He went downstairs and out on to the 
 head of the steps in front of the door. The 
 old wire-haired terrier got up from his place 
 
FATHER AND SOX. 31 
 
 on the tiger-skin before the hearth in the 
 hall, and trotted out after him. The dog 
 seemed anxious for notice ; he put his fore- 
 paws up against the balustrade and forced 
 his grey muzzle up into Colonel Enderby's 
 hand with a certain air of inquiry. The 
 old master Avas gone ; was this the new 
 one ? The Colonel looked down and patted 
 the dog's head for a minute ; then he drew 
 himself up and took a deep breath of the 
 keen moist air. His heart was very full 
 just then. 
 
 "I am afraid I am a bit of a fool," he 
 said, half ashamed of his own emotion. " I 
 suppose I didn't know how much I cared 
 for the place till it came to a question of 
 giving it up altogether. It cuts one a little 
 at first." 
 
 The gaudy beauty of a wild autumn 
 morning was upon Bassett Darcy. The 
 sky was clear after a night of rain and wind; 
 a thin, watery blue above, and below almost 
 white, with a flare of yellow light along 
 the eastern horizon. A broken procession 
 of light grey clouds — called of country 
 weather-prophets by the ominous name of 
 
32 COLONEL ENDEEBY'S WIFE. 
 
 " messengers " — streamed up from the west- 
 ward and straggled, ragged and dirty, 
 across a bank of darker cloud stretching 
 behind the uplands of Priors Bassett. The 
 trees, roughly stripped of their coloured 
 leaves by the night's storm, were black with 
 wet and glistened in the sunshine, the 
 coarse grass of the open park looking a raw 
 green. The wind, chill with rain, blew the 
 rooks and jackdaws hither and thither, as 
 they left the wood overhanging the bend of 
 the sluggish river down behind the house. 
 Somewhere among the shrubbery, under 
 shelter of the high red-brick wall of the 
 gardens on the left, a robin was singing a 
 tender lament for the dead summer and for 
 the pain and cold of the long bleak coming 
 winter. 
 
 There were sounds, too, from the large 
 block of stable buildings on the right. The 
 murmur of voices, the impatient stamp 
 of a horse, the rattling of pails and tinkle 
 of falling water, and now and again a few^ 
 bars of some tune, whistled shrilly, came to 
 Colonel Enderby's ears, as he stood there 
 looking silently at the strange yet familiar 
 
FATHER AND SOX. 33 
 
 scene. Memories of his mother, of his 
 childhood, of quaint games and imaginings, 
 when the wood by the river was shrouded 
 in delightful mystery, and the river itself 
 seemed full of unknown danger and of 
 promise ; when the flower-garden was a 
 sweet enchanted region, and when every 
 natural object possessed a spirit and 
 personality of its own, to be approached 
 with wonder and reverence ; when gardeners 
 and grooms too seemed wise with all 
 manner of occult wisdom, men who had a 
 tight grip on fundamental facts, and were 
 not to be deluded by mere appearances ; 
 when the keeper, in his gaiters and brown 
 velveteen coat, with pockets big enough to 
 hold a couple of retriever puppies, appeared 
 a wild and daring character, fascinating, 
 yet somewhat alarming also, thanks to his 
 careless disregard of animal life and pro- 
 found experience in the matter of vermin. — 
 Memories such as these, impressions and 
 associations which had slumbered for years, 
 awoke now in Colonel Enderby. Yes, it 
 is all there, all that has ever befallen us, 
 written with some mysterious kind of sym- 
 
 VOL. I. D 
 
34 COLONEL ENDERBY'S WIFE. 
 
 pathetic ink upon the heart and conscience, 
 and needing merely the fated touch which 
 shall restore to the invisible characters their 
 original legibility, and make us live our 
 past lives over once more in pleasure or in 
 pain. 
 
 He went down the stone steps, round the 
 end of the great square house, and along the 
 wide gravel terrace with the shrubberies on 
 one hand and the sloping lawns on the 
 other. He had wandered there years ago, 
 on sleepy summer evenings, with his gentle, 
 sweet-faced mother, telling her in shy, 
 half-awkward fashion the story of his first 
 love and of Miss Cecilia Murray's many 
 perfections, while Mr. Enderby sat over his 
 wine in the large dining-room indoors, and 
 the last glow of the sunset faded behind the 
 distant woods. 
 
 In that pool yonder, under the alder 
 stump, he caught a two-pound perch in 
 the Easter holidays, the year he went to 
 Harrow ; and there was the place, just 
 where the bank shelves into the water, 
 among the rushes and broad dock-leaves, 
 now sere and withered with the chill of 
 
FATHER AND SOX. 35 
 
 autumn, that he and Matt had seen a 
 couple of water-rats, one Sunday, after 
 afternoon service, and that Spot, the old 
 water spaniel, had missed the last one by a 
 couple of inches. And there : — but the 
 tale would be endless. Each path and 
 bush and flower-bed had its history, simple, 
 yet vivid, sad or merry of remembrance. 
 
 And since those far-off yet unforgotten 
 times, the little, ugly, red-legged, blue- 
 eyed boy had grown into a man ; had 
 wandered far and wide, had seen strange 
 sights, and passed through strange expe- 
 riences ; his gentle mother had lain these 
 many years sleeping in the churchyard on 
 the hill above ; his first love, the fair 
 Cecilia, had married the not too reputable 
 son of an Irish peer, and had drifted away 
 along some quite other road across the land 
 of this life ; the old Squire, obstinate and 
 tyrannical to the last, was dead. Philip 
 Enderby himself was middle-aged. He 
 supposed that he had outlived most of his 
 hopes and illusions ; and yet the old home 
 was just the same as ever. The rooks still 
 clamoured as they left their nests, and the 
 
36 COLONEL ENDEEBY'S WIFE. 
 
 fish rose in the lazy stream ; robins sang 
 plaintively among the shrubs, men whistled 
 over their work in the stable yard, and the 
 rich, damp, clay soil smelt strong and fresh 
 under the morning sunshine. The indi- 
 vidual changes, drops away, and dies, his 
 place knows him no more. Yet nature can 
 always find another bird to sing the old 
 song, and the wind blows as it will through 
 all the long years, and the land wakes glad 
 and fragrant at the kiss of the pale dawn, 
 and plain daily labour goes on steadily, 
 unheedingly, from generation to generation. 
 Birds will sing, stable buckets clatter, and 
 grooms whistle, so one fancies at times, just 
 as usual on the morning of the Last Day 
 itself. 
 
 Colonel Enderby, with the old w r hite 
 terrier trotting solemnly at his heels, paced 
 slowly up and down the long walk, thinking 
 of these things. One of the tinder-gardeners 
 sweeping fallen leaves and twigs off the 
 smooth gravel, stopped his work as he 
 passed by, and took a good long stare at 
 the Colonel. " He'd heered," as he told his 
 wife that eveniug over his supper, " a'ready, 
 
FATHER AND SOX. 37 
 
 as Mr. Jack Enderby was come into it all ; 
 but he felt he'd like to know what sort of a 
 looking gentleman the other one was, con- 
 sidering the old Squire was so terrible 
 spiteful agin' him." 
 
 Perhaps we may as well take a good look 
 at Philip Enderby, too, as he moves along 
 under the garden front of the stately house 
 in the wind and the morning sunshine, and 
 see what manner of man he is — outwardly, 
 at all events. I am afraid it must be owned 
 frankly, at starting, that he is not at all an 
 obviously romantic figure. The Colonel is 
 turned eight- and-forty, and is not unprosper- 
 ous looking — facts calculated, in the estima- 
 tion of most persons, to knock all prospects 
 of romance effectually on the head ! Further, 
 it must be owned that at no period of his 
 life has he been reckoned a handsome man. 
 All the same, there is a certain air of distinc- 
 tion about him. He is rather over middle 
 height ; well made and well set-up — broad 
 across the chest and small round the loins ; 
 and possessing, too, even in the undress of 
 a rough shooting-coat and heavy boots, that 
 effect of spotless freshness and cleanliness 
 
38 COLONEL ENDEEBY'S WIFE. 
 
 that is one of the most notable charac- 
 teristics of a well-bred Englishman. His 
 features are somewhat large and strongly 
 marked ; the nose aquiline, the mouth 
 hidden under a heavy light-brown mou- 
 stache, the ends of which- the Colonel has a 
 habit of pulling downwards in meditative 
 fashion whenever he has anything a little 
 on his mind. His jaw is square and solid ; 
 his complexion originally fair, but now 
 tanned and dulled by travel and exposure. 
 His crisp short hair, a darker brown by 
 some two shades than his moustache, is as 
 thick as ever, and still untouched with grey 
 — a fact which, though he is far from being 
 vain, does certainly yield him considerable 
 satisfaction. 
 
 Philip Enderby's eyes are the only point 
 in his personal appearance meriting un- 
 qualified praise. They are deep-set under 
 straight eyebrows — real fighting eyes of 
 bright blue ; the pupil small, the iris large 
 and peculiarly rich and clear in colour. 
 Such eyes are habitually kind and friendly 
 enough ; but they can grow very keen and 
 ruthless when the blood is hot and an ugly 
 
FATHER AND SOX. 39 
 
 day's work has to be clone. Ajdd our friend 
 here has seen an ugly day's work done more 
 than once in his life. He has seen more 
 than most men's share of battle and horror 
 and death. He looked at them steadily, not 
 without quick movements of pitying wonder 
 and disgust ; but chiefly with a stern sense 
 of his own immediate duty, which was to 
 put through the work in hand simply, and 
 even cheerfully, without any careful hesita- 
 tion or speculation concerning the ultimate 
 ethics of the situation. — This last sentence 
 seems to imply something of harshness and 
 cruelty, I fear ; but it may be questioned 
 whether any man will be of much active 
 use in the world who has not a residuum of 
 brutality left in him. In any case, it is 
 certain that in some natures, along with a 
 dash of harshness and cruelty — if one must 
 needs employ such unlovely terms — goes 
 tenderness of heart towards the weak and 
 unfortunate, delicate consideration for friend 
 or kinsman, and a devotion towards chosen 
 individuals so profound and constant that it 
 is almost perilous in its intensity. 
 
 The man of this temper who loves — still 
 
40 COLONEL ENDEKBY'S WIFE. 
 
 more, who loves late — will do it with a 
 terrible completeness. Strength has its 
 dangers as well as weakness. They are 
 touched with dignity and splendour, it is 
 true ; but they are too often touched as 
 well with a species of desperation. These 
 simple whole-hearted natures, under the 
 dominion of a fixed idea, are horribly diffi- 
 cult to cope with. Nothing turns them 
 aside. They will go through fire and water, 
 utterly regardless of the well-intentioned 
 remonstrances of the bystanders, to reach 
 the goal, whatever it may be. 
 
 In saying this, I do not mean for an 
 instant to suggest that this quiet, dignified, 
 and, alas ! middle-aged soldier, Colonel 
 Enderby, was at all disposed just now to 
 run mad upon love or any other matter. 
 The potential possibilities of a character 
 may never be developed in a given direction ; 
 but, thanks to circumstances, may remain 
 latent to the end. Far from indulging in 
 exaggeration of feeling or intention, he was 
 calmly making up his mind to accept the 
 inevitable ; to part with a hope that, though 
 but half-formulated, had been very dear to 
 
FATHER AND SON. 41 
 
 him ; to retire gracefully from a difficult 
 position ; and not only conceal, but, if pos- 
 sible, even forget his own disappointment 
 and injury. 
 
 For the Colonel paced up and down that 
 bright morning in front of the house at 
 Bassett Darcy, not as master, but as guest. 
 Old Mr. Enderby had bequeathed all his 
 property — houses, lands, plate, and other 
 possessions — to the younger of his two sur- 
 viving sons. Philip only inherited that 
 which would have come to him had his 
 elder brother, Matthew, lived — two-thirds 
 of his mother's fortune and a sum of money 
 left, in remainder, to him by name, in his 
 grandfather's will. He would no longer be 
 a poor man, it is true ; but to some persons, 
 even the assurance that in future they are 
 secure of a comfortable balance at their 
 bankers' will not wholly compensate for the 
 subjective discomfort of knowing themselves 
 to be the objects of an undying grudge. 
 This public and practical repudiation on the 
 part of his father was hard to bear. His 
 pride rebelled against it, as well as his 
 heart; and it was not without a struggle 
 
42 COLONEL ENDEKBY's WIFE. 
 
 that the Colonel schooled himself into 
 acquiescence. 
 
 As he stood still in the middle of the 
 hroad walk, looking away over the river to 
 the wood and the levels of the grass park 
 beyond, something very like tears came into 
 his eyes. There was a depth of very 
 wholesome humanity in the man. It 
 would have been pleasant to him to settle 
 down here, with a wife and children — as 
 Jack was about to do, for instance — to 
 see another generation growing up about 
 him, full of hope and generous ambition ; to 
 move on, surrounded by kindly, faithful 
 faces and honest love, towards the inevit- 
 able, but undreaded close. He could not 
 help feeling, rather sadly, that he had missed 
 a good deal in life. It was dreary work 
 looking at all this established security and 
 order from the point of view of a homeless 
 old bachelor. Colonel Enderby shook him- 
 self, with a queer smile, and turned back to 
 the house again. 
 
 " Ah ! well, it's no good quarrelling with 
 facts," he said, half aloud. "We all get 
 what we're best fitted for in the long run, I 
 
FATHER AND SOX. 43 
 
 suppose ; and it doesn't pay to cry over 
 spilt milk. Come along, Yic " — to the 
 terrier, who sat on the gravel, still con- 
 templating him with an air of inquiry — 
 "Fro. going indoors, like a sensible fellow, 
 to my breakfast." 
 
 Mr. Jack Enderby, meanwhile, notwith- 
 standing that at this moment Fortune ap- 
 peared to woo him with her broadest 
 smiles, was in an unhappy frame of mind. 
 Not that he was troubled with importunate 
 memories, or perplexed by the indifference 
 of universal nature to the fate of the in- 
 dividual or any such high or intimate 
 matter. Jack was safely rooted in the 
 conventional and commonplace, and his 
 perturbations were of a purely concrete 
 order. But he was entirely unaccus- 
 tomed to feeling more than one thing at a 
 time, and just now he was a prey to many 
 conflicting sensations. He found it dread- 
 fully confusing. Jack's conscience did not 
 accuse him. He knew that he had brought 
 no undue influence to bear on his father 
 regarding the disposition of the property ; 
 yet still he was painfully aware of embar- 
 
4-i COLONEL ENDEBBY's WIFE. 
 
 rassment and discomfort in his elder brother's 
 presence. Not possessing any morbid or 
 ascetic views concerning the inherent value 
 of suffering, it seemed to him a little too 
 bad that he should be so extremely uncom- 
 fortable when he was quite innocent of 
 wrong- doing. 
 
 He had come to the conclusion the day 
 before that it was incumbent upon him to 
 make Colonel Enderby a handsome and 
 appropriate speech on the subject of the 
 property. But the house had been full of 
 people ; there had been a good deal of 
 movement and stir, and, after the funeral, a 
 tendency in the direction of wine and cold 
 baked meats, and general conversation in 
 a rising scale of cheerfulness. Mr. Peter 
 Gainage, the lawyer from Slowby, had 
 stayed to dinner. So had Dr. Symes — not 
 that the latter gentleman had any intention 
 of being bracketed socially with a country 
 solicitor. He stayed for reasons of his own. 
 He happened to have heard some dramatic 
 stories of those terrible years of the Indian 
 Mutiny, and he was anxious to make nearer 
 acquaintance with a man who had been a 
 
FATHER AND SON. 45 
 
 not unextinguished actor in them. Dr. 
 Symes had remained, talking to the Colonel, 
 till late. There had realty been no favour- 
 able opening for Jack Enderby's speech ; 
 and as he was not by any means glib, 
 unless he lost his temper, and as he stood 
 in mortal fear of fine talking and heroics, he 
 had not tried very hard to find an opening, 
 since none presented itself unsought. 
 
 Now this morning the prospect of that 
 same speech hung over him like a dark and 
 dreadful shadow, while at the same time 
 he was conscious of an elation so lively 
 that it made him wash, put on his boots, 
 and even tie his white tie — Mr. Enderby 
 had an instinct that it would be graceful 
 to emphasize the outward and visible signs 
 of his clerical profession at this juncture — 
 in time to a dashing triumphal march which 
 kept on thumping itself out in his brain. 
 
 "Matt can go to Eton," he thought, 
 " and the girls can have new frocks when- 
 ever they want them. Bates says there's 
 no end of first-rate wine in the cellars ; and 
 Augusta will look uncommonly well in those 
 diamonds of my poor dear mother's." 
 
4G COLONEL ENDERBY'S WIFE. 
 
 Then lie checked himself ; grew suddenly 
 serious, thought of Jacob and the birth- 
 right, and of the nasty consequences in 
 some ways of his misappropriation of Esau's 
 blessing; and then of the virtues of the 
 law of entail, and of the sacred institution 
 of primogeniture — for Jack Enderby was a 
 devout Conservative. 
 
 "Every stick and stone on the estate 
 shall be strictly entailed on Matt at once,*' 
 he said, rather illogically. 
 
 He pictured the nice string of hunters 
 he would have in those great barrack-like 
 stables before the year was out ; then 
 made another return upon his brother, and 
 w r ondered what on earth he should say to 
 him. 
 
 When the breakfast bell rang at last, 
 poor Mr. Enderby felt anything but gay. 
 The triumphal march died away into silence, 
 and he would have sacrificed a good deal of 
 prospective pleasure in the matter of wine and 
 horses to have avoided the next half-hour. 
 
 As Jack, with rather a rueful counte- 
 nance, came down into the square flagged 
 hall, the Colonel entered it by the front 
 
FATHEE AND SOX. 47 
 
 door, letting a great rush of fresh, westerly 
 wind into the house with him. He came 
 forward, holding out his hand to his brother, 
 and looking him very frankly and kindly in 
 the face. There was a line serenity in his 
 expression as he did so. 
 
 "Good morning, Jack," he said. " I've 
 been round the dear old place. I'm glad 
 to find that with all the knocking about 
 the world that I've had, I have not for- 
 gotten a single thing here. It seems as if 
 I hadn't been away a day." 
 
 He paused a moment, and then added 
 quickly. 
 
 " God bless you, Jack, you and your 
 wife, and the children ! Good luck to you, 
 and your boys after you; they're jolly, 
 plucky little lads, and will keep up the 
 honour of the old name gallantly." 
 
 Colonel Enderby turned away, and went 
 across the hall to lay down his hat. 
 
 " You'll give me a bed now and then," 
 he said, "won't you, if I want to get away 
 from soldiering, and have a breath of my 
 native air? " 
 
 Jack Enderby was touched, distressed, 
 
48 COLONEL ENDEBBY's WIFE. 
 
 relieved, all at the same moment. The 
 number and diversity of his emotions did 
 not tend towards lucidity of thought or 
 expression. 
 
 "Upon my word/'' he began, "I don't 
 know what on earth to say to you, my dear 
 fellow. I am in the most awfully awkward 
 position, you know. I've been wanting to 
 speak to you seriously ever since this all 
 came out about the property. It isn't 
 right, you know. It's infernally hard on 
 you, though I don't want to say anything 
 disrespectful about my poor father, of 
 course. But, you know, he was very high- 
 handed with me ; there was no getting 
 near certain subjects. He was as close 
 and reticent as could be about money 
 matters. I give you my word I hadn't a 
 notion till the day he died of the way he 
 meant to leave things, and even then he 
 only gave me a hint. I don't understand 
 it. I tell you, I don't know how to look 
 you in the face. I feel like — well, upon 
 my word, I don't know what I do feel 
 like," he added hopelessly. " It's most 
 uncommonly awkward for me, and your 
 
FATHER AND SOX. 49 
 
 taking it all in this wonderfully generous 
 sort of way makes it all the worse, that 
 it does." 
 
 Jack's voice grew a little shaky. He was 
 genuinely moved, though his form of utter- 
 ance was, it must be allowed, somewhat 
 elementary. 
 
 The Colonel came across from the table 
 on which he had laid down his hat. His 
 brother's incoherent address had pleased 
 him, and strengthened his willingness to 
 accept the situation unreservedly. 
 
 "It's all perfectly right as it is," he 
 answered. " You're cut out for a country 
 squire, Jack — it will suit you a good deal 
 better than preaching, eh ? And Augusta 
 is just fit for this sort of thing too. After 
 all, what do I want with a great barrack 
 of a house and an army of servants ? There, 
 we quite understand each other, and needn't 
 say any more about it. By the way," he 
 said presently, "it seems to me there is no 
 end of keep on South Park, just across the 
 river, simply wasting. I should put eighteen 
 or twenty beasts on it at once, if I was in 
 your place. I suspect you'll find the estate 
 
 VOL. I. E 
 
50 COLONEL ENDERBY'S WIFE. 
 
 wants a lot of looking after at first. Things 
 must have been a good deal neglected, since 
 rny father's not been able to get about and 
 see into them himself." 
 
 Then the two men went into the dining- 
 room, chatting of stock, and horses, and 
 draining, and kindred subjects. And by 
 the time breakfast was over, the triumphal 
 march was thumping away as merrily as 
 ever again in Jack Enderby's head. 
 
 That evening as he stood smoking medi- 
 tatively, with his back to the library fire, 
 the Colonel said — 
 
 " I think I shall get long leave, Jack, 
 and go abroad for a time, when all this 
 business is finally settled. I dare say 
 Edmund Drake would go with me. You 
 know, after all, I have seen next to nothing 
 of Europe." 
 
 He turned round and steadied a big log 
 that threatened to fall out on to the hearth 
 with his foot. 
 
 " I feel as pleased as a schoolboy," he 
 went on, " at having some money in my 
 pocket to play ducks and drakes with." 
 
FATHER AND SOX. 51 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 RETROSPECTIVE. 
 
 A brilliant American writer has told us 
 that in order to acquire a really compre- 
 hensive and scientific understanding of the 
 personality of any given man or woman, it 
 would be necessary to go back to the garden 
 of Eden, and, beginning with our first 
 parents, to trace the gradual evolution of 
 the individual specimen down through the 
 ages, from the cradle of the human race to 
 the present day. This, doubtless, is strictly 
 true. It is, therefore, all the more a matter 
 for devout thankfulness, that such a course 
 is hedged about with obvious impossibility ; 
 for were it not so, there is no saying to 
 what gigantic proportions the biography of 
 the most obscure and uninteresting person 
 might reach ! Let me hasten to assure 
 
 UBRARf — 
 UNIVERSITY OF fttWOIf 
 
52 COLONEL ENDERBY's WIFE. 
 
 the reader that it is not for an instant 
 proposed in the present case to peer into 
 the backward abysm of things in this alarm- 
 ingly voluminous and tedious manner, in 
 the hope of therein discerning the ultimate 
 causes of present effects. The narrator 
 only desires, with all attainable brevity and 
 conciseness, to make a few statements 
 which may serve to throw some light upon 
 the fortunes and conduct of certain actors 
 in this little drama. 
 
 When Philip Enderby was about two- 
 and-twenty an event took place which very 
 sensibly affected his subsequent career. He 
 discovered one fine day that he was very 
 deeply in love — in love, too, with a young- 
 lady whose fortune would be pretty well 
 enclosed by the trunks in which she packed 
 her modest trousseau. The young man's 
 tastes were neither showy nor expensive. 
 He had, in fact, been blamelessly economical, 
 eking out his pay as subaltern in a march- 
 ing regiment, with the slender sum allowed 
 him, rather grudgingly, by his father, and 
 never forestalling quarter-day with inop- 
 portune demands for advances. Now he 
 
FATHER AND SON. 53 
 
 intimated that an increase of allowance 
 would enable him to marry, and that he 
 wanted to marry very much indeed. 
 
 But, unfortunately for poor Philip, he was 
 not, and never had been, a favourite with his 
 father, whose stock of parental affection was 
 rather exclusively bestowed upon his eldest 
 son, Matthew, a handsome, headstrong, 
 blustering fellow. Young Matt had left the 
 university, where he had distinguished him- 
 self more in sporting and athletic than in 
 learned circles, very much in debt. His 
 father had just cleared him, so that Philip's 
 love affair and request for help came at a 
 singularly inconvenient season. In vulgar 
 terms, Mr. Enderby didn't see it at all. 
 
 " What did that silly fellow, Philip, want 
 with a wife and a houseful of squalling brats 
 at his age ? " he asked. " The boy hadn't 
 half enough to do, kicking his heels at one 
 garrison town after another. A little good 
 hard work was what he wanted ; that would 
 knock the calf-love out of him soon enough, 
 xlnd then, who the devil is this Miss 
 Cecilia Murray ? " he added, not over- 
 civilly. " I never heard of her. Let 
 
54 COLONEL ENDERBY'S WIFE. 
 
 Philip take up with some girl with money y 
 in the county, whom we know something 
 about, and then it'll be plenty of time to 
 talk about increased allowances, and so on. 
 If they're so much in love, let 'em wait; 
 that's the only thing I can recommend to 
 'em." 
 
 Lieutenant Enderby and Cecilia Murray 
 proceeded to wait. Poor dears ! there was 
 nothing else very possible for them to do 
 under the circumstances, since they were 
 really attached to each other. They waited 
 dutifully during the space of a year. Then 
 the young lady began to lose her good looks 
 a little. She was one of those thin, under- 
 vitalized blondes who do not wear very well. 
 It became daily more evident that waiting 
 did not agree with her physically, though 
 the constancy of her heart might be as 
 great as ever. It was a pity, for Philip was 
 blessed with a large share of patient devotion. 
 He could have waited faithfully for a dozen 
 years for his Cecilia, and sworn at the end 
 of it that she was every bit as pretty as the 
 first day he met her. 
 
 Cecilia Murray's mother, however, was a 
 
FATHER AND SON. 5-5 
 
 lady of experience, of resources, and of an 
 eminently practical turn of mind. Her own 
 marriage had not been exactly a conspicuous 
 success, since her husband had added to 
 various other incapacities the incapacity for 
 living long, and had left his wife, as a still 
 young and handsome woman, with a family 
 of portionless daughters on her hands. 
 Mrs. Murray permitted herself no illusions 
 in certain matters. She had realized with 
 disagreeable distinctness that, in the case of 
 a girl having little besides personal attrac- 
 tions to recommend her, time is of supreme 
 value on this side of five-and-twenty. 
 
 " With Cecilia's style of looks, freshness 
 is everything," she said, with praiseworthy 
 candour. 
 
 Acting upon this conviction the good lady 
 did not warmly encourage her daughter's 
 lover, whose material prospects struck her 
 as lacking in any brilliant promise. She 
 treated the young man with scant courtes}', 
 and had, in fact, prepared to break off the 
 match altogether, when an unlooked-for 
 occurrence caused her suddenly to alter her 
 opinion as to the eligibility of his suit. 
 
56 COLONEL ENDERBY'S WIFE. 
 
 It was in the winter-time that young 
 Matthew Enderby, troubled about money 
 matters and thirsty for some fresh amuse- 
 ment, elected to come to the quaint cathedral 
 town in the north, where his brother's regi- 
 ment was then quartered, and spend a week 
 with him. Matfc was in very low water 
 again ; his debts were heavy, and he could 
 not make up his mind to tell his father 
 frankly about them. Between horses and 
 dogs, billiards and racing, and little runs up 
 to London, the young gentleman had con- 
 trived to get his affairs into a sufficiently 
 desperate condition. The Squire's temper 
 was short at times even with his eldest and 
 best-loved son ; and Matt neither relished 
 the idea of embarking in a slightly dis- 
 creditable confession, or of risking his 
 position of first favourite with his father. 
 He was in the state of mind in which a man 
 is willing to clutch at remote and improbable 
 chances of salvation. Philip was devoted 
 to him, he knew. Philip was a generous 
 fellow and might be able to help him. At 
 worse, Philip could be coaxed into breaking 
 the whole thing to his mother — whose 
 
FATHEE AND SOX. 57 
 
 darling lie was — and through her Matt 
 might get the assistance he wanted without 
 the unpleasantness of a personal state- 
 ment. Filled with these vague hopes and 
 round-about intentions, he started on his 
 pilgrimage to the northern city; but once 
 there the desire to cut a figure, win admira- 
 tion, and get himself talked about, returned 
 upon him to the exclusion of more prudent 
 considerations. The week of his stay ex- 
 tended itself into three, and during those 
 three weeks Matthew Enderby might cer- 
 tainly congratulate himself on having made 
 a mark — of a kind. 
 
 One night, or rather, early one morning, 
 the two brothers, and a young fellow-officer 
 of Philip's, Beaumont Pierce-Dawnay, by 
 name, were returning from a somewhat 
 uproarious bachelor's dinner-party at a 
 neighbouring country-house. Matt had 
 taken more wine than was good for him ; 
 he had played cards and lost heavily. 
 He was excited and angry, and tried to 
 carry off his uncomfortable sensations by an 
 extra amount of swagger and bluster. When 
 the high two-wheeled dog-cart, in which the 
 
58 COLONEL ENDEEBY'S WIFE. 
 
 three young men were going to drive back y 
 came to the door, Beau Pierce-Dawnay said, 
 with a significant glance, to Philip — • 
 
 " You'd better drive, old man. You're 
 the steadiest of the lot, and that horse is a 
 nasty vicious brute, and stumbles into the 
 bargain." 
 
 But Matthew chose to regard this as an 
 unwarrantable act of interference. He was 
 in the humour to pick a quarrel with any 
 one, and the other man's imperturbable 
 good-temper had been a source of irritation 
 to him all the evening. With some in- 
 solence, he said he had hired the trap him- 
 self ; he knew very well what he was about ; 
 he had driven out, and he was going to drive 
 back again. If Mr. Pierce-Dawnay was 
 afflicted with nervousness he could walk, as 
 far as he, Matt, was concerned, and welcome. 
 
 Beau, however, was far from quarrelsome ; 
 he got up behind the dog-cart with a good- 
 natured laugh. 
 
 " Oh ! I don't care a rap," he said. " I 
 can stick on here tight enough. If the 
 horse comes down, you and Philip '11 get the 
 broken necks, you know, not I." 
 
FATHER AND SON. 59 
 
 This speech did not tend to soothe 
 Matthew Enderby. The horse justified the 
 evil opinion given of it, and the young man, 
 half from recklessness, half from temper, 
 drove wildly, and frightened and fretted the 
 ill-conditioned animal into a perfect fever. 
 At last, at the top of a long, steep hill, Matt 
 lost all patience, and flung the reins petu- 
 lantly to his brother. 
 
 " There, catch hold," he cried. " I shall 
 get mad and cut the brute to pieces in a 
 minute. I want to light my pipe. Hold 
 him up, you fool! w T hat are you at, let- 
 ting him gander about the road in that 
 fashion?" 
 
 Philip caught hold of the reins as best he 
 could ; but the slap of them on the horse's 
 back, as Matt threw them to him, had 
 thoroughly scared it. The horse bolted. 
 Philip was almost helpless ; he was sitting 
 low, and driving from the wrong side too ; he 
 could not get any purchase on the horse's 
 mouth. Matt, perceiving the danger, made 
 a clutch at the reins again, with an oath, 
 and succeeded in giving a violent wrench 
 to the right hand one. The horse swerved, 
 
CO COLONEL ENDEEBY'S WIFE. 
 
 crossed its fore legs, and. came down like a 
 lump of lead on the hard frosty road. 
 
 The next thing Philip remembered was 
 standing out in the roadway, with Pierce- 
 Dawnay by him. He was not much hurt 
 himself, but an indefinable dread was upon 
 him. He w T ent over to the further side 
 of the broken-down carriage. There was a 
 great heap of stones on the grass by the 
 roadway, — and across the heap, just where 
 the light of the lamp fell, lay poor young 
 Matthew Enderby. He w r ould never swagger, 
 or play cards, or get into debt again, in this 
 world. 
 
 Some grief is unapproachable ; it resists 
 sympathy almost as an insult, and nurses 
 itself in black silence and gloom. So it was 
 with the Squire. He did not say much 
 about his son's death, but he brooded over 
 it in heavy speechless wretchedness. He 
 could not accustom his mind to it ; he 
 had a sense of unpardonable injury and 
 wrong. The house at Bassett became a sad 
 place. Jack was up at college, and he went 
 home as little possible, though the fact 
 of his being blessed by nature wdth many 
 
FATHER AND SON. 61 
 
 characteristics of the true Enderby type 
 made his presence rather welcome than 
 otherwise to his father. Towards Philip the 
 Squire felt with deep unreasoning bitterness. 
 The thought that this boy, for whom he had 
 never cared greatly, who did not resemble 
 the rest of the family either in looks or in 
 temperament, would take his dashing elder 
 brother's place, was hateful to him. Here- 
 tofore Philip had been simply uninteresting 
 to his father; he was uninteresting no longer, 
 he was obnoxious. If one of the two lads 
 must go, why had not Fate selected him ? 
 The Squire could have spared him well 
 enough, if it came to that. 
 
 Meanwhile, Philip himself was half broken- 
 hearted. Death, in kindly fashion, rubs out 
 the remembrance of past faults and follies, 
 and leaves generally a fair and gracious 
 picture of those we have loved. Their 
 virtues seem altogether their own, and their 
 vices no vital or integral part of them, but 
 merely an unsightly smirch easily washed 
 away and obliterated. Ever since the days 
 when Matt's tin soldiers invariably won 
 glorious victories on the floor of the Bassett 
 
62 COLONEL ENDERBY'S WIFE. 
 
 Darcy nursery, over his own unsuccessful 
 squadrons, lying prone and scattered on the 
 ground, Philip had always admired his hand- 
 some, headstrong elder brother, and yielded 
 him the first place willingly, even gladly. 
 It was horrible that Matt, who was so 
 brilliant and taking, who promised to sup- 
 port the family name in such an open-handed 
 manner, who enjoyed life so vastly, should 
 have been snatched away thus at a moment's 
 notice. 
 
 But people were kind to Philip in his dis- 
 tress. Mrs. Murray, notably, was far kinder 
 than she had ever been before. Her affection 
 seemed to rise with extraordinary rapidity 
 from zero to boiling-point. She welcomed 
 him to her house, and quite advertized the 
 fact of her daughter's engagement. Perhaps 
 our friend Philip was pitiably inexperienced 
 in those days. He accepted Mrs. Murray's 
 attentions with the warmest gratitude, while 
 it never occurred to him to inquire as to the 
 root from which they might spring. 
 
 Mrs. Murray's affection, however, was 
 tempered with astuteness. As time passed 
 by, she began again to cast a doubtful eye 
 
FATHER AND SON. 63 
 
 on the young man's pretensions. He was 
 in all probability secure of a good position 
 and large fortune now ; but then, his father 
 — as far as Mrs. Murray could make out — 
 was the sort of man who might live for 
 €ver. Meanwhile, Cecilia had other ad- 
 mirers. The good lady weighed the bird 
 in the hand against the birds in the bush ; 
 and, unless the former should develop 
 sudden and unexpected plumpness, felt it 
 would be advisable to relinquish her hold on 
 it, and employ both hands in trying to catch 
 one of those other birds that were still at 
 liberty. She announced one day, to the 
 young man's surprise, that she had really 
 given him time enough ; it looked bad for a 
 girl to be hanging on with a long uncertain 
 engagement like this ; Mr. Enderby must 
 -shilly-shally no longer; Cecilia, poor dear 
 child, was growing wretchedly worn and 
 peaky ; Mr. Enderby must many her at 
 once, on a good income — " such an income 
 as will be in keeping with your position and 
 prospects, you know " — or not at all. 
 
 Philip was a good deal startled, both by 
 the announcement itself, and the tone in 
 
C4 COLONEL ENDEKBY'S WIFE. 
 
 which it was conceived. There was one 
 clause in it, notably, that offended both 
 his taste and good feeling. Still he was 
 very much in love. He wrote home to his 
 mother to say he was coming, and then 
 w r ent down to Bassett resolved to renew his 
 request to his father. 
 
 As long as he lived he remembered the 
 events of that evening with painful distinct- 
 ness. The dinner was not a cheerful one. 
 The Squire was moody, and hardly spoke, 
 except to give an order to the servants. 
 Mrs. Enderby, with gentle tact and self- 
 sacrificing sweetness, tried to ignore her 
 husband's surly pre-occupation and to talk 
 as usual ; but she was nervous, and the 
 conversation sank away again into anxious 
 silence. Philip found his father's manner 
 anything but reassuring ; as the saying is r 
 his heart was in his mouth. 
 
 When Mrs. Enderby had left the dining- 
 room, Philip told his little story — told it 
 in a modest, quiet, manly way. There was 
 a trace of pathos in the young man's bear- 
 ing as he pleaded his cause, which some 
 hearers would have found affecting. But 
 
FATHER AND SOX. 65 
 
 Mr. Enderby was not easily affected. He 
 turned his chair sideways, leaned his elbow 
 on the table, and answered Philip over his 
 shoulder, without taking the trouble to look 
 at him. 
 
 "I told you my opinion of this foolish 
 business of yours two years ago," he said; 
 "it hasn't changed." 
 
 "You told us to wait, sir, and we have 
 waited," answered Philip. 
 
 Mr. Enderby put his hand on the de- 
 canter standing by him, and refilled his 
 glass. 
 
 "And the girl's got tired of waiting, I 
 suppose — thinks you can ask for whatever 
 you like now and get it ; and you think the 
 same, no doubt. You're in a pretty hurry, 
 I dare say, to step into your dead brother's 
 shoes." 
 
 " You've no right to say that, sir," flashed 
 out Philip, hotly. " I've given you no 
 cause for such a supposition. Such a 
 thought never entered my head, or hers 
 either. She was good enough to care for 
 me long ago, when certainly nobody could 
 accuse her affection of being mercenary." 
 
 VOL. I. F 
 
6<6 COLONEL ENDERBY's WIFE. 
 
 u I'm glad to hear it," returned the elder 
 man slowly. " It's as well you should 
 know just where you stand. If you thought 
 your brother's death would improve your 
 prospects, you were mistaken, that's all. 
 It won't make a penny's difference to you, 
 while I live." 
 
 Mr. Enderby swallowed down his glass 
 of porfc, and then broke out suddenly and 
 violently — 
 
 " But for you, Matt might have been alive 
 now. You were drunk ! " 
 
 Philip set his teeth hard. He went as 
 white as the table-cloth before him. 
 
 "I don't drink, sir," he said, " and you 
 know it. I was as sober as I am at this 
 moment. Pierce-Dawnay was with us ; he 
 told you so at the time." 
 
 "Pierce-Dawnay w T as your friend, not 
 Matt's. What proof have I that he didn't 
 try to make the best of a bad job, and say 
 wdiat he could to shield you ? " 
 
 "He's my friend, as you say; but he is 
 a gentleman all the same, sir. He is not in 
 the habit of telling lies." 
 
 How far sullen brooding grief had really 
 
FATHER AND SON. 07 
 
 perverted Matthew Enderby's reason, and 
 made him harbour ugly suspicions against 
 his son ; how far he was merely actuated by 
 a bullying desire to pain and humiliate the 
 young man, it would be difficult to deter- 
 mine. Probably the tw r o causes were too 
 subtly mixed to be capable of separation. 
 He sunk his head on his breast, and spoke 
 with brutal deliberation. 
 
 " So much the worse for you, then, if you 
 were sober. That doesn't put your conduct 
 in a better light, as far as I can see. You 
 can drive well enough when it pays you to 
 drive well." 
 
 Philip sprang up from his place and came 
 round in front of his father. His expression 
 was full of uncontrollable amazement and 
 horror. 
 
 " What on earth do you mean, sir ? " he 
 cried. " What are you daring to hint at ? 
 Do you know what a dastardly thing your 
 words seem to imply? " 
 
 Mr. Enderby looked up at him without 
 raising his head. His dull eyes were blood- 
 shot and his face flushed with passion as 
 he answered : — 
 
68 COLONEL ENDERBY'S WIFE. 
 
 "By God! I tell you some people would 
 say you knew very well what you were 
 about when you pitched Matt out on to 
 that cursed heap of stones. This is a fine 
 property, and you were my second son. 
 Foul play has been heard of for a lighter 
 stake than that before now." 
 
 Some ten minutes later Philip rushed out 
 into the hall, letting the door slam heavily 
 behind him. As he did so, Mrs. Enderby 
 moved forward in the firelight to meet him. 
 She had been too anxious to rest by herself 
 during this critical interview between her son 
 and husband. She came back into the hall 
 again, and stood near the wide open fireplace, 
 listening with deepening fear and sorrow to 
 the fierce voices in the dining-room. 
 
 Philip's tempest of anger died down as he 
 caught sight of his mother. He put his 
 arms round the frail, delicate woman in a 
 sudden agony of tenderness. 
 
 " Come away to your room, mother," he 
 said huskily; " I have got to say good-bye 
 to you." 
 
 Poor Mrs. Enderby clung to him trem- 
 bling. 
 
FATHER AND SON. 69 
 
 " Oh, you have quarrelled!" she cried. 
 " My dearest, if you love me, go back 
 and make it up. Eemember, your father 
 is very quick-tempered ; he often says 
 things he regrets later, when he has re- 
 covered himself. And he is very sore 
 about dear Matt ; you know how he loved 
 him. He cannot submit to this trial; it 
 makes him hasty and bitter. All his hopes 
 were centred in Matt. And then, too, he 
 has been troubled about business. He has 
 been tried, Philip, cruelly tried and harassed. 
 Eemember all this, dear. Go and make it 
 up with him, for my sake. If he has been 
 a little hard with you, try to bear it — don't 
 be stubborn, Philip ; try to meet him half- 
 way." 
 
 The young man did not answer till they 
 had crossed the hall and entered Mrs. 
 Enderby's little sitting-room. She stood 
 by him, still clasping his hand, and looking 
 with sweet piteous earnestness in his 
 face. 
 
 "No, mother," he said; " the apology 
 must come from him, not from me. It 
 can't be made up unless he withdraws 
 
70 COLONEL ENDEEBY's WIFE. 
 
 certain accusations lie has made against 
 me." 
 
 "Then it will never be made up," said 
 Mrs. Enderby, in a low voice. 
 
 " He has accused me of a hideous 
 action," Philip went on, U of something 
 preposterous, vile, unnatural. I cannot 
 tell you about it. I had better never have 
 been born than have dreamed of it even for 
 an instant." 
 
 Philip flung himself down on his knees 
 before her, and held her about the w^aist, 
 pressing his face against her gown. 
 
 " Mother, promise me that you, at least, 
 will never doubt me ; that you'll never 
 listen to any suggestions he throws out 
 about me ; that you will keep me in your 
 heart of hearts ; that you'll never let any- 
 thing cloud your love for me. Promise me, 
 mother, to believe in me always, before I go." 
 
 In the poor boy's weakness Mrs. Enderby 
 found an unexpected calm and strength. 
 
 " Stand up, Philip," she said gently. She 
 laid her hands on his shoulders, and 
 looked deep into his blue eyes. " I believe 
 in you completely and truly, Philip. 
 
FATHEK AND SON. 71 
 
 Nothing can shake my faith in you. This 
 is a terrible delusion that has taken 
 possession of your father's mind, the fruit 
 of sorrow. You must not hold him ac- 
 countable for it. Thoughts take hold of us 
 sometimes which it is as impossible to drive 
 away as it is to rid ourselves of disease itself. 
 But they pass after a time, and we shake 
 off the remembrance of them as we shake 
 off the remembrance of a wretched dream, 
 with infinite thankfulness and relief. Please 
 God, it may be so in this case, and that 
 before very long you may come back to me 
 again. Ah ! you are very dear to me, 
 Philip. You have been the stay and 
 comfort of my life ; you have been son and 
 daughter to me, both in one." 
 
 Mrs. Enderby could not manage to say 
 more. The two stood looking at each 
 other for a few minutes in silence. Then 
 Philip bent down and kissed his mother, 
 and went away. 
 
 The proverb says troubles rarely come 
 singly. To Philip Enderby they seemed to 
 come in legions just at this time. Mrs. 
 Murray was pitiless ; as the income was 
 
72 COLONEL ENDERBY's WIFE. 
 
 not forthcoming on the one part, the bride 
 was not forthcoming on the other. She 
 developed an admirable sense of duty — 
 feared that the young man must have 
 behaved shamefully to his father to cause 
 this rupture and denial. A bad son is 
 calculated to make but a sorry husband. 
 Cecilia's happiness must not be endangered. 
 Mrs. Murray felt it would be both immoral 
 and impolitic to put a premium on filial 
 disobedience. On the highest grounds she 
 therefore entirely refused to think of Mr. 
 Enderby as a possible son-in-law. 
 
 So there was an end to Philip's budding 
 romance. At one stroke he found himself 
 bereft alike of parents, home, and mistress, 
 and throw T n upon the world as a mere 
 soldier of fortune. With his faithful and 
 affectionate nature, he was bound to suffer 
 very deeply under this accumulation of 
 misfortunes. I do not wish to draw a fancy 
 portrait of the young man, and hold him up 
 as a model of fortitude and virtue. On the 
 contrary, I must admit that for a time after 
 the final breaking off of his engagement, 
 it seemed a little doubtful whether Philip 
 
FATHEE AND SON. 73 
 
 was not determined to set out on that 
 unprofitable journey, commonly known as 
 " going to the bad." He was so miserable, 
 poor fellow, that he was sorely tempted to 
 drown misery in debauch. But, perhaps his 
 mother's prayers, perhaps a certain innate 
 purity and sweetness, which at bottom 
 made riot disgusting to him, called Philip 
 back before he had sunk very deep in the 
 slough. He recovered his footing on the 
 solid ground of good living, and, not without 
 a hot sense of shame and self-reproach in 
 face of his past aberrations, took, once and 
 for all, to wiser courses. 
 
 Great public events, too, came at this 
 crisis indirectly to his aid. The year 1854 
 saw the beginning of a war which we are 
 now assured was highly discreditable, if not 
 actually iniquitous. Be that as it may, the 
 fact remains — happily or unhappily, I know 
 not which — that men may fight as gallantly 
 in a bad cause as a good one, and that the 
 moral effect on individuals may be as 
 salutary when they suffer, struggle, and 
 endure in an unjust quarrel as in a just one. 
 Philip Enderby began to show what spirit 
 
74 COLONEL ENDERBY S WIFE. 
 
 he was truly of. He emerged, he dis- 
 tinguished himself. Later, during the 
 hideous months of the Indian Mutiny, his 
 name obtained a rather enviable notoriety. 
 The plain slender young fellow 7 , whose 
 quiet ways had made him something of a 
 butt for the wits of his regiment, developed 
 both mentally and physically. India, for 
 some years after the rebellion, offered 
 brilliant opportunities to soldiers who had 
 the wit to take advantage of them ; and 
 Philip's patience, constancy, and courage 
 had already marked him out as a person 
 to be entrusted with delicate or hazardous 
 work. As the young man could not marry 
 his love, he decided to marry his sword, 
 and contrived, as time went on, to carve 
 out for himself a sufficiently distinct place 
 in the world with that somewhat unculti- 
 vated instrument. 
 
 A certain simplicity and directness of 
 purpose never left him. But as he grew 
 older, Philip Enderby was not a person 
 with whom it was advisable to take a 
 liberty. It came to be understood that 
 some matters must not be spoken of lightly 
 
FATHER AND SON. ib 
 
 before him — a woman's reputation must 
 not be smiled away, or a man's moral de- 
 linquencies too easily condoned. Younger 
 men were disposed to think him a trifle too 
 rigid in matters of virtue and religion for 
 the entire comfort of his neighbours — a 
 person given to slight exaggerations, stern, 
 and not altogether easy to get on with. 
 Yet every one admitted that he was kindly 
 too, a faithful friend, and a fine officer. At 
 eight-and-forty the Colonel's position was 
 acknowledged and assured. He had escaped 
 many dangers, resisted many temptations ; 
 and as yet, perhaps fortunately for himself, 
 he had been very true to the memory of his 
 first love. 
 
 And Mrs. Enderby ? Loviug both hus- 
 band and son, nothing was left her but to 
 live by faith. But faith, unassisted by re- 
 current and encouraging revelations, is a 
 lean and far from nourishing diet. Mrs. 
 Enderby did not thrive upon it. As day 
 after day and month after month passed 
 by, without any change or sign of relenting 
 on the part of the Squire towards Philip, 
 faith began to grow weak, and Mrs. Enderby 
 
76 COLONEL ENDEKBY'S WIFE. 
 
 began to grow weak also. She hungered 
 after her boy. He had been a good and 
 gentle son to her ever since the time when, 
 clad in a round holland pinafore and white 
 tucked drawers, he had trotted after her 
 up and down the long passages at Bassett 
 Darcy, and about the sheltered, high-walled 
 gardens, fragrant w 7 ith the scent of pinks 
 and mignonette. Later, he had never failed 
 to scrawl her a weekly letter from school, 
 containing an ill-spelled chronicle of rudi- 
 mentary joys and sorrows. And afterwards, 
 when he went into the army — while through 
 many wakeful nights, in the great blue bed- 
 room over the hall, she had wrestled in 
 prayer for him, and agonized over those, to 
 her, mysterious temptations that are sup- 
 posed specially to beset young gentlemen 
 of the upper classes — she had always found 
 him come home to her, as quiet and simple 
 and tenderly thoughtful as ever. 
 
 Only once did she venture to break the 
 silence which her husband maintained upon 
 the subject of his quarrel with his son ; and 
 then the Squire's fierce, unreasoning violence 
 terrified her into patient submission again. 
 
FATHEE AND SON. 77 
 
 Mrs. Enderby could cling to her love, but 
 she could not fight for it. As time went 
 on, she fell into a strange habit of sitting 
 silent and unemployed in the large, dusky 
 saloon, overlooking the broad, smooth lawn 
 and lazy river. She would not go out 
 much ; she shrank from meeting her neigh- 
 bours, or even from stepping in and out of 
 the cottages, with a basket of dainties on 
 her arm, which she distributed along with 
 the most sulphureous of tracts, and the very 
 mildest of personal advice. Sometimes she 
 seemed to be bewildered, and hardly to know 
 what she was doing. Unpleasant rumours 
 got about concerning her ; people said poor 
 Mrs. Enderby' s mind was going. 
 
 Medical science, in the neat and drily 
 attentive person of Dr. Eideout of Slowby — 
 it was before the day of Dr. Symes and the 
 local pre-eminence of Tullingworth — owned 
 itself baffled. There was no organic disease 
 discoverable, and yet the poor lady was 
 evidently sinking. 
 
 The feeble flame of Mrs. Enderby's life 
 flickered up fitfully whenever her husband 
 entered the room. Hope lingers with us, 
 
78 COLONEL ENDEKBY'S WIFE. 
 
 and old habits assert themselves even when 
 the sands have run very low, and the feet 
 of the mourners are near the door. She 
 told him that there was " nothing really the 
 matter. She was only very weak, and 
 would be better again in a day or so." 
 
 But the day on which Mrs. Enderby would 
 be better never dawned. That nickering 
 flame sank slowly down till it was quenched 
 in darkness, and Mrs. Enderby lay dead. 
 She had paid the penalty of too great faith 
 and love. Virtues should be of a strictly 
 limited order, one sometimes fears, if they 
 are to bring their possessors in a comfort- 
 able dividend on this side the grave. 
 
 Matthew Enderby missed his wife very 
 keenly. He had loved her truly, according 
 to his lights. The custom of many years 
 had made her presence necessary to him, 
 and her death seemed somewhat of an im- 
 pertinence. It was the only independent 
 action she had taken, save a certain tremu- 
 lous support given to Philip's love affair, 
 since he married her. Mr. Enderby could 
 hardly understand it. He was sad, lonely, 
 angry ; and his anger, not perhaps un- 
 
FATHER AND SON. 79 
 
 naturally, vented it self in implacable hostility 
 towards the son, whose action, he persuaded 
 himself, was, if indirectly, still certainly 
 connected with his wife's long illness and 
 death. 
 
BOOK SECOND. 
 A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP, 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
CHAPTEE I. 
 
 THE THEE ADS BEGIN TO CKOSS. 
 
 Compaeed with many of its sister towns 
 situated along the shores of the Gulf of 
 Genoa, Terzia cannot claim to be a very 
 pretty place. It is too full of the whir of 
 machinery, the clank and clang of hammers, 
 and the dust of workshops to be altogether 
 pleasant. The beautiful old ship-building 
 trade, formerly the wealth of this part of 
 the coast, is fast dying out ; but a few half- 
 finished wooden vessels, with an olive branch 
 at the prow, stand on the stocks in the 
 large half-deserted yards on the grey sea- 
 shore. Iron and steam, strong and unpoetic, 
 have it pretty much all their own way 
 nowadays. The famous Corniche Eoad, too, 
 is here narrowed to a sort of straggling 
 street between high vineyard walls and tall 
 
84 COLONEL ENDERBY'S WIFE. 
 
 painted houses; and — whether it appears 
 as a sea of pale mud, or is smothered in 
 paler and at least equally objectionable 
 dust — is always, wet or dry, a perfect 
 pandemonium of rough two-wheeled wag- 
 gons, loaded with heavy cotton bales, sacks 
 of rags, or with great barrels piled up to an 
 alarming height, and of straining mules and 
 horses, and yelling drivers, and grating 
 tram cars. 
 
 Yet if you leave the busy little town, 
 with its teeming streets, and wander up the 
 steep paved lanes behind between the vine- 
 yards, and if, when you have passed the 
 last of the red and yellow walls, and step 
 out into the open olive grounds above, you 
 stop and turn, and look back, the scene is 
 very moving and inspiring even here. For 
 you are in Italy, after all — beautiful, pas- 
 sionate, terrible Italy. 
 
 About a quarter of a mile out of Terzia, 
 going eastward towards Genoa, you come 
 to some rusty iron gates in the high, red- 
 plastered wall that skirts the road on the 
 left. A broad carriage-way leads from 
 these gates first across flat market-gardens, 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 85 
 
 in which the peasants work, with sleeves 
 and trousers stripped up, showing bare, 
 muscular brown arms and legs ; then, 
 turning sharply to the left, it runs at the 
 foot of a natural cliff of buff-coloured rock, 
 supported here and there by masonry. After 
 thirty yards or so the road turns to the 
 right and climbs the hill, shaded on the 
 south by a line of dwarfed and distorted 
 fir trees, and with broad spaces of grass on 
 each side of it, bright in the spring-time 
 with name-coloured gladiolas, red orchis, 
 and blue-feather hyacinth. Another zigzag, 
 through vineyard terraces and broken rocks, 
 among which the fig trees root themselves, 
 and straggle a maze of smooth grey branches, 
 grey roots and glossy dark-green leaves, 
 and then at last you reach the final bit 
 of the ascent — a broad carriage-way still, 
 gravelled with little black and white pebbles 
 from the neighbouring beach, a wall of brick 
 and rock on the left hand, and on the right 
 a drop into the vineyard below. On either 
 hand the road is bordered with hedges of 
 pink monthly roses, wherein the cicalas, 
 with their great eyes and foolish faces, sit 
 
86 COLONEL ENDEEBY'S WIFE. 
 
 fiddling all day long in the hot sunshine. 
 The carriage-drive ends at last in a wide 
 gravelled terrace in front of a small orange- 
 red stuccoed villa. 
 
 Standing on this high terrace, where the 
 noises of the road, the railway, and the 
 town — the ring of hammers, crack of whips, 
 and wild cry of the muleteers — reach you, 
 softened and harmonized hy distance, the 
 scene is a very noble one. 
 
 In the south the purple sea rises and 
 meets the sky-line. The grey sweep of the 
 narrow beach trends away in a bold curve, 
 here bordered by gleaming houses, and there 
 broken by some dark densely wooded pro- 
 montory, past cape after cape, and headland 
 after headland to the westward. Just below 
 lies the town, built in massive blocks of 
 tall many-windowed houses, which have 
 flat or low-pitched roofs, and are painted 
 every conceivable colour, from the lightest 
 green or yellow to the deepest blue or 
 chocolate. At the back of the town, and 
 rising tier above tier up the sloping foot- 
 hills, are vineyards and gardens, with now 
 and again some gaily coloured villa, or the 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 87 
 
 tall campanile of a village church. Here 
 and there long lines of cypresses follow 
 each other in a dark and mystic procession 
 down the hillside, marking the boundary 
 of a landowner's property. x\bove, the 
 olive-grounds stretch in a misty silver belt 
 around the slopes. Above them are thickets 
 of great white heath, and sweet bay and 
 myrtle, with the quaint, blotted form of 
 an umbrella pine, disengaging itself sharply 
 in places from the undergrowth. Above, 
 again, are dusky fir-woods, and then at 
 last your eyes rest on the bare arid moun- 
 tain sides towering up in the searching 
 sunlight, the summits crowned by a pil- 
 grimage church or monastery, or risingnaked, 
 unadorned, and harsh against the sky. 
 
 The Apennines behind Terzia may be 
 described as a giant hand pointing seaward, 
 with deep ravines and watercourses between 
 the gigantic outstretched fingers. Only 
 the town and beach and road are pale ; all 
 the rest — woods, mountains, rich purple 
 sea, and rich purple sky — glow and palpi- 
 tate with intensity of colour ; while in 
 the extreme west, above the deep blue of 
 
88 COLONEL ENDEKBY's WIFE. 
 
 far-off hills and capes, soaring up into 
 the clear ether, rise the glittering peaks 
 and dazzling snow-wastes of the Maritime 
 Alps. 
 
 Towards the latter end of April, 1877, 
 about six months after old Mattjiew En- 
 derby's death, one burning afternoon, the 
 subject for a delightful little picture might 
 have been found on the terrace up at the 
 Villa Mortelli. 
 
 A low broad parapet of stone, stuccoed 
 and painted the same orange-red as the 
 house, guards the terrace in front. Look- 
 ing down over it there is a sheer drop of 
 some five-and-twenty, or perhaps thirty feet, 
 into the vineyard below. At this time the 
 leaves were just breaking, and a delicate 
 veil of green spread itself over the face of 
 the vineyards. 
 
 In the corner of the terrace, away from 
 the carriage-drive, with her back against a 
 trellised and somewhat dilapidated arbour, 
 smothered in Wistaria and climbing roses, 
 sat a young girl. She rested one elbow on 
 the low wall by her side, and held in the 
 other hand a great red umbrella ; — not one 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 89 
 
 of those mean little scarlet parasols that 
 ladies affected so much some few years ago, 
 but a real, honest, peasant's umbrella, big 
 enough to shelter a whole family from sun 
 or rain, and decorated round the edge of it 
 with a barbaric pattern, woven in staring 
 black and white and yellow. 
 
 The young lady was very simply dressed 
 in a plain light cotton gown, which had, 
 however, an admirable air of freshness and 
 crispness in every fold and frill of it. Her 
 figure was slight but delicately rounded, 
 and her face was charming; not strictly 
 beautiful, perhaps, for there were delightful 
 little touches of individuality about it which 
 prevented its belonging to any stereotyped 
 and obvious order of female loveliness. It 
 was just that — an entirely charming face, 
 bright, out-looking, and with a sort of morn- 
 ing clearness upon it, and an effect of guile- 
 lessness which made one disposed to treat 
 this young lady more as an attractive child 
 than as a person who had already reached 
 the tiresome period of life technically de- 
 scribed as — years of discretion. 
 
 Her hair — fair, with golden lights and 
 
90 COLONEL ENDERBY'S WIFE. 
 
 ruddy shadows in it — was gathered up high 
 at the back, showing the shape of her 
 head, arid curled prettily upon her forehead. 
 Her complexion was fair, too, with a clear 
 healthy tinge of red in her cheeks ; the 
 nose, a little uncertain in line, but daintily 
 cut about the tip and small curved nostrils ; 
 the mouth round and sweet, though wanting 
 in those generous curves about the lips 
 which make some mouths so nobly beau- 
 tiful. Her eyes, a clear blue-grey, w T ere set 
 perhaps just a trifle too near together ; still, 
 they were finely shaped, and opened well. 
 There was nothing too positive, too definite 
 in the girl's face. Her long eyelashes and 
 arched eyebrows were but a few shades 
 darker than her bright hair. 
 
 Altogether she was charming; and charm- 
 ing, too, with that peculiar indescribable 
 charm that belongs to certain women — 
 a magnetic quality not dependent on 
 faultlessness of physical beauty for its 
 existence, but a something beguiling and 
 upsetting, especially to the masculine sense , 
 which seems to emanate from the whole 
 person. 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 91 
 
 Certain women have a singular power of 
 establishing a relation — I do not know how 
 else to put it — with almost every man they 
 come across. How it is done I cannot 
 pretend to say; for one may be very sensible 
 of an effect, and remain entirely unable to 
 analyze the cause of it. Only I fancy that 
 every woman whose name has come down 
 to us through the long centuries with a 
 glamour of magic about it, so that the 
 very sound of it makes the blood pulse 
 more quickly, must, in some degree, have 
 possessed that strange power. Helen must 
 have had it, or Troy town would never 
 have suffered long sorrow and fire and final 
 desolation. All those gracious and noble 
 ladies must have had it whose remembrance 
 is enshrined for ever in the "Ballade des 
 Dames du temps jadis" of Francois Villon, 
 thief, profligate, and writer of imperishable 
 verse. Catherine of Siena must have had 
 it, or never, surely, would popes and priests 
 and princes have listened so humbly to her 
 chiding. Julie d'Etange — most moving, if 
 most imprudent of fictitious heroines — must 
 have had it, or M. de Wolmar would never 
 
.92 COLONEL ENDEKBY'S WIFE. 
 
 have married her, any more than Saint- 
 Preux would have broken his heart for her 
 among the rocks above the blue lake at 
 Meillerie. These, and many more : for the 
 list would be a long one of potent and 
 perilous names. Yes, we had better forget 
 them, we sensible middle-aged people, and 
 let them fade away into the great unknown 
 along with " the snows of yester year." 
 
 In saying all this I do not, for a moment, 
 desire to imply that there was anything 
 very wonderful, extraordinary, or epoch- 
 making about the girl sitting in the Italian 
 sunshine, on the terrace up at the little red 
 villa ;. nor do I, for a moment, purpose to 
 compare her with those queens of fiction, 
 life, and legend whose memory comes over 
 us with so dangerous a strength. 
 
 The indefinable charm I have spoken of 
 greets you in many and very different places. 
 It belongs exclusively to no one age, or 
 class, or nation; it may be found both in 
 saint and sinner. It may look out at you 
 alike from the face of a labourer's daughter, 
 bending over a steaming and prosaic wash- 
 tub, and from that of a child in the perky, 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 93 
 
 progressive class-room of a modern board- 
 school, and from that of some well-bred and 
 well-known woman moving in the sacred, 
 innermost circle of London or Parisian 
 society. Still it is not very common — per- 
 haps fortunately — all the same. The plain, 
 steady, common-sense w r ork of the world 
 would hardly keep on quite so regularly if 
 it was very common. And it is only fair 
 to add, too, that hundreds and thousands 
 of women have been honoured highly and 
 loved devotedly who possessed no trace of 
 it. It is a peculiar gift to chosen indi- 
 viduals ; it comes to them by nature, and 
 was never learnt, nor taught of any yet. 
 Only, wherever you meet with it, the colour 
 grows richer and the pace faster, and Love 
 laughs aloud with the hope of another 
 victim ; and life either spreads out before 
 you strangely fair, and deep, and full, or 
 is stained for ever after with the memory 
 of a great regret. 
 
 On the low red wall, just beyond the 
 shadow cast by the big umbrella, sitting 
 hunched together basking in the sunshine, 
 was a good-sized brown monkey; a grotesque- 
 
34 COLONEL ENDERBY'S WIFE. 
 
 and sorrowful little figure, curiously iu 
 contrast with that of the young girl. 
 
 Centuries of disappointment and fruitless 
 endeavour seemed to have wrinkled the 
 loose skin on his forehead. Occasionally 
 he reached round and scratched his back 
 with one thin, brown hand, or made a fierce, 
 rapid grab at the small green lizards that 
 ran glittering up and along the sunny wall. 
 If the girl moved, ever so slightly, he looked 
 round sharply at her, wdth that quick up- 
 lifting of the eyebrows and gleam of the sad 
 shrewd eyes, which go to make a monkey's 
 face so unspeakably restless and painful. 
 
 The cicalas shrilled in the rose-bushes, 
 while the green frogs, at the old tank away 
 along the vineyard path to the left, kept 
 up the chorus immortalized by Aristophanes. 
 The jangle of bells came down from one of 
 the village churches on the hillside above, 
 and the grate of wheels and cry of the mule- 
 teers came up from the crowded road below. 
 Little playful winds swept across from the 
 deep mountain valleys, scattered a few loose 
 petals of the roses on the trellised arbour, 
 and then wandered away out to sea. And 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 95 
 
 the charming girl sat dreaming, looking 
 lazily out over the brilliant scene from 
 under the rosy shade of her red umbrella, 
 while the brown monkey beside her basked 
 in the broad sunshine, musing, perhaps, 
 in perplexity of spirit, on the many griefs 
 and wrongs of his strange half-human 
 race. 
 
 There seemed a pause, a space of sweet 
 sunny waiting, up at the Villa Alortelli that 
 afternoon. The lights were lit, and the 
 curtain was up, and the stage was set and 
 ready. When would the rest of the actors 
 come on ? 
 
 About five o'clock the young lady's lazy 
 reverie was brought to a close by the 
 rattling of a carriage up the steep road 
 between the rose-hedges, and the grinding 
 of the loose gravel under its wheels as it 
 drew up at the front door. 
 
 She had watched the carriage ever since 
 it turned in at the iron gates off the high 
 road — had stretched herself a little, and sat 
 up with a growing expression of interest 
 and vivacity in her pretty face. 
 
 " Malvolio," she said, leaning towards the 
 
9G 
 
 monkey as she spoke, " I perceive that 
 there has been a slight mistake. Your poor 
 master is grilling himself quite needlessly 
 at Terzia railway station all this while. 
 His temper w T ill he execrable when he 
 returns. He will not be able to forgive 
 himself for having been coerced into com- 
 mitting a civility. Prepare yourself, my 
 dearest little beast;" she added, " there will 
 shortly be remarkable developments in the 
 situation." 
 
 The monkey gazed at her anxiously, as 
 though trying hard to understand. He 
 scratched his ugly little head, wrinkled up 
 his forehead, and grinned rather wickedly. 
 The girl watched him attentively for a 
 moment or two, and then laughed gaily 
 and softly, as a child does with a delicious 
 anticipation of coming amusement. 
 
 "Anything is delightful in the way of 
 a change, isn't it, my excellent Malvolio ? " 
 she said to the monkey. 
 
 Colonel Enderby was a long-suffering 
 man. As a rule he could put up resignedly 
 with a large amount of discomfort. But 
 he had come to visit Mrs. Pierce -Dawnay, 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 97 
 
 at the Villa Mortelli, out of the purest sense 
 of duty. She was the widow of au old 
 Mend, and the Colonel had a high respect 
 for the claims of friendship, even in the 
 second degree. Still, it must be allowed 
 that where duty is the sole motive power, 
 small annoyances are liable to take a very 
 strong hold upon the imagination ; and as 
 he got out cf the carriage, Colonel Enderby 
 certainly felt far from urbane. He was 
 choked with dust and roasted with the 
 blazing afternoon sun. He had left his 
 travelling companion seated over the rem- 
 nants of an excellent luncheon in the shaded 
 hall of a Genoese cafe. The thought of 
 Edmund Drake smoking peacefully in that 
 cool and stately place had been distinctly 
 irritating. He could have found it in his 
 heart to use some rather forcible expres- 
 sions concerning these few miles of road out 
 from Genoa. He was prepared to state on 
 oath, if necessary, that they were simply 
 the most hot, arid, ugly, and generally 
 insufferable miles of road in the known 
 world. 
 
 The untidy plausible Italian coachman 
 
 VOL. I. H 
 
98 COLONEL ENDERBY'S WIFE. 
 
 rang the bell, and then banged casually on 
 the door with the handle of his whip, to 
 hurry the servants within ; but no sound 
 was audible indoors. Bells, apparently, 
 were answered with truly artistic delibera- 
 tion at the little red villa. 
 
 Colonel Enderby stamped his feet to 
 settle his trousers down over his boots, and 
 beat himself a little with his gloves to get 
 some of the pale dust off his coat, looking 
 rather gloomy and injured all the while. It 
 was extremely unpleasant to him to be 
 otherwise than absolutely neat and clean. 
 He glanced critically at the pair of small, 
 weedy carriage horses, who stood with heads 
 hanging wearily down and streaming flanks. 
 Then he turned impatiently to the door 
 again. 
 
 " Nuisance it is, waiting ! " he said. " I 
 suppose this is the right house ? Why on 
 earth don't they answer the bell ? " 
 
 Looking up as he spoke, he became aware, 
 for the first time, of the presence of the 
 young lady, who stood watching him from 
 the other side of the terrace. He was con- 
 scious of a slight shock of surprise, and of 
 
A TEST OF FEIENDSHIP. 99 
 
 a sincere hope that she might riot have 
 overheard, his hasty observation. He lifted 
 his hat, and. keeping it in his hand, passed 
 round, in front of the horses' heads and. 
 walked across the terrace towards her. 
 
 The girl, too, came a few steps forward. 
 Her light cotton gown showed a rosy red 
 in the shade of her big umbrella. Her eyes 
 were very bright, and. she was smiling. It 
 was a smile not easily forgotten — brilliant, 
 irresistible, delicious to look at, and liable 
 to retain a prominent place subsequently 
 in the mental vision. 
 
 As she came forward the monkey scrambled 
 down off the wall and followed her, seizing 
 the folds of her dress with his long narrow 
 hands for support. He chattered angrily 
 at the carriage and the approaching stranger 
 — his queer wizened countenance distorted 
 with emotion. Meanwhile the good-looking 
 Italian driver, leaning lazily against the 
 nearest of his smoking horses, laughed and 
 made grimaces at the poor little creature, 
 exciting him to a painful pitch of impotent 
 fury. 
 
 " Colonel Enderby," said the girl, looking 
 
100 COLONEL ENDERBY's WIFE. 
 
 up at him, and still smiling, " I am afraid 
 you have altogether forgotten me. I am 
 so sorry. Indeed, it amounts to being a 
 little humiliating for me, for I have the 
 most perfect recollection of you. You were 
 always so kind to me." 
 
 Philip Enderby felt slightly embarrassed. 
 He was not accustomed to be greeted after 
 this fashion by unusually pretty young 
 ladies. Since the far-off days of Cecilia 
 Murray, his experience in the matter of 
 women's society had neither been very large 
 nor very intimate. He had an almost 
 quixotic reverence for the sex — such a 
 reverence as cynical persons are wont to 
 say can only be maintained at the expense 
 of the presence of accurate knowledge. 
 
 There was a frankness in the young lady's 
 expression, and a graceful self-possession in 
 her manner, however, which the Colonel 
 found reassuring. He answered her slowly, 
 perhaps a trifle stiffly ; yet he could not help 
 smiling too, her face in its expression had 
 such a bewitching fearlessness. 
 
 " I ought to know you, though nine years, 
 have made a good deal of difference, it 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 101 
 
 must be owned. You are Miss Pierce- 
 Dawnay." 
 
 The girl laughed softly, and put up her 
 eyebrows with a little air of protestation 
 and regret. 
 
 " Oh yes," she said; " nine years make 
 a lamentable difference, of course. They 
 change simple Jessie into elaborate Miss 
 Pierce-Dawnay, and they put dolls and 
 bonbons out of the question. That last 
 is especially trying for me. I am just as 
 fond of bonbons as ever. Your taste in 
 dolls w T as not — well, how shall I say it ? — 
 exactly professional, Colonel Enderby, but 
 in bonbons I found it ravishing." 
 
 There was a carefulness and distinctness 
 in Miss Pierce-Dawnay's pronunciation 
 which one frequently remarks in English 
 persons who are constantly in the habit of 
 speaking a foreign language. Her words 
 did not run into each other in the slipshod 
 fashion too common even among our well- 
 bred and highly educated countrywomen. 
 They seemed to stand apart, and each 
 maintain a full and separate value. This 
 little mannerism has something both pretty 
 and arresting to the attention in it. 
 
102 COLONEL ENDEEBY'S WIFE. 
 
 Philip, quiet, serious, middle-aged man 
 as he was, felt delicately amused and 
 interested in the charming young creature 
 before him. It is very strangely pleasant, 
 as one gets on in years and the glory of 
 the day grows pale, to meet with some- 
 thing as fresh and gay and fearless as this 
 girl. To the Colonel there was a touch of 
 pathos in her radiant youthfumess. She 
 struck him as a charming child even now, 
 and he answered her little speech with a 
 certain smiling gravity. 
 
 " We might manage the bonbons still, 
 I dare say, if you wish it." 
 
 "Oh," she cried, "thank you! I have 
 yet, then, something to live for, and you 
 are doubly welcome. To tell the truth, we 
 have been slightly wanting in amiability 
 and animation lately here at the Villa 
 Mortelli. Your arrival is every w 7 ay agree- 
 able ; we have wanted something to change 
 the current of our thoughts." 
 
 Colonel Enderby bowed his recognition 
 of this civil observation. 
 
 "But mamma will be impatient to see 
 you," the young lady continued. "And, 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 103 
 
 meanwhile, will you kindly discharge that 
 intolerable driver, who is nearly sending 
 our poor Malvolio into fits by jeering at 
 him ? Then we will come indoors, please. 
 Ah ! there is Parker. She will tell you 
 what to pay that wretched driver. They 
 always overcharge ; it is their recognized 
 system. Parker is the only member of this 
 establishment who can manage them." 
 
 The person indicated, a tall, angular, hard- 
 featured woman, stood in the doorway, 
 delivering herself of a series of short obser- 
 vations in curiously bad Italian. 
 
 "Antonio is to take Colonel Enderby's 
 things down to his hotel later, Miss Jessie," 
 she said, looking sharply at Philip, and 
 addressing his companion. " Mrs. Pierce- 
 Dawnay is waiting for you in the drawing- 
 room. Marie's taken in tea." 
 
 The Colonel, assisted, whether he would 
 or no, by Parker — who indulged in biting 
 comments on the shiftiness of Italians in 
 general, and Genoese cab-drivers in par- 
 ticular — finally succeeded in satisfying the 
 demands of the coachman. Then the long 
 whip cracked, and the tired little horses 
 
104 COLONEL ENDEKBY'S WIFE. 
 
 jerked up their heads, and the carriage 
 rattled away down the steep road between 
 the pink rose-hedges in the southern sun- 
 shine. 
 
 u Shall we come indoors now ? " asked 
 Jessie. 
 
 She closed her umbrella, and, picking up 
 Malvolio in her arms, turned towards the 
 house. As she did so, Colonel Enderby 
 was sensible of a quick movement of re- 
 pulsion, almost of disgust. 
 
 " Surely you are not going to carry that 
 monkey," he said hastily. " Here, let me 
 take it." 
 
 " Oh no, he would perhaps bite you/' she 
 replied; " and that would be such an un- 
 fortunate beginning to your visit. He is 
 very spiteful with strangers. But I often 
 carry him when his master, my cousin, 
 Bertie Ames, is not at hand — don't I 
 Malvolio ? " 
 
 Colonel Enderby could offer no further 
 objection, yet somehow he did not at all 
 like it. Perhaps it was the result of a long- 
 night journey through from Paris ; perhaps 
 he had got sunstroke standing talking on 
 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 105 
 
 the terrace without his hat ; but he was un- 
 doubtedly aware of a strange and decidedly 
 disagreeable sensation as he passed from 
 the glow and splendour of colour and sun- 
 shine outside into the dim chill entrance- 
 hall of the Villa Mortelli. It seemed to 
 him as if somewhere else, long, long ago, 
 all this had happened before. He knew it 
 was a foolish, absurd fancy, and it annoyed 
 him. Yet surely it was not the first time 
 he had followed the graceful flitting figure 
 of this young girl up the cold, white, marble 
 staircase, while the weird face of the still 
 chattering and but half-pacified monkey 
 grinned back at him over her shoulder. 
 
106 COLONEL ENDERBY's WIFE. 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 BEAUMONT PIERCE-DAWNAY's WIDOW. 
 
 The Villa Mortelli is a plain house. It has 
 seen its best days, and everything about 
 it has grown a little tumble- down and 
 antiquated. The present owner is only too 
 happy to let the upper suites of rooms to 
 any family, Italian or foreign, with a taste 
 for quiet and economy, which can be 
 induced to rent them ; while the surround- 
 ings of the house are left pretty much to 
 their own devices, subject to a periodic 
 tidying up on the part of the peasant over- 
 seer, who looks after the vineyards and 
 market-gardens below. 
 
 It is a decidedly plain house. The ground- 
 floor on either side the front door has but a 
 couple of heavily grated windows in it, and 
 is given over to kitchens and chilly nagged 
 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 107 
 
 store-rooms opening into a central hall. 
 Above is a low entresol, with ugry little 
 square windows overlooking the terrace ; 
 and above, again, are two floors of large 
 and rather handsome rooms. The lower of 
 these two suites opens at the western eud 
 on to the flat roof of a building origin ally, 
 no doubt, designed for a coach-house and 
 covered yard. The roof is supported on an 
 arcade of arches and massive square pillars, 
 and covers quite a considerable area of 
 ground. The house, with the said building 
 or loggia, is painted, as has already been 
 stated, a deep orange red. The windows 
 have outside wooden shutters to them, 
 originally a vivid blue in colour, but now 
 weathered by the action of the rain and 
 sun and sea-wind to a dull neutral tint. 
 
 Beyond the house, on the same level 
 as the terrace, and divided from it by a 
 dilapidated wooden paling, is a square 
 flower-garden; a neglected wilderness of a 
 place, a mere tangle of roses, camellias, 
 lilacs, and other flowering shrubs, with 
 lilies and hyacinths below them, straggling 
 about the ill-kept beds as they please. 
 
108 COLONEL ENDEKBY'S WIFE. 
 
 Some lemon trees are trained against the 
 back wall facing the southern sun ; and in 
 the centre of the garden, where the four 
 w~eedy gravel paths meet, stands a clump of 
 not over-productive orange trees. On the 
 low red boundary wall are large earthen- 
 ware pots of fantastic shapes containing 
 plants of tall sword-leaved aloes. 
 
 Immediately behind the house rises a 
 cliff, up which a light iron staircase leads 
 from the back of the loggia to the vine- 
 yard above. Higher is a slope of coarse 
 grass, the rising ground being crowned 
 with a thick little wood of scrub oak, ilex, 
 and fir. 
 
 Jessie, with the monkey in her arms, 
 went quickly upstairs, and, crossing the 
 landing, threw open the tall narrow doors 
 of the drawing-room. 
 
 " Mamma," she said, in her clear de- 
 tached tones, " here is Colonel Enderby. 
 He has driven out all the way from Genoa." 
 
 The inside of the little red villa is in 
 harmony with the exterior. It, too, has 
 seen its best days. The room into which 
 the Colonel found himself ushered by his 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 109 
 
 charming guide was long and high, with a 
 vaulted and richly painted ceiling. The two 
 southern windows were shaded with half- 
 closed shutters and red Minds ; while the 
 one at the far end of the apartment, draped 
 like the others with faded yellow brocade 
 curtains, stood wide open on to the flat roof 
 beyond. The sun slanting in through it 
 filled the air with warm mellow light. 
 There was an effect of worn-out splendour 
 about the room. The covers of the large 
 couches and chairs showed frayed and 
 threadbare at the points of greatest contact; 
 the plentiful gilding of consol-tables and 
 mirror-frames was a good deal tarnished : 
 but the glorious sunshine streaming in en- 
 riched and harmonized it all. Even the 
 marble floor, but sparsely covered with 
 rugs, looked only agreeably cool in the 
 glowing atmosphere. 
 
 Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay, with both hands 
 outstretched, and a considerable rustling 
 of full black silk and grenadine skirts, 
 came rapidly across the room to greet her 
 guest. 
 
 "Ah, my dear friend!" she exclaimed, 
 
110 COLONEL ENDERBY'S WIFE. 
 
 " this is indeed a pleasure. How very good 
 it is of you to come to me." 
 
 Colonel Enderby bowed over the hand- 
 some woman's hands as he held them. 
 
 "You are too kind," he answered gallantly. 
 "I engaged long ago always to obey your 
 summons." 
 
 " I know — I know you promised. But it 
 is a long time ago. It is so long, too, since 
 we have met at all that I really scrupled to 
 trouble you — the more so, perhaps, because 
 you have been very helpful to me in the 
 past. People say I am exacting ; that I 
 demand too much. Those are odious accu- 
 sations, you know. They make one nervous 
 of asking a service from even one's best 
 friends, at times." 
 
 Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay put up one hand, 
 and pushed back, rather impatiently, the 
 folds of the black lace mantilla which w T as 
 fastened across her dusky hair, and hung 
 down softly about her shoulders. 
 
 " I have been in great perplexity," she 
 said. " Your visit is most welcome." 
 
 She spoke rapidly, and there was a ring 
 of sincerity, almost of enthusiasm, in her 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. Ill 
 
 reception of hiin, in which a vainer man 
 than Philip Enclerby might have found 
 occasion for a pleasant sense of elation. 
 Luckily, however, he was not given to 
 ebullitions of personal vanity. He supposed 
 the lady's pecuniary affairs were in disorder 
 — it had happened more than once before 
 now — and that she wanted him to set them 
 straight for her. He possessed a very 
 romantic reverence for womankind in the 
 mass ; but, all the same, he was satisfied 
 to take up an extremely practical position 
 with regard to this lady. He had no sen- 
 timental hankerings after relations of an 
 intimate or emotional character. 
 
 And yet Eleanor Pierce-Dawnay, at two- 
 and-thirty, with her well-set head, pure oval 
 face, and luminous brown eyes, greeting her 
 guest so charmingly in the pale, faded room 
 at the Villa Mortelli, was unquestionably 
 a woman whom you might easily have been 
 excused for desiring to improve your ac- 
 quaintance with. She was tall, with a fine, 
 supple figure, and stately carriage. Her 
 black hair had none of that greasy gloss on 
 it which too often makes black hair anything 
 
112 COLONEL ENDEEBY'S WIFE. 
 
 but a beauty. Her complexion was dull, it 
 is true ; but her skin w r as even in tone and 
 delicate in texture. She looked like a 
 woman who loved an indoor life, and warm, 
 fragrant atmosphere. There was a richness 
 of suggestion, so to speak, and an intensity 
 about her such as usually go with mental 
 and social rather than with physical activity. 
 The Colonel was aware that his hostess's 
 course had been a slightly original and 
 erratic one ; otherwise, listening to her fluent 
 speech and noting her rather stormy beauty, 
 he might very well have wondered a little 
 why this striking-looking young woman had 
 elected to shut herself up, with her step- 
 daughter, in the solitude of a quiet country ' 
 house. 
 
 " You are not the least altered," she went 
 on, moving back a step or two, and looking 
 at her guest carefully. 
 
 " I wonder whether that is good news or 
 not," answered Philip, smiling. He was a 
 trifle put about by this attentive scrutiny. 
 
 " Undoubtedly it is good news." 
 
 Eleanor laid her hand lightly on Colonel 
 Enderby's arm. 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 113 
 
 " You have come, and I am very grateful. 
 There is the whole matter. Now let us 
 have some tea. You must be tired after 
 your long journey. Come and sit down 
 comfortably." 
 
 "I am so disgustingly dirty," remarked 
 the Colonel, as he followed his hostess up 
 the long room. He had been wishing to 
 make this apology from the moment he 
 came in. " I am really ashamed of appear- 
 ing before you in this state." 
 
 Eleanor stopped a moment, and turned 
 to him. 
 
 " The same little mania as of old about 
 dust, Colonel Enderby," she said. " Ah ! 
 that reminds me of so much." 
 
 During the foregoing conversation the 
 girl had been standing aside, watching her 
 two companions with a gay little air of 
 interest and amusement. Now she moved 
 away, and stepped out on to the loggia. 
 
 " Mamma is going to have reminiscences," 
 she murmured. "We will retire, Mal- 
 volio, and return at a more convenient 
 season." 
 
 "Dear child," called Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay 
 
 VOL. I. I 
 
114 COLONEL ENDERBY'S WIFE. 
 
 after her ; "remember the sun. Have you 
 got a hat ? " 
 
 " The awning is up," answered the girl, 
 looking back and smiling brightly — less, 
 perhaps, at her stepmother than at Philip — 
 " and the sun never affects me. I am going 
 to watch for poor Bertie." 
 
 " We thought you would come straight to 
 Terzia by train," Eleanor said to him. " I 
 did not like your arriving there and finding 
 no one to receive you. I deputed my cousin, 
 Mr. Ames, to go and meet you." 
 
 She sat down by the tea-table, and began 
 rearranging the cups and saucers. A silence 
 fell on her, and for a few moments she 
 appeared to be somewhat oblivious of the 
 presence of her guest. 
 
 Philip sat down in the nearest chair, 
 crossed his legs, and slowly pulled first one 
 side and then the other of his thick 
 moustache with the thumb and forefinger 
 of his left hand in a meditative fashion. 
 Several things in the course of the last hour 
 had surprised him a little. He did not feel 
 quite at home with his new circumstances. 
 
 As Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay handed him his 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 115 
 
 teacup, she looked up with a sudden change 
 of expression. 
 
 " What do you think of my step- 
 daughter? " she asked. 
 
 The question was so wholly unexpected 
 that Colonel Enderhy paused for a moment 
 before answering it. During that brief 
 pause he was acutely sensible of the clear 
 tones of the girl's voice — talking half- mock- 
 ingly to the monkey — which came in, along 
 with the sunshine, at the open window. 
 
 " I think that your step-daughter has 
 grown into a very beautiful person," he 
 said at last, with a certain seriousness. 
 
 " Ah, you too ! " cried his hostess. 
 
 Perhaps there was the faintest savour of 
 irritation in her manner. Any way, she did 
 not enlarge upon the subject. She talked 
 on, pleasantly enough, about less personal 
 matters — -friends in England, the Colonel's 
 journey and so forth, for some minutes, 
 then asked one or two questions about 
 Matthew Enderby's last illness, about Bassett 
 Darcy and the disposition of the property. 
 
 " It seems to me you have been very 
 badly used, Colonel Enderby," she said at 
 
116 COLONEL ENDEKBY S WIFE. 
 
 last. " And I suppose, with your usual 
 generosity, you submitted to be despoiled 
 without a single protest." 
 
 The Colonel smiled. He was not accus- 
 tomed to the overflowings of feminine 
 sympathy, or the picturesqueness of femi- 
 nine statement. They struck him both as 
 amusing and violent. 
 
 " That is rather a hard way of putting it, 
 you know," he answered. 
 
 He did not particularly enjoy discussing 
 his own affairs with Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay — or 
 any one else, for that matter. 
 
 " My father had a perfect right to leave 
 his property as he liked. He knew that 
 I was provided for under my poor mother's 
 will." 
 
 " But then there is a recognized custom 
 in these things. You must have always 
 expected to possess the place eventually. 
 You must have looked forward to it — 
 dreamed about it, taken it for granted. 
 No, it seems to me a wretched injustice." 
 
 " Hardly as bad as that," said the Colonel. 
 He wanted to take the matter as lightly as 
 possible. " I've wandered about the world 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 117 
 
 too much to be fit to settle down, at my age, 
 into a regular country squire — at least that 
 is what my father thought, no doubt — and 
 quite reasonably too. Of course, being so 
 much out of England, I have lost touch of 
 a whole lot of things — it was inevitable. 
 Xow, my brother has been on the spot all the 
 time ; he knows all about the place, and so is 
 much more fitted for that sort of life than I 
 am. He's a capital fellow," added Colonel 
 Enderby, heartily. " He's a first-rate farmer 
 and sportsman, and a useful man, too, 
 in the county. He's got a lot of common 
 sense. Then he's married, you know, and 
 has a family, and that, of course, makes a 
 difference." 
 
 " I really can't see that it makes the 
 smallest difference." Eleanor looked up 
 at him very prettily. " A man at your 
 age — specially, perhaps, in your profession — 
 is in the prime of life. You haven't taken 
 a vow of celibacy, I suppose ? You may 
 marry too." 
 
 Colonel Enderby shook his head. He 
 looked at his boots, he smiled, but with no 
 exuberant cheerfulness. 
 
118 COLONEL ENDERBY's WIFE. 
 
 " No, no, I shall never marry, my dear 
 madam," he answered quietly. 
 
 At this moment Jessie came in at the open 
 window. 
 
 "Bertie has arrived," she said. " He 
 has driven back. He will certainly be very 
 cross." 
 
 "I am sorry," remarked Philip, getting 
 up and setting down his teacup, "that I 
 should have given Mr. Ames all this un- 
 necessary trouble." 
 
 Jessie turned to him with the most dainty 
 and reconciling air of amusement. Cer- 
 tainly she was admirably pretty. 
 
 " Don't be sorry. It does not in the 
 least signify. Bertie is rather grateful in 
 his heart of hearts to any one who will 
 supply him with a legitimate excuse for ill- 
 temper. He enjoys being " — the girl made 
 a graceful little outward gesture with her 
 two hands — " like that, you know, slightly 
 ill-used and injured." 
 
 " Jessie, you are malicious." Eleanor 
 spoke sharply, and her face darkened. 
 
 The young lady rested her hand for a 
 moment caressingly on her step-mother's 
 shoulder. 
 
A TEST OF FEIENDSHIP. 119 
 
 " What could I say, little mamma ? " she 
 asked. " It was a choice between Colonel 
 Enderby's peace of mind and poor Bertie's 
 reputation." 
 
 There was a sound of footsteps on the 
 stairs. The monkey gave an odd, sharp 
 cry, and ran quickly in at the open window 
 and across the room. It looked even more 
 grotesque and uncanny, perhaps, when it 
 subsided into a mere animal, and went 
 honestly on all fours, than when it stood 
 or sat upright with an assumption of dis- 
 creet and human attitudes. As the door 
 opened, the monkey sprang nimbly off the 
 floor into the arms of the young man who 
 entered, making as it did so strange 
 caressing noises. 
 
 "Poor little abomination!" said Mr. Ames, 
 as he stroked and fondled the creature. 
 
 He came on slowly into the room, look- 
 ing rather hard at Colonel Enderby mean- 
 time. 
 
 "Ah! you have arrived, then," he con- 
 tinued. "I have had the misfortune of 
 missing you." 
 
 Somehow Philip did not relish being 
 
120 COLONEL ENDERBY'S WIFE. 
 
 taken so entirely for granted. He would 
 have preferred a more formal and regular 
 mode of introduction. 
 
 "I am afraid," he said stiffly, "that I 
 have given you a lot of unnecessary 
 trouble." 
 
 "No, no," answered the other man. 
 "Pray don't mention it. It didn't matter. 
 It passed the time, you know; and that, 
 after all, is as much as the most interesting 
 occupation can do for one really." 
 
 Mr. Ames, judging by his appearance, 
 was in age something over thirty. He 
 was a good-looking young gentleman, with 
 a dark, pale, and rather sleepy face, short 
 pointed black beard and moustache, and 
 black eyebrows — nearly meeting above the 
 nose and running up a little at the ends. 
 He was dressed w T ith elaborate precision, 
 in the latest English fashion; but an in- 
 describable touch of floridiiess in the cut 
 of his garments made the Colonel pretty 
 sure an Italian tailor must be, after all, 
 responsible for the production of them. In 
 his button-hole Mr. Ames wore an extremely 
 fine white gardenia. 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 121 
 
 " Give me some tea instantly, dear cousin 
 Nell," he said, subsiding languidly into a 
 large arm-chair and addressing Mrs. Pierce- 
 Dawnay. "I conclude you drove out from 
 Genoa ? " he added, looking towards Colonel 
 Enderby. 
 
 It was observable that his voice was 
 singularly full and sweet, while his dark 
 eyes were nearly as mournful as those of 
 the monkey on his knee. 
 
 The Colonel admitted, briefly, that he 
 had driven out from Genoa. 
 
 "It is a beastly road," said Mr. Ames, 
 very gently. " Three lumps of sugar, dear 
 Eleanor, please ; you always forget my 
 number. And a lump for Malvolio too, 
 please. There, there, quietly, my poor 
 lamb ! Let us avoid unnecessary violence," 
 he went on, as the monkey snatched, chatter- 
 ing, at the piece of sugar she held out 
 to it. 
 
 Philip did not stay very late at the Villa 
 Mortelli that evening. He parted from his 
 hostess on the terrace. Antonio, the Italian 
 cook, — in a white linen jacket, blue trousers 
 and very ornate smoking-cap, with a large 
 
122 COLONEL ENDERBY's WIFE. 
 
 pair of gold-rimmed spectacles, a ferocious 
 grey moustache, and the air of a distin- 
 guished field-marshal at least, — stood in the 
 doorway, holding the Colonel's travelling- 
 hag and bundle of wraps, and waiting to 
 show him the way down to the hotel at 
 Terzia. 
 
 The sky, in which the stars and crescent 
 moon shone wdth a cold steady radiance, 
 stretched a vast dome of purple black over 
 land and sea. The waves lisped and mur- 
 mured on the beach far below. The croak- 
 ing of innumerable frogs came from the 
 reservoir away among the vineyards. 
 Wafts of warm air, laden with rich faint 
 scent of orange and lemon blossom, swept 
 round the house from the tangled garden 
 beyond. Up at one of the villages on 
 the mountain side there was a festa, and 
 every house was illuminated with rows of 
 candles along each window-ledge, gleam- 
 ing and twinkling, faint and yellow, through 
 the clear air. The foreground of terrace 
 and vineyards and roadway lay frosted 
 with moonlight and blotted with black 
 shadow. 
 
. A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 123 
 
 " Good-night, my clear friend," said 
 Eleanor Pierce-Dawnay. 
 
 She held the Colonel's hand in both 
 hers, and looked at him with a strangely 
 restless appealing expression in her fine 
 eyes. 
 
 " I don't know how to thank you enough 
 for coming to me. I shall expect you early 
 to-morrow. I have so much to talk over 
 with you. To-night I would not trouble 
 you, but I need your help." 
 
 Eleanor checked herself abruptly. Bertie 
 Ames sauntered out from the house and 
 stood beside her. 
 
 " Cousin Nell," he said, in his rich, 
 soft voice, "you and Jessie will catch 
 all the colds in the world out here with- 
 out any shawls. The night is romantic, 
 no doubt, but, unfortunately, it is also 
 chilly." 
 
 The girl treated Colonel Enderby to one 
 of her brilliant smiles as she bade him 
 good-bye. 
 
 " Au revoir," she said. " And the bon- 
 bons — shall I really have them ? " 
 
 Looking back when he had gone half- 
 
124 COLONEL ENDEEBY'S WIFE. 
 
 way down the carnage road to the iron 
 gates, Colonel Enderby could still see Mr. 
 Ames and Jessie. They stood together, 
 side by side, on the terrace, in the pale 
 moonlight, a black figure and a white one. 
 Suddenly the young girl's laugh rang out 
 clear and sweet through the silence. 
 
 " Ah ! truly our signorina is an angel," 
 said Antonio, devoutly. "It will be a sad 
 day for the red villa when madame marries 
 her daughter." 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 IX WHICH THE COLONEL TAKES STOCK OF HIS 
 POSITION. 
 
 It appeared to Mr. Edmund Drake, who had 
 followed his friend out from Genoa, that he 
 w T aited a very long while for Colonel Enderb} r 
 in the smoking-room of the Grand Hotel at 
 Terzia that evening. The good gentleman's 
 mind w^as not, it must be conceded, of the 
 order w T hich feeds willingly and profitably 
 on itself. Solitude and meditation had 
 never struck him as salutary, or in any 
 degree inspiring. There was, indeed, no- 
 thing hermit-like about Mr. Drake's appear- 
 ance ; but rather a certain light and roving 
 quality, which made him suggestive of an 
 elderly, but still able-bodied, butterfly. With 
 praiseworthy diligence he was wont to flutter 
 from amusement to amusement, killing time 
 
126 COLONEL ENDERBY's WIFE. 
 
 pertinaciously and with admirable gaiety of 
 heart. He was a constant diner-out. He 
 liked balls, garden parties, and festivities 
 generally. He hunted with the Midland- 
 shire hounds from the beginning of Novem- 
 ber till the end of March; took rooms in 
 one of those knowing little streets off 
 Piccadilly for June and July ; found himself 
 among the purple stretches of the Scotch 
 moors, or by the side of some brawling 
 salmon river in August; paid a round of 
 visits in pleasant country houses, with a 
 view to shooting, in September and Octo- 
 ber ; and settled down again for the serious 
 business of the winter in his capital little 
 bachelor establishment at Tullingworth in 
 time for the third meet of the season, 
 which, as everybody knows, is held at 
 Bassett Darcy. 
 
 April and May were off-months, so to 
 speak, with Mr. Drake. He was very 
 grateful to any one who would suggest to 
 him an enjoyable method of passing them ; 
 and when, this year, his old and valued 
 friend, Philip Enderby, had proposed a run 
 on the Continent, Mr. Drake accepted the 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 127 
 
 idea with alacrity and enthusiasm. He had 
 a pretty little taste in pictures and music 
 of the lighter sort ; and, as the home of 
 the arts, he cherished a great kindness for 
 Italy. It seemed to him rather clever and 
 up to the mark to visit that profoundly 
 picturesque country now and again. He liked 
 to he able to say, " When I was in Eome in 
 '57," or, " When I was on my way to 
 Venice in '65." It sounded well, and 
 served to impress some fan neighbour at a 
 provincial dinner-party with the notion that 
 she had the honour of sitting by a travelled 
 and intelligent man of the world, who might 
 be expected to look at life generally from a 
 comprehensive and cosmopolitan standpoint. 
 And it must be owned that even now, 
 though rotund in the central region of his 
 person, though grey about the moustache 
 and whiskers, though bald — yes, lamentably 
 bald on the crown of his head, which rose 
 white and shining, above a thick semicircle 
 of grizzled hair — even now Mr. Drake was 
 penetrated with a constant desire to impress 
 and captivate the members of ike opposite 
 sex. His vanity in this matter was de- 
 
128 COLONEL ENDEEBY'S WIFE. 
 
 licionsly naif. He professed a deep and 
 searching knowledge of feminine peculiari- 
 ties ; and being, in point of fact, an emi- 
 nently modest and well-condncted person, 
 loved to represent himself as a terrible rake, 
 a very Don Juan of a fellow, full of perilous 
 dissimulation, and as inflammable as gun- 
 cotton. 
 
 When Colonel Enclerby at last entered 
 the smoking-room that evening, Mr. Drake 
 received him with a lively sense of satis- 
 faction. He laid down the meagre pages 
 of Galignani, from which he had been 
 vainly trying to extract some small amount 
 of mental sustenance, with an air of evident 
 relief and applied himself vigorously to 
 conversation. 
 
 " Not half a bad place this," he said ; 
 " and really they gave us a first-rate dinner. 
 They're trying to work the hotel into 
 popularity just now, you see, it being quite 
 new, and good feeding pays as an advertise- 
 ment. There are a very tidy set of people 
 here, too, take 'em all round. A very 
 effective-looking Russian woman just oppo- 
 site to me at table this evening — I wished 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 129 
 
 I'd been nearer to her. You must observe 
 her to-morrow, Enderby. Upon my word, 
 she's worth looking at. The everlasting 
 English parson here, of course — little red- 
 haired fellow this time, with a face like a 
 ferret. He's got his wife, and a couple 
 of sisters-in-law — I take them to be by 
 their looks — with him. Yery plain, well- 
 meaning sort of people, you know. The 
 English all seem to me pretty fair. But 
 there are half a dozen Germans — greedy, 
 noisy, ill-dressed lot, I must say. I came 
 over just after '66, you know, and the 
 Germans were offensive enough then, in all 
 conscience ; but this last war has regularly 
 brutalized them. They can't forget it, even 
 now. Their swagger is disgusting," ex- 
 claimed Mr. Drake — " simply disgusting ! " 
 
 He threw himself back on the broad 
 orange- and-black covered divan, fitted 
 against the wall of the room. " Brutes ! " 
 he said under his breath, and then fell to 
 humming a gay air from La fille cle Madame 
 Angot, to restore his imperilled equilibrium. 
 
 Colonel Enderby, meanwhile, sat himself 
 down in an angle of the afore -mentioned 
 
 VOL. I. K 
 
130 COLONEL ENDEKBY'S WIFE. 
 
 divan, which, along with a few marble- 
 topped tables and a generous supply of 
 mirrors and sjDittoons, constituted the entire 
 furniture of the lofty light-coloured room. 
 His sympathies being by no means strongly 
 Gallic, he ignored the subject of his friend's 
 discourse, and applied himself to matters 
 nearer home. 
 
 " I'm glad you like the place," he said. 
 " Should you mind staying on here a day 
 longer ? It seems that Mrs. Pierce-Daw T nay 
 wants to talk over some business matters 
 with me to-morrow. Probably I shan't be 
 of the slightest use to her, but I must listen, 
 at all events. And she insists on our both 
 dining there to-morrow night. You won't 
 mind, Drake, eh ? " 
 
 " Delighted, I'm sure," replied the other 
 man, cordially. " I'll poke about here in 
 the morning, you know, and just run into 
 Genoa in the afternoon, while you're busy." 
 
 Colonel Enderby was not in particularly 
 good spirits. He lighted his cigar, and 
 sat smoking in silence, staring vaguely at 
 the well-laid parqttet floor between his 
 feet. 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 131 
 
 Mr. Drake, however, wanted to talk. He 
 fidgeted with Galignani, hummed Madame 
 Angoi with increasing vivacity, and at last, 
 no longer able to contain himself, embarked 
 in an inquiry. 
 
 " "Well, and how did you find Mrs. Pierce- 
 Dawnay?" he asked. "I only saw her 
 once — years ago. Good-looking woman, 
 and promised to improve." 
 
 "I don't know that she has altogether ful- 
 filled that promise," observed the Colonel, 
 drily. "But as far as looks go, she's hand- 
 some enough still." 
 
 Mr. Drake fidgeted about again for a 
 minute or so. 
 
 " Well, and what about the little girl ? " 
 he inquired lightly. 
 
 " Oh, she's grown up as little girls will." 
 
 " Pretty?" 
 
 " Very pretty," said Philip, with a certain 
 finality in his tone. 
 
 Few things are more vexing to your 
 thorough-paced gossip than to be answered 
 in this poverty-stricken sort of fashion. But 
 Edmund Drake was not easily pnt off; he 
 returned valiantly to the charge. 
 
132 COLONEL ENDEKBY'S WIFE. 
 
 "Anybody else there ? " lie asked, after a 
 time. 
 
 Colonel Enderby raised liis eyes with a 
 questioning expression. 
 
 " There— where ? " he said. " Oh ! at the 
 Villa Mortelli ? Yes, a nice ? gentle, little 
 person in grey, who put in an appearance at 
 dinner — dame de coiwpagnie, I suppose ; and 
 an infernally ugly monkey : and a cousin of 
 Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay's — a young man." The 
 Colonel leant back and crossed his legs. " I 
 didn't quite fancy the young man some- 
 how," he added presently. 
 
 " Ah ! one rarely does ismcy the young 
 man, you know, when one's getting well on 
 towards fifty," remarked Mr. Drake, with a 
 chuckle. "Well, I shall turn in now, I 
 think, Enderby ; and I strongly recommend 
 you to do the same. Nothing like a good 
 night's rest for bringing one round after a 
 long journey, you know." 
 
 Philip, however, did not take the excellent 
 advice thus offered him. He sat up rather 
 late. 
 
 More than once Galli, the head waiter, 
 clothed in funereal black, with a napkin 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 133 
 
 over his arm, and flat, tired, slippered feet, 
 looked in to see if the English Colonel had 
 not at last retired, so that he might put out 
 the gas and go to bed himself. Galli had a 
 nohle head and pale, finely chiselled face, 
 set in a frame of crisp black heard and crisp 
 hlack hair, suggestive of some impassive 
 and world-weary Eoman emperor. In point 
 of fact, his soul was more in harmony with 
 his slippered feet than with his imperial 
 head. It was a common, patient, unim- 
 portant little soul, quite capable of thrilling 
 into ecstasy over a tip of five francs. The 
 mark of a stupendous history and civiliza- 
 tion has stamped itself in royal characters 
 on so many Italian faces, behind which 
 there really is nothing at all, except slightly 
 amiable vacuity. Gralli looked in at the 
 smoking-room door, saw Colonel Enderby 
 was still there, and went humbly away 
 again, to meditate in silence and loneli- 
 ness among his table-cloths, glasses, and 
 decanters. 
 
 Philip sat and smoked and thought, or 
 rather ruminated ; for when men of the 
 Colonel's type are not actively engaged 
 
134 COLONEL ENDERLY'S WIFE. 
 
 about some practical matter, they can hardly 
 be said to think. Their mental processes 
 are chiefly pictorial, I fancy ; not so much a 
 matter of words and ideas, as of scenes and 
 impressions. 
 
 The gas burned with a yellow, unsteady 
 light, revealing very fully the nakedness of 
 the room. In the corridor just beyond, 
 Mr, Drake's enemies, the lively, not to say 
 uproarious, party of Teutons w^ere playing- 
 cards, and indulging freely in those strange 
 interjectional snortings and gruntings that 
 form such an integral part of German con- 
 versation. 
 
 His surroundings were far from romantic ; 
 and yet the pictures which presented them- 
 selves to Philip Enderby's mind were un- 
 doubtedly touched with the delightful finger 
 of romance. The events of the afternoon 
 had stimulated his memory to a remarkable 
 degree. He seemed to see poor, good- 
 looking, rackety Beau Pierce -Dawnay once 
 more, as he lay tossing restlessly on his 
 narrow camp bed, through the long hours 
 of semi-tropic nights — half wild wdth fever 
 and exhaustion, crying tears of impotent 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 135 
 
 misery and weakness, and raving about his 
 young wife and his " darling little Jessie," 
 whom he would never see again. Philip 
 had been with poor Beau when he died, 
 and had promised — with the fervour natural 
 to such a moment — to look after the dying 
 man's wife and child. He had kept his 
 promise, too, with perhaps unusual faith- 
 fulness — for that same fervour of the 
 watcher beside the death-bed, cools down 
 sensibly, as a rule, after the funeral : and 
 what was originally embraced as a sacred 
 duty, appears too often, later, as something 
 allied to a bore. But Philip had really 
 applied his mind to helping his friend's 
 widow. He had extracted her jointure from 
 a recalcitrant father-in-law ; had advised her 
 successfully regarding her affairs on several 
 occasions — Eleanor had rather a gift for 
 getting into what are vulgarly called tight 
 places — and had held himself ready, at all 
 times, to come to her if she should send for 
 him. For the last few years their relation 
 had been a less intimate one, it is true ; yet 
 the Colonel had never regarded himself as 
 released from his old engagement. 
 
13G COLONEL ENDERBY ? S "WIFE. 
 
 The Germans finished their game. They 
 got up with a sound of loud talk and 
 laughter, a scraping of chairs and clatter of 
 hoot-heels on the marble floor. Galli looked 
 in for a moment, tired, but acquiescent in 
 whatever state of things might be revealed 
 to him. But Philip Enderby sat still on the 
 orange-and-black divan, his legs crossed, his 
 steady blue eyes staring at nothing in par- 
 ticular, a queer smile about his lips, and the 
 stump of his cigar fading from crimson heat 
 to grey ash between his fingers. 
 
 A fair young face smiled at him from 
 under a great red umbrella, and a light 
 slender figure flitted before him in the 
 gloom of a wide dusky stairway, and merry 
 mocking words wandered in through a 
 sunny window. A hundred dainty little 
 movements and charming glances forced 
 themselves on his remembrance ; and all 
 the while, with ancient wizened counte- 
 nance, a monkey grinned and chattered at 
 him ; and a young man — well, no, not a 
 young man exactly, but a decidedly younger 
 man than Colonel Enderby — stood by, 
 mournful, cynical, and it must be owned, 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 137 
 
 most unnecessarily good-looking into the 
 bargain. 
 
 The Colonel sat up and shook himself. 
 He did not half like his own imaginations. 
 His state of mind was decidedly abnormal, 
 and it worried him. Then his thoughts 
 wandered back to Cecilia Murray, his old 
 love. Yes, he had been true to her, very 
 true, on the whole, — even when it was quite 
 useless to be so. A certain tenderness came 
 over him even now whenever he thought of 
 her. Ah ! how different things might have 
 been if he had married her years ago, and 
 if, in due time, Bassett Darcy had come to 
 him ! 
 
 Philip had visions of himself, solidly 
 prosperous, settled in life, with a wife who 
 had become a sort of second self to him, 
 and a troop of growing boys and girls 
 around him ; hunting three or four times a 
 week ; riding over on Board days to Slowby ; 
 going to church soberly on Sunday ; busy 
 with pleasant homely matters ; building 
 good cottages ; giving away beef and pudding 
 to the labourers' wives at Christmas ; wan- 
 dering about on nice, dull, dewy mornings, 
 
138 COLONEL ENDEKBl's WIFE. 
 
 with a spud in his hand, and vexing seriously 
 because there were so many plantains in 
 the turf on the lawns. He sighed. Yes, not- 
 withstanding his assertions made to Mrs. 
 Pierce-Dawnay a few hours before, that was 
 the life he was really cut out for — ordinary, 
 sensible, and responsible, touched with 
 kindly humour, and backed with dignified 
 comfort. Renunciation is not such an easy 
 matter, after all. You may fast of your own 
 free will, and not because you are compelled 
 to ; but you will feel as hungry for the food 
 you deny yourself as for food that is denied 
 you. Colonel Enderby had forgiven his 
 father, he harboured no grudge against his 
 younger brother ; but he was not very 
 cheerful all the same. He got up and took 
 one or two turns up and down the room. 
 Then, moved by a sudden impulse, he stood 
 still in front of one of the mirrors, and took 
 a good, long, honest look at himself. 
 
 The impression he received was not an 
 encouraging one, somehow. 
 
 " Drake was right," he said, a little in- 
 consequently. "I'm nearly fifty. It's all 
 very well, but there are a number of things 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 139 
 
 you must do before then if you're going to 
 do them at all. I feel as if a little fighting 
 would be rather a comfort just now," he 
 added. 
 
 The Colonel moved across to the table 
 again, and picked up his cigar-case and box 
 of fusees. 
 
 "I'd better go to bed. I'm out of sorts, 
 I think, to-night. The day after to-morrow 
 we'll go on to Spezia ; Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay 
 will have said her say by then, I suppose." 
 
 Just outside the door he nearly ran into 
 Galli — yawniug, but mild, and still clinging 
 to his napkin. Philip Enderby was struck 
 with sudden compunction ; he said a few 
 civil words to the man about having kept 
 him up so late. 
 
 Galli bowed and smiled faintky — a well- 
 bred, if discrowned Caesar. 
 
 " We are accustomed," he remarked 
 vaguely. " The German gentlemen have 
 but lately finished. I wait to see to the 
 gas." 
 
 And with shuffling footsteps he passed 
 along into the empty smoking-room. 
 
140 COLONEL ENDEBBY'S WIFE. 
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 "LE dessous des cartes.'' 
 
 For reasons which he would have found it 
 difficult to define, Philip put off his visit to 
 the Villa Mortelli, next day, till the afternoon. 
 He did his hest to maintain a very British 
 and unimpressible frame of mind. Accom- 
 panied by that lively and self-important 
 little man, Mr. Drake, he explored the not 
 very promising town of Terzia in the 
 morning ; looked in at the lofty, stuffy, 
 painted church, and pronounced it tawdry ; 
 lingered for a few minutes at the great 
 straggling station, and remarked, with a 
 grain of contempt, how slovenly and slip- 
 shod all Italian railroad arrangements 
 appeared to be ; loitered down on the grey 
 beach, in the brilliant sunshine, watching 
 the great blue-green rollers come in in end- 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 141 
 
 less succession, and break in hollow thunder 
 and snowy foam at his feet, and declared he 
 had seen a ten-times finer ground sea on 
 the west coast of England. The Colonel 
 was sensible of a strong instinct of self-pro- 
 tection at this juncture. He felt the desira- 
 bility of cultivating a number of wholesome 
 British prejudices. The feeling amused him, 
 even while he recognized its wisdom. 
 
 About half-past two o'clock he arrived at 
 the little red villa. The sky was absolutely 
 clear, and the whole place seemed to sleep 
 in the rich glowing sunshine. The front 
 door stood open on to the terrace. Philip 
 rang ; waited ; rang again, and then, getting 
 bored both with the delay and the heat, 
 went indoors and upstairs. 
 
 The drawing-room door stood open too. 
 From within came the sound of a piano. 
 Some one was playing brilliantly, almost 
 riotously, avalse. There is an indescribable 
 underlying pathos in dance music — every- 
 body knows it ; a heartache behind all the 
 laughter, a weariness below all the rapid 
 movement, a question, a doubt, a misgiving, 
 under all the radiance and joy . 
 
142 COLONEL ENDERBY's WIFE. 
 
 Colonel Enderby did not quite care to 
 acknowledge the penetrating sentiment of 
 the music just then. He knocked at the 
 door, as no servant w 7 as visible, and then 
 walked straight into the room. As he did 
 so, the valse sank away into a tender regret- 
 ful passage. 
 
 Jessie Pierce-Dawnay was at the piano. 
 Apparently she was absorbed in her own 
 performance. Her pretty head was thrown 
 back, and her light figure showed up with a 
 very telling distinctness against the shaded 
 corner of the room beyond the instrument. 
 In a low chair by her side Mr. Ames 
 lounged, slowly cutting the pages of a 
 yellow French novel, and whistling the air 
 of the valse softly as he did so. At the 
 sound of Colonel Enderby' s footsteps, he 
 looked up. 
 
 " Ah ! " he said gently. 
 
 The young girl looked round too. She 
 got up quickly and came forward, her face 
 irradiated with one of those delightful 
 smiles. 
 
 " You are very late," she said. " Did you 
 get tired of us all last night ? We expected 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 143 
 
 you to luncheon at half-past twelve ; but 
 perhaps you did well in not coming. You 
 would have found Bertie and me alone. 
 Miss Keat has gone into Genoa; Mamma 
 has one of her headaches, and is in- 
 visible. 7 ' 
 
 Mr. Ames, meanwhile, rose slowly from his 
 chair. 
 
 "I hope they gave you decent rooms," 
 he observed, in his sweet, drawling voice. 
 " I spoke beforehand ; I did what I could ; 
 I was assured that you would be treated en 
 prince. But a hotel-keeper's business is to 
 tell one lies, you know." 
 
 " I did very well, thanks," Colonel 
 Enderby answered, rather shortly. Then 
 he turned to Jessie again, and made one or 
 two necessary and civil inquiries respecting 
 her stepmother. 
 
 " Ah ! mamma's headaches are very 
 distressing," she said. " They are nervous. 
 When they come on, mamma succumbs ; 
 she disappears entirely. As for us, we are 
 very sorry, of course, but we have grown 
 accustomed to it ; we wait till she reappears, 
 and then we proceed as usual. Bertie 
 
144 COLONEL EXDEEBY'S WIFE. 
 
 suffers at times, too," she added ; " but lie 
 doesn't disappear. He remains, and I have 
 to amuse him." 
 
 "In that case Mr. Ames is hardly 
 deserving of much pity," said Philip. 
 
 The young lady was really very capti- 
 vating as she stood there looking with a 
 sort of mischievous innocence from one of 
 her companions to the other. 
 
 " I am to be pitied, though, a good deal, 
 sometimes," she answered. " Bertie is not 
 easy to entertain. He becomes tired of 
 everything. He says he has got beyond it. 
 He has a most beautiful voice, Colonel 
 Enderby, but he will never sing now ; he 
 says he has got beyond that. The phrase 
 is odious to me." 
 
 The girl spoke with some warmth. Mr. 
 Ames w r ent on quietly cutting the pages of 
 his novel. 
 
 "My dear little cousin," he said, "your ex- 
 perience of life is as yet, happily for you, very 
 limited. I will preach you a little sermon." 
 
 " Oh, pray don't," said Jessie, quickly, 
 putting up her eyebrows. "I have the 
 most lively objection to sermons." 
 
A TEST OF FKIENDSHIP. 145 
 
 "I know," lie answered. "For an 
 English girl your education has been 
 deplorably neglected in that particular. 
 But if you knew more of the world, you 
 would be vividly aware that the chief busi- 
 ness of a reasonable being consists in getting 
 beyond things. Ask Colonel Enderby," 
 he added, glancing up suddenly, " if he is 
 not unpleasantly conscious of having got 
 beyond a whole number of things by now." 
 
 " Have you ? ' : said Jessie, almost 
 seriously. 
 
 The whole spirit of the conversation was 
 distasteful to Philip. He had taken a 
 dislike to Mr. Ames, who struck him as 
 sententious, and at moments even offensive, 
 with his languor, and his drawl, and his 
 over-delicate manner. The question, too, 
 reminded him, with irritating distinctness, 
 of his unsatisfactory colloquy with the 
 looking-glass in the smoking-room the night 
 before. He paused a moment before 
 answering. The girl repeated her question, 
 looking in his face all the while with curious 
 directness. 
 
 " Yes," he said, rather sadly ; " I'm afraid 
 
 VOL. I. L 
 
146 COLONEL ENDERBY'S WIFE. 
 
 I have got beyond a good many things too, 
 Miss Pierce-Dawnay." 
 
 "Ah! dear me," she sighed; "what a 
 
 pity ! " 
 
 Still she stood gazing questioningly at 
 him. The Colonel felt himself singularly 
 moved by that lingering inspection. 
 
 Bertie Ames laughed gently. 
 
 " I told you so, Jessie," he said. " The 
 law is of universal application. See, it holds 
 equally good in the case of myself and 
 Colonel Enderby — if I may venture, in pass- 
 ing, to associate my obscure name with his 
 illustrious one. Everybody gets beyond 
 everything, to put it vulgarly. I am almost 
 past this last novel of Daudet's. And the 
 day will come, Jessie, when a new gown — 
 even one from Paris — will cease to give you 
 any very active satisfaction. " 
 
 "No, no, no!" cried the girl, piteously. 
 Her pretty eyes rilled with tears, and she 
 moved two or three steps away from him, 
 and nearer to the Colonel. 
 
 "Don't say that — don't spoil it all! It 
 isn't true, Bertie," she cried. " Say it isn't 
 true," she went on, turning to Colonel En- 
 
A TEST OF FEIENDSHIP. 147 
 
 derby — coming so close to him that lie 
 perceived quite strongly the scent of a little 
 bunch of grey violets which she wore in the 
 bosom of her dress — " tell me it isn't true ; 
 tell me I shall always go on enjoying things. 
 I enjoy them so much now. Don't let Bertie 
 make me miserable." 
 
 At this moment Philip stood undoubtedly 
 in need of all those self-protective instincts 
 which he had sought to cultivate earlier 
 in the day. The situation was a slightly 
 dangerous one. For an instant he was 
 tempted to do an exquisitely silly thing. 
 He was tempted to gather this pretty 
 appealing child into his strong arms and 
 swear — an oath, by the way, quite impos- 
 sible to keep — that neither Mr. Bertie Ames 
 or any one else should ever give her 
 a moment's distress again. Fortunately, 
 however, most people only do a tithe of the 
 foolish things they are tempted to do. 
 •Colonel Enderby drew himself up. He 
 even moved a little farther away. His 
 heart may have beat rather quick for the 
 moment, but that he could not prevent. 
 He glanced at Bertie, who leant easily 
 
148 COLONEL ENDERBY's WIFE. 
 
 on the top of the piano, and watched him 
 with a suspicion of lurking amusement in 
 the expression of his handsome face. 
 
 "My dear young lady," he said quietly, 
 "if people get discontented and miserable, 
 they have generally only themselves to 
 thank for it, in the long run. One need 
 never, except through one's own fault, get 
 beyond enjoying the things which are really 
 worth most in life." 
 
 There was a pause after the Colonel had 
 thus made his confession of faith. Then 
 Mr. Ames observed, but so mildly and 
 amiably that it was impossible to be very 
 wrath with him — 
 
 "Pardon me, but I wonder whether you 
 really believe that ? " 
 
 Just at this moment Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay 
 rustled into the room, closely followed by 
 the austere form of Parker, bearing cushions, 
 eau-de-cologne, and various et ceteras. 
 
 "Ah, Colonel Enderby," she said, with 
 a certain weariness of manner which was 
 not without its charm, " I have been ex- 
 pecting you. Why didn't you come 
 earlier?" 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 149 
 
 As she spoke Eleanor looked rather hard 
 at the Colonel, erect, serious — even a trifle 
 savage ; at the young girl, with her flushed 
 face and still misty eyes; and, lastly, at 
 Bertie Ames, leaning indolently on the top 
 of the piano. Her expression changed 
 sensibly, and she spoke perhaps with a 
 grain of uncalled-for rapidity and decision. 
 
 " Parker, you may take all those things 
 back into the little drawing-room again, 
 please. I am not very well to-day, not equal 
 to much," she continued, addressing Philip ; 
 " still, I cannot afford to waste the precious 
 hours of your visit. I should like to have 
 some quiet talk with you, Colonel Enderby. 
 Will you come with me into my sanctum ? 
 It is cooler there, and we shall be alone." 
 
 Then she placed her hand on her step- 
 daughter's shoulder and said, "You look 
 tired, Jessie. Take a book, and go to your 
 own room and rest." 
 
 " And me ? " inquired Mr. Ames, gently, 
 "and me, cousin Nell? In your scheme 
 of universal benevolence, am I to be left 
 out in the cold, or will you kindly devise a 
 suitable occupation for me also ? " 
 
150 COLONEL ENDEKBY'S WIFE. 
 
 Eleanor turned to him with a flash in her 
 eyes. 
 
 " You can ring for the monkey," she said 
 briefly. 
 
 " Ah, just so. The idea is an admirable 
 one. I too am provided for. Thanks. I 
 may ring for the monkey." 
 
 Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay looked at Philip. 
 " Let us come," she said, as she moved 
 towards the door. 
 
 The Colonel followed her across the land- 
 ing to another room, though inwardly he 
 was just a shade reluctant to do so. He 
 liked plain sailing, a simple straightforward 
 manner of conducting life; and he began 
 to suspect that plain sailing was by no 
 means the custom of this slightly eccentric 
 household. He was becoming conscious 
 that a good deal was going on around him 
 which he could not fathom, and he did not 
 in the least enjoy it. 
 
 When Mr. Ames was alone, he subsided 
 into the deep arm-chair again. 
 
 " Cousin Nell becomes enigmatical," he 
 said, half aloud. 
 
 If Philip Enderby was already on the 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 151 
 
 look-out for cross currents, and sunken 
 rocks, and shifting winds, his talk with his 
 hostess that afternoon was by no means 
 calculated to reassure hirn. The prepara- 
 tions for it in the way of smelling-bottles 
 and cushions were alone suggestive of em- 
 barrassing possibilities, to a man unused to 
 the habits and requirements of womankind. 
 Then, too, an effect of restlessness, of hardly 
 repressed emotion, which was observable in 
 Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay's manner, perplexed 
 him. In a way, he was a little afraid of 
 this stormy handsome woman in her present 
 mood. She struck him as likely to make 
 strange propositions, and prove somewhat 
 unmanageable if they were not complied 
 with. Mentally, he repeated his decision of 
 leaving Terzia on the morrow. 
 
 After some desultory conversation as to 
 his plans — where he was going, and what 
 he proposed to see — Eleanor said, with a 
 certain solemnity in her tone — 
 
 " Colonel Enderby, you mustn't suppose 
 I asked you to put yourself out of the way 
 and come here to see me on some merely 
 frivolous pretext. I want you to be so good 
 
152 COLONEL ENDERBY's WIFE. 
 
 as to give rae your advice in a difficult and 
 delicate matter. There are reasons which 
 seem to give you a claim in this question. 
 You were my husband's best friend, and so, 
 in this case, I instinctively turn to you. 
 Will you permit me to speak quite freely ? " 
 
 The Colonel assented courteously enough. 
 What else could he do ? Yet he was sen- 
 sible of growing discomfort. The room 
 was cool, but the shut and darkened 
 windows produced an effect of airlessness. 
 It was sweet, too, with the scent of flowers, 
 and his hostess, with her serious intense 
 face, sitting on the old-fashioned sofa 
 opposite to him, made a sufficiently telling 
 and graceful picture. But Philip refused 
 to be impressed. Perhaps he was suffering 
 a reaction after his moment of keen feeling 
 in the drawing-room just before. He was 
 not in quite a sympathetic attitude of mind, 
 and yet his loyalty to his old brother-in- 
 arms made him wish to be helpful to Mrs* 
 Pierce-Dawnay if he could. 
 
 "I have great confidence in your judg- 
 ment," she went on. " I cannot trust 
 myself; I can't be as dispassionate as I 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 153 
 
 want to be. But I can trust you, Colonel 
 Enderby. Think of all I owe you, as it is." 
 
 "Pray don't say that," he interrupted. 
 " Your husband was my very dear friend. I 
 have merely tried to pay — very inadequately 
 — a debt I owed to the dead " 
 
 The Colonel paused. His expression was 
 pathetic, modest, charming, as he looked 
 across at her. 
 
 Eleanor was a person of quick perceptions. 
 She had a very high respect for her com- 
 panion. She felt, too, at this moment, that 
 a dividing wall was, so to speak, broken 
 down between them, and that they had 
 moved several steps nearer to each other in 
 intimacy. 
 
 " I know, I know," she returned warmly ; 
 " and it gives me more confidence now. 
 I am horribly perplexed. You must advise 
 me. Tell me," she went on, speaking 
 quickly, " tell me, what shall I do with my 
 step-daughter, with poor Beaumont's child? " 
 
 Philip Enderby was startled. 
 
 " Good heavens ! Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay, 
 what do you mean ? " 
 
 " Oh, don't misunderstand me," she an- 
 
154 COLONEL ENDERBY'S WIFE. 
 
 swered. " I don't mean anything very 
 extraordinary. Jessie has reached an age 
 when it becomes necessary to think of her 
 future. She is attractive, she has had 
 many admirers." 
 
 " No doubt," murmured Philip, almost 
 involuntarily. 
 
 " Foreign ways are different to English 
 ones, you know. Parents here take a much 
 more active interest in their children's 
 prospects than is customary at home. They 
 look forward. They consult with some 
 chosen friend ; they decide on a course of 
 action, and carry it out." 
 
 The Colonel began to see what was 
 coming. Under other circumstances the 
 position he was called upon so unexpectedly 
 to occupy might have struck him as an 
 amusing one. But for some reason he was 
 not in the least inclined to look at the 
 question of Jessie's future from a humorous 
 point of view. He was moved to disclaim, 
 quite hotly, any share in providing for the 
 young lady's happiness. 
 
 " You must pardon me," he said. " In 
 all business matters I am glad to be of 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 155 
 
 service to you in any way I can ; but this 
 question is altogether outside the range 
 of my capacity. I have not any qualifica- 
 tions for the part of adviser regarding your 
 step-daughter's future. Kemember, I had 
 not seen her since she was quite a child 
 till yesterday. I know absolutely nothing 
 of her tastes and inclinations; any inter- 
 ference on my part would be simply 
 grotesque." 
 
 Philip leant back stiffly in his chair, and 
 looked away. 
 
 "I am sorry, but I must refuse to dis- 
 cuss this matter," he continued. "It places 
 me altogether in a false position. Surely 
 some one else — your cousin, Mr. Ames, for 
 instance — is far better qualified to advise 
 you than I am." 
 
 Directly the words were out of his mouth, 
 Philip regretted them. It was odious to 
 him to think of that languid disillusioned 
 young man having a hand in the fate of 
 the pretty child who had implored him so 
 passionately "not to let Bertie make her 
 miserable " only half an hour ago. The 
 Colonel felt as if he had been guilty of an 
 
156 COLONEL ENDERBY'S WIFE. 
 
 act of treachery. He was furious with 
 himself. 
 
 His hostess, too, was perhaps a trifle 
 nettled at his very plain refusal to do 
 what she asked of him ; but outwardly she 
 dominated her displeasure. 
 
 "I understand your feeling," she said. 
 "I half expected you would object at first, 
 and I respect you for doing so. But we 
 can't let the conversation end like this. I 
 must explain myself a little further. At 
 the risk of annoying you, I shall go on." 
 
 Eleanor sat up ; she leant her elbow on 
 the arm of the sofa, and fingered the 
 carved woodwork of it rather restlessly as 
 she spoke. 
 
 "In mentioning Mr. Ames you have 
 touched the root of all my perplexities. 
 He is my second cousin. He has been 
 living with us, off and on, for the last two 
 years. Bertie's career has not been an 
 altogether fortunate one. He has had a 
 good deal to endure, one way and another. 
 I think," she added, with a ring of genuine 
 feeling, in her voice, " that I have been of 
 some little help to poor Bertie. Colonel 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 157 
 
 Enderby, you must bear with me ; you must 
 let me tell you about him." 
 
 But tbe Colonel was growing decidedly 
 restive. He was suspicious of these con- 
 fidences ; be began to distrust whither they 
 might lead. He wanted to cut the con- 
 versation short, to go away, to go out of 
 doors — to do anything, in short, but sit here 
 listening in this sweet, airless, oppressive 
 atmosphere. 
 
 "You are tired, Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay," he 
 said, getting up and standing before her. 
 " Don't you think it would be best to leave 
 the story of Mr. Ames' troubles till to- 
 morrow morning — till you are rested? " 
 
 " You would do me a real favour, Colonel 
 Enderby, if you would listen now." 
 
 She turned her face to him suddenly; 
 it seemed pale and haggard in the soft 
 light. 
 
 "Pray, pray, listen now," she went on, 
 speaking low and hurriedly, clasping her 
 hands, and leaning forward with her eyes 
 fixed on his face. " You are honest and 
 true, and I am horribly lonely; I am in 
 great distress. I can't tell you altogether 
 
158 COLONEL ENDERBY'S WIFE. 
 
 why; you must take my word partly on 
 trust. Perhaps I shouldn't have spoken so 
 soon, but I am low and nervous to-day. I 
 hate all that pitiless sunshine, and glare, 
 and glitter outside ; it distracts me. I am 
 getting worn out, and I can't be cautious, 
 and diplomatic any longer. I have wanted 
 some one to speak to for weeks and months. 
 Of course, all this seems weak, excited, 
 ridiculous, exaggerated to you; but listen 
 to me, Colonel Enderby, not for my sake, 
 but for the sake of my dead husband, 
 w T ho trusted you — for his sake, hear me 
 out." 
 
 The Colonel sat down again. It was all 
 very painful, very unpleasant ; but it would 
 be nothing short of brutal to leave a woman 
 pleading for a hearing in that desperate 
 way, and Philip was very far from being a 
 brute. 
 
 " Thank you," she said eagerly. 
 
 Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay pressed her handker- 
 chief hard against her lips ; she was altogether 
 unstrung. She had a choking sensation in 
 her throat, and, for a few seconds, was on 
 the edge of an outburst of hysterical sob- 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 159 
 
 bing ; but she mastered herself by an effort 
 of will, which her companion could not help 
 admiring. She set her teeth, gave herself 
 a petulant little shake, and then began 
 speaking again calmly. 
 
 "Bertie's mother was an Italian," she 
 said. " His father was a banker in Milan. 
 I used to be with them a good deal, years 
 ago, before I married. However, that's 
 neither here nor there. Bertie has money 
 and no profession. He fell wildly in love 
 with a young Italian lady of good family — 
 a distant connection of his mother's. Her 
 parents had other views for their daughter, 
 they would not hear of it. Bertie was not 
 good enough for them, I suppose ; they 
 made his religion the objection. It has 
 always struck me as, indeed, a case of the 
 irony of fate, that poor dear Bertie, of all 
 people in the world, should suffer in the 
 cause of religion." 
 
 Eleanor shifted her position slightly ; she 
 avoided looking at Colonel Enderby. 
 
 " The young lady married, as her parents 
 desired her; she did not pretend to care a 
 rap for her husband. She was a beautiful, 
 
160 COLONEL ENDEEEY'S WIFE. 
 
 self-willed, emotional creature. I needn't go 
 into particulars ; the story is not a pleasant- 
 one. Everybody knew what was happening. 
 Bertie Ames sacrificed his youth to this 
 unfortunate liaison ; it has blighted his 
 whole life. The lady still cares for him — 
 there have been terrible scenes at times — 
 but he no longer cares, I think, for her. 
 Yet, if her husband were to die, he would 
 marry her to-morrow ; he believes he is 
 bound in honour to do so. Bertie's sense 
 of honour is very fine." 
 
 Eleanor raised her eyes with a movement 
 of pride as she finished speaking. For the 
 life of him, Philip could not help smiling 
 a little. 
 
 " Yes, it is," she cried, with energy. " He 
 no longer cares, but he waits. He will not 
 think of any one else. All his Italian friends 
 laud him as a preux chevalier, a very model 
 of constancy." 
 
 She paused, still looking up, almost de- 
 fiantly. Colonel Enderby cleared his throat. 
 He had disliked this young gentleman from 
 the first; and that fact, probably, made 
 him somewhat merciless. Personal feelings 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 1G1 
 
 insinuate themselves so cunningly into our 
 judgments of others, and offer, on broad, 
 general principles, such excellent justifica- 
 tions for their existence. 
 
 " That is a mistake on the part of Mr. 
 Ames' friends," he remarked drily. 
 
 A dull flush came into Eleanor's cheeks. 
 
 " Yes, from your point of view, I dare say 
 it is ; yet, remember, Bertie is more of an 
 Italian than an Englishman. The standards 
 in these matters are different here. But for 
 the last few months I have been gro wing- 
 dreadfully anxious. I have noticed, I have 
 feared that — well, that he was very much 
 drawn towards Jessie. He won't marry, 
 he will never many any woman but the 
 Countess Tolomei. But, Colonel Enderby, 
 think — think if Jessie comes to care for 
 him." 
 
 Colonel Enderby stood up all of a piece, 
 as the saying is. 
 
 " Send him away," he said, fiercely. 
 " There is just that one thing to do ; send 
 him out of the house directly." 
 
 Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay flung back her hands 
 wildly. 
 
 VOL. I. 51 
 
1G2 COLONEL ENDEKBY'S WIFE. 
 
 "I can't, I can't!" she cried. "Any- 
 thing in the world hut that." 
 
 Philip stared at her for a moment in 
 dumb amazement. She was pale and 
 scared. 
 
 Then as the meaning of her strange 
 outburst began to dawn upon him, he 
 turned aw r ay, half in pity, half with a sense 
 of repulsion. The situation was painfully 
 complicated. 
 
 Eleanor also had risen to her feet. There 
 was a silence. Presently she spoke. 
 
 "I have been mad," she said hoarsely. 
 " I have lost my head and betrayed myself. 
 I have put myself to shame before you. 
 Colonel Enderby, if you are a man of 
 honour — and I know you are that — you will 
 believe what I say now, and then go away 
 and blot my insane self-betrayal out of your 
 mind for ever. Bertie Ames does not dream 
 of this ; nobody in the world knows it." 
 
 There was a fine dignity about the woman 
 at that moment. 
 
 Philip bowed silently. Words were ob- 
 viously out of the question. Eleanor moved 
 aside, and began nervously arranging some 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 163 
 
 cut flowers that stood on a dish on one of 
 the tables. 
 
 The Colonel's mind was penetrated with 
 the remembrance of Jessie. Poor child ! 
 her prospects, all things considered, seemed 
 to him sufficiently melancholy. Again, he 
 felt a strong movement of pity — of tender- 
 ness towards her. It seemed frightful that 
 this pure, innocent, gay young life should be 
 bound up with the dark unfruitful history 
 he had just been listening to. He stood 
 absorbed in thought. If only something 
 could be done to help her ! 
 
 Eleanor left off fingering the flowers, and 
 moved about the room impatiently. With 
 whatever sentiments of trust and confidence, 
 with whatever vague hope of possible as- 
 sistance she had begun her interview with 
 Colonel Enderby, at this moment, in her 
 hot shame and wounded pride, she desired 
 most cordially to be rid of him. 
 
 "You leave here to-morrow I think you 
 said?" she observed at last, over her 
 shoulder. 
 
 Philip was not prepared for the question. 
 It forced him to come to a sudden decision. 
 
164 COLONEL ENDEBBY S WIFE. 
 
 " No," lie answered slowly; "I think I 
 shall remain here for a few days longer — 
 that is, of course, if you will permit me to 
 do so." 
 
 There was a perceptible interval of 
 silence before Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay's answ T er 
 came. 
 
 " It will be delightful," she said at last. 
 " Shall we come into the other room ? 
 Miss Keat and the others will be there. 
 It seems to me rather oppressive here." 
 
 " Thank you, I think I won't stay now," 
 he responded ; "I rather want a walk. 
 I'll come back, with my friend Drake, to 
 dinner." 
 
 As the two friends were going down to 
 the hotel that night, Mr. Drake suddenly 
 stopped short in the wavering yellow light 
 of one of the few gas-lamps in the quaint, 
 painted main street of Terzia, and looked 
 full at his companion. 
 
 " I don't half like leaving you behind, 
 somehow, Enderby," he said. "It's not 
 merely the breaking up of our plans ; though, 
 of course, I'm sorry for that : but I take for 
 granted your reasons for staying are good 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 165 
 
 enough, and so I accept them without any 
 fuss." 
 
 The good little gentleman moved on 
 again with his quick, self-important walk. 
 
 "I don't know what it is, but, hang it 
 all, Enderby, I feel nervous about you." 
 
 Philip laughed in a very cheery, reas- 
 suring way. 
 
 "You have a wonderful imagination, 
 Drake," he said. " Why, what on earth 
 do you take it is going to happen to me ? " 
 
 "I don't mind the widow," observed the 
 other man, apparently rather inconse- 
 quently; " I'd trust her, I think. At 
 bottom she's a good woman — flighty, of 
 course, and all that sort of thing; but I'll 
 back her to be sound enough here-" — Mr. 
 Drake thumped himself heavily in the 
 region of the heart — " sound enough here, 
 you know," he repeated. " But that little 
 girl — upon my word, Enderby, somehow I 
 fight uncommonly shy of that deuceclly 
 pretty little girl." 
 
 The Colonel looked down ; he kicked the 
 loose gravel on the walk of the hotel 
 garden — which they were just then crossing 
 
166 COLONEL ENDERBY's WIFE. 
 
 — with his foot, and laughed again, but this- 
 time with slight annoyance. 
 
 "A thousand to one," he said, "you'll 
 never set eyes on Miss Pierce-Dawnay 
 again, so really I don't think that very 
 much matters." 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 167 
 
 CHAPTEK Y. 
 
 JESSIE SUGGESTS A REMEDY. 
 
 Having once committed himself to a line of 
 action, it was Colonel Enderby's habit to 
 stand by it, even when it failed, on more 
 mature consideration, to commend itself 
 very highly to his judgment. Inspired 
 partly by his loyalty to Beaumont Pierce- 
 Dawnay's memory, partly by a quick pity 
 for the two women, whose position seemed 
 to him such a critical and painful one, Philip 
 had decided the evening before to stay on 
 at Terzia. He was going to stick to his 
 post ; he was going somehow to see them 
 through. And yet, when in the cheerless 
 light of a very wet morning, he bade fare- 
 well to kind, fussy little Mr. Drake, and 
 saw the latter gentleman pack himself and 
 his baggage into the rattling omnibus, which 
 
1GS 
 
 was to convey him into Genoa, Philip 
 became conscious that perhaps he had 
 undertaken a very foolish piece of business. 
 It was all very well to talk of lines of 
 action ; but the unfortunate thing was, that 
 he hadn't any line at all. He could not 
 see his way in the least. He turned back 
 into the large brightly painted hotel, which 
 looked particularly frivolous and ephemeral 
 on this gloomy morning, in anything but 
 a sweet temper. He said to himself that 
 " the whole thing was a nuisance, and that 
 he had got himself into an infernally awk- 
 ward fix : — " and, it must be owned, he 
 said it with a will. 
 
 The Colonel's temper was not improved 
 when, on sallying forth, some few hours 
 later, in a mackintosh and heavy boots in 
 defiance of the streaming rain, he met Mr. 
 Ames just turning in at the gates of the 
 hotel garden. Bertie was holding up a 
 large umbrella, picking his way carefully 
 along the sloppy pavement, and looking 
 mildly disgusted, yet resigned. He had on 
 a very light overcoat, and wore the inevi- 
 table white gardenia in his button-hole, a 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 169 
 
 trifle brown at the edges of the petals from 
 the wet. 
 
 He nodded blandly to Colonel Enderby. 
 
 " I suppose you rather like this sort of 
 weather ? It seems home-like," he observed, 
 with a sweet wistfulness of expression, which 
 was by no means appeasing to a man in an 
 irritable frame of mind. 
 
 Two minutes before Philip had felt no 
 special objection to the rain. The dull sky 
 was really rather a relief after all that gaudy 
 sunlight. But for some occult reason, as 
 Bertie spoke, his opinion went round to 
 another quarter with all the velocity of a 
 weather-cock on a gusty day. 
 
 "It's the most beastly morning I ever 
 saw," he replied, with considerable asperity. 
 " The whole place looks miserable. It 
 seems to me this country can only look 
 decent in a blaze of sunshine." 
 
 Mr. Ames smiled faintly. 
 
 " Yes, I understand just what you mean." 
 
 He took a leisurely survey of the large 
 hotel, built round three sides of a square 
 and coloured pink, with splendid imitations 
 of stone pilasters and florid mouldings 
 
170 COLONEL ENDEEBY's WIFE. 
 
 painted in pale yellow, and the shadows 
 they were fondly supposed to cast painted 
 in pale green. Then he turned, and gazed 
 down the many-coloured street behind him. 
 
 "I understand perfectly what you mean," 
 he repeated. " It looks very like the inside 
 of a theatre by daylight. You thorough- 
 going English people dislike that ; it strikes 
 you as artificial. As for us, we others prefer 
 our theatre, daylight or gaslight, to anything 
 else in the world." 
 
 " It all appears to me very cheap and 
 flimsy," said Colonel Enderby. "I can't 
 think much of the beauty of a country 
 when it can be spoilt by a few hours' rain." 
 
 He glanced critically at the other man's 
 clothes as he spoke. Mr. Ames' dress 
 provoked him. To-day Philip took great 
 exception at his hat. It was too low in the 
 crown, and too curled up at the sides. 
 " Just like a shop-boy out for a Sunday," he 
 said to himself. 
 
 "As we have satisfactorily disposed of 
 the country, let us go on to the people," 
 Bertie resumed, with much composure. He 
 found a delicate pleasure in keeping his 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 171 
 
 companion standing here in the rain. " They 
 remind me, now, very much of fowls on a wet 
 day, depressed and draggled. I felt so like 
 a fowl myself this morning, that I really 
 had to come out. I wanted to stand about 
 on one leg with other fowls, and make 
 melancholy little noises. There is a natural 
 desire for communion among the wretched, 
 you know. I feel much better since I have 
 stood about here with you." 
 
 This was going too far. The Colonel 
 drew himself up. 
 
 " I think I'll walk on," he said curtly, 
 and, turning away, passed rapidly down the 
 dripping street. 
 
 " He is a very good-hearted barbarian, 
 after all, I believe, though he doesn't like 
 me," Bertie Ames said to himself, with 
 commendable candour, as he picked his way 
 across the hotel garden. " The British 
 flavour is a little too pronounced, perhaps ; 
 but, poor man, he can't help that. I 
 wonder what dear Cousin Nell really intends 
 to do with him. Her inventive power is 
 startling at moments." 
 
 Later that same day, Philip Enderby had 
 
172 COLONEL ENDEEBY'S WIFE. 
 
 a short conversation with Jessie, which 
 seemed to throw light on the situation. 
 The rain had almost ceased; but the pale 
 ragged clouds still hung low on the hill- 
 sides, while the w r hole landscape seemed 
 blotted in in cold tones of indigo and grey. 
 The Colonel had been for a long walk. He 
 had been trying hard to arrange his ideas, 
 to make out what was the next step he had 
 better take. To stay and do nothing to mend 
 matters at the red villa was out of the 
 question, and yet for the life of him he 
 could not arrive at any distinct conclusion. 
 All his plans had been put out ; and he 
 found himself stranded in a dull little 
 foreign town, offering but small promise of 
 occupation or entertainment to a man of 
 his tastes, with a difficult and delicate piece 
 of diplomacy on his hands. The Colonel 
 felt himself to be a somewhat ill-used person, 
 as he walked up to the front door of the Villa 
 Mortelli that gloomy drizzling spring after- 
 noon. 
 
 Just as he was going to ring he heard his 
 name called, and, turning round, saw Jessie 
 coming from the tangled garden beyond. 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 173 
 
 She was wrapped in a long cloak, with the 
 hood of it pulled up over her head, framing 
 the oval of her fair young face with a dark 
 line. There was something pensive in her 
 expression. The girl had gained an almost 
 tragic interest in Colonel Enderbv's eyes 
 since his conversation with her step-mother. 
 Her foes were those of her own household, 
 poor child ! It was sad. Altogether, she 
 struck him as a very appealing little figure, 
 standing there among the dripping leaves 
 and rain- washed flowers in the dull after- 
 noon light. 
 
 "I am so glad you have come," she said. 
 " It has been a horrible day. Miss Keat 
 has had bad news from England; she is 
 going away to-morrow. To-day she has 
 done nothing but pack and cry. Mamma 
 has devoted herself to Miss Keat. Bertie 
 went out early — he escaped. That is the 
 disadvantage of being a girl; you cannot 
 escape ; you must stay," 
 
 Jessie delivered herself of this statement 
 of her small woes, looking with pathetic 
 frankness into Philip's face. 
 
 "I am wretched," she went on, turning 
 
174 COLONEL ENDERBY S WIFE. 
 
 away, and pulling impatiently at a straggling 
 rose-spray, which, as she touched it, sent a 
 tiny cataract of water on to the shining 
 gravel below. "I want the sunshine; I 
 want to be amused." 
 
 At the risk of lowering the Colonel lament- 
 ably in the opinion of all sensible readers, 
 I must admit that Jessie's petulant outburst, 
 far from seeming silly or reprehensible in 
 his eyes, touched him considerably. Unfor- 
 tunately, you see, Philip was not the hero 
 of an admirable middle-class fiction — a 
 person bristling with respectabilities and 
 moralities, whose life is ruled by com- 
 mon sense, and a lively discernment of 
 probable profit and loss, and of the market 
 value of a given article. He was only a 
 plain, simple-minded gentleman, with a very 
 tender heart under his stern manner, and a 
 vein of poetry and romance in his composi- 
 tion which, at moments, sadly perverted the 
 strictness of his judgment. Alas ! there 
 will always be men, I fear, in this singularly 
 ill-regulated world, who never find a graceful 
 girl more winning than when she laments 
 that there are creases in her rose-leaves, 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 175 
 
 or sheds charming little pearl-like tears of 
 desire for the moon or some other equally 
 unattainable object. 
 
 "I am very sorry you are wretched," he 
 answered gently. "It hardly seems fair, 
 does it ? Wretchedness might keep itself 
 for older and" — he hesitated a moment, 
 rather at a loss for the right word — " well, 
 different sort of people to you. It does not 
 seem quite appropriate at your age. But I 
 am afraid I cannot bring back the sunshine 
 for you." 
 
 Philip paused. He would have given a 
 good deal to bring back the sunshine for 
 this pretty child, in more senses than the 
 immediate and obvious one. He felt rather 
 fiercely towards Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay at that 
 moment. He formulated an accusation 
 against her. She wanted to get rid of the 
 girl to serve her own purposes. It was 
 unfaithful of her. In thought he accused 
 her of being a dangerous and unscrupulous 
 woman. 
 
 Jessie looked up at him with charming 
 directness. 
 
 "I don't know that," she said. "'I 
 
17G COLONEL ENBEBBY'S WIFE. 
 
 believe you would do what you could. I 
 like you very much, Colonel Euderby." 
 
 Philip, like many light-haired men, re- 
 tained even at eight- and-forty a certain 
 capacity for blushing. There was un- 
 doubtedly a deeper tone than usual in his 
 face, as he answered — 
 
 "As much as in the days of dolls and 
 bonbons ? " 
 
 " Quite as much," said Jessie, promptly. 
 
 She drew the dark cloak more closely 
 about her shoulders. 
 
 "Do you mind walking with me a little 
 way?" she asked, after a moment's hesita- 
 tion. " It is so cold standing still." 
 
 The Colonel did not mind it in the least. 
 He was very much interested in Miss 
 Pierce-Dawnay and in her future. He did 
 not attempt to conceal that fact from him- 
 self. Why should he? Her father had 
 been his friend. Philip had refused rather 
 hotly, it is true, to co-operate actively with 
 her step-mother the day before ; but then, 
 that was before all the facts of the case 
 were before him. No man is quite con- 
 sistent ; even the most honest-minded 
 
A TEST OF JTJEXDSHir. 177 
 
 among us can find excellent reasons for 
 following our own inclinations. 
 
 Anyhow, it happened that on that damp 
 and sombre afternoon Colonel Enderhy had 
 a little walk with the young lady, which 
 tended to make him entertain a much more 
 amiable opinion of Terzia and its surround- 
 ings. 
 
 " I thought the other day I should like to 
 talk to you," she had said, when they were 
 fairly started on the road leading down 
 through the vineyards. "I want to ask 
 you several things. I think you have in- 
 fluence with Mamma ; j)erhaps you could 
 speak to her. It is so dull here ; I want 
 to go away. Mamma says she requires 
 retirement ; but I don't in the least require 
 retirement. I w 7 as much happier at Florence. 
 AYe w r ent into society at Florence. And 
 Bertie was nicer at Florence. He has been 
 strange lately. He says all sorts of depress- 
 ing things. He is very melancholy. He 
 sits and stares at me." 
 
 A sense of relief came over Philip. He 
 could not have said precisely why. 
 
 " Do you mind very much being stared 
 
 VOL. I. N 
 
178 COLONEL ENDERBY's WIFE. 
 
 cat ? " he inquired, looking at the girl by his 
 side, and smiling. 
 
 "It is very creepy to be stared at by 
 somebody who looks dismal and does not 
 speak," she answered quickly. "Bertie is 
 fond of reading scientific books about the 
 origin of all sorts of things. He firmly 
 believes that we are all descended from 
 monkeys. I am inclined to think it must 
 be true too, sometimes ; for his eyes 
 are exactly like Malvolio's, when he sits 
 and stares, and says nothing. It is not 
 pleasant." 
 
 The girl gave a little shudder, and then 
 went on speaking again, with that pecu- 
 liarly distinct and clear-cut utterance. 
 
 " I wish mamma would go back to Eng- 
 land. She says it is too expensive, and that 
 the climate does not suit her. But I want to 
 see it. English girls have so much more 
 liberty ; they have so many amusements. I 
 should like England." 
 
 Colonel Enderby stopped. This struck 
 him as rather a happy idea. Jessie stopped 
 too, and turned to him. They were stand- 
 ing beneath one of the crooked dwarfed 
 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 179 
 
 fir trees bordering the carriage-road, about 
 halfway down to the iron gates. 
 
 "Ah ! you want to go to England? " he 
 said briefly. 
 
 " Yes ; I want immensely to go. "We 
 could settle down and really know people. 
 Here everybody whom we know goes away, 
 sooner or later. Only Bertie, and Mamma, 
 and I remain." 
 
 " You want me to ask Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay 
 to take you home to England? " said Philip. 
 
 "Ah, do, do! " cried the girl, softly, but 
 fervently. 
 
 She clasped her pretty white hands in an 
 imploring manner, wdiile her long cloak, 
 flying back in a sudden gust of wind, re- 
 vealed her slim, graceful figure. Colonel 
 Enderby's heart warmed sensibly towards 
 this charming young lady. She confided in 
 him with such engaging frankness. He felt 
 more at home with her too, out of doors in 
 the gloom and wet, than in the lofty rooms 
 and amid the faded elegancies of the little 
 red villa. 
 
 "101 talk to Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay," he 
 said, after a moment's reflection. " I believe 
 
180 COLONEL ENDEEBY'S WIFE. 
 
 it would be an excellent plan. I dare say I 
 could be of some use to you — find you rooms, 
 you know, and that sort of thing. Then 
 you might have a couple of months in 
 London during the season, and come down 
 into Midlandshire afterwards. Your father," 
 he added gently, " w T as a Midlandshire man ; 
 you w r ould like to see his county, wouldn't 
 you?" 
 
 Whether it was the prospect of seeing 
 poor Beau Pierce-Dawnay's native count}', 
 or whether other and less retrospective 
 enjoyments floated before Jessie's eyes, 
 I cannot say ; but she certainly smiled 
 upon her companion with a brilliant and 
 delighted smile. 
 
 "Ah! I knew you would help me," she 
 said. 
 
 " Meanwhile," Philip went on, " we must 
 try to make things a little more cheerful 
 for you here. Let me see, to-day's Thurs- 
 day. Suppose you and Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay 
 come and dine with me at the Grand 
 Hotel on Saturday, if it's fine? There's 
 a very nice restaurant opening out into 
 the garden, you know. It wouldn't be 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP i 181 
 
 exciting exactly, but it would be a little 
 change." 
 
 ie It would be delightful," answered Jessie. 
 " I like going out. I like a restaurant. I 
 like the lights, and the people moving about, 
 and the little tables, and the tinkle of the 
 glasses and things." 
 
 Philip smiled. It touched him, somehow. 
 There was a wonderful freshness and re- 
 sponse in this young nature. 
 
 " You have a great faculty for enjoyment," 
 lie said, with a certain tone of regret in his 
 voice. 
 
 By contrast he felt very old at that 
 moment. The Colonel, who so far had 
 accepted his increasing years with praise- 
 worthy indifference and resignation, was 
 dimly conscious of entertaining a deepening 
 grudge against them. 
 
 " The rain is coming on again," he con- 
 tinued, after a minute's silence. u We'd 
 better walk back to the villa — I mustn't let 
 you get wet." 
 
 " One moment," cried the girl. " About 
 England — you must be a little careful how 
 you approach mamma. She may not like 
 
182 COLONEL ENDEEBY'S WIFE. 
 
 it. You need not say that the suggestion 
 came originally from me, need you ? " 
 
 Undoubtedly, Jessie was very engaging 
 just then. Her innocent flower of a face up- 
 turned, her sweet round mouth a little open, 
 her w 7 hole attitude questioning and eager. 
 
 " You want very much to go ? " asked the 
 Colonel. He watched the girl keenly. 
 
 " Yes, yes, dreadfully," she replied. 
 
 " Very well ; I will do my best. I will be 
 a model of discretion. But now- w T e must 
 turn back ; the rain '11 be down on us in 
 five minutes." 
 
 " Jessie, Jessie ! where have you been ? " 
 cried Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay, as her step- 
 daughter entered the chilly hall of the Villa 
 Mortelli some ten minutes later. " We 
 have been greatly alarmed about you. 
 Antonio and Parker have been searching 
 for you high and low." 
 
 In point of fact, the whole of Mrs. Pierce- 
 Dawnay 's household were gathered together 
 in the hall : — Antonio, in his embroidered 
 smoking-cap and gold-rimmed spectacles ; 
 Parker, upright and severe ; Marie, the 
 waiting-maid, with her square Swiss figure 
 
A TEST OF FBIEXDSHir. ICO 
 
 and high cheek-bones ; Miss Keat, her mild, 
 frog-like countenance and pale, protuberant 
 eyes still bearing testimony to the tears 
 shed over her packing, and her grey alpaca 
 gown having a limpness of outline about it 
 wholly consonant with a depressed mental 
 attitude. Bertie Ames was standing near 
 his handsome cousin, a rather inscrutable 
 expression in his face. And, finally, Malvolio 
 — clothed in a little red jacket, with a big 
 frill round the neck of it, his long brown 
 arms showing particularly lean and skinny 
 out of the short open sleeves — filled, appa- 
 rently, with an unwonted spirit of revelry, 
 performed a series of wild and impish gym- 
 nastics about the shining marble balusters 
 of the staircase in the background. 
 
 " We have been alarmed about you, 
 Jessie," repeated Eleanor. " Nobody knew 
 you had gone out. I have been very much 
 agitated." 
 
 The girl pushed back the dark hood from 
 her bright hair ; her eyes were dancing ; the 
 moist air and exercise had deepened the 
 delicate pink in her cheeks. There was a 
 dainty air of defiance about her, a sudden 
 
181 COLONEL ENDERBY's WIFE. 
 
 assertion of personal liberty, as she stood in 
 the middle of the inquiring group. 
 
 " I was quite safe," she said, clearly. 
 " Colonel Enderby has been good enough to 
 relieve the tedium of a very dull day by 
 taking me for a walk." 
 
 " Oh, really ! " murmured Mr. Ames, 
 under his breath. 
 
 " You should have left word, Jessie, and 
 saved us this anxiety," said her step-mother ; 
 but she spoke less urgently than at first. 
 
 That excellent woman, Parker, with many 
 dismal observations regarding the dire con- 
 sequences of w T et boots, drove, without more 
 ado, the young lady upstairs in front of 
 her. Miss Keat's short round person dis- 
 appeared too, presumably in the direction 
 of her half-filled trunks. 
 
 Philip waited only a few minutes. He 
 excused himself, and started back through 
 the now pouring rain for the town. De- 
 cidedly there was something unpleasantly 
 mysterious about the atmosphere of the 
 Villa Mortelli: and yet, on the whole, 
 he was glad that Mr. Drake had started 
 alone that morning for Spezia. 
 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 18- 
 
 CHAPTEE VI. 
 
 A SEARCH FOR A VOCATION. 
 
 In England it is, of course, an acknowledged 
 fact that marriages are made in heaven. 
 In other countries — as Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay 
 had occasion to point out to Colonel 
 Enderby — they are chiefly made by the 
 parents and guardians of the contracting 
 parties. This, on the face of it, would not 
 seem to be an unreasonable custom; but — in 
 theory, anyway — British sentiment revolts 
 against it. 
 
 British sentiment is a very remarkable 
 and curious thing. It is worth thinking 
 about ; worth thinking about for the same 
 reason that the origin of matter, and the 
 origin of evil — I do not wish to bracket the 
 two together in thought, only in speech — 
 let us, by all means, avoid the heresy of the 
 
186 COLONEL ENDEEBY'S WIFE. 
 
 Manichees ! — and the origin of life, and a 
 good many other profound subjects are 
 worth thinking about, namely, because they 
 are incomprehensible. British sentiment is 
 entirely incomprehensible. It has a fine 
 disregard both for logic and for experience. 
 If carefully considered, it may generally be 
 found to embody an impressive and appa- 
 rently successful denial of the axiom that it 
 is impossible at one and the same time to 
 serve both God and mammon. And out of 
 this statement there grows a second thought 
 — a gently entertaining one to the social 
 historian, whose business it fortunately is, 
 not to teach zealously, but to observe faith- 
 fully, and then set down his observations. 
 With what vigour and dignified alacrity the 
 respectable Englishman entrenches himself 
 behind his open Bible, and flings a text — 
 almost any one wdll do — in your inquiring 
 face ; and with what consistent and high- 
 handed indifference he treats the practical 
 application of the majority of scriptural 
 injunctions in daily life. If closely examined, 
 the attitude of the said respectable English- 
 man presents a matter for sincere tears, or 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 18 < 
 
 equally sincere laughter, as you regard it 
 from the ideal or the realistic standpoint. 
 We do not pretend to deal in the ideal, and 
 therefore may permit ourselves a comfortahle 
 little chuckle. 
 
 But to return to the text. English 
 marriages are made in heaven- — -which, 
 heing interpreted, means that the ordinary 
 Anglo-Saxon is a very quiet and domestic 
 sort of animal, who requires a wife. 
 Having, however, at the same time, a 
 curious necessity for the hacking up of his 
 own inclination with not only the Divine 
 sanction, but with a warm and overflowing 
 Divine approval, he has exalted marriage 
 to the very highest place in the catalogue 
 of good works, and has indeed made a 
 virtue of necessity with a vengeance. 
 British sentiment has come in, too, in all 
 the force of its corporate strength, and 
 lias positively inundated us with admirable 
 views on this subject, concerning which it 
 has evolved a whole literature of fiction 
 and biography. Far be it from me to 
 speak lightly of that literature. It com- 
 mands my highest respect ; it is excellent ; 
 
188 COLONEL ENDERBY's WIFE. 
 
 it is salutary ; but* it is also slightly in- 
 artistic, and may be briefly described as the 
 apotheosis of suburban villas, solid worth, 
 and side-whiskers. 
 
 If, in that humble, teachable, scientific 
 spirit in which the social historian seeks 
 to approach all phenomena and all questions 
 presented to him — desiring always and only 
 more clear understanding and fuller light — 
 if, I say, he ventures to ask mildly : — And 
 what about those marriages which expose 
 the deplorable category of their conjugal 
 infelicities to public scrutiny in the Divorce 
 Court ; or those other still sadder marriages, 
 that end amid brutal words, and yet more 
 brutal actions ; or, again, those other 
 marriages which drag on with distaste and 
 recriminations, or, at best, dull paralyzing 
 indifference and coldness, through long, 
 weary years — are all these made in heaven ? 
 British sentiment, backed by British re- 
 spectability, begs the inquirer, first of all, 
 "not to be coarse;" and then goes on to 
 inform him that these are not true marriages 
 at all — "the people never really loved one 
 another ! " Well, that, of course, would 
 
A TEST OF ITJEXDSHIP. 189 1 
 
 be a most consolatory explanation of dis- 
 tressing phenomena, if one could accept it. 
 Only, unluckily, observation and experience 
 do not bear it out very fully. 
 
 For, alas ! love — the love that leads to 
 marriage — whether that marriage prove a 
 very crown of life, or a gateway opening 
 into regions most distinctly purgatorial — 
 would hardly seem to be pre-ordained and" 
 predestinate, let down bodily from above. 
 Experience rarely justifies these exalted 
 notions of supreme destiny or of diligent 
 arrangement on the part of the Higher 
 Powers. In nine cases out of ten, that 
 love is more the result of propinquity than 
 of predestination. No celestial architect is 
 required to raise for Love a fair and fateful 
 dwelling-place, let British sentiment, arm- 
 in-arm with British respectability, frown 
 and thunder as they may. The house of 
 Love may be builded easily enough by any 
 man and woman, out of such comnionplace- 
 materials as a dance, or a song, a light 
 laugh, a lingering pressure of hands, or 
 those meaningless tears that come so easily 
 into a young girl's eyes. 
 
190 COLONEL BNDEBBYS WIFE. 
 
 Love would seem to be very hurnble- 
 mindecl. He bids uo heralds and ambas- 
 sadors go before him, with blare of trumpets 
 and waving of banners. He comes at hap- 
 hazard along quiet country lanes, among 
 gleams of moonlight over dewy lawns; he 
 meets us on the crowded city crossing, amid 
 the shouts of the drivers, and under the 
 very feet of the omnibus horses ; he has 
 even taken to travelling in prosaic railway 
 carriages in these latter days, and that with 
 a disregard of class almost painfully demo- 
 cratic. He is quick, and subtle, and fear- 
 less ; yet he comes softly and silently, 
 stealing up without observation. And at 
 first we laugh at his pretty face, wdiich is 
 the face of a merry, earthly child; but his 
 hands, when we take them, grasp like 
 hands of iron, and his strength is as the 
 strength of a giant, and his heart is as the 
 heart of a tyrant. And he gives us to 
 drink of a cup in which sweet is mingled 
 with bitter; and the sweet, too often, is 
 soon forgotten, w T hile the taste of the bitter 
 remains. And we hardly know whether to 
 bless him or curse him, for he has changed 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 191 
 
 all things; and we cannot tell whether to 
 weep for the old world we have lost, or 
 shout for joy at the new world we have 
 found. Such is love for the great majority ; 
 a matter terrestrial rather than celestial, 
 and of doubtful happiness after all. 
 
 But it is high time to leave these easily 
 enunciated generalities, and return to 
 Eleanor Pierce-Dawnay, whose communi- 
 cations had produced anything but an 
 agreeable impression upon the mind of our 
 friend the Colonel. 
 
 Eleanor, notwithstanding many faults and 
 shortcomings, was a woman of a large and 
 generous nature. She was clever ; but 
 clever rather through instinctive sympathy 
 and emotion than through force of intellect. 
 She could boast no general scheme of rmilo- 
 sophy, with its careful balancing of evil 
 against good and good against evil. A calm 
 and widely comprehensive view was almost 
 impossible to her. It was not the least 
 comfort to her to trace the logical sequence 
 of events ; nor could she lose her inherent 
 horror of individual suffering in a quiet 
 scientific appreciation of the orderly de- 
 
192 COLONEL ENDERBY'S WIFE. 
 
 velopment of the law of cause and effect. 
 She did not care a fig about necessary con- 
 sequences; but she cared deeply that a man 
 or woman — specially, perhaps, the former — 
 should be in pain or sorrow or want. She 
 had a native impulsion, of which, possibly, 
 she w T as a trifle proud, to dry tears, bind 
 up broken hearts, and administer almost 
 dangerously strong doses of pity and con- 
 solation. Such a woman is for ever flinging 
 herself a corps perdu into situations of 
 which, wdien the first excitement of her 
 feeling has worn off, she is liable to get a 
 little tired. Eelations with her are likely 
 to be stormy. You had better make hay 
 while the sun does shine, and keej) con- 
 stantly in mind the fact that it is certain 
 not to shine very continuously. 
 
 As quite a girl, handsome, ardent, and 
 romantic, Eleanor Ames had, for good or 
 evil, met with Beaumont Pierce-Dawnay. 
 
 A tall, fair-haired young soldier, in bitter 
 grief for the death of his pretty young wife, 
 Avith a broad band of crape round his arm, 
 and a lovely little motherless child by his 
 side, is, undoubtedly, an object calculated 
 
A TEST OF FEIEXDSHir. 103 
 
 to awaken a warm thrill of commiseration 
 in every female heart. Eleanor forgot those 
 other gentlemen of her acquaintance upon 
 whom she had been wont to expend a 
 certain amount of thought and considera- 
 tion. Marriage with a bachelor seemed to 
 her a very insipid affair. The ideal office 
 of a woman was that of consoler ; the ideal 
 condition that of motherhood — even of step- 
 motherhood, if necessary. Eleanor con- 
 soled the young soldier to such good 
 purpose, that in three months from the 
 date of their first meeting he had married 
 her. 
 
 I do not pretend to offer any theory 
 regarding the origin of this marriage, and 
 pronounce it heavenly or anything else. 
 My business is merely, in a faithful and 
 diligent manner, to record facts. Beau 
 Pierce-Dawnay was a great, simple, good- 
 natured gentleman, who, when the halo 
 of romance which surrounded him in his 
 character of broken-hearted widower had 
 faded and he was looked at in the light of 
 common day, presented no very wonderful 
 or mysteriously affecting characteristics. 
 
 vol. i. o 
 
194 COLONEL ENDEKBY's WIFE. 
 
 Eleanor wanted an office. She wanted to 
 go on consoling ; but, unfortunately, Captain 
 Pierce-Dawnay did not now stand in the 
 slightest need of consolation. He pro- 
 nounced himself to be " as jolly as a sand- 
 boy," and was immensely bewildered when 
 he made out that his beautiful wife w r as not 
 at all pleased at the announcement. At 
 last, still both devoted and bewildered, poor 
 Beau was ordered out to India, and Eleanor 
 took to wandering. She had been a good 
 deal in Italy before her marriage, and the 
 fascination of that strangely absorbing 
 country drew her back to it again. After 
 her husband's death she stayed on. Eng- 
 land had become distasteful to her. She 
 had a craving for the sunshine, the flowers, 
 the rich emotions, the glamour and endless 
 suggestion of southern life. 
 
 An ardent and sympathetic woman, with 
 no duties dependent on her position to 
 regulate her action and satisfy her imagina- 
 tion, is apt to run a little wild. Eleanor 
 had many hobbies. She could not be 
 accused of riding them to death; because, 
 before the poor things had arrived at a fatal 
 
A TEST OF FBIENDSHIP, 195 
 
 stage of exhaustion, she got tired of each 
 one of them in turn, and cantered hopefully 
 away on some fresh steed. Schemes of 
 emigration, the down-trodden condition of 
 the Italian peasantry, the emancipation of 
 woman, all engaged her attention in turn. 
 One year she was distracted about the 
 sufferings of animals, and made herself sick 
 with horror over the revolting details of 
 scientific cruelties. Later, under the in- 
 fluence of some of those devout and some- 
 what damnatory British Christians who 
 yearly haunt the shores of the Mediter- 
 ranean during the winter months, she grew 
 anxious as to the future of her soul. She 
 went to prayer-meetings held in the disused 
 ballrooms of large hotels ; she read trying 
 little books by obscure authors, bound in 
 the crudest, most uncultivated of colours, 
 on instantaneous answer to prayer, and so 
 forth ; she subscribed largely to societies 
 for the wholesale conversion of German 
 Jews, and other equally practical objects. 
 
 But Eleanor's sympathies were really too 
 wide and deep to flow long within the 
 artificial barriers of any one sect or system. 
 
19G COLONEL ENDEEBY S WIFE. 
 
 Nothing but a general reconstruction of 
 society, whereby sorrow and crying and 
 pain would be for ever abolished, and a 
 universal panacea applied to this poor 
 world's creaking joints, half-blind eyes, and 
 open sores, could pacify the passion of pity 
 which w T as growing within her. She began 
 to consort with rather dangerous company. 
 Persons fluent of speech, and generous of 
 subversive ideas, began to haunt her little 
 appartement in Florence, and keep up loud 
 and enthusiastic discussions till the small 
 hours of the morning. When a woman 
 takes to revolutionary politics, be it in ever 
 so mild a form, she is indeed skating on 
 very thin ice. A convent, a lunatic asylum, 
 or a husband — either will do ; perhaps, 
 even, rightly considered, there is a certain 
 affinity between the three — becomes im- 
 peratively necessary. 
 
 Just at this critical period of her career,. 
 Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay happened to meet her 
 cousin, Bertie Ames, at the Baths of Lucca, 
 where she was spending part of the summer. 
 She had not seen much of him for a con- 
 siderable length of time. The two had 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 197 
 
 certainly cherished a species of fondness 
 for one another long ago ; but Bertie Ames, 
 in those days, had been a young man with 
 the world too much at his feet to make 
 many claims upon his cousin's pity. She 
 had enjoyed dancing with him, flirting with 
 him, and so on, well enough ; but he had 
 not entered into the serious business of her 
 affections. She had only regarded him as 
 an agreeable and decorative sort of super- 
 fluity. 
 
 But at the Baths of Lucca, in 1874, Mr. 
 Ames presented a very different spectacle 
 to his charming and warm-hearted cousin. 
 He was just recovering from a serious 
 illness. He was weak and depressed, miser- 
 able both in mind and body. His large 
 brown eyes had a look of sadness in 
 them which went straight to Eleanor's 
 heart. An old man-servant of his father's, 
 Antonio by name, and an ill-favoured little 
 monkey appeared to be his only companions. 
 He appealed to Eleanor's imagination, first 
 as a specimen of suffering humanity, and 
 then as a relative. Family affection has 
 a habit of asserting itself with remarkable 
 
198 COLONEL ENDEEBf's WIFE. 
 
 vigour ill the heart of a woman, when the 
 object of that feeling is an attractive man. 
 
 Eleanor resisted neither family affection 
 nor the moan of suffering humanity. She 
 devoted herself to Mr. Ames, and he re- 
 paid her with sincere gratitude. He went 
 further. He confided in her ; he told her 
 the details of that history which, two years 
 later, she briefly recounted, as has already 
 been stated, to Colonel Enderby. Eleanor 
 entered with generous warmth of feeling 
 into the situation. She erected poor, not 
 verv admirable Bertie into a hero. She 
 gloried in his devotion to the ashes of an 
 expiring passion. She lavished upon him 
 both her time and her imagination. She 
 realized his sufferings even more keenly, 
 possibly, than he realized them himself. 
 
 To do Mr. Ames justice, he was pro- 
 foundly touched by her kindness. He pos- 
 sessed in a high degree that lively sense of, 
 and interest in, the society of women, which 
 is undeniably more completely developed in 
 the Latin than in the Teutonic races. To 
 members of the former, a woman always has- 
 a peculiar and exciting interest. She is 
 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 199 
 
 never taken quite for granted, and reckoned 
 — as Jack Enderby, for instance, reckoned 
 his wife — as a capital good fellow and 
 ordinary companion in arms. We Teutons 
 are very decent, and a trifle suspicious too. 
 Bertie Ames was only half a Teuton, and 
 he put a very high value on the eujoyment 
 of his cousin's presence and ministrations. 
 
 When the time came for Eleanor to leave 
 the Baths of Lucca, she found herself 
 singularly unwilling to leave Mr. Ames as 
 well. Quite a moving little scene took 
 place, during which a number of excellent 
 things were said about friendship, and the 
 delightful relation of brother and sister. 
 The end of it all was that Bertie, Antonio, 
 and the monkey travelled back with Mrs. 
 Pierce-Dawnay, Jessie, Miss Keat, and that 
 estimable woman, Parker, to Florence. 
 
 Some persons advised themselves to be 
 a good deal scandalized at this last eccen- 
 tricity of Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay's ; but the 
 majority of her acquaintance, knowing her 
 real goodness of heart, and bearing in mind 
 the excellent reputation which, though a 
 young and pretty woman, and her own 
 
200 COLONEL ENDERBY's WIFE. 
 
 mistress for so many years, she had always 
 enjoyed — the majority, I say, contented 
 themselves with smiling, shrugging their 
 shoulders, and observing that the charming 
 widow had exchanged a general scheme of 
 benevolence for a particular one. 
 
 Still it must be owned that a decided 
 change came over her way of living. The 
 promoters of Jewish conversion found their 
 attentions quite at a discount ; neither en- 
 couragement nor subscriptions were any 
 longer forthcoming. Eleanor began to go 
 out a good deal into society instead of enter- 
 taining the reformers of society at her own 
 house. These latter gentlemen made a 
 valiant attempt to regain their former posi- 
 tion with her. They hinted broadly at the 
 moral danger consequent on putting the hand 
 to the plough and afterwards looking back 
 — looking back, too, in the direction of a 
 specimen of that most noxious class of 
 mankind which eats its bread in idleness, 
 and hugs the aristocratic idea. They de- 
 nounced Mr. Ames as a viper, a scorpion, 
 a hateful parasite on the wounded and 
 shuddering body of corporate humanity. 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 201 
 
 To all of which rather violent language 
 Bertie replied by saying in his softest tones, 
 one evening, to his hostess — 
 
 "Dear Cousin Nell, I think you mustn't 
 let those amiable maniacs come here any 
 more. They are, no doubt, immensely 
 amusing ; but }'ou may have a little too 
 much to pay in the end for that style of 
 comedy. We must regulate our entertain- 
 ments, more or less, by the length of our 
 purser, you know." 
 
 It must be admitted that, with all their 
 many virtues, women have not nearly so 
 innate a sense of the lesser dignities of 
 living as men. They cannot — perhaps o wing- 
 to want of physical strength — pay as much 
 attention to that outward ritual which 
 makes life proceed, even in private, with 
 self-respect and punctuality. An establish- 
 ment in which there is no man is liable to 
 be uncertain as to hours, messy as to meals, 
 unmethodical in many ways, and even 
 occasionally — though one mentions it with 
 fear and trembling — hardly as careful of 
 cleanliness as it might be. Those wonderful 
 women of the future, the result of several 
 
202 colonel enderby's wife. 
 
 generations of high school and university 
 culture, who are going to improve us vastly 
 in so many ways, may possibly add mascu- 
 line appreciation of small dignities and 
 privacies to their other excellences ; may 
 have learnt to prefer butcher's meat to 
 miscellaneous editions of tea and toast at 
 odd hours, and to regard morning wrappers 
 as part of the livery of that slavery from 
 wdiich they fondly believe they have escaped 
 for ever. But, meanwhile, there is no 
 denying that a household gains perceptibly 
 in good tone and outw T ard regularity from the 
 moment a man becomes a member of it. 
 Women are for ever making short cuts to 
 comfort ; a man, on the other hand, walks 
 straight along the high-road towards that 
 desirable object, and, I venture to think, 
 generally succeeds in reaching it the first. 
 
 The complexion of Mrs. Pierce-Daw r nay's 
 little establishment improved very much 
 from the time Mr. Ames, Antonio, and 
 the monkey became recognized members 
 of it. Bertie, who had inherited consider- 
 able business capacity from his English 
 father, as well as considerable emotional 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 203 
 
 capacity from his Italian mother, took his 
 cousin's financial affairs in hand, and set 
 them on a more secure "basis than they had 
 been on for a long while. It may he added 
 that he had an excellent taste for the 
 decorative side of life generally, and con- 
 tinued to create a very graceful entourage 
 for himself and his relations. 
 
 Jessie at this time was just eighteen, and 
 was to come out, as the phrase is, that 
 winter. In point of fact, she came out very 
 effectually. Bertie Ames forgot some of 
 his private griefs in watching the girl's 
 brilliant enjoyment of society ; while Eleanor 
 threw herself, with all her accustomed 
 ardour, into the situation. Jessie proved, 
 undoubtedly, a success; and her step-mother 
 was honestly delighted at that fact — all the 
 more so, probably, because her relations 
 with the girl had not been entirely satis- 
 factory in the past. 
 
 Owing to her sundry and manifold schemes 
 for the temporal and spiritual welfare of 
 mankind, Eleanor's interest in her step- 
 daughter had been spasmodic in character. 
 If Jessie was ill, then she gathered her 
 
304 COLONEL ENDERBY's WIFE. 
 
 into the arms of affection, and lavished 
 tendernesses upon her. But Jessie was 
 very rarely ill. She grew up as some fair, 
 healthy plant grow 7 s up in a fertile soil, 
 strong and straight. She made few demands 
 upon the sympathy of others ; there was 
 n refined vigour about her, and a happy 
 immunity from those nervous affections 
 which so often beset growing girls. 
 
 Eleanor had elaborate theories regarding 
 education, drawn alternately from Kousseau's 
 "Emile," Kichter's " Levana," and from 
 the axioms of the last Woman's Eights 
 prophetess she happened to have come in 
 contact with. Practically Jessie held to the 
 teaching of Jean Jacques, though innocent 
 of any acquaintance with the writings of 
 that much-abused philosopher, and followed 
 where Nature led her. She had a remark- 
 able aptitude both for music and languages, 
 though the theory of the one and the 
 grammar of the other meant little enough 
 to her. Her talent was essentially practical 
 and verbal, a desire for something articulate 
 and rapidly expressive. 
 
 For her step-mother's hobbies she had but 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 205 
 
 small comprehension, and an equally limited 
 interest. Jessie from a child had possessed 
 a great capacity for being bored if people- 
 became earnest or imperative. She would 
 just go away and leave them. It is to be 
 feared that her sense of obligation to the 
 needs and claims of her fellow-creatures was 
 not very lively. She loved sunshine, move- 
 ment, exercise, and all natural objects ; she 
 established relations with all manner of 
 living creatures — was friendly with gold- 
 fish, and intimate with cats and canaries. 
 When poor Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay, becoming- 
 troubled — under the auspices of her revivalist 
 friends — about the condition of her own 
 soul, extended her solicitude to Jessie's soul 
 also, the girl met her anxious and penetrat- 
 ing words first with amusement, and then 
 with something very like anger. For r 
 indeed, in the fulness of her youthful 
 vitality and the keenness of her powers of 
 enjoyment, Jessie had about as much con- 
 ception of the deeper needs of the human 
 spirit as a butterfly, hawking on a gay 
 summer's day over a bank of honeysuckle 
 and wild roses, might be expected to have. 
 
4 206 colonel enderby's wife. 
 
 She declined to take the slightest interest 
 in the emancipation of her sex, being, 
 as she said, quite unconscious of being 
 enslaved ; the Italian peasants contrived 
 to wear charming dresses, even though 
 they might be supposed by imaginative 
 persons to be short of some other neces- 
 saries of life ; as to the German Jews, they 
 were extremely ugly, and, as she added, 
 with an irresistible wrinkling up of her 
 pretty little nose, they also usually smelt. 
 Poor Eleanor's enthusiasms were met by 
 this radiant creature with calm common 
 sense. There was something curiously 
 baffling to her in her step- daughter's per- 
 sonality. Sometimes the elder woman, 
 whose ardent nature demanded warm affec- 
 tion and intimate intercourse, would exercise 
 all her power to fascinate the girl. Then 
 Jessie would smile in her brilliant way, and 
 say, "All ! now, little Mamma, now you are 
 adorable." — But wdien her step-mother went 
 on to entreat for more love, a fuller measure 
 of trust and sympathy, Jessie became be- 
 wildered, even cross, and would retire grace- 
 fully, but firmly, to the less exacting society 
 
A TEST OF FRIENDSHIP. 207 
 
 of her gold-fish or canaries. And Mrs. 
 Pierce-Dawnay turned away, sighing rather 
 bitterly, to throw herself — metaphorically 
 speaking, of course — into the arms of the 
 socialists, or anti-vivisectionists, or any 
 other misery-mongers who happened to be 
 handy at the moment. Step-mothers, poor 
 things, have established a very unenviable 
 reputation in literature. In real life, it may 
 be questioned whether they are not frequently 
 more sinned against than sinning. 
 
 Jessie spent two very gay winters in 
 Florence. She was admired, fSted, petted. 
 The young lady had more than one admirer 
 whose attentions were weighted with serious 
 intentions ; but the girl herself had an 
 inclination to be slightly annoyed with ad- 
 miration when it put on an importunate 
 complexion. She was as spontaneously 
 merry as a kitten, and as untroubled by 
 sentimental perturbations. 
 
 Eleanor's humour, meanwhile, had changed 
 notably during these two years. Her mind 
 had been invaded by a new idea, which 
 came to possess it with perilous complete- 
 ness and intensity. She wearied of Florence ; 
 
208 colonel enderby's wife. 
 
 she began to long for solitude, for silence r 
 for an immunity from the distractions of 
 society. Bertie Ames had friends in Genoa, 
 and so it fell out that, in the autumn of 
 1876, Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay's rather mis- 
 cellaneous menage removed itself to the 
 comparative retirement of the little red 
 villa. 
 
BOOK THIRD. 
 LOVER AND MISTRESS 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 IN WHICH PHILIP MAKES AN IMPORTANT 
 DISCOVERY. 
 
 It is surprising how soon you may acquire a 
 habit, and how soon that habit will come to 
 fit you as easily and comfortably as an old 
 glove. If Colonel Enderby had been told, 
 on his first arrival at the Villa Mortelli, that 
 he would walk up there every day for the 
 best part of the coming fortnight, and that 
 each recurring visit would prove less irk- 
 some to him than the last, he would have 
 refused to credit the statement. And yet, in 
 truth, he was becoming more than tolerant 
 of that diurnal pilgrimage. I am afraid 
 the Colonel can hardly be acquitted of a 
 charge of procrastination just at this period. 
 Every day he started w T ith an intention of 
 speaking frankly to Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay 
 
212 COLONEL ENDEEBY'S WIFE. 
 
 about the advisability of a return, for a 
 time, at least, to England ; every day he 
 went back to his hotel at night without 
 having delivered his piece of advice. It was 
 difficult somehow. There never seemed to 
 be a good opening, or happy opportunity. 
 Eleanor did not invite her guest to par- 
 ticipate in any more private interviews. 
 She avoided all personal and intimate 
 communications, and contented herself 
 with being agreeable on broad general 
 grounds. She was a clever woman, with 
 a considerable habit of society, and she 
 really was very pleasant to Colonel Enderby ; 
 but she took care not to find herself alone 
 with him. Jessie or Mr. Ames was always 
 present. 
 
 The little dinner at the restaurant passed 
 off excellently; and, as now the spring 
 days were bright and long, Eleanor pro- 
 nounced this a capital opportunity for see- 
 ing something of the country around Terzia. 
 She planned long drives to distant villages 
 on the coast, — charming, little, old-world 
 places, with tall, discoloured houses facing 
 the purple sea; w 7 here dark-eyed girls and 
 
LOVEK AND MISTRESS. 213 
 
 women — whose pale cotton garments, inno- 
 cent of starch, present a softness of out- 
 line and exquisite delicacy of tone, yellow, 
 pink, or purple, not unworthy of some 
 classic picture — stand in long lines hauling 
 in the seine-nets upon the shelving beach, 
 or lay their week's washing out to bleach 
 on the rough, grey shingle. 
 
 The Corniche road leaves the low shore- 
 line sometimes here, and diverges inland 
 among the wooded valleys where the nightin- 
 gales sing, passing by deep rocky water- 
 courses, where the narcissus, with its 
 fragrant flowers and sheaf of sword-shaped 
 leaves, grows down at the stream- side ; by 
 orchards, where fruit-trees are all white and 
 pink with innumerable blossoms, and, in the 
 cool grass beneath them fresh with the 
 winter rains, the fat velvety brown blossoms 
 of the bee-orchis show dark against the 
 full rich green. And to all these scenes 
 Jessie Pierce-Dawnay's bright presence lent 
 an indefinable charm. The girl was so 
 frankly and fearlessly glad. 
 
 A certain glamour was coming over 
 Philip Enderby's spirit. He was in no 
 
214 COLONEL ENDERBY'S WIFE. 
 
 haste to urge the return to England. 
 Spezia had faded into the far distance. 
 Poor Mr. Drake might continue his little 
 tour alone. The Colonel was growing 
 curiously reconciled to this idle manner of 
 life. He was very well contented, especially 
 when Mr. Ames — to whom in private he 
 occasionally applied not very flattering 
 epithets — and his monkey were out of the 
 way. He began to have some warmer feel- 
 ing than mere toleration for those large, 
 faded, shady rooms at the Villa Mortelli. 
 He was, in fact, insensibly collecting a 
 gallery of pleasing mental pictures, in every 
 one of which the central figure was that 
 of a fair girl, — leaning hack in a carriage, 
 her hands full of flowers, while the fresh 
 sea- wind ruffled her hair ; loitering in the 
 sunny terrace under the shade of a red 
 umbrella; wandering among the tangled 
 luxuriance of the neglected garden ; sitting 
 and playing brilliant vivid music at the 
 piano, in a dusky corner of the large 
 drawing-room; now and then a trifle tired 
 or pensive, asking some small service which 
 it was a tender privilege to render her. 
 
LOVER AND MISTRESS. 215 
 
 Ah. ! really Colonel Enderby was very well 
 entertained just now. He did not analyze 
 the situation, but he most distinctly appre- 
 ciated it. 
 
 On the second Sunday of his stay at 
 Terzia, it happened that he did not make 
 his way up to the villa till quite late. 
 Several things detained him, and combined 
 to induce in him a humour not completely 
 in sympathy with the atmosphere of that 
 peculiarly constituted establishment. 
 
 In the morning Philip fulfilled the whole 
 duty of man by attending the English 
 service, held in one of the back rooms of 
 the hotel. There are three separate things 
 which the British tourist demands, and woe 
 to the hotel which does not hasten to 
 supply them — no respectable Anglo-Saxon 
 boot-sole will ever cross its threshold ! 
 Two of these things are for the body ; the 
 third is for the soul — a proportion not with- 
 out meaning, perhaps. The British tourist 
 must be accommodated with sponge-baths, 
 open fireplaces, — and an English chaplain. 
 The hotel-manager at Terzia had early 
 realized the existence of this trinity of 
 
216 COLONEL ENDEKBY'S WIFE. 
 
 necessities on the part of his clients, and 
 had done his best to meet them. 
 
 Mr. Drake's acquaintance, the little, 
 ferret-faced clergyman, officiated ; while 
 his attendant ladies — the good man, being 
 apparently desirous of making the most of 
 the apostolic permission, was " leading 
 about " a wife, a sister, and two sisters- 
 in-law — with laudable zeal, undertook, 
 supported by an antiquated and tinny 
 piano, to supply the musical portion of 
 the performance. The sermon — that un- 
 fortunately inevitable incident in the 
 Anglican church service — consisted of an 
 extempore address on Belshazzar's feast. 
 The subject is sufficiently full of impressive, 
 if mysterious, suggestion in the original 
 narrative. Unluckily, the preacher elected 
 to treat it from a symbolic point of view. 
 Everything was diligently explained to 
 mean something else ; and in proportion 
 as his grammar became more doubtful and 
 his types more obscure, the worthy little 
 man's voice waxed louder and louder, and 
 his aspect became more combative and 
 defiant. At length he absolutely bellowed 
 
LOVER AND MISTRESS. 217 
 
 forth a string of formless sentences, mainly 
 suggestive of an exegetical and doctrinal 
 chaos. One is bound to suppose there is 
 something singularly grateful to the pro- 
 fessional palate in this style of discourse, 
 since one is so frequently fated to hear it. 
 To the unsophisticated layman^ it is slightly 
 bewildering, and offers but doubtful help 
 towards the conduct of life, or the under- 
 standing of matters eternal. 
 
 Philip, being but a simple-minded person, 
 did not derive any sensible measure of 
 illumination from the latter part of the 
 exercises of the morning. In the afternoon 
 he went for a walk among the hills. The 
 day was radiant, the air quick with the 
 breath of the sea-breeze. 
 
 Turning off the main road, at the out- 
 skirts of the town, he passed up the steep 
 paved way between the vineyard walls, to 
 a little village church, with a tall red and 
 yellow painted campanile, standing on the 
 hillside about a mile from Terzia. It was 
 the hour for afternoon service. The bells 
 jangled, harsh and imperative, in the high 
 tower; while on the low wall fronting 
 
218 COLONEL ENDEKBY'S WIFE. 
 
 the flat space before the church door, 
 men and lads sat lazily chatting and 
 laughing. The village priest — a kindly 
 bright-eyed man, in a worn cassock and 
 rusty skull-cap — wandered, his hands clasped 
 behind him and his tall lean figure some- 
 what bent, from group to group, speaking 
 a word to one and another with genial 
 familiarity. 
 
 Inside the church, dim with the coloured 
 gloom of stained windows and frescoed 
 walls, a large company of peasant women 
 sat or knelt, the gay silk handkerchiefs 
 tied over their heads making them look like 
 a great bed of gaudy spring tulips. The 
 air was warm and heavy with a lingering 
 odour of incense; there was a suppressed 
 murmur of voices, stir of footsteps, and rustle 
 of garments. 
 
 In his character of English traveller, 
 Philip felt he had a right to look at any- 
 thing that presented itself. He stepped 
 within the open church door ; but, I grieve 
 to say, there were certain uncultivated 
 and Protestant tendencies in his spiritual 
 constitution which prevented his being 
 
LOVER AND MISTEESS. 219 
 
 in very warm sympathy with the scene. 
 He loved out-of-doors ; and Catholicism, 
 with all its splendour and wide appeal to 
 the imagination, has little enough of out- 
 of-doors about it. It lets in the sunshine 
 through cunningly painted glass, on which 
 it has portrayed the orthodox conception 
 of the ends and aims of mortal existence. 
 Our friend the Colonel was tempted to 
 fancy the white light of truth painfully 
 obscured by passing through this coloured 
 medium. 
 
 Be that as it may, he had soon seen as 
 much as he cared to see of the village church. 
 He turned up a narrow path at the back 
 of it, and, after passing through the belt 
 of olive trees — whose tremulous silvery 
 shade is not so much shade, after all, as 
 broken light — through thickets of myrtle 
 and tall Mediterranean heath, on the 
 straight spires of which the withered 
 blossoms showed golden brown, he reached 
 the outer edge of the pine woods high on 
 the mountain-side. 
 
 Far below lay the vineyards and gardens, 
 and the houses of the town glittering in 
 
220 colonel endekby's wife. 
 
 the keen dazzling light. Beyond, the sea 
 stretched away to the southern horizon. 
 The hells of the little village church clanged 
 out wildly for a few minutes more, and 
 then, with a final crash and bang, ceased 
 suddenly. No sound broke the silence 
 save the whisper of the wind in the pine 
 trees, rising and falling in a soft and 
 rhythmic cadence, like that of summer 
 waves on a quiet sandy shore. A glad 
 repose, a sabbath stillness, came over the 
 beautiful land. 
 
 Philip Enderby threw himself at full 
 length on the deep brown bed of fallen 
 pine-needles; and as he lay there in the 
 warm sunshine, looking up at the red- 
 barked branches, and dark glossy foliage of 
 the trees outlined clear and sharp against 
 the deep blue-purple of the sky, pleasant 
 thoughts and hopes came to him. Form- 
 less hopes that he could hardly have set 
 out in words, yet which brought to his 
 soul deeper meaning than all the ungainly 
 profundity of the sermon he had listened 
 to that morning, and a larger peace and 
 promise than that imaged forth in the 
 
LOVER AND MISTRESS. 221 
 
 rich gloom of the church, with its half- 
 seen pictures and banners, down below. 
 
 Yes, let excited philanthropists, and 
 humanitarian ecclesiastics, and other ener- 
 getic, improving, and actively virtuous 
 persons say what they may, — it is very good 
 at times to get away into silence and soli- 
 tude. To get away from all the noise and 
 struggle of man, with his arts and sciences 
 and magnificent schemes, so often abortive, 
 and his poor little space of anxious, self- 
 conscious years, and his mixed motives and 
 feverish efforts. To get away beyond all 
 histories, with their sounds of wailing and 
 battle, their stains of sin and of blood; 
 beyond all the philosophies, with their vain 
 attempts to square the circle and reconcile 
 that which can never be reconciled ; beyond 
 all the formulas and all the creeds, with 
 their bitter hatreds, their arbitrary assertions 
 arid negations ; beyond, yes, beyond the 
 very sense of right and wrong itself, back, 
 back to the great serene heart of Nature — a 
 heart beating with primal and exhaustless 
 energy, yet calm and restrained ; filled with 
 the rapture and repose of limitless power and 
 
222 colonel endekby's wife. 
 
 victorious attainment. It is good to get back 
 and lie on the warm bosom of the eternal 
 mother, the folds of whose garments are the 
 high mountains, whose feet are set in the 
 laughing ocean, and whose life is the life of 
 the world ; — to lie there, while the soul slips 
 away from the sense of its own paltry joys 
 and sorrows, from the narrow hopes and 
 fears of the individual lot ; to be made one 
 with the glorious order of created things, 
 the flesh and spirit no longer conscious of 
 weary fightings and divisions ; to dream 
 of the everlasting mysteries of birth and 
 growth, and of the fulness of strength and 
 of the failing of strength, and of decay — 
 and of the mystery of transmuted force, of 
 life again returning out of death, to begin 
 once more the ceaseless round of existence 
 anew; to dream of the mystery of night 
 and morning, summer and winter, seed- 
 time and harvest, rain and shine, while 
 through all the countless ages the Eternal 
 "Wisdom and Goodness broods for ever over 
 the broad bright land and sea. "What 
 is man that Thou art mindful of him?" 
 Get back, back to the mother of all, and 
 
LOVER AND MISTRESS. 223 
 
 listen, — peradventure she may speak to 
 you. 
 
 Philip Enderby, lying there under the 
 pine trees, in the afternoon sunshine, had 
 a perception of unspeakable trust and con- 
 fidence, of belief in a final reconciliation 
 far away, far off out of mortal sight. For 
 a little space he dimly grasped the strange 
 secret of the Buddhist Nirvana — that state 
 of acquiescent contemplation, passionless 
 and impersonal, without movement, with- 
 out desire, which, in the estimation of some 
 of the purest spirits, constitutes the highest 
 conception of perfect and enduring bliss. 
 
 " Thank God for this beautiful world," 
 he said to himself quietly and reverently. 
 
 The sun was sloping towards the west, 
 and the shadows were growing long, w T hen 
 he rose up at last. Voices of the peasants 
 making their way back from the village 
 church came up on the sea-breeze from 
 the winding paths below. The spell indeed 
 was broken, but the impression it had made 
 remained for a while yet. Philip wandered 
 down towards the vineyards, amazed, filled 
 with a solemn gladness — like a man who 
 
224 colonel enderby's wife. 
 
 has seen a vision, and spoken, face to face, 
 with the gods. 
 
 But alas ! these happy moments of clear 
 insight and illumination are hut moments 
 after all. The discords of our over- civilized 
 and artificial life soon drown the music of 
 the spheres ; the fair face of heaven is too 
 soon obscured again by storms of passion ; 
 while jealousy, self-will, hatred, and fear, 
 like evil beasts, root up and trample under- 
 foot the fruitful land. " Man never con- 
 tinueth in one stay" — which is, after all, 
 extremely fortunate for the dramatist and 
 writer of fiction. Let us console ourselves ! 
 — for indeed life at this admirably ideal level 
 would interfere fatally with our excellent 
 system of large profits and quick returns. 
 
 Colonel Enderby, as he loitered among 
 the olives, thought that perhaps he would 
 not go up to the Villa Mortelli at all that 
 evening. The silent hour on the mountain- 
 side had done much to loosen the chain of 
 habit that was fastening on him. He was 
 aware of a sudden sense of aloofness from 
 the life of the villa — from Mrs. Pierce- 
 Dawnay with her sad secret and dark 
 
LOYEE AND BOSTBESS, 22-5 
 
 beauty; from Bertie Ames, with his soft 
 voice and air of a mild Alephistopheles. 
 He had drunk deep of the cup of nature. 
 He could hardly go straight back and drink 
 their thin vin ordinaire, and listen to the 
 social gossip of a lady who was more than 
 half in love with a gentleman of rather 
 shady antecedents ; who, on his part, was 
 greatly disposed to adore her stepdaughter. 
 The good Colonel, you see, permitted him- 
 self to state the case a trifle coarsely just 
 then, and the contrast it offered to his late 
 emotions was too glaring. He paused, 
 with a slight movement of disgust. 
 
 He leaned against the gnarled grey trunk 
 of one of the old olives, and felt for his 
 cigar-case. He had been a good deal 
 moved. A smoke would steady him. 
 
 "Decidedly," he muttered, "I am not 
 quite in the humour for those people just 
 now." 
 
 Yet in saying this the Colonel was con- 
 scious of niakirjg a mental reservation. 
 "Those people" did not include Jessie, 
 somehow. He thought, with a sense of 
 relief, of the girl's bright glancing looks 
 
 VOL. I. Q 
 
226 colonel bndebbt's wife. 
 
 and guileless laughter. She was as fresh 
 and natural, and far from all subtle under- 
 current of sinister meaning, as the resinous 
 scent of the pine-trees, or the babble and 
 glitter of the mountain streams. 
 
 " She would understand it all w r ell 
 enough," he thought. His clear eyes 
 softened, and he smiled quietly to himself. 
 ' ' She would never strike a false note, or be 
 out of tune with feelings like these." 
 
 Colonel Enderby's smile broadened a little. 
 It changed its character from tenderness to 
 amusement. 
 
 " I wonder which of my feelings she 
 w^ould be out of tune with, though ? " he 
 added. " I am afraid I am beginning to 
 be a little too much aware of that young- 
 lady. Is it possible that she is growing- 
 dangerous ? " 
 
 He walked on down the hillside, not 
 looking very carefully where he w r as going, 
 but following the path mechanically. 
 
 " If they do go back to England, half a 
 dozen good-looking- young fellow r s will be 
 over head and ears in love with her in the 
 first month." 
 
LOVER AND MISTRESS. 227 
 
 It was surprising how vindictive he felt 
 at the thought of those same good-looking 
 young fellows. 
 
 "And why the devil shouldn't they be 
 in love with her ? What mors reason- 
 able ? And what possible concern is it of 
 mine ? " 
 
 Colonel Enderby stopped short. The 
 vision had faded. He was no longer face 
 to face with the gods. But he was face to 
 face with something which at moments is 
 hardly less overpowering and incompre- 
 hensible, perhaps, than the presence of a 
 divinity would be — he was face to face with 
 his own heart. He was conscious of a sharp 
 self-revelation which filled him both with 
 pain and pleasure ; with a sense of exulta- 
 tion and yet of irremediable folly. 
 
 " I am in love," he said. "I, at eight 
 and forty : — I, who have never cared for a 
 woman in that way since Cecilia Murray : — 
 I, who reckoned myself as safe as a church : 
 an elderly friend and adviser, interested of 
 course, filled with a sort of fatherly regard — 
 I am in love, in love with a beautiful girl 
 of barely twenty.'' 
 
228 colonel endebby's wife. 
 
 He was aware of strangely conflicting 
 emotions. It is so keenly pleasurable to 
 have stirrings of vivid sensation ; to let the 
 imagination dwell on one fair face and form, 
 which seems to gather up in itself lovely 
 promises, unnumbered hopes, the delight of 
 untold possibilities. And when the face 
 and form in question are those of a young 
 girl, innocent, inexperienced, before w T hom 
 the years stretch out as a land of promise, 
 there is indeed an inexpressible charm in 
 the position ! A man longs to w 7 rite noble 
 poems on the blank pages of the maiden's 
 book of life ; to keep it free from all smirch 
 or stain, from all knowledge of sin, and 
 shame, and sorrow. There is a passion of 
 reverence, almost of pity, mingling with the 
 love of an honest man for a pure girl, which 
 makes it the most exquisite, perhaps, of all 
 human sentiments. " He is the first that 
 ever burst into that silent sea : " — and in 
 that thought there is, for certain natures, 
 positive rapture, an aroma fresh as that of 
 mountain flowers, a living delight as in the 
 breath of the wind of morning. 
 
 Philip Enderby drew himself up to his full 
 
LOVER AND MISTRESS. 229 
 
 height. He rejoiced in his fine physical 
 health, in his vigour of body, as he walked 
 rapidly along the steep paved lane between 
 the vineyard walls. He was still in his 
 prime ; Mrs. Pieree-Dawnay herself had 
 told him so, and it was true. 
 
 But these gracious thoughts did not last 
 long. Wiser and sadder ones followed ; 
 practical considerations of disagreeable 
 cogency. Eeason critically examined the 
 situation, and, alas ! appeared disinclined to 
 strengthen the hands of emotion and desire. 
 Eight and twenty years is a wide interval 
 between the respective ages of wife and 
 husband. Not only is the disparity un- 
 graceful ; but Colonel Enderby realized 
 bitterly that it might amount to being 
 actually perilous. He was not a vain man, 
 and was not disposed to over-estimate his 
 own powers of attraction. Then, too, his 
 quick appreciation of what was natural and 
 harmonious influenced him, perhaps, un- 
 necessarily at this juncture. The high 
 value he set on the freshness and sponta- 
 neity which were such conspicuous qualities 
 in Jessie, made the idea of her marrying a 
 
230 colonel endeeby's wife. 
 
 man whom it would he absurd to call 
 anything hut middle-aged almost distress- 
 ingly incongruous to him. Philip revolted 
 from anything in human relation which 
 appeared to him distorted, or approaching 
 ever so faintly to w T hat he would have called 
 grotesque. 
 
 " A decrepit old man with a beautiful 
 young woman tied to him is a hateful 
 object," he broke out at last. " People 
 sentimentalize over it and call it touch- 
 ing and pathetic. It is disgusting. Do I 
 want to condemn a pretty woman, some 
 fifteen years hence, when she is at her 
 best, to tucking me up in bed of a night, 
 and feeding me with gruel, and helping to 
 wrap shawls round my gouty old feet ; 
 and perhaps — there's no saying how low 
 one may fall at last — to walking about by 
 my bath-chair at some beastly watering- 
 place ? " 
 
 Colonel Enderby shook himself. 
 
 " Pah ! disgusting ! " he said. " No, no ; 
 I'm a fool ever to have thought of it. It's 
 all utter folly and madness. Somebody 
 ought to clap me into a lunatic asylum. A 
 
LOVER AND MISTRESS, 231 
 
 man's not fit to be about loose who is liable 
 to lose his head in this sort of way." 
 
 Colonel Enderby dined by himself in the 
 restaurant that evening. He did not feel 
 in the humour to meet the ferret-faced 
 cdergyman and his following, and all the 
 other miscellaneous collection of guests, at 
 the table d'hote. He sat alone at a little- 
 table, by a large French window standing 
 open on to the hotel garden. There was a 
 sound of many feet in the main street of 
 the town as the dusk closed in. Companies 
 of young men strolled up and down, singing- 
 together in full deep voices a wild wailing 
 chant, which seemed to tell of " old un- 
 happy, far-off things, and battles long ago." 
 Then suddenly would come a snatch of 
 violin music, dying away again, as the 
 player passed on between the high painted 
 houses, into silence, with a plaintive linger- 
 ing cry. The hall porter, his long green 
 coat plentifully decorated with gold lace, 
 slowly lighted the numerous gas-lamps in 
 the square garden ; stopping now and again 
 to exchange a word or two with the 
 Colonel's black-headed little waiter,— who 
 
232 colonel endeeby's wife. 
 
 had dawdled out, napkin on arm, to take a 
 survey of things in general between the 
 courses. There was a blending of light, 
 and movement, and rich colour, and light- 
 hearted laughter with those suggestions of 
 age, and weariness, and regret, that are 
 hardly ever absent from Italian scenes. 
 The country is too ancient ; it means too 
 much. The life of to-day merely plays like 
 a fitful iridescence on the great stream of 
 memories which sweeps past us with such 
 awful strength and indifference. 
 
 Philip had left peace up among the pine 
 woods on the still slopes of the Apennines. 
 Here was man once more, crowding, crushing 
 forward, generation after generation, down 
 the manifold ages of history; the same 
 stories told over and over again, through 
 an endless procession of human lives. The 
 last, the man of to-day, troubled with the 
 same questions, the same maddening 
 desires, the same degrading necessities, and 
 as far away too, apparently, from the heart 
 of absolute truth as the stern dark old 
 Eomans of the Eepublic ; or the splendid 
 and licentious Eomans of the Empire; or 
 
LOVEE AND MISTRESS, 233 
 
 the savage hordes of barbarian Goths and 
 Franks, and Lombards ; or the dim, chival- 
 rous children of the Middle Ages ; or the 
 glittering, rapturous sons and daughters of 
 the Eenaissance ; or the weary watchers 
 for the dawn of returning liberty in the 
 long sad night of Austrian and Papal 
 supremacy. 
 
 Colonel Enderby, well dressed, well off, 
 solidly English, sitting comfortably at dinner 
 at the open window of a modern hotel, and 
 looking out calmly into the narrow streets 
 of an unimportant north Italian town, was 
 still haunted and oppressed with a percep- 
 tion of these things. The past seemed to 
 over-shadow and absorb him, threatening 
 to swallow up his individuality. Thousands 
 of men had wandered along the flowery 
 path of love, all unsuspecting, as he had. 
 Thousands of men had staked their life's 
 happiness on a woman's smile, and the 
 clasp of a woman's hand. Thousands had 
 turned away disappointed, sick at heart, 
 consumed with unsatisfied desire. Nay, 
 more, thousands had got all they dreamed 
 of or hoped for, and, in the end thereof, 
 
234 colonel endeeby's wife. 
 
 weariness and sorrow. It was the old, old 
 story over again. 
 
 The black-headed waiter, who had found 
 conversation agreeable, rather to the neglect 
 of more obvious duties, hurried in suddenly. 
 
 " Would monsieur the colonel have 
 dessert ? There was an excellent compote 
 of fruits?" 
 
 No, monsieur the colonel would not have 
 dessert. Monsieur the colonel had arrived 
 at conclusions. He went up to his own 
 room and dressed himself for the evening 
 with scrupulous precision. He stopped a 
 moment in the hall on coming down again, 
 and asked the porter for a light for his 
 cigar. The man brought it and then 
 remarked, as he helped Philip on with his 
 overcoat — 
 
 " They have company at the Villa Mor- 
 telli to-day. Two English ladies, a little 
 boy, and a maid. Antonio, Madame Pierce- 
 Dawnay's servant —whom, doubtless, mon- 
 sieur has often seen — has been clown to 
 secure rooms for them." 
 
 Colonel Enderby did not bestow much 
 attention upon this announcement ; he was 
 
, LOVER AND MISTKESS. 235 
 
 busy with his own thoughts. He was going 
 to tell Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay that, as she had 
 honoured him with her confidence, he would 
 strongly urge upon her the advisability of 
 an immediate journey to England. He was 
 also going to say good-bye. He had settled 
 definitely to go on to Spezia to-morrow. 
 
236 colonel endekby's wife, 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 A SPEING NIGHT. 
 
 Good resolutions are a pleasant crop to 
 sow. The seed springs up so readily, the 
 blossoms open so soon and make such a 
 brave show — specially just at first. We 
 are full of self-congratulation ; we point to 
 our patch of garden ground with pardon- 
 able pride, and ask if anything ever promised 
 better. But when the time of flowws has 
 passed, what as to the fruit ? Well, it must 
 be admitted that the fruit has a bad habit 
 of maturing but slowly, and that the wind 
 too often brings it down before it is well ripe. 
 Everybody knows what an unsatisfactory 
 thing wind-fallen fruit is. After all the 
 trouble it has given us in the earlier stages 
 of growth, we grudge to let it lie on the 
 ground and rot ; and yet if, in an economi- 
 
LOVER AND MISTRESS. 237 
 
 cal spirit, we gather it together and eat it, 
 it has an undeniable tendency to prove 
 unwholesome, and produce that inelegant 
 and painful disorder vulgarly known as 
 the colic. 
 
 Philip Enderby's good resolutions were 
 in very full bloom as he walked up on that 
 Sunday evening to the little red villa. In 
 saying this the writer does not, for a moment, 
 wish to raise a smile at the Colonel's ex- 
 pense. Far from it. To those who look 
 below the surface and recognize how very 
 seldom men and women do actually 
 sacrifice their own desires to the ruling 
 of an idea, there is something fine in such 
 a man's directness and singleness of purpose ; 
 in his voluntary self-abnegation ; in his 
 readiness to do violence to his own feel- 
 ings, if, by the doing of such violence, he 
 can preserve w T hat appears to him an 
 ideal fitness of things. There is a grain of 
 heroism, surely, in an honest acknowledg- 
 ment of one's own disabilities — a heroism 
 all the more rare of attainment because 
 unsurrounded with romance and glamour, 
 because not in the very least exciting. 
 
238 colonel enderby's wife. 
 
 Colonel Enderby had determined to stand 
 aside, to efface himself, not so much as to 
 hint at his own feelings. They were strong 
 — strong enough in all conscience, as he 
 owned to himself, almost with shame — 
 hut he himself was stronger. He looked 
 the matter fairly in the face, judged it, and 
 turned away. He thought it would be 
 little short of dishonourable to trade upon 
 Jessie's innocence and inexperience, to use 
 his love, still more his age or loneliness, as 
 a claim upon her pity. The Colonel, by the 
 way, accredited Jessie with a number of 
 virtues, of the existence of which her 
 conduct and conversation had given but 
 limited indications. But, then, lovers 
 have a proverbial power of balancing 
 inverted pyramids, going to sea in sieves, 
 and successfully performing other feats of 
 a kindred nature, impossible to a faithless 
 and unbelieving generation. 
 
 The girl must go to England, he thought. 
 She was pretty enough and original enough 
 to make a distinguished marriage. She 
 should marry a man, young, brilliant, and 
 hopeful as herself. And when that small 
 
L0VEE AND MISTBESS. 239 
 
 voice, which, is not the voice of conscience, 
 but the voice of something qnite the 
 reverse of conscience — devout persons have 
 gone so far as to fancy it the voice of 
 Satan himself, — when this voice began to 
 suggest objections, to ask him inconvenient 
 questions — when, for instance, it inquired, 
 " What and if this imaginary brilliant 
 young man turns out a gambler, a pro- 
 fligate, or a drunkard?" — Philip remained 
 firm and clear-sighted. The fate which 
 lay before Jessie in the future, it was 
 no business of his to predict. God knew ; 
 and it was not for him, Philip Enderby, 
 to indulge his own passion under the 
 specious pretence of acting special pro- 
 vidence to her, and protecting her from 
 possible trouble. His duty was to leave 
 her free ; free as the soft breeze of the sparing 
 night. To speak his mind fearlessly to 
 Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay, and then go away 
 and forget — for Philip had no morbid 
 craving to pose, as a man with a history, 
 or to hug a useless regret — that he had 
 ever come near being something more to 
 the captivating young lady than her father's 
 
240 colonel endebby's wipe. 
 
 old and faithful friend. That was the right 
 course for him to pursue. 
 
 As far as his personal appearance went, 
 the Colonel had rarely showed to greater 
 advantage that he did on this occasion. 
 The fighting light had come into his blue 
 eyes, and his jaw was set and square. 
 Strong emotion, in some men, produces a 
 singular effect of youth. It refines and 
 chastens the face. Philip looked some six 
 or eight years under his actual age, as he 
 walked up rapidly through the trellised 
 vines, — w 7 hose young leaves, where the 
 waning moonlight touched them, seemed set 
 in a tiny rim of silver. 
 
 By following a narrow path across the 
 vineyards you avoid the many zig-zags of 
 the carriage road. This path comes out on 
 the right, at the foot of the terrace on which 
 the house stands ; and, passing along close 
 under the wall of masonry, joins the main 
 road some twenty yards further on, at the 
 bottom of the final ascent. 
 
 As Colonel Enderby reached the end of 
 the path and turned along under the wall, 
 he heard voices on the terrace immediately 
 
 i 
 
LOVEB AND MISTEESS. 241 
 
 above him. He could not see the speakers, 
 owing to their position, and the intervening 
 screen of leaves. 
 
 "I believe he was always a very well- 
 meaning young man, not good looking, and 
 not very sharp, you know. We saw a great 
 deal of him at one time, more, in fact, than 
 I really wished — not that I want to say 
 a word against him, pray understand that ; 
 he was perfectly inoffensive." 
 
 Philip received a slight shock. The voice 
 — a woman's — had something alternately 
 aggressive and wheedling in the tones of it, 
 which struck him as unpleasant, yet dimly 
 familiar. 
 
 " I think it must be the same," he heard 
 Mr. Ames answer ; there was no mistaking 
 his soft utterance. " The description tallies 
 admirably, except in one particular." 
 
 " What particular ? " — this sharply by the 
 woman. 
 
 " He is sometimes a little offensive now, 
 at least to me, dear aunt. But people 
 must develop, you know, in twenty years. 
 He is still not very sharp, as you put it ; 
 and he is eminently respectable." 
 
 VOL. I. u 
 
242 colonel enderby's wife. 
 
 Philip walked on quickly out of hearing. 
 He had an instinct that the foregoing 
 conversation concerned him nearly. Taken 
 all round, it was not a nattering piece of 
 criticism ; still, he derived a positive, if 
 unchristian, satisfaction from the knowledge 
 that he was offensive at times to Mr. 
 Ames. But that woman's voice ? He could 
 not fit a name or personality to it, yet 
 he hecame momentarily more and more 
 convinced that he remembered it very 
 well. 
 
 He walked fast along the vineyard path, 
 cutting impatiently at the straggling weeds 
 by the side of it as he did so, and then 
 turned to the right up the carriage road. 
 The steep slope of the ground compelled 
 him to slacken his pace. 
 
 Frogs were croaking and barking up at 
 the old reservoir, among the tall green 
 canes in the gulley on the left, and the 
 sharp metallic note of the locusts came 
 from the rose bushes ; but Colonel Enderby 
 with all his love of nature, was not in the 
 right humour to find pleasure in these 
 things. His pride rebelled against the false 
 
LOVER AND MISTRESS. 243 
 
 position iii which he found himself. The 
 fact of having overheard something not 
 intended for his ears was intensely annoy- 
 ing to him. That woman's voice troubled 
 him. All the uncomfortable side of life at 
 the Villa Mortelli, which had begun to pass 
 out of the range of his vision during the 
 last ten days, rushed into the foreground 
 again, with obtrusive distinctness. The 
 lines of duty and wisdom had showed plain 
 enough when he left Terzia some half-hour 
 ago ; but now they seemed to grow confused 
 and blurred. He felt suspicious, vaguely 
 disturbed. This movement of suspicion 
 extended itself even to the beautiful night. 
 The grasshopper became a burden, the frogs 
 with their everlasting clatter an absolute 
 nuisance. The scent of the orange-trees, 
 wafted down on the soft wind from the 
 garden beyond the house, was sickly in its 
 sweetness. There was a magical influence 
 abroad to-night, as baffling and perplexing 
 as the dim sense of familiarity which that 
 woman's voice had evoked. 
 
 At the top of the hill Colonel Enderby 
 paused. The scene before him was a 
 
244 COLONEL ENDEEBY S WIFE. 
 
 quaint and fantastic one. The usually 
 sober little villa seemed, for once, to have 
 put on a gala dress. The terrace stretched 
 away bathed in pale moonlight, save where 
 a broad shaft of more positive and yellower 
 light streamed out across it from the hall 
 door. The garden was gay with a number 
 of little, coloured, paper lanterns, swaying 
 gently in the breeze, and showing here 
 and there, in high relief, the blossoms and 
 foliage of the adjacent shrubs, with spaces 
 of dusky shadow in between. From the 
 garden came a sound of voices. 
 
 But that which specially arrested Colonel 
 Enderby's attention was a pair of white 
 figures on the terrace, directly in front of 
 him — one that of a girl, the other of a child 
 some five or six years old. The two were 
 playing together, running lightly to and fro, 
 laughing and calling to each other in tones 
 fresh and clear as bird-notes. There was 
 a weird unearthly effect in these pale 
 flitting figures. For a few T seconds, cross- 
 ing the shaft of light streaming out from 
 the doorway, they would become material- 
 ized, honest flesh and blood ; then stepping 
 
LOVER AND MISTRESS, 245 
 
 back into the moonlight again, they in- 
 stantly regained a vague ethereal cha- 
 racter. 
 
 Philip hesitated ; he stood still watching 
 them. Under the circumstances, it was 
 difficult to know exactly how to act. He 
 could not bring himself to walk up calmly 
 to the young lady in the midst of her 
 mystic evolutions, and greet her with some 
 stereotyped remark upon the state of the 
 weather. His taste made him recoil in- 
 stinctively from so very unimaginative a 
 mode of procedure. And there was some- 
 thing more restraining than mere good 
 taste in Philip just now. He was in that 
 heightened state of moral and emotional 
 consciousness, in which conventional ways 
 of conducting one's self are quite the least 
 easy or obvious. Seeing Jessie again in the 
 light of the confession he had so lately 
 made to himself, the poor Colonel was 
 almost painfully aware how much she was 
 to him; how delightful he found her 
 presence ; what a tender and yet penetrat- 
 ing value her every look and action had 
 for him ; how terribly sweet it would be 
 
246 COLONEL ENDERBY S WIFE. 
 
 to take her in his arms, to hold and keep 
 her for ever next his heart. And yet as she 
 laughed with merry, meaningless laughter, 
 and ran with light quick footsteps after the 
 laughing child, she seemed cruelly beyond 
 his reach, a creature of some young, far- 
 off, ideal world. Yes, love was indeed 
 working. In Philip the dear, tremulous, 
 delicious heartache had fairly begun, and 
 I, for my part, entirely refuse to pity him. 
 The piteous moment only comes, for each 
 one of us, when that happy pain is cured 
 for ever. 
 
 Suddenly the child set off running straight 
 along the terrace, looking back, and calling 
 to the girl behind him as he ran. Catching 
 sight unexpectedly of Colonel Enderby's 
 tall dark figure in front of him, the boy 
 swerved with a shrill cry of fright, and 
 would have fallen headlong, if Philip had 
 not stepped forward and caught him by the 
 arm. 
 
 " Look out, my little man," he said kindl}% 
 " or we shall have you tumbling on your 
 head." 
 
 Jessie paused on hearing the child's cry. 
 
LOVER AND MISTRESS. 247 
 
 She stood still for a moment, and put up 
 one hand, with an instinctive movement to 
 smooth the coils of her fair hair. Then she 
 came forward slowly. The moonlight fell 
 softly upon her straight slender figure. 
 Her head was thrown hack, and there was a 
 charming half- defiant smile on her face. 
 
 Those desirable blossoms which had shown 
 so thick on Philip's patch of good resolu- 
 tions wilted and faded curiously at this 
 juncture. The fruit of them, if it ever 
 came to perfection, promised to be a detest- 
 ably bitter mouthful. He was rapidly 
 passing out of the region in which a man 
 thinks and reasons, into that far more 
 interesting and, also, far more dangerous one 
 in which he merely feels. But he fought 
 gallantly with the rising tide of his own 
 passion. He would go away to-morrow. 
 It would be folly, and more than folly, to ask 
 this mere child to marry him, and yet — yet, 
 how he could have loved her ! How gladly 
 he could have consecrated all his life to her 
 service ! With what fulness of satisfaction 
 he could have borne her off from this 
 crowded, hot, suggestive Italian land, and 
 
248 colonel endebby's wife. 
 
 watched her nature unfold its full sweetness 
 through the long, still English summer 
 days, amid the broad green country, and 
 in the innocent northern sunshine ! He 
 fancied the girl would be far more at home 
 at dear, stately old Bassett Darcy than in 
 the sultry artificial glamour of the Villa 
 Mortelli. 
 
 All this flashed through Philip's mind 
 as Jessie, in flowing w T hite garments, came 
 forward in the cool moonlight. The garden, 
 with its tawdry coloured lanterns, its fitful 
 murmur of conversation, and tinkle of coffee- 
 cups, lay behind her. She was stepping 
 westward, away from it and all that it 
 implied — away from Bertie Ames and his 
 sub-acid humour, away from Mrs. Pierce- 
 Dawnay and her dark restless affection, 
 away from unknown ladies with harsh, half- 
 remembered voices, away from that little 
 haunting evil-spirit of a monkey, — away 
 from all that, out towards the freedom and 
 gracious solemnity of the spring night — and 
 towards him. 
 
 Colonel Enderby dropped the boy's hand, 
 which had rested in his. He put the child 
 
LOVER AND MISTRESS. 249 
 
 gently away from him, and stood waiting. 
 His eyes were very clear and steady; but 
 there was a certain pain in his expression, 
 as of one to whom a good gift is offered, 
 yet who is constrained, for very delight 
 in it, to refuse to put forth his hand and 
 take it. 
 
 The little boy, who did not apparently at 
 all relish this indifference on Philip's part 
 to his own small presence, ran up to Jessie, 
 and pulled at her dress, saying — 
 
 "Who is he? What does he want? 
 Don't let us stop playing because of him." 
 
 Jessie looked full at the Colonel for a 
 minute, then she bent down towards the 
 upturned face of the child, and said, with 
 her peculiarly clear and detached enuncia- 
 tion — 
 
 " Listen, Johnnie, and I will tell you who 
 he is. He is a kind friend, and a famous 
 soldier. He has seen great battles and 
 strange countries. And he never cried 
 when he was a little boy and nearly fell 
 down on the gravel. And," she went on, 
 very softly, " he promised to help me to 
 get away from the little red villa and go to 
 
250 colonel enderby's wife. 
 
 England, but I am afraid he has forgotten 
 all about that." 
 
 " I don't want you to go away, Jessie," 
 returned the boy, promptly. Evidently he 
 regarded most things from a personal stand- 
 point. " I want you to stay here and play 
 with me." 
 
 Colonel Enderby came up and stood near 
 Jessie. Her words had been wonderfully 
 pleasant to him. She rested one hand on 
 the boy's shoulder, and with the other 
 pushed back the heavy mass of brown hair 
 from his forehead, all the while looking up 
 with something between amusement and 
 appeal at the man standing opposite to her. 
 
 Philip felt a quickening of the pulse, and 
 a certain intoxication of the senses such 
 as he had not known for many a long day. 
 He would go — yes, he w T ould go ; but still, 
 it was not in human nature to cut short the 
 present moment. 
 
 " You still want to get away to England 
 very much, then ? " he asked. 
 
 " I don't care so much about it to-night," 
 she answered, still passing her hand over 
 the boy's hair, " because I am amused. 
 
LOYEE AND MISTRESS. 251 
 
 But to-morrow, or the first clay it rains, 
 or Bertie is cross, or mamma has a headache, 
 I shall want to go as much as ever." 
 
 The tide of feeling was rising, rising in 
 Philip ; but he struggled with it manfully. 
 
 "I have come to-night on purpose to 
 speak to Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay on that sub- 
 ject," he said. " I ought to have done so 
 sooner, but the days have slipped by, and 
 I have had no suitable opportunity. I did 
 not forget, all the same." 
 
 Jessie looked down and gently patted the 
 child's shoulder. 
 
 "I do not fancy you are one of the people 
 who easily forget their promises, Colonel 
 Enderby. ' I said so just now ; I don't quite 
 know why, — but I do not really think it." 
 
 Philip took a long breath. He had some 
 difficulty in replying as calmly and un- 
 concernedly as he wished. 
 
 "You mustn't speak to me like that, 
 Miss Pierce-Dawnay," he said. "It makes 
 it rather hard for me to say to you that 
 which I came here to say." 
 
 Jessie glanced up quickly and attentively. 
 
 "I have come to bid you good-bye," he 
 
252 colonel enderby's wife. 
 
 went on doggedly. " I am obliged to leave 
 for Spezia to-morrow." 
 
 The necessity of that journey to Spezia 
 had become to Philip, in the last few hours, 
 a formula in which he instinctively took 
 refuge. To him the words held a world of 
 meaning over and above the actual state- 
 ment. 
 
 "It is Mr. Drake," cried the girl. Her 
 expression altered curiously. " I don't 
 care for Mr. Drake." 
 
 " Poor Drake ! " said Philip. " Ah ! I'm 
 afraid there is a good deal more in it than 
 can justly be put down to his account." 
 
 " But you will come back again?'' 
 
 Jessie spoke with a most engaging little 
 air of entreaty. 
 
 Colonel Enderby shook his head rather 
 sadly. 
 
 " No, I think not," he answered. 
 
 The girl turned away, almost petulantly. 
 Her soft white skirts swept against Philip 
 as he stood by her, and stirred the loose 
 gravel, as she moved, with a quick rattling 
 sound. She threw herself forward, leaning 
 her elbows on the low terrace wall, and 
 
LOYEE AND MISTRESS. 253 
 
 looked out over the dim vineyards into the 
 deep purple of the night. Her attitude 
 showed very markedly the supple beauty of 
 her figure — the strong delicate line of the 
 back from shoulder to waist, and the 
 graceful curve of her well-set hips under 
 her close-fitting white bodice. 
 
 "It is all no use then," she said. 
 " Mamma will never go to England if you 
 leave her to herself. She will stay, and stay, 
 and stay. I do not know how it is, but I 
 believe when people have been some time in 
 Italy they cannot go away. They are under 
 a spell; they must remain. Mamma is like 
 that. If you leave us we shall stay here 
 always. Don't go, Colonel Enderby," she 
 cried, suddenly standing up and turning to 
 him. " Or if you must go, come back soon 
 again. Everything has been so much 
 pleasanter since you came. Mamma has 
 been delightful to me ; we have had no 
 little scenes. And as to Bertie's melancholy, 
 it did not matter ; I had some one else to 
 think about." 
 
 Jessie spoke very simply and frankly, 
 looking into her companion's face. One 
 
254 colonel enderby's wife. 
 
 thing that helped to make this young lady 
 so truly captivating was an apparent 
 absence of all self-consciousness. There 
 was an effect of straightforwardness in her 
 little speeches which effectually robbed 
 them of coquetry. 
 
 As for Philip, he was hard pressed. If 
 there was a strain of egotism in Jessie's 
 regret, he did not very carefully consider 
 it. It w T as enough that the fair young 
 creature, standing there within a yard of 
 him, begged him not to desert her; told him 
 her days were pleasanter for his coming; 
 trusted him thus in her beautiful and fear- 
 less innocence. The moment was a critical 
 one. 
 
 Just then, however, the boy, who had 
 assisted very unwillingly at this interview, 
 in which his small personality seemed to 
 count for so little, lost patience altogether, 
 and broke into open remonstrance. 
 
 " Come along, Jessie," he said, pulling at 
 her hand. " Let's come and play. Or else 
 take me to mother. I want to go to mother." 
 
 Mr. Bertie Ames came out of the garden. 
 He leant against the gate-post for a few 
 
LOYEE AND MISTRESS. 255 
 
 seconds, watching the group at the far end 
 of the terrace, and then sauntered slowly 
 towards them. 
 
 " Come along, Jessie, don't you hear? 
 Do come," whined the hoy. 
 
 The corners of his mouth began to turn 
 down in an ominous fashion. 
 
 "Ah! don't cry," she answered quickly. 
 " I do not like children when they cry." 
 
 The critical moment was over. Colonel 
 Enderby gathered himself together again. 
 He had been sorely tempted, but he had 
 mastered the temptation. He would be 
 true to the best he could see. 
 
 " I will talk to Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay," he 
 said to Jessie. " You will trust me to do 
 my best ? " 
 
 " Oh yes; as to that, I trust you very 
 fully. But, all the same, we shall stay on 
 here indefinitely if you go away." 
 
 "I must go away." Philip spoke gently 
 and gravely, looking very full at her. "I 
 must go for a very simple reason — I dare 
 not stay." 
 
256 colonel enderby's wife, 
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 THE JOYS OF EEUNION. 
 
 "My dear Jessie," Mr. Ames began, 
 languidly, as soon as he was within com- 
 fortable speaking distance, " are you dis- 
 posed to perpetrate an act of virtue, and 
 go and mount guard? Cousin Eleanor is 
 becoming a little nervous ; I am quite 
 nervous already. You are eminently wel- 
 come, Colonel Enderby," he added, with 
 gracious emphasis. " Some relations of 
 mine have most kindly come to see me 
 to-day. We have not as much in common 
 as one could wish — my fault, of course, 
 I own, — and though family affection goes 
 a long way, and fills up many gaps, con- 
 versation now is becoming the least shade 
 difficult. I have been looking forward to 
 
LOYEE AND MISTRESS. 257 
 
 your arrival with longing and hope. Would 
 you come and say something to them? 
 We should all unite in a movement of 
 gratitude unfeigned." 
 
 " I shall he very happy to make myself 
 useful," said Philip, stiffly. 
 
 He detested Mr. Ames with amazing- 
 cordiality at that moment. 
 
 "That is so good of you," the other 
 man answered. Then he addressed Jessie,, 
 at whom he had glanced more than once 
 while speaking. 
 
 " I wonder if you know how extremely 
 becoming that gown is ? " he remarked, in 
 a meditative manner. 
 
 "It does not much matter whether I 
 know it or not," she replied quickly. 
 
 " If other people do, you mean," con- 
 tinued Mr. x\mes, still looking at her, and 
 lifting his eyebrows slightly. " Commend 
 me to your fundamental good sense, Jessie. 
 It never deserts you." 
 
 "I did not say that," the girl answered, 
 with some warmth. 
 
 " Oh no, of course not. If you had, it 
 would have tended to disproYe my state- 
 
 TOL. I. S 
 
258 colonel enderby's wife. 
 
 ment with irritating rapidity. But you 
 leave things to be understood. Your 
 taste is always admirable." 
 
 " That is more than can be said of your 
 own, at times, Mr. Ames," broke in the 
 Colonel. 
 
 A number of subtle strains of feeling had 
 combined to endanger Philip's self-control. 
 He was bitter, and he lost his temper 
 pretty thoroughly. " That fellow, with 
 his nasty insinuations, will make her as 
 artificial and unbelieving as he is himself," 
 he thought ; and then he added, mentally, 
 a certain desire concerning Mr. Ames' 
 future destiny, considerably more vigorous 
 than polite. 
 
 Bertie, meanwhile, stared at him with 
 an air of interested surprise. 
 
 " Suppose we come into the garden," he 
 said. " Perhaps it would be safer. This 
 spot is exposed ; and medical men say that 
 moonlight is dangerous. It affects the 
 intelligence, in some cases. Shall we 
 come ? " 
 
 Few things are more acutely irritating 
 than that another person should trium- 
 
LOVER AND MISTRESS. 259 
 
 phantly retain his suavity of demeanour, 
 when you are conscious of having lost your 
 own. Bertie Ames practised this passive 
 form of torture frequently upon the members 
 of his acquaintance. He entirely refused 
 to be ruffled ; he became gentler and more 
 seriously polite and gracious, — that was 
 all. He was perfectly ready to pardon 
 small insolences, and bless those that 
 cursed him; and this not because his 
 spirit was penetrated with a conviction of 
 the inestimable value of the grace of 
 humility, but simply because it was not 
 worth while to get excited. Men and 
 things were profoundly unsatisfactory ; 
 this world is a most unsuccessful specu- 
 lation, bound to go wrong and prove a 
 bore. To permit yourself to be excited 
 or angry implied that you had expected 
 things to go right, and were proportionately 
 disappointed. It was crude, it was ex- 
 quisitely foolish to be disappointed ; and 
 if there was one thing Mr. Ames dreaded 
 it was being foolish. He did not dread 
 anything else very much. He was under 
 the impression that he had taken the 
 
260 COLONEL ENDEBBT S WIFE. 
 
 measure of the possible evils which could 
 befall liim — lie believed lie was equal to 
 meeting them. He had not very much, he 
 thought, either to gain or to lose, barring 
 his belief in his own perspicacity. That 
 would be a heavy loss, and an irretrievable 
 one. 
 
 As to Colonel Enderby, Bertie had a con- 
 siderable respect for him. He fancied that 
 he understood the other man's character 
 pretty completely. He knew quite well 
 that Colonel Enderby disliked him ; but it 
 would have appeared about as reasonable 
 to Bertie to be annoyed with him on these 
 grounds as to be annoyed with a snail 
 for moving with deliberation, or with a 
 spider for enjoying a diet of flies. People 
 are the result of their circumstances, of 
 inheritance, nationality, education. To be 
 offended with them, poor dears, for what 
 they cannot possibly help, for sympathies 
 and antipathies, none of their choosing 
 and beyond their control, is simply absurd. 
 And so it conies about that a materialist 
 and necessarian creed produces some aspects 
 of the highest Christian e?;durance and 
 
LOVER AND MISTRESS. 261 
 
 toleration — a really admirably glad suffering 
 of fools, combined with a beautiful absence 
 of any vindictive desire to bray the said 
 fools in mortars, with the professed inten- 
 tion of grinding the folly out of them. 
 
 The immediate consequence of Mr. Ames' 
 philosophy on the present occasion, was 
 that he entertained his companion with 
 agreeable conversation as they walked 
 slowly after Jessie and the little boy down 
 the length of the terrace. His face was 
 mild and serious, his manner calm and 
 soothing. He treated the Colonel as one 
 treats a slightly insane patient, who should 
 be agreed with and humoured. Bertie 
 dawdled, loitered, gazed down over the 
 terrace wall at the vineyards and the town 
 below — did his best, in fact, to lengthen 
 out the little walk as much as possible, and 
 completely to engage Colonel Enderby's 
 attention. 
 
 Philip's wrath abated under these blan- 
 dishments. He thought he had been a 
 trifle rough on Mr. Ames. He did not care 
 to emphasize that movement of roughness. 
 He had plenty on his hands already, with- 
 
262 colonel endeeby's wife. 
 
 out complicating matters by a brush, with 
 this imperturbable young gentleman. He 
 dawdled too, and listened very civilly to 
 Mr. Ames' advice as to the best way of 
 seeing Italy, and other kindred matters, 
 while his eyes followed Jessie's retreating 
 figure with lingering wistfulness. 
 
 As they went in at the dilapidated gate 
 of the garden Bertie was saying : — 
 
 "You should come for a winter, you 
 know. Florence, for instance, is delightful 
 in winter. And there generally is interest- 
 ing society there ; society that presents 
 a good deal of material to the imagina- 
 tion. Yes, you should see it, Colonel 
 Enderby. You would form an element — 
 perhaps a new one. Society would be 
 obliged to you. By the way, my cousin, 
 Mrs. Farrell, who is here to-night, could 
 tell you a lot about Florence. She was 
 there a good deal a few years ago, before 
 her husband, poor Eugene, died. There 
 were original traits in Eugene's character. 
 Mrs. Farrell had some experiences, I fancy, 
 while she lived in Florence." 
 
 Colonel Enderby happened to look full at 
 
LOYEE AXD MISTRESS. 263 
 
 Bertie Ames as the latter finished speaking. 
 His thoughts had been engaged with 
 somewhat penetrating personal considera- 
 tions, and he had hardly noticed what the 
 other man had been saying. The two 
 were standing quite near each other in the 
 narrow gateway. Glancing at him suddenly 
 the Colonel was aware of a singular ex- 
 pression about his companion, of an [intent- 
 ness of gaze, as though he was watching 
 him with some distinct purpose. 
 
 Bertie Ames put his hand over his eyes 
 for a moment, with an indolent, half-dis- 
 gusted gesture. 
 
 " Dear me," he said, " how vulgar those 
 wretched little lanterns look after the 
 moonlight ! and yet Jessie and I were rather 
 pleased with our illumination at first. Even 
 now — though I own it is a lamentable 
 exhibition of the intermittent purity of my 
 taste — I think it has a certain value. It 
 presents a contrast, and there is a great 
 deal to be got out of contrasts. They are 
 very teaching. They make one aware of a 
 number of sensations one might otherwise 
 miss. And at my age I begin to cherish 
 
264 colonel enderby' s wife. 
 
 sensations — that is if they are not too 
 vivid." 
 
 He moved on as he spoke into the 
 gleaming garden ; and then, smiling amiably 
 at Philip, added — 
 
 " Talking of contrasts, Colonel Enderby, 
 here is a sufficiently telling one. It is a 
 little unkind to one of the ladies, cer- 
 tainly, but that, alas ! is unavoidable. Just 
 look there, at my cousin Jessie Pierce- 
 Dawnay and my cousin Cecilia Farrell, nee 
 Murray." 
 
 Colonel Enderby came a few steps into 
 the garden too. He started, and could 
 hardly repress an exclamation. He was 
 conscious of a sudden luminous concussion 
 in his brain. The solid ground seemed to 
 give a lurch, and then slowly settle itself into 
 place again. 
 
 Where the four weedy gravel paths met 
 in the centre of the garden, with the light 
 of a row of swaying lanterns falling fully 
 upon her, Jessie stood, her white figure 
 showing in high relief against a dim multi- 
 tudinous background of leaves and flowers. 
 She was speaking with considerable vivacity 
 
LOVEE AND MISTKESS. 265 
 
 and animation — apparently describing her 
 late game of play. By her side, listening 
 to her clear speech, was a tall, thin, jaded 
 woman, who had undeniably shaken hands 
 with the days of her youth. She wore a 
 plain travelling dress of dark material ; and 
 gave the impression of being a tired, careful, 
 over-burdened individual ; of having reached 
 a state of mind in which she was indifferent 
 to those small niceties of feminine attire, 
 and was unequal to that prettiness of 
 gesture and manner so important to every 
 woman who retains her natural desire 
 of appearing to advantage in masculine 
 eyes. 
 
 As a connecting-link between these two 
 very dissimilar persons stood the little boy 
 — holding the hand of the elder woman, 
 kicking about the gravel with his foot, and 
 putting in a remark from time to time in 
 thin treble tones. 
 
 " I hope you have not tired yourself, 
 Jessie," said Mrs. Farrell, with an even 
 colourless utterance. " You have been very 
 kind in amusing Johnnie so long." 
 
 Jessie laughed gently. She looked won- 
 
266 colonel enderby' s wife. 
 
 derfully sparkling with her fresh face and 
 quick, graceful movements. The emotion 
 she had displayed a short time before, when 
 talking to Colonel Enderby, had apparently 
 passed away, leaving no trace, save perhaps 
 a brighter light in her blue-grey eyes, and 
 a slight vibration in her voice. 
 
 "I am hardly ever tired," she answered, 
 " unless I am bored, and then I just go to 
 sleep. Mamma says I am remarkably 
 strong. I am very glad of that. I am 
 not fond of sickness or sick people — it all 
 seems unnatural, you know." 
 
 Mrs. Farrell appeared a little bewildered ; 
 she drew the boy nearer to her as she 
 replied — 
 
 " Sickness may be unnatural. I am sure 
 I don't know. It is very common." 
 
 Bertie Ames smiled. He glanced at the 
 two women under the orange trees, and 
 then at Colonel Enderby. 
 
 " This contrast interests you ? " he 
 inquired. 
 
 The Colonel's expression had resolved 
 itself out of simple astonishment into one of 
 considerable resolution. The position w r as 
 
LOVER AND MISTRESS. 267 
 
 a painful and embarrassing one, but he was 
 determined to carry it through with a high 
 hand. 
 
 u I believe I have the honour of knowing 
 that lady," he said, with some dignity of 
 manner. " She has probably forgotten me, 
 though, as it is a long while since we met. 
 I must ask you to mention my name to her, 
 to recall me to her remembrance." 
 
 Bertie Ames made a gesture of assent. 
 
 " By all means. But here are Mrs, 
 Pierce-Dawnay and my worthy aunt, Mrs. 
 Murray, just coming out of that gnat- 
 infested little arbour. Speak to them first. 
 My cousin is not in her happiest mood 
 to-night, I grieve to say, therefore it is 
 advisable to observe formalities." 
 
 Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay did, in fact, sweep 
 up to the two gentlemen in a rather un- 
 necessarily dramatic manner. She shook 
 hands with Philip in silence, and then 
 stepping aside said — 
 
 " Colonel Enderby, Mrs. Murray. Mrs. 
 Murray assures me that you and she are old 
 friends. That was the term, wasn't it? — 
 old friends, Colonel Enderby." 
 
2C8 colonel enderby's wife. 
 
 Philip bowed profoundly to a voluminous 
 figure which blocked the archway of the 
 arbour. 
 
 "Ah! perhaps Colonel Enderby won't 
 admit the friendship," said the lady, with 
 a large and slightly biting archness of 
 address. "We women remember every 
 little event in our quiet monotonous lives ; 
 but with you gentlemen it is so different. 
 A thousand things happen to you, you 
 know, and deaden the old recollections, 
 while we poor things sit at home with our 
 fancy-work, and our memories, and our 
 regrets. Ah ! dear me." 
 
 Philip felt nettled. 
 
 "I too have an excellent memory, I 
 assure you," he said quietly. 
 
 "Eh! what?" exclaimed Mrs. Murray, 
 sharply. 
 
 Then she turned to Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay 
 with an assumption of great geniality of 
 demeanour. 
 
 " We have always watched Colonel 
 Enderby's career with so much interest, 
 you know. The papers have not been 
 silent. They have given us information — - 
 
LOVER AND MISTBESS, 2G9 
 
 very deeply interesting information at 
 times. I have often said to Cecilia, ' I 
 wonder if we shall ever meet Colonel 
 Enderby again ? ' And now that it should 
 come about through you, my dear Bertie, 
 in this unexpected way, really, you know, 
 it is very, very singular.' 7 
 
 The smile which accompanied these 
 words revealed a remarkably even and 
 glittering set of teeth. Mrs. Murray was 
 an old woman ; but she was extremely well 
 preserved, almost too well preserved, per- 
 haps. She was stout, high-coloured, and 
 completely mistress, apparently, both of 
 herself and of the situation. 
 
 " My dear aunt, what greater happiness 
 can befall my unworthy self than to give 
 you pleasure ? Giving is more blessed than 
 receiving, you know. But in this case the 
 blessing seems to ricochet somehow; and 
 in the giving, I too am sensible of receiving, 
 in a measure." 
 
 Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay looked rather hard 
 at the young man. 
 
 " Bertie," she said quickly, " you are 
 talking nonsense. Come," she added,. 
 
270 COLONEL ENDEEBY'S WIFE. 
 
 addressing the Colonel, " come and speak 
 to Mrs. Farrell." 
 
 Philip found himself bowing again stiffly 
 — mechanically. He had a vision of a pale, 
 w r orn, anxious woman's face ; and was aware 
 of a strange tightening sensation about the 
 muscles of his throat as he tried to deliver 
 himself of a civil and appropriate greeting. 
 The last time he had seen this woman she 
 was pretty and young ; he had loved her 
 devotedly ; he had kissed her at parting ! 
 It seemed cruelly malicious on the part of 
 circumstance that he should meet her again 
 on this day of all days in his life, when the 
 cherished sentiment of years had fairly died 
 out into grey ashes, and the clear, intense 
 flame of a growing passion was quickening 
 the deep places of his heart. 
 
 For a perceptible space of time after 
 Philip's introduction to Mrs. Farrell there 
 was a silence. No one seemed disposed to 
 take the initiative. Then Mrs. Murray 
 began to repeat, with an air of being quite 
 determined to say something, her former 
 phrases about the lapse of time, the un- 
 failing memory of woman, the interest 
 
LOVER AND MISTRESS. 271 
 
 excited in her mind by Colonel Enderby's 
 career, and the strange and agreeable chance 
 of this encounter. 
 
 " I wonder," remarked Mr. Ames, gently, 
 "how far one really enjoys meeting old 
 friends. Sometimes it strikes me that 
 there is a grain of conventionality in one's 
 expression of satisfaction. I dare say I am 
 peculiar in the matter, but I find the sight 
 of old friends rarely fills me with unmiti- 
 gated rapture. You are fond of subtleties 
 of this kind, what do you think about it, 
 cousin Nell?" 
 
 " Hadn't we better go down to the 
 hotel?" broke in Mrs. Farrell, speaking 
 hurriedly to her mother. Her face was 
 burning painfully ; and that, alas ! did not 
 improve her personal appearance. "It is 
 getting very late for Johnnie ; and we 
 haven't seen our rooms yet, you know." 
 
 " Why do you squash my hand so tight, 
 mother?" asked the little boy, fretfully. 
 " You hurt me." 
 
 " I too think Johnnie would be better 
 in bed," said Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay, suddenly. 
 There was rather a dangerous light in her 
 eyes. 
 
272 colonel endeeby's wife. 
 
 "It is some way down to the town," 
 Cecilia went on. " I think we had better 
 start soon." 
 
 "We shall see yon again, Colonel 
 Enderby," said Mrs. Murray, with much 
 warmth of manner. " I understand yon 
 are staying at Terzia." 
 
 " Unfortunately, I leave to-morrow," he 
 answered. "But I will give myself the 
 pleasure of calling on yon in the morning, 
 if I may." 
 
 Directly he had spoken, Philip was aware 
 of having somehow committed an indis- 
 cretion. Bertie Ames said "Ah!" softly, 
 under his breath ; and Eleanor rustled 
 suggestively. 
 
 "Dear me, I am so sony. I thought, 
 from my nephew's account, yon would be 
 here for some time longer. Well, well," 
 Mrs. Murray went on, shaking one fat hand, 
 with its multiplicity of jangling bracelets, 
 at him playfully, "we shall see — we shall 
 see. Perhaps we may make you change 
 your mind, you know, notwithstanding all 
 that good-for-nothing Bertie's sarcasms 
 about old friends." 
 
LOVEE AND MISTRESS. 273 
 
 Then the excellent lady, with many ex- 
 pressions of affection and gratitude for the 
 most delightful of evenings, took leave of 
 her hostess. 
 
 " Jessie, go indoors with them," said 
 her step-mother. " See that Mrs. Murray 
 has her cloaks and things. You will pardon 
 my remaining here," she continued, turn- 
 ing to Cecilia. " Bertie, you will take care 
 of your aunt. Antonio can go too, you 
 know, and carry the child." 
 
 As Jessie obediently followed in the wake 
 of her step-mother's guests, she passed very 
 close to Philip Enderby. Moved by a 
 momentary feeling, she stopped and looked 
 up at him, with a strange mixture of anger 
 and entreaty in her charming face. 
 
 " It is no good, then; you are obdurate, 
 you still mean to go," she said quickly. 
 " I must prepare myself to remain for ever 
 at the little red villa. I make you my 
 curtsy, Colonel Enderby. I have been 
 deceived in you." 
 
 The words cut Philip to the quick. The 
 whole meaning and purpose of the man 
 rushed together in one clear, over-mastering 
 
 YOL. I. T 
 
274 colonel enderby's wife. 
 
 impulse. He stretched out his arms to 
 grasp and keep her. 
 
 "Ah, Jessie," he said — " Jessie, I can't 
 part with you like this." 
 
 But the girl neither heard nor heeded him. 
 Having delivered her soul of its hurden of 
 resentment, she turned and fled. He saw 
 her pale figure drift swiftly across the semi- 
 darkness of the terrace, flash into clearness 
 for an instant in the yellow light of the 
 doorway, and then disappear within the 
 house. To follow her was impossible ; it 
 meant coming face to face with that pain- 
 fully playful old person, Mrs. Murray; it 
 meant making a confession which reason 
 and sentiment alike condemned. He took 
 a long breath ; set his teeth ; and went 
 back to seal his fate by speaking to Mrs. 
 Pierce-Dawnay. 
 
 That lady, meanwhile, had, perhaps fortu- 
 nately, been too self-occupied to take any 
 note of the little scene between her step- 
 daughter and her guest. She was suffering 
 an acces of nervous irritation. She had flung 
 herself down in a wicker-chair beside the 
 table, with its half-empty coffee-cups, and as 
 
LOVER AND MISTRESS. 275 
 
 Colonel Enderby came up to her she broke 
 out into vehement protest. 
 
 "Heaven help us, but what a woman! 
 She is the most abominable old vulgarian. 
 She sets every tooth in my head on edge, 
 and her insinuations are little short of an 
 insult. There is a mauvaise lemgue, if you 
 like ! Wretched Cecilia to have such a 
 mother ! And really it is too vexatious that 
 Miss Keat should be away just now; it 
 
 is Ah ! well — but, Colonel Enderby, 
 
 tell me, what on earth has made you decide 
 to rush off to Spezia like this, at an hour's 
 notice?" 
 
 As she ceased speaking, Eleanor raised 
 her e}^es to Philip's face. Something in his 
 appearance arrested her attention. He 
 stood still, almost rigid, before her; yet 
 there was a singular intensity and concen- 
 tration of purpose about him. 
 
 The answer to her question came promptly 
 enough. 
 
 " You must pardon me, Mrs. Pierce- 
 Dawnay ; I cannot give you my reasons for 
 going away. But they are imperative, believe 
 me, all the same." 
 
276 colonel endeeby's wife. 
 
 Her forehead contracted into a frown, 
 half annoyance and half thought. 
 
 " I do not understand you." 
 
 " I understand myself only too well," 
 answered the Colonel, not without a grain 
 of bitterness. 
 
 A sound of footsteps and voices came from 
 the direction of the house. The guests 
 were departing. Then Parker, tall and 
 angular, stalked into the garden. 
 
 " If you're going to stay out here, ma'am, 
 any longer," she said, " you must put more 
 on. Mr. Ames sent out this cloak. I 
 meant to bring one out myself, anyway." 
 
 Parker's manner towards her mistress 
 was not weighted with any superabundance 
 of ceremony. Their acquaintance dated 
 from the days of sensible nurse and more or 
 less spoilt child, and a savour of that rela- 
 tion survived between them still. Eleanor 
 submitted very readily to have the cloak 
 wrapped about her. 
 
 "I suppose I can put out those lantern 
 things ? " Parker went on. 
 
 " Oh, leave that to Antonio. You can't 
 reach them," answered Eleanor. 
 
LOVER AND MISTRESS. 277 
 
 The worthy waiting-woman smiled grimly. 
 "I can reach them just as well as 
 Antonio. And he won't be back for the 
 best part of an hour. The candles are 
 burnt right down ; they'll set fire to the 
 paper before long." 
 
 " Oh, do as you like; you always have 
 your own way in the end, you know." 
 
 With that Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay got up. 
 
 " Come on to the terrace," she said to 
 Colonel Enderby. " Tell me," she added, 
 as they moved away, " are your reasons for 
 going connected in any way with the people 
 you met here to-night ? " 
 
 " No, I had decided to go before I saw 
 your guests this evening. I had already 
 mentioned the fact to your daughter." 
 
 Eleanor leaned against the low terrace 
 wall. 
 
 " This is all very abrupt," she said. 
 
 In the garden Parker extinguished the 
 coloured lights one by one. There was 
 something rather fateful about her tall, 
 gaunt form. It was difficult to believe 
 that the harsh-featured, bony woman did 
 not derive a cruel satisfaction from cutting 
 
278 colonel endeeby's wife. 
 
 short the pretty, frivolous, superfluous bril- 
 liance of those swaying lights. 
 
 Philip watched her in silence for a 
 moment, then he spoke simply and ear- 
 nestly. The fact that he was sternly 
 putting out all his own gay-coloured hopes, 
 just as Parker yonder w r as putting out the 
 gay-coloured lanterns, lent a penetrating 
 quality, a ring of simple eloquence to his 
 speech. He alluded to their former con- 
 versation ; he reminded Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay 
 that she had asked his advice — now he gave 
 it. She had spoken of her step-daughter's 
 future — let her take the young girl home 
 to England, to her own country and kindred, 
 and find a worthy suitor for her there. 
 " Foreigners and half foreigners," he said, 
 " seem to me likely to make very poor 
 sort of husbands. " For her own peace of 
 mind, as well as for Jessie's welfare, he urged 
 her to go, and go soon, — to renew intercourse 
 with her own and her husband's relations, 
 to pick up the threads of English life again. 
 
 Eleanor listened quietly. When he had 
 finished, she spoke with an air of abstraction. 
 
 " That is what you advise, then ? " 
 
LOVER AND MISTRESS. 279 
 
 " Yes, that is what I advise. I have thought 
 the matter over as carefully as I know how. 
 That is what you ought to do." 
 
 Eleanor raised her shoulders irritably. 
 
 " Oh, you are mistaken — mistaken," she 
 exclaimed. 
 
 " No, I am not — I wish I was mistaken," 
 said the Colonel sadly. " I have found 
 the last fortnight very pleasant, Mrs. Pierce- 
 Dawnay ; it is not to please myself that T 
 go away." 
 
 He wanted to enlarge on this text and 
 make a civil speech ; but somehow the 
 words stuck in his throat — the speech 
 refused to come off. 
 
 Eleanor shook hands with him in silence ; 
 then, when he had got a few steps away, 
 she called after him. 
 
 " You do not start early to-morrow ? " 
 
 Colonel Enderby turned back. 
 
 "I shall go by the mid-day train," he 
 answered. 
 
 At the end of the terrace he took a last 
 look at the Villa Mortelli. The moon had 
 set some while before. The house loomed 
 up a black shapeless mass, with a window 
 
280 colonel endebby's wife. 
 
 here and there gleaming faintly from light 
 within. The frogs and cicalas had con- 
 cluded their long concert. Only the muffled 
 roar of the surf sounded up from the beach, 
 and the night wind w T hispered and rustled 
 among the stiff leaves of the old ilex trees 
 at the near end of the upper vineyard path. 
 Far below, the lights of the town twinkled 
 amid the rich purple obscurity of the night. 
 To Colonel Enderby the last fortnight 
 seemed of the substance of a dream, ethereal, 
 unsubstantial. The pretty play was played 
 out ; the curtain had come down ; the spec- 
 tacle was over ; the common work-a-day 
 world claimed him as its own once more. 
 He believed, at that moment, that he had 
 said good-bye for ever to all extravagance, 
 whether of joy or sorrow. Wife, child, 
 home — those eternal sources both of purest 
 pleasure and keenest pain, were not for him. 
 He would go away ; go back to his soldiering. 
 It had consoled him long ago, perhaps it 
 would contrive to console him again. He 
 thought, with a species of ascetic satisfac- 
 tion, of the innumerable rows of black 
 huts at Aldershpt, of the unlovely barrack 
 
LOYEE AND MISTEESS. 281 
 
 buildings and the church crowning the 
 rising ground, of the bare drab waste of 
 the Long Valley, with its encircling ranges 
 of sombre fir trees and stretches of dark 
 heather. 
 
 Henceforth, as far as love and pretty 
 young girls went, he would honestly accept 
 his age and disabilities ; he would put that 
 side of things away for ever, and patiently 
 submit to consider himself shelved in 
 questions of the affections. 
 
 " Upon my word, though," he said to 
 himself while walking along the narrow 
 street of Terzia, between the tall frowning 
 houses — " upon my word, I have had a 
 pretty hard day of it." 
 
 Just then Mr. Ames, slim, a shade over- 
 dressed, and with an air of exquisite suavity, 
 met him. 
 
 "Ah! good-night, Colonel Enderby," he 
 said. "Is it true that we have the mis- 
 fortune of losing you so soon ? Still, not- 
 withstanding the prospect of parting, I 
 own I am a happy man to-night. I have 
 the heart of a child. I revel in the posses- 
 sion of a clear conscience. After all, what 
 
282 colonel enderby's wife. 
 
 pleasure is comparable to a sense of accom- 
 plished duty ?' ' 
 
 Lifting his hat, he passed on, without 
 waiting for any answer. 
 
 Philip Enderby had a momentary longing 
 to find himself opposite to Mr. Ames at a 
 distance of twenty paces, with accessories in 
 the form of pistols, seconds, and a surgeon. 
 It made the fact of his renunciation none 
 the easier, that he left that enigmatical 
 young gentleman behind him in full posses- 
 sion at the Villa Mortelli. 
 
LOVER AND MISTBESS. 283 
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 MR. AMES FINDS HIMSELF UNEQUAL TO 
 THE OCCASION. 
 
 When she parted with Colonel Enderby, 
 Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay was in a somewhat 
 excited frame of mind. Like many persons 
 of apparently strong will and strong cha- 
 racter, she had at bottom a great necessity 
 for moral support ; she was, in truth, ex- 
 tremely dependent. She found it impossible 
 to keep things to herself; she was compelled 
 to overflow, so to speak. Very often she 
 made most compromising mistakes by over- 
 flowing to quite the wrong person. 
 
 She went indoors, and upstairs into the 
 drawing-room, which looked depressing and 
 ghostly in the feeble light of a pair of 
 candles set on the piano. Jessie had been 
 playing earlier in the evening. Some loose 
 
284 colonel endeeby's wife. 
 
 music was scattered about, and a little 
 bouquet of flowers, which Bertie had given 
 the girl when she came down dressed for 
 dinner, lay fading on the turned-back lid 
 above the key-board. Eleanor regarded 
 these indications of her pretty step- 
 daughter's late presence without any very 
 warm signs of maternal, or even step- 
 maternal tenderness. In point of fact, they 
 appeared to aggravate rather than modify 
 her former agitation. She clasped her 
 well-shaped hands together with strong im- 
 patient gesture, and began to pace back- 
 wards and forwards up and down the whole 
 length of the long room, her black lace 
 mantilla swaying with the alternate droop- 
 ing and half-angry raising of her head, 
 wdiile the heavy train of her black silk dress 
 made a rasping noise as it dragged over the 
 marble floor. 
 
 Mr. Ames came in, after a while, arid 
 came in, too, in a charming humour. He 
 even went so far as to hum a few bars from 
 one of Mephistopheles' merry evil-sounding 
 songs in " Faust " as he came upstairs. 
 
 " Ah ! dear cousin Nell, you are still up. 
 
LOVER AND MISTRESS. 285 
 
 This is an unexpected bit of good fortune. 
 Let us talk." 
 
 Eleanor glanced at him from under her 
 dark eyebrows. Her nostrils dilated slightly. 
 She looked like a well-bred horse which 
 lays back its ears, half in nervousness and 
 half in viciousness. 
 
 "I will sit down, if you don't mind," 
 Bertie continued. " I am slightly ex- 
 hausted. I see you are walking off the 
 effects of my dear aunt Mrs. Murray's 
 society. It needs walking off, I admit. 
 Don't let me interfere with that salutary 
 process. We can talk just as well so." 
 
 " She is a detestable old woman," said 
 Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay over her shoulder, as 
 she swept up the room again. 
 
 " Ah ! there you over-shoot the mark," 
 he answered, in a mildly argumentative 
 tone. " She is not detestable; she is only 
 powerful. You are rather powerful too, 
 you know, Eleanor, at times. And two 
 powerful women rarely get on quite happily 
 together. But I am really sorry for my 
 aunt all the same. She compassed sea and 
 land to make good marriages for her 
 
286 colonel enderby's wife. 
 
 daughters, and now all their highly desirable 
 husbands refuse to have anything to do 
 with her. She has had to fall back on 
 Cecilia. Cecilia has a positive genius for 
 doing her duty." 
 
 " I always have thought Cecilia more or 
 less of a fool," said Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay 
 incisively. 
 
 " Yes; but she is a good fool; and that 
 is more or less of a good thing. To-night 
 I love her dearly. She completely routed 
 our valiant Colonel." 
 
 Eleanor stopped abruptly in her agitated 
 walk. 
 
 " What do you mean ? " she exclaimed. 
 
 Bertie Ames leant back in his chair, 
 rested his elbows on the arms of it, and 
 pressed the tips of his fingers together, 
 with the air of a man who is full of a 
 gracious sense of well-being. 
 
 " It was truly refreshing," he said. " It 
 was just one of those delicate little episodes 
 that make life more than endurable for a 
 short period. I guessed a good deal from 
 certain things which my aunt said when we 
 first mentioned Enderbv's name. I ascer- 
 
LOVER AND MISTRESS. 287 
 
 tained that they had not met since the balmy 
 days of youth, and that at that remote epoch 
 he had been seriously smitten with Cecilia. 
 Cecilia had also entertained tender feelings 
 towards him, prior, of course, to her con- 
 nection with that plausible scapegrace, 
 Farrell. I was grieved to inflict any dis- 
 comfort on her, poor dear soul ; but what 
 would you have ? One can't too closely 
 consider everybody." 
 
 Eleanor walked on again. Her head was 
 bent ; she looked anything but delighted at 
 this little narrative. 
 
 " I was sweeter than honey and butter to 
 the Colonel, who, on his part, was not quite 
 as civil as he might have been to me. But 
 I bided my time. I arranged a delicate 
 revenge." 
 
 " Eevenge ? " she interrupted sharply, 
 " Why, what quarrel have you with Colonel 
 Enderby ? " 
 
 " Oh, no personal quarrel, I assure you, 
 He has the liveliest contempt for me ; but 
 I don't mind that — it is a mere matter of 
 temperament. He can no more help it 
 than that nameless but historic person, of 
 
288 colonel endekby's wife. 
 
 whom we used to be told in our youth, 
 could help his head swelling when he 
 eat gooseberries. I revenged not so much 
 my wretched self, dear cousin Nell, as 
 all unsuccessful, unrespectable, vagabond 
 humanity. I have a large share of those 
 primitive instincts of fallen man which 
 make dirty, worthless, little boys, in the 
 gutter, throw a handful of mud at the nice, 
 clean, well-conducted little boys who roll 
 by them, sitting up in well-appointed 
 carriages. I planned a telling scene. I 
 let the sight of Cecilia burst upon our 
 friend as she was standing talking to 
 Jessie under the orange trees. You can 
 picture the contrast." — Bertie Ames laughed 
 softly to himself. " It was dramatic. The 
 poor Colonel really behaved very well. 
 But, to use a vulgar phrase, it knocked 
 the wind out of him for a few seconds very 
 effectually. " 
 
 Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay was at the far end 
 of the room. She spoke with a trace of 
 hesitancy. 
 
 " No doubt he felt seeing Cecilia again, 
 under the circumstances. But — I suppose 
 
LOVER AND MISTRESS. 289 
 
 I am stupid — I confess I don't quite catch 
 the point of the contrast with Jessie." 
 
 "Heaven help us, Eleanor, where are 
 your eyes ? " cried Mr. Ames, holding up 
 his hands. "Why, poor man, to put it 
 coarsely, he is simply over head and ears in 
 love with Jessie! " 
 
 Mrs. Pieree-Dawnay came slowly down 
 the length of the room. Again she had that 
 appearance of laying hack her ears, and 
 showing the whites of her eyes. As she 
 passed the young man, she said, with some- 
 thing rather forced in the calm of her 
 manner — 
 
 "Ah, you think so too, do you? I am 
 glad of that." 
 
 There was a moment's silence. 
 
 " I don't think that is quite kind of you, 
 cousin Nell," he ohserved. "Has not 
 Jessie had plenty of victims already ? I 
 merely perpetrated a passing practical joke. 
 You go farther, it seems, and with no fair 
 cause. Why should you want the poor 
 man to he tortured ? " 
 
 "I don't want him to he tortured," she 
 answered, keeping her eyes fixed on the 
 
 VOL. I. 
 
290 COLONEL ENDEEBY S WIFE. 
 
 floor. "I have the highest regard for 
 Colonel Enderby. I desire earnestly to 
 secure his happiness." 
 
 Bertie Ames remained very still. The 
 air of enjoyment had pretty well died out of 
 his face. 
 
 " Pardon me," he said, "but would you 
 mind sitting down, Eleanor ? The scraping 
 of your dress is getting a little on to my 
 nerves. It confuses me. I confess, for 
 example, I don't clearly apprehend the 
 meaning of your last speech." 
 
 As he spoke Mr. Ames looked very full at 
 his companion. 
 
 Strong as Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay might 
 appear, this man certainly exercised a re- 
 markable influence over her. She knew 
 quite well that the die was cast, and that 
 a dangerous and painful scene lay before 
 her — how dangerous and painful it might 
 prove she could not as yet determine; but 
 that it would tax her courage and forti- 
 tude pretty severely she was already sure. 
 In her present state of hardly repressed 
 excitement, it would be far easier to her 
 to say what must be said moving to and 
 
LOVER AND MISTRESS. 291 
 
 fro. Yet when Mr. Ames looked steadily 
 at her, and pointed to the sofa opposite to 
 him, she wavered only for a moment, and 
 then sat down. 
 
 " That is better," he murmured. "lam 
 idiotic, no doubt, but I repeat, I do not 
 clearly understand what you mean." 
 
 Eleanor leant back among the large sofa 
 cushions. Movement and feeling had 
 brought a glow of colour into her cheeks. 
 In her rich elaborate black gown, with 
 the soft lace falling back from her dusky 
 hair, she was undoubtedly a strikingly 
 handsome and distinguished-looking woman. 
 Physically she gave way before her com- 
 panion, a nervous tremor shook her ; but 
 mentally she hardened herself against his 
 influence. She half shut her eyes, and 
 clasped her hands tightly together as they 
 lay on her lap. 
 
 "I intend to encourage Colonel Enderby," 
 she said slowly. " To be quite frank with 
 you, I wish to secure Jessie's future, and 
 I believe that he would make her an 
 admirable husband." 
 
 Bertie Ames did not move ; but he turned 
 very pale indeed. 
 
292 colonel endekby's wife. 
 
 " All ! " lie said, with a queer shuddering 
 intonation. It was something like the 
 cry of an animal in pain. 
 
 Eleanor sat tip quickly. She raised her 
 hands and tore open the lace at her 
 throat. She wanted air, she felt as though 
 she would stifle. It was dreadful to her 
 to see this man suffer — but it was almost 
 equally dreadful to perceive why he 
 suffered. 
 
 " Don't take it like that, Bertie," she 
 cried, with sudden violence. " It is hideous. 
 You will drive me mad." 
 
 Bertie Ames hardly heeded her outburst. 
 He smiled a little. Eleanor covered her 
 eyes. His poor white face and that pitiful 
 mockery of a smile turned her faint. 
 
 " I understand perfectly well now, thank 
 you, Nell," he said gently. " I flattered 
 myself I was prepared for most things ; 
 but one's imagination, I observe, has a 
 habit of just missing what is most probable. 
 One's philosophy, too, fails at critical 
 moments. It enables one to bear imaginary 
 evils perfectly well. It is not so successful 
 with real evils. Well, I own myself beaten. 
 
LOVEK AND MISTRESS. 293 
 
 You are the cleverer of the two by a very 
 long way. I had not thought of this com- 
 bination. Jessie's future demands a victim, 
 of course — but I am to be tortured this time, 
 I see, not Colonel Enderby." 
 
 " What could I do?" she exclaimed. 
 " 1 have suspected — feared how things were 
 going with you ; but I did not dream it 
 had gone as far as this. And then," she 
 added, with a sort of gasp, "it may come 
 to nothing, after all." 
 
 " I don't think so." the young man 
 answered, with that same wretched smile. 
 " Everything w T ill turn out as you wish — 
 at least, if you keep on." 
 
 " I must keep on," said Mrs. Pierce- 
 Dawnay. 
 
 She threw back her head ; her face w r as 
 hard and set. Then almost immediately 
 she softened again into a tone of pleading, 
 with a wild longing to justify herself, to 
 prove that her motives were commendable. 
 
 "I do it for the best, Bertie. I believe 
 it is right. It seems the safest thing I can 
 do for the child. And who can care for her 
 happiness as nearly as I ? Am I not, after 
 
294 COLONEL ENDEKBY'S WIFE. 
 
 all, practically her mother ? — mustn't I 
 know best ? — mustn't I be most capable 
 of judging ? Do you think I could be so 
 base and faithless as to do this thing 
 lightly or thoughtlessly? I have prayed, 
 I have prayed over it — God wouldn't be so 
 cruel as to let me make a mistake ? I 
 have implored for guidance." 
 
 Mr. Ames laughed. It was not an 
 agreeable laugh exactly. 
 
 " Oh ! in that case, I, of course, have 
 nothing further to say. If the Higher 
 Powers have been duly consulted, persons 
 such as I am are out of it, clearly. Still 
 you may pity me just a little, cousin Nell," 
 he went on. " It was my last hope. I 
 hardly allowed that it amounted to a hope 
 even. It was the remotest of chances ; 
 but just a chance still. Jessie is so young. 
 I fancied, perhaps, the luck would turn; 
 that something might possibly happen if 
 we could only wait." 
 
 Eleanor's expression hardened again per- 
 ceptibly. If he suffered, at least she 
 suffered too. 
 
 " Keally," he said, after a minute or two, 
 
LOVER AND MISTRESS. 295 
 
 "my position is a singularly graceful one, 
 now I come to think of it. I have been 
 cherishing a secret desire during the last 
 few months for nothing less than the death 
 of a woman I adored for years — a woman 
 who gave me all she had to give." Bertie 
 paused. " Now the news that she has 
 developed some fatal malady would give 
 me — well, not unmixed pain. Isn't that 
 charming ? ' ' 
 
 "You make yourself out far worse than 
 you are," she interrupted. 
 
 " No, I think not. I appear to be a very 
 despicable animal, and let me at least be 
 honest and admit it. The best thing 
 about me has been my faithfulness to the 
 memory of what was, in itself, a far from 
 pretty thing — Enderby, for instance, would 
 cover it by a very ugly word. But even 
 that last shred of honourable feeling has 
 worn iincoinmonly threadbare in the past 
 twelve months." 
 
 " Jessie would not make you happy," 
 said Eleanor, hoarsely. " I have watched 
 her from babyhood. There are strange 
 wants in her nature." 
 
296 COLONEL ENDERBY's WIFE. 
 
 "All! if I am to wait for a wife till I 
 find a faultless woman, I shall wait through 
 all eternity," he responded. " ' One man 
 among a thousand have I found; but a 
 woman among all those have I not found.' " 
 
 "Where did you get that abominable 
 sentiment from?" demanded Mrs. Pierce- 
 Dawnay. 
 
 " Out of that very acute book, the Bible, 
 cousin Nell. They are the words of a 
 person who is reputed to have had a pretty 
 wide experience of women. My French 
 novels, that you sometimes gird at, say 
 the same thing, only they put it in less 
 conventional language. I am as well aware 
 •of Jessie's peculiarities as you are ; but I 
 should understand her. I should never 
 ask of her what she could not give. I 
 should be contented with very little — from 
 Jessie." 
 
 "You would quarrel," she said bitterly. 
 
 " Yes," he answered, " it is a way 
 husbands and wives have. Everybody 
 knows that. Still, that knowledge has 
 never lowered the marriage returns very 
 sensibly yet, I believe." 
 
LOVER AND MISTRESS. 297 
 
 Eleanor flung herself back against the 
 sofa-cushions. " He loves her — he loves 
 her," she repeated to herself, and the words 
 stabbed her as she said them. 
 
 Mr. Ames got up ; he came across to 
 the sofa and sat down by his cousin. His 
 face was very pale still — it looked ghastly 
 with his black beard and great, sad, dark 
 eyes — but he had regained much of his 
 usual indolent manner. 
 
 " Come, let us talk over this matter 
 reasonably, Eleanor, without any heroics. 
 We both admit that Jessie has certain 
 peculiarities which may prove difficult to 
 deal with. A man will have to pay a 
 certain penalty for loving her." 
 
 a Colonel Enderby will love her too well 
 to be conscious of the penalty," she inter- 
 rupted. 
 
 "At first, yes. But remember he is 
 five-and-twenty years older than she is, at 
 least, and he has lived in an utterly different 
 world to hers. He will worship her, he will 
 be incapable of looking at her from a com- 
 mon-sense point of view — looking at her as 
 she really is. He will make her into an 
 
298 colonel enderby's wife. 
 
 idol. Some day something will happen 
 which makes a demand upon her. She will 
 fail him. He is a fine fellow, in a way, 
 though a stupid one. He will blame him- 
 self, and forgive her. It will happen a 
 second time. And then shall I tell you what 
 he will do ? He'll just quietly go and blow 
 his brains out. The man is incapable of 
 adjusting himself, he moves all of a piece. 
 He is a rigid English Puritan, you know r , 
 at bottom." 
 
 "You don't mean to insinuate anything 
 against Jessie ? " cried Mrs. Pierce-Dawnay, 
 her eyes blazing with a sudden burst of 
 jealousy for the girl's honour. 
 
 " Heaven forbid ! Jessie will never com- 
 mit any of those indiscretions that society 
 judges very harshly." 
 
 There was a silence : then Bertie Ames 
 bent towards his cousin and looked at her 
 very steadily. 
 
 " What are you going to do — let him go 
 away to-morrow ? " 
 
 She looked back at him with an ex- 
 pression of passionate anguish and despair 
 in her handsome face. 
 
LOVER AND MISTEESS. 299 
 
 " He must go if lie will. But I shall 
 make him distinctly understand my wishes 
 as to Jessie's future first." 
 
 Bertie placed his hand on Eleanor's two 
 hands as they laj r clasped in her lap. The 
 hot colour rushed into her face, she closed 
 her eyes with a swift shiver, which trembled 
 all through her frame. 
 
 " Nell," he said softly, "think a moment. 
 Are you quite determined? " 
 
 " Yes, yes," she cried wildly, shaking off 
 his hand. " Utterly determined ; irrevocably 
 determined. Jessie must go — she must go. 
 It must be done at once." 
 
 " Very well," he answered. 
 
 Then he got up slowly from the sofa. 
 
 "It is very late," he went on. " You 
 had better go to bed. Shall I get you a 
 candle ? " 
 
 "Bertie, Bertie," cried Mrs. Pierce-Daw- 
 nay in desperation, stretching out her 
 hands to him, "for God's sake, don't hate 
 me!" 
 
 "Oh! my dear, I don't hate you," he 
 replied wearily. " You have been wonder- 
 fully kind to me, and have borne with me 
 
'300 COLONEL ENDEKBY'S WIFE. 
 
 with a great deal of patience at times when 
 I must have been anything but pleasant 
 company. It would be detestably ungrate- 
 ful to hate you. No, I haven't fallen into 
 that depth yet. And perhaps you are right ; 
 perhaps it is all, as you say, for the best. 
 Only it is a little difficult for me to take 
 an optimist's view of the matter just at 
 present. I can't help thinking of myself 
 first, you know. It is a tendency inherent 
 in human nature ; we all have it in our 
 degree, saints and sinners alike." 
 
 He looked down on the ground, and 
 shrugged his shoulders in a lazy hopeless 
 sort of fashion. 
 
 " I think, sometimes, I am like a living 
 man bound to a corpse. It is not a graceful 
 metaphor, but it just expresses my sensa- 
 tions. Lately I have had an insane hope 
 of getting free from the corpse ; but I tied 
 the cords myself, and I tied them a little too 
 cleverly. I shall never get free — never. 
 That makes a man a trifle irritable at 
 times." He glanced up at her suddenly, 
 with a lifting of the eyebrows and a short 
 laugh, r" I and the corpse always," he said, 
 
LOVER AND MISTRESS. 301 
 
 u right on to the end — and then beyond, 
 probably blank darkness and nothing. 
 Delightful company, isn't it ? Cheering 
 prospect for a healthy man of three-and- 
 ihirty?" 
 
 There were noble impulses in Mrs. Pierce- 
 Dawnay. She had a movement of reckless 
 magnanimity. 
 
 " Your sense of honour is overstrained,'' 
 she said, and as she spoke no thought of 
 self was present to her mind. "It is false. 
 Go away, Bertie ; go away out of this beauti- 
 ful baleful country, which bewitches and 
 perverts us all — go away and begin over 
 again." 
 
 She had risen to her feet. She looked 
 almost majestic in her dark stormy beauty, 
 standing there in front of him. 
 
 In how far the young man had realized 
 the nature of her feelings towards himself, 
 I cannot say. That he had a suspicion of 
 them is pretty certain ; for it is impossible 
 that a woman should love a man deeply 
 without betraying herself to him in a 
 thousand little ways. But Bertie Ames 
 was not without gracious and respectful 
 
302 COLONEL EXDERBY's WIFE. 
 
 sentiments towards certain persons, notwith- 
 standing his cynicism, real or affected. He 
 had avoided examining his cousin's feelings 
 on that special point very discreetly and 
 modestly. At this moment, however, he 
 was guilty of an act of cruelty ; hut then, in 
 extenuation of that act, it must he allowed, 
 poor fellow, that he w^as very sore at heart. 
 To Eleanor's magnanimous outburst, he 
 answered, smiling — 
 
 " That is all very well, but I am not fond 
 of solitary journeys. A new heaven and 
 earth seem to demand an Eve as well as an 
 Adam. Who shall go forth with me ? — 
 Jessie?" 
 
 Eleanor shrank back as if he had struck 
 her. The glow of generous enthusiasm 
 died out of her face, leaving it thin and 
 haggard. She had to steady herself with 
 her hands on the arm of the sofa. 
 
 " I beg your pardon," he resumed hastily, 
 filled with sudden compunction. " I forgot 
 myself; I oughtn't to have said that. But 
 don't, for heaven's sake, turn devil's 
 advocate and tempt me. You know just 
 as well as I do that that sense of honour — 
 
LOVEK AND MISTRESS. 303 
 
 call it false and overstrained if you will — is 
 the one thing that keeps me from going 
 utterly to the bad, and gives me some kind 
 of self-respect. Without it I should be 
 worth nothing at all; I am worth little 
 enough as it is. I may be superstitious ; 
 but I don't much fancy any fresh start 
 would be very successful which began with 
 the throwing of that poor old rag of honour 
 overboard." 
 
 Eleanor was silent. Bertie went across 
 the room, lighted one of the chamber 
 candles standing on the consol-table by the 
 door, and brought it to her. Small every- 
 day needs must be supplied, and small 
 civilities complied w T ith, even when poor 
 human hearts are torn and bleeding. The 
 outward decencies of civilization take no 
 note of the more intimate emotions. 
 
 As Mr. Ames gave his cousin her candle, 
 and the light of it fell upon her face, he was 
 moved with compassion towards her. 
 
 •''You look terribly tired, Eleanor," he 
 said kindly. 
 
 His friendly solicitude was, perhaps, 
 even harder to bear than his indifference. 
 
30-i COLONEL ENDEKBY's WIFE. 
 
 Eleanor felt ill; she was chilled through, 
 though the night was warm. She, too, was 
 bound, she feared — bound hard and fast and 
 everlastingly to the corpse of a dead love. 
 
 "Yes, I am tired," she answered hope- 
 lessly—" tired of my life." 
 
 Bertie smiled at her kindly again, and 
 raised his hands with a deprecating gesture. 
 
 " So am I, cousin Nell," he said, " abomi- 
 nably tired of it. But you and I are culti- 
 vated persons, so we won't take any violent 
 measures to rid ourselves of that fatiguing 
 possession, will we ? In , face of the blank 
 darkness I alluded to just now, it might be 
 a mistake. We'll leave all such desperate 
 doings to highly respectable barbarians, like 
 our friend the worthy Colonel. Good night. 
 Mind you don't slip on the landing; — the 
 floor is just like ice there, outside." 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 PRINTED EY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES. 
 
 
 
 MIT I'D,