OF THE 
 UNIVERSITY 
 OF ILLINOIS 
 
 Tom Turner Collection 
 
 \9i08 
 
PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
THE WORKS OF 
 RICHARD LE GALLIENNE 
 
 PROSE FANCIES. First Series. With Portrait of the 
 Author by Wilson Steer. Crown 8vo. Sixth Edition, 
 
 PROSE FANCIES. Second Series. Crown 8vo. Second 
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 THE BOOK BILLS OF NARCISSUS : an Account ten- 
 dered by Richard Le Gallienne. With a Frontispiece. 
 Crown 8vo. Third Edition, 
 
 ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON, an Elegv, and other 
 Poems, mainly Personal. Crown 8vo. 
 
 ENGLISH POEMS. Crown 8vo. Fourth Edition, revised, 
 
 GEORGE MEREDITH: Some Characteristics. With a 
 Bibliography (much enlarged) by John Lane. Portrait, 
 etc. Crown 8vo. Fifth Edition, revised, 
 
 THE RELIGION OF A LITERARY MAN. Crown 8vo. 
 Fifth Thousand. 
 
 RETROSPECTIVE REVIEWS : a Literary Log, 1891— 
 1895. 2 vols. Crown 8vo. 
 
 THE QUEST OF THK GOLDEN GIRL : a Romance. 
 Crown 8vo. Fifteenth Edition, 
 
 THE ROMANCE OF ZION CHAPEL. Crown 8vo. 
 Second Edition. 
 
 THE WORSHIPPER OF THE IMAGE : a Tragic Fairy 
 Tale. Crown 8vo. 
 
 RUDYARD KIPLING : a Criticism. With a Bibliography 
 by John Lane. Crown 8vo. 
 
 SLEEPING BEAUTY, and other Prose Fancies. 
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 TRAVELS IN ENGLAND. With Six Illustrations by 
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 RUBAIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM : a Paraphrase from 
 several Literal Translations. Crown 8vo. Fourth 
 Edition. 
 
 AN OLD COUNTRY HOUSE. 
 
PAINTED 
 SHADOWS 
 
 BY 
 
 RICHARD LE GALLIENNE 
 
 JOHN LANE: THE BODLEY HEAD 
 VIGO STREET, LONDON, W. MCMVIH. 
 
Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 THE YOUTH OF LADY CONSTANTIA 
 THE SHADOW OF THE ROSE 
 cl-i POET, TAKE THY LUTE ! . 
 
 THE WANDERING HOME .... 
 THE FIRST CHURCH OF THE RESTORATION, AMERICAN 
 BEAUTY'S PORTMANTEAU .... 
 OLD SILVER ..... 
 FRAGOLETTA ..... 
 THE WOMAN IN POSSESSION 
 
 DEAR DEAD WOMAN .... 
 THE HOUSEHOLD GODS .... 
 THE TWO GHOSTS ..... 
 
PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
THE YOUTH OF LADY 
 CONSTANTIA 
 
THE YOUTH OF LADY 
 CONSTANTIA 
 
 LADY CONSTANTIA sat looking out at 
 the summer morning from the windows of 
 her little book-filled bower. The morning was 
 terribly bright and dewy — and O the bloom and 
 the abundance of the world ! The cruel exuber- 
 ance of crowding leaves, the indolent magnificence 
 of the rose ! How fresh, how strong, how brimming 
 with sap and fire and the urgent joy and glory of 
 the young year ! 
 
 Terrible — cruel — yes ! for there was that in all 
 this sun-filled cup of fragrant life that almost broke 
 her heart, and brought her head down upon the 
 sill of the open window, and shook with sobs her 
 beautiful shoulders. Her fine hair, still thick and 
 still gold, lay framed in the window, a soft treasure 
 of silken light, and the climbing yellow roses filled 
 it with their scent and their dew. 
 
 Presently she roused herself with an impatient 
 gesture, and raising her face, glittering with tears, 
 looked out defiantly on the young, young world. 
 
 3 
 
4 
 
 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 'O my God/ she exclaimed, striking her clenched 
 hand on the window ledge, * how cruel, how unjust 
 it is!' 
 
 Something was on the point of passing away 
 from Lady Constantia for which all her wealth, all 
 her social distinction and popularity, all the fair 
 luxury of her existence, were no compensation. 
 In that old battle of Beauty against Time, at last, 
 at last, after a fight and a succession of victories 
 rarely paralleled in the annals of fair women, she 
 was on the point of losing. As yet no one knew 
 of it but herself. Her maid indeed hardly sus- 
 pected it — for Mariette had as proud a faith in 
 her mistress's beauty as a squire in the valour of 
 his knight. And surely that was a triumph ; for, 
 hard as it may be for a man to be a hero to his 
 valet, the difficulty is nothing in comparison with 
 being a beauty to one's maid. Indeed, Lady Con- 
 stantia Greville's perennial youth had for years 
 been one of the seven wonders of the fashionable 
 world. Of course, every one knew that she had 
 recently become a grandmother — O the ingrati- 
 tude of one's daughters ! — but, looking at her, one 
 felt that, if indeed it was a matter of genealogical 
 statistics, it was not, seriously speaking, a matter 
 of fact. It reflected rather on the precocity of the 
 daughter than upon the age of the mother. One 
 of the many disadvantages of belonging to the 
 
THE YOUTH OF LADY CONSTANTIA 5 
 
 upper classes is the fact that your age cannot be 
 kept a secret. The day of your birth is entered in 
 the stud-book of Burke for all eyes to read, though 
 one has heard of large sums having been offered 
 for merciful misprints. Every one knew that Lady 
 Constantia Greville was forty-five, though no one 
 looking at her could possibly believe it. Without 
 the evidence of Burke and a grandson, no one 
 would have dreamed of giving her more than 
 twenty-nine. And, so long as she still possessed 
 the reality of youth. Lady Constantia was sensible 
 enough to care nothing for the merely arbitrary 
 registration of her years. But at last the reality 
 was to be hers no more. The silken skin was on 
 the point of failing her, and the clear girl's eyes 
 were soon to grow a little dim. 
 
 The glory of her glorious womanhood was 
 standing on the last-lighted frontier of the shadow. 
 Even yet it was summer with her — but a step and 
 it would be the autumn woods, the brilliant autumn 
 tints! Her heart sank, sank, as she thought of it. 
 The long autumn, and then — *the winter sun- 
 shine.' She who had so long been splendid spring 
 and triumphant summer — to be complimented on 
 the charm and grace of her passing away: the 
 autumn landscape of a beautiful woman, the gentle 
 loveliness of the dying year ! In such phrases her 
 own wit mocked at her own despair. The autumn 
 
6 
 
 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 tints ! O ghastly thought — was she to be com- 
 pelled at last — she whose beauty had been the very 
 health of flowers, the sweet blood of wholesome 
 strength and country air and fragrant sleep — was 
 she to give herself at last into the hands of the 
 embalmers : the embalmers of beauty, with their 
 horrible unguents and spices and all the foul skill 
 which keeps the dead alive, become the painted 
 phantom of herself, and be the astonishing copy of 
 her own girlhood ? 
 
 Her whole nature revolted at the thought. And 
 yet — the alternative : * to grow old gracefully,' to be 
 one's daughter's only rival, some day to be called 
 
 * sixty years — young ' — ugh ! — to hear that youth 
 is a matter of temperament and that years don't 
 count, to be heartily assured that one looks younger 
 than ever : O God, lace caps and silver hair, and 
 
 * Ah ! you will never be as beautiful as your mother 
 was at your age.' O God ! God ! God ! 
 
 And Lady Constantia nearly bruised her hand 
 with the force with which she emphasised that 
 tragic rebellion with which sooner or later a beauti- 
 ful woman must face the stern fact that she is soon 
 — to cease to be a woman. Grandmothers are 
 angels — they are not women. Constantia had 
 been so superbly, so laughingly a woman, and she 
 was as yet conscious of no essential failure in her 
 bountiful womanhood. Her health was still bound- 
 
THE YOUTH OF LADY CONSTANTIA 7 
 
 ing as a child's, and her figure was literally that of 
 a girl. No one as yet, I said, saw what was coming. 
 But she had looked in her mirror that morning and 
 seen — no, it was nothing so obvious as a wrinkle, 
 or any superficial failure of her skin. It was rather 
 a fleeting weariness of tint, a slight deadness or 
 opacity of tone, as if some interior light which 
 illumined the beautiful ivory lamp of the lily was 
 sinking at its centre. It was not, after all, the 
 beautiful skin itself that was failing her, but some 
 mysterious radiance that was retreating from the 
 surface. It was not a matter for the dermatologist. 
 No physical arts were going to avail her. Could 
 it be merely the settling down of the fires of life ? 
 Once they were all fairy flame in the cheek, but 
 henceforward they were to burn with a steady, un- 
 radiating glow. O God — could it be because she 
 was forty-five ! 
 
 Forty-five ! . . . yet, after all, as she looked 
 round her shelves and was reminded of the beau- 
 tiful women of antiquity who had so romantically 
 defied time that they had hardly begun to love at 
 forty-five, she took heart. 
 
 After all, there was somewhere in the world the 
 secret of imperishability — if only one could find 
 it. These roses at her window need never fade — 
 if only one knew that secret. Ah ! where was 
 it hidden? In what fairy cave, in what dread 
 
8 
 
 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 inaccessible mountains of the moon, guarded by 
 dragons and gryphons and one-eyed giants, did 
 the simple crystal of the immortal spring bubble 
 up like diamond out of the earth ? 
 
 She turned over her old folios, with pages yellow 
 as daffodils, and she read how a certain beautiful 
 lady of Crete had prolonged her youth till the age 
 of a hundred and seventy-three by living on nothing 
 but daisy roots, and how another beautiful lady of 
 Mitylene had lived even longer by drinking only 
 the water of a certain well, and eating nothing but 
 the livers of serpents; she read of still another 
 beautiful lady who suddenly, when she was fifty 
 years old, had by chance gathered a certain wild- 
 flower, and pressing it to her nostrils had been so 
 marvellously refreshed by its fragrance that, when 
 she ceased from smelling it, she had suddenly be- 
 come a young girl. She read how a Princess of 
 Mesopotamia had retained her beauty till she was 
 past ninety by bathing each morning in the milk 
 of unicorns, and had suddenly grown old and died 
 because no reward she could offer could procure for 
 her another pint of unicorn's milk in the wide world. 
 
 She read that the complexion was much bene- 
 fited by one's listening to the lark as it rose from 
 its nest in the dawn, and that the contemplation of 
 certain stars, particularly in certain months of the 
 year, gave the eyes a marvellous brightness. 
 
THE YOUTH OF LADY CONSTANTIA 9 
 
 The juice of blackberries applied under certain 
 aspects of the moon made the feet small, and 
 much handling of lilies made the fingers white 
 and tapering ; and to hear the first nightingale of 
 the year break its shell had a wonderful effect upon 
 the voice. 
 
 They were absurd old books, of course, Con- 
 stantia said ; and yet — what if there should be 
 some method in all their picturesque madness ? 
 The most potent science of the modern world was 
 but a fulfilment of these magnificently nonsensical 
 dreams of astrologers and alchemists and herb- 
 alists. Science indeed had long since ceased to 
 be common-sense, and entered the realms of the 
 supernatural. With wireless telegraphy a mere 
 matter of business — so reliable a mode of com- 
 munication that lovers can sigh instantaneously to 
 each other around the globe ; with witchcraft, other- 
 wise hypnotism, one of the recognised methods of 
 medicine ; with surgery an opium-eater's dream, 
 and a dangerous operation a dolce far niente way 
 of spending a fortnight — surely the elixir of life 
 became a long-expected, stupidly delayed common- 
 place of science. 
 
 Her beauty had already been prolonged so re- 
 markably beyond the common span of beautiful 
 faces that its endurance alone was almost enough 
 to suggest to her that she was one of those in 
 
lo PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 secret, if unconscious, communication with those 
 immortal forces that keep the world young for 
 ever. If there were forces that could indolently 
 furnish the meadows with their freshness, spring 
 after spring, and with a mere turn of the hand fill 
 the sky with stars and the singing of birds, surely 
 forces that could do so much could do the little 
 thing Constantia asked, arrest those merely parochial 
 activities of decay threatening her beauty — as some 
 citizen maggot dares to take possession of the 
 chateau of the rose — and lay an authoritative finger 
 even upon death. 
 
 Thus the miracle of her beauty set Lady Con- 
 stantia pondering on possible miracles of its preserv- 
 ation, and she read and listened and watched here 
 and there, and paid heed even to the advertise- 
 ments of those quacks who batten, as we have just 
 said, on the decay of the rose. That it was a 
 weakness in her she would have been the first to 
 acknowledge — with shame; but this weakness at 
 least she never stooped to : she never gave herself 
 into the hands of the embalmers. She permitted 
 no artists of the surface to approach her face. 
 Her beauty was, so to say, merely the registration 
 of some central sweetness and health and wonder 
 in the world. If her face was lovely, it was be- 
 cause it was fed by deep artesian wells of beauty, 
 brimming down in the silence and the strength 
 
THE YOUTH OF LADY CONSTANTIA ii 
 
 and the sweetness at the heart of the world. If the 
 beauty-making root was dead, would she — could 
 she — be so cheaply dishonest as to furbish up the 
 dying flower ? 
 
 Her beauty was too strong for that. Her beauty 
 had been a reality too long for her to care to turn 
 its decay into an imposture. 
 
 No ! — but if ... if only the root of the rose 
 might be miraculously quickened so that the slim 
 stems grew soft with their very strength of sun and 
 dew, and put out from their sides little green wings, 
 from sheer might of their freshness. . . . 
 
 If only some power profoundly vital as a field 
 of corn would only lay its hand upon the root of 
 the rose that was Constantia Greville! And the 
 mere fact of her long-enduring beauty, as I have 
 said, made her confident that such hidden powers 
 must be. 
 
 It was this mood of a mind in no way super- 
 stitious or hysterical that caused her to pay atten- 
 tion to the stories that came to her, on she could 
 hardly say what wings of hearsay, about a certain 
 Dr. Sibley, whom everybody laughed at, and, so 
 far as she knew, no one patronised, who claimed 
 to have discovered some of the secrets of youth. 
 Dr. Sibley appeared to despise the methods of the 
 charlatan ; at all events, he made no use of them, 
 and his name had chanced to get into the papers 
 
12 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 as accidentally as if he had merely set a bone with 
 unaccustomed skill. 
 
 There was, however, that indefinably informing 
 quality in the rumour that made Lady Greville 
 determined to visit him in some sooty address off 
 the Edgware Road. Much as her beauty was 
 to others, it was far more to herself, and there 
 was nothing she would not do, however silly it 
 might seem to the world, to keep it alive — that 
 is, really alive. 
 
 At last she found herself in the horrible little 
 respectable street off the Edgware Road. She 
 had dressed herself in her plainest clothes, and 
 had ridden in an omnibus, to avoid the chance of 
 recognition. Shrinking with shame, she at length 
 came to the dim but not obtrusively sordid door. 
 With a gasp she rang the bell ; and next she 
 was seated in a sepulchral front parlour, dingily 
 neat — mahogany, a marble mantelpiece, and a 
 black marble clock ticking solemnly as if it were 
 keeping time in a tomb. A room less suggestive 
 of 'occult' mysteries could hardly have been con- 
 ceived. Poor Lady Constantia had half expected 
 crocodiles suspended from the ceiling, snakes in 
 bottles, and bundles of dried herbs, and Dr. Sibley 
 she had figured, half laughingly to herself, as 
 a preposterous quack wearing a dressing-gown 
 embroidered with the signs of the Zodiac. 
 
THE YOUTH OF LADY CONSTANTIA 13 
 
 But as the room agreeably surprised her, so 
 did the doctor. He was a short, business-like 
 man, with a rather red nose and a Welsh accent. 
 His clothes and manner were both good, and 
 Lady Constantia, with an inward sigh of thanks- 
 giving, saw that she had to deal with something 
 like a gentleman. 
 
 He received her as any other doctor might have 
 done, and tactfully helped her out with her first 
 preliminary explanation. After what she had ex- 
 pected, he was most attractively taciturn. Neither 
 did he launch out into a flood of charlatan ex- 
 position, nor, on the other hand, did he laboriously 
 explain that he was no quack. He said nothing 
 whatever about psychic phenomena or astral planes. 
 In fact, beyond a few of the usual medical 
 commonplaces, he said hardly anything at all. 
 He asked Lady Constantia a few questions such 
 as he might have asked if she had sought his 
 advice for some customary ill of the body : Were 
 her father and mother living? How many children 
 was she the mother of? Appetite? Exercise? 
 Sleep well ? — and so on. 
 
 Then he looked at her quietly for a while, 
 pondering. Suddenly he said, as simply as though 
 he had been prescribing iron and quinine — 
 
 ' Yes ! I can make you young again. . . 
 
 Lady Constantia began to murmur her thanks. 
 
14 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 ' Wait a moment/ he went on ; * I can make you 
 young again, as young as you were at twenty-five 
 . . . for ten years. , . / 
 
 Lady Constantia gasped. 
 
 * Listen . . . for ten years . . . but^ and now 
 listen again, at the end of that time, on the very 
 last hour of the ten years, you will suddenly be- 
 come absolutely old, older than you could ever 
 have become in the ordinary course of events. 
 From twenty-five you will shrink to eighty in a 
 moment. It is for you to consider whether you 
 will grow gradually towards fifty-five or whethef 
 you will choose to be twenty-five years old for ten 
 more years and then suddenly be eighty. If I 
 were you, madam,' added the doctor, from whom 
 Lady Constantia had concealed her rank, * I would 
 remain as you are. Even when you are fifty-five 
 you will look very little older than you do now.' 
 
 Lady Constantia thought a long while. Presently 
 she turned to the doctor. 
 
 * May I ask about your methods ? ' 
 
 * I have no methods.' 
 
 * No methods ! ' 
 
 ' None that you will know of.' 
 
 * I don't understand.' 
 
 ' I mean that, if you agree to employ my ser- 
 vices, you and I need never meet again. In a 
 month's time from now your beauty will have come 
 
THE YOUTH OF LADY CONSTANTIA 15 
 
 back to you ; in a month's time you will be a girl 
 again.' 
 
 ' But how do I know that this is true ? ' 
 
 * I can give no guarantees beyond my promise.' 
 ' And your fee? ' 
 
 * One thousand pounds a year — till the end of 
 the ten years.' 
 
 Lady Constantia laughed scornfully, but the 
 doctor's manner was so quiet and simple that she 
 was convinced in spite of herself. After all, what 
 were ten thousand pounds in exchange for ten 
 years of her lost beauty ; and if the doctor was a 
 quack, well — she was rich. So presently she 
 turned again to the doctor. 
 
 * I agree,' she said. 
 
 * But remember ! ' said he, * the ten years will 
 end . . . and what then ? ' 
 
 ' I will pay that price, too,' said Lady Constantia. 
 Then she added, * Shall I pay you now?' 
 
 * Yes ! please,' said the doctor, as quietly as 
 though he had said, ' A guinea, please.' 
 
 And Lady Constantia, who had come armed 
 for some such contingency, paid him out ten 
 hundred-pound notes. The doctor made out a 
 formal receipt, and as he handed it to her, added : 
 * A month from to-day ! Thank you. Good 
 afternoon.' 
 
 And Lady Constantia was once more in the dim 
 
i6 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 little street. She turned a moment to look at the 
 insignificant house. Could it be true ? Surely she 
 must have been dreaming ! 
 
 At the beginning of the ninth year Lady Con- 
 stantia found herself face to face with a terrible 
 ordeal, a tragic temptation that had never entered 
 into her plan of life. Hers had always been a 
 strange heart, a kind heart and an affectionate, but 
 it had always seemed incapable of a real passion. 
 She had loved her husband in a sisterly way, and 
 his death had caused her genuine regret ; but 
 neither he nor she had ever mistaken their marriage 
 for a romance. 
 
 Suddenly, however, at the age of fifty-four she 
 was to be stricken by the veritable arrow tipped 
 with honey and tears, the true and terrible love of 
 the poets. 
 
 Adjoining her country home, a certain beautiful 
 young man had recently come into his lordship. 
 He was still a mere boy, scarcely twenty-two, and 
 of a singular grace of nature ; manly indeed, and 
 yet dreamy ; already a soldier browned with the 
 sun that shines on English battles in far un-English 
 lands, but, as with a soldier-poet ancestor of his, 
 his eyes were somewhat subject to the influence 
 of the stars. 
 
 Lady Constantia had known him as a mere baby. 
 
THE YOUTH OF LADY CONSTANTIA 17 
 
 — for was he not ten years younger than her own 
 daughter, who had long since come to look older 
 than her supernatural mother ? — and he had grown 
 up in full possession of the legend of Lady Con- 
 stantia's eternal youth; and, when he was old 
 enough to think of such matters, the poet in him 
 had been fascinated by its romance. It had sent 
 him dreaming of Helen of Troy, of Iseult, of Cleo- 
 patra, and, often as he looked at her, while yet a 
 bookish dream-filled boy, he had wondered if she 
 would be young still when he had grown up, so 
 young that she would not laugh at him — if he 
 should still love her. And, year by year, Mortimer 
 Fanton had grown more and more to be a man ; 
 he had, it might almost have seemed, raced to be 
 a man — that he might catch up to Lady Con- 
 stantia before she ceased to be a girl. And, year 
 by year, there was no change in that unfading face. 
 Year by year the clock struck the hour for the 
 beauties of this and that season in bitter rotation, 
 but the beauty of Constantia Greville laughed at 
 all the clocks of time. 
 
 By the time that Constantia Greville was fifty- 
 four Mortimer Fanton had qualified to look her 
 slightly elder brother — a boy still, but quite old 
 and tanned enough, and with a moustache firmly 
 enough established, to play the protecting member 
 of the family, if need be. Seeing the two together, 
 
 B 
 
i8 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 unprejudiced by previous information, you would 
 have thought it the most natural thing in the world 
 that two such beautiful young people should fall in 
 love with each other. For whatever the miraculous 
 art may have been which had given Lady Con- 
 stantia her youth, it was, at all events, an art that 
 concealed itself. There was no smallest suggestion 
 of the tour de force ; and her youth was so real and 
 fresh that to say she was fifty- four seemed as silly 
 as saying the like of a newly-opened flower. All 
 her technical 'age' proved was the slander of 
 chronology. 
 
 And the older she grew — in Burke, but nowhere 
 else — the more Mortimer Fanton loved her. He 
 loved her first, because she was the most beautiful 
 woman he had ever seen, and next because she 
 appealed to that romantic sense in him, which, as 
 a rule, English girls but imperfectly satisfy. Her 
 beauty, like that of the beautiful ladies df old time, 
 was already touched with the romance of immor- 
 tality. She was to him like one of Villon's * dead 
 ladies' whom it had been his strange fortune to 
 meet in a meadow of Paradise. Pier age, so called, 
 had not made her old, but only immortal. When 
 sometimes he caught sight of her at a distance 
 walking in her park, he said to himself: * To think 
 that I have seen Queen Mary ! ' 
 
 Though the dawn still bloomed in her cheek, 
 
THE YOUTH OF LADY CONSTANTIA 19 
 
 over her head there hung already the crescent moon 
 of legend. Should he meet Queen Guinevere in 
 a green glade some morning, would he give a 
 thought to her age? Would he not rather love 
 her the more because she was still a wild rose after 
 a thousand years ? 
 
 All men think they love beauty, and their matri- 
 monial failures usually represent youthful aesthetic 
 ideals which they have outgrown. Their wives 
 too often are like pictures by popular artists which 
 appealed to them as boys, and which in a rash 
 moment of inexperienced admiration they hung 
 upon their walls — pictures which they haven't the 
 heart or the opportunity to take down. 
 
 But Mortimer Fanton really loved beauty. As 
 a boy, reading his dreamy books, he had thought 
 of woman as the beautiful princess riding on a 
 white palfrey in the middle of the dark wood 
 of the world, so beautiful that a man would will- 
 ingly die to look once at her face and kiss her 
 hand ; but beautiful, always beautiful, and nothing 
 more — what more could there be ? He had never 
 stopped to think how she would talk, what she 
 would say or do, when she stepped down from her 
 palfrey, and her women met her at the iron door 
 of the castle on the edge of the forest. To him 
 she was a white flower journeying upon a white 
 palfrey; she was woman, the white flower of the 
 
20 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 world ; and he dreamed of a man as a being 
 worthy to win and strong to guard that white 
 flower. 
 
 If you see a lady riding through the woods, 
 like a holy candle borne with a great hush of 
 holiness down the glades, how long do you wait 
 till you offer her your heart and your lance and 
 your life? Do you wonder: How, and How, and 
 How? Do you wonder anything at all, except: 
 O God, is it possible she will take me for her 
 servant? Is it possible that some day she will 
 give me the deeps of her eyes ? 
 
 Other men may ask more — oh, surely let us say 
 less than this — but Mortimer Fanton . . . well, he 
 knew of nothing more to ask. When he was still 
 a child he had seen the most beautiful lady in 
 the world ; he had been told she lived only a few 
 meadows away — he measured the distance by acres 
 of cowslips ; he had played truant that he might 
 be hidden in the fern to catch a glimpse of her 
 face passing like a dove through the trees ; and 
 now that he had become a man, and had been 
 here and there and used his eyes about the world, 
 that face of his boyhood was still the only face 
 among women for him. Still he would watch her 
 face going up the wood like a spray of hawthorn 
 carried in the hand, still her beauty was to him 
 the supreme prize of all the prizes of the world. 
 
THE YOUTH OF LADY CONSTANTIA 21 
 
 And the day came when he dared to tell her of 
 all this, and when she hardly dared to listen. 
 
 To her his love was more wonderful and more 
 to be desired than he, or any one but a woman, 
 could dream of. She was an old, old woman, and 
 here was a boy bringing her so beautiful a love. 
 How few out of all the women of time had been 
 made such an offering! And the victory was the 
 more real because she knew that Mortimer's love 
 for her was not founded on a mere fancy. The 
 beauty he worshipped, she said proudly to herself, 
 as she looked in her mirror, was real beauty. 
 Though its time was growing so short, though it 
 had endured so many years, it was still the un- 
 tricked beauty of a girl. It was by no cheap 
 illusions of the boudoir that she had won Mortimer's 
 love. He might kiss her cheek, but he would 
 only kiss it a deeper pink, and there was nothing 
 of all her beauty that could do other than welcome 
 the challenge of his eyes. 
 
 Yes ! for the wonderful love he was giving her — 
 she would be giving him in exchange no counterfeit. 
 She could give in exchange a woman no less 
 beautiful than his love. She, a woman of fifty- 
 four, dare draw herself up and say: *Am I 
 not beautiful, am I not as young as any girl?' 
 Ah, the beauty; but ah, the terror of the 
 temptation ! 
 
22 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 Dare she tell him that this beauty had scarcely 
 two years to live? . . , and then she covered her 
 lovely face with her hands. Would he love her 
 still ... if he knew? Would he pay half the 
 terrible price of the beauty he loved ? How could 
 she run the fearful hazard of confession ? . . . 
 
 For days she had been pondering it all. Of 
 course, when he had spoken, she had put his love 
 away, gently, laughingly, motherly . , . but he had 
 not missed a certain wild something in her eyes 
 which he could not know for gratitude, and he had 
 not altogether despaired. 
 
 By chance one morning he met her near a grove 
 of hawthorn just then in fragrant flower. Her eyes 
 were so full of the dream of him at the moment 
 that she could not help his seeing ; and he dared to 
 take her hand and beg her to sit down awhile and 
 let him look in her face. 
 
 She sat down, like any country maid, in the thick 
 grass, and he held her hand gently, and looked at 
 her, as if her face was a vision that would only last 
 so long as he kept his eyes upon it. 
 
 ' Well ? ' he said after a while. 
 
 * Mortimer, it cannot be.' 
 
 There was silence again for a moment. 
 
 * But it shall be,' said Mortimer, guiding his 
 speech by the lovely star-chart of her face. * It 
 shall be.' 
 
THE YOUTH OF LADY CONSTANTIA 23 
 
 * Listen/ said Constantia ; ' suppose my beauty 
 were suddenly to perish — suppose it should happen 
 that in a year, say two years' time, I should suddenly 
 wrinkle up, and all my years fall upon me in a 
 moment, like a shower of ashes? . . / 
 
 Mortimer laughed sceptically. 
 
 * Yes ! but suppose . . . And listen ... for all 
 my strange youth, I am an old woman. Even 
 though my beauty should last, in a very few more 
 years I must die. You are still a boy. When you 
 are thirty, Mortimer, it may well be time for me 
 to die. . . : 
 
 I love you,' said Mortimer for answer. 
 
 * Yes ! But would you love me if you knew that 
 in two years I should look really old ... or 
 Mortimer, would you love me if you knew that in 
 two years I have to die ? . . 
 
 * I love you — there can be no conditions. Any 
 one we love might die . . . would two years seem 
 too short a time to be married to you — Con- 
 stantia? . . 
 
 For the first time he dared to say her name. 
 
 * If I say that I know — know as I know a date 
 in the almanac — seriously know — that in two 
 years I must die, do you still wish me to be your 
 wife? . . 
 
 ' How can you ask me — even supposing all that 
 you say is anything but dreams ? . . ' 
 
24 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 'But tell me . . . you would not think I had 
 cheated you if I slipped away and died — you would 
 not think that I had not played fair . . 
 
 So Constantia had already determined to quiet 
 her conscience by a desperate resolve, and with the 
 two years of her beauty that were left to her buy 
 the only love she had ever known ; and, like any 
 other lover, Mortimer was bent on taking the always 
 mysterious risks of love. 
 
 The two years were growing terribly near to 
 their close. But a few weeks of her beauty re- 
 mained, and then she must either keep her promise 
 to herself and die while she was still young to look 
 upon, or be hideously revealed to her husband in 
 all her withered years. Her heart stood still with 
 terror at the thought. Oh, was there no other way ! 
 The love Mortimer had given her, precious as it 
 had seemed in its first giving, had grown still more 
 precious with time — more devoted, more gentle, 
 day by day. Her heart ached to see how he loved 
 her, and often she tried to quiet her conscience by 
 reminding him of what she had said the day she 
 had promised to be his wife. The time was draw- 
 ing near, she would tell him again and again, when 
 she must go away from him — when she must die. 
 But his only answer was to smile tenderly at her, 
 and take her glorious face in his hands, and kiss 
 
THE YOUTH OF LADY CONSTANTIA 25 
 
 her eyelids, soft and full and silken as the petals 
 of a rose. 
 
 ' No,' he laughed, ' it is you that will soon have 
 a queasy old fellow on your hands, to humour and 
 nurse and put up with — and perhaps, who knows, 
 some dashing young person will be coming along 
 and stealing your love from the tiresome nono- 
 genarian in the chimney corner? I found a grey 
 hair this morning — think of that ! But this dear 
 hair — ah, how thick, and golden it is . . 
 
 * Don't jest, oh, don't jest, Mortimer/ Constantia 
 cried, cowering into his arms. * It is more serious 
 than you know. I told you two years ago that it 
 must come, and I know now it is coming ; I hear 
 it coming nearer, moment by moment . . 
 
 *Well, love,' he said, petting her soothingly, as 
 one soothes a child, *if it comes, we shall meet it 
 together, shall we not? I will be by your side, 
 dear. I must be always there. I could not live 
 without you, Constantia . . .' 
 
 ' No, no,' Constantia exclaimed in horror, taking 
 her face away from him and covering it with her 
 hands. ' No, no ! I must face it alone — all alone, 
 Mortimer . . .' 
 
 ^ That will be selfish of you, dear, if you do . . . 
 But come, let us go for a ride, and blow away these 
 dark thoughts. I love you so, my Constantia. 
 Don't you understand how I love you ? ' 
 
26 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 He meant that nothing could happen that could 
 change his love for her — no ! not even if her beauty 
 were suddenly to die. 
 
 As the days went one by one, striking, as it 
 seemed to Constantia, some dark gong in the 
 sky, she more and more beat herself like some 
 beautiful bird against the cage of her destiny. 
 Oh ! was there no other way ? Oh ! was there no 
 other way ? 
 
 Surely the strange man who had done so much 
 for her could do still more. She would go to 
 him and offer him — oh! half her fortune — any- 
 thing — for just a few more years, five years — 
 — one year even — oh ! even a few more precious 
 days. 
 
 So, one afternoon, she found herself again in 
 the dingy omnibus, once more she was in the 
 dingy street, once more she had nervously rung 
 the bell of the dingy little house, and sat hearing 
 the same clock ticking the minutes to the same 
 furniture. 
 
 And when the doctor at length entered the 
 room he seemed as unchanged as all the rest. 
 She had not seen him all the years since her 
 last visit. The punctual transmission of his fee, 
 each unchanging year, had been their only com- 
 munication. 
 
THE YOUTH OF LADY CONSTANTIA 27 
 
 He received her in the same quiet way, with 
 the same superb, yet unostentatious, imperturb- 
 ability. His manner had the simplicity of a great 
 scientist, master of some secret of nature, to you 
 so mysterious, but to him a comparative common- 
 place of his laboratory. He manifested as little 
 surprise or self-gratulation over the wonderful girl- 
 hood which entered his room — though Lady Con- 
 stantia looked fully twenty years younger than 
 when he had last seen her — as any other doctor 
 when his treatment has turned out as he expected. 
 It was his business to make people young — what 
 would you ? 
 
 Of course, he knew what Lady Constantia had 
 come to ask of him. It was inevitable that she 
 should come thus, and implore him to work the 
 miracle over again. His patients invariably came 
 back to him near the end in this way, and he 
 had been half expecting Lady Constantia for 
 several days. Therefore, once more he helped 
 her out with her broken-hearted explanation of 
 her visit, and endeavoured to tranquillise the wild- 
 ness of her appeal ; waving aside the sensational 
 rewards she offered him, as though they did not 
 concern a man of science, such as, after all, it 
 is undeniable that he had proved himself. 
 
 He said nothing to the point for some time, 
 and was evidently pondering far more deeply than 
 
28 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 he had pondered on her first visit. Poor Con- 
 stantia wistfully watched his face, snatching a wild 
 hope from his withdrawn manner. Then at last 
 he turned to her. 
 
 * You are a wonderful woman, Lady Greville,' 
 he said — for she had thrown her name and her 
 entire confidence into the scales of her proffered 
 reward. * Nature at your birth seems to have 
 given you more of her secret life than I realised 
 when I first saw you. I have never met any one 
 quite like you. You are a very interesting 
 case. . . 
 
 And then the doctor fell to pondering again. 
 It was evident that the lovely face waiting on his 
 word with such piteous intensity was entirely for- 
 gotten as he meditated. Then, an unwonted pro- 
 ceeding with him, he rose and paced up and down 
 the room, quite close to the beautiful face, almost 
 brushing it with his coat, so little did he heed 
 it. He pulled at his spare black beard in an 
 abstracted way, and seemed now and again to 
 be talking to himself internally and making cal- 
 culations, which he punctuated with his head, as 
 they came out right or wrong. At last, with a 
 startling suddenness, he stopped dead in his walk, 
 and as he turned to Lady Constantia, it was 
 evident that he was labouring with suppressed 
 excitement. 
 
THE YOUTH OF LADY CONSTANTIA 29 
 
 ' Yes ! yes ! I see my way ! ' he said. * Yes ! 
 I see my way ! ' 
 
 Lady Constantia fell on her knees hysterically 
 and kissed his hand. 
 
 * Oh ! how can I thank you — you strange, 
 strange man ! ... ' 
 
 But the doctor somewhat brusquely put her 
 aside, and bade her to be seated and listen. 
 
 * Before you thank me, listen ... As I said just 
 now, you are a very remarkable woman. I saw 
 that at first. For no other woman could I have 
 done so much as I have already done. Remember 
 that Nature is behind all I do — without her help 
 I can do nothing . . / 
 
 ' Yes ! yes ! ' said Lady Constantia, with het 
 hand raised as in prayer. 
 
 ' But,' the doctor continued, * even with you, 
 what you ask is impossible. It is astonishing to 
 me, indeed, that I can do what I can do . . .' 
 
 But for the moment the doctor went off again 
 into his calculations, oblivious of the woman so 
 desperately hanging on his every word. 
 
 'Yes! I think I can promise that,' he said, 
 coming again out of his reverie. ' Yes ! I can 
 give you back — /lalf your beauty for a time, but 
 for how long I cannot say. It may be five years, 
 it may be ten, it may be . . • Well, I cannot 
 promise. . . 
 
30 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 ^ Half my beauty . . v ' cried Lady Constanda, 
 sinking back in wonderment. 
 
 ' Yes ! I can do that. ... I see I can do that 
 — and — by heaven! . . The doctor stopped 
 short as though he had suddenly seen, indeed, 
 a light from heaven ; * excuse me, but I see one 
 way, too, by which all your beauty might come 
 back . . . but that,' he added, 'will not depend 
 on me.' 
 
 Then suddenly, with a sort of tenderness, he 
 held out his two hands almost gleefully to Lady 
 Constantia, and took hers in a congratulatory 
 way. 
 
 * Upon my word, you are a most remarkable 
 case . . he exclaimed. 
 
 * But half my beauty . . . what can you mean ? 
 and that other contingency you speak of. . . , Oh, 
 tell me more clearly . . 
 
 * I cannot, for I hardly know myself. But this 
 much I see, that so remarkably vital are your own 
 original forces of beauty, that I, by certain know- 
 ledge and power I possess, which are my secret, 
 can so sustain them that one half of your beauty 
 can be saved to you ; and I see, too, that another 
 man holds the secret of restoring the other half. 
 What his power is, or how it may operate, I have 
 no knowledge . . . only I am able to see the 
 possibility. I wish, indeed. Lady Greville, it were 
 
THE YOUTH OF LADY CONSTANTIA 31 
 
 in my power to save all your beauty from the 
 fury of time. Some day I trust that my studies 
 may have taken me so far as to make such beauty 
 live for ever. . . . But all I can do now I have told 
 you. . . 
 
 ' Half my beauty . . said Lady Constantia. 
 * It sounds strange. . . . However, it is something. 
 I accept your offer, doctor. Let me keep half my 
 beauty . . and then she added, 'Your fee, 
 doctor ? ' 
 
 * Pardon me,' he answered, ' but this time you 
 must permit me to treat your case in the disinter- 
 ested interest of science. It is worth more than 
 money to my studies to have encountered so re- 
 markable a patient. You have already rewarded 
 me with great liberality, and your fees have en- 
 abled me to pursue branches of my science which 
 otherwise I should have been obliged to neglect — 
 for my researches are costly beyond those of any 
 other science. . . 
 
 Lady Constantia endeavoured to overrule his 
 objections, but it was in vain ; and, though indeed 
 the money was nothing to her, it gave her con- 
 fidence, as she once more hurried home through 
 the dingy street, that her mysterious doctor was 
 indeed no charlatan, that his strange promise 
 would be kept, and that even that other enigmatic 
 forecast of his might also come true. 
 
32 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 Half her beauty . . . what could he mean ? 
 And that other half in some one else's keeping — 
 what could that mean? In whose keeping? Oh, if 
 she only knew in whose keeping it was! Would 
 she not go through the world seeking him — give all 
 she had and become a poor woman just to find him, 
 and buy from him that other half? 
 
 Half her beauty . . . what could the doctor 
 mean ? Half her beauty ! Would that suffice to 
 hold Mortimer's love? She was very beautiful. 
 ' Half that beauty/ she said to herself, as she looked 
 in the glass. * Some women would give much, I 
 suppose, to be even half so beautiful. . . 
 
 Half her beauty ! But how would the mysterious 
 mathematician measure and divide ? Was she not 
 to die after all ? Would Mortimer love her still with 
 — only half her beauty ? Or should she keep her 
 promise, and die, as she had vowed, mysteriously 
 a girl ! 
 
 The final morning of the tenth year came at last 
 — the last day of her beauty. When evening had 
 come and Mortimer bade her good night as she 
 went to her room, it would be the last time he 
 would see the Constantia he had loved. When the 
 next morning dawned she would be either dead — 
 or changed. 
 
 Should she tell him all ? Should she throw her- 
 
THE YOUTH OF LADY CONSTANTIA 33 
 
 self upon the mercy of his love ? Ah, no ! it would 
 be like asking his leave to live, a reprieved felon, 
 existing by his mercy. No, that she could not 
 bear. So by an extraordinary self-command, she 
 determined to make that last day the most wonder- 
 ful of all their days together, and, if indeed it was 
 to be her beauty's setting, her beauty should at 
 least set in unforgettable glory. In this she was able 
 to succeed so well that the day passed for Mortimer 
 in one long adoration of the strange woman he 
 loved. From morning till evening he could not 
 leave her side. Never had the spell of her beauty 
 been so strong upon him. 
 
 But though her power over herself held out 
 remarkably, she could not refrain from bidding 
 Mortimer good night with unusual solemnity. 
 
 *0 Mortimer,' she cried, as she stood encircled 
 by his arms, Mook well into my face. If you have 
 loved it — and indeed, my beautiful Mortimer, you 
 have loved it more than it is worth — love it now ; 
 for perhaps you will never see it again ! . . . ' 
 
 But her husband deemed that this was but another 
 of those attacks of strange fear that had overcome 
 her of late. 
 
 *The day has been long — too long to have 
 been so wonderful, my Constantia,' he said. *We 
 are but mortal, after all, and even an immortal like 
 you might well fall a little faint at the end of such 
 
 c 
 
34 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 a day.' Then, after a pause in which he strove 
 to tell by the strong hands so gently laid on 
 her hair all that words were so poor to tell, he 
 added — 
 
 ' Constantia, will you never believe in my love — 
 will you never understand how much longer it is 
 than time, how much stronger it is than death. . . . 
 Sleep well, beautiful head, and remember that if 
 evil dreams should come — I am near.' 
 
 And so Constantia went to her room, and the 
 faithful maid who had grown old in the service of 
 her eternal youth dressed her for sleep. Constantia 
 felt unwontedly tender towards her to-night. 
 
 * Mariette,' she said, ^ I am afraid I have not 
 been always so considerate as I should have been. 
 I have long meant to give you this' — and poor 
 Mariette almost gasped at the note which her 
 lady crumpled into her hand. Strangely enough, 
 too, she took the little shrunken woman by the 
 shoulder and kissed her on her hair ... so that 
 Mariette went away wondering ; and when Con- 
 stantia was quite alone, she softly locked both the 
 doors of the room. 
 
 For whatever was to be must be to-night. Oh, at 
 what tick of the clock was it to befall — at what 
 moment of this fearful night was she — to change ? 
 She looked at herself again and again. Yes ! she 
 was wonderfully beautiful. How smooth were her 
 
THE YOUTH OF LADY CONSTANTIA 35 
 
 cheeks, how bright her eyes, how round her throat ! 
 Half of all this beauty ! What could it mean ? 
 
 At last she lay down in her bed and drew the 
 sheets over her, but she dared not put out the light, 
 and she could not sleep. Her little clock silverly 
 ticked and ticked and ticked, till at last she rose 
 in a frenzy and buried it deep in a drawer muffled 
 away among linen. 
 
 But still she seemed to hear it ticking : ' Half her 
 beauty — half her beauty — half her beauty. . . 
 
 And so an hour or two went by, and, in spite of 
 herself, Constantia slept. 
 
 Suddenly she awakened as out of a nightmare — 
 and passed her hand involuntarily over her face. 
 What was this ? What was this against her hand ? 
 The light was still burning. Once more she leaped 
 from her bed, and sought her mirror — and then 
 a piercing shriek smote like the sword of death 
 through the house. 
 
 *0 my God! Is that what the doctor meant? 
 Is this half my beauty?' and with a scream she 
 fell in a swoon upon the floor. 
 
 Horror ! Horror ! Horror ! — what was this ? The 
 face that had looked back at her from the mirror 
 was only half her own. The other half was the 
 face of a woman of ninety ! 
 
 Mortimer, who had slept but fitfully in his ad- 
 joining room, sprang from his bed at her cry, and 
 
36 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 finding the door locked, called on her to open it, 
 but, receiving no answer, he broke it open. 
 
 She was lying as she had fallen in front of her 
 mirror, lying on her beautiful girl cheek. All 
 Mortimer saw was the cheek that had withered. 
 For a moment he stood as one might stand in the 
 presence of some supernatural terror. His next 
 impulse was once more to secure the door, and bid 
 the servants who were already seeking admittance 
 to return to their beds. No one should see his 
 Constantia any more but he. 
 
 Then, bending over her, murmuring his love, he 
 lifted her up and placed her on the bed ; and, as 
 he did so, he saw how much stranger it was even 
 than he had thought, for when Constantia lay on 
 her right side as he had placed her, lo! the face 
 he saw was the girl he had always loved. 
 
 * There is still left me half her beauty,' he said, 
 'half that wonderful beauty I have loved. It is not 
 all lost . . . and, even if all should go, Constantia,' 
 he said, speaking as if she heard, though she lay 
 heedless as death, 'even if all should go, I would 
 still love you. Thank God, at last I shall be able 
 to make you understand . . . ' 
 
 And thereon, deep in the silence of his heart, 
 he registered a vow to be, as long as he lived, the 
 faithful priest at the grave of Constantia's lost 
 beauty. 
 
THE YOUTH OF LADY CONSTANTIA 37 
 
 Lost ! Nay, only half lost, and once more he 
 kissed the beautiful girl lying there with her rich 
 hair spread over her faintly flushed cheek. 
 
 Xonstantia,' he whispered, 'I love you'; and 
 holding her softly in his arms, again and again he 
 softly told the sleeping woman how he loved her — 
 how he loved her — how he loved her. 
 
 And so the night passed, and the dawn came, 
 and filled the room with strange gold. Constantia 
 had not moved during all the night, but had lain 
 just as Mortimer had placed her. Suddenly she 
 turned, with the deep waking sigh of a healthy 
 child, and became conscious of Mortimer's arms 
 about her. 
 
 *What has happened?' she cried, half remem- 
 bering, and suddenly sitting up. . . . As she did 
 so, Mortimer, too, sprang up in what one might 
 perhaps call a terror of joy. 
 
 * Constantia ! ' he almost shrieked, as he snatched 
 a hand-mirror from her dressing-table. * Constantia ! 
 Look!' 
 
 But suddenly full consciousness came back to 
 Constantia, and, as she remembered, she dashed the 
 mirror down, so that it broke in pieces upon the 
 floor. 
 
 *0 Mortimer, Mortimer! be merciful. I know. 
 I have looked, O God, forgive me — I should have 
 died.' 
 
38 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 * But you don't understand, Constantia. See — 
 you shall look — ' and he carried the dear form to 
 the great glass ; and something wonderful in all his 
 tenderness gave her courage, so that she dared to 
 look . . . and when she looked . . . 
 
 Well, it was merely Constantia Greville as she 
 had been accustomed to find herself in her mirror 
 for the last — how many years? She turned one 
 cheek and then the other, but there was no 
 difference . . . 
 
 Then in wonder and joy she turned to Mortimer. 
 
 * So you were the other man,' she said, throwing 
 her arms about his neck, 'and your love was the 
 other half of the miracle.* 
 
THE SHADOW OF THE ROSE 
 
THE SHADOW OF THE ROSE 
 
 I 
 
 AVE you ever considered the shadows of 
 
 -I J- beautiful things, how exquisite they are, 
 how strange, how filled with meanings and 
 messages ; and, as well, that they are no less real, 
 when you come to think of it, than the so-called 
 realities by which they live — mysteriously real — 
 real, you may even deem, with a more exquisite 
 reality ? The shadows of sunny leaves dappling the 
 long glades of the woodland silence and falling 
 about one like the fairy dies that make the mark- 
 ings on flowers. The blithe silhouettes of darting 
 birds on the window-curtains in early summer 
 mornings. The dreamy flicker of swaying branches 
 across the page in summer afternoons. The shadow 
 of a flower on the wall. The shadow of a beautiful 
 woman on a blind. 
 
 I am thinking of shadows, because for a full hour 
 I have been watching the shadow of a rose on my 
 study wall. It is that time of the afternoon when 
 the sunshine is at once richly sensuous and yet 
 haunted as with a spiritual thought — the moment 
 
 41 
 
42 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 when the superb physical bloom of the day is at its 
 proudest, yet touched with wistfulness, as with fear 
 of the coming night ; the moment when you seem 
 to be waiting for the opening of a door, and a voice 
 secret yet clear. 
 
 The rose is very beautiful. Its divine head 
 proudly catches the gold sun, and seems to rejoice 
 in its own sumptuousness, yet — why is it? — my 
 eyes are all the time on its shadow. It might 
 almost seem that the sun and the rose were there 
 only to make that beautiful masterpiece of shadow 
 — the sun the artist, the rose the material, the 
 result — this dream of a rose upon the wall. Do I 
 mean that the shadow of the rose is more beautiful 
 than the rose? I cannot say. I only know that 
 all the time I am watching the shadow and forget- 
 ting the rose. Can it be that the shadow of the 
 rose is the rose's soul ? 
 
 No less than the rose itself is it created by the 
 sun out of particles of matter so fine, the immaterial 
 silver of shadows, as to make the rose's texture 
 coarse and homespun. By the side of this dainty 
 phantom the rose's beauty seems a heavy, material 
 thing. 
 
 Would you say that a beautiful face is more real 
 than a picture of it? — yet the picture will remain 
 long after the face has passed away. Then should 
 one not rather say that it was the face that was 
 
THE SHADOW OF THE ROSE 43 
 
 the dream, and the picture the reality ? When we 
 look back upon our lives, do we not see that it 
 was the shadows that were the realities? What 
 of those long morning shadows full of romantic 
 promise that ran before us in the sunrise of our 
 lives, kissing their hands and inviting us to mys- 
 terious goals? What of Love? What of Fame? 
 They were real only so long as they ran before us, 
 shining shapes of promise. They were real only 
 so long as they were shadows. 
 
 II 
 
 As I contemplate that shadow-rose on my wall, 
 it comes to me that thus has my life gone by. All 
 my life have I been loving the shadow of the rose, 
 and so it will be with me till I die. I am of those 
 for whom it is destined. My Rose will always 
 belong to another — but her shadow will belong 
 only to me. 
 
 Long before I saw the Rose I had known she 
 was in the world, for her beauty was upon the lips 
 of Fame. I had seen a picture of her face, and 
 thought how strange it would be if I should ever 
 come so near to that fairness as to hear her voice. 
 But she lived in a far land, and it seemed unlikely 
 that our paths would ever cross. Then by chance 
 one day I heard that she was coming over the sea. 
 
44 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 The Rose was coming over the sea — and for 
 days the western wind seemed sweet with her 
 coming. 
 
 A caravan from China comes ; 
 
 For miles it sweetens all the air 
 With fragrant silks and dreaming gums, 
 
 Attar and myrrh — 
 A caravan from China comes. 
 
 O merchant, tell me what you bring, 
 With music sweet of camel bells ; 
 
 How long have you been travelling 
 With these sweet smells ? 
 
 O merchant, tell me what you bring. 
 
 A lovely lady is my freight, 
 
 A lock escaped of her long hair,— 
 
 That is this perfume delicate 
 That fills the air— 
 
 A lovely lady is my freight. 
 
 Her face is from another land, 
 I think she is no mortal maid, — 
 
 Her beauty, like some ghostly hand. 
 Makes me afraid ; 
 
 Her face is from another land. 
 
 The little moon my cargo is. 
 
 About her neck the Pleiades 
 Clasp hands and sing ; lover, 'tis this 
 
 Perfumes the breeze — 
 The little moon my cargo is. 
 
 The Rose was coming over the sea, and my heart 
 wondered: Shall we ever meet? One of those 
 
THE SHADOW OF THE ROSE 45 
 
 mysterious voices of the soul, which are deeper than 
 reason, whispered that nothing could prevent our 
 meeting, and with the premonition was blended a 
 vague fear as of some beautiful sad destiny about 
 to fulfil itself. Yes ! The Rose and I would surely 
 meet. Yet I said that I would in no way plan to 
 that end. A meeting so devised would seem value- 
 less to me ; as little significant as though one in 
 love with a queen whom he had never seen, hearing 
 that she was to be present at a theatre, should buy 
 a box, that he might look upon her during the per- 
 formance. No, if we were to meet at all. Fate and 
 not I must arrange the meeting. 
 
 Next I read in the papers that the Rose had 
 landed. She was in London. The Rose was in 
 London. She and I had come so near across Time 
 and Space as to be in London together. London 
 had become an enchanted forest, and somewhere 
 in its heart was hidden a magic flower. To think 
 that somewhere in that vast maze of streets the 
 Rose was moving to and fro, like any other woman. 
 Any moment she might whirl by me in her carriage, 
 any moment I might turn a corner, and the Rose 
 be there. Soon I began to read that she had been 
 here, or that she had been there, at this party or 
 that theatre. Soon my friends began to tell me 
 how last night they had met the Rose, and after a 
 while I seemed to be always entering a room the 
 
46 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 moment after she had gone, and be aware of the 
 sweetness she had left behind. She seemed to be 
 always invisibly near me, like a goddess in her rosy 
 cloud. 
 
 Yes! The caravan had come from China, and 
 London's drawing-rooms were filled with its fra- 
 grance. 
 
 'The Rose was here just now,' my friends would 
 say, and * Oh, but you must meet the Rose,' they 
 were always saying. ^We must arrange a little 
 dinner.' I smiled, but preferred to elude even 
 friendly diplomacy to bring about my meeting with 
 the Rose. 
 
 If we were ever to meet, surely some diviner 
 machinery than the social stratagem must be already 
 moving to an event like that. Oh no ! It must 
 never be said that it was through Mrs. Williamson 
 that I first met the Rose. No one less than a 
 Heavenly Power must presume to bring the Rose 
 and me together. Sometimes I vaguely pictured 
 our meeting in a great solitude of stars, with the 
 sound of the sea at our feet, and the moon rising 
 and harps hidden in the sky. Or we might meet, 
 I thought, on a mountain-top, some morning as the 
 day was breaking — suddenly stand face to face, only 
 she and I, in the holy dawn. 
 
 It has since struck me as rather remarkable how 
 instinctively my friends divined that the Rose and 
 
THE SHADOW OF THE ROSE 47 
 
 I were intended to meet. If Nature herself had 
 told them — as perhaps she did — they could not 
 have been more convinced of our affinity. 
 
 * Why, it is ridiculous that you have never met ! ' 
 they would say sometimes. *You were born for 
 each other ! ' and so on. Friends occasionally make 
 mistakes with their amiable sorcery of this kind, 
 and induce a spurious interest in two strangers, one 
 for the other, which, when they meet, is apt for the 
 time to wear the appearance of a more genuine 
 relation. The unknown thus presented to our 
 thoughts is apt to ensnare our imaginations in 
 advance, and we are so prepared to fall in love 
 beforehand that when the meeting happens at last, 
 there seems nothing else to do. 
 
 But it was not so with the Rose and me. Higher 
 Powers than our friends had interested themselves 
 in our meeting. We had been born to meet, born to 
 love each other — or, should I only say that I had 
 been born to love the shadow of the Rose. 
 
 Ill 
 
 After all, it was at Mrs. Williamson's that we met, 
 one of those evenings when that dear woman 
 gathers about her what she calls ' artistic people,' 
 to the accompaniment of hired strings in the hall 
 and many sandwiches. Actually it was a strange 
 
48 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 place in which to meet the Rose, and how strange 
 she looked there, amid the twitter of little epigrams, 
 lonely as the moon above the frivolity of some silly 
 little town. 
 
 I had gone there with no thought of meeting 
 her ; gone for quite a different reason ; gone, in 
 fact, because, like all of us, I admired Mrs. 
 Williamson's red hair — and went to look at it once 
 more, as one goes out to gaze at a sunset. If I 
 had been aware that Mrs. Williamson and the Rose 
 were acquainted, I don't think I should have gone ; 
 but, actually, Mrs. Williamson was one of the few 
 among my friends who had never mentioned the 
 Rose's name. 
 
 However, it was Mrs. Williamson's, and no more 
 august stage, that those Higher Powers had chosen 
 for our meeting-place ; but, as a great event digni- 
 fies the lowliest spot, as fields once sleepy pastures 
 are startlingly transfigured with mighty armies, and 
 the name of a meadow is made immortal by war, 
 as some village stable is suddenly visited by angels, 
 to become for ever a shrine for all the world — with 
 a like significance I sometimes say to myself — 
 ' Mrs. Williamson's.' 
 
 I have since thought it was strange that I should 
 have been in the room quite a long time before I 
 knew she was there, for I would have said that I 
 could not have been so near her and unaware of 
 
THE SHADOW OF THE ROSE 49 
 
 her presence — yet so it was, and I talked gaily 
 with a bright little creature I knew, little thinking 
 how near was the striking of the clock. Then I 
 remember that two people were talking near me, 
 and one of them was saying — 
 
 * Isn't she beautiful to-night ? Really, she is 
 more beautiful than ever ! ' 
 
 ^Who is it that is so beautiful?* I turned and 
 asked, for I knew the speaker. * Who is it that is 
 so beautiful ? ' I asked, unconsciously inviting my 
 doom. 
 
 ^ Why, the Rose yonder,' answered the man 
 casually. * I never saw her look so beautiful.' 
 
 The Rose! If the man's words had been a flash 
 of lightning striking down between us, my face 
 could hardly have shown so white, or my heart 
 stood so still. The Rose! I bent my head. I 
 dared not look upon her yet. I must gather all of 
 myself together, bid farewell to all I had been, be 
 ready for all that was to be. For I knew that when 
 I raised my head I was to look upon the face of 
 Love, which is the face of death as well. Then I 
 raised my head and looked — and the world was 
 changed. 
 
 She was standing in the centre of a small group 
 of fluttering admirers, half a dozen witty fellows 
 chirruping their little good things at her, like grass- 
 hoppers at the feet of a sphinx, for to all they said 
 
 D 
 
so PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 she seemed to be answering nothing, standing 
 amongst them quite silent, with a lonely smile on 
 her beautiful face — as far away from them she 
 seemed as a star shining in a pool in the middle of 
 a wood — silent, mysterious, alone. She seemed 
 like the queen of some hidden kingdom of the air, 
 fairy-folk of the elements, who had lost her way 
 into this little drawing-room and was looking for a 
 door of escape back to her own people ; and her 
 eyes had a wistful, seeking expression — and were 
 just a little frightened, I thought. The men were 
 plainly disconcerted by this unaccustomed creature, 
 and their twitter died down in embarrassment. 
 
 Suddenly she turned her great eyes on me. 
 * Oh, take me back to fairyland ! ' they seemed to 
 say. * This is not your home any more than it is 
 mine. These little people frighten me. Let us 
 escape together. Oh, take me away.' 
 
 Ah ! it was not Mrs. Williamson's after all. It 
 was Solitude and she and I, and a voice like distant 
 thunder over our heads, giving us to each other. 
 And others in the room beside ourselves heard the 
 thunder ; for I well remember that when I next 
 came back to consciousness of Mrs. Williamson's, 
 there was a curious look upon the faces of the 
 talkers, as though they had been fellow-spectators 
 of a strange happening. And, indeed, had they 
 not seen two whom Life had chosen for each other 
 
THE SHADOW OF THE ROSE 51 
 
 meet — there before their very eyes? Is there a 
 stranger thing ? If we had cried out each other's 
 names, it could not have been plainer that from 
 that moment we were each other's. 
 
 As it was, I do not remember our talking at all. 
 Suddenly we were together in the solitude. The 
 little leaves were whispering all around us, and 
 bright little eyes were peering at us out of the 
 boughs, but we heeded them not, there in that 
 heart of the ancient wood which we had discovered 
 in Mrs. Williamson's drawing-room. 
 
 There we sat very still and looked at each other, 
 and I thought my heart would break with the 
 happiness of looking at her — she was so beautiful 
 — break with the joy of having found her there, so 
 lovely a thing in the solitude. 
 
 My love, my love, thou art fair ! Thou hast dove^s eyes. 
 
 If we talked, I know not what we said, though I 
 remember all else of that night, can see and hear it 
 all, as vivid still and near as the shadow of that 
 rose yonder on the wall. How well I remember 
 every detail of her dress that night, I who have 
 never been able to say what any other woman wore. 
 Let me indulge my lover's heart with trying to 
 describe that little frock ! 
 
 A trailing kirtle of velvet, rich and soft, its volu- 
 minous folds hanging in long lines of wondrous 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF imWTO 
 
52 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 colour. All the treasures of the opal, blending 
 with the beauteous sea-stone, the amethyst, do but 
 give a hint of its rare shimmerings, which now 
 allure the happy eye as would a field of honey-full 
 clover blossoms, a rare and seductive mauve in 
 sunlight, and again which seemeth to be of the 
 warm gray that broods across a bare woodland at 
 Winter's dusk. And gaily on these lustrous folds, 
 toward the small feet that appear on occasion to 
 kiss the hem of it, twine garlands of round trees 
 and flowers and vines and lovers' knots, all needle- 
 wrought in amethyst and gray and gold. A goodly 
 blending of these there are, and likewise are they 
 scattered over the bodice, as though careless to re- 
 veal or to conceal the shot silk of amazing soft 
 lustres that hath been fashioned into a small coat, 
 which hath been slashed away in the front and on 
 the sleeves, the more sweetly to display airy gos- 
 samer mousseline, silky white, which hath been 
 confined at the small waist by a rich girdle of blue 
 and a brave buckle of brilliants. Add to this a 
 touch of the same pale blue at the slim throat and 
 a band of gold that doth most kindly hold the 
 sleeve high on the arm, so that its round beauty 
 may not hide unnoticed. 
 
 Ah ! but methinks I can as little describe her 
 gown as I can describe her, or remember the words 
 we said. 
 
THE SHADOW OF THE ROSE 53 
 
 No, not one word can I remember from that 
 night, but I know well what my heart was saying. 
 
 * Great Queen/ it said, Mf in all the world of 
 faces that come and go a man should find at last 
 your face — what should he say? What shall he 
 do? What can such a one say, but, forgetting all 
 other faces : Here am I, O Queen, a firefly that 
 has flitted hither and thither, seeking, seeking, for 
 the maker of the light of which I have but a tiny 
 spark. In vain have I flashed my small lantern 
 upon this one, upon that, searching for the whole 
 of which I form a part, searching for you ! " O 
 radiant one, so dazzling, yet so grandly simple — 
 what shall I say but : I have come. I have 
 found thee. Let me merge my light in the light 
 that is thee." ' 
 
 And again my heart said very softly — 
 
 ' Dear, why have you your eyes, why do you 
 have your hands, and the true clasp of them ; why 
 your hair, your soul? Why should they be so 
 dear, so inexpressibly sweet, so necessary to me? 
 Why should the heart dream and ache for such, 
 that have been in the world since it began, simply 
 because they 3.rQ yours? 
 
 'Can you answer these love's riddles? I care 
 not, if you but love me — love me — love me . . . 
 and love me, and love me. 
 
 ' O Queen, I love you. You— YOU ! ' 
 
54 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 So spake my heart to the Rose, as I sat and 
 worshipped her that evening at Mrs. Williamson's, 
 there in the solitude ; and once for a moment she 
 laid her hand on mine and I heard her heart 
 speak. 
 
 * I love you/ said her heart, in a voice strangely 
 solemn and clear. ^ I love you.' 
 
 I dreamed that night that God had given me 
 the Rose — but it was the shadow of the Rose He 
 had given me. 
 
 IV 
 
 O Dream-Rose upon the wall so mysteriously 
 made of the velvet shadows and the tendrilled 
 sunshine, I watch you all the afternoon, growing 
 newly exquisite each moment with the changing 
 light, watch you, and love you, my Rose of Shadow. 
 Others may think the Rose herself more fair. But 
 not so I. The Rose is but the Rose's body; you 
 are the spirit of the Rose. You are all my dreams 
 of the Rose, and I dream of the Rose every day 
 of my life, and you are filled as with dew with the 
 tears I have shed for her. 
 
 Another hand gathered the Rose herself and set 
 her in his garden, but I envy him not ; for at the 
 same moment that he gathered her, I gathered the 
 shadow of the Rose, and she became an immortal 
 
THE SHADOW OF THE ROSE 55 
 
 flower. And alas ! the Rose herself must fade and 
 wither, and some day all her beauty slip from her 
 in a huddle of petals, leaving but the Autumn 
 berry of the Rose — but the Shadow Rose will 
 never fade. For it was made when the light of 
 dreams streamed over the real Rose — it was then 
 I gathered it : the young shadow of the young 
 Rose. 
 
 V 
 
 Shadows ! Oh, my shadows, how I love you ! 
 How you come about me in the haunted sunset! 
 I call you by your names and you are by my side 
 — dear shadow names that no one knows but I. 
 The sun is setting and the shadows come about 
 me, the beautiful shadows the Sun of Life made 
 for me and gave me — mine for ever. In the dusk 
 they seem to grow thick about me like a harvest 
 field. Yes! They are my harvest of shadows. 
 The day is nearly ended. Do I seem lonely in 
 the dusk? No, I have my shadows. They come 
 around me like children. Indeed, I am not alone. 
 See how rich life has made me ! See what beau- 
 tiful shadows we have made together in the sun. 
 Life and I ! All these dream faces are mine. It 
 needs my eyes to see them now. To others they 
 have passed away; from me they can never pass. 
 
56 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 See how we smile on each other, the dream faces 
 and I. 
 
 These shining shadows are all the love and 
 wonder and delight, all the beauty and truth, all the 
 kindness of my days, since the morning sun came 
 up, and Life and I and the sun began weaving the 
 shadows. These shadows are my treasure. They 
 are the wealth that has come to me day by day. 
 They are like the leaves of a book on each page 
 of which is written a wonderful event. What lovely 
 pages they are, and they are all mine. All these 
 marvellous things I am reading, while the dream- 
 rose sways on the wall, happened to me. These 
 beautiful people I am reading about, these, lovely 
 faces, these true hearts, these sweet voices, are all 
 here, all written in the beautiful story-book of my 
 years, my book of shadows, each page of which 
 is a dream that came true, and is therefore true 
 for ever. 
 
 Passed away, did you say ? Nay, look again at 
 my Shadow Rose on the wall. It grows more real 
 as the sun sinks lower. It can pass away only 
 when the sun itself passes, and the night comes, in 
 which the Rose and its shadow are alike seen no 
 more. And when that Shadow of Shadows at last 
 falls over me, will it not still seem to me the 
 Shadow of the Rose ? 
 
POET, TAKE THY LUTE! 
 
POET, TAKE THY LUTE! 
 
 LL the rest of the village of Twelvetrees 
 
 -^^"^ was asleep, and only the moon looked 
 on — with natural sympathy, one cannot but 
 believe — at what was taking place in a little house 
 on the hillside, somewhat lonely in situation ; 
 in fact, the last house as the high-road began to 
 breast the hill and seriously settle down to the 
 King^s business of reaching the next market-town. 
 
 It lacked an hour of midnight, and for some 
 long time before the moon had been aware of the 
 noise of altercation inside that lonely house. A 
 stern voice, heated, one might surmise, not only 
 with anger but also with wine, had been mightily 
 pounding at a boyish voice of much sweetness, 
 which was occasionally able to interject a pleading 
 sentence here and there into the thunder-cloud of 
 the darker voice. 
 
 Suddenly the door of the cottage flashed open 
 and a frail, boyish figure was hurled into the garden, 
 and the door shut again. Almost immediately it 
 was again opened, and an object, which the poor 
 
 59 
 
6o PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 ejected one eagerly recognised as his lute, was 
 thrown after him. 
 
 * Take your toy with you ! ' said the voice, * and 
 never let me see either of you again.' 
 
 The lad seized his lute with loving anxiety, and 
 stood up in the light of the moon to examine it — 
 lest it should have suffered hurt. It had fared 
 better than he could have hoped. Only one of 
 the strings had been cut upon a stone. Involun- 
 tarily he tried the others — a proceeding which, 
 being mistaken by his angered father for bravado, 
 provoked a fiercely-opened window and a volley 
 of books. 
 
 'Take these, too,' shouted the father, 'till 
 you read these you were of some use in the 
 world ' 
 
 The boy calmly and gently examined the books, 
 and then, turning to his father, he said — 
 
 'Father, will you do me one last favour? You 
 have thrown me out the wrong books. ... I shall 
 only be able to carry one upon my journey — and 
 it is not here ' 
 
 ' Well ? ' bellowed the father. 
 
 * It is a little vellum-bound duodecimo of the 
 poems of Catullus, printed by the Brothers Elzevir 
 of Amsterdam, father dear — and it is more precious 
 to me than any other book in the world — if you will 
 but give me that — you will find it, I think, on the 
 
POET, TAKE THY LUTE! 6i 
 
 right-hand corner of the fourth shelf — I will go 
 away this moment, and trouble you no more as 
 long as I live ' 
 
 There was something so irresistible in the com- 
 bined gentleness and self-command of the boy that 
 he was able to win this concession, and, grimly 
 leaving the window, his father examined the shelves 
 a moment, and then, finding the volume, threw it 
 out to his son, who caught it in his waiting hands 
 with the skill of a juggler. 
 
 *Is that the nonsense you want?' growled the 
 father. 
 
 * It is indeed. Thank you with all my heart ! ' 
 answered the son, affectionately placing the book 
 in his doublet. * And now good-bye, father ; I am 
 very sorry to have been such a disappointment to 
 you. But really I could not help being born a 
 poet — really I couldn't. I would be a cordwainer 
 if only I could ; indeed I have been trying my 
 best ' 
 
 The father was curiously softened. 
 
 * Hadn't you better come in and try again ? ' he 
 said. 
 
 * No, thank you, father ! I have tried all I can. 
 I had better go ; good-bye.' 
 
 ' Don't you want any money ? ' called the 
 father. 
 
 * No, thank you,' said the boy proudly. ' I have 
 
62 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 my lute ' — and therewith he flung out of the garden, 
 and up the hill on the way to the moon. 
 
 So soon as he felt himself at a safe distance, he 
 put down his lute softly on the grass, and throwing 
 his hat into the air, danced an elfish pas seul, 
 expressive of wild delight. 
 
 ' Free, free ! ' he shouted aloud. * Free ! think of 
 it ! no more cordwaining any more for ever ! ' 
 
 *But now to business,' he said, when he had 
 finished his dance ; ^ where shall we sleep, O 
 Jacobus Rossignol, and where shall we eat, and 
 moreover where is the money to come from to do 
 either?' 
 
 As he spoke he turned out his pockets to the 
 moon. They were quite empty, except for a little 
 medal of our Lady of Consolation, which had been 
 given him by a village girl who had fallen in love 
 with his singing. 
 
 Not a sou ! However, that was no surprise, and 
 no great worry. As for sleep — how often had he 
 slept under the stars, lying on his back listening to 
 their music — and been beaten by his father for his 
 truancy ! A bed of fern, with the firmament for 
 a bed-curtain — and the moon for one's bride. Well, 
 in Jacobus RossignoFs opinion, here you had a 
 bedchamber for a king. 
 
 But 
 
 Our poor Jacobus suddenly realised that he was 
 
POET, TAKE THY LUTE! 
 
 63 
 
 hungry. Indeed his purse was no emptier than his 
 belly, and there was a pain in one which he didn't 
 feel — or care about — in the other. 
 
 Yes! he must eat! Otherwise how could he 
 appreciate his starry bedroom as he would wish to ? 
 Even a poet must be fed. 
 
 He looked up at the moon. He judged by her 
 position that it was not yet midnight. 
 
 'Four miles/ he said to himself, 'four good 
 miles to the inn of " The Flaming Sword ! " — and 
 on the way I will make a song wherewith to buy 
 a supper 1 ' 
 
 So, with a brave heart, little Jacobus Rossignol 
 picked up his lute, and stoutly footed the high- 
 road. 
 
 In spite of his two emptinesses, his heart beat 
 high. How could it be otherwise with him, on so 
 fragrant a night of spring, and with such a moon ! 
 Indeed, his whole nature was so full of music that 
 anything he looked at or thought of turned immedi- 
 ately into a song. Need I say that it was with 
 no thought of his supper that he made this song 
 to the moon, as he walked with his lute pressed 
 close to his heart ? However, you must sing about 
 something nearer than the moon if you expect 
 a supper in exchange for your song. But poor 
 Rossignol had never been practical — he could only 
 sing just what he wanted to sing at the moment ; 
 
64 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 and although he was so very hungry, he wasted all 
 those four miles in making this song to the moon — 
 
 Sweet mother moon ! for am I not your child ? 
 
 Kind mother moon ! what is your child to do ? 
 For surely there is in me something wild — 
 
 And they all tell me that it comes from you. 
 
 Here am I, lonely as a babe new-born, — 
 Nothing to bring the world in hard exchange ; 
 
 A ray too delicate to live till morn, 
 A phantom in the daylight, lost and strange. 
 
 O put a dream into my lunar head — 
 
 That I may sell its silver as I sing, 
 And earn a meal, moon-mother, and a bed, 
 
 And buy my bruised lute another string. 
 
 Though * The Flaming Sword ' was still open 
 when Rossignol arrived there, it was evidently all 
 but gone to bed. The landlord was just awake in 
 a corner of the tap-room, and close by him there 
 snored in company a sodden-looking ploughman, 
 and a big soldier plainly overcome by wine. 
 
 As Rossignol pushed open the door and looked 
 in, the landlord sat up, and eyed his guest with no 
 affectionate regard. At first sight poor little Ros- 
 signol was not prepossessing — not, at all events, 
 to landlords — with his thread of a body and his 
 white wisp of a face ; and then he looked worn, and 
 poor as well, and he had not had the forethought 
 to remove the dirt from his clothes consequent upon 
 
POET, TAKE THY LUTE! 65 
 
 his father's precipitation of him into the garden. 
 Surely his appearance was not that of a profitable 
 visitor. He could make a much better impression 
 now and again, as I will endeavour to explain later ; 
 but, at the moment, the landlord, to say the least, 
 did not see him at his best. 
 
 ' WelV shouted the landlord, in a voice as near 
 thunder as he could make it — * Well, what do you 
 want ? ' 
 
 Rossignol was so tired that he had not his cus- 
 tomary nerve about him, so he answered promptly 
 from his heart — 
 
 * Supper ! ' 
 
 ' Supper ! . . . You are a likely one to order 
 supper at this time of night, aren't you? Let me 
 see your purse, and then, perhaps, you shall see — 
 your supper. . . . What say you. Master Weevil?' 
 and he nudged the snoring ploughman at his side. 
 'Supper! God 'a' mercy! What do you think 
 of that, Corporal?' and he appealed to the sleep- 
 ing soldier — but the Corporal was too fast asleep to 
 hear him. 
 
 Seeing that his humour was somewhat wasted, he 
 again turned to Rossignol. 
 
 ^ Let me see your purse, young man/ he said, 
 ^ and then we will see about supper.' 
 
 * I have no purse,' answered Rossignol, seeing 
 that ready words could alone help him. ' I threw 
 
 E 
 
66 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 it away four miles back. It was too heavy to carry 
 — with nothing in it. Is there anything so heavy, 
 Master Hirondelle — for though you know nothing 
 of me, I know you for the best arm at bowls in six 
 counties — is there anything so heavy as an empty 
 purse? . . 
 
 But the innkeeper was too important a char- 
 acter in that countryside to be softened with so 
 worn a compliment. 
 
 * That is all very well,' he said. * But supper 
 costs me money — why should I give it to you for 
 nothing? . . 
 
 ' I will sing you a song in exchange . . / 
 answered Rossignol, shouldering his lute, as though 
 he would play. 
 
 ^ A song :. . a nice time to sing,' answered the 
 landlord. 'Why! You would rouse the house. 
 There is a company upstairs of ladies and gentle- 
 men worth more money to me than I could make 
 out of fellows like you if I kept this inn for a 
 thousand years. . . * 
 
 But it was somehow evident in the landlord's 
 expression that he had a kind ear for music ; and 
 at that moment the big soldier suddenly sat up 
 with a yawn. 
 
 'Who said a song!' he roared, 'a song! that's 
 just what I want. Who said a song ? . . .' 
 
 The Corporal was evidently a man of some im- 
 
POET, TAKE THY LUTE! 
 
 67 
 
 portance in those parts, and the landlord turned to 
 him with respect ... 
 
 ' This ragamuffin here/ he answered. 
 
 The soldier rubbed his eyes, and looked at Ros- 
 signol with sleepy fierceness. 
 
 'What can you sing?' he said presently. 
 
 ' Anything/ answered Rossignol, on his mettle. 
 
 'Can you sing a soldier's song?' 
 
 Xan I?' 
 
 'So! . . . well sing us — "The Three Jolly 
 Corporals." ' 
 
 'That I cannot do, for I don't know it, but if 
 Master Landlord will give me a cup of wine — 
 for I have walked a long way and am tired — 
 I will sing you a soldier's song of my own 
 making. . . .' 
 
 'No, no/ interrupted the landlord brusquely. 
 ' I am here to sell wine, not to give it. . . . Let 
 us have your song, and we will see about your 
 wine. . . / 
 
 ' I am sorry/ answered Rossignol. ' I would 
 do as you ask, if I had the strength, but, as I said, 
 I am very tired and I am too faint to sing without 
 some food, or at least drink. . . .' 
 
 ' Give him his wine/ said the soldier command- 
 ingly to the landlord. 'You know me. Give him 
 a full cup — give him two, if he will — and see that 
 it is good. ... I like the boy, there is a brave 
 
68 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 light m his face. . . . Give him his wine, I tell 
 you. . . / 
 
 And the soldier being, as I said, a great man in 
 those parts, the landlord scuttled off immediately, 
 and in a moment or two placed a tankard in front 
 of little Rossignol almost as big as himself. 
 
 * Is it good wine ? ' asked the soldier, who be- 
 tween wine and sleep was inclined to be quarrel- 
 some. 
 
 * It is the best Burgundy in my cellar,' answered 
 the host, completely cowed. 
 
 * Now, sir,' said the soldier, addressing Ros- 
 signol, ' allow me to drink to you. You carry a 
 lute, I see ; I carry a sword. They have always 
 been old friends. Men like our host here, a good 
 fellow in his way, don't understand these matters. 
 They merely sell . . . and look narrowly at their 
 returns ; but the soldier and the poet give — give 
 for the joy of giving : the soldier gives his life, the 
 poet gives his song — and ask nothing more in 
 return than you asked just now : food and a little 
 wine. . . 
 
 Rossignol was naturally much cheered by this 
 address, and he raised his glass to the Corporal with 
 a smile so winning, so full of naiVe gratitude, that 
 the Corporal's heart was his from that moment. 
 
 * My name. Corporal,' he said, ' is Jacobus Ros- 
 signol — if I had a sword, how proud it would be 
 
POET, TAKE THY LUTE! 69 
 
 to be the younger brother of your sword! As it 
 is, I have nothing but a lute. Would it were 
 worthier of being at your service. . . 
 
 Thereon Rossignol took his lute and pulled here 
 and there at its strings. 
 
 * It has had an accident to-night,' he explained ; 
 'one of its strings is broken . . . but I will do what 
 I can. . . 
 
 ' No hurry ! ' said the soldier. * Let us drink an- 
 other cup of wine. The night is still young, you 
 will sing all the better. . . 
 
 Presently, as the wine gave him heart, Rossignol 
 took up his lute in good earnest, and sang :— 
 
 Soldier going to the war — 
 Will you take my heart with you, 
 
 So that I may share a little 
 In the famous things you do ? 
 
 Soldier going to the war — 
 
 If in battle you must fall, 
 Will you, among all the faces. 
 
 See my face the last of all ? 
 
 Soldier coming from the war — 
 Who shall bind your sunburnt brow 
 
 With the laurel of the hero, 
 Soldier, soldier — vow for vow ! 
 
 Soldier coming from the war — 
 When the street is one wild sea. 
 
 Flags and streaming eyes and glory — 
 Soldier, will you look for me ? 
 
70 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 The Corporal expressed his appreciation of 
 RossignoFs ballad with such heartiness that the 
 ploughman, who had slept peacefully through the 
 singing, woke up. 
 
 *You have missed a good song, Master Weevil/ 
 said the Corporal, 'but perhaps Master Rossignol 
 will sing it over again for your benefit. . . / 
 
 To this Rossignol readily assented, once more 
 to the Corporal's great satisfaction. 
 
 ' The sword is all very well,' said the plough- 
 man, after a pause, * but I am a man of peace, 
 a man of the fields and the plough. I suppose 
 you have no quiet song for a countryman like 
 me? . . .' 
 
 * Have I not?' said Rossignol. * Listen , . and 
 once more he took up his lute and sang : — 
 
 Let whoso will sing towns and towers, 
 'Tis not so that my heart is made ; 
 
 My world is a wide world of flowers, 
 Leaf upon leaf and blade on blade. 
 
 Of buds and butterflies and birds 
 
 I ponder, lying in the grass, 
 For company the quiet herds, 
 
 And the slow clouds that pass and pass. 
 
 Safe in the leafy arms of trees, 
 
 I watch, through many a summer noon. 
 
 The silken shadows of the breeze, 
 
 Till the stars come and bring the moon. 
 
POET, TAKE THY LUTE! 71 
 
 To silent talk of growing things 
 
 I listen with a loving ear, 
 And all that buds or builds or sings 
 
 Is to my heart beloved and near. 
 
 O meadows of the earth so green ! 
 
 O meadows of the sky so blue ! 
 How happy have these sad eyes been 
 
 Just looking my great love at you ! 
 
 So sweet was the sound of Rosslgnors voice 
 that it presently came about as the landlord feared. 
 One by one the guests rose from their beds and 
 stole along the corridors, and hung over the stair- 
 case, forgetful of each other, if only they might 
 hear more clearly that unexpected music. Like 
 bees on a blossom — so the landlord's guests clung 
 to the balustrade. 
 
 Rossignol had but finished the countryman^s 
 song, and was in the act of raising his glass to the 
 Corporal, in recognition of his generous praise' 
 when a woman's voice haughtily summoned the 
 landlord into the hall. It was the Princess Belle- 
 fleurs, speaking for all the rest. 
 
 ' Who is it that sings so sweetly at midnight, Mr. 
 Landlord?' she asked, as M. Hirondelle came out 
 with a cringing, apologetic mien. 
 
 * I am sure,' answered M. Hirondelle, * I beg 
 your pardon, Princess. I beg pardon of all you 
 lords and ladies, but . . 
 
72 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 * Fool ! ' answered the Princess. * Man or night- 
 ingale, give him this, and beg him sing another 
 song ' ; and she flung down a gold piece as big as a 
 rose. 
 
 * Let us see him too,' she cried ; and thereon the 
 whole company, on a sudden impulse, streamed 
 laughing down the stairs into the tap-room, bid- 
 ding the landlord bring them wine, and there were 
 Rossignol and the Corporal smiling to each other 
 over their cups. 
 
 The landlord of ' The Flaming Sword ' was so 
 impressed by the reception given to his vagabond 
 guest, that when Rossignol made ready to leave 
 next morning, he begged him think twice before 
 setting out — for, he added, so long as he was land- 
 lord of 'The Flaming Sword,' Master Jacobus 
 Rossignol might count on it as his home. In fact, 
 if he would only consent, he was willing to pay him 
 many gold pieces a month in exchange for his 
 song. 
 
 But * No — no ! ' laughed Rossignol, as he stepped 
 out once more upon the road. ' Make me a 
 slave if you will . . . but my lute shall be always 
 free.' 
 
 As Rossignol walked along in the morning air, he 
 tossed his lute up towards the sun. 
 
 *Why! I believe you and I together could win 
 
POET, TAKE THY LUTE! 
 
 73 
 
 a kingdom/ he said, apostrophising it, as he caught 
 it in his arms as tenderly as if it had been a flower ; 
 ' that is, if either of us were foolish enough to care 
 about a kingdom ! ' 
 
 'Yes, indeed,' Rossignol continued, *who would 
 care to be a king, when he could make songs as 
 you and I, and fill beautiful eyes with tears, and 
 draw lords and ladies from their beds, and make 
 strong soldiers our friends — all for a handful of 
 butterflies ? ' 
 
 Indeed, little Master Rossignol, without being 
 foolishly arrogant, was very satisfied with himself 
 and his lute and life in general this May morning ; 
 and he was more glad than ever that his father had 
 cast him out to the care of the moon. 
 
 ' Think of it ! ' he exclaimed, keeping himself 
 company with conversation, as was his dramatic 
 habit, * think of it! Who in the world is so free 
 as I am ? Now, other men walking this road would 
 have business great or small that demanded their 
 arrival here or there. A mitred abbot, travelling 
 luxuriously with his kitchen, must needs take a 
 certain turning of the road. He may not wander 
 away into yonder fairy lane of hawthorn. He is 
 due on a grave mission at the Monastery of the 
 Five Streams and the Fat Meadows. The good 
 monks are already en fete in anticipation of his 
 coming. He cannot, merely as a gentleman, dis- 
 
74 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 appoint them . . . but you and I, my lute, have no 
 such obh'gations. No one expects us. It matters 
 to no one but ourselves what road we take . . . and 
 yet our wandering music will always find kind ears 
 wherever we go . . . 
 
 * Besides, my lute, we have forgotten ... we 
 have money as well ' ; and, plunging his hand into 
 his pocket, he drew forth the rose-noble which the 
 Princess had thrown down for him to the landlord, 
 and of which the landlord had been too flurried to 
 rob him. 
 
 * Did you ever see such pretty money ! ' said poor 
 Rossignol, * and he spun it after a lark just then 
 climbing his ladder of dew, catching it again with 
 his usual elfish dexterity. * Yes ! it is too beautiful 
 almost for money. It is almost big enough to be 
 beaten out into a crown. . . 
 
 At this moment his soliloquy was interrupted by 
 his becoming aware that he no longer had the road 
 to himself; for there suddenly faced him, moving 
 slowly between the trees, a small dilapidated cart 
 drawn sullenly by a not too well-conditioned 
 donkey ; and it rattled rustily as it crawled along. 
 
 But immediately his eyes forgot the donkey and 
 the cart, as they fell upon the ragged barefooted 
 apparition of a beautiful girl, who, with one hand at 
 the donkey's bit, held in her other hand a long wand 
 of hazel with a few leaves at its top. 
 
POET, TAKE THY LUTE! 75 
 
 Presently the tinker's cavalcade came within 
 speech of Rossignol — for it was just a tinker's cart 
 rattling with pots and pans ; and as the girl drew 
 nearer to him, he saw that hers was at once the 
 saddest and the loveliest face he had ever seen. 
 Her rags seemed rather to set off her beauty than 
 to mar it, and, as Rossignol looked upon her face, 
 his heart sank with joy and sorrow; for he knew 
 that he was no longer free. 
 
 Taking his hat from his head, he bowed to her. 
 
 *You seem weary,' he said. 'May I not be of 
 some trifling service to you? Let me drive your 
 donkey for you at least ... or will you not rest 
 here a little, and eat some cherries with me, and 
 refresh yourself with wine . . . ' for Rossignol, in 
 addition to his gold piece, had set out from * The 
 Flaming Sword ' with his wallet comfortably packed 
 with such provision. 
 
 'Hush!' she said. 'Your face is gentle. But I 
 dare not speak to you, for my master is close 
 behind. I left him but now in the village inn, and 
 he will follow me in a moment. He is very strong, 
 and his heart is very hard. . . . ' 
 
 ' Are you his slave ? ' asked Rossignol. 
 
 'Yes! I am his niece, whom he has fed and clothed 
 from my cradle. He has been very good to me, but 
 he is often cruel. . . . ' 
 
 'But see . . .' said Rossignol, taking his lute 
 
76 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 in his hand, ' with this I can do anything — give 
 me leave, and I will soften his heart with a 
 song. . . . ' 
 
 ' Hush ! ' said the girl, ' I hear him coming. Leave 
 me, for he will beat me if he should see us talking 
 together. . . 
 
 But, almost before Rossignol could answer, a 
 lumbering giant of a man had overtaken them, 
 and with loud oaths demanded of his niece why 
 she thus loitered to talk with strangers upon the 
 road. 
 
 Rossignol had barely time to whisper to her, 
 * I will love you as long as I live. I would die for 
 you . . . ' when he found himself caught roughly 
 by the shoulder, and whizzed off so forcibly that 
 it was all he could do to remain standing at the 
 end of his surprise. But, though he had almost 
 lost his feet, he had neither lost his courage nor his 
 tongue. 
 
 ' You brute ! ' he shouted at his enemy, * you 
 brute ! ' 
 
 There were blades of grass on the wayside there 
 which were almost as tall as Rossignol, as he stood 
 up so absurdly ready to fight the impossible. But 
 there was such a fierceness in his white shut fist of 
 a face that even the giant was moved to a kind of 
 admiration ; yet he was only a common creature 
 after all ; he had, as we said, but that moment left 
 
POET, TAKE THY LUTE ! 
 
 the inn ; his purse was light ; and he was in haste to 
 reach the next town. 
 
 So, with the least trouble in the world, he took 
 the wriggling might of poor little Jacobus by the 
 collar, and, boxing his ears in some such fashion as 
 an elephant might admonish a fly, he flung him, as 
 he might have flung a nut, down into the underbrush 
 at the edge of the road. 
 
 When Rossignol sat up, the road was empty of 
 travellers once more. 
 
 ' Faith ! ' he said, ruefully picking up his lute, 
 *we are not so powerful as we flattered ourselves 
 . . . but no ! I forgot. It was I that failed, not 
 you ! If only I had been given the chance to sing 
 him our song of The Green Leaves and the Blue 
 Sky, I am sure he would have listened — and, who 
 knows ? he might have given me his niece for my 
 wife , . .* 
 
 He looked down the road sadly. It was still 
 rainbowed for him with the remembrance of that 
 beautiful face. 
 
 * If only he could have heard me sing ! ' said little 
 Rossignol. 
 
 So, somewhat downcast, Rossignol picked him- 
 self up out of the fern and walked the high-road 
 once more ; nor did he nor his lute say a word 
 one to the other for many days. Instead of singing, 
 he paid his way with the gold piece, for he was so 
 
78 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 sad that he told himself over and over that he would 
 never sing again. 
 
 But one day, about noon, having thrown him- 
 self down under a hawthorn, with all its fragrant 
 clouds for a canopy, he remembered the friend 
 he had in his pocket, and, taking out his little 
 Catullus, began to read about Lesbians sparrow 
 for the thousandth time. The day was heavy with 
 all the honey and the heat of the summer, and, 
 as he read, the book fell from his hand, and he 
 slept there on the grass underneath the hawthorn, 
 the forefinger of his left hand in the book, and 
 his right arm thrown lightly over the back of his 
 lute. 
 
 ' What, after all, is he but a child ? ' said the 
 Princess Bellefleurs, as, by chance passing that way 
 in search of silence and wildflowers, she found him 
 lying asleep, with his small white face lying among 
 his red curls like an egg in a nest. 
 
 ' Just a child ! . . . ' 
 
 ' I wonder what his mother was like,' said the 
 Princess softly, as she sat down close to him under 
 the hawthorn, proposing to herself to cross-examine 
 him for her amusement, as great ladies may, when 
 he awoke. 
 
 It was a full hour before he even stirred in his 
 sleep ; and meanwhile the Princess watched him 
 with a very gentle look. At last he opened his 
 
POET, TAKE THY LUTE! 79 
 
 eyes, just as he lay, and, while they were still half 
 asleep, they fell upon the Princess. Dreamily he 
 looked at her without a word. He was too sleepy 
 yet to distinguish between dream and daylight. At 
 length the Princess spoke : — 
 
 * You remember me?' she said. 
 
 * No, I do not,' he answered, with the simplicity of 
 a boy ; and he added immediately — 
 
 ' I remember only one woman. You are very 
 beautiful, but you are not that woman.' 
 
 * And who, I wonder, was she ? ' asked the 
 Princess. 
 
 ^ I hardly know, for I saw her but for a moment. 
 She was the niece of at inker, and I saw her for 
 a moment on the high-road ... I do not even 
 know her name, for I had hardly spoken to her 
 before her uncle came upon me, and beat me 
 so that when I came back to myself her face 
 had gone — as you might pluck a rose from a 
 tree. . . .' 
 
 ' A tinker's niece ! ' said the Princess, half 
 to herself; 'think of it — you love a tinker's 
 niece ! . . . ' 
 
 ' Why not ! ' exclaimed the poet, suddenly leaping 
 up, wide awake. 
 
 * Why not ! indeed,' answered the Princess, with 
 diplomacy. And, her eye falling upon the open 
 book, she turned their talk a safer way. 
 
8o PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 ' You are a scholar, too, I see ! Will you not read 
 to me out of your book ? . . / 
 
 'How pretty this Latin looks!' she added. 'If 
 only I could read it. . . . Tell me what this means, 
 dear poet. . . 
 
 ' Alas ! I am no scholar,' answered Rossignol, 
 his thoughts momentarily diverted. ' I am too 
 idle. I am afraid I guess at the meaning of 
 words by their looks, as I guess at the meaning of 
 beautiful faces . . . yet this surely I can spell out 
 for you. I was trying to make a song of it just 
 now as I fell asleep. My words are poor indeed 
 in exchange . . . what words have I for words like 
 these ! Ah ! to think that a spray of this hawthorn 
 is not so fresh as a line of Catullus after two 
 thousand years ! Just listen : — 
 
 ^Passer mortuus est meae puellae^ 
 
 Passer^ deliciae meae puellae^ 
 
 Quern plus ilia oculis suis amabat . , . 
 
 ' The tenderness of it ! Isn't it strange that 
 words of so long ago should mean so much to me 
 to-day, sitting here under a comparatively recent 
 hawthorn ! What words have I, or any other 
 man . . . but listen again : — 
 
 ^Nec sese a gremio illius move bat ^ 
 Sed circumsiliens modo hue modo illuc 
 Ad so lam dominain usque pipilabat . . . 
 
POET, TAKE THY LUTE! 8i 
 
 'Pipilabatl he repeated; 'doesn't it break your 
 heart — just one word — piptlabat} O Princess! you 
 are very wonderful, but you are not so wonderful as 
 a word like that . . . you are not so wonderful as 
 piptlabat . . / 
 
 ' I am quite sure that I am not,' said the Princess, 
 smiling ; ' and I am the more certain, as I will con- 
 fess that I am no scholar, and that I have as little 
 idea of the meaning of ptpilabat'' as yonder 
 crow. . . . Tell me what it all means, you wandering 
 boy ; and, if you will only sing it to me, I will 
 listen. . . . Yes ! I will listen, you strange boy, as 
 long as you will sing ' ; and she laid her hand lightly 
 and tenderly upon his for a moment. 
 
 *You are very gracious. Princess,' answered 
 Rossignol, ' but it is preposterous to attempt 
 to put such words into any other tongue . . . 
 you might as well ask me to translate a wild 
 rose. However, I will do the little that I can'; 
 and Rossignol took up his lute and sang — 
 
 ' Weep, Mother of Love ! Weep, Baby-boy of Arrows ! 
 
 And weep all men that have a tear to shed ! 
 Because — alas ! — the sparrow of all sparrows, 
 The sparrow of my little girl, is dead. 
 
 O it was sweet to hear him twitter-twitter 
 In the dear bosom where he made his nest ! 
 
 Lesbia, sweetheart, who shall say how bitter 
 This grief to us — so small to all the rest ? 
 F 
 
82 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 For Lesbia loved no less that little bird, 
 Nor less was loved, than mother loves her daughter, 
 
 Or daughter mother ; would you could have heard 
 His tiny voice, pretty as falHng water ! 
 
 And in no other bosom would he sing, 
 
 But sometimes sitting here and sometimes there, 
 
 On one bough and another, would he sing, — 
 Faithful to Lesbia — as I am to her. 
 
 He, little bird, must go, as go the flowers, 
 
 Down the dark road by which no man returns ; 
 
 O curses on the black strength that devours 
 The beauty of life, and all its music burns ! 
 
 Foul shades of Orcus, evil you befall ! 
 
 Tis true you smote her little sparrow dead — 
 But this you did to Lesbia worse than all : 
 
 You made her eyes with weeping — O so red 1 ' 
 
 ' I would you were not so much in love with 
 the tinker's niece . . / said the Princess, as he 
 finished. 
 
 ' Why do you say that ? ' asked Rossignol. 
 
 * Because,' she answered, rising and making ready 
 to return to her castle close by in the woods — 
 'because I am inclined to think you might have 
 married a king's daughter. . . / 
 
 And thereupon she left him. 
 A king's daughter!' said Rossignol to himself, 
 still only half awake. ' What could she mean . . . 
 anyhow, it is no matter : for am I not in love with 
 the tinker's niece ? ' 
 
POET, TAKE THY LUTE! 83 
 
 * Think of it, lute,' he said, as he once more started 
 along the road. * Think of it — we are great people, 
 after all . . . we might have married the king's 
 daughter. . . 
 
 *But, ah!' he added, *have we not seen the 
 tinker's niece ! ' 
 
 ' It is a sweet life we lead, you and 1/ said 
 Rossignol one day to his lute, *a wonderful life! 
 Do you think we are quite as grateful for it as we 
 ought to be? Think how little we give— and all 
 they give us in exchange ! What am I ? Now 
 look at me, a mere imp of a man, one half rags 
 and the other half wrinkles ; — and come now . . . 
 what are you ? . . . a frail shell of rather cheap 
 wood, with almost all your varnish rubbed away, 
 cracked as well in two places, and subsisting on 
 charity for your strings. If any one else were to 
 play upon you but me . , . me, with these fingers ' 
 — Rossignol's fingers were his only personal vanities 
 — ' me too with my love ... do you think he would 
 be able to wring a tune out of you ? . . . But, ah ! ' 
 he added, * forgive me, little brother, my fingers 
 could make music with no other strings. We are 
 neither of us anything without each other. I could 
 play upon no other lute — and no other musician — 
 shall we say, ** master " ? — could play upon you. . , . 
 Am I not right ? 
 
84 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 * That being agreed upon between us/ Ros- 
 signol went on again, * I mean that we two good- 
 for-nothings, of no value apart, are able in our 
 aflfectionate combination, with no trouble in the 
 world, indeed with the mere self-indulgence of our 
 talents, to do as we please, and heed no one's bid- 
 ding, having stored here in our common pouch all 
 the gold pieces we can conveniently carry, and 
 certainly more than you and I could spend in a 
 twelvemonth . . . 
 
 * I wonder who found the last overflow,' con- 
 tinued Rossignol, ' when our purse was so full that 
 it burst, and we left gold pieces lying like king- 
 cups along the road. I wonder who found them, 
 and what they did with them ? . . . ' 
 
 * Do you see these arrowheads down there in 
 the stream ? ' said Rossignol presently. ' You and 
 I have time enough to gather them if we care 
 . . . but the soldier riding post may not stop, and 
 the mail-coach is too much behind time already 
 to waste any time upon flowers. Even the little 
 stream, leisurely as it is, must go on . . . only you 
 and I, my lute, may sit here and be as lazy as we 
 please, and watch the clouds moving like white 
 cows through the blue pastures of heaven, and 
 listen, if we will, to yonder bird — listen to it, if it 
 sings well enough — and long enough, till the even- 
 ing star. . . . Yes! our life is very wonderful . . . 
 
POET, TAKE THY LUTE! 8$ 
 
 but, O lute! you shall sup as lute never supped 
 before, you shall drink wine as old and fragrant as 
 if it had been drawn from the foundations of the 
 earth, you shall sleep in a bed of down, with 
 silk curtains woven on Flemish looms, and your 
 dreams shall be as sweet as a meadow of daisies : 
 — if only ... if only you will take me to the tinker's 
 niece ! ' 
 
 Day after day, summer and winter, Rossignol 
 and his lute walked and sang together, and there 
 was no foot of the way that did not seem to them 
 aflower with kindness and wonder. 
 
 And it was not only by his singing that Ros- 
 signol won his way. There was something good 
 about his young-old little face, something that took 
 you right away with its kindness. You couldn't 
 say that it was beautiful — in the usual sense 
 — but there was something about it that made 
 beautiful faces look silly. Besides, he seemed to 
 love and understand everything and everybody. 
 Nothing ever happened but he knew all about it, 
 and knew the only thing there was to do ; no one 
 ever got into trouble without his seeing why: 
 seeing, indeed, that there was nothing else for him 
 to do — and seeing in an instant the way out. 
 
 He was indeed almost inhumanly clever, but 
 one was compelled to remark that he was never 
 clever merely for himself. 
 
86 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 There seemed nothing he could not do. Chal- 
 lenged not infrequently, as he was, to conform to 
 the foolish excitements of the world, he could, in 
 mere child's play, do so marvellously with a bor- 
 rowed sword — for he had none of his own ; being 
 so small a man, his lute was heavy enough — that 
 he made many another soldier his friend ; and he 
 could play such tricks with a pack of cards that a 
 whole city devoted to the curing of hides, and 
 dumbly indifferent to his song, begged him to live 
 there for ever. 
 
 Once, on his way, he came upon a wandering 
 clockmaker, fast asleep. The clockmaker's cart 
 was drawn under the hedge, and a spirited mongrel, 
 fastened to it, barked an alarm at his sleeping 
 master. But Rossignol silenced him so completely 
 with a touch of his hand, that he licked his fingers 
 lavishly in token of friendship ; for Rossignol had 
 never yet met with dog, cat, or horse that he could 
 not, with some kindness of his hands or some friend- 
 ship of his voice, make his devoted slave. 
 
 The clockmaker's dog was evidently wild for a 
 run among the possible game of the adjacent fields, 
 for there was a strain of an old hunting grandsire 
 in his lowly blood, and, seeing that the clockmaker 
 was not likely to awake for some time, Rossignol 
 released the poor soul, and applied himself to an 
 old clock with a pretty engraved face, which it 
 
POET, TAKE THY LUTE! 
 
 87 
 
 was evident the clockmaker had been trying to 
 mend as he had fallen asleep. 
 
 Very soon Rossignol, delighting in all its deli- 
 cate mechanism, had started the old clock ticking 
 again ; and, wondering why anybody should care 
 to keep time, he went upon his way. 
 
 He was a friend, too, of all the children along 
 the roads. When some tired mother had given up 
 her querulous infant in despair, he would take it in 
 his arms, and in a few moments put it to sleep 
 with a soothing murmur mysteriously his own— 
 or with the sprightly imitation of some homely 
 animal, so entertaining that the child's thoughts 
 were diverted from its sorrow. 
 
 And so the years went by, and the people along 
 the roads began to understand that the odd little 
 vagabond with his kind eyes and his sweet voice, 
 and that old lute of his, was what is known as a 
 great man. There was hardly any need for him 
 to sing his songs himself, as he passed along, for 
 mothers sang them to their children, and lovers 
 sang them to each other ; indeed, the very birds 
 sang them from the trees. Jacobus Rossignol and 
 his lute became at length so famous that univer- 
 sities met him with laurel as he entered the city 
 gates, dusty from the road, and with the same old 
 lute on his arm, and made him Doctor of Laws in 
 spite of his old clothes. 
 
88 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 Kings invited him to make his home at their 
 courts, and sometimes he smiled to himself as he 
 thought of that king's daughter. 
 
 But fame had no power over his simplicity. 
 
 The world still had nothing more to give him 
 than it gave the night his father cast him out-of- 
 doors. And, speaking of his father — well ! the 
 lute he had used so despitefully had long since 
 made him so rich and at ease in the world, that 
 the village of Twelvetrees had proved too small 
 for him, and his mere stables resembled a village. 
 
 His son knew life too well to feel any triumph 
 over the old man in all this, and, in every way he 
 could, he tried to persuade him that if he had 
 not shot him through the door that night, he would 
 never have been a real poet at all. 
 
 * I needed to face the world for myself, dear 
 father,' he said, * and I knew nothing about it till 
 that night. Indeed, I never even knew that the 
 moon was so beautiful till you threw me out into 
 the moonlight. . . 
 
 But, for all his honours, Rossignol and his lute 
 continued their simple way about the world. 
 Rossignol gave his money day by day to the 
 poor, reserving no more for himself than sufficed 
 for food and clothes and lodging, and an occa- 
 sional new string for his lute ; and still, as when a 
 boy, he could not be persuaded that the world 
 
POET, TAKE THY LUTE I 89 
 
 could give him anything better worth having 
 than — 
 
 The Spring, 
 
 A Hawthorn in Blossom, 
 
 A Copy of Catullus, 
 
 An Old Lute, 
 and — The Face of the Tinker's Niece. 
 
 But, though he tramped many a dusty road, 
 and read Catullus under many a vernal bush, he 
 looked in vain for that little rusty cavalcade. Oh 
 to hear again the clanking of those pots and pans ! 
 Oh again to be pitched headlong into the fern ! 
 But it was fated that Rossignol should never see 
 or hear those pots and pans again ; and only by 
 accident in one of his wanderings did he at last 
 come upon the tinker's niece, as she was starting 
 on a long journey. 
 
 Rossignol was still quite a boy to look at, and 
 indeed the years had perhaps seemed more and 
 longer to him than to other people — for other, 
 wiser people had so many things to do. He had 
 been doing nothing all this time but walk through 
 the lanes, looking for the tinker's niece. He had 
 seemed to be looking for her for years upon years ; 
 though actually she was little more than a woman 
 when he saw her for the last time suddenly one 
 morning, all covered with flowers, in a little 
 churchyard — ^just as he and his lute were going 
 
90 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 by, without a thought of his coming upon her like 
 that. 
 
 There were sad voices and solemn music about 
 her, as Rossignol entered the churchyard gate 
 with a strange sinking of the heart. Gently mak- 
 ing his way through the dark crowd, Rossignol 
 caught sight once more of her lovely face — but 
 her eyes were fast closed, and her brow was 
 wreathed with lilies. . . . 
 
 * At last ! . . / he cried out, in a voice that 
 made the mourners stand still in astonishment. 
 ' At last ! . . 
 
 And then, standing as one in authority by the 
 bier, he turned to the priest, taking his lute in his 
 hands, and thus asserting himself, little man, for 
 the first time in his modest life. ' Your pardon, 
 Father,' he said, 'but I am the poet. Jacobus 
 Rossignol. I love this lady ; and either I will 
 sing her awake again, or I and my lute shall be 
 buried in her grave.' 
 
 So sudden and strange was his apparition, that 
 his hands were on the strings and his voice among 
 the words before any one had thought of hinder- 
 ing him ; and, so soon as he began to sing, no 
 one had a thought except for his song — and his 
 sorrow. 
 
 ' Poor soul ! ' said one under his breath, ' his 
 grief has broken his heart.' 
 
POET, TAKE THY LUTE ! 91 
 
 And this was the song that Rossignol sang to 
 the tinker's niece, as she lay with closed eyes 
 among the lilies — 
 
 This is my lady — pray you wait a while 
 Before you lock such beauty underground, 
 
 Shut in this dungeon that immortal smile. 
 And plunder music of its sweetest sound. 
 
 This is my lady ! Ah ! I never told 
 All that I dare speak now that she is dead ; 
 
 This is my lady ! She who lies so cold, 
 White as the flowers that wither on her head. 
 
 This is my lady ! She will never know 
 
 How my heart breaks because my heart is hers ; 
 I am the nightingale, — she was the rose ! 
 
 0 give me leave to sing to her, fair sirs ! 
 
 Ah ! rose untimely smitten of the cold, 
 
 1 bring my burning lute afire with spring, — 
 So young 'twould turn to blossom faces old ! 
 
 For thee to listen — scarce is need to sing ! 
 
 Love, sleeping on with such a silent air- 
 Awake, for all the land is flower and bird ; 
 
 What dost thou, little sluggard, sleeping there, 
 
 Sleeping as sound as though thou hadst not heard ! 
 
 O raise thy head ! — or, if too weary thou 
 Open thine eyes, and nod a little smile, 
 
 And in my arms, ah ! love, I '11 take thee now 
 And carry thee to God each shining mile. 
 
 But the tinker's niece lay there as if she had 
 heard no word of the song that made the tears 
 
92 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 stream from all other eyes in the churchyard except 
 hers. 
 
 ' It is strange that she should sleep like this/ 
 said Rossignol to himself. * She cannot have 
 heard my voice. I will sing to her my song of 
 The Coming of Springs and then surely, when she 
 remembers the gladness of the green world, she 
 will awake.' And taking up his lute once more, 
 Rossignol sang — 
 
 Heart, have you heard the news 
 
 The Spring has come back — have you heard ? 
 With little green shoot and little pink bud, and the little 
 
 new-hatched bird. 
 And the Rose — yes ! yes ! the Rose — 
 
 Nightingale, have you heard the news ? 
 The Rose has come back and the green and the blue, 
 
 And everything is as new as the dew — 
 New nightingale, new rose. 
 
 Wind of the east, flower-footed breeze, 
 
 O take my love to the budding trees. 
 To the cypress take it, and take it, too. 
 
 To the tender nurshngs of meadows and leas, 
 To the basil take it, messenger breeze, 
 
 And I send it, my love, to you. 
 
 O April skies ! 
 The Winter's done, 
 
 O April skies ! 
 The Spring 's begun ! 
 
 And honey-humming 
 Summer's coming — 
 
 O April skies I 
 
POET, TAKE THY LUTE! 93 
 
 But the tinker's niece lay there in her shroud 
 of flowers, and never stirred, and the priests and 
 the mourners looked on at the strange grief of 
 Rossignol, ignorantly awed. 
 
 ' It is strange/ said Rossignol, and he stood 
 pondering in silence a long time. 
 
 Then again he spoke — 
 
 * Perhaps it is her will to sleep,' he said ; ' per- 
 haps she is weary and would rest. . . . Let us not 
 call her again, my lute ; let us rather sing low to 
 her, that she may indeed sleep. . . 
 
 And, taking his lute in his hands for the last time 
 Rossignol sang softly this lullaby of death — 
 
 Vain, all in vain ! O Love, thou dost not hear : 
 
 Thou art too lost in sleep to wake again ; 
 In vain my song, in vain the falling tear. 
 Vain, all in vain ! 
 
 She will not wake again till Gabriel sings ; 
 
 For any mortal music we can make. 
 My lute and I, with these heart-broken strings. 
 She will not wake. 
 
 Sleep then, ah ! sleep — if slumber be thy will ; 
 
 We would not vex thee, though we needs must weep ^ 
 Of slumber everlasting take thy fill — 
 Sleep then, ah ! sleep. 
 
 As he finished his song, Rossignol bent his 
 head over his breast, and burst into tears. Then 
 gaining command of himself, he stood up before 
 
94 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 the people, and turning to that grim uncle whom 
 he loved now because he had thrown him among 
 the ferns — 
 
 *Will you do this for me? 'he said. * Will you 
 bury my lute with her ... for what to me is the 
 music she cannot hear ? ' 
 
 And as Rossignol left the churchyard in a 
 dream, he laughed sadly to himself — 
 
 ' O my lute — my lute ! We were nothing, after 
 
 aiir 
 
THE WANDERING HOME 
 
THE WANDERING HOME 
 
 I 
 
 HE wandering home! The expression, 
 
 J- you will say, is paradoxical. Is it not 
 of the essence of home that it is rooted, stable, 
 always snug with welcome and peace in the same 
 green corner of the earth? That is what home 
 means. I know — and, perhaps, fortunately for 
 themselves, that is how most people think of home. 
 Well, it is a question of temperament, like so much 
 else in life. 
 
 For the average, or, if you prefer, the normal 
 temperament, the world seems insecure unless 
 it has assured for itself, by irrefragable legal hold- 
 fasts, a lifelong anchorage in the treacherous 
 stream of existence. If it is able to assure the 
 continuance of this anchored safety to those that 
 come after it, and if, too, it should happen itself 
 to have inherited it from those that went before, 
 its sense of security is as the roots of the moun- 
 tains. The ideal home of such a temperament 
 seems typified by those old country houses one 
 
 G 
 
98 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 often sees in America, where the family graveyard 
 is attached to the house, an extension of the 
 garden. The poetry of the ideal is indisputable. 
 It vividly and appealingly concentrates all that 
 we mean by the family sentiment — the conception 
 of men and women not in units, nor even in pairs, 
 nor yet even in single households of parents and 
 children, but rather in clusters of such households 
 radiating from one original root of home — the 
 sentiment of the clan. 
 
 There, just beyond the garden, lie the strong 
 builders of the home, the old men of iron, and 
 the beautiful old grandmothers. They have done 
 their work, and they take their rest, while the 
 young folk go on with the work in the old house. 
 But, though they are dead, they still belong to 
 the home, familiar presences that still have their 
 say in living affairs — waking up, as it were, now 
 and again, to say a strong, wise word on occasion, 
 and then to sleep again. Yes, in death they are 
 still at home. They have not been sent away, 
 numbered exiles, to some Siberia of the dead. 
 They lie safe within the circuit of the warm walls 
 they built, and in the dark nights the home lights 
 stream across their graves. And sometimes, as 
 their children read over their names on the crooked 
 tombstones, it makes them feel, as we say, more 
 'at home in the world,' to realise that when they 
 
THE WANDERING HOME 
 
 themselves die, they too will go on thus belonging 
 to the old home, and not wander like orphaned 
 ghosts in the shadowy land. 
 
 This is the way of one temperament. Perhaps 
 the majority of people feel like that. It is the 
 way of another temperament, a temperament fun- 
 damentally different, that I am now concerned to 
 present. 
 
 To this other temperament, that sense of rooted- 
 ness, of anchorage, in the world which is so assur- 
 ing and consoling to the first temperament, is one 
 to inspire it with feelings almost precisely the 
 reverse, feelings little short of terror. To this 
 temperament the signing of a lease seems like the 
 signing of a death warrant. It brings one so ap- 
 pallingly face to face with the Last Fact of exist- 
 ence. Even a short lease, after one has turned 
 thirty, is sufficient to inspire this feeling. Say it is 
 only for seven years. Say you are thirty-five. 
 When the lease is out, you will be forty-two. 
 Another seven years' lease will bring you to the 
 threshold of fifty. A third brings you to fifty- 
 six, a fourth to sixty-three, and a fifth to — three- 
 score years and ten ! And the odds are that two 
 of those leases you will never sign. 
 
 Or you may reflect to yourself something after 
 this manner : To-day, when I sign this lease, I may 
 still call myself a young man — though really 
 
100 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 young people wouldn't call me so. At all events, 
 there is yet a little of the cake of youth remaining. 
 By the time this lease has run out it will be eaten 
 to its last crumb. To-day my little daughter is 
 still a child. By the time this lease has run out 
 she will be a woman. To-day my hair still passes 
 for brown. By the time this lease has run out it 
 will be frankly gray. People will say : ^ O lots 
 of young people have gray hair ! ' Yes ! but the 
 lease is up, and you know you are not young any 
 more, and will not be young again for ever. 
 
 It is thoughts like these that run shiveringly 
 through some of us as we sign a lease, and faith- 
 fully promise a landlord, under sundry pains and 
 penalties, to live in the same house, cultivate the 
 same plot of garden, walk the same streets, catch 
 the same trains, for no less than seven out of the 
 few years left us ; seven — with an option of re- 
 newal to fourteen or twenty-one. You see plainly 
 whose are the features of the grim lawyer, and you 
 see the smile on them, as you set your finger on 
 the little red seal and declare this your act and 
 deed. 
 
 Yes, you have promised to live in the same 
 house for seven years. For seven years that might 
 have been packed so full of experiment and ex- 
 perience, you have promised to do the same thing. 
 The gong will sound for meals every day at the 
 
THE WANDERING HOME loi 
 
 same hours. You will walk at the same hour. 
 You will sit and read at the same hour. The 
 only change will be in the servants, and the only 
 consolation that you are treading the same round 
 with — the same woman. 
 
 I would not be misunderstood as writing un- 
 graciously of this sameness in mortal things. Life 
 is, and must be, made up of the same things. But 
 the art of life is to make ourselves forget that they 
 are the same things — the art, and the problem. 
 Nor is it, indeed, that we would change these same 
 things for other things. The burden of sameness 
 is not in the things themselves, but rather in the 
 monotony of their arrangement. The ingredients 
 of the same old dish are excellent, but the cook 
 lacks versatility. All that is needed is the trans- 
 forming touch of that ^ perpetual slight novelty,' 
 which Keats declared to be characteristic of true 
 poetry. That the spring always brings the same 
 flowers and the same birds is not matter for this 
 complaint, for they never seem the same ; or that 
 the face of a friend should always look the same, 
 in spite of the years ; or that those who loved us 
 once should go on loving us just the same. These 
 carry within them that perennial freshness which 
 is the essence of novelty. Perhaps one can illus- 
 trate the kind of novelty of which some of us 
 are in constant need by a comparatively trivial 
 
102 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 comparison. Take the arrangement of the pictures 
 in one's room. They are, we will say, all good 
 pictures, pictures which wear well, and not merely 
 brilliant or sensational memoranda of past moods 
 of choice. They are deep wells of beauty, the 
 bottom of which we have never seen, nor will ever 
 see. Yet there are times when they seem to be 
 failing us. It almost seems as if they have given 
 us all they had to give. We, perhaps, fancy that 
 they are worn out. We need new pictures. The 
 truth, however, is that we have grown weary, not 
 of the pictures themselves, but of their arrangement. 
 If we move them about a little, set them in un- 
 accustomed lights, hang them in other rooms, we 
 shall suddenly find all their freshness back again, 
 and come upon them from time to time with quite 
 a thrilling shock of novelty. 
 
 The image is homely and limited, and by no 
 means covers all the ground. It may serve to 
 illustrate the burden of the sameness of things, 
 but it does not touch that terror of securely invested 
 repose and reiteration which is a veritable bugbear 
 of some natures — the wild dread of being 'settled 
 down.' 
 
 To be 'comfortably settled in life' is the very 
 proper aim of most men and women, and so far as 
 the term merely refers to a secure income, even 
 the most incorrigible world-wanderer will not find 
 
THE WANDERING HOME 103 
 
 fault with it. The complaint is not of a settled 
 income, but of having to spend it in certain settled 
 ways and in certain settled conditions. When we 
 say that a ship is settling down, we mean that 
 she will sail the seas no more, no more feel the 
 adventurous wind in her sails, touch no more 
 strange islands, nor steer her course again by un- 
 familiar stars. So with a man when he signs the 
 long lease. He is done with experiment. His 
 adventures are over. The sea is wide and shimmer- 
 ing about him. Mysterious ports call him from 
 behind the setting sun. But no ! his sailing days 
 are over. He is settling down ! 
 
 Now the problem for this wild bird that dreads 
 the cage, this nomad that hates the immovable 
 roof, is: How so to order his days that they may 
 present the illusion of that perpetual slight novelty, 
 and not hint too loudly of their swift passing away. 
 
 A skilful gardener, as we know, can so cunningly 
 arrange his trees and lawns, and wind about his 
 walks in so illusive a fashion, that even a few acres 
 may be filled with surprises, and you can walk in 
 and out for quite a long time without suspecting 
 how small is the garden. So with life, the problem 
 is to hide the end of the garden, to make-believe 
 it is a never-ending pleasaunce, and never to hint 
 at the stranger waiting by the iron gate that opens 
 into the haunted wilderness outside. 
 
104 
 
 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 This, you will perceive, is a very different view 
 from that of those old American settlers who liked 
 to think of the graveyard at the end of the garden ; 
 but it must not be confused with a morbid or 
 cowardly fear of death. The Wanderer I am 
 thinking of does not fear death as death — he only 
 fears its shrinking influence upon life. To him 
 and to natures like his, the memento mori does not 
 so much quicken the pace of his living by its 
 warning to make the most of existence. Rather 
 is it apt to make him say : * With so short a time 
 to do anything in, it is hardly worth doing anything 
 at all ; with so short a time to be happy in, it is 
 hardly worth while beginning to enjoy.' 
 
 There is in all significant human acts an indefin- 
 able implication of eternity. We involuntarily do 
 our work with, one might say, an almost instinctive 
 sense of its being somehow or other immortally 
 important. The feeling is not in any sense reasoned. 
 Reasoning may easily dissipate it. But it is none 
 the less there. And we enter into our joys with 
 the same gusto of immortality. One of the reasons 
 for the conquering force of youth is its buoyant 
 possession of this motive sense. Death has not 
 yet entered into its calculations. As life advances, 
 however, death is seen to be something more 
 than the old wives' tale we had thought it. It 
 may well be that we misunderstand death. This 
 
THE WANDERING HOME 105 
 
 sense of immortal impulse in human action of 
 which I have been writing may very well mean 
 that immortal significance it seems to mean. If 
 so, it is the more important for us to resist the 
 blighting influence on life of our very natural mis- 
 interpretation of death. Maybe death is not an 
 end, but one more radiant beginning. It does not, 
 however, wear that aspect as year by year we ap- 
 proach nearer to it, and, therefore, it is all to the 
 good of efficient living that we meditate as little as 
 possible on our latter end. 
 
 Now for the temperament which for the moment 
 I represent, there is no more insistent reminder of 
 that latter end than the rooted, long-leased home. 
 Even amid all the June glories of the distinguished 
 old garden, the warm reassurance of the passionate 
 summer air, the Wanderer shivers as the cold 
 thought takes him of the unchanging stretched- 
 out days, and of that last inevitable day when, 
 with the hushed pomp of mourners, he shall pass 
 out through the Georgian doorway, across the 
 village green, to the dull old churchyard. It is 
 terrible to be quite certain where you will die. 
 The certainty makes you feel something like dead 
 already — 
 
 ' And enterprises of great pith and moment 
 With this regard their currents turn awry, 
 And lose the name of action.' 
 
io6 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 II 
 
 The Wanderer had felt all this very restlessly, and 
 so had the Wanderer's Wife — for what a mistake 
 it is to think that woman is the born Stay-at- 
 Home! The Wanderer and the Wanderer's Wife 
 loved each other with all their hearts — and both 
 their heads. Nature had made them nomads ; but 
 nature, too, had made it impossible for them to 
 wander long or far from each other. 
 
 They had been married now for nearly twelve 
 years, and yet it was plain truth, and no smug 
 platitude for social publication, that their love was 
 as young and fresh as ever. They had never bored 
 each other for five minutes. The stress of so many 
 years of life had so far failed to reveal any serious 
 lack of harmony between them. Nature had evi- 
 dently selected them with great care for each 
 other — but they had been wise, too, and skilfully 
 seconded nature with that tact of loving for lack 
 of which too many unions equally well planned by 
 nature fail of success. 
 
 'One needs to be clever, as well as devoted, to 
 love successfully,' the Wanderer's Wife was fond of 
 saying. 'Love, particularly married love, is the 
 most difficult of the fine arts. Love needs enormous 
 
THE WANDERING HOME 107 
 
 taking care of — needs amusement, distraction, and 
 perpetual refreshment/ 
 
 There was, of course, nothing particularly new 
 about this wisdom. It was the success and the 
 novelty of its application that gave significance to 
 the words ; and it was, indeed, no small success for 
 two such natures to have been married for so long, 
 and yet to have retained the precious sense of vista, 
 the salt of adventure, in their lives. All the security 
 they felt the need of was in the deep sense and 
 tried knowledge of their love. They did not feel 
 the need of daily monotony to make them sure of 
 the stability of their marriage bond, nor did they 
 conceive marriage as a state in which two people 
 never take their eyes off each other. They were, 
 indeed, mysteriously two in one, yet they remained 
 two as well, two separate beings, with the need 
 occasionally of separate atmospheres to breathe in. 
 They were blissfully married, but, at the same time, 
 blessedly single. 
 
 *The first thing to remember in marriage,' the 
 Wanderer's Wife would say, 'is that, talking 
 without cant, each one has needs in life besides 
 the other. These needs may be pleasures that 
 the other cannot share, or they may be simple, 
 innocent habits or personal methods, with which 
 marriage so often disastrously and stupidly interferes 
 — such as the need, say, of a silent hour alone or of 
 
io8 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 a solitary walk. The truest lovers must occasion- 
 ally get on each other's nerves — that is why a 
 large house is wisest for love to live in, and why 
 love in a cottage seldom succeeds. Then, while 
 one of the true delights you marry for is that of 
 doing things together, there are times when a 
 certain impatience of this perpetual duality of all 
 our actions is to be feared, and an irresistible rest- 
 lessness to do something for and all by oneself — 
 just as when one was a girl or boy — comes over 
 us. For once not to have to share, for once not to 
 have our little adventures companioned even by 
 the most sympathetic companion ! For once to be 
 allowed to forget that their is such a being even as 
 the best husband in the world ! ' 
 
 This, no doubt, had an heretical sound for some 
 ears, but the experienced ones conceded the wisdom 
 of the Wanderer's Wife, and the well-known 
 success of her principles in practice silenced 
 criticism. 
 
 The Wanderer and his Wife attributed much of 
 their happiness to the fact that they seldom lived 
 for long in the same place. Their constancy was 
 largely due to the stimulus of change, and the 
 freshness of their love largely came of the freshness 
 which was thus maintained in their own natures. 
 Through the windows of their house of life fresh 
 currents of air were continually pouring, and when 
 
THE WANDERING HOME 109 
 
 the aspect from one window wearied they turned 
 to another. In fact, their house of life should 
 rather be described as a tent pitched according to 
 their mood, now in one latitude, now in another — 
 so to say, the portable pied-a-terre of two fellow- 
 pilgrims, who sought the elixir of youth in com- 
 pany, and felt that they had found it with every 
 new experience, or every rejuvenation of an old 
 one. 
 
 Two children had been born to the Wanderers. 
 The girl, Pervenche, with her deep forest eyes, the 
 colour of which no man could tell, and her little 
 nut-shaped face, half hidden between the big, brown 
 foliage of her hair, was now ten — she was already 
 a woman in fairy-land — and the boy, Asra, with his 
 northern blue eyes and obstinately curling gold hair, 
 was eight. 
 
 As you would expect, heads were sometimes 
 shaken over the effect upon these young lives of the 
 Wandering Home. ' No home-life, poor darlings,' 
 had been said of them. Such is the superficial 
 wisdom of the ignorant. Pervenche and Asra 
 knew better. Instead of one home, with one play- 
 room, they had homes and playrooms all over the 
 world, with an ever-changing succession of toys. 
 Instead of only feeling at home in one little corner 
 of one little town, or one little village of an earth 
 glittering with strange cities, and teeming with 
 
no PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 towns as stars in the sky, and villages as sand on 
 the seashore, their young imaginations were already 
 at home in a hundred distant places, and their 
 young memories already stored with travel pictures 
 from half the planet. Homeless ! Why, if ever two 
 children felt at home in the world, it was Pervenche 
 and Asra, for, wherever they went, the world was 
 like a new picture-book, with the wisest and most 
 loving father and mother to turn over its pages and 
 tell them its meaning. Instead, too, of growing 
 up prejudiced little provincials, they were already 
 qualifying to be citizens of every nation, and, in- 
 stead of merely having friends who lived in just the 
 same sort of houses as they did, and talked the 
 same language and wore the same clothes, they 
 already numbered dear friends who called them 
 the prettiest pet names in French and Italian — 
 and perhaps the dearest friend they ever had was 
 a tiny little gentleman who used to tell them 
 the beautiful names of things in Japanese. Many 
 little children would have called these people 
 * foreigners,' but Asra and Pervenche would not 
 have understood. * Foreigners ? ' No, they were 
 friends. So much for the place of the child in the 
 Wandering Home. 
 
THE WANDERING HOME iii 
 
 III 
 
 The Wanderer and his Wife were standing on their 
 little roof-garden right away at the top of one of 
 those fortresses which in New York they call apart- 
 ment houses. In Italy they would be called cam- 
 panili, or some other name more appropriate to their 
 beautiful, soaring strength. 
 
 It was the close of a brilliant January day, and 
 the sun was setting as, to some of us it seems, it 
 can only set over New York, in a glory of grim 
 towers and city smoke, a tumbled beauty, form- 
 less, unconventional, yet sternly impressive. From 
 where they stood, turning to right and left, 
 they could see the North and the East Rivers 
 gleaming at the ends of their embattled street. 
 Silhouetted rigging now and again stood out for 
 a moment against the gleam, passing slowly out to 
 sea. The infinite freshness of the Atlantic swept up 
 over the vast towers, already peopled with lights. 
 Cressets and sky-signs began to fill the dusk with 
 fiery writing. Up Sixth Avenue the elevated rail- 
 way moved like a magic lantern slide, and out of 
 the deepening night far sea-horns called homelessly, 
 homelessly. 
 
 *This is New York,' said the Wanderer's Wife, 
 
112 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 as they stood hushed on their tower. * It is so 
 beautiful — I wonder why we should ever want to 
 live anywhere else.' 
 
 'So do 1/ said the Wanderer, and after a pause 
 he added : * But we do. Do you hear the wander- 
 ing horns calling us out there? — 
 
 * " Where shall we wander ? " 
 Said he ; and she, 
 " O anywhere yonder, 
 Anywhere yonder, 
 Out to sea." 
 
 * But where shall we wander this time, child ? ' he 
 continued, *for I feel your wings already beating for 
 flight.' 
 
 * Yes ! to which of our homes shall we wander ? ' 
 said the wife, laughing. * I know it s preposterous 
 at the time of the year, but I 've got a sudden home- 
 sickness for the dear old face of Madame Henriot. 
 I wonder how she is.' 
 
 Madame Henriot was the old lady who looked 
 after their little pied-dL-terre in Paris, and, as the 
 wife spoke, there came before her eyes a picture 
 of that vivid city, putting on her jewels in the 
 frivolous lute-stringed twilight. Like a city of 
 fireflies it flashed into her imagination, and the 
 sound of it came back to her, gay and sad as one 
 of its own chansonnettes, that wonderful murmur 
 of Paris, like the sound of a great shallow river, 
 
THE WANDERING HOME 113 
 
 blended with the singing of many sirens, that 
 seems to be calling you — to come and drown, to 
 come and drown, to come and drown. 
 
 *We can go to Paris and London later/ said 
 the Wanderer, ' but now — ' 
 
 * London ! * exclaimed the wife, her mind in- 
 stantly making another picture. * Yes ! I should 
 love to see London too, — dear old London, with 
 its burly roar — like the sound of a great waterfall 
 busily turning mills. I wonder how our little 
 Chatterton garret is looking'; and she was back 
 on the instant is some tiny old-world chambers 
 with low beams and undulating oak floor, tucked 
 under the roof at the top of a crazy winding 
 staircase ; a swallow's nest, with red tiles and 
 a sweeping view of the trees in Lincoln's Inn 
 Square, swaying to and fro in a prison of historic 
 architecture. 
 
 ' Yes,' she said musingly, pointing to the fading 
 glow in the west, *but you must confess that the 
 sun sets very prettily behind the Law Library in 
 Lincoln's Inn.' 
 
 Then the growing chill of the night drove them 
 into the lighted sitting-room behind them. 
 
 Pervenche and Asra were in the sitting-room 
 turning over picture-books on the edge of bed-time. 
 
 * Where would you like us to go this year 
 Pervenche ? ' asked the mother. 
 
 H 
 
114 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 Pervenche looked up out of her deep cave 
 of hair, and after a moment's serious thought 
 answered — 
 
 * I think, mother, I should like best to go to the 
 Orange Trees in the Blue Mountains. It is quite 
 a long time since we were there/ 
 
 ' But how about your French, dear ? ' 
 
 * O mother ! I know far more than I did 
 then. ' 
 
 * Suppose old Nonotte should ask you to say 
 one of those little songs she used to teach you ? — ' 
 
 * I remember them, mother — at least some of 
 them. I can say Les Hirondelles^ I 'm sure.' 
 
 'Say it, little one,' said the father, stroking her 
 long hair. 
 
 After a quaint little clearing of her throat by 
 way of preparation, Pervenche began : — 
 
 " ' Que j'aime a voir les hirondelles, 
 A ma fenetre, tous les ans, 
 Venir m'apporter des nouvelles 
 De I'approche du doux printemps ! 
 Le meme nid, me disent-elles, 
 Va revoir les memes amours : 
 Ce n'est qu'a des amants fiddles 
 A vous annoncer les beaux jours. 
 
 " * Lorsque les premieres gelees 
 Font tomber les feuilles des bois, 
 Les hirondelles rassemblees 
 S'appellent toutes sur les toits : 
 
THE WANDERING HOME 115 
 
 Partons, partons, se disent-elles, 
 Fuyons la neige et les autans ; 
 Point d'hiver pour les coeurs fideles ; 
 lis sont toujours dans le printemps.'" 
 
 * Bravo, dear! said the father, as Pervenche 
 finished, with a little gasp of achievement. ' So you 
 would really like to go to the Orange Trees in 
 the Blue Mountains? Well, mother and I will 
 think about it. But what is Asra's opinion ?* 
 
 ' I,' answered Asra stoutly, * would rather go 
 to North Star Castle, and play among the rocks 
 and go out with the old fishermen.' 
 
 North Star Castle was their name for an old inn 
 right away near the top of Norway, mortised in 
 among rocks and fishing-nets, and filled with the 
 sound of the sea. 
 
 * But it would be so cold there yet, Asra. Why, 
 we should have to walk in snowshoes, and wear 
 skins, like the Eskimo . . . ' 
 
 ' I should love snowshoes,' rejoined Asra. 
 
 'And perhaps eat candles . . .' the father con- 
 tinued, smiling. 
 
 'O father!' both the children laughed scepti- 
 cally. 
 
 * Or frozen whale.* 
 ' O father ! ' 
 
 When the children had gone, the Wanderer 
 turned to his wife. 
 
ii6 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 * What do you think of Pervenche's suggestion ? * 
 he said. 
 
 ' I second it/ she answered. 
 
 So it was decided that they were to take the 
 next Italian boat, and come at length to the 
 Orange Trees in the Blue Mountains. 
 
 The Orange Trees in the Blue Mountains was 
 their name for an old mill-house lying in a fertile 
 valley at the back of the dark hills which run like 
 a wall along the French Riviera. It is hidden 
 away four or five miles inland behind an old rocky 
 castellated town that overlooks the Mediterranean, 
 a scramble of narrow, climbing streets, little shops, 
 market-place and old parish church, all huddled 
 under the grim shadow of the old feudal castle. 
 The valley is so spacious as rather to be a plain, 
 — a vivid oasis of cultivation refreshing to the eye 
 and heart amid the swart solitudes of the surround- 
 ing hills. A little river ripples like a harpsichord 
 through the valley, past whispering trees and round 
 grassy corners flickering with anemones. There, 
 too, is a vineyard, acres of tendrilled green, and a 
 great cluster of barnlike buildings, in which the 
 wine is stored in mysterious vats and barrels. An 
 avenue of limes runs like a silver lane across one 
 end of the valley, and if you walk up this lane, 
 you come at last to The Orange Trees in the Blue 
 Mountains — a rambling old mill-house tucked into 
 
THE WANDERING HOME 117 
 
 a ferny elbow of the hillside, just where the river 
 sings its way back among the hills, turning the 
 mossed old waterwheel as it goes. Along the 
 river bank runs the big old garden, rambling up 
 the hillside, and here in the sun grow the orange- 
 trees — solar systems of golden fruit in a heaven of 
 bright and bushy emerald. Above the garden is 
 a little olive orchard, mounting in terraces of sunny 
 shadow ; regular irregularity of twisted trunk, and 
 cloud upon cloud of sunburnt green. Each step 
 of the broad staircase is a long floor of laughing 
 flowers ; a terrace of olive-trees, then a little jump 
 of hyacinths ; a terrace of olive-trees, then a ledge 
 of yellow roses; a terrace of olive-trees, then a 
 strip of beans in flower ; a terrace of olive-trees, 
 then a lake of freshest violets ; so, by steps of 
 orchard and flower-bed, with shadowy resting- 
 places of sudden rock, the olive-trees give place 
 at last to the little cork-oaks, that clothe the hills 
 with a thickset garment of small, dark, shining 
 leaves — the gate of the wilderness. 
 
 The Wanderers had come upon the place in one 
 of their earliest wanderings together, and the old 
 miller and his wife had taken them in to lodge 
 there, one never-to-be-forgotten spring, before as 
 yet either Pervenche or Asra had their present 
 wide acquaintance with the world — in fact, before 
 they had come into the world at all. 
 
ii8 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 The place was indeed to them that hidden 
 garden somewhere in the world for all of us, a 
 garden of which most of us have lost the key, or 
 which we dare not visit again : the garden of rap- 
 ture, of enchanted moments — the Eternal Eden. 
 There was not a corner of that little valley, not a 
 bend of the stream, not a dingle in the woods, not 
 a path across the hills, which had not for them a 
 fairy significance ; nor yet a face they had seen, 
 nor a local characteristic, nor any smallest occur- 
 rence of the time, which was not then and now of 
 the stuff of dreams. 
 
 O those old picnics by the stream-side! One 
 of Mother Michaud's delicious pates made especi- 
 ally for them, and exquisite white cheese, and a 
 litre of the valley's own wine, bought from Bacchus 
 himself, as they called the huge old keeper of the 
 vineyard — true wine of the earth, for forty cen- 
 times the litre. And some exquisite book, not so 
 much to read in, but just because they knew it to 
 be full of beautiful words. Then to lie back into 
 the golden grass with their cigarettes, and look 
 up at the sky through the dainty trees. And, all 
 the time, the running of the river and the visiting 
 butterflies and — themselves. 
 
 And those long tramps among the hills, hills 
 which at first promised nothing but the sombreness 
 of the cork-oaks, and the metallic rocky footways, 
 
THE WANDERING HOME 119 
 
 but which were presently seen to be silvered with 
 asphodel, and embroidered with orchids — ivory, 
 and velvet, and dew, and green with unsuspected 
 nooks of grassy freshness. How they would start 
 at dawn, while there was still a feeling of starlight 
 in the air, and the sun had not yet warmed to his 
 work ! Up and afoot before nature's business was 
 a-hum, and while its beauty was but half awake, 
 wandering on while the day slowly kindled like a 
 newly-lit fire about them, on to the merry blaze 
 and roar of noon. And all the time that thrilling 
 comradeship of two who are at once comrades and 
 lovers. All the little excitements of the way — the 
 high spirits, the wit, the romp of it all ; and at 
 length, as noon would bring them with a sudden 
 flash of amethyst to the Mediterranean and the 
 old brasseried town — oh ! what an inspired appetite 
 for lunch, an appetite so keen and fresh as almost 
 to seem a spiritual rather than a physical hunger ! 
 Then the old garden of Les Hesperides ; again 
 orange-trees, and arbours of yellow roses, and fair 
 food and wine like laughter in the glass, and — 
 each other. 
 
 All these and a hundred such pictures passed 
 through the minds of the wanderers as they sat 
 musing a moment after the children had gone. 
 They both came out of their dream-garden at the 
 same moment, and their thoughts met at the gate. 
 
120 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 * No wonder Pervenche loves the Orange Trees 
 in the Blue Mountains/ said the Wanderer 
 gently. 
 
 * Do you want to go there again ? ' asked his 
 wife, smiling. 
 
THE FIRST CHURCH OF THE 
 RESTORATION, AMERICAN 
 
 [I am compelled to disguise the names of the people taking part in 
 the following story ^ as their real names are too well kyiown in New 
 York society. Essentially, however, the story is true, as time tvill 
 prove,'\ 
 
THE FIRST CHU,RCH OF THE 
 RESTORATION, AMERICAN 
 
 S the Reverend Arthur Winslow stepped out 
 
 on to Fifth Avenue at four of a May 
 morning — to be precise, the morning of May 14, 
 1901 — any one who had observed him would 
 readily have understood why he, of all men, or 
 rather all clergymen, should have been chosen for 
 the remarkable revelation which had been made 
 to him during the most momentous night of his 
 life, a revelation with which his whole being was 
 turbulently on fire. He dismissed the automobile 
 which had been awaiting him since one o'clock — 
 the automobile with which as a fashionable divine, 
 he did his district visiting — and turned toward 
 the park. He needed to walk. As he strode 
 away, with the vigour of an athlete and ' the grace 
 of a young god,' he paused once to look at the 
 house he had left — a famous house, the owner 
 of which was known for his combination of enor- 
 mous wealth with exquisite taste. Probably no 
 one ever passes the house without saying to himself 
 
 123 
 
124 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 or his companion, *That is Mulciber Jackson's 
 house/ But if that passer-by knew how much 
 more that house means than he has the dimmest 
 notion of, with what a different wonder would 
 he gaze at it ! The minister knew — that is, he 
 had known for an hour or two. He had often 
 dined in that house before. He was quite accus- 
 tomed to dining with millionaires. Was he not 
 known as ^ The Millionaires' Vicar ? ' Yet he had 
 never had the smallest suspicion of what he now 
 knew. Not a hint. The secret had been indeed 
 well kept. 
 
 The air was all sensitive with the dawn. A 
 mysterious purity was in the air. Fifth Avenue 
 looked like some fairy street just made in a dream. 
 The indescribable eloquence of the silent coming 
 of light thrilled the heart. From masses of sleepy 
 mother-of-pearl, the sky changed to handfuls of 
 fire-red opals, and spears of pure gold shot up 
 here and there through the tumbled colours of the 
 clouds. 
 
 Winslow had an impulse to go on his knees 
 right there in Fifth Avenue, before the august 
 Light-Bringer, but he forbore, though the impulse 
 showed the insight which had prompted the re- 
 markable proposal which was filling his heart with 
 the blended exhilaration of joy and fear. Within 
 the seclusion of the park the impulse grew even 
 
FIRST CHURCH OF RESTORATION 125 
 
 stronger. The vivid grass, almost phantasmal in 
 the freshness of its green, the spiritual look of the 
 trees — ' the trees about a temple ' — the consecra- 
 tion which seemed mysteriously poured over the 
 most ordinary object, affected him almost to the 
 point of ecstasy. He looked at his Christian clothes 
 with a strange smile. Had he been n a more 
 secluded place, he would have torn them from him, 
 and stood up naked in the dawn, a radiant young 
 priest of Apollo. 
 
 Mulciber P. Jackson was one of those powerful 
 ugly men whom women adore ; of massive build, a 
 rough-hewn face, bearded as a rock is bearded, 
 with ferns and mosses, he was, at the same time, 
 ponderously lame. He had a humour which was 
 like the laughing of a volcano, and he could also, 
 at times, suddenly reveal a charm of gentleness, 
 tender as those surprising nooks of green that 
 nestle in the fire-mountain's side. 
 
 His wife was the most beautiful woman in New 
 York. As such, I presume she is not easily identi- 
 fiable. Were I to tell you her real name, you 
 would recognise her at once as the most beautiful 
 woman in the world. The Mulciber Jacksons were 
 somewhat mysterious in their origin. Of course, 
 it was said that Mulciber Jackson was a Jew, or 'a 
 Hebrew,' as they politely say in America. It is 
 one of the many privileges of all rich men to be 
 
126 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 credited with belonging to one of the two most 
 remarkable races that have made human history 
 and still go on making it. Acute observers referred 
 Mulciber Jackson to that other race, and there they 
 were undoubtedly right ; for he was certainly more 
 Greek than Jew. His wife's face was pure Greek, 
 as a woman's face is allowed to be. Some spiteful 
 tongues said that Mrs. Mulciber Jackson imitated 
 the Venus of Milo ; but her beauty was too adven- 
 turous, too rich and strange, to merit the accusation. 
 Even if Mulciber Jackson had not been ugly, he 
 would still have attracted to his house all the beauty 
 of New York ; for, as I have said, he was rich as 
 well. Indeed, to dine at his table was the quickest 
 way to become acquainted with the classes of 
 American beauty and wealth. 
 
 Yes, he was a remarkable man, but only those 
 who shared his confidence, as Winslow now shared 
 it, really knew how remarkable. Beneath his some- 
 what terrible drollery he hid a purpose that could 
 only flag with achievement. Generally known as 
 the funniest man in New York, he was actually its 
 divinest and, some would say, its most dangerous 
 dreamer. What was he rich for? His dream. 
 Why was his life so splendidly hospitable? His 
 dream. Why did he trouble himself about the 
 Reverend Arthur Winslow ? His dream. What 
 was his dream ? You shall hear. 
 
FIRST CHURCH OF RESTORATION 127 
 
 Dinner at Mulciber Jackson's was apt to be 
 almost too showily symbolic of the power and 
 beauty of America. If one could make any criti- 
 cism against the taste of its entertainments, it was 
 that his guests were too uniformly remarkable. 
 There was never any one to be met at his dining- 
 table that was not in some way or other illustrious, 
 except, possibly, yourself. You almost felt that 
 you had been asked to a dinner of public monu- 
 ments. 
 
 Winslow had certainly felt that, till he had grown 
 used to Mulciber Jackson's dinners ; and, the first 
 occasion on which he had sat at the great man's 
 table, he had noted with a certain terror the way 
 the guests — for the most part magnates from Wall 
 Street, purposely chosen by a host who realised the 
 clerical interest in rich people — had talked about 
 various gigantic undertakings, as Titans might spin 
 tops together. To hear them talk of fifty millions 
 of dollars — as if the subject wasn't money at all, 
 only ^ horse-power ' or so many ' volts,' put Winslow's 
 customary eloquence to silence. To his fancy they 
 were like so many presidents of the elements. 
 Here was a man talking of owning the sea as 
 though he were Neptune ; another of electric power, 
 as though he had bought up the bolts of Jupiter; 
 a third discussing rapid transit as though he were 
 Mercury ; and there was a woman who talked of 
 
128 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 corn as though she were Ceres. There, too, sat a 
 new god discussing oil in a loud voice. 
 
 How curiously near the fact Winslow's fancy was 
 he had little known. But the occurrences of this 
 last evening recalled and confirmed it. 
 
 During dinner he had been vaguely conscious 
 that something unusual was in the air. His beauti- 
 ful companion had been indiscreet enough to half 
 ask him questions which, she remembered too late, 
 she had no right to put. 
 
 ' Was he . . . ? ' but ' No ! she forgot. . . . ' 
 
 And he remembered afterwards that the faces of 
 the men wore a curiously uplifted, one might almost 
 say, religious expression. 
 
 When the ladies had withdrawn, Mulciber Jack- 
 son took the opportunity of a private word with 
 Winslow. He had not, of course, failed to notice 
 the effect on his face of a sudden strain of music, 
 stealthily escaped and quickly recaptured as might 
 be said, from the limits of the world : an apparition 
 of sound strangely coming and going along subter- 
 ranean corridors of approach. 
 
 * Arthur,' he said — for he was on terms of affec- 
 tionate friendship with the minister — ' I have a 
 surprise for you to-night. You will, I know, under- 
 stand and appreciate ; and I know it will startle 
 you at first, but, after the first surprise, well, I have 
 hopes I will talk of later.' 
 
FIRST CHURCH OF RESTORATION 129 
 
 Presently the guests rose and departed to a 
 quarter of the house which was quite new to 
 Winslow. A quiet-looking door opened on a deep 
 passage slanting gently downwards. The walls 
 of the passage were decorated by frescoes of a 
 decidedly religious character, but the religion was 
 one that has long since passed away. Mulciber 
 took Winslow's arm, and detained him a little way 
 behind the rest. ^ I suppose you never really 
 suspected your friend Mulciber of religion,' he said. 
 'You will see; I shall be surprised if you are not 
 profoundly stirred — and even changed ; or rather 
 decided.' 
 
 Mulciber was unwontedly nervous for so rugged 
 and hairy a man, and his limp made his face twitch 
 painfully. 
 
 The corridor at length brought them to an 
 exquisite little elevator of painted cedar, in which 
 they were rapidly carried as it seemed into the very 
 centre of the earth. As they glided downwards, 
 strains of the same music Winslow had heard before 
 came up to them ; and presently, as the elevator 
 finished its journey, Winslow found himself in a 
 hushed world of worship and white marble. As 
 from a small private chapel he was looking out into 
 a beautiful little Greek temple. 
 
 The temple was already filled with kneeling 
 worshippers, and white-robed priests moved about 
 
 I 
 
130 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 the altar in the ofifices of a ritual, which was un- 
 familiar to the young Anglican priest, but which 
 yet seemed not quite strange to him. 
 
 Music and singing of an indescribable mournful- 
 ness blent with incense and the piercing fragrance 
 of spring flowers. 
 
 Yet, beneath all the terrible sadness, there seemed 
 an undertone as of some lost joy rising from the dead. 
 
 It was the Easter day of some great old sorrow. 
 
 It was impossible for Winslow, with all his sus- 
 ceptibility to beautiful ritual, the aesthetic and the 
 emotional side of religion, not to be profoundly 
 moved. 
 
 Presently a great hush fell over the temple, as the 
 high-priest took and held up before the people a 
 strange red flower with curiously lettered petals. 
 Then in a moment a great sob seemed to break 
 from the very hearts of the adoring worshippers. 
 
 ^Ai! Ai!' they cried. ^Ai! Ai!' And again 
 * Ai ! Ai ! ' as the priest elevated the sacred flower 
 for the third time. 
 
 Then Winslow realised that he was in a temple 
 of Apollo, and that this was a solemn fast of 
 mourning for the death of Hyacinthus, the beloved 
 friend of the god. 
 
 He looked at his friends. One and all they were 
 bent in an attitude of the profoundest worship. 
 
 Then he, too, bent his head. 
 
FIRST CHURCH OF RESTORATION 131 
 
 Later on, when Winslow was alone with Mulciber 
 Jackson in his little private smoking-room, his host 
 turned to him with some eagerness. 
 
 * Well, what do you think of it all ? ' 
 
 * I hardly know,' Winslow replied. ' I am yet too 
 confused, almost intoxicated, with my impressions. 
 Besides, it was all so unexpected, so strange. Tell 
 me what it means.' 
 
 * I suppose you think that it was all a mere 
 masquerade ; the latest device of a jaded, luxurious 
 society, seeking after novelty ? ' 
 
 * At first I did,' the minister answered ; ^ but there 
 was a note of seriousness in it that soon led me to 
 think otherwise.' 
 
 * I am glad of that, for it was quite serious, and 
 represents a very serious movement which will 
 presently astonish society as it has not been aston- 
 ished for two thousand years. If I tell you what it 
 means, will you give me your word, without any 
 professional reservation, that you will keep what I 
 shall tell you absolutely secret? ' 
 
 ' I give you my word.' 
 
 * You have read Heine's Gods in Exile?^ 
 ' I have.' 
 
 *Well — the gods are to be in exile but a very 
 little longer. The old gods are coming back. Two 
 of the most important of them came over on the 
 Teutonic last week, and are living here in New 
 
132 
 
 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 York at this moment — of course, under assumed 
 names, awaiting the event of which I will presently 
 tell you.' 
 
 ' But you cannot be serious. Gods in Exile was 
 merely a fancy ... a witty imagination.' 
 
 * I am perfectly serious, and Heine's fancy was 
 only a fancy in that he represented the gods in a 
 much worse plight than they have ever been in. 
 That was his incorrigible irreverence, to which 
 not even his own profoundest beliefs were sacred. 
 Actually none knew better than Heine the true 
 status of the eternal gods in a world and amid 
 a civilisation from which they had been formally 
 banished, but which they actually control.' 
 
 * But, Mulciber, you speak of the gods as if they 
 were actually alive — as if, indeed, they had ever 
 really existed at all, and were not mere myths of 
 the popular imagination. Even supposing them 
 once to have lived, they died at the birth of 
 Christ' 
 
 ' Pardon me. So far as I have heard or read, 
 the death of but one god has been ever reported, 
 the death of Pan — and Pan's death was a legend 
 of which Christianity was sorely in need at the 
 time, for the simple purpose of combating the all 
 too vigorous existence of the very god the legend 
 declared to be dead. " Great Pan is dead ! " Why, 
 even you, as a Christian minister, face to face with 
 
FIRST CHURCH OF RESTORATION 133 
 
 the warm instincts of humanity, must know that, of 
 all the gods, Pan is the god likely to survive all the 
 rest.' 
 
 ' Well, continue,' said Winslow, after a pause. ' I 
 confess that I am somewhat bewildered. Let me 
 listen, and I will try not to interrupt.' 
 
 ' Then you must first try to realise that all I tell 
 you is not fancy — strange as it may sound — but 
 actual truth. The old gods, as we call them, have 
 never died. They have only been deposed for a 
 short time. They are soon to come back to their 
 thrones. Actually they have never left them ; it is 
 only officially that they have been exiles.' 
 
 ' Go on,' Winslow nodded. 
 
 * Let us talk a little theology,' continued Mulci- 
 ber, smiling ; * I am sure you won't object. I have 
 often seen the race to which I am popularly sup- 
 posed to belong praised for a theological concept 
 which is, it seems to me, its one mistake; a 
 concept contrary to all human experience, and 
 perhaps on that very account — so whimsical is 
 humanity — a concept which has enjoyed remark- 
 able success. The Jews have invented most things, 
 but their most illustrious invention is the inven- 
 tion of the One God. The Jews are the most 
 abstract, the least human people in the world. 
 They are a nation of idealists, of dreamers, of 
 philosophers, of artists. They are skilled in 
 
134 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 essences, in sublimations of the fact — rather than 
 the fact itself. And if you consider the real 
 significance of the industry with which they are 
 most popularly associated, you will see how that 
 alone, and best of all, proves my contention. 
 The industry of the Jew is money-making. 
 Money-making is the essence of all industries. 
 Thus the Jew, unwillingly enough compelled to 
 touch earth at some point, touches it where all 
 its various concrete activities concentrate into an 
 abstract synthesis, or distillation, — hopelessly, I 
 know, to mix one's metaphors. Money is the 
 distillation of all human labour. It is a volatile, 
 immaterial thing ; the abstract flowering result of 
 all the varied processes of human life. The Jew, 
 the aristocrat of all aristocrats, hating to soil his 
 delicate fingers with the rough and common work 
 of the world, but realising that some work he must 
 do, if he is to continue living upon a pleasant 
 planet, naturally chooses to touch life at its most 
 abstract or immaterial summit. Not for him the 
 coarse and narrowing activities of popular indus- 
 tries. Like some poet who will not soil his hands 
 with the writing of a realistic novel, the depicting 
 of the stockyards of human life, but will sing only 
 of the moon, and the stars, and the face of woman, 
 so the Jew will consent only to take hold of that 
 material which has already passed through so many 
 
FIRST CHURCH OF RESTORATION 135 
 
 processes of refinement that no hint of those 
 cleansing processes remains upon it ; as one might 
 distil attar of roses for a living, and disown any con- 
 nection with the revolting processes by which the 
 common gardener rears the rose to its haughty 
 immaculacy.' 
 
 ' Is it proper for a Greek to be quite so fond of 
 using Latin ? ' Winslow asked, laughing, interrupting 
 merely that Mulciber Jackson might gain a moment 
 in which to breathe. 
 
 Taking a draught of ApoUinaris, Mulciber 
 continued — 
 
 * I have, as I said, only referred to the most 
 notorious preoccupation of the Jew as an illustra- 
 tion of his abstract habit of mind. A race so 
 mentally constituted would naturally produce a 
 Moses and a Spinoza — as it would naturally pro- 
 duce a Shylock. Above all other races, it is the 
 Mental Race. In spite of their remarkable per- 
 sistence, the Jews are the least rooted in earth of 
 any people. Their patriotism — is a patriotism of 
 the mind. They will never go back to Palestine. 
 Their idealism is too great. It soars above such 
 mere earthly sentimentalism. They were just the 
 people, therefore, to conceive an abstract One 
 God — a god remote from humanity, understand- 
 ing nothing of its needs, its joys, or its sorrows, 
 a god that indeed felt constrained on that very 
 
136 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 account to send his own more human son upon 
 the earth, the better to comprehend the strange 
 race of men. Through the humanity of this divine 
 son, the concept of the One God, paradoxically 
 enough, has gained its widest acceptance — though 
 the monotheistic ideal which Christ taught has all 
 along needed the aid of his divine mother and the 
 saints to make it acceptable to a humanity that 
 instinctively felt the need of many gods — a god 
 for every need. Gods succeed in proportion to 
 their humanity. Jehovah has never been accept- 
 able to the world, and he owes his present position 
 to the endearing humanity of his son. On the 
 other hand, that humanity has been disastrously 
 thinned by the Jewish blood in his veins. Christ, 
 with all his humanity, was still the son of a Jewish 
 god. He brought the world a gift of which it 
 stood sorely in need, a gift by virtue of which 
 he must hold his eternal place in any Pantheon — 
 the gift of Pity ; but with it, owing, as I said, to 
 his Jewish ancestry, he brought abstract restric- 
 tions upon the kindly instincts and operations of 
 humanity, which have prevailed over the true gift he 
 gave. It was not really necessary that all the gods 
 should go for Christ to come. Their banishment 
 was but that inevitable eclipse of other stars which 
 must always accompany the lighting of a new star. 
 Now that the new star has settled down to a normal 
 
FIRST CHURCH OF RESTORATION 137 
 
 place in the heavens, we see that the old stars are 
 still burning. That's what I mean when I say that 
 the old gods are coming back — or rather that they 
 have never gone away. Christ will not be banished 
 when they come back. His place will still be his. 
 They merely resume their own.' 
 
 Winslow was evidently struck by this reasoning. 
 
 Mulciber Jackson continued : ' Yes, humanity is 
 too complex to be satisfied with one god. It is 
 impossible for one god to understand all the needs, 
 all the hopes and aspirations, of humanity. That 
 there is one god greater than all the rest our own 
 Grecian theology has formulated. Zeus is wor- 
 shipped as the Father of the Gods. But his wisdom 
 is so great that he leaves the lesser gods undisputed 
 sway in their own dominions. He would not dream 
 of instructing Neptune in the management of the 
 sea, or of interfering with the purposes of Apollo. 
 But we must not wander too far afield. I shall 
 hope to have many opportunities of discussing 
 with you such mere points of doctrine. To-night 
 it is not theories I wish to talk with you, but facts. 
 Now you and I may think as we please about the 
 old gods, their management of the world and so 
 on, but the fact remains, as I have said, that they 
 are coming back — coming back not only to their 
 own power, but to a power far greater than any 
 they have ever wielded before. If you doubt this, 
 
138 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 consider a moment the condition of the world, and 
 can you sincerely say that it is a Christian condi- 
 tion ? Ostensibly we still live in the Christian era. 
 Our churches are externally Christian. Christian 
 ethics are supposed to rule our lives. Officially the 
 world is Christian — actually it is what you might 
 call " Pagan." In what is the world most interested 
 to-day? Is it the Kingdom of Heaven, the in- 
 heritance of the weak, the amelioration of the poor, 
 the spiritual life.? No, the world is interested 
 in Power and Beauty. War and Women and 
 Wealth are practically all it thinks of. It still 
 professes Christ, but its real divinities are Mars 
 and Venus and Plutus. Of this there can be no 
 doubt at all. 
 
 ' These three divinities were never seriously dis- 
 turbed by the Christian heresy. Like some royal 
 family, overthrown awhile by popular sedition, 
 they went into retirement, indeed, but into retire- 
 ment no less splendid and luxurious than the 
 public life to which they had been accustomed. 
 They have never changed the manner of their 
 lives in the smallest particular, nor has the number 
 of their worshippers ever appreciably decreased. 
 The only difference has been that the worship 
 offered to them has been a secret rather than a 
 public devotion, and for that very reason the more 
 sincere. Actual godship has always been theirs, 
 
FIRST CHURCH OF RESTORATION 139 
 
 but naturally, with the pride of their race, they 
 have dreamed of the time when it should once more 
 be publicly acknowledged. It is not meet that the 
 immortal gods should rule the world in hiding, 
 however superb be their hiding-places. 
 
 'Now it has been decided that the time for a 
 public restoration of the old gods has come. Not 
 only do all the signs in the world at large point 
 that way, but those familiar with the inner work- 
 ings of the so-called religious world know that it 
 too is prepared for and sympathetic towards the 
 change. The many new churches which have 
 sprung up of late years, particularly many of them 
 in America, as you know, with immense wealth 
 and social power behind them, have not only been 
 useful in preparing the way for us, by familiarising 
 men's minds with the idea of a coming change 
 and the necessity of it, but the majority of them 
 are secretly affiliated to our cause, and ready, at 
 the right moment, to throw off the mask and openly 
 acknowledge allegiance to the old gods, whom they 
 actually worship under Christian names. How 
 nearly related to us the oldest and most powerful 
 Christian church has always been you need not be 
 told. The change there will be very slight. The 
 saints will but resume their old names, and hardly 
 any appreciable changes in the ceremonial will be 
 found necessary. In regard to the newer churches, 
 
140 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 you may have noticed the prominence given to 
 love in their doctrines. Mystical phraseology is 
 often used to veil it, and it is sometimes referred 
 to as sisterly love or brotherly love ; but that it is 
 one of the many forms of the worship of our august 
 lady, known variously as Urania and Aphrodite, 
 no one acquainted with its ceremonies can doubt. 
 Enough then to convince you that the world is 
 ready and waiting for the revelation which I have 
 made to you to-night. I am but one humble 
 mouthpiece of a vast organisation which is backed 
 by all the power and wealth and other influence 
 of the world. You may take my word that on 
 a certain date, which I will confide to you, the 
 world will officially cease to be Christian. Chris- 
 tianity will not be abolished. Actually it has 
 never been more than a small sect. It is too 
 spiritual, too unearthly an ideal ever to take hold 
 of great numbers of men. By an accident it be- 
 came constituted as a powerful hypocrisy. Now 
 it will sink back to sincerer dimensions. The 
 number of real Christians in the world will be no 
 smaller than before, and they will be free to worship 
 as they choose, without oppression, or the in- 
 trusion upon them of those hypocrites who have 
 vulgarised their beautiful creed. Orders are already 
 given throughout the world that on that day of 
 Restoration the images of Christ are everywhere to 
 
FIRST CHURCH OF RESTORATION 141 
 
 be respected. His place among the gods is his 
 for ever — the place of the God of Pity. It is 
 only, as I said, the old gods who resume their 
 places — the Gods of Power. On that day, in 
 every great city of the world, temples of Jupiter 
 and Apollo, of Diana and Venus, will be opened. 
 They are now in course of erection — supposedly 
 as Christian churches. When you give me your 
 decision, I will reveal to you the full extent of our 
 plans ; but first you must give me your answer to 
 this question : " Will you consent to be the High 
 Priest of Apollo of the First Church of the Restora- 
 tion in New York ? " ' 
 
 After Mulciber Jackson had finished speaking, 
 the friends sat some moments in silence. The 
 minister was visibly moved, A great conflict was 
 taking place in his soul. 
 
 *You have been chosen for me to speak to, 
 Arthur,' added Mulciber presently, 'not merely 
 because of your popularity and your gifts of elo- 
 quence, but because we believe that, while you 
 have been a sincere priest of Christianity in its 
 more human aspects, you have also come to see 
 its limitations as a complete formula of human life. 
 It supplements us, but it can never permanently 
 displace us. Man needs all his gods: he cannot 
 afford to lose any of them. And, similarly, some 
 men are born to be priests of one god, and some 
 
142 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 priests of another. Believe me, you were born less 
 a priest of Christ than a priest of Apollo/ 
 
 Such was the proposal that was agitating the 
 mind of the Reverend Arthur Winslow as he paced 
 Central Park on the morning of the 14th of May 
 this present year. 
 
 Of his decision I know nothing. 
 
BEAUTY'S PORTMANTEAU 
 
BEAUTY'S PORTMANTEAU 
 
 HE five o'clock train leaving Waterloo on 
 
 Saturdays for the more distinguished parts 
 of Surrey is undeniably one of the smartest trains 
 of the week. I have heard it jealously called *the 
 Haw-Haw train.' I prefer to call it the feudal 
 train — for, apart from its aristocratic travellers, 
 it is filled, from engine to guard's van, with so 
 feudal a spirit that one might, without exaggeration, 
 describe it as a baronial hall on wheels. It is the 
 romance of the day for the corduroyed porters, who 
 know their distinguished clients too well to expect 
 from them the costly tips they would surely demand 
 from your mere bourgeois passenger. To sweat 
 and groan under the baggage of a mere merchant, 
 however wealthy, is one thing. There is no glory 
 in that. Therefore, it is natural that you expect 
 money to make up the deficiency. Sir Ralph 
 Gilderoy is, of course, quite another matter. He 
 is a form of poetry. He is emblazoned in your 
 imagination like a herald's coat. Though he should 
 look like an ordinary passenger — and, to do him 
 justice, he usually does — to your feudal eye he is 
 
 K 
 
146 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 romantic as his own coat of arms. Probably your 
 brother is one of his under-gardeners down there 
 in fragrant Surrey, and if he should only give you 
 sixpence instead of a shilling you understand that 
 it is no meanness on his part ... for you know, by 
 long-inherited instincts of cheerful servitude, how 
 hard it is for a gentleman to live in a world so 
 sordidly run upon a money basis. Indeed, if you 
 could only dare, you would like to say to him, 
 'Keep it, Sir Ralph . . . some other time, when 
 you are better off.' And should he give you a 
 shilling — you bless him for a gentleman indeed — 
 for no one but a gentleman would give you his last 
 shilling. 
 
 If this sounds ironical, sarcastic, or anything 
 cheap like that, I must beg the reader to believe 
 that my words have been put together with no such 
 intention. I mean them to convey neither more 
 nor less than the distinction attaching to the five 
 o'clock train leaving Waterloo on Saturdays for the 
 more distinguished parts of Surrey, and the pure 
 joy it gives to all the railway officials, from highest 
 to lowest, privileged to have a hand, however 
 humble, in running it. Heavens ! but it is a proud 
 train ! Of course it never dreams of stopping at 
 Surbiton. Stopping at Surbiton ! I should think 
 not ! Why, it flashes nervously through the station, 
 as though afraid that Surbiton should insist on a 
 
BEAUTY'S PORTMANTEAU 147 
 
 recognition — and it so full of lords and ladies 
 and golf-sticks! Even Esher — think now, Esher! 
 — it thunders through with the utmost nonchalance. 
 Much against its will it pulls up at Guildford, but 
 any one can tell by the impatient way in which it 
 fumes out steam that its aristocratic heart rebels at 
 the materialistic time-table which enforces so vulgar 
 a delay. 
 
 * Next stop Witley ! ' cry out the guards and 
 ticket-collectors — and with what alacrity the five 
 train hides its shame in the chalk tunnel of the 
 Hog's Back, and straightens itself like a greyhound 
 for the climb to that noble junction of coroneted 
 country roads ! 
 
 Any one who flatters himself that the feudal 
 system is dead and done with should see that five 
 train drawing in to Witley some Saturday afternoon 
 in July. It is one of the loveliest sights in the world, 
 looked at in the proper spirit. Of course, there 
 are other stations on the route between Waterloo 
 and Portsmouth worth a brief respectable stop — 
 Haslemere, Liphook, and Liss, for example; but 
 not one of them begins to compare in aristocratic 
 unction with Witley. 
 
 For quite a while before the five train is due, the 
 pretty little station, with its name picked out in 
 geraniums or some other railway station flower, 
 begins to fill with excitement. It is absurdly 
 
148 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 small and humble in appearance considering its 
 importance — one might almost say its ^ fame/ even 
 its destiny ; and when the five has been signalled 
 and is seen labouring up the last stretch of hol- 
 lowed pinewood, it will become congested with 
 struggling expectancy of a high order. Long since, 
 the gravelled circle of roadway outside the station 
 has been thronged with the solemn presences 
 of smart vehicles of every conceivable fashion of 
 smartness. The grooms and the horseflesh still 
 hold their own, but the chauffeurs and automobiles 
 are evidently ' it ' as well. Suddenly a great 
 hand-bell clangs through the station, and the few 
 disregarded country-folk look to their baskets and 
 their umbrellas. An eager row of corduroy lines 
 the platform, and the footmen fall over each other, 
 striving to catch the faces of master or mistress as 
 the noisy lighted windows glide into the quiet 
 country peace. Wearing a proud feather of steam, 
 the five o'clock train has arrived at Witley. 
 
 Suddenly the platform is filled with the most 
 distinguished-looking baggage that it is in the 
 mind of Bond Street leather-goods-men to imagine. 
 No matter how knocked about these trunks and 
 portmanteaus and kit-bags may seem, they have 
 the careless air of belonging to a nobleman. And, 
 indiscriminately mingled with such baggage are 
 the hardly less distinguished -looking parcels of 
 
BEAUTY'S PORTMANTEAU 149 
 
 caterers and florists : fish swathed in rushes, and 
 hampers of inconceivable dainties, game making 
 no attempt at concealment. Amid the elegant 
 welter, dogs, respectfully held in leash by some 
 unnamed representative of the feudal system, and 
 snuffing at the Nice labels on the distinguished 
 baggage — and everywhere such pleasant words of 
 greeting as *Good evening, my Lord,' and *Ah! 
 there you are, Squiggs ! ' 
 
 Confusion is no name for the scene, but what a 
 distinguished confusion ! — and if some great gentle- 
 man should occasionally use strong language amid 
 the chaos, or some gentle lady lose her pretty 
 temper over a lost hat-box, — the fact is felt to be 
 reassuring evidence that your lords and ladies, bless 
 them, are human, after all ! 
 
 To the watchers and waiters at Witley, the five 
 train was a sudden emergence round a bend of a 
 green light, a shrill whistle, and a thunder of lighted 
 cars — but for a full hour its various compartments 
 had been like so many miniature stages, each with 
 its own characteristic drama. One would need to 
 be Balzac even to indicate the varieties of human 
 type and human drama concentrated between 
 engine and luggage-van. I desire, however, to 
 make no such hopeless experiment with the un- 
 attainable, and am, indeed, well content to confine 
 my attention to a certain first-class carriage, which, 
 
ISO PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 in spite of the congested not to say overheated 
 condition of the other carriages, continued till 
 within about five seconds of the train's starting to 
 be occupied by one solitary, majestic figure. Still 
 no ^ Engaged ' label accounted for its comparative 
 emptiness. It had needed but a shilling and a 
 guard's pass-key to work this wonder. No few 
 hurried passengers had tried the door in vain, and 
 looking in, with the most irate intentions, had been 
 awed by the haughty eye-glassed presence inside, 
 calmly reading The Sporting Times. One or two 
 who had seemed determined to enter, in spite of 
 such impressive appearances, had been cowed 
 immediately by a word from a ticket -inspector, 
 who, promising them a seat elsewhere, whispered 
 that * Sir Ralph Gilderoy liked to be alone.' Yes ! 
 the solitary reader of The Sporting Times was no 
 less a personage than Sir Ralph Gilderoy. If the 
 name means nothing to you — it is hardly worth 
 while enlightening your ignorance. Still, for the 
 purpose of our story, I must say that Sir Ralph 
 was the captain of one of the crackest cavalry regi- 
 ments, and universally acclaimed as the handsomest 
 man in the British army — which, you will admit, 
 is saying a good deal. Though he paid no more 
 than any other passenger, Sir Ralph not unnatur- 
 ally took it for granted that his rank and distinc- 
 tion entitled him to ten seats as against your 
 
BEAUTY'S PORTMANTEAU 151 
 
 average man's one — and in this feeling there was 
 not a railway employee but was with him. Imagine 
 then the general consternation when, within a 
 second or two of the train's starting, a resolute 
 young gentleman, wildly racing up the platform, 
 with a loaded porter at his heels, stopped in front 
 of Sir Ralph's carriage, and demanded that it 
 should be opened to him, with an air that no official 
 concerned with the five train could mistake — in 
 spite of his somewhat Bohemian appearance, his 
 long hair, soft hat, and Liberty tie. The inspector 
 shot a despairing look at Sir Ralph, but there was 
 no denying the newcomer's demand — a demand 
 made with an air, I must repeat, quite as, perhaps 
 even more, distinguished than Sir Ralph's own — 
 so the door was opened in a twinkling, and as the 
 newcomer seated himself in one of the corners, 
 the train began to move with pompous slowness 
 out of the station. 
 
 Sir Ralph had looked up from The Sporting 
 Times with great hauteur^ entirely lost upon the 
 impertinent intruder, who, giving him a casual 
 glance, tossed his hat up into the rack, thus reveal- 
 ing a shock of disgustingly curly hair, and opening 
 a small bag at his side, presently littered his corner 
 of the compartment with books, which he handled 
 with the manner of a man accustomed to sizing 
 them up at a glance. 
 
152 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 Presently he found one that seemed to hold his 
 attention, and, tossing the rest into his bag, began 
 to read. Sir Ralph could hardly believe that any 
 human being could be so unconscious (unaffectedly 
 unconscious, he was obliged to admit) of his exist- 
 ence. He eyed him occasionally over his paper. 
 He was evidently a gentleman, in spite of his 
 damnable Bohemian airs. The face and the hands 
 were too fine, and the manner too quietly at ease 
 for him to be anything else, in spite of the absurdly 
 beautiful blond hair and that outrageous socialist 
 silk tie. 
 
 Presently the intruder took out a cigarette-case, 
 and, turning to Sir Ralph, politely asked if he 
 objected to smoking — the compartment not being 
 labelled 'smoking.' Sir Ralph haughtily — did not 
 object. In fact he had been aching for a cigar 
 himself, but had disdained to ask the other's 
 permission. After a while the intruder, noticing 
 that The Sporting Times seemed to have given 
 out, quietly offered Sir Ralph a batch of evening 
 papers, which Sir Ralph could not very well refuse 
 to accept. But he despised the fellow none the 
 less — in spite of his further observation of the 
 lithe athleticism of the slim, careless figure, the 
 strong throat, and the well-set shoulders. And so 
 the two made the journey to Witley together, and, 
 as one can imagine, much to Sir Ralph's disgust, 
 
BEAUTY'S PORTMANTEAU 153 
 
 found that their enforced intimacy was only begin- 
 ning. The intruder was out of the carriage first, 
 and was immediately hailed by Lady Blackthorne's 
 footman, who, taking care of his hand-baggage, at 
 the same moment saluted Sir Ralph, informing 
 both gentlemen that the carriage was waiting out- 
 side the station. Think of it! Sir Ralph and the 
 stranger were evidently both guests at Lady 
 Blackthorne's house-party, and willy-nilly must 
 put up with each other's society from Saturday 
 till Monday. Presently the carriage was rustling 
 its way among the tunnelled leaves of a Surrey 
 lane, and the silence between the two men seeming 
 to one of them rather stupid — 
 
 ' Apparently,' said the stranger, * we are to be 
 fellow-guests of Lady Blackthorne. My name is 
 Silchester.' 
 
 * Mine,' answered the other, ' is Gilderoy.' 
 
 Each knew the other by name immediately. * The 
 devil ! ' said Gilderoy to himself. ' Why should a 
 man dress so out of his station ? ' But, after all, 
 when a man is a lord, it doesn't so much matter 
 that he is a poet as well — and Lord Silchester 
 was by way of being quite a distinguished poet, 
 considering that he was barely thirty years old. 
 
 The revelation of the poet's rank did much 
 towards clearing the atmosphere. Besides, like 
 many gallant captains, Gilderoy had a sneaking 
 
154 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 affection for poetry himself, and a by no means 
 contemptible knack of turning out verses on occa- 
 sion. Some of Lord Silchester^s love-songs, he was 
 generous enough to admit, he had sung now and 
 again at regimental parties ; for Gilderoy's voice 
 was almost as fine as his figure. So, by the time 
 the carriage brought them to their destination, the 
 two men were in a very different relation to each 
 other than when they had entered it. 
 
 ' I '11 confess,' Gilderoy had said, * that as a rule I 
 love poetry as much as I despise poets — and I trust 
 you will excuse my saying that it is a pleasure to 
 meet a poet who is a gentleman too.' 
 
 'For my part,' Lord Silchester laughingly an- 
 swered, * I have always loved soldiers as much as I 
 hate war.' 
 
 And the two curiously dissimilar men shook 
 hands on that. 
 
 Lady Blackthorne met them in the hall, sur- 
 rounded by a group of young people who had 
 evidently just loitered in from the garden to greet 
 the new arrivals. She was in the midsummer of 
 her widowhood, and had the sincere air of all 
 beautiful people accustomed to worship. 
 
 After the first greetings were over, she explained 
 to her two latest arrivals, both old friends, that 
 owing to the superflux of beautiful young people 
 in the absurdly small, old house, she was compelled 
 
BEAUTY'S PORTMANTEAU 155 
 
 to ask them to share the big bedroom in the west 
 wing together. What could be more appropriate 
 than that Mars and Apollo should lie down in 
 peace together ! 
 
 *Yes/ laughed Lord Silchester, *but, when you 
 say that, you are only providing for Captain Gilde- 
 roy — where am I to sleep ? ' 
 
 The compliment was not lost on Gilderoy, who, 
 if he was professionally Mars, was surely hand- 
 some enough to be regarded as an unprofessional 
 Apollo; and from this moment there was quite a 
 danger of the two men becoming friends. 
 
 This gay prelude of greeting over, they went up 
 to their room to dress for dinner. For all Lady 
 Blackthorne's depreciation, it was a huge old room 
 with two immense canopied beds, on one of which 
 the soft-voiced manservant deputed to take care 
 of these two distinguished gentlemen had already 
 spread out, with that impressive reverence peculiar 
 to English menservants, the evening clothes of 
 Lord Silchester. 
 
 But Sir Ralph Gilderoy's portmanteau was still 
 unemptied, and, as the two men had entered the 
 room, Johnson had taken Sir Ralph aside and re- 
 spectfully whispered him of a strange and rather 
 embarrassing occurrence — an occurrence concerning 
 which all his ingrained reverence for rank could 
 hardly rob him of a respectful smile. 
 
iS6 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 Gilderoy was by no means without humour, and, 
 after the first flash of annoyance at what had been 
 told him, he broke out into a great laugh. 
 
 'Silchester/ he said, 'come over here. Here's a 
 go ! What do you think of this ? ' 
 
 I have spoken of the distinguished confusion of 
 baggage at Witley station. Here was a delicious 
 result of it. No wonder Johnson had lost some 
 of his traditional reserve as, opening the Captain's 
 portmanteau, instead of finding there the faultless 
 shirt and so on, his astonished eyes beheld — 
 well ! it was simply this. Some young lady had 
 been travelling by the five train whose portmanteau 
 so closely resembled Sir Ralph's that a highly 
 romantic exchange had been made by the dis- 
 tracted porters. Readers with imagination will 
 need no further details. As Johnson modestly 
 displayed the portmanteau to the nobleman, Lord 
 Silchester gave a quick little start, unnoted by his 
 companion, and thereupon rolled upon his bed in 
 fits of laughter. But Sir Ralph, not being a poet, 
 was more sentimental — that is, after dismissing 
 Johnson with a nonchalant reassurance that no 
 doubt the mistake would soon be discovered by 
 the lady unknown — for no initials or label upon 
 the bag gave clue to the identity of its owner — 
 and his own bag restored to him. 
 
 *Dear little girl,' said the Captain, whose only 
 
BEAUTY'S PORTMANTEAU 157 
 
 weakness, one may say, was woman. * I wonder 
 who the deuce she is. She has evidently been 
 paying a shopping visit to town/ he continued, 
 tenderly pointing to a smart little walking-skirt, 
 and, in spite of every wish to do the gentlemanly 
 thing, noting one or two feminine trifles, such as 
 a particularly small and elegant pair of walking 
 shoes, and a veil of a pattern so original you 
 could hardly fail to recognise it again. * There 
 is something deucedly touching about a woman, 
 Silchester . . . Don't you think ? ' 
 
 For answer Lord Silchester once more doubled 
 himself into convulsions, in which Sir Ralph could 
 not but make-believe to join. 
 
 'Forgive me,' gasped Silchester, when at last 
 he had recovered himself, ' but you will admit 
 that it is funny. Thank Heaven it happened to 
 you instead of to me! You can carry it off all 
 right — but I should never have heard the end 
 of it.^ 
 
 But Silchester's laughter had been so whole- 
 hearted as almost to nettle Gilderoy with a suspi- 
 cion that this very newly-made friend had a private 
 joy in his discomfiture, which suspicion Silchester 
 perceiving made haste to allay by a subdual of his 
 mirth, and a promise to himself that he would some 
 day make it up to Gilderoy. 
 
 The way in which Sir Ralph took the inevitable 
 
iS8 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 chaffing at dinner was a masterpiece of savoir 
 faire. The apparition of so famous a dandy in 
 the anteprandial drawing-room in his railway 
 tweeds naturally provoked attention, and when Sir 
 Ralph whispered the explanation to his hostess, 
 she again laughed so unmercifully that the attempt 
 to rob the rest of the company of the joke was in 
 vain. 
 
 Over dinner a facetious bishop made a learned 
 reference to Hercules and Omphale, which fell 
 rather flat in an unclassical age ; and Sir Ralph 
 was made the subject of many a flippancy of which 
 naturally he never heard. 
 
 * Really/ whispered one wag to his partner, * Sir 
 Ralph is too disgracefully decollete' 
 
 * But what fine pearls he is wearing ! ' was the 
 wicked response. 
 
 ^Sir Ralph is sweetly pretty to-night, don't you 
 think ? ' said another. 
 
 *A little too much of the ingenue^ though,' was 
 the reply. 
 
 ' I 'm not sure but that a high bodice wouldn't 
 suit him better, after all,' said another wit. ' There 
 is a distinction about the high bodice that would go 
 better with his severe style of beauty. . . .' 
 
 ' Besides, it is hardly modest to wear one's scars 
 so low,' said another. 
 
 ' But we mustn't forget that this is his first 
 
BEAUTY'S PORTMANTEAU 159 
 
 season. When he has been out a little longer, he 
 will soon learn to make more of himself. . . / 
 
 ' Of course/ said the other, ' we must wait for 
 his first ball really to judge.' 
 
 While poor Sir Ralph was thus being made a 
 motley to the view, a parallel scene was being 
 enacted in a country house some six miles away. 
 The two beautiful daughters of the Earl of Wych- 
 mere had run up to their rooms to change their 
 frocks for dinner. As they entered the bedroom 
 which they shared together, laughing over certain 
 reminiscences of their trip to town, their devoted 
 maids were busy emptying their dress-boxes, hat- 
 boxes, etc., and returning the various articles to 
 their accustomed places in wardrobe and closet. 
 A woman's baggage is necessarily more voluminous 
 than a man's, and the maids were hardly through 
 with their task as the young ladies entered the 
 room. They had hardly entered, however, when 
 Anisette threw up her hands, with a little scream. 
 
 What could be the matter ! Look ! 
 
 Well ! 
 
 So it was into this fragrant place that the fault- 
 less shirts so missed by Johnson had wandered — 
 and the worst of it was, or the best, that Captain 
 Gilderoy's name, of the — th Hussars, was there on 
 the leather so plain as immediately to replace a 
 possible mystery by a fascinating certainty. Cap- 
 
i6o PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 tain Gilderoy^s evening clothes ! Well ! — and 
 Lady Teresa hid her face in her thick gold hair, 
 already loosened for her maid, and her white 
 shoulders shook with laughter — probably at the 
 very moment that Lord Silchester was rolling in 
 absurd convulsions over the corresponding dis- 
 covery made by Captain Gilderoy. 
 
 Then she and her raven-haired sister laughed as 
 if their hearts would break. Lord Silchester's 
 laughter, as I have said, was scarcely less hearty at 
 the same moment ; Gilderoy's laughter, too, had 
 been full of courage, and the laughter at the dinner- 
 table had been vividly infectious ; but there was 
 no laughter concerned in all this little comedy to 
 be compared with the laughter of Lady Teresa and 
 Lady Mary Wychmere, as they discovered Captain 
 Gilderoy's evening clothes. 
 
 Time and again they tried to stop it, so that 
 they might speak a reasonable word to each other 
 — but no ! it was impossible — and once more they 
 hid their faces, as over their shoulders swept the 
 white cataracts of laughter. 
 
 It was a pity that Gilderoy could not have been 
 there to hear that beautiful laughter — for he, of 
 all men, with his manly sentiment about women, 
 would have realised the lovely freshness, the brook- 
 like spontaneity of it. As Lady Teresa laughed 
 you naturally thought of her thick, sun-rippled 
 
BEAUTY^S PORTMANTEAU i6i 
 
 hair, and as you looked at her hair, you thought of 
 the rippling ringlets of her laughter. Oh, was there 
 anything in the world quite so good to hear as Lady 
 Teresa's laughter ? And, when she and her sister 
 laughed together, the dullest imagination dreamed 
 of the Guadalquivir. 
 
 I will not say that it was well that Captain 
 Gilderoy did not keep his love-letters in his evening 
 clothes — yet I must confess that his effects were 
 subjected to an irresistible curiosity, such as, of 
 course. Lady Teresa's escaped. 
 
 * It 's too bad to have to send them back, isn't 
 it?' she said, laughing, *but of course we must. 
 Just one more look at these beautiful golf-stockings, 
 and do you think, Mary, I might steal this adorable 
 tie . . . and oh, do look at those open-worked 
 socks ! . . . ' 
 
 * What dainty things soldiers wear . . / laughed 
 Lady Mary ; and then the bag was reluctantly 
 closed, and instructions given for its immediate 
 conveyance to Lady Blackthorne's. 
 
 It arrived during dinner, and, when an hour or 
 so after Lady Blackthorne duly informed Sir Ralph 
 of its arrival, she — though, of course, knowing 
 quite well — denied any knowledge of whence 
 it came. It had come, she said laughingly, under 
 cover of night, in a carriage with the blinds closely 
 drawn, and had been brought to the servant's door 
 
 L 
 
r62 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 by a masked man with a drawn revolver in his 
 hand . . . 
 
 Gilderoy took his roasting like the good fellow 
 he was, and, to tell the truth, in his heart, which 
 was, as I have hinted, far more romantically made 
 than his exterior indicated, thought far more of the 
 romantic side of the quaint incident than of the 
 ludicrous. They could laugh all they pleased — 
 but Gilderoy personally felt that he had the best 
 of it. Chance had selected him for a charming 
 suggestion of possible adventure. The strange 
 portmanteau of beauty had come to him — instead 
 of, say, to Silchester. 
 
 ' I consider it,' he said laughingly, in answer to 
 some more badinage of Silchester's, as the two men 
 were turning in, ' a personal compliment from Fate 
 — and you know, well enough, that you are only 
 jealous because it didn't happen to you/ 
 
 At this last remark Silchester once more fell into 
 absurd hysterics. 
 
 * How deucedly touching women are, eh ! Gil- 
 deroy?' he continued, when he had recovered his 
 breath. * And,' he added, ' to be quite serious, 
 have you ever thought how romantic a woman's 
 belongings are, compared with a man's ? You fell 
 in love with those little shoes, I saw at a glance, 
 and would probably have kissed them but for the 
 presence of Johnson. Now, I wonder what the 
 
BEAUTY'S PORTMANTEAU 163 
 
 mysterious lady thought of those elegant bedroom 
 slippers there. Tread upon them softly, Gilderoy — 
 who knows but that before she sent them back 
 she kissed them on each dear little sole. Perhaps 
 even she leaned out of her window in the moon- 
 light — leaned out and gathered a climbing rose — 
 gathered it, Gilderoy, with her beautiful white arm 
 gleaming in the moonlight, and tucked it into one 
 of the touching toes — are you sure you looked 
 properly before you put them on ? If I were you, 
 I should have another look. . . 
 
 For answer, Gilderoy took off the slippers and 
 flung them with excellent aim at his already re- 
 cumbent companion, and himself thereupon took 
 shelter between the sheets. 
 
 * I say/ he said presently, * I suppose you haven't 
 a volume of your poems with you. I don't feel in 
 the least sleepy? . . 
 
 * One for you ! ' laughed Silchester ; * no, I 'm 
 afraid I haven't, but I think I can remember a 
 very short one that exactly fits your case. . . .' 
 
 * Go on,' answered Gilderoy dreamily, out of the 
 darkness. 
 
 And Silchester recited, with mock unction: — 
 
 Long after you are dead 
 I will kiss the shoes of your feet, 
 And the long, bright hair of your head 
 I Will go on being sweet ; 
 
PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 In each little thing you wore 
 We shall go on meeting, love ; 
 In a ring we shall meet, 
 In a fan we shall meet, 
 Or a long-forgotten glove. 
 Long after you are dead. 
 Oh ! the bright hair of your head 
 And the shoes of your little feet ! 
 
 * I 'II forgive you the chafif for the verses,' re- 
 torted Gilderoy. *You are not worthy of having 
 written them, Silchester — strange chaps, you poets 
 — you seem to feel everything, yet feel nothing. 
 Say them again ' ; and Silchester laughingly re- 
 peated. 
 
 * Will you copy them out for me to-morrow?' 
 'Certainly!' answered the poet, with difficulty 
 
 stifling a new convulsion which he really felt to be 
 too bad in the present condition of the Captain's 
 feelings. 
 
 ' How did those first two lines go ? ' asked the 
 Captain, after a while. 
 
 But the poet was fast asleep. 
 
 In a day or two the various members of the 
 party which had been so diverted by Captain 
 Gilderoy's adventure were scattered about the 
 counties, taking their shining places in other social 
 constellations, and, a fortnight afterwards, Sir Ralph 
 was staying down in Devonshire with a friend to 
 
BEAUTY^S PORTMANTEAU 165 
 
 whom he was deeply attached, on account of an 
 exceptionally fine trout stream that ran through 
 his domain. Gilderoy, like all real soldiers, had a 
 great capacity for, and delight in, silence ; and that, 
 together with the love of the sport for its own sake, 
 made him an ardent fisherman. He asked nothing 
 better than a long, lonely day with his rod, and a 
 wandering meditative stream ; and, if some days he 
 had bad luck with his fishing, he made up for it 
 in dreaming. He would, of course, have been the 
 last to admit it, but not infrequently on his fishing 
 excursions he might have been found under a 
 hawthorn bush by the stream's side scribbling 
 verses, instead of catching trout. For, indeed, as 
 Lady Blackthorne had implied. Mars and Apollo 
 were always closely related. 
 
 On the particular afternoon, however, on which 
 I desire next to introduce him to the reader, he 
 had taken his rod seriously, as the silver and rose 
 in his fishing basket bore witness. It is true that 
 now and again, as the afternoon sunshine fell softly 
 about him through the trees, and gleamed here 
 and flitted there, lighting up the secrecies of the 
 stream, that his fancy would go a-wandering — as 
 the bravest man's might, under conditions sugges- 
 tive of romance even more alluring than the 
 heaviest trout that was ever glazed into immor- 
 tality in gun-room or country inn. There have been 
 
i66 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 those who, ostensibly going a-fishing, have seen the 
 naiads ; and it must be difficult, I should think, 
 for the most prosaic nature to spend a whole day 
 by a stream-side without some haunted feeling of 
 the possible apparition of some mysterious beauty, 
 or the sense that something wonderful was about 
 to happen to him, something even more wonderful 
 than — trout. At last this feeling threw its spell so 
 completely over Gilderoy, as the golden bloom on 
 the afternoon grew deeper, that he decided he had 
 caught all the trout he cared about, and threw him- 
 self down by the stream-side in a mood of enchanted 
 reverie, much more in the spirit of 
 
 ' Such sights as youthful poets dream 
 In summer eves by haunted stream,' 
 
 than any of his friends could have believed of 
 him. 
 
 As he thus lay, with his eyes idly fixed on a 
 shining reach of water up-stream, a bend of glory 
 before the stream entered a Delphic avenue of 
 muttering shade, he noticed, suddenly specking 
 the broad swathe of unrippled light, a tiny black 
 object, like some small water-bird in the mid- 
 current. A curiosity, as idle as his reverie, kept 
 his eyes on it till it disappeared in the shadows, 
 and kept them waiting in idle expectancy for its 
 reappearance in another space of light a few yards 
 
BEAUTY'S PORTMANTEAU 167 
 
 away from him. Who has not watched the adven- 
 tures of some broken branch, or equally important 
 object, with the caprices of a rocky stream, held 
 one's breath at its dangers, drawn breath again, 
 and even hurrahed, as it detached itself from 
 some ensnaring obstacle, and once more floated 
 triumphantly on its way ? In just this spirit 
 Gilderoy awaited the emergence into daylight of 
 the tiny black object, whatever it might be, and 
 silently made bets with himself on its chances of 
 surviving the unknown perils of the shadows. So 
 long, however, was this in coming about that he 
 had given up hope, and was on the point even 
 of forgetting it, when, lo ! it suddenly appeared 
 on the edge of the light, coquetting with an eddy. 
 Gilderoy, who had looked upon the five-pound 
 note which he had laid upon it as lost, sat up 
 and boyishly clapped his hands. 
 
 ' Bravo ! ' he cried, sitting up, and, alert again 
 with the keenness of a sportsman, * Bravo ! — but 
 what the deuce is it? . . for, though it was 
 still too far away for him clearly to distinguish it, 
 there was something about its shape that piqued 
 his curiosity. Presently it swung out of the eddy, 
 and started swiftly again on the full current. 
 
 *By Jove!' Gilderoy shouted, suddenly spring- 
 ing up, and splashing through the shallow stream, 
 careless of his beautiful golf-stockings. He was 
 
i68 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 just in time to save the little derelict from plunging 
 down a small fall, at the bottom of which it would 
 probably have been sunk for ever — though I am 
 inclined to think that rather than have allowed 
 that to happen, Gilderoy would have instantly 
 stripped and dived for it— for beyond all shadow 
 of doubt this little dainty craft that had come 
 gliding so bravely down the stream . . . 
 
 Well, when Gilderoy had cried * Bravo ' and 
 splashed in, what was it he had seen ? A woman's 
 shoe delicately floating to him — out of fairyland! 
 
 Remembering how deucedly touching woman 
 seemed to Gilderoy, you can imagine how the 
 incident appealed to him. A woman's lonely 
 little shoe thus floating all unprotected and un- 
 cared for on this perilous stream. This he would 
 have felt on general principles, but, please, further 
 imagine, if you can, his feelings when he recognised 
 the shoe ! 
 
 Yes ! as I began to say, beyond all shadow of 
 doubt, this was one of her shoes, one of those two 
 that, as Silchester had truthfully said, he had felt 
 like kissing that evening at Lady Blackthorne's. 
 
 Seated on the bank, he turned it over and over, 
 and presently devoted his attention to drying it 
 reverently by means of the long grass and a hand- 
 kerchief. There was no doubt at all ! It was 
 hers. He would have known it anywhere — even 
 
BEAUTY'S PORTMANTEAU 169 
 
 in a shoe-shop. Bless it ! And this time he kissed 
 it without shame — 
 
 * Long after you are dead 
 I will kiss the shoes of your feet. . . 
 
 He had for days been vaguely in love with the 
 unknown owner of this little shoe. But this second 
 strange accident settled it. Accident ! No doubt 
 materialistic critics might call it mere coincidence — 
 and if Silchester had been there, he would un- 
 questionably have had another attack of his absurd 
 hysterics. Coincidence indeed ! Be reasonable. 
 Could anything be a plainer indication of the pur- 
 poses of Fate than that this very shoe should thus 
 come into his hand a whole day's journey from 
 the place where he had first seen it — and in so 
 manifestly miraculous a fashion ! Anyhow, what 
 does the puerile criticism of the spectator ever 
 matter to a man in love ? And yes ! Gilderoy was 
 in love — he said it out loud to the stream, and, 
 if any trout were still alive in his basket, they 
 heard it too ; not to speak of various birds that 
 thereupon flew off in all directions like messenger- 
 boys to tell the whole wide world that Captain 
 Gilderoy was in love! In love! with whom? 
 Realism would answer, with a number three shoe! 
 But there is a magic intuition in love which, as 
 it was possible to guess at Hercules from his foot, 
 
170 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 so is it an easy matter for a lover to build up 
 beauty from her shoe ! Ex pede Venere ! 
 
 While Gilderoy was thus sentimentalising over 
 Beauty^s slipper, Beauty, about a mile up stream, 
 had awakened to a more practical concern for it. 
 It was, no doubt, all the world to Gilderoy, but 
 it was even more to Lady Teresa Wychmere, with 
 two or three miles of woodland between her and 
 Wildwoods Manor. Suddenly, news of her distress 
 seemed to be carried on the breeze to Gilderoy. 
 
 ' Of course. By Jove ! ' he exclaimed, picking 
 up his rod and basket, and starting up-stream. 
 * What a fool I am ! I may be too late to help 
 her, with my confounded sentimentalising. . . / 
 Need one say that what he meant was : ^ I may be 
 too late to see her ! ' 
 
 So up the stream-side hastened Gilderoy — and, 
 meanwhile, if ever there was a picture of beauty in 
 distress, surely it was the Lady Teresa. And she was 
 Beauty courageous as well, and full of merriment at 
 her plight. Some one once said that her laughter 
 was like the laughter of a nymph at the bottom of a 
 well — and, as she laughed to herself by the stream- 
 side, it would have been hard to tell whether it 
 were she or the stream that made so happy a 
 rippling in the solitude. 
 
 But to think of the stream running off with her 
 shoe in that way — that innocent-looking stream! 
 
BEAUTY'S PORTMANTEAU 171 
 
 An hour ago the absolute solitude of the place, and 
 the luxurious afternoon sunshine laden with sleepy 
 perfume, had stirred her wild young senses, just as, 
 a mile below, it had touched to sentiment the 
 martial heart of Gilderoy ; and the irresistible lure 
 of running water, so fresh and cool, and shot with 
 a myriad golden reflections, had so possessed her 
 that she forgot what a great girl she was nowadays, 
 and, drawing off her shoes and stockings, had 
 delighted to paddle up and down the rocky shallows 
 like a child. There was no Antaeus present to 
 report the lovely picture she made, and to attempt 
 to imagine it would more than likely seriously offend 
 a certain gentleman who has long since set the seal 
 of a lover's ownership on all that beauty. 
 
 But there can surely be no harm in saying how 
 bravely her beautiful head caught the sun, and how 
 her thick gold hair, loosened with the glee of her 
 sport, shone and glittered, as though all the gold 
 in the world had been heaped up there in one 
 exquisite consolidation. How vivid with the pure 
 beam of life were her fearless blue eyes, how filled 
 with the fire and sap of existence her noble body, 
 so lithely poised amid the inequalities of the rocky 
 stream ! Yes ! — and at the risk of offending the 
 gentleman just referred to, it must be said that the 
 feet of Nicolete, by the side of which, that night she 
 fled from Beaucaire, the daisies themselves seemed 
 
172 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 dark, cannot have been whiter than those for which, 
 though as yet they knew it not, one shoe was 
 already missing; for, while the Lady Teresa was 
 thus disporting herself, one of her shoes had silently 
 slipped from the rock on which it had been insecurely 
 placed, and been eagerly carried off by the river — 
 to experience adventures with which we are already 
 acquainted. 
 
 After she had thus played the girl again for 
 some little time, her charming unconsciousness was 
 suddenly succeeded by an abrupt return to her 
 grown-up womanhood — and the blood mounted to 
 her cheeks as she hastily sought the river bank 
 with its protective conventionalities in the shape of 
 shoes and stockings. What had she done? For all 
 she knew, the woods were full of eyes — poachers 
 at the very least. And what a head of hair ! With 
 a curious instinct of woman, it was her loosened 
 hair to which she gave her first attention ! Letting 
 it fall down in a Danae-shower about her — oh, un- 
 seeing eyes of the woodland ! — she had quickly 
 coiled it up again into a presentable crown of glory. 
 And now her stockings — and now her — shoes ! 
 
 But, as we know, only one shoe remained. 
 
 Then it was that she laughed and laughed at the 
 absurd lark of it, and then it was — and providen- 
 tially not a moment earlier — that Gilderoy, coming 
 up-stream, heard a laughter that, to repeat a phrase 
 
BEAUTY'S PORTMANTEAU 173 
 
 of his which I have already used, seemed like the 
 laughter of a nymph at the bottom of a well. 
 Strangely enough, too, there was something about 
 its timbre that recalled Silchester. 
 
 Lady Teresa saw him a few yards away, on the 
 opposite side of the stream — such, at first sight, 
 seemed his bad luck — saw him long enough to 
 make two observations : first, that he was carrying 
 her slipper, and second, that she had seen him — or 
 rather, some of him — before ! The second observa- 
 tion puzzled her for a moment, and then remember- 
 ing, she bent her beautiful head on her knees and 
 laughed again, so whole-heartedly that Gilderoy 
 was more and more reminded how Silchester had 
 laughed that night at Lady Blackthorne's. 
 
 He, on his part, had not failed to notice her 
 shoeless foot, and, happy at heart at the sight, her 
 laughter only made him the happier. As the lost 
 shoe had begun it, surely her laughter completed 
 their introduction. When she lifted up her beauti- 
 ful head to make an excuse for her foolishness, she 
 found that he had already forded the stream and 
 stood by her side with her shoe in his hand. 
 
 * How good you are ! please forgive me,' she said. 
 ' How can I thank you — ' and then she added 
 archly — ' Sir Ralph Gilderoy ? . . . ' 
 
 * You know me ! ' said Gilderoy, in rapturous 
 surprise. 
 
174 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 'Some of you, at any rate, Sir Ralph/ she 
 answered ; and then giving him a lovely mis- 
 chievous smile, she added : ' I 'm so glad you got 
 those beautiful golf-stockings back safely. . . . ' 
 
 ' You don't mean to say ? . . . ' gasped Gilderoy. 
 
 *Yes!' she nodded, as she fastened on her re- 
 covered shoe. * Yes ! I mean to say . . . ' 
 
 'But, becoming as they are,' she added after a 
 pause chiefly occupied by the running of the river, 
 'I think you had better come up with me to the 
 Manor, and have them changed for dry ones. My 
 brother, Lord Silchester, whom you know, is staying 
 there with me, and he will look after you. • • . ' 
 
 ' Lord Silchester is your brother? ' 
 
 'Yes! Didn't you know? . . 
 
 'Now I begin to understand. . . 
 
 * Understand what ? ' 
 
 'Well, why Silchester laughed so — and laughed so 
 like you — the night our portmanteaus crossed. . . 
 
 And so the two strolled up together through the 
 woods to the Manor. 
 
 ' Fancy you remembering my shoe,' said the Lady 
 Teresa. 
 
 ' Yes ! but fancy your remembering my golf- 
 stockings/ said Gilderoy. 
 
 And of such is the kingdom of heaven. 
 
OLD SILVER 
 
OLD SILVER 
 
 TT WHENEVER one of those memory days is 
 ' ^ coming round which give me the oppor- 
 tunity of showing Well-Beloved how much I 
 love her, and how glad I am that she came to be 
 born, I invariably turn my steps, often weeks 
 beforehand, to the Shop of Dreams. This is an 
 antiquity shop whose window, filled with old silver, 
 old lace, old violins, and such-like matters of 
 memory and dream, is no little of an anachronism 
 in one of the busiest shopping streets of New 
 York. The elevated railway thunders but a block 
 away, and cross-town cars flash by — the fan that 
 once waved in the hand of the Pompadour, or the 
 slippers that once held the little feet of Marie 
 Antoinette. 
 
 One of the ways in which I contrive to retain 
 the affection of Well-Beloved is by my ministering 
 to her passion for old silver. It comes over her 
 at more or less regular intervals, and I am always 
 on the look-out to appease it, and often it happens 
 that just as her love seems to be slipping away 
 
 M 
 
178 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 from me I call it back by the luckily-timed gift of 
 a filigree cardcase, a pair of Regency shoe-buckles, 
 or a fancifully devised vinaigrette. 
 
 Wonderfully unlike all other women, Well- 
 Beloved is unlike them in this also, that she cares 
 nothing for modern trinkets, however costly, and 
 takes no heed of the great goldsmiths' windows 
 as we walk the streets together. Three parts of 
 the pleasure in her various bibelots is the touch of 
 human history upon them, the faint fragrance 
 of forgotten dreams. Modern jewels, however 
 beautiful, are, to her way of thinking, mere raw 
 material. * They have never lived,' she is fond of 
 saying. *Wait till they come, as some day they 
 surely will, to our Shop of Dreams, with the mark 
 of tears upon them, tarnished with sighs, worn 
 with kisses — then they will be really beautiful. 
 But as yet they mean nothing. Their value is still 
 to come.' 
 
 Thus I have never bought diamonds for Well- 
 Beloved, for they would give her no pleasure ; 
 but, as I said, whenever a red-letter day falls to be 
 celebrated, I turn my feet to the Shop of Dreams, 
 and, after long inspection of its storied window, 
 all that romantic wreckage thrown up there by the 
 sea of life as upon a shore, I turn the handle of 
 the gate of ivory and enter into a hades of Empire 
 frivolities, eight-day clocks, damascened armour, 
 
OLD SILVER 
 
 179 
 
 cameos from the bosoms of our grandmothers, old 
 snuff-boxes, and dead men's rings. 
 
 The proprietor is himself no little of a senti- 
 mentalist, and he is attractively learned in the 
 history of the dream things it is his charming 
 business to sell. He and I are long since old 
 friends, and he allows me to drop in and prowl 
 about the nooks and corners of the centuries 
 without a thought of traffic. Many are the 
 hours I have spent with him recalling the story 
 of this or that relic, and he is long since well 
 aware of ' madame's ' insatiable appetite for old 
 silver. 
 
 A little while ago I called in and found him in 
 the characteristic act of examining an antique 
 through the little magnifying glass which is always 
 more or less screwed into his right eye, and with 
 which, as I tell him, I verily believe he goes to bed 
 at nights. He looked up at me and nodded, with- 
 out removing the glass. 
 
 * Excuse me a moment,' he said, returning to his 
 antique, * I have something to show you.' 
 
 When he had completed his examination, he 
 called me from my contemplation of an exception- 
 ally fine Etruscan vase, and, taking a packet from 
 a drawer, began to unfold it. 
 
 'What will madame say to this, do you think?' 
 he said, smiling, as he revealed a superb silver cross, 
 
i8o PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 carved with vine-leaves and set in its centre with a 
 large four-sided amethyst. 
 
 * I say ! ' I exclaimed. 
 
 * Yes, it's a fine thing, isn't it? They don't often 
 come into one's hands. A veritable bishop's cross. 
 French, of course. Early eighteenth century, I 
 should say. You notice the mitre ; and the 
 amethyst, you see, stands for the cushion. Here 
 are the tassels at each corner of the setting. It 
 is a reliquary, too,' and he turned it over. *You 
 see how it opens at the back? . . . But here is 
 something to delight madame. Look, isn't it 
 human, the eternal feminine — doesn't it touch your 
 heart ? ' 
 
 He had opened a little door at the back of the 
 cross, and there, inside, instead of the expected 
 piece of blessed bone, or fragment of the true Cross, 
 what do you think was there? A tiny powder- 
 puff! 
 
 O woman ! woman ! 
 
 ' How Catholic ! ' I exclaimed ; * and I '11 wager 
 she was a good little devout Catholic for all that ! ' 
 
 'She is that — poor little woman, if ever there 
 was one,' said my friend, with more than usual 
 sympathy in his voice. 
 
 ' You know her, then ? ' said I. 
 
 'Yes! I know her,' he said. Then presently he 
 continued : * You will notice that this powder-puff 
 
OLD SILVER 
 
 i8i 
 
 contrivance, this little lid here, is comparatively 
 new. Ten years old, maybe. It was just a freak 
 of her gay little head — in the days when it was 
 still gay.' 
 
 My eye had for a moment wandered away and 
 fallen upon a picture that I had never noticed in 
 the shop before. 
 
 * Where did you get that picture?' I exclaimed. 
 'Stunning, isn't it?' he answered. 
 
 It was a modern picture, a singularly vivid im- 
 pression of a crowded centre of New York at 
 twilight — Thirty-third Street and Broadway at the 
 rush hour, with the elevated coming up against a 
 smoky sunset; a picture filled with the poetry of 
 modern cities. 
 
 * Though you wouldn't think it,' said my friend, as 
 I turned once more to the bishop's cross, ^ the cross 
 and the picture belong to each other.' 
 
 And then he told me a story. 
 
 Some eight or ten years before the bishop's 
 cross came into the possession of Well-Beloved 
 there was a certain young man, in an exceedingly 
 wild and woolly Western town, who had been in- 
 conveniently gifted by nature with the unreasonable 
 desire to paint beautiful things. Yes! it became 
 more and more evident to his perplexed and dis- 
 appointed connections that Paul Channing was 
 
i82 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 born, or rather doomed, to be an artist. But for 
 this disconcerting tendency, he might have taken 
 advantage of the reversion of a prosperous dry- 
 goods store belonging to his father, and thus 
 reposed upon a prosaic * certainty,' instead of 
 whimsically choosing the very precarious uncer- 
 tainty of the life of art. His case, too, presented 
 an additional peculiarity and difficulty which de- 
 serve mentioning. His choice of subjects was so 
 bewildering. 
 
 The town of Busirls was by no means without a 
 certain appreciation of art — that is, art of a certain 
 kind, a very fixed and certain kind. It allowed 
 a certain mysterious importance to the artist who 
 painted subjects from 'the Greek,' Italian land- 
 scapes, sacred pieces, or, in short, anything that 
 had been painted so often before that it had 
 become quite natural and recognised to paint it — 
 waterfalls, say, or mountain scenery, or sensational 
 shipwrecks. Animals, or 'still life,' reproduced 
 with recognisable fidelity, the town of Busiris was 
 prepared to accept. But alas ! Paul Channing 
 cared to paint none of these things — and he 
 defended his disinclination with extraordinary 
 heresies. The mere fact of these subjects having 
 been painted so much, he said, was reason enough 
 for his painting something else. The business of 
 the painter was to paint new beauty, and thus 
 
OLD SILVER 
 
 183 
 
 reveal it to eyes that had yet to find it out. There 
 was no need to go so far afield for beauty. It was 
 at our very doors. It was everywhere about us, 
 rainbowing our common lot and commonplace 
 surroundings. Our very offices and factories were 
 beautiful, seen in the proper light and with the 
 right eyes. There were moments when Busiris 
 was as beautiful as the Parthenon — though, of 
 course, in a different way. Italy? Greece! No, 
 America was beautiful enough for Paul Channing. 
 He would be the painter of America. One would 
 rather have expected Busiris to welcome this 
 patriotic leaning in its young artist. But, curiously 
 enough, this choice of subject seemed to be the 
 most incomprehensible of all his vagaries. America 
 was useful, indeed — but beautiful ! No, that was 
 no part of its business— and it was all in vain that 
 Paul painted the Joplin Soap Works at sunset, or 
 caught the romantic expression of the shoe factory 
 by moonlight. Nor were his impressions of the 
 limited' coming in from Chicago, or of a crowded 
 trolley-car at the rush hour, more convincing to 
 his fellow-citizens. 
 
 So it was that, partly in disgust and partly in 
 search of new subject-matter, he decided to go 
 East. He had once been to Chicago, and loved a 
 sky-scraper in course of erection ; and for a long 
 while he had dreamed of painting New York, with 
 
i84 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 its turreted peninsula, singing like a forest of stone 
 in the breath of the Atlantic. 
 
 Paul, with the fierce independence of the artistic 
 young, refused to accept anything of the proffered 
 aid of a father, perplexed but kindly, beyond his 
 fare and a hundred dollars, which he was confident 
 of repaying a week or two after his arrival in 
 New York out of the appreciation of a more 
 sympathetic public. 
 
 So it was that Paul Channing came to New 
 York, and found cheap yet pleasant rooms in the 
 neighbourhood of Washington Square. He was not 
 entirely friendless in his new home, for, as it always 
 providentially happens with artists, though so far 
 away from New York, he had already been found 
 out by two or three experimental young painters 
 whose studios were round the corner from his 
 lodging, and letters from whom had done no little 
 toward keeping him alive out there in Busiris. 
 But he did not immediately advise them of his 
 presence in New York, for the reason that he 
 wanted to have the city all to himself for a little 
 while — a sort of artistic honeymoon. He shrank 
 from the risk of any one else displaying it to him. 
 He knew how he was going to love it, and he 
 j^new — so he thought, in that sublime self-confidence 
 of youth which wins most of the battles of life — 
 that he needed no one's assistance to see whatever 
 
OLD SILVER 
 
 beauty belonged to it. It was going to be his 
 city. He had dreamed of it for months, even 
 years, and now at last he was come to paint it. 
 So days, even weeks, went by, without his even 
 thinking of being lonely ; for the beautiful city was 
 more beautiful than he had dared to dream it, and 
 the days were too short for him, as he sat with his 
 sketch-book and strove to fix his rapt impressions 
 of its adventurous, even foolhardy, charm. He 
 would spend whole days on ferry-boats just to 
 look at that wonderful sky-line of office-buildings, 
 resolutely, even sternly, insisting, without a thought 
 of beauty — and yet so terribly beautiful, with the 
 terrible beauty of power. So the beauty of cities 
 had always come about, he said to himself. Strong 
 men had needed strong buildings for their mer- 
 chandise, their cannon, or their prayers, and from 
 the sincerity of their strength the stone had soared 
 and massed itself together, and, because it was real, 
 had unconsciously become beautiful. 
 
 After a while he had made so many sketches 
 that he felt the need of showing them to some one, 
 and so called on his fellow-artists — thereon to 
 become quite a small lion among them. Here 
 was the man they had all been looking for ! And 
 soon the name of Channing was being mysteriously 
 passed on from studio to studio, as the latest 
 esoteric man of the future. This was naturally 
 
i86 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 gratifying to the young painter, but, as it did no 
 more than confirm his own quiet idea of himself, it 
 in no way turned his head. On the contrary, it had 
 the uncommon effect of concentrating him upon 
 his artistic purpose, and of once more secluding 
 him from the generously eager society that now 
 began to seek him. Paul was so far, at all events, 
 a true artist that the praise he received did not 
 paralyse him with self-satisfaction ; it simply cer- 
 tificated a dream and a hope. As a rule, the young 
 artist is so intoxicated with the first fragrance of 
 his first laurels that they send him to sleep upon 
 them, never to wake again. But Paul was different. 
 He realised that the budding laurel is very liable 
 to blight, and that from no cause is it so liable 
 to languish as the laureate's own neglect. There- 
 fore he absented himself from facile adulation, 
 and shut his door and lived with his sketch-book 
 and his canvases. 
 
 But, being a painter, his room necessarily had 
 windows, and looking through them one day, he 
 saw a beautiful face. A beautiful face was some- 
 what irrelevant to Paul — for his dreams had been 
 all of beautiful buildings. However, the face was 
 so beautiful that he was compelled to look at it 
 again, and again and again. The face was bent 
 over a strip of embroidery, the beautiful face that 
 was evidently striving to catch all the light of a 
 
OLD SILVER 
 
 187 
 
 cloudy day. There was a sad little garden to the 
 house where Paul lodged, and it was by so much 
 as its few yards of dank and disappointed greenery 
 that the industrious little seamstress and Paul were 
 divided from each other. But Paul was some 
 seven stories high, and the unknown beautiful face 
 sewed for ten hours of the day on a level with the 
 garden. Paul saw her smitten by a strong top- 
 light, which irradiated her head with glory. She 
 gave no evidence of ever catching sight of him, and 
 indeed may have been entirely unconscious that 
 his eyes were on her so often and so long each 
 day. Dimly seen, seated a little way from the 
 window, was an old lady who worked in company 
 with her, on similar lengths of needlework, and, 
 the month being June, the two sat with the window 
 open, and sometimes waifs of their talk — happy, 
 laughing talk — and little songs, frailly sweet, would 
 float up into Paul's open windows. But the 
 laughter was all he could understand, for the words 
 belonged to a language foreign to him. French 
 he said to himself, though he neither spoke nor 
 read that beautiful tongue, and French surely was 
 that dark beauty so vivid, so distinguished, so 
 brilliantly brunette. As he looked on it, Paul re- 
 called the lines of an Eastern poet : — 
 
 * Did you ever see a woman 
 Quite so black, yet quite so fair ! ' 
 
i88 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 And, day by day, the face at the window, up and 
 bright and industrious often in the very dew of 
 dawn, came to mean more to him, more and more 
 to pique his curiosity and stir his sense of wonder. 
 It was so exquisite a face, and the Hfe of this un- 
 known mother and daughter — though they were 
 evidently poor and hard-working — suggested a 
 certain sad distinction; was, so to say, so 'aristo- 
 cratic ' in its refinement. So a dowager and a 
 young queen in exile might ply their needles for 
 a livelihood with haughty industry. 
 
 If Paul's studio had had many visitors, it could 
 hardly have escaped notice that his sky-scrapers 
 were for the moment in eclipse, and that studies 
 of a certain beautiful head occupied all the avail- 
 able spaces of easel and wall, chair and even bed- 
 stead. Temporarily the river-front had lost its 
 fascination, and the sketches and canvases littered 
 about that were not occupied with the beautiful 
 face were, mysteriously enough, given up to 
 sketches of a not particularly beautiful cat. It 
 was not Paul's own cat. No cat shared his studio 
 with him, and up till now cats had never attracted 
 him. I suppose it is not hard to guess that it was 
 a cat that drowsed on the window-ledge of the un- 
 known, as she sat at her work — the third member 
 of the family. 
 
 One evening when Paul returned from a walk he 
 
OLD SILVER 
 
 was somewhat startled to find this little friend of 
 hers curled up on his divan, in the deep, pathetic 
 sleep of petted, trustful animals. Pussy opened 
 her eyes sleepily, but did not stir, and suffered 
 him to stroke her without protest, presently purring 
 by way of friendship. As Paul stroked her, he 
 said to himself over and over, * Her little cat ! ' 
 and then he looked out to see if there were any 
 signs of agitation in the window below. The 
 blind was undrawn, and a lamp burned on a little 
 table, but the chair was empty. Perhaps Black- 
 as-Night — as in his thoughts he had long since 
 called the stranger — was out looking for her pet. 
 It was natural to suppose that she was very un- 
 happy at its loss, and very unlikely that she should 
 guess the best place to look. Obviously it was 
 Paul's privilege to do Mademoiselle Gabrielle 
 Chartier a real service — for he had made it his 
 business to learn her name — and possibly . . . 
 Well, at all events, it was wonderfully in his power 
 to send her to bed easier in her mind than she 
 could otherwise have gone with 'her little cat' 
 wandering out of doors — Heaven knows where. 
 There was a broad blue ribbon round pussy's neck, 
 and Paul bethought him that he might allow him- 
 self so much reward as to attach to it one of those 
 portraits of ' her little cat,' with the compliments 
 of the artist. This he thereupon did, and having 
 
I90 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 made Pussy happy with a long drink of milk, 
 they set out together. Arrived at Mademoiselle 
 Chartier's door, his knock was answered by a 
 maid-servant, who, acknowledging the receipt of 
 pussy, volunteered the information that mademoi- 
 selle was out, looking for her, and would, she was 
 sure, be proportionately grateful. 
 
 Returning to his studio, Paul watched the lonely 
 lamp for a full hour, but nothing happened. Then, 
 deciding to smoke his bedtime pipe and drink his 
 usual nightcap, he left his window a moment or 
 two. When he returned, the lamp down there was 
 no longer burning. 
 
 Black-as-Night had evidently come home and 
 found her little pussy-cat all safe. Before she put 
 out the lamp — had she looked up at his window 
 with a momentary gratitude? He felt that she 
 must have done that anyhow — and what did she 
 think of the picture of * her little cat ' ? 
 
 These questions were, in some degree, answered 
 by a dainty note that came to him next evening, 
 in which Mademoiselle Gabrielle Chartier acknow- 
 ledged Mr. Canning's great kindness in restoring 
 her precious pet, and wished to thank him, too, for 
 the pretty sketch. Only, she could not help adding 
 that Mr. Canning had failed to note a very un- 
 common characteristic of ' her little cat ' : the 
 white ring around her tail — the Ring-o'-Roses, as 
 
OLD SILVER 
 
 191 
 
 she called it. Otherwise the portrait was perfect, 
 and Mademoiselle Chartier begged once more to 
 express her gratitude to the artist. 
 
 Paul naturally looked out of his window for the 
 next day or two with unusual interest, though it 
 was hard on him that he had to take more care 
 now than before, lest he should attract attention, 
 and thus seem to be claiming the acquaintance of 
 a smile. Black-as-Night was there, punctual and 
 industrious as before, but, so far as he could 
 observe, she seemed no more conscious of the 
 studio on the seventh floor than formerly. Her 
 beautiful head was bent over her stitchery with the 
 same day-by-day absorption, and her beautiful 
 hands sped the needle and the coloured silks as 
 industriously as before. And in the shadow, a little 
 away from the window, an old lady plied a needle 
 and thread on the glowing tapestry — and on the 
 window-sill ^her little cat' blinked lazily in the 
 sun — with unmistakably that ring of white roses 
 around her tail. 
 
 Several days passed, and Black-as-Night worked 
 at her window, and Ring-o'-Roses sunned herself 
 on the window-sill, and the summer days went by. 
 But Paul had fallen unaccountably idle, and the 
 incident of ^her little cat' seemed as closed as a 
 marble tomb. Paul left his door open several 
 evenings, in the hope that Ring-o -Roses might be 
 
192 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 tempted once more to go in search of adventures; 
 but — no! 'her little cat' stayed at home. Then 
 it occurred to Paul that possibly it might not be 
 taking undue advantage of an opportunity to make 
 a more careful study of Ring-o'-Roses, with special 
 regard to the unique decoration of her tail. To 
 this end he bought a powerful opera-glass, so that 
 he might make no mistakes this time — and he 
 made it a point of honour with himself that he 
 would look only at Ring-o'-Roses, and not, in the 
 weakest moment, take advantage of her beautiful 
 little mistress. Indeed, he was not hypocritical in 
 this, and I trust the reader will not blame him if 
 one day he could not resist the temptation of 
 looking at the pattern she was working upon, and 
 if, following the pattern, his eyes, so to say, eaves- 
 dropped upon her beautiful hands — and then made 
 a sudden theft of her face. But for this Paul was 
 so remorseful that he shut up his glasses and used 
 them no more. He would not look in those 
 beautiful eyes by stealth, would not be a thief of 
 their privacy. If some day — yes, if some day they 
 cared to give up their pure depths to his gaze — 
 well, ah, how well it would be ! But to filch their 
 solemn quietude, to come secretly upon their 
 silence — no, Paul already loved Black-as-Night too 
 much for that. 
 
 But she could hardly resent his sending her what 
 
OLD SILVER 
 
 193 
 
 he called ' Ring-o'-Roses — Corrected Portrait/ The 
 sketch could not fail to give her pleasure, and some- 
 how he felt that she would divine that, supposing 
 her interest in the sketch did not extend to the 
 artist, he was not the man to trouble her with 
 further reminders of his existence. 
 
 So the new portrait of Ring-o'-Roses was duly- 
 finished with great care, and directed to Mademoi- 
 selle Chartier, and — was it wrong of her? — Black- 
 as-Night looked up at the studio next morning and 
 — smiled. 
 
 Black-as-Night presently followed up her smile 
 with a note in which Mademoiselle Chartier thanked 
 Mr. Channing for the sketch, and added that she 
 and her mother would be glad if he could take tea 
 with them on the following Thursday afternoon. 
 Perhaps it is unnecessary to say that Mr. Channing 
 was proud to accept the invitation. So Thursday 
 afternoon found him seated inside the very room, 
 and in the very chair by the window, which 
 had so long been mysterious and dreamlike for 
 him. 
 
 Mademoiselle talked English exceptionally well 
 for a Frenchwoman, talked it better, indeed, to 
 Paul's way of thinking, than most American girls, 
 because she added to it the daintiest suggestion of 
 a French accent. Her mother, a frail little old lady 
 talked English hardly at all, but there was no need 
 
 N 
 
194 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 for her to talk. She was as silently expressive of 
 the distinguished charm of the old French world as 
 a piece of old lace — or those sacred embroideries 
 which she and her daughter worked on, in the spirit 
 of lay sisters, for the holy, beauty-loving church to 
 which they belonged. In a modest way they had 
 quite a reputation for their skill with their needles, 
 and Madame Chartier would tell with pride of her 
 little daughter, during her education at the Convent 
 of the Sacred Heart, before the disastrous days 
 when M. Chartier, having lost all his money through 
 the war, had died and left them penniless — how the 
 good sisters had named her Doigts d'Or, because 
 of her skill even as a child. Whenever there was 
 some particularly difficult piece of needlework to 
 be done it was always brought to little Doigts 
 d'Or. 
 
 Presently Doigts d'Or poured out tea with the 
 golden fingers, and Ring-o'-Roses came in from 
 the window-sill, with a curious little interrogative 
 purr, which was plainly a request for milk. Doigts 
 d'Or poured out a saucerful for her, stroking her 
 affectionately as she did so. 
 
 * I suppose she is not really beautiful,' she said ; 
 *but then, you see, we love her, and love makes 
 anything seem beautiful — don't you think?' turn- 
 ing her rich brown eyes full on his face. It 
 was the first time he had thus looked into them. 
 
OLD SILVER 
 
 195 
 
 How deep they were, cloudless as a southern sky, 
 and pure as a child's ! 
 
 Yes; such a child she was, yet so profoundly, 
 so exquisitely, so benignantly, so tragically a 
 woman. Eyes more acquainted with the external 
 characteristics of woman than Paul's — which as 
 we have seen, had, up till now, mainly occupied 
 themselves with public buildings — in addition to 
 applauding her beauty, would have been able, 
 scientifically, so to say, to divine in Gabrielle, in 
 uncommon possession, those even rarer and more 
 precious qualities of womanhood which have made 
 the Madonna the supreme type of human worship. 
 Perhaps older and sadder eyes than Paul's are 
 needed to see and appreciate these qualities im- 
 mediately and at their work ; that infinite fidelity 
 which no wrong-doing can estrange, which with- 
 stands all the shocks of fate and time, and that 
 divine tenderness which keeps open for us, when 
 all other havens are closed, the arms of its im- 
 measurable consolation. 
 
 Ah, yes ! Gabrielle was indeed beautiful, but 
 she was more. All over her sacred womanhood 
 it was written that she was, too, the perfect mate, 
 the woman men have died to — lose; all that is 
 concentrated in the word of all words which en- 
 shrines the indestructible loyalty of human feeling, 
 that word so sweet to be so strong, the word — wife. 
 
196 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 Paul was too inexperienced to know how much 
 more the word wife means than the beautiful girl 
 we marry ; but he was already deeply in love with 
 the beautiful girl, and she — well, when a woman 
 like Gabrielle is going to love a man she is not 
 long in making up her mind. But she takes some 
 time to call it * love ' even to herself. She knew 
 she liked PauPs blond curling hair, and his brave 
 grey eyes, and she liked the way he shook hands. 
 They were strong, clean hands, she said to herself, 
 and she looked forward to his holding her little 
 bird of a hand in his again. And, these important 
 matters being silently understood, Paul took leave, 
 going away enriched with Madame Chartier's 
 promise for herself and daughter to pay a return 
 visit to his studio on an early day. 
 
 The day was naturally a long time coming, 
 but it came, and, for the first time, women's 
 skirts — angelic sound ! — rustled into Paul's bachelor 
 solitude. How wonderful it was to have such 
 wonderful visitors ! Paul could not only have 
 kissed the hem of Gabrielle's pretty black-silk 
 skirt, but the hem of her old mother's also. He 
 took them to the window, and together they 
 looked down at Ring-o'-Roses sitting in the sun 
 on the window-ledge. To think that they were 
 actually up here with him to-day, and looking 
 down, as he had so often looked, without a thought 
 
OLD SILVER 
 
 197 
 
 that that beautiful Doigts d'Or would some day 
 bend her face out of his window so thrillingly 
 near his ! 
 
 Of course, there were many sketches to be 
 examined, and Paul grew happier still as he saw, 
 with that instinct of the artist that cannot be 
 deceived, that Doigts d'Or knew. It was clear 
 that she saw his artistic dream, and was able to 
 appreciate his success. His heart gave a great 
 sigh of gladness at realising this. Presently 
 Doigts d'Or mentioned the works of a certain 
 young French painter who also was given up to 
 the beauty of cities, and Paul's confession that 
 he knew nothing of French painting, not even 
 of anything French — beyond his visitors! — led 
 to Doigts d'Or talking of her beautiful French 
 poets. . . . 
 
 Were they French songs that sometimes floated 
 like silver butterflies up into his window.? he 
 asked. There was one he loved so . . . but, of 
 course, he couldn't remember the words — not even 
 hum the tune. 
 
 * Could it be Uaube natt et ta porte est close''}' 
 Gabrielle asked, ^ or perhaps "Z^ Rot d'Yvetot'^}' 
 
 But Paul did not know, adding that he might 
 dare to ask her to teach him some of the songs, 
 if it were not like asking a bird to teach one how 
 to sing. 
 
198 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 Doigts d'Or laughed, and having translated to 
 her mother, Madame Chartier shook her head play- 
 fully at him, and said that Messieurs les artistes were 
 dangerous flatterers. 
 
 Before they left, Paul summoned up courage 
 to bring out from a hiding-place, where it had 
 been hurried away with others, what he considered 
 his best sketch of Black-as-Night. She blushed 
 deeply, but her eyes glowed with pleasure, as she 
 recognised herself, and her old mother was evi- 
 dently won from that moment. Paul explained 
 that he would beg Madame Chartier's acceptance 
 of the sketch, but it was so imperfect, etc. — yet 
 if only she would allow her daughter to sit for 
 him, he might hope to do something more worthy. 
 His visitors protested against his wasting his time 
 in such a fashion, but Paul retorted by a business- 
 like proposition. He should paint mademoiselle's 
 portrait, and she should teach him some of those 
 little French songs. She need not waste her much 
 more precious time either, but could go on with 
 her needlework while he painted. So it was a 
 bargain, and Doigts d'Or agreed to fix an early 
 day — to sit for the picture, to teach monsieur 
 French, and to work hard at her embroidery, all 
 at once. Clearly, there would be little margin 
 left for such industrious young people to get into 
 mischief. 
 
OLD SILVER 
 
 199 
 
 Quite two sittings, if not three, came and went 
 with exemplary industry. Doigts d'Or's face grew 
 on the canvas, the length of stitchery grew on her 
 lap, and Paul's knowledge of French had pro- 
 gressed as far as a respectable mastery of the 
 auxiliary verbs ; for it had seemed best to begin 
 his studies in this humble way rather than with 
 those airy, delicate lyrics from old France or 
 modern Provence, which, though so simple and 
 bird-like on Doigts d'Or's lips, were found, after 
 all, to exist by a complicated linguistic organism 
 which, it was to be feared, it would take her pupil 
 some time to master. They seemed so easy to 
 have made, so divinely natural to sing, but oh, how 
 grim with grammar and stiff with learning they 
 became the moment one tried to learn them for 
 oneself! It was as though one should study the 
 anatomy of a nightingale. 
 
 It was, I think, on the occasion of the fourth 
 sitting that suddenly Paul lost all patience with 
 the conditional imperfect tense of ' avoir' and at 
 the same time, throwing down his brushes, likewise 
 brought to a standstill the golden fingers, and 
 holding them still on Gabrielle's lap, as he kneeled 
 in front of her, looked a long look into her face, 
 and told her what they had both known in their 
 hearts — with that mysterious intuition of love — 
 the moment they had first spoken together. O 
 
PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 the dear words — how often they have been spoken, 
 how often written, how often printed ; but let us 
 print them once more. Even in print how they 
 breathe incense and thrill with wonder ! 
 
 * I love you/ said Paul. 
 
 * I love you/ answered Gabrielle, taking his brows 
 in the golden fingers, oh, so tenderly, so tenderly — 
 and as she looked at him her brown eyes filled 
 with tears. 
 
 Is there anything so infinitely sad as complete 
 happiness ? And for these two lives one completely 
 happy moment had come. O golden moment, stay 
 for ever ! Let love remain just as it is in this first 
 moment of its transfiguring avowal, an altar-flame 
 of perfect fire, a newly open flower divinely drunk 
 with all the dews of heaven. 
 
 Hardly less happy was Madame Chartier herself 
 when the young people went that very afternoon 
 and told her their love and asked for her blessing, 
 and, when the day approached which there was no 
 necessity long to defer, she brought from unsus- 
 pected hiding-places a dowry of lace and fine linen 
 and old silver which made Gabrielle clap her hands 
 for joy and pride. How clever our quiet old 
 mothers can be when they have a mind to ! 
 
 So it came about that Paul and Gabrielle were 
 married — the difficulty of Paul's Protestantism 
 
OLD SILVER 
 
 201 
 
 having been smoothed over by a kindly dispensa- 
 tion — and the manufacture of sacred embroidery 
 and the immortalisation of sky-scrapers went on 
 under the same happy roof. 
 
 To have won Gabrielle had seemed marvellous, 
 wonderful, but that moment of winning her, raptur- 
 ous as it had been, what was it compared with this 
 daily living by her side ; to be allowed to spend 
 one's days in the close neighbourhood of such 
 fragrant goodness as Gabrielle's ? For, as time 
 went on, her goodness of nature grew to seem 
 more wonderful to Paul even than her beauty. It 
 seemed, indeed, that her beauty grew out of her 
 goodness — was her goodness. Her goodness had 
 the charm of a natural gift, and her religion, as 
 Paul soon learned, as he studied her day by day 
 — happy student! — was no less an unconscious 
 fruition of her whole spontaneous being. She 
 prayed — as she sang. 
 
 It often amazed him, as he watched her, to see 
 how real certain beliefs and attitudes so figmentary 
 for himself were to her instinctive, childlike nature, 
 and how little ways of thought which in others 
 he would have called either superstitious or in- 
 sincere, were the true religion of a little, trusting 
 child. 
 
 By a hundred engaging ways Gabrielle led Paul 
 even to respect * superstitious practices' which in 
 
202 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 others he would have described as pertaining to a 
 Polynesian savage. 
 
 For example, little Gabrielle never took medicine 
 without making the sign of the Cross several times 
 and saying one or two Ave Marias, and Paul had to 
 hold her in his arms, too, and reassure her before 
 she would set her lips to the bitter stuff. 
 
 * I don't like it,' she would say. 
 
 ' I know, little girl, it 's terrible. Only remember 
 how much good it is going to do you.' 
 
 * I 'm a brave girl, am I not, Paul ? ' 
 
 * Indeed you are, Gabrielle. But, see now — see, 
 it will soon be down, and then — ' 
 
 ' What will you give me then, Paul ? ' 
 *You shall have a pound of your favourite 
 chocolate.' 
 
 ' Truly, Paul ? ' 
 ^ Truly.' 
 
 * Wait a minute, then ! ' 
 
 Gabrielle would thereupon mystically tattoo her- 
 self with prayers, and presently, * Now ! ' she would 
 say, and the bitter stuff was swallowed at last. 
 
 I have no doubt that this sounds silly to read. 
 Had it been any one else but Gabrielle, Paul would 
 have called it idiotic, but it was so plainly real to 
 Gabrielle that he could not help respecting it, and 
 wondering if that was not the only efficacious way 
 of taking medicine. 
 
OLD SILVER 
 
 203 
 
 Gabrielle, I said, but PauTs name for her was 
 more and more Doigts d'Or — for what a task, O 
 Golden-Fingers, is this over which you bend with 
 so soft a light upon your face ! 
 
 Doigts d'Or ! 
 
 But, alas ! For so short a time shall little Denis 
 wear these fairy garments upon his frail limbs. 
 Ah ! little Denis, if only you had stayed a year or 
 two longer, worn out your baby-clothes, and set 
 Doigts d'Or at work upon some larger sizes. If 
 only you had stayed ! But, alas ! the days of 
 Denis were hardly more than the days of a snow- 
 drop, nay, hardly longer than a snowflake's was the 
 life of little Denis. If only you had stayed longer, 
 Denis — who knows ! 
 
 We have been so occupied with Paul Channing's 
 domestic affairs that we have almost forgotten that 
 he was all the time an artist. He himself may 
 well have seemed to forget that all-important 
 fact — in the lives of artists, and, alas ! in the 
 lives of those who love them. How many women 
 have forgotten, or failed to realise it, to their own 
 sorrow ! No artist is really at heart a human being 
 — he belongs to the Undines, to those fairy tribes 
 of the air and the water that mean no harm with 
 their appealing simulation of humanity, but do 
 so much. They literally 'enter in' to the 
 
204 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 human passions of their fellows — even undertake 
 the human responsibilities ! — with such a reality 
 of interest — become, for instance, husbands and 
 fathers with such picturesque sincerity. It is they 
 who make the cradle-songs that break the heart, 
 and the love-songs that make the cradles. To 
 declare that they are without soul or heart seems 
 preposterous when all the litanies and lyrics of 
 life are plainly of their making. And yet — 
 well, let us return to Paul Channing, merely re- 
 calling once more that, though he was by this the 
 happiest of husbands, he still remained the most 
 dedicated of artists. 
 
 Without, of course, forgetting Gabrielle^s beauti- 
 ful face, his eyes had once more remembered his 
 beautiful buildings, and, stimulated by that fire 
 which love mysteriously brings to all the affairs of 
 life, he made pictures of New York so amazingly 
 beautiful that even New York itself at last became 
 aware of them. People known as * magnates* 
 began to buy his work, and great ladies swept in 
 and out of his studio. In short, Paul Channing 
 * arrived,' became a vogue, and found himself caught 
 up into the social life of the great capital. His 
 worldly affairs prospered, but having none of that 
 worldly ambition which is too often a humiliating 
 weakness of the provincial artist, he never forgot 
 the simplicity which had made him strong. For a 
 
OLD SILVER 
 
 205 
 
 nature such as his the common temptations of life 
 flaunt themselves in vain. 
 
 Properly speaking, life has only one danger for 
 the true artist — the danger of beauty. 
 
 Paul Channing had loved and married the good 
 beauty. He was now to meet the evil beauty. 
 
 Beauty breeds its monsters, its coloured poisons, 
 its terrible flowers. Just as there are strangely 
 spotted shapes of flower and fruit, subtly coloured, 
 fantastically formed creatures of earth and air and 
 water, wicked fancies of nature, whose fairness 
 seem somehow sin, all evil enchantment and deadly 
 sweetness, beauty that is all lure and snare, and the 
 heart whereof is foulness and dust — so there are 
 women like Delilah Marsh. ' Del ' Marsh was 
 the name by which she was usually spoken of in 
 the over-cultivated society of which she was per- 
 haps the most poisonous flower. To her intimates 
 she was Lamia, the snake-woman, with the strange 
 red hair and the violet eyes and the skin white 
 as a shroud. She was beautiful as some exquisite 
 fungus in the decaying woods, and indeed she was 
 the child of luxury and degenerate idleness. She 
 was very rich, and learned in all the potent essences 
 and distillations of art — in literature, in music, in 
 painting. Her library was like a garden heavy with 
 evil scent, and everywhere on her walls the soul was 
 seen as the beautiful bond-slave of the senses. 
 
206 
 
 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 Her life was a continuous quest of new emotions, 
 or rather sensations. Her pampered nerves cried 
 out for the new thrill, and Paul Channing's art 
 gave her for a moment that priceless shock of 
 novelty. She bought many of his pictures, and 
 his goodness, his simple boyhood, fascinated her. 
 His freshness came upon her like dew, and his 
 virgin spirit stirred all her impulses of seduction. 
 And, alas for him ! he fell before her as one 
 stricken by some sweet-smelling narcotic. She 
 drew him to her as a snake draws a bird. 
 
 O Gabrielle, with your beauty, white as the 
 northern star, wholesome as a meadow of daisies ! 
 where are your songs, Gabrielle — those pure little 
 songs that used to float up into the window? Have 
 you forgotten your songs, Gabrielle, or have they 
 lost their power? Alas! Gabrielle sings no more; 
 she only pines and prays, and watches Paul's 
 haunted face with a dying heart. 
 
 Alas ! little Gabrielle, must you come like this 
 to understand that you love one of those terrible 
 lovers of beauty — an artist? He loves all beauty — 
 your good beauty, Gabrielle — yes, he loves it 
 still ; but the evil beauty has now laid its spell 
 upon him. God made him so. God help you 
 and him, little Gabrielle! You cannot help him, 
 Gabrielle. The poison must have its way with 
 him, spread its devil's fire through his veins. 
 
OLD SILVER 
 
 207 
 
 But who knows? — he may not die. Love him 
 and love him, Gabrielle, and watch and pray, and 
 maybe he will grow whole again, and come back to 
 God and to you, and the old, clean dreams, with 
 purged eyes and a heart made new. Watch and 
 pray, Gabrielle. There are saints to help all us 
 poor sinners, and there is the compassionate Mother 
 of us all. 
 
 All true religion is instinctive — yes, superstitious, 
 if you will. It is the profound organic recogni- 
 tion by one's whole multiplex nature of invisible 
 standards for our visible lives, obedience to laws 
 of right and wrong essentially as * unreasonable ' 
 as the unseen commands of gravitation. It is 
 dumbly unargumentative, and relies in silence on 
 the aid of those invisible powers, which it obeys 
 without a question, as simply as it draws its 
 breath. Those who follow the invisible law natur- 
 ally rely upon the invisible guidance and protection. 
 Gabrielle's goodness obeyed the laws of God as 
 simply as her beauty obeyed the laws of nature. 
 As she strove to live according to the will and the 
 example of the Blessed Saints, you can hardly 
 blame her if she relied, in times of difficulty, on 
 their assistance. Her own particular saint was St. 
 Anthony— of Padua : he who finds for us what we 
 have lost. Little Gabrielle knew, I imagine, little 
 of St. Anthony's personal, Paduan history. She 
 
2o8 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 would, very likely, have been surprised to hear that 
 he was so recent a saint, and have wondered what 
 the poor people did who had lost things before he 
 was born. 
 
 Gabrielle had lost — a heart ; not quite lost it, 
 perhaps, but was in danger of losing it. To whom 
 should she go if not to St. Anthony? The Holy 
 Mother was ready with illimitable pity when hope 
 was quite gone by, and loss was an irretrievable 
 fact. She alone could dry our tears and bind up 
 our wounds, but St. Anthony — ah ! he could bring 
 us back what we had lost, all the more precious by 
 its seeming theft. 
 
 There was a little New York church where 
 St. Anthony stood day and night — far away, indeed, 
 from Padua — stood ready to help any sad soul 
 that cared to light up his kind face with the flame 
 of a votive candle. Near by his shrine was a 
 box divided into two parts. Both parts contained 
 candles, and one part, being labelled ^ ten cents,* 
 contained longer candles than the other part, which 
 was labelled ^ five cents.' Candles are earthly 
 offerings to heavenly beings, and if they were 
 to cost nothing, what would be the point of offer- 
 ing them ? Surely the intercession of an invisible 
 power is bought cheaply, even nominally, at such 
 prices. 
 
 Gabrielle always bought five-cent candles, for 
 
OLD SILVER 
 
 209 
 
 she was a good housewife, and knew that God 
 does not wish us to spend more on prayers than 
 we can afford. Her idea was that, had she given 
 a million dollars for a candle, her prayer would 
 have stood no better chance of being heard. In- 
 deed, she would probably have maintained that — 
 the poor candles come first. Such was her faith in 
 God. 
 
 So, day by day she would go and tell St. Anthony 
 of her sorrow, and beg him to give back to her the 
 heart of the man she loved. 
 
 At first, when Paul had fallen under the spell, 
 she had been just humanly jealous, as any other 
 woman might have been, angry and vindictive ; but 
 the more she watched the face of Paul, and marked 
 how kind, though haunted and withdrawn, his ways, 
 the more she came to regard him as smitten with 
 a sickness of the soul, literally a love-sickness. 
 He was sick of an evil dream. She would nurse 
 him — self-forgetful as any nurse. This fancy of 
 his meant no more than some fever accidentally 
 caught. Even though it should kill him, it would 
 not mean that he did not love her, or disprove that 
 she, of all women, was his wife. 
 
 For the time Paul had not only forgotten — or 
 seemed to have forgotten — Gabrielle ; his art 
 languished too. Like us all, he had but so much 
 life to give — here or there. His pictures needed 
 
 O 
 
210 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 his breath and his blood no less than he needed 
 his breath and blood for himself. So when it 
 happened that Lamia stole from him all the life 
 he had, his pictures also began to die. 
 
 Critics began to ask what was the matter with 
 Paul Channing's work. Its virility seemed to be 
 fading out of it. It was growing perfunctory and 
 phantom-like ; and, indeed, properly speaking, Paul 
 worked no more. He was incapable any longer 
 of that tranced absorption of all his faculties in a 
 healthy fury of work which had possessed him as he 
 carried his sketch-book close to his heart to and fro 
 on the New York ferry-boats. The clear electrical 
 atmosphere of his passionate vision of a new beauty 
 born in the West, a stern beauty of strong towers, 
 lit by the rising sun of a mighty people, had been 
 invaded by a perfumed miasma, and the stealing 
 sweetness softened all his strength. 
 
 ' I saw pale kings and princes too. 
 
 Pale warriors — death-pale were they all ; 
 Who cried, La Belle Dame Sans Merci 
 Hath thee in thrall—" ' 
 
 How often he said that over to himself, with a hope- 
 less smile at his bondage ! 
 
 * Yes,' he would add, * and to this day they 
 are all kings and princes and warriors that are 
 her victims, the strong men and the pure and 
 the noble. O Lamia's tastes are delicate! The 
 
OLD SILVER 
 
 211 
 
 honey she loves to steal is hived, like David's 
 honey, in the hearts of the strong/ 
 
 But though he might fight against the coils, the 
 beautiful snake's eyes were too strong for him, and 
 more and more they drew away his life. 
 
 Yes, his life — for suddenly, one day, with a white 
 shock all through him, he realised that, literally, 
 Lamia had done him a mortal hurt. As even 
 strong men may die of heart-break, he felt that 
 he too was dying from within, dying of some 
 broken pride of his spirit, dying, as it were, of 
 very shame for the violated idealism of his soul. 
 There are fevers of the soul for which the body 
 must die, and, by some mysterious intuition, it 
 was suddenly whispered to Paul that before many 
 months were past, he was going to die. 
 
 When the thought first came to him, he dis- 
 missed it as foolish. Fevered men have these 
 fancies. But it recurred again and again, and, in- 
 deed, before long he became conscious of a certain 
 physical failure in himself, a fading impulse and 
 a lack of endurance. He was manifestly thinner, 
 too, and he would sometimes quote laughingly to 
 himself the lines of that Eastern poet he loved — 
 
 * So thin grow I with longing, and this ache 
 
 That in the grave will now be ended soon, 
 The folk at evening my pale body take 
 
 For the new moon, 
 Being like a thread of silver for your sake.' 
 
212 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 He would even say them to Lamia, with that 
 sad laugh in which there is no laughter, the sad 
 laugh of the passing souL And Lamia, who in her 
 way loved him, would feel a little sorry for him, 
 and wonder. . . . 
 
 * Paul,' she said, one evening, as they sat together 
 among the books and pictures that gave out poison 
 like night-blossoming plants, 'are you sorry that 
 you have loved me ? ' 
 
 'Yes,* answered Paul. 
 
 * Sorry ! Why ? Why are you sorry ? ' 
 
 ' Because, Del — I have never really loved you.' 
 ' Never loved me ! ' and she laughed the scornful, 
 fatuous laugh of the conceited poison. 
 
 * No, Del, I have never loved you for one second. 
 I have been your poor drugged and delirious slave. 
 I have pressed your lips to mine as an opium 
 smoker presses the little pipe to his lips, and 
 dreams he is king of all the gardens of the sky. 
 Have I loved you, Del ? Yes, if the man loves the 
 poison that steals his soul and saps his body, and 
 melts his manhood like wax, all in exchange for 
 a few painted wings of the butterflies of dreams. 
 Loved you ! Yes. I have loved you as men love 
 poisoned honey, and opiates loaded with death, 
 and all the foul sweetness of the pit of hell — but, 
 like all such men, how gladly would I give back 
 for ever all your spices and your songs for one drop 
 
OLD SILVER 
 
 213 
 
 of dew glittering in some old, pure morning of my 
 boyhood ! ' 
 
 ' Dear Paul/ said Lamia, * dear Paul — your talk 
 grows more picturesque than ever. How full of 
 colour it is, as vivid . . 
 
 'As the flames of hell,' Paul interrupted her. 
 * Don't you know that dying men are the best 
 talkers in the world ? No dinner-table can match 
 the deathbeds of some men for brilliancy. Del, I 
 am dying — dying of the poison that is you . . 
 
 *You are not very polite, Paul. Deathbed wit 
 is usually more polished. . . 
 
 * You wicked thing ! ' cried Paul, growing pale 
 with anger, and rising to go on shaking limbs. 
 ' How wicked you are ! You see me dying — yet 
 you can jest like that. You wicked thing ! . . 
 
 But Lamia stayed his going with a caress, and 
 gave him a long, singing drink in a delicate 
 Venetian glass, and ran her white, wicked fingers 
 through his curls, a little damp with the fever that 
 was in him, and soothed him, sang to him, and 
 told him that it was he who was cruel, not she; 
 that indeed she loved him ; if he loved her too, 
 was it any fault of hers? — and if it really hurt 
 him to love her, he should go away — yes, go 
 away that very night, and see her no more. And, 
 for answer, Paul, lying back on the settee, with 
 eyes like grave-candles, drew her close to him, 
 
214 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 and looked long into the poison-flower of her 
 face. 
 
 ' Sing to me, Del/ he said presently. * Sing 
 me . . . "The Woman of Dreams."' 
 
 Going to the piano, Del recited, rather than sang, 
 to the accompaniment of a touched note here and 
 there — recited well, for Lamia loved poetry and 
 all beautiful things with a real love, and perhaps 
 was no more intentionally evil than any other 
 beautiful evil thing — 
 
 * I am she who comes back and comes back with the sound 
 
 of the rain. 
 
 I am she who whispers and whispers hidden among the 
 leaves ; 
 
 I am the sea and the wind, and the sigh of the summer grain, 
 And the lonely reed am I that rocks and whimpers and 
 grieves. 
 
 * I am the woman who came in the dawn and the diw of 
 
 your days. 
 
 For when first awakened your eyes 'twas upon my face 
 they fell ; 
 
 From your cradle you rose and walked the world in the 
 hope of my face, 
 Seeking the woman of dreams, in heaven, in earth, and 
 in hell. 
 
 * Yes ! I am the woman of dreams, the woman no man shall 
 
 wed — 
 
 Would you mate with the rising moon, or the glimmer 
 of stars upon streams ? 
 Or marry the mist on the mere, or the hopes in the heart 
 of the dead ? 
 
 Then home to your hearth shall you bring me — me, the 
 woman of dreams. 
 
OLD SILVER 215 
 
 * Have you seen a light on the hills you never shall touch 
 
 with your hand ? 
 Have you heard a voice in your sleep you never again 
 shall hear ? 
 
 Have you dreamed of a sea so blue, and oh ! of so green a 
 land, 
 
 Believed in a tale more true than the stories of eye and 
 ear ? 
 
 * Have you dreamed of a gold and a silver more silver and 
 
 more gold 
 
 Than men mine in the mountains, or deep dived for 
 some dream 
 
 Pearl beyond reach of diver, at the spent end to hold 
 A drowning clutch of radiance, a sinking circling gleam ? 
 
 * I was the gold, I the silver, the light on the hills, the pearl, 
 
 The sound of the summer leaves was I, the sound was I 
 of the rain. 
 
 The hope in your heart was I, your dream-boy's dream 
 of a girl, 
 
 Yea, the woman of dreams was I — that all men must 
 love in vain. 
 
 ' Ah ! never shall you be mine, beloved, nor ever can I be 
 yours ! 
 
 You are the kiss of the sun on the sea, I am the flying 
 foam. 
 
 Ah ! shall we live in a rainbow, love, so long as a rainbow 
 endures, 
 
 For I am the woman of dreams, and the rainbow is my 
 home ? ' 
 
 When she had finished, Paul was silent for a long 
 time. He was thinking of Gabrielle. 
 
2i6 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 * Yes/ he said presently, * it is time I went back 
 to my woman of dreams. . . 
 
 'I thought I was your woman of dreams, Paul,' 
 said Del, coming over to him and laying her hand 
 on his hair. 
 
 Paul laughed scornfully. 
 
 *You! . . . You my woman of dreams! No, Del, 
 men don't dream of women like you. Men dream 
 of good women, faithful women, of noble comrades, 
 and splendid mothers — not phantom women, poison 
 women, like you. . . 
 
 *Paul! ' 
 
 'Yes, I 'm rude, I know. One is always inclined 
 to be rude when one is wretched, and to reproach 
 others when one is most disgusted with oneself. 
 Forgive me. I know you are not to blame. You, 
 like us all, are only fulfilling the law of your nature. 
 Poisons cannot help being poisons. It is for the 
 sane man to keep away from them. Good-bye, 
 Del. This is good-bye. I don't think we shall 
 meet again.' 
 
 However, Paul and Lamia did meet again, for her 
 snare was strong even when clearly seen to be a 
 snare; but one afternoon, as Paul was returning 
 home from a call upon his cruel enchantress, he 
 happened to pass by the church where Gabrielle 
 said her prayers, and there indeed she was mount- 
 ing the steps just as he was passing. She had not 
 
OLD SILVER 
 
 217 
 
 seen him. There was a look of intense loneliness 
 about her little figure, a dwindled hopeless look 
 about her very frock, that smote his heart ; and, 
 unperceived of her, he followed into the church. 
 Except for half a dozen shadows kneeling here and 
 there in the dimness, the church was empty. It 
 was very dark, and indeed was only illuminated by 
 the light from two shrines at its far end. To one 
 of these Gabrielle bent her steps, and having fixed 
 and lit a candle on the great democratic candlestick, 
 she knelt down near by and prayed. . . . 
 
 Paul knew for whom and for what she was pray- 
 ing, and, as he watched her keeling there, his evil 
 dream fell from him. Rising from her knees, 
 Gabrielle met his eyes and saw that her prayer was 
 answered. 
 
 * Gabrielle, will you forgive me ? ' he said. ' It 
 was all a foolish lie, a wicked dream. I have never 
 loved any one but you in all my life. I was 
 enchanted, Gabrielle. I did not know.' 
 
 Gabrielle's face grew transparent with a look of 
 terrible joy, and she fell almost fainting into Paul's 
 arms. 
 
 * Oh, but is it true ? Paul, is it true ? ' 
 
 ' It has been true all the time. Nothing else has 
 ever been true. I have been sick, that is all. Now 
 I am well. I think it was your prayers, Gabrielle. 
 I heard them all the time.' 
 
2l8 
 
 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 Gabrielle turned involuntarily toward the saint 
 who had brought her back the heart she had seemed 
 to lose. 
 
 * Thank St. Anthony with me,' she said, * for it 
 was he brought you back to me.' And Paul knelt 
 by her side, and prayed with her ; and then they 
 went out into the street together with shining eyes. 
 
 And, indeed, unless certain kind heavenly powers 
 do have our poor mortal hearts in their keeping, 
 how shall one explain the complete oblivion of 
 those months of fever that now, and immediately 
 and for ever, blotted out for Paul the name of 
 Delilah Marsh ? The ancient king who bathed in 
 the Eastern river did not rise out of the water more 
 cleansed of the leprosy of his body than Paul rose 
 from his knees that afternoon cleansed of the 
 leprosy of his soul. 
 
 * And the cross?' said I, after a long silence. 
 
 * It was an heirloom,' answered my friend, who 
 bought and sold the dream-silver, 'that had come 
 down to Madame Chartier from a grandfather who 
 was the bishop of some place or other in northern 
 France. It is a humble thing compared with a 
 gold cross that once belonged to the same grand- 
 father, which poor Gabrielle brought me one day 
 when . . .' 
 
 'When . . .' said I. 
 
OLD SILVER 
 
 219 
 
 'When Paul Channing was very ill/ 
 
 * And she brought this . . 
 
 'Some weeks after he was dead, and she and 
 her mother were going back home to Europe.' 
 
 ' She has gone, then ?' said L 
 
 *Yes; and I bought all Channing's pictures she 
 could bear to part with. I hope some day to be 
 able to send her quite a little surprise packet of 
 money, the profit on all I could afford to give her 
 at the moment.' 
 
 ' Channing died, then? ' said I. 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 *But he never went back to Lamia?' 
 
 ' I don't believe he ever thought of her again,' 
 answered my friend. ' I became rather intimate 
 with them all, from the time that his wife first 
 brought in to me one of his pictures to sell. It 
 struck me so much, and she herself so interested 
 and charmed me, that I asked to call and see some 
 more of his pictures . . . and so we got to be 
 friends. 
 
 * He was a very great artist, and, as he lay there 
 wasting away, it was wonderful to watch his face 
 light up as he talked about his old love — not 
 Lamia — but the beauty of New York ; and to the 
 last there was always a charcoal and a piece of 
 board at his side, with which in a few firm strokes 
 he could do more than most men with a month's 
 
220 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 hard work. And, strange as it may sound, though 
 he was so ill, I never saw so much happiness as 
 among those three people. Their love for one 
 another was the most beautiful, most truly happy 
 thing, I ever saw. The shadow of death seemed 
 only to make it the more beautiful.' 
 'And Gabrielle?' said I. 
 
 * It was strange to see her. It was as though 
 she were not losing him at all — only parting from 
 him for a little time. She had come to have as 
 sure a faith in his love as in God Himself, and his 
 death was to her literally little more than as though 
 he were to be divided from her by a long journey. 
 But that they should meet again some day at the 
 end of the journey, and be each other's beyond the 
 power of parting, she evidently no more doubted 
 than she doubted that St. Anthony had brought 
 back her husband's heart to her that afternoon in 
 the little church/ 
 
 * Your old silver is very sad,' I said to my friend 
 after a while. 
 
 * Yes/ he answered, *it is filled with sighs/ 
 
FRAGOLETTA 
 
FRAGOLETTA 
 
 HEREVER Septimus Ledward travelled 
 
 ^ ^ — and he travelled much, for the vicis- 
 situdes of life had filled his soul with an un- 
 rest that did not suffer him to remain very long 
 in any one place — he carried with him a strangely 
 beautiful little box of beaten copper, evidently 
 very ancient, and secured by bands and locks 
 almost grotesquely out of proportion to its size. 
 This box he never allowed out of his sight, nor 
 permitted even his faithful manservant to touch 
 it. On his journeys he himself carried it in a 
 strong leather case made specially to hold it, 
 which never left his side, day or night Only two 
 people in the world besides himself knew what the 
 box contained. One was the highest officer in the 
 English Customs, and the other was of no special 
 account. One would be right in surmising that 
 the box created no little curiosity in the customs 
 houses of the many ports of entry and frontier 
 stations, through which in his wandering life he 
 was continually passing. But he had only to draw 
 from his pocket a paper signed by that high 
 
 223 
 
224 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 official aforesaid to cause the officer in charge to 
 salute him with an almost religious deference, and 
 to signify that after such a credential no examina- 
 tion of the mysterious box was necessary. 
 
 His friends, of whom he had many — for in his 
 strange melancholy way he was busily and some- 
 times vividly social — were hardly less curious than 
 the customs, and would often late at night, when 
 the wine had loosened the bonds of discretion, ask 
 him to reveal the secret of the strangely beautiful 
 little box, that, however fleeting his visit to any 
 particular place, had always some distinguished 
 position in his rooms reserved for it. 
 
 He would answer them according to his mood. 
 Sometimes an elfish mockery would take hold of 
 him, and he would excite and pique their curiosity 
 with mysterious suggestions and half-promises of 
 confidence. At other times he would silence them 
 with a dark fierce look, but hardly more fierce 
 than sad, which set them to knocking out their 
 pipes, drinking off what remained in their glasses, 
 and remarking on the lateness of the hour. At 
 other times he would indulge a certain poetic 
 invention he possessed, and tease them with pic- 
 turesque fancies — such as this, for example. The 
 box, he would say, was filled to the lid with 
 gold pieces . . . Ah! but listen . . . gold pieces 
 stamped with the face of a wonderful dead woman. 
 
FRAGOLETTA 
 
 225 
 
 No! she was not some ancient queen of Babylon. 
 She was a beautiful woman, dead but a few years 
 ago, a mysterious princess of some long-displaced 
 dynasty, whose fancy it was to establish her own 
 mintage. She was very rich, and was able to 
 employ the greatest artists to design the coins, 
 some of which were light as snow-flakes and fine 
 as lace, some no larger than a pearl, and some 
 mossy and embossed like antique medallions, all 
 various with exuberant fancies, and all impressed 
 with her beautiful face. The coins circulated only 
 among her courtiers, and the great number of 
 her secret subjects scattered in all parts of the 
 world. Amongst them their value was greater 
 than the value of any other general currency. 
 *When she died,' ended Ledward, obtained, at 
 an enormous cost, from the master of the mint, 
 the entire residue of her treasury — and, great as 
 was the cost, each of the coins in that little box 
 represents a power to purchase devotion and service 
 in strange places such as any other coin a hundred 
 times its value would fail to buy. 
 
 There was among Septimus Ledward's friends, 
 as often happens among one's friends, a man who 
 was really his enemy. Yet a common interest in a 
 dead woman had irresistibly drawn them together. 
 They had loved the same woman, and she was 
 
 P 
 
226 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 dead, but Septimus had won her love in return 
 and his friend had failed. The woman had been 
 dead now many years, but neither of the men had 
 been able to forget her. Neither of them would 
 ever forget her till they died ; and, as I said, out 
 of this immortality of mutual remembrance, a 
 curious sinister friendship had grown. Each 
 longed to speak to some one of that beauty which 
 all the rest of the world had forgotten, but each 
 had no one to speak to but the man he at once 
 hated and blessed for remembering it. Both were 
 lonely men. Both had been born, and one of 
 them still spent his days, in the same old country 
 town. Septimus, as I have said, lived but a short 
 time in any one place, but none the less the old 
 rambling house in which he had been born was 
 always in readiness for him, and it was not seldom 
 that his wandering orbit brought him back there. 
 And up till three years ago he had always had for 
 a companion a beautiful child. But now the child 
 came no more, for she was dead — dead, though 
 but twelve years old, — and her little starlit face, 
 that had so strangely incarnated her mother's 
 beauty, was gone like the wood-anemones of three 
 years ago. 
 
 Septimus had loved his wife with one of those 
 rare passions which throw a glory of immortality 
 across the face of life, and her death had left him 
 
FRAGOLETTA 
 
 227 
 
 stricken with that dangerous loneliness in which 
 the characters even of the strongest men are apt 
 to become the prey of all the evil spirits of despair. 
 Nor did he entirely escape their influence, but, for 
 the first four years after his wife's death, he had, 
 like many men in his case, numbed the noble pain 
 in him by those narcotising dissipations which may 
 possibly belong to the merciful processes of time, 
 but which in retrospect leave the soul sick and 
 sorely ashamed. 
 
 From one poor pleasure to another he passed, 
 drugging the anguish of his memory ; and mean- 
 while, in the pure atmosphere of his country home, 
 a little gold-headed girl had been growing out of 
 babyhood, and her big violet eyes were filling her 
 face with wonder, blossoming there as though they 
 were flowers growing out of her mother's grave — 
 her mother's own eyes come back again as the lost 
 hyacinths of this year return to earth with the next 
 spring. 
 
 Once from one of his long wanderings he returned 
 to find the baby grown into quite a little maiden, 
 and the sight of her smote his heart with a pro- 
 found remorse. Suddenly it was brought home to 
 him that while he had been going to and fro upon 
 the wasting errands of despair, this little flower had 
 been growing up here, as forgotten by him as a 
 lily in the midst of a wood. He had come upon 
 
228 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 her as she was playing alone in the old garden, 
 singing gay little snatches to herself, as she wove 
 daisy-heads into a chain upon her tiny lap. There 
 was a curious pathetic loneliness about her gaiety, 
 and as he watched her there, weaving her daisies 
 and singing in the sun, there was suddenly flashed 
 upon him a vision of the little creature's lonely 
 days. All this while she had been growing 'mid 
 sun and shower,' growing up and up like the other 
 flowers in that neglected garden, going from change 
 to change in the sweet processes of her baby-life. 
 And he had missed it all, all this exquisite growth 
 of a child, a girl-child — missed it, for what? Sud- 
 denly she looked up and saw him, and throwing 
 down her daisies with a cry of delight, ran to him 
 with heart-breaking eagerness. 
 
 * Why, Daddy,' she cried, * I thought you were 
 never coming home ! ' 
 
 ' Fragoletta,' he said, her mother looking up to 
 him out of her eyes, ' Fragoletta, I will never go 
 
 away any more ' and he pressed the little figure 
 
 to his heart. 
 
 'O Daddy!' she said, 'do you really mean it? 
 Why, that is news ! I must run and tell Nanny, 
 and she half started off to tell the great news 
 to her nurse, one of those good women who are 
 mother and father and playmates and the whole 
 world to lonely children. 
 
FRAGOLETTA 
 
 229 
 
 ' No, stay awhile/ he said, gently restraining her, 
 'show me the daisy-chain you were making'; and 
 they went and sat down under an old mulberry-tree 
 together, and Fragoletta picked up her daisies, and 
 began humming one of her little songs. 
 
 * Nurse has taught me so many new songs while 
 you were away, Daddy,' she said. ' Shall I sing 
 you one ? ' 
 
 *Do, my darling,' he said, the arrows again in 
 his heart, to think how good all this time a kind 
 servant had been to his child. As she sang in her 
 little bird-like treble, the tears filled the father's 
 eyes. With the quickness of childhood she noticed 
 them : ' Why, Daddy, you are crying, . . .' and then 
 a storm of sorrow swept over him against which 
 he was powerless, and, burying his face in the baby 
 lap, he sobbed as though his heart would break ; 
 and the mother that lives already even in little tiny 
 girls stroked his hair, as if she knew all the sorrow 
 of the world, and softly said over and over, 'Don't 
 cry. Daddy dear, don't cry.' 
 
 From that moment Septimus and his little 
 daughter were inseparable companions. He still 
 remained a wanderer, but henceforth she shared 
 his wanderings, and it was his joy to take her with 
 him to all the old beautiful places of the earth, 
 the places made sacred by history and by art, and 
 to watch the wonder of the world reflected in her 
 
230 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 eager young eyes. And what a responsive, grate- 
 ful little spirit it was ! How she drank in all the 
 beauty and the wonder with those big eyes — eyes 
 so lit up from within that many who looked at her 
 shook their heads ! It was too much the face of a 
 spirit to be long a visitant of this world — and then 
 her mother had been only twenty-six when she 
 died. Fragoletta ! darling little Fragoletta ! The 
 very name seemed ominous — and as she grew more 
 and more into maidenhood, graceful as a wind- 
 flower, her father often caught himself looking at 
 her with a sinking of the heart. So terribly her 
 mother born again — dare one think she would 
 escape her mother^s fate ? She had come to seem 
 less like his daughter than her mother's childhood, 
 her mother as a little girl — like those pictures of 
 her in short frocks which, like most lovers, he 
 cherished perhaps best of any : for there is some- 
 thing strangely touching in those pictures of one's 
 wife taken in childhood, with the funny little shoes 
 and stockings and the nursery coiffure of the period. 
 This wife, so tall, so much a woman at your side — 
 was she really once a small school-girl like that? 
 How strange ! 
 
 So the days went by, Fragoletta growing each 
 day in beauty and grace, and in his love for her 
 Septimus found a consolation in which there was 
 no unfaithfulness ; but a consolation filled with the 
 
FRAGOLETTA 
 
 231 
 
 menace of a new bereavement — or rather the old 
 bereavement suffered twice; and when Fragoletta 
 died it was to him as though her mother had died 
 again. But, this time, he sought no more the 
 tawdry alleviations of his first sorrow. He had 
 lived too long and too near to the pure heart of 
 a child ; and it is one of the mysteries of the 
 heart that the memory of his wife was now merged 
 in the memory of his child. It was Fragoletta he 
 found himself thinking of, and of her mother through 
 her. So strange is the human heart ! 
 
 And, along with the purification which little 
 Fragoletta had wrought in him, there came to him, 
 soon after she had died, one of those curious intui- 
 tions which one would disregard as fancies did 
 they not so often vindicate themselves as facts — 
 the intuition that before very long he too would 
 follow whither Fragoletta and her mother had gone, 
 and in some meadow of Paradise come once more 
 upon his little girl making daisy-chains and singing 
 to herself in the sun. There was no reason at all 
 for this feeling ; for, in spite of all his sorrows, 
 Septimus, as we have said, was no melancholy 
 monomaniac, but an active man of this world. Still 
 any one versed in the subtle signs of approaching 
 death might have noted a strange kindness stealing 
 over him soon after little Fragoletta's death, a kind- 
 ness hardly of this world, an aloof gentleness of 
 
232 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 manner, as of one ceasing to concern himself with 
 the sublunary turmoil, the manner of one who is 
 taking farewell. As the days went by, his face grew 
 gentler and gentler, till, though he was still quite a 
 young man, it grew, like Fragoletta's, to seem made 
 of starlight And all the time, too, he continued 
 wandering from place to place, though his wander- 
 ing was no longer the restless fever of the past. 
 He travelled now to see again the places Fragoletta 
 and he had seen together, and often he felt certain 
 within himself that he was seeing them for the last 
 time. 
 
 And this kindness that was coming over him 
 extended itself to all by whom he had suffered 
 wrong, making him eager even to take the wrong 
 upon himself, to put to sleep old enmities — 
 unconsciously, was it? that he might depart in 
 peace with all men. Above all, his heart went 
 out towards the friend who hated him, and they 
 would often sit together far into the night in the 
 lonely old house talking of the dead woman they 
 both loved. But, strange as it may sound, neither 
 ever spoke of Fragoletta. Sometimes the two 
 men would visit together the rooms which were 
 still kept sacred to the dead woman — the little 
 boudoir, with her work-basket, its reels and skeins 
 just as she had left it, her small wainscoted writing- 
 
FRAGOLETTA 
 
 233 
 
 room looking into the old garden, with her pen 
 as she last laid it down, and the book she had last 
 been reading with its face turned down on the 
 divan. All was just as she had left it, and the two 
 men walked softly about the still rooms and said 
 nothing — except perhaps sometimes, * She is gone, 
 Septimus.' 
 
 * Yes ! Geoffrey, she is gone.' 
 
 Now it must be told that, as the years went by, 
 the sorrow in the heart of Geoffrey Wake — for 
 whom there had been no Fragoletta — was slowly 
 turning to madness in his lonely brain ; and there 
 were moments in those midnight watches with 
 Septimus in which, though he appeared to be 
 drowsily smoking his pipe, dark impulses rose up 
 in his soul against Septimus seated on the other 
 side of the hearth. Often he felt with fierce glee 
 how good it would be to spring across and strangle 
 the life out of the man who had robbed him of 
 the woman he loved. His fingers would indeed 
 move nervously at such times with the imagina- 
 tion of it. Yes ! to strangle him, to watch him 
 awhile in the stillness of his death, and then him- 
 self to die, and so end the ache of it all for ever. 
 These dark feelings too were being constantly fed 
 by indulgence in wine, which, instead of making 
 glad his heart, filled it with gloom and desperate 
 fancies. 
 
234 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 Sometimes Septimus would gently stay his hand 
 as it sought once more the midnight decanter, with 
 a : ' Don't, Geoffrey. I have tried it. It is no use.' 
 And, usually, Geoffrey would take the admonition 
 in good part. But it chanced one night, when the 
 wine was running more than usually wild in his head, 
 that he answered Septimus with a flash of anger. 
 
 ' It is well for you to talk,' he cried, rising 
 threateningly from his chair, 'you who stole her 
 from me ! . . 
 
 * Gently, Geoffrey, gently,' said Septimus, striving 
 to restrain him. 
 
 * Gently be d d ! ' cried the other ; and, his eye 
 
 suddenly falling on that little ancient box of beaten 
 copper, concerning which he had always cherished 
 
 jealous fancies, he continued : * Gently be d' d ; 
 
 tell me what you hide in that box yonder ! By 
 God, you shall, for I know well what it is ! . . 
 
 At this Septimus grew white and sprang to his 
 feet. 
 
 * If you lay a finger on that box, I will kill you ! ' 
 he exclaimed. 
 
 ' Ah ! it is as I thought,' said the other mock- 
 ingly. * It is her hair, her thick gold hair you keep 
 in that box. You have stolen that from me too. 
 You thief! — to steal a woman's hair out of her 
 coffin . . . open that box, I say, or by the heaven 
 above us, I will break it open ! . . 
 
FRAGOLETTA 
 
 235 
 
 *You are drunk, Geoffrey — and you are wrong 
 too/ said Septimus, striving to keep his head. 
 * Beatrice's hair has long since turned to flowers. If 
 you would cut a lock of her hair, go pluck the 
 violets from her grave. . . / 
 
 * You lie — with your snivelling poetry,' cried 
 Geoffrey ; and he added, laughing a wild laugh, 
 'you shall die too ! . . 
 
 Plucking a pistol from his pocket, he instantly 
 fired it into Septimus's breast. Septimus sank back. 
 For a second his friend glared over him, and then 
 the madness passed in sorrow, and Geoffrey sup- 
 ported him in his arms, laid him down upon the 
 floor, and found pillows for his head. 
 
 *You have done me a great service, Geoffrey,' 
 said the dying man. * I have long wanted to go . . . 
 to her. 
 
 *You shall not go alone,' cried Geoffrey, his 
 jealousy returning at the thought that the dying 
 man was indeed so soon to meet the woman he 
 loved. ' See, we go together ! ' — and next moment 
 a bullet tore through his brain, and the two men lay 
 still together, and the secret of the little box was 
 still kept. 
 
 An innocent secret it proved, indeed, when the 
 day came for the mourners, and the will was 
 read, and all the locked places of the life of 
 
236 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 Septimus were opened. Septimus's life had often 
 been in danger in out-of-the-way places, on account 
 of that mysterious little box of beaten copper. 
 Expert diamond thieves had plotted to waylay 
 him, under the impression that it was filled with 
 precious stones. Once in Sicily, brigands had 
 held up a lumbering diligence, because he chanced 
 to be travelling by it. They had been driven off, 
 but if instead they had murdered Septimus before 
 his time, and broken open that little box, what 
 would they have found ? — A tiny urn of alabaster, 
 a little silken frock, a pair of child's shoes, a 
 bundle of old letters, and this word engraved in 
 gold upon the alabaster — Fragoletta I 
 
THE WOMAN IN POSSESSION 
 
THE WOMAN IN POSSESSION 
 
 * T DONT know how you put up with it. If I 
 ^ were you I should tear his eyes out,' ex- 
 claimed Ruth Barley's most intimate friend, as she 
 entered Mrs. Barley's boudoir for a little visit one 
 April afternoon. 
 
 'Why, what's the matter, dear?' asked Mrs. 
 Barley, and then immediately understanding: *0h, 
 you mean Francis ! . . . that 's all right' 
 
 As Mrs. Martha Stenning had rung the bell, a 
 smart automobile was standing at the door, and in 
 the hall she had come upon Mr. Barley laughingly 
 leaving the house with an exceedingly pretty and 
 smart young woman. The two were obviously 
 very much occupied with each other, and the spin 
 they were about to take together was likely to be 
 exceedingly cosy. 
 
 * Francis's latest inspiration girl, is that it?' 
 said Ruth, her beautiful black eyes smiling serenely 
 from a face that radiated a happiness secure as the 
 fixed stars. ' Bon't upset yourself about her, 
 dear Martha. Francis and I understand each 
 other. . . .' 
 
 239 
 
240 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 * Who is she ? ' asked Martha, by no means 
 placated. 
 
 ' Oh, she is a little actress playing at the Comedy. 
 Didn't you think her charming ? I 'm afraid she 
 is not much of an actress. She is one of those 
 actresses, you know, who talk Maeterlinck and 
 Pater — instead of acting ; and poor dear Francis 
 likes that, you know. A girl has only to be pretty 
 and talk about the Mona Lisa, and Francis is 
 lost. . . 
 
 ' The Mona Lisa at this time of day ! I sup- 
 pose the girl comes from the provinces. Dear 
 heaven, how sick one is of the Mona Lisa! If I 
 were a man I should prefer a woman with a cour- 
 ageous taste for Marie Corelli. . . 
 
 ' I believe that is one of the reasons why Francis 
 loves me,' laughed Ruth, who, though the wife of 
 a famous poet and dramatist, made no pretence 
 of being * literary' or 'artistic,' in the cant sense 
 of those much abused words. She was enough of 
 a reader to enjoy Balzac — and her husband's own 
 writings, of which he truthfully averred she was 
 the best critic — and that is quite enough 'litera- 
 ture' for an author's wife. To Francis Darley's 
 great comfort, his wife did not possess 'the artistic 
 temperament.' Two artistic temperaments in one 
 house would be a menace to the neighbours. But 
 Darley knew who it was that read his nature, and 
 
THE WOMAN IN POSSESSION 241 
 
 understood every little law of his being, as no 
 one else in the world knew and understood them; 
 and, however his fancy, and even his tongue, might 
 sometimes be carried away, his heart was safe in 
 Ruth Barley's keeping, as Ruth well knew, and 
 smiled accordingly. 
 
 * Yes ! but how can you stand it ? ' said Martha, 
 returning to the main theme. * Why ! if Mark 
 were to . . 
 
 ' Mark is different.' 
 *How different?' 
 
 * Mark is not a poet.' 
 
 * Thank heaven, no ! ' ejaculated Martha. 
 
 * Francis,' continued Ruth, smiling, ^ is a great 
 poet. Mark is — a great husband ! Now Francis, 
 whatever you may think, is a good husband — but 
 he is not exactly a great husband — not a born 
 husband, so to say, as he is a born poet.' 
 
 * I should like to know your definition of a good 
 husband,' rejoined Martha. * It must be rather 
 original.' 
 
 *A good husband is a man who needs you, and 
 knows it — and does not forget it.' 
 
 * And a great husband ? ' queried Martha. 
 
 * Is one who needs no one else.' 
 
 *You are easily satisfied, Ruth,' commented her 
 friend, *and your definition is certainly not romantic. 
 "A man who needs you!" How prosaic living 
 
 Q 
 
242 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 with a poet has made you ! I want to be loved — 
 not to be needed.' 
 
 'To be needed is to be loved/ answered Ruth 
 sententiously. ' Need is the only love that lasts, 
 and the deeper the need the deeper the love. Men 
 need all kinds of things in woman. They need our 
 beauty, and, should that go, and we possess nothing 
 else they need, their love necessarily goes too. 
 They also very much need the mother and nurse 
 in us, and the wife that holds a man is hardly less 
 of a mother to her husband than to her children. 
 There is no baby to compare with a big, grown-up 
 husband.' 
 
 * That is all very well, so long as he only needs 
 us. It is his needing some one else as well that I 
 object to. . . . Why should Francis need to be 
 gadding about with little actresses and such like, 
 when he has a wife as young and pretty as you at 
 home?' 
 
 * Because, as I said before, Francis is a poet.' 
 
 ' I don't see what difference that makes. Why 
 should a poet be more polygamous than your 
 average man ? ' 
 
 *I don't believe he is,' said Ruth stoutly, 'but 
 in his case you hear about it, and in the case of 
 the average man you don't. Your average man, 
 for one thing, is more of a hypocrite, and, for 
 another, less interesting to the gossips. Besides, 
 
THE WOMAN IN POSSESSION 243 
 
 something comes of a poet's love-affairs — Heine's 
 love-songs, for instance — whereas the love-affairs of 
 your average man are mere hoggish self-indulgence.' 
 
 ' You weren't always so philosophical, Ruth.' 
 
 * No,' and Ruth's black eyes flashed for a moment 
 with a certain memory, 'because I didn't always 
 know Francis as well as I do now. I admit that 
 once it would have broken my heart to see him 
 go off like this. I should have thought our love 
 was at an end, and been ready for all kinds of 
 jealous revenges. I nearly left him once on account 
 of an affair really no more serious than this, and 
 it was seeing how suddenly and completely it 
 passed away that taught me my lesson. After- 
 wards I grew to feel quite sorry for the girl, as 
 living with him day by day, I noticed how com- 
 pletely and how unconsciously he had forgotten her. 
 His power of forgetting, or rather of doing without 
 people, sometimes frightens me. It is so quiet and 
 absolute, so silently a part of him. He seems to 
 care for people, not as individuals, but as sensa- 
 tions — for the effect they produce in him. They 
 exist for him only so long as they produce the 
 effect he desires. I don't think he is quite con- 
 scious of this, and, in fact, imagines himself a 
 devoted friend to any number of people — but I 
 think I'm right, and anyhow I know it's like that 
 with what he calls his inspiration girls. . . 
 
244 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 ' Inspiration girls indeed ! * fumed Martha, by 
 no means convinced by Ruth's long speech ; * why 
 cannot he stay at home and get his inspiration 
 from his wife ? ' 
 
 * For the same reason, dear Martha, that a painter 
 needs a change of models occasionally. . . / 
 
 * Thank heaven I am not a painter's wife,' 
 interjected Martha irrelevantly. * Think what 
 the wives of those painters from the nude must 
 suffer! . . 
 
 * Martha, you are adorable,' laughed Ruth, 
 kissing her friend, ' but I 'm glad you said that, 
 because it helps me to explain poor Francis better. 
 You know that those painters you speak of only 
 look upon their models with a purely professional 
 eye. . . .' 
 
 * They say so — but does any one believe them ? ' 
 'No doubt there are exceptions,' said Ruth 
 
 smiling, *but in the main I think it's true. I 
 understand how it may be, through Francis — for, 
 however much he may call himself in love with 
 this or that inspiration girl, I notice that he is even 
 more in love with the verses she inspires. . . .' 
 
 * It is enough to make one give up reading 
 poetry, when one thinks of the horrible processes 
 of its production,' said Martha, with a shudder. 
 
 *Like pkt6 de foie gras, or osprey plumes, eh?' 
 laughed Ruth mischievously. 'Well, if you love 
 
THE WOMAN IN POSSESSION 245 
 
 poetry, and particularly if you love a poet, you 
 have to overlook the process/ 
 
 'I could never do it,' said Martha decisively. 
 
 *0h yes, you could,' said Ruth. ' It is a part 
 of her metier de femme for a vi^ife to adapt herself 
 to her husband's profession, whatever it may be. 
 Besides, if Francis were to stop falling in love, we 
 should starve. Without the stimulus of some new 
 face, his brain would stagnate ; for it is the novelty 
 of the thing — not the thing itself — that makes the 
 inspiration. Why now, come, Martha ! in a lesser 
 degree we all experience the same thing when we 
 have a little flirtation with a new man at dinner. 
 How bright we suddenly become, and we say a 
 hundred clever things we should certainly never say 
 at home, dumbly dining with the best of husbands. 
 Daily life together strengthens the roots of love, 
 and fills the branches with fruit, but it necessarily 
 shakes down the blossom.' 
 
 * Life cannot be all blossom,' commented Martha, 
 with solid wisdom. 
 
 * True enough, dear moralist, but you must have 
 noticed that by the time the blossom has turned to 
 fruit, the birds have stopped singing.' 
 
 *You are incorrigible, Ruth. To think of you 
 standing up for Francis in this way, and to think 
 how he is spending his time this very minute ! . . .' 
 
 * Dear Francis ! ' said Ruth, half to herself, her 
 
246 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 eyes growing soft with tenderness. * I think I 
 know pretty well what he is doing, and could 
 almost tell you what he is saying. Let's see — 
 it's just half-past four. They've been gone about 
 an hour. Yes ! they '11 be well into Surrey by this, 
 and have probably stopped at some little country 
 inn for tea. There is one I know of with a quaint 
 old garden, winding box-hedges, and summer- 
 houses in quiet corners. They will probably have 
 tea brought out into one of these, as it is such a 
 sunny afternoon. On the way along, they have 
 almost certainly been discussing what is politely 
 called the necessity of the artist to live his, or 
 her, own life — with a gentle accent on the her (for 
 she, you must remember, being an actress, is 
 very much of an "artist") — the necessity of the 
 artist to live his or her own life untrammelled by 
 conventions. . . .' 
 
 * Without regard to common decency,' amended 
 Martha. 
 
 ^ Be quiet, Martha, and don't interrupt the clair- 
 voyant. He has also been telling her, so as to 
 give a respectable air to their flirtation, as well as 
 to set her at her ease, what an angel I am, and how 
 perfectly I understand his nature, and allow him 
 his own way. She has said how exquisite she 
 thinks me, and how she couldn't bear that their 
 — their — friendship should cause me a moment's 
 
THE WOMAN IN POSSESSION 247 
 
 pain. These decent preliminaries agreed upon, 
 they may now begin to play the game with a clear 
 conscience. . . 
 
 ' Ruth, you are quite horrible. . . .* 
 
 * Hush ! they are sitting in one of the little 
 arbours waiting for the tea, and he is leaning over 
 the table looking into her eyes. They are both 
 silent a long while. His hand rests on hers upon 
 the table. Now he is speaking : " If only we had 
 met earlier . . he has said — without a quiver of 
 a humorous muscle, perhaps sincerely forgetting 
 that he has said exactly the same thing at least 
 a thousand times before. She pats his hand depre- 
 catingly. You mustn't say that," she says. " Oh, 
 it is no disloyalty to Ruth," he hastens to explain. 
 " I love her very truly. But I love her differently. 
 There are so many ways of loving. We love one 
 for certain qualities, and another for other qualities. 
 What I give you is not taken away from Ruth. 
 The love I feel for you is something different — well, 
 because it is for you. . . Here they suddenly 
 unlock hands, and adopt a correct attitude of 
 admiration of the rural prospect — for the tea-tray 
 is approaching. . . / 
 
 About time,' fairly snorts poor Martha. * Why, 
 Ruth, how can you ! ' 
 
 * Don't be so unsympathetic, Martha. See, she 
 is pouring out the tea for them. " How many 
 
248 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 lumps ? Milk or cream ? " Her expression is 
 almost domestic. It is so dear to be playing at 
 home together — even in so timid a way. Neither 
 speaks of this, but there is an implication of it in 
 their manner toward each other. " Ah ! well . . 
 sighs Francis presently, with unutterable meaning. 
 "We must be brave," says the girl, with wifely 
 tenderness. "Yes! yes!" says Francis, *'but O 
 the tragic complexity of our poor human lives! 
 What tangled webs they are ! How we miss each 
 other, or meet too late ! " " Never mind," says 
 she bravely, " it is something to have met at all — 
 even like this." " Yes ! it is something, . . ." and 
 Francis again takes refuge in the unutterable. 
 "Who gave you that ring?" asks the girl presently. 
 "Ruth," says Francis, blushing apologetically. 
 Tears suddenly glitter in those wonderful eyes. 
 Francis presses close to console her, his face 
 wearing an expression of the tenderest concern. 
 It is terrible to see her suffer so. But how 
 brave she is with her little handkerchief! "And 
 now suppose we go for a walk ? There are some 
 charming woods close by — and then we can have 
 dinner at the inn, and so back to town in the 
 moonlight. . . ."' 
 
 ' And you call that being married ! ' cried Martha, 
 with something like virtuous indignation at what 
 she regarded as Ruth Barley's levity. 
 
THE WOMAN IN POSSESSION 249 
 
 * No ! I call it being married — to a poet/ laughed 
 Ruth. 
 
 'But tell me/ said Martha, after a while, 'about 
 that little inspiration girl that made your eyes flash 
 so a few minutes ago/ 
 
 * It is all so past and gone — it is silly to recall it/ 
 answered Ruth. 
 
 ' Never mind. I want to hear. Besides, a woman's 
 past is always so much more interesting than her 
 present' 
 
 * Oh, all right, then/ began Ruth. 
 
 * She was a dainty little thing, and had what 
 poor Francis calls " a certain strange charm " to 
 which he is susceptible — I call it a certain clawish 
 fascination, a kind of green-eyed, moon-struck pretti- 
 ness, which, I have noticed, repels the sane, healthy 
 man no less than it attracts those abnormal, half- 
 diseased creatures we call "artists." She was like 
 some nasty sweet flower growing out of a grave. I 
 suppose you haven't noticed, Martha, but artists 
 have a curious distate for healthy women. Not 
 only literary men, but the great painters, too, seem 
 to have an objection to really beautiful women. As a 
 rule, the greater the painter the homelier his women. 
 It is very seldom you find a great painter painting 
 a really pretty woman. They seem to resent having 
 to allow nature any share in the beauty of their art. 
 
2SO PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 ' Still, I don't deny that in her way this little 
 girl was pretty ; and she was very clever and am- 
 bitious, too, and could talk Francis's artistic jargon 
 to perfection, picking it up from him so cleverly as 
 they went along, that poor Francis never suspected 
 that she was little more than a skilful feminine 
 phonograph. It didn't take long to persuade him 
 once more that here at last was the One Woman 
 he had been waiting for. Francis still makes 
 periodical discoveries of that One Woman — but 
 I know him better now, and pay no attention to 
 them. I understand, as you would say, that they 
 are a part of the horrible processes of poetry. But 
 then the type was new to me. Having been 
 brought up among soldiers, I was naturally a little 
 out of it with poets. Besides I wasn't married 
 then — and marriage makes a great difference, 
 Martha ; for marriage is one of those actions that 
 speak louder than words. If a man has had the 
 courage to marry us, we can afford to reward him 
 with a little of his own way afterwards. Having 
 paid us the compliment of so serious a fact, surely 
 we may be a little lenient to his fancies. Francis, 
 too, I am bound to say, was quite clever for once. 
 As a rule, he is a miserable liar — the feeblest I 
 know. But I '11 confess that in this case, for a long 
 while, he took me in completely. 
 
 ' So soon as, by an accident, I discovered that I 
 
THE WOMAN IN POSSESSION 251 
 
 was not quite the only woman in the world, he 
 promptly introduced me to the other, explaining, 
 with the most convincing innocence of expression, 
 that it was purely an artistic affinity, the sympa- 
 thetic relationship of two fellow-craftsmen, nothing 
 more. * Do you never kiss her?' I asked. The 
 very thought seemed to fill him with horror. 
 " Never ! " he exclaimed ; " how can you ask me such 
 a question? It is as unworthy of yourself as it is 
 unfair to her! " And think, Martha, I believed him 
 — believed it was merely a union of souls. That, of 
 course, I didn't mind. And by the way, Martha, 
 have you noticed that so long as a woman lacks 
 physical attraction — or so long as we think she 
 does — our minds are at ease ? But alas ! you can 
 never be sure what constitutes physical attraction 
 with a poet. Only of one thing be sure — that when- 
 ever he speaks of the soul, he means, well — the 
 body. Well, as I say, Francis took me in com- 
 pletely, and this pretty "friendship" went on right 
 under my nose, without my having a suspicion of 
 its' real nature — till the day came when our engage- 
 ment was formally announced to our friends. . . 
 
 Ruth paused, her black eyes flashing once more 
 with ancient memories. 
 
 * And then? . . prompted Martha, interested 
 as only another married woman could be in such 
 a story. 
 
252 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 *Well, an evening or two after our engagement 
 had been announced, who should come to pay me 
 a visit but our little inspiration girl, whom in the 
 innocence of my heart I had grown to look on 
 quite as a friend. It was part of Francis's wicked 
 scheme to disarm criticism by bringing us together 
 occasionally, and she would sometimes come and 
 take tea with me, and talk in a winning pathetic 
 way she had, which would have taken in the devil 
 himself. So her visit was no particular surprise. 
 Indeed, poor soul, my first thought was that she 
 had come to congratulate me on my engagement. 
 So successfully had they fooled me. . . 
 
 ^The wretches!' ejaculated Martha sympatheti- 
 cally. 
 
 ^ It is sweet of you to come like this, Stella," I 
 said in my innocence. She flushed slightly with 
 a momentary embarrassment, but quickly recovered 
 her self-possession — of which, as a rule, I may say, 
 the expression "triple brass" gives but a faint 
 idea. " Child ! " she said — she had an amusingly 
 superior way of calling every one " child " — men 
 and women alike, particularly men — " Child ! " — 
 and she took both my hands, and looked one of 
 her particularly sincere, soul-melting looks deep 
 into my eyes — " child ! I would give anything not 
 to have to say what I have come to say to-night — 
 anything to save you the pain of it. If it were 
 
THE WOMAN IN POSSESSION 253 
 
 only for myself, I would never say it — but, by my 
 love for my mother, which, as you know is the most 
 sacred thing in my life, I swear that I do it more 
 for his sake than my own. . . 
 
 *"For his sake!'' said I. "What do you mean? 
 Pray sit down and explain yourself." 
 
 ' " I mean," she said, " that you must never marry 
 Francis Darley. . . 
 
 Indeed," said I, "and would you mind explain- 
 ing why not? . . ." 
 
 Because he doesn't really love you. He makes 
 you believe so. But he doesn't really love you — as 
 you deserve to be loved. . . ." ' 
 
 *She had the impudence to say that!' cried the 
 sympathetic Martha. 
 
 * " Go on," I said,' continued Ruth. 
 
 *''Well," she explained, "he really loves me — 
 but he hasn't the strength to tell you so him- 
 self. . . ." 
 
 * I was so dumfounded, not so much by what 
 she was saying as by the calm effrontery of her 
 saying it, that I sat silent, just nodding to her to 
 proceed. 
 
 '"You see, child, you and he have been en- 
 gaged a long time, and he feels in honour bound 
 to you. And, of course, he loves you too, in a 
 way. . . ." 
 
 * " Thank you. . . said I. 
 
254 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 ' " Oh don't be angry with me, Ruth. Am I hurting 
 you ? " 
 
 * " Not in the least," said I ; " I am interested — 
 that's all. Please go on." 
 
 *"Well, as I said, he is truly fond of you — but, 
 well I there is — you must forgive me, Ruth, so 
 much in him you don't understand, don't answer 
 to . . ." 
 
 It's true I can't rave over Pater," I said, **but 
 go on. . . ." 
 
 Pater is perhaps a deeper bond than you 
 imagine, Ruth," she went on with unruffled calm- 
 ness; "but, of course, what I mean is more and 
 deeper than that. In short, I know that I am the 
 woman who, more than any woman he has ever 
 known, meets him at every point of his nature. . . 
 
 * " Do you know how many women he has loved ? " 
 I asked. 
 
 ' " Oh yes ! he has spoken all out honestly to me. 
 I understand his nature. They were but part of his 
 development. . . ."' 
 
 * Poor things ! ' interrupted Martha. 
 
 Leading up to you?" I added with womanly 
 sarcasm. 
 
 * " I know it sounds conceited, Ruth — and oh ! 
 child, don'^ suffer — but I believe what you say is 
 true. I do truly believe that ours is the true unity 
 of the spirit. That sounds like cant, I know, but I 
 
THE WOMAN IN POSSESSION 255 
 
 cannot help it — for of this I am as sure as of my 
 life itself, that I have never known any one who is 
 so myself, who so embodies all that I really care 
 for in this world. There is no need for him to 
 assure me that we care for each other — because 
 we are so like. He knows that and I know it, and 
 a hundred times we say it to each other : ' No one 
 ever said that to me but you. I never dreamed 
 any one felt this but I.' That absolute quality that 
 I have always supposed means love is the love we 
 both have — and nothing can take that away from 
 me. . . . 
 
 'She stopped, and looked at me, expecting me 
 to speak. At last I did. 
 
 *'*If Francis has made you believe all this, he is 
 a better liar than I thought," I said, and I am not 
 proud of the part he has played." 
 
 * " You mean,'' said she, entirely unshaken in her 
 confidence, ''that he has been lying to me. It is 
 impossible. . . ." 
 
 * " Not perhaps, deliberately," I said ; " Francis 
 would regard such deliberate lying as vulgar. 
 Besides, there would be no amusement in it for 
 him. No ! he has undoubtedly meant what he 
 said when he said it. If he has deceived you, he 
 has deceived himself as well. If you know him, as 
 you say you do, you must know what a creature 
 of moods he is, how he is carried away by the 
 
256 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 moment and the last new influence, and acts, or 
 rather talks^ accordingly. . . 
 
 *But this had no effect whatever. She listened 
 to me tolerantly, with a look of anguished pity, 
 which is her own patent. " Indeed, I wish for your 
 sake, child, that you were right. I know his moods, 
 of course, and for a long while discounted what he 
 said to me on account of them . . . but, see, I 
 hate to do it," and she turned to a small hand-bag 
 she had brought with her. " I have here some of 
 his letters. Here is one of them. Will you read 
 this? . . 
 
 *She had the vulgarity to bring you his letters! 
 . . ' exclaimed the simple Martha, who likewise 
 does not read Pater. 
 
 * She had — and the fiendish cruelty, too.' 
 
 ' Never mind the cruelty — that was perhaps, after 
 all, only the woman fighting for her life — but the 
 vulgarity, Ruth — ^ think of the vulgarity ! ' 
 
 * I 'm afraid I forgot that at the moment. My 
 heart was beating too cruelly from fear of what I 
 was about to read. . . 
 
 * And . . prompted Martha. 
 
 ' Well, Francis had been a devil, and no mistake. 
 If I hadn't loved him as I did . . 
 
 'But what was in the letter?' queried practical 
 Martha. 
 
 'Just everything . . . No wonder the poor girl 
 
THE WOMAN IN POSSESSION 257 
 
 felt confident of his love. She could hardly have 
 felt anything else. " Give me another," I said ; and 
 she handed me another from an enormous bundle 
 tied up with a corset lace. 
 
 Heavens!" I exclaimed, as I noticed the size 
 of the bundle. " How often did he write to you ? " 
 
 ***Once every day," she answered, ^^and some- 
 times twice, even three times." 
 
 Another?" I asked, and again, Another?" 
 till I had read about twenty. She handed them to 
 me in a dead silence. I felt as though she were 
 strangling me, and all the time I read she watched 
 me with her cold, moonlit eyes. At last I could 
 bear no more of them. 
 
 * " Enough ..." I said, and we both sat still, as 
 it seemed, for a long while. I confess that the 
 letters had staggered me. Was she right, after 
 all? I asked myself. Did he really love her best, 
 and was he only marrying me, as she said, to keep 
 his word? I took up the last letter, and read it 
 again. It sounded terribly real, a simple cri de 
 cceur^ you would have said, if ever anything was 
 written from the heart — which, by the way, 
 Martha, living with a poet has long caused me to 
 doubt. It was cruel reading, and it so shook my 
 faith in Francis's love for me that I found myself 
 clutching at a thought that began to form in my 
 mind. Suppose it were true that Francis did in 
 
 R 
 
258 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 his way love us both — equally, I forced myself to 
 say. Suppose the scales were about even, and 
 he hardly knew which of us to choose? Wasn't 
 Stella in this very act of showing me these letters 
 unconsciously throwing something into my side of 
 the scales which would outweigh her in Francis* 
 mind once and for ever ? For Francis, wayward as 
 he is, and wicked as undoubtedly he had been, has 
 a sound, kind heart, which nothing can alienate like 
 deliberate cruelty, practically when it is mean and 
 small . . 
 
 ' And vulgar. . . Martha once more inter- 
 posed. 
 
 'The more the thought grew, the more comfort 
 it gave me. Perhaps, after all," I said to myself, 
 **she has unconsciously done me a great service. 
 For, unless I am entirely out of it in my reading of 
 Francis, he cannot possibly go on caring for any 
 one capable of this action of Stella's. It flashes 
 too fierce a light into the mean recesses of her 
 nature. If I am not very wrong, he will welcome 
 this self-revelation of hers as a deliverance from an 
 unsuspected evil — for I know that he has thought 
 of her as the gentlest and most delicate-natured of 
 women. Over and over again, he has spoken of 
 her tenderness, her exquisite refinement . . . but 
 now . . 
 
 *"Well?" said Stella, interrupting these reflec- 
 
THE WOMAN IN POSSESSION 259 
 
 tions, which I imagine had been clearing my face 
 of some of its first perplexity. At all events, they 
 had helped to calm me, and when I answered I felt 
 that I had regained command of myself. 
 
 I think," I said, "that Francis has behaved 
 most unworthily towards both of us, and in a way 
 most unworthy of himself. After reading these 
 letters, I cannot blame you for thinking as you say, 
 and, if my faith in his love for me relied upon 
 letters, I confess that these letters to you would 
 have shattered it ; but . . 
 
 You still, then, believe in his love for you 
 
 Strange as it may seem, I do." 
 '"Suppose I were to tell you . . 
 *"Tell me anything — tell me all."' 
 
 * And did she?' interrupted Martha once more. 
 *She did, indeed. It didn't make so much 
 
 difference as she expected — didn't hurt me half 
 so much as those letters ; and, besides, it added 
 greater strength to that growing feeling of security. 
 What would Francis think of a woman who could 
 so shamelessly reveal herself — for the poor end of 
 vanquishing a rival ? . . 
 
 ' But what did you say ? ' prompted Martha. 
 
 * I said nothing for so long that she began to 
 believe I was crushed, began to grow sorry for 
 me. ..." Dear," she said. . . 
 
 * The vixen ! ' murmured Martha. 
 
26o PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 * " Dear, you must be brave. You will be brave, 
 I know. Yes, be very brave. In the end it will 
 all have helped you, I know it will, and oh ! child, 
 let me try and help you — depend upon me to do 
 all I can. Believe that no one in the wide world 
 would give more to see you happy than I. ... It 
 is not for myself I have spoken. It is for him. He 
 has been so unhappy all his life, always seeking 
 and never finding, and now that at last . . 
 Well, you can guess the rest, Martha.' 
 
 * And, again, what did you say ? ' 
 
 * Nothing. I just smiled at her, and let her go 
 on — till at last she grew a little uneasy at my 
 tranquillised expression, and stopped suddenly. 
 
 *"Why do you smile?" she asked. **Are you 
 still sure of his love?" 
 
 Yes ! " I answered. 
 
 Will nothing convince you ?" 
 * " Nothing but his actions." 
 
 * How- do you mean ? " 
 
 mean this," I said, speaking deliberately, 
 "that I shall see Francis to-night, and tell him all 
 you have told me. Perhaps you will lend me one 
 of his letters ? " 
 
 With pleasure," she answered. 
 
 I will tell him all you have told me — and then 
 I will go away for six months. . . ." 
 
 * And ? " she queried. 
 
THE WOMAN IN POSSESSION 261 
 
 ' " Leave the field open to you." 
 ' " And what do you expect from that ? " she 
 retorted. 
 
 ' I expect nothing. I shall just wait and see 
 what happens. That is all. If you are right, and 
 he really loves you best ... he will have the 
 opportunity of proving it. I shall exert no influ- 
 ence upon him whatsoever. I will not write to him, 
 nor will I allow him to write to me. If six months 
 is too short a time for the test, take a year. If I 
 loved him less, I would say good-bye to him this 
 moment. But I am a woman. I love him — and 
 if he truly loves me . . . well, I will forgive him 
 everything. I doubt if you could say the same. 
 Reading Pater together is one thing, love is another. 
 We shall see which he values more. . . . " ' 
 
 * Well, what happened next ? ' prompted Martha 
 once more. 
 
 ' I saw Francis that evening, and next day I 
 packed myself off to Spain.' 
 ' And Francis ? ' 
 
 * He has never seen or written to her since. He 
 took her action just as I thought he would, and, 
 indeed, felt his pride wounded because he had 
 allowed himself to be infatuated by so essentially 
 common a nature.' 
 
 * And at the end of the six months ? ' said Martha. 
 
 * We were married.' 
 
262 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 ' H'm ! ' said Martha, meditatively. * She had 
 played her trump card — and lost.' 
 
 ' And what had Francis to say for himself ? * asked 
 Martha presently. ' His part in the drama does not 
 strike me as particularly pretty — however easily a 
 too indulgent wife may overlook it. . . 
 
 * His explanation was the most naiVe thing you 
 ever heard/ answered Ruth. * " When a man is in 
 love with two women at once," he said,** what can he 
 do but lie to each of them — about the other ? " 
 
 * You were in love, then ? " I said. 
 
 * " Yes, in a way — in a way I have been a score 
 of times, and shall probably be again. . . . ' 
 
 * " When one is so often in love," I retorted, 
 " don't you think one should find some other de- 
 scription for one's feeling ? " 
 
 *"Yes, but the feeling deserves a nice name," 
 he answered. " It is not to be confused with . . ." 
 
 * " Francis," I said, ** I want no more of your 
 talk about a union of souls. A kiss is a kiss — 
 whatever the motive. You remember that Paolo 
 and Francesca were reading together — that day 
 they read no more. Probably they would have 
 explained the situation to Lanciotto — as a common 
 interest in Pater ! . . . " 
 
 * " Ruth," he said, taking me in his arms, "you are 
 far too clever. There is no need for you to read Pater/' 
 
THE WOMAN IN POSSESSION 263 
 
 * I am a woman who loves you," I said. " And 
 love is a clever god. He is so clever that he has 
 taught me to understand even you — taught me to 
 understand that you do really love me best in spite 
 of — the little kisses.'' 
 
 ' " Never mind those," he said, " they only teach 
 me to value yours the more. Shall I say a poem I 
 made for you the other day ? " 
 
 ' " You fraud," I laughed, " say it, of course, so 
 long as you don't expect me to believe it." And 
 this is the poem ! I have it by heart,' said Ruth. 
 
 * " Through the many to the one— 
 
 Oh, so many ! 
 Kissing all and missing none, 
 
 Loving any. 
 Would you know how sweet is love 
 
 Monogamic? 
 Try a year or two of love 
 
 Polygamic ! 
 
 * " Would you know how dear is one, 
 
 Leave the others ; 
 Loving all is loving none, 
 
 True love smothers — 
 Smothers all his heavenly flame, 
 
 Kissing any — 
 Loving much is not the same 
 
 As loving many." ' 
 
 ' Yes ! he certainly is a fraud,' was Martha's 
 comment. 
 
264 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 * You know nothing at all about him/ retorted 
 Ruth. 
 
 ' What happened to the girl ? ' asked Martha. 
 * I confess I grow a little sorry for her/ 
 
 ' You needn't be/ said Ruth. ' After all, Francis 
 knows women. He could not have acted as he did, 
 had he not known that it was out of his power to 
 cause her any hurt. " Her little egoism makes her 
 fire-proof/' he used to say. " The egoism of the 
 great is sensitive to the tiniest sting, but the egoism 
 of the little is invulnerable. She will go on believ- 
 ing to the end of her life that I have never loved 
 any woman but her ; and that is all she cares about 
 — for her love was just vanity. Do you think I 
 failed to see that ? 
 
 ' " ym not sure I like that, Francis," I said. 
 Can't you do something to disillusion her ? " 
 
 * I 'm afraid I can do nothing, except what I am 
 doing — and going to do for ever. ..." 
 
 ' " What 's that ? " said I. 
 
 '**Love you/' he answered — and, next morning, 
 when by chance I had slept rather late, I found 
 this little verse, twisted like a curl-paper in my 
 hair. He called it " The Ghost." 
 
 * " Please, sweetheart, let her thin ghost rest — 
 The devil take that tiresome Past ! 
 1 loved you first, I love you last. 
 And always have I loved you best/'' 
 
THE WOMAN IN POSSESSION 265 
 
 * A poem seems to make up for a good deal/ said 
 Martha. 
 
 ' It does/ answered Ruth, * if you love the 
 poet.' 
 
 Martha stayed for dinner, and the moon rose; 
 and when ten o'clock came, she kissed Ruth with 
 a certain curious respect, and went home. Martha 
 was a very shrewd specialist of her sex. At first, 
 and for a long while, she had suspected that Ruth 
 was bravely making the best of it, as so many wives 
 have to do ; but the longer she talked with her the 
 more she became convinced that Ruth was really a 
 happy woman. She herself could not understand 
 happiness on such conditions ; but then — there are 
 so many ways of being happy. 
 
 If she had seen Francis Barley's return home a 
 few moments after her departure, she would have 
 been still further corroborated in her reading of — 
 to her — an uncommon situation. 
 
 There was not the smallest shadow of a question 
 on Ruth's face as she welcomed her husband in 
 from the moonlight. 
 
 * How you smell of the country,' she said, * the 
 pines, and the broad commons! Did you have a 
 good time, little boy ? ' 
 
 * Ruth,' he said, * do you know how I love 
 you?' 
 
 *Of course, I do/ she answered, 'otherwise do 
 
266 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 you think I would let you run off with pretty 
 young actresses like that ? ' 
 
 'I'm so glad you used the plural/ said Francis, 
 laughing. 
 
 * Of course/ she said, ' my safety is in numbers/ 
 
 ' I want to say a little poem I made as I came 
 along/ said Francis presently. * You '11 never guess 
 whom it is written to ? ' 
 
 * To me, of course/ she said. 
 
 ' " Dear wife, there is no verse in all my songs 
 But unto thee belongs/' ' 
 
 quoted Francis laughingly. * But you Ve right — it 
 is for you. . . 
 
 * Go on,' she said. 
 
 * Little mother/ he said, seating himself at her 
 knees by the fire, and looking up into her face, * I 
 am so glad to be back home. Do you believe I 
 love you ? ' 
 
 * Of course I do ! ' she answered. * You are only 
 a little child, and you cannot live without your 
 mother. . . . But say your poem, like a good child.' 
 And Francis recited as follows : — 
 
 * I did not know I loved you, love, like this : 
 
 I thought our love was chance and passing need ; 
 Your eyes were very brown, and oh ! your kiss 
 
 Was sweet indeed — 
 Yet dreamed I not of loving you like this. 
 
THE WOMAN IN POSSESSION 267 
 
 'You stole so unannounced into my life, 
 
 No fatal premonitions or alarms 
 Told me that you — well ! that you were my wife ; 
 
 There were your arms — 
 And unannounced I stole into your life. 
 
 * Had some one asked me of you, I had said : 
 
 " It is too late to meet her — long ago 
 She is a dream, or maybe she is dead ; 
 
 I do not know 
 More to tell any of her," I had said. 
 
 * And now, beloved, too well you know the rest — 
 
 One woman must be heaven, and earth, and hell ; 
 So soft, yet so responsible, a breast ! 
 
 I said "Too well"— 
 Love, is my head too heavy for your breast ? ' 
 
 * You made that in your head as you came 
 along?* said Ruth, when he had finished. 
 
 ' No, in my heart.' 
 'But she inspired it?' 
 
 'What if she did? You cannot surely object to 
 an inspiration girl who inspires me with poems — 
 to my wife ? ' 
 
 * Did you say it to her ? ' 
 ' What do you think ? ' 
 
 * I believe you did/ 
 
 ' Believe me, I did not — but even suppose I did — 
 I will admit that I am capable of reciting a new 
 poem to a hack-driver, or a car-conductor, to any 
 one who happens to be present — even suppose that 
 
268 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 I did recite it to her : what does that matter so 
 long as it was written to you ? ' 
 
 ' But she might think you meant it for her ? ' 
 
 ' What if she did ? ' 
 
 'You are right/ said Ruth, 'what does it matter? 
 . . . so long/ she added, 'as you are quite sure it 
 was written for me. . . 
 
 And Francis was quite sure. 
 
DEAR DEAD WOMEN 
 
DEAR DEAD WOMEN 
 
 OT the sacred women who lie in their shrouds, 
 
 ^ pillowed upon their golden hair, but the 
 living women who once loved us and love us no 
 more — those are the really dead women. The 
 women whose eyes are closed seem near and human 
 in comparison with those horrible women who, 
 though really dead, contrive to go on existing — 
 or making a ghastly semblance of existence — 
 without us. It makes one's flesh creep to think 
 of them, and to meet them again is really to have 
 seen a ghost. 
 
 I shall never forget the start it gave me, when, 
 after seeing or hearing nothing of her for four 
 years, I suddenly came upon Meriel — drinking 
 champagne in a merry company. She had even the 
 heartlessness to lift her glass to me, and smile! 
 Horrible resurrection ! Do the dead rise like that ? 
 I looked at her with something like fear, almost 
 expecting her to fade away, a phantom of my dis- 
 ordered brain ; but no ! she persisted — persisted 
 drinking champagne. Yes, surely it was Meriel. 
 
 271 
 
272 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 How strange it was ! Still Meriel, and still — drink- 
 ing champagne. 
 
 And it was all gone, then — all nothing to her — 
 all that divine past of ours — ah ! speak of it softly 
 — all gone, all nothing to her ! O Meriel ! you 
 cannot have forgotten. It was all so dear, so good, 
 so true, so wonderful ! O love ! the stars and the 
 dews of it, and the heavenly voices, and all the 
 kindness, all the laughter. Oh, you cannot have 
 forgotten. Or are you wicked now, and has time 
 indeed turned the old dreams to derision ? 
 
 Meriel, I cannot stay. I will not watch you there 
 — drinking champagne ; or will you come back, and 
 drink it with me, drink it with me and no one else 
 for ever ! 
 
 So whirled my mad thoughts till I could support 
 them no more, and I fled from those lit and laugh- 
 ing diners ; but as I went, Meriel raised her glass 
 again, and smiled. 
 
 Perhaps there is no gulf quite so impassable as 
 that which divides us from the woman who loved 
 us once, but who loves us no more ; nor is there 
 any woman so sternly inaccessible — to us — as 
 she whom we once won — and then lost. Life has 
 no stranger thing in it than this : that two people 
 should be all the world to each other: that they 
 should share all the sacredness, all the tender- 
 ness, of existence together, be closely united by a 
 
DEAR DEAD WOMEN 
 
 273 
 
 thousand ties of loving intercourse, and that sud- 
 denly all this enchanted intimacy should pass away, 
 as though indeed it were a mere trick of enchant- 
 ment, to be replaced by an alienation so profound 
 that no two people, however unacquainted, are now 
 so far from each other as these two who were once 
 so near. 
 
 It is surely the very strangest thing that any 
 one else in the world may approach Meriel but — 
 I. I of all people ! The very smallest amenity is 
 denied me. Others may flirt with her, make her 
 little presents, write her pretty letters, take her to 
 see the play, be permitted to kiss her hand, and 
 generally behave in a way that — if it were I, how 
 well I can imagine the haughty *Sir!' that would 
 transfix me with interjections, were I to attempt 
 the most innocent of these liberties. Such divinity 
 doth hedge a woman ! 
 
 In the company of such reflections it is hard not 
 to be cynical about human relationships, and if we 
 escape cynicism, we must at least sorrowfully ask 
 ourselves : What, then, is durable in human life, if 
 this could pass away? On what shall a man build, 
 if love like this can so pitiably, almost ludicrously, 
 come to naught? Almost ludicrously — for such 
 a bankruptcy throws a shadow of ridicule upon all 
 human credit. What do human feelings and human 
 vows amount to, if one day they can seem so 
 
 S 
 
274 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 stable and so infinitely important, and the next day 
 be so much east wind ? 
 
 Yes ! it is no mere egoism that prompts the 
 pang with which we think of some one we have 
 loved as happy and shining somewhere out there 
 in the human infinitude — in spite of all that has 
 been and can never be again. There is something 
 in the feeling, too, of a fine impersonal jealousy 
 for the memory of a beautiful thing. We resent 
 this oblivion no little, as we resent the forgetful- 
 ness of some fair deed, or the neglect of some 
 noble name. Our love is dead indeed — but let us 
 not forget how lovely a thing it was in its life ; let 
 us think of it with that reverence due to all beau- 
 tiful history ; let us even sometimes scatter secret 
 violets upon its grave, the violets of the Past and 
 Gone. 
 
 I think we have too little reverence for our own 
 histories, too little, indeed, of that attitude of mind 
 which made young Sir Thomas Browne declare his 
 life 'a miracle of thirty years.' Busy, may be, 
 with the emotional present, we press on toward 
 the new raptures, the new faces — forgetful of all 
 that old treasure of the heart. It were well, I 
 think, to give ourselves a little time to meditate on 
 that. And for this it is good, on occasion, to be 
 all alone — alone, say, in a great foreign city, lonely 
 with a million lighted windows. 
 
DEAR DEAD WOMEN 275 
 
 Such a loneliness is mine to-night, and, as from 
 a watchtower I mark the lamps of pleasure break- 
 ing into blossoms of gold in the twilight, and hear 
 afar off the growing hum of dinner and theatre, and 
 the fragrant rustle of a hundred thousand night- 
 flowering women, I say to myself: I wonder for 
 whom Miranda is dressing to-night — for whom is 
 she coiling her splendid hair, crimson as a field of 
 poppies, and just as full of sleep? I can see her 
 so plainly. She is like a vivid poster on the walls 
 of my heart. For whom is that radiance of ex- 
 pectancy in her blue eyes, that faint flush of 
 excitement on her cheek, as she raises her 
 white arms to her head, and thrusts in here and 
 there the amber pins ? Ah ! that throat, those 
 shoulders, Miranda, in the glass ! They were mine 
 once. Whose are they to-night? How blonde 
 they are, how abundant — like a field of wheat, 
 with the sun on it, I once said ; yes ! wrote some- 
 thing like it in a poem — a poem Miranda has for- 
 gotten, at least to-night. I have forgotten it, too, 
 but Miranda I have not forgotten. I hate the man 
 she is dining with to-night, whoever he may be. 
 I can see him calling for her, shiningly groomed, 
 and smiling fatuously with self-congratulation. He 
 is so happy to be taking Miranda out to dinner. 
 He is thinking that at last the long dry stalk of 
 the day is about to blossom. He is thinking 
 
276 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 that in a few moments Miranda will be seated by 
 him in a hansom, a thrilling garden of fragrance 
 and gauzy convolutions of silk and lace — 
 
 * Awake, O north wind ; and come, thou south : blow upon 
 my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out ! ' 
 
 She will take his hand and give him a long 
 sweet look, and they will each heave a glad little 
 sigh because they are together at last, and the 
 man will say, * I am so happy,' and she will 
 answer, * So am 1/ And then they will be driven 
 off to paradise. 
 
 Far from them indeed is the thought of the 
 poor, lonely ghost that is I. And yet, Miranda, 
 we used to think our little dinners wonderful 
 occasions too, if you remember; and you used to 
 say that I . . . well, never mind — you have evi- 
 dently forgotten it all, forgotten all the fun and 
 the fairy-tale of it, and all the happy childishness. 
 I must remember for both : so to-night, across three 
 thousand miles of foam, I am thinking of you, 
 Miranda. ' I have been faithful to thee, Cynara, 
 in my fashion ! ' 
 
 Miranda has gone out to dinner, and I am once 
 more alone looking out over the terrible city, lying 
 beneath me like some monster with a million 
 golden eyes. O the abysses of infinite solitude, 
 the heights, the depths, that surround on every 
 
DEAR DEAD WOMEN 277 
 
 side the tiny park of one's being — and, perhaps 
 deepest and darkest of all, the innermost abyss of 
 the soul ! I shiver, and turn from the window, but 
 that abyss within my lonely room is lonelier still, 
 and I am back at the window again — for there at 
 least are lights and the human murmur. 
 
 And presently another face has come to join 
 me in my solitude, as though a great white moth 
 had floated up to me out of the night — a face of 
 amethyst and silver, a shining, stricken face of tears 
 and dreams, a face my heart dare hardly look upon 
 because the face is still so dear. This face and I 
 have shared so many sorrows together, have loved 
 our love so well, yet has it slipped from our hands 
 like a pearl that has fallen into the sea, and there is 
 only the bitter sea left to us, and the lonely wind. 
 
 Oh, did you think I was glad, Isabel, that our pearl 
 had fallen into the sea — did you think that ? Ah ! 
 come and look in my heart to-night. 
 
 Do you remember, Isabel, that evening we 
 walked along the shining levels of sand by the 
 Northern Sea — and there was still light enough for 
 me to write a verse for you on the hard sand ? We 
 walked till the moon rose, and when we came back 
 to read our verse by its light, lo ! the rising tide was 
 already washing it away. Do you remember that 
 night ? 
 
 Do you remember that other night when we 
 
278 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 walked through the sweet-smelling Devon lanes 
 again by the sea? Your face seemed made of 
 starlight and your body of silver mist, as you 
 floated, rather than walked, by my side ; and I was 
 half afraid of you — you looked so like a spirit, or a 
 woman of faerie. Do you remember that night ? 
 
 Do you remember that morning, when life had 
 grown sadder, when we walked again by the sea, 
 in a mighty sunrise, and climbed great shoulders of 
 down, and stood high up and looked across the 
 glittering planes of water? We were sad, but as 
 yet we had not lost our pearl. Do you remember 
 that morning ? 
 
 And now I can see the face of Isabel no more — 
 for my tears. 
 
 To every man born of woman must have come 
 such hours of lonely retrospect, when the evening 
 sky has seemed like a frieze of unforgotten faces, 
 and his aching heart has gone wandering among 
 lost paradises. With what immortal treasure have 
 the beauty and the goodness of women enriched 
 our memories ! They have indeed made of our 
 lives 'a miracle of thirty years' — perhaps a mir- 
 acle of sixty! And as out of the sweet-smelling 
 treasure-chest we softly take the gifts of wonder 
 they gave us, it will be strange if a sense of our 
 own failure does not overcome us, of failure to 
 
DEAR DEAD WOMEN 279 
 
 appreciate our fairy fortune till it was too late. We 
 were so young, may be, and so eager for all the 
 beautiful faces, that we took all too heedlessly the 
 beautiful face that was our own, and did not value 
 at its worth the gift that is seen to have been so 
 infinitely precious — now that it has been taken 
 back. 
 
 * One asked of Regret, 
 
 And I made reply : 
 To have held the bird, 
 
 And let it fly ; 
 To have seen the star 
 
 For a moment nigh, 
 And lost it 
 
 Through a slothful eye/ 
 
 Ah, how much better we could love those faces 
 now, how much finer a return we could make for 
 all that faith-of-heart we paid perhaps so cheaply 
 in base coin, the mintage of vanity ! If only we 
 could be granted another trial ! Life has been 
 teaching us the values of things ! If only we 
 might apply our new wisdom to those old oppor- 
 tunities of happiness so eagerly offered to us ! If 
 only we could do all our loving over again ! And 
 if we could, would there not be more love and — 
 fewer loves? In how different a spirit, with what 
 gratitude and humility, would we accept the 
 wonderful gift of woman ! Oh, how true we would 
 be, how carefully we would tend our love— lest it 
 
28o PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 should die ; how we would honour it and humour 
 it, and engage it by a thousand devices — lest it 
 should fly away ! And with what attentive happi- 
 ness would we taste and dwell upon each miraculous 
 moment ! 
 
 Ah, yes! we see it all so clearly now, as those 
 beautiful faces, so heavenly kind, shine down upon 
 us, 'enskied and sainted,' from the lonely night. 
 How good, how good they were to us — those 
 beautiful women who loved us once and love us 
 no more ! Surely when one comes to die, a man's 
 last thought will be one of thanksgiving for the 
 goodness of women to him all his days. 
 
 Yes ! the goodness of women ! We talk much of 
 their beauty, but as one grows older, and begins 
 to recover from one's first heady draught of the 
 intoxicant known as woman, it is, I think, woman's 
 goodness, rather than her beauty, that comes to 
 seem her one astonishing characteristic. Her 
 beauty, indeed, comes to take its place as merely 
 one of the component elements of her goodness ; 
 and we grow to understand why, in the evolution of 
 humanity, the Madonna has supplanted Aphrodite 
 in the temples of the world. Yes, the homeliest 
 Madonna ever painted comes to wear a beauty for 
 our eyes such as the most provocative Aphrodite, in 
 all the superb pomp of her physical perfection, can 
 wear for us no more. 
 
DEAR DEAD WOMEN 281 
 
 Woman shares her beauty with the whole of 
 nature. She is but one small fraction of the beauty 
 of the world, and, in a universe which from planet to 
 animalcule is one long riot of beauty, to any eyes 
 but those of a lover's illusion she is, by comparison, 
 but indifferently fair. The true lovers of beauty, as 
 distinct from mere lovers of women, know many a 
 lovelier thing than woman. 
 
 There are creatures in the sea made out of rain- 
 bows of such fairy shape that by their side the 
 most beautiful woman is ungainly as a hippopot- 
 amus, and the earth and air are clothed and winged 
 with forms more exquisite than any girl that was 
 ever made out of dew and danger. The beauty 
 of some animals far surpasses the beauty of any 
 woman, and the grace of the most graceful woman is 
 clumsiness compared with the maddening mobility 
 of some fishes. What eyes, however lustrous, can 
 hold their own with certain precious stones, or what 
 skin, however fine its texture, dare match itself 
 against the ivory and bloom of certain flowers? 
 Even a woman's hair is coarse compared with the 
 swaying filaments of certain delicate sea-weeds and 
 the stems of silken grasses. 
 
 And when we turn from nature to art, woman's 
 hopeless inferiority in beauty to the beautiful work 
 of the artist's dreaming hands is so obvious as 
 to need no illustration. No woman was ever so 
 
282 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 beautiful as the Parthenon ; no woman was ever 
 so beautiful as a Corot ; no woman was ever so 
 beautiful as some words. 
 
 Woman's beauty, I repeat, but represents her 
 small share in the common stock of universal love- 
 liness. The world is an inexhaustibly beautiful 
 world. After life itself there is nothing so common 
 as beauty. Beauty is the lavish by-product of the 
 vital process. Without apparently giving beauty a 
 thought. Nature is heedlessly, wantonly beautiful ; 
 and she produces beautiful women as carelessly as 
 she produces some exquisite weed, or litters the 
 bottom of the sea with mother-of-pearl. 
 
 But woman's goodness — it is by virtue of that 
 that she is unique in the creation. It is her good- 
 ness, not her beauty, that throws over her that hal- 
 lowing light of the divine, and makes her something 
 more than mortal in very deed ; so that her deifi- 
 cation by the Christian Church is less a symbolic 
 transfiguration than a recognition of her actual 
 every day nature here and now upon the earth. 
 The three attributes most god-like of all the attri- 
 butes of gods are — Pity, Forgiveness, Consolation ; 
 and these are the attributes which make woman 
 — Woman, 
 
 From first to last how much every man owes 
 to woman for pity, forgiveness, and consolation ; 
 though it is not till he has lived a while, and 
 
DEAR DEAD WOMEN 283 
 
 suffered and made suffer, that his indebtedness 
 becomes by slow degrees revealed to him. Ah ! as 
 he looks back — how much has he been forgiven, 
 from those early heedless days when he took the 
 love of his mother as carelessly as his breath, and 
 wounded her heart without dreaming of it, Heaven 
 knows how often — on and on, love after love idly 
 accepted, may be, as so much tribute, and tossed 
 aside with scarce a thought of all that wasted 
 treasure and all the pain ! Mother, Wife, Nurse, 
 and Saviour : from first to last, it was Woman that 
 made us, and not we ourselves ; and always to the 
 end of our lives, as a child runs to its mother in its 
 distress, so man goes to woman for his solace, 
 and so the whole world of mankind brings its 
 weariness and its tears to the feet of Our Lady 
 of Consolation. 
 
 Yes, one can bear to think of the beauty of 
 women, but the thought of the goodness of — 
 some — women breaks one's heart. 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD GODS 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD GODS 
 
 MRS. VEDA HAMILTON sat on the 
 balcony of her beautiful country house 
 on the Hudson and watched the sunset. She 
 was alone to-night, and glad to be alone. Her 
 husband was away in Washington on political 
 business — Joseph Hamilton, one of the strongest 
 men and noblest natures in American politics. 
 Dinner was over, and her two children, a boy of 
 seventeen and a girl of fifteen, had eagerly begged 
 to be excused that they might watch the carpenters 
 erecting the stage in the great hall for their 
 amateur theatricals next week. 
 
 The sound of hammers and young voices came 
 to Mrs. Hamilton, as she sat and watched the 
 mellow purples and golds of the sumptuously dying 
 day. Every stroke of the hammer and every 
 happy young laugh smote her heart like the tolling 
 of a bell. 
 
 That performance her children were so passion- 
 ately anticipating — would she be there to see it? 
 Would it, indeed, ever take place? 
 
 Mrs. Hamilton was a woman about forty, strik- 
 
 287 
 
288 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 ingly brunette. Her thick black hair, her rich olive 
 skin, and her majestic black eyes — * tropics and 
 tragedy in solution/ a wit had said — seemed mag- 
 nificently out of place, somehow, even in their 
 luxurious surroundings. There was an untamed, 
 unsatisfied romance about her. And yet she was 
 a very happy woman. She had married the man 
 of her choice — a man who was as good and charm- 
 ing a husband as he was a distinguished politician 
 — and he was a true companion. All she had 
 asked of life had been given her. Her home was 
 a paradise of harmonies and satisfactions. Her 
 children were clever and beautiful. She did all 
 she pleased. Not a desire was unfulfilled, not an 
 inclination unsatisfied. Mrs. Veda Hamilton was 
 a happy married woman of the highest order. 
 
 In some such terms as these she would herself 
 have described her life — at all events, a year ago ; 
 but a year ago this very night it had been revealed 
 to her that, after all, something was lacking in her 
 ordered, happy existence that had hitherto seemed 
 so complete and satisfying. 
 
 Mogens Neergaard, the great Scandinavian 
 violinist, brought her the news. 
 
 They had met at a musicale, in New York, and as 
 soon as they had spoken to each other she knew 
 what that something was — knew, with a heart that 
 shuddered at the discovery — and yet strangely 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD GODS 289 
 
 sang — that her life could never seem complete — 
 never even real — again. 
 
 Her life had contained every element but one — 
 that element of wonder, of enchanted exaltation, 
 which we call romance. It had been everything 
 but a fairy tale. Yet not till Mogens Neergaard 
 had come and touched her with his magic bow 
 had she been conscious of the lack. 
 
 It was less the famous music than the man him- 
 self. The music was but a part of him, like his 
 deep, laughing voice, or his sea-king's eyes ; for 
 Mogens Neergaard was not one of those hunchbacks 
 of art whose divine faculty must house with de- 
 formity. He was more like those old troubadours 
 who could fight as brilliantly as they could sing. 
 
 * Yea ! one who wore his love like sword on thigh 
 And kept not all his valour for his lute.' 
 
 His tall, athletic figure and his fine, erect head 
 gave assurance of a man who was as strong as he 
 was fearless. A rapid, irresistible lover, he was no 
 effeminate or cowardly amorist, and his physical 
 courage had been attested by several famous 
 duels. 
 
 When he and Veda Hamilton had met in that 
 New York drawing-room, their introduction was 
 for each other a thrilling recognition — a divine 
 meeting again, rather than a first acquaintance. 
 
 T 
 
2go PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 One of those mysterious understandings that in- 
 stantly unite men and women who are destined to 
 play a part in each other's history, immediately 
 sprang up between them. It seemed strange that 
 their hostess should be taking the trouble to intro- 
 duce them. They knew each other so well. 
 
 A month later Veda Hamilton and Neergaard 
 were sitting on the very balcony where she was 
 now sitting, for Neergaard had come almost to 
 make his home there for a while, and no one but 
 himself knew that, at great expense, he had can- 
 celled important engagements to stay there. For 
 an artist Neergaard was a rich man ; so he could 
 afford to love like a millionaire. 
 
 * Fancy Mrs. Pottle thinking it necessary to 
 introduce us ! ' laughed Neergaard suddenly, after 
 a slight pause in which they had sat watching the 
 sunset on Veda Hamilton's verandah. * I remember 
 so perfectly what you wore that day ten thousand 
 years ago ... or was it earlier? I think it was. 
 Indeed, I cannot remember a time when we didn't 
 know each other. Can you ? ' 
 
 * I cannot,' answered Mrs. Hamilton gaily. * I 
 remember perfectly what you played — that is, if 
 you really remember what I wore.' 
 
 ' Is it a challenge? ' 
 'Yes.' 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD GODS 291 
 
 * Well, I '11 tell you some day/ 
 
 * You're a brave man.' 
 
 * Yes, I know — but why ? ' 
 
 'To think you could describe a woman's dress 
 — particularly one so much out of fashion.' 
 
 * Men make women's dresses. Men are the great 
 artists in women's dresses, as they are in every 
 other form of art. It is their fancy and skill that 
 make — some — women what they are.' 
 
 ' They may make our dresses — some men, but 
 no true man can describe woman's dress. I stick 
 to my point.' 
 
 * There is a kind of man who can,' said Neergaard, 
 audaciously smiling an unspoken word. 
 
 ^Heleast of all.' 
 
 * You mean ' 
 
 * I mean, to save you the anguish of committing 
 an indiscretion, that love is particularly blind in 
 this matter.' 
 
 *You said the word first, remember,' laughed 
 Neergaard. 
 ' What word ? ' 
 ' Love.' 
 
 * I said it to prevent your saying it.' 
 
 * I will never say it.' 
 
 * You must never say it.' 
 
 * No ; but some day I will come in a chariot of 
 fire and carry you away where no eyes but mine 
 
292 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 shall see you, where I shall be jealous only of the 
 sun and the stars — not forgetting the moon/ added 
 Neergaard, with one of those aside laughs that 
 made no woman ever quite sure of him. 
 
 * I am not a Sabine, remember, but an American 
 — an American matron.' 
 
 * Well, in an automobile, then.' 
 
 * I think I should prefer a naphtha launch/ 
 'You would? All right. A naphtha launch — 
 
 with a chariot of fire waiting — where shall I 
 say? ' 
 
 ^ Where do you think ? ' 
 
 * Anywhere this side of heaven.' 
 
 * A nice, indefinite rendezvous. You artists are 
 so unpractical.' 
 
 * That is a common mistake about us, which, on 
 the whole, we prefer to encourage. And am I 
 nothing more to you than an artist ? Please think 
 of me as a man.' 
 
 ' Much more.' 
 
 * More than a man ? ' 
 ^Yes.' 
 
 * Do you mean a god ? ' asked Neergaard, return- 
 ing to his irony. 
 
 < No — Mogens Neergaard.' 
 
 * Is that your answer ? ' 
 
 * Did you miss it? ' 
 
 ' I didn't. How could I ? • • . Truly I remember 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD GODS 293 
 
 the dress you wore ten thousand years ago/ said 
 Neergaard presently. 
 ' Tell me.' 
 
 And Neergaard described it. 
 
 * And I remember the piece you played.' 
 
 ' Tell me.' 
 
 ^ Play it again.' 
 
 And Neergaard played it. 
 
 In that hour there began a communion between 
 Veda Hamilton and Mogens Neergaard for which, 
 in the world's coarse dictionary, there is no name. 
 Was it love? Was Neergaard Mrs. Hamilton's 
 'lover'? Surely not, as the world understands 
 those words. Veda Hamilton remained no less 
 true a wife and mother for her friendship with 
 Neergaard. And Neergaard, without a suspicion of 
 treachery, had still the right to take the hand of 
 Joseph Hamilton and look frankly into his eyes. 
 Nothing that had ever been Joseph Hamilton's, 
 or could be his for ever, had been violated or 
 even jeopardised. It was only the quality in his 
 wife which had never been and could never be his 
 that had been given to Neergaard. It was no 
 vulgar thief of the heart's treasure who had come 
 to mean so much to his wife, and was his own 
 dearest friend. Indeed, something had been given 
 to him rather than taken away by the companion- 
 
294 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 ship of the two ; for through it a whole unsunned 
 garden in his wife's nature broke into blossom. 
 
 She had been like a palace the most wonderful 
 rooms of which none till now had cared to inhabit 
 Surely there was no wrong in Neergaard dwelling 
 in those disused chambers of imagery. Till he 
 came to the palace no one else had knocked at 
 those unsuspected doors. And how wonderful it 
 was to have some one living in those forgotten 
 rooms ! 
 
 No doubt the world, which occasionally caught 
 glimpses of Mrs. Hamilton and Neergaard together, 
 had its own crude misinterpretations. The world 
 knows only one way of loving. But, indeed, 
 Mogens Neergaard and Veda Hamilton dwelt in 
 * breathless bowers ' it * dreamed not of,' and it 
 is worth pondering how so good and beautiful 
 a thing as their friendship was and can be so 
 hopelessly misconstrued by a vulgar, concupiscent 
 world — a world whose standards of love are the 
 standards of the divorce court. Neergaard, it must 
 be said, in explanation of such gossip, was some- 
 what famous for his affairs of love and honour. 
 Mrs. Hamilton might well, may be, figure as one 
 more moth drawn by his fatal dazzle ; but how 
 positively laughable the mistake was ! The two 
 people most concerned enjoyed together the few 
 echoes of such talk that reached them. 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD GODS 295 
 
 *Has he kissed you yet?' asked an old woman 
 friend of Mrs. Hamilton, worldly to her finger-tips. 
 She was a woman not easily frightened, but the 
 blazing silence of Mrs. Hamilton's reply perceptibly 
 shortened her call. 
 
 'The fools! the idiots! the pigs!' Neergaard 
 stormed, when he heard the story. *Kiss you! 
 Heavens ! Who wants to kiss you ? ' 
 
 Both of them broke into laughter at his vehe- 
 mence. Certainly it was not the customary talk 
 of a lover. 
 
 * Kiss you ! ' he went on, fuming to himself. 
 *What a word! Kiss you!' And then he burst 
 forth into one of his torrents of breathless rage. 
 * Why, Veda, when I want to kiss you, do you think 
 ril do it behind the door? No! Til just take 
 you and set you high up on yonder star, and kiss 
 you in front of all the universe. O these little 
 sneak thieves of love ! This petty larceny of the 
 Seventh Commandment ! Tell me, Veda — ' and 
 he stopped short in his fierce walk to and fro, and 
 took her sternly by the wrists — *tell me, Veda, 
 in all our hours together, have I ever seemed for a 
 moment to be thinking, to have it in me to be 
 thinking, of their miserable little love — their 
 kisses, their caresses, their sickly little sugar-plums? 
 Ugh! The fools, the idiots, the pigs, the school- 
 girls ! Oh, but I '11 kiss you some day,' he turned 
 
296 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 off, with savage inconsequence, ^and the whole 
 world will know of it, but they won't call it " kiss- 
 ing." It will be thunder and lightning and tempest 
 and rainbows — and the fools will look up in terror, 
 and say, " It thunders," or " It lightens," knowing 
 nothing of what the gods are really doing. Kiss 
 you ! Do you see the tip of the young moon over 
 there?' — his mood returning once more to fancy 
 and laughter. * Well, some day you and I will sit 
 and dangle our heels up there, just at the very 
 end, and laugh at the whole stupid world, and kiss 
 — yes! kiss if we care about it — ^just as often as 
 we please.' 
 
 * Little child,' said Veda Hamilton soothingly, 
 stroking his fine, strong hands. * What a child a 
 great big man really is, after all ! What a child ! ' 
 
 The stars were coming out overhead, fields upon 
 fields of marguerites, 
 
 Neergaard turned gently to his friend, his wild 
 mood subsiding. 
 
 * Little mother,' he said tenderly. 
 
 How good indeed Mogens Neergaard and Veda 
 Hamilton had been and were for each other, one 
 could hardly expect a wicked world to understand. 
 
 Most people not entirely animal, vegetable, or 
 mineral, whatever the comfort or security of their 
 lives, are haunted by an ideal — one might almost 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD GODS 297 
 
 call it an ideal of excitement — that no worldly 
 prosperity can appease and no respectable occu- 
 pation lull. There is some music of joy that life 
 has never yet struck out of them. That flowering of 
 existence we call romance has never come to them. 
 Their lives have been brick-and-mortar. They 
 have missed the moonshine. Those magic case- 
 ments of which Keats tells have never opened for 
 them. Nothing they have ever done has had the 
 delight for them of something they ought not to 
 do. They have the peace and the pence, but the 
 music went down the other street. Such are not 
 always consciously disappointed. Sometimes there 
 is needed some one to come and remind them of 
 what they really care for, and what — if they are 
 not quick — they will surely miss. 
 
 Veda Hamilton's was such a nature. She was 
 like a musical instrument unconscious of itself. 
 She was ignorant of her own music till Mogens 
 Neergaard came and with the mere sound of his 
 voice set all the keys a-trembling. Perhaps he had 
 discovered nothing in her except her unused capa- 
 cities for being happy. How happy he made her, 
 and by what simple means ! She had only to see 
 him. He had only to come and sit by her and say 
 that he had managed to catch the 5.30 train. He 
 had only to ask her husband what his opinion was 
 as to the chances of a certain measure. He had 
 
298 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 only to say : ' It is rather warm to-night ; may I 
 open this window ? ' or ' Lloyd, how are you getting 
 on with Dumas?' to fill her with a new sense of 
 wonder and joy. In short, he had only to exist 
 in her presence to make her realise what music 
 upon music of happiness had lain unawakened in 
 her all these years. 
 
 Till she had met him she had never dreamed 
 how one's very body can sing for joy — merely 
 because another human being is talking politics 
 to your husband over his coffee. True, she had 
 always been very happy — that is, very comfortable 
 and contented in her life. The difference between 
 her life as it had been and as it was now was just 
 the difference between affection and ecstasy. Not 
 till Neergaard came had she known transfiguration ; 
 and till our lives have been transfigured we do not 
 really live at all. 
 
 Neergaard was for her the spiritual vision that 
 she had found nowhere else — not in religion, not 
 in her home life, beautiful and dear to her as it 
 was ; not in nature, not in art ; only in Mogens 
 Neergaard. 
 
 And for him, in a different way, she was the 
 same revelation. The career of an artist is beset 
 by nothing so much as facile love, but the danger 
 of an artist meeting the one stern, true love is that 
 she usually breaks his heart. 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD GODS 299 
 
 Mogens Neergaard had seemed to know love 
 many times. He had been a notable polytheist 
 of the affections. But now, as he looked back, it 
 seemed to him that all these various loves, charm- 
 ing and beautiful as they had always been, had 
 been wrong ways of loving, meant to teach him 
 the right way of loving, the only way — the love 
 of one man for one woman, and of one woman for 
 one man, as long as life lasts. His polygamic 
 training had seemed to reveal to him the divine 
 beauty of monogamy. And thus, for that very 
 reason, he was able to bring to the woman before 
 whose face all his memories perished like wax, a 
 love pure and undefiled, a love the earth of which 
 had been purged away, a love to which all other 
 loves had been contributory processes. At last, 
 free of its earth and its roots and its stem and 
 its rough sheath — at last love was for him all 
 flower. 
 
 So it was for those two people for many months, 
 but at length there came to them the day that will 
 always come — the day when they said to each 
 other : * It is not enough. These few hours are 
 not enough. Better none at all than these mar- 
 gins and remnants of another's days. All the 
 days are rightly ours — ours by right of our love. 
 We cannot live any longer apart from each other.' 
 
PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 It was a summer afternoon, and they stood 
 together knee-deep in a field of marguerites, 
 secluded within the vast seclusion of a June sky. 
 
 ' I cannot live without you,' said Neergaard, as 
 they stood looking into each other's eyes as in a 
 trance. 
 
 'I cannot live without you,' Veda Hamilton 
 answered, the words falling from her lips without 
 her knowledge. 
 
 Then, all in a dream, they were in each other's 
 arms, and they kissed each other for the first and 
 only time. 
 
 After the manner of lovers, they gathered each 
 a marguerite and walked slowly from the meadow 
 with happy, sacred eyes. 
 
 There, in a moment of exaltation, to which the 
 high heaven was accomplice, they had made that 
 solemn gift to each other which may not be taken 
 back. For a brief moment they had lived in their 
 own world, without thought of any other. They 
 returned to that other as they stepped out on to 
 the dusty highroad — the beaten track of daily life. 
 Then they began to reason, after the manner of this 
 world. In the meadows, among the marguerites, 
 there had seemed no need of reason. On the 
 highroad it was different. 
 
 And this reasoning was much like the reasoning 
 of all lovers under like conditions. 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD GODS 301 
 
 ' After all, it will be best/ Neergaard was saying, 
 'best in the end for him, too' — though he did not 
 explain his second remark ; and Mrs. Hamilton 
 made no reply, walking at his side, thinking and 
 thinking. 
 
 * Surely the happiness of two is worth more than 
 the happiness of one,' he continued presently. 
 
 * Oh, but the pain — his pain,' she moaned. 
 
 * What of our pain — your pain — my pain ? ' 
 'Yes, I know — I know ' 
 
 * Has our happiness no rights too ? ' 
 
 ' Don't talk, Mogens. I am yours. It is terrible 
 — terrible — but I am yours — now — always — when 
 you will.' 
 
 * Are you frightened ? ' 
 ' Yes.' 
 
 ' Would you go back ?' 
 'No.' 
 
 ' I love you.' 
 
 * I love you.' 
 
 So at length there had come for Veda Hamilton 
 and Mogens Neergaard love's inevitable hour, when 
 they must either part for ever or meet for ever. 
 They had promised to meet for ever. The greater 
 marriage, they said to each other, had annulled 
 the lesser marriage. They discussed many plans. 
 Neergaard was for going to Hamilton with the 
 
302 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 simple truth. It was a man's way. Surely it had 
 been the best way — the only way. But the woman 
 shrank from it. There is always a coward some- 
 where in the bravest, and Veda Hamilton's cowardice 
 was her dread of seeing another's pain. She could 
 not face the thought of seeing her husband's 
 anguish, seeing his life go down, like a shot man, 
 before Neergaard's story. 
 
 If Neergaard really wanted her he must steal 
 her — literally carry her away by main force in that 
 chariot of fire of which he had long ago laugh- 
 ingly spoken. She would not resist. It was not 
 Neergaard's way, and the man in him shrank from 
 a course so like that of the common household 
 thief. Yet it was the only way. He must either 
 lose the woman he loved for ever or be held for 
 what he was not. After all, when he and she were 
 once together, what would the understanding of a 
 world that necessarily misunderstood most things 
 mean to them ? 
 
 The world cannot take away anything from 
 those for whom its gifts are of no value. To lose 
 the good report of the world — and win Veda 
 Hamilton ! That was the proposition. Could 
 there be more than one decision to that ! The 
 grounds of Mrs. Hamilton's home sloped through 
 gardens and orchards and a brief stretch of natural 
 woodland down to the Hudson itself, where in 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD GODS 303 
 
 a miniature bay was a hidden pier. At midnight 
 a small launch would push its way through the 
 branches and moor itself there; and Neergaard 
 would stride up through the woodlands and the 
 orchards and the gardens to carry away his 
 bride. 
 
 It was for this reason that Veda Hamilton sat on 
 the balcony watching the sunset, and wondering if 
 this was really her last night in her home. 
 
 So she sat on and sat on, till twilight had 
 become moonlight. Her children came and kissed 
 her good-night. The carpenters had gone home. 
 The Hudson shivered into silver ripples. The 
 real world was put away for the night. The unreal 
 world was coming on duty. The shadows were 
 taking their places. The lights had already come 
 out — gold dots and green dots, and red full stops 
 on the darkening page of the world. Sounds that 
 had no meaning in the sunshine became strangely 
 significant. Dogs barked differently. Little flying 
 things that had waited all day, afraid lest they 
 should be seen, whizzed and squeaked, and were 
 variously happy at their ease. The great silence 
 yawned itself awake, with deep-breathing, distant 
 sounds. 
 
 It was the hour when the chair you sit on is 
 all that is left of the solid earth — as if the tide 
 
PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 of oblivion had suddenly come up and washed 
 the daylight world away, and left you there alone 
 on your little rock of silence in the star- whispering 
 night. 
 
 ' O God ! ' sighed Mrs. Hamilton. 
 
 ' Which god?' said a little voice out of the dark- 
 ness. ^ Please, ma'am/ it went on, ^ I am only one 
 of the humblest of the gods — one of the pantry- 
 gods, so to say ; learned people called us the 
 Penates. I am the god that helps to cook the 
 supper that Mr. Hamilton so enjoys when he comes 
 home late from a long day.' 
 
 * And I, please, ma'am,' said another voice out of 
 the shadow, ' am Domiduca, the god that watches 
 over his safe coming home.' 
 
 'Is he not safe?' asked Mrs. Hamilton, in 
 alarm. 
 
 ' Oh yes, madam ; he has just left Washington by 
 the Congressional Limited.' 
 
 Mrs. Hamilton turned in the direction of the 
 voices, but the dusk had grown so deep that she 
 could see no one. Yet none the less she was aware 
 that the door behind her was thronged with appeal- 
 ing, familiar presences. 
 
 Soon another voice spoke, quite near to her. 
 
 ' I am the goddess that watches over the fruit 
 trees,' it said. ' I am Pomona of the Orchards. I 
 bring the apple-blossom and the pear-blossom and 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD GODS 305 
 
 the cherry bloom. I guard the peaches and the 
 nectarines on the warm wall, and I scare the birds 
 from the strawberry beds.' 
 
 * I bring the snowdrops and the early violets, 
 said another voice, ' and keep the grass thick and 
 cool through the hottest days. The dew and the 
 shadows also are in my care.' 
 
 * I am the god of the stables and the barns,' said 
 another voice. * I watch over the mare in foal, and 
 make sweet the milk in the udder. I dwell in cool 
 dairies and sweet-smelling granaries. I am the 
 genius of the farm.' 
 
 I am the guardian of the linen closets,' said 
 another voice. * I scatter lavender among the cool, 
 white sheets, and destroy the moth with the pungent 
 odour of camphor/ 
 
 * I am he who takes care of the pictures and relics 
 of those you have loved,' said another voice ; * the 
 sacred things that but for me would gather dust in 
 unvisited cupboards and unopened drawers.' 
 
 * I am she,' said another voice, ' who guards for 
 you the first baby-clothes, the first tiny socks and 
 slippers, and all the firstlings of motherhood.' 
 
 ' I am the god of the dogs and cats,' said another 
 voice. 
 
 ^ And I watch over the poultry and keep the new- 
 laid eggs from the rats and the young chickens from 
 the hawk,' said another voice. 
 
 U 
 
306 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 * I am the god/ suddenly broke in another voice, 
 stern and masterful, * that guards your husband's 
 honour/ 
 
 * I am the memory of your father and mother, 
 said another. 
 
 * I am the future of your children,' said another. 
 And while they were all speaking — these and 
 
 many other gods of the home — the clock slowly 
 struck the hour of twelve. 
 
 Then it seemed to her that, without her own will, 
 she had risen from her chair, the persuasion of 
 many little hands upon her skirts and the grip of 
 one stern hand upon her wrist. 
 
 ' Come indoors ! Come indoors ! ' voices all 
 around her seemed to be calling. * There is danger 
 out here. Come indoors.' 
 
 Then she found herself in the bedroom, sitting 
 near the window, with a stunned sense of loss — loss 
 wide as, oh, far wider than the world ! 
 
 Presently there stole to her ears the far sound of 
 a violin. It was Neergaard playing as he came up 
 through the gardens. 
 
 Nearer and nearer the music came, till at last it 
 stopped, as in angry surprise, beneath her window. 
 She could hear Neergaard's impatient tread on the 
 balcony. She heard him walk to the door and try 
 it. But the stern god that had taken her by the 
 wrist held her still more firmly 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD GODS 307 
 
 Then suddenly he was calling her once more with 
 his violin. 
 
 At first the strings were all entreaty, wistful and 
 tender ; but, as he played on, they grew stormy 
 with passion and angry with reproach. 
 
 He no longer pleaded ; he demanded her in the 
 name of his love. 
 
 The great god was calling her outside, but the 
 little gods inside, the little gods of the home, held 
 her fast. 
 
 At last she could bear it no more. Stiffly she 
 rose from her chair, and called strangely to him 
 through the window. 
 
 * Good-bye, Mogens,' she called : 'it cannot be.' 
 
 Then the music ceased. 
 
 And the little gods laughed low and nudged 
 each other, and pattered back to their cupboards 
 through the silent house. 
 
 But the heart of the great god was broken. 
 
THE TWO GHOSTS 
 
THE TWO GHOSTS 
 
 " I ^WO people who had once loved — or thought 
 they loved — had been dead and buried for 
 three years — that is, to each other. To the rest of 
 the world they seemed vigorously and even gaily 
 aboveground, and, at all events, had retained suffi- 
 cient life in them to get engaged to be married 
 to two other people. The man, it should be 
 explained, was already engaged when he first met 
 the woman, and had never, during the whole course 
 of his relations with her, the smallest intention of 
 breaking his engagement. But the woman did not 
 know that — and there is, of course, no possible 
 justification for his wicked, Don-Juan-like atti- 
 tude, except that, as boys will be boys, men will 
 be men. 
 
 Now it chanced one spring afternoon, when these 
 three years had gone by, that the ghosts of these 
 two lovers met in a New York drawing-room, and 
 were both very much disturbed at the sight of each 
 other. Nothing upsets a ghost so much as the 
 apparition of another ghost. Though they were 
 both clever ghosts, they were unable to conceal 
 
 311 
 
312 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 from each other their excitement at meeting, and, 
 indeed, less able to conceal it from the eyes of the 
 lookers-on, who, knowing something of their story 
 when they had been alive, were hardly less ekcited 
 than themselves. 
 
 * The two ghosts have met,' went a whisper round 
 the room ; ^ what is going to happen ! ' 
 
 Meanwhile the two ghosts were looking at each 
 other without saying a word. Presently * Is it 
 you ? ' * Is it you ? ' they said together, and each 
 answered, ' It is 1/ 
 
 ' Let us draw away from the others, and look at 
 each other/ said the two ghosts, and they found a 
 corner apart from the inquisitive eyes, and looked 
 and looked at each other, and never said a word ; 
 till at last the time came when the woman-ghost 
 must go and meet the man to whom she was en- 
 gaged up there in the real world, and with whom 
 she dined every evening — as, it is well known, is 
 the custom of all engaged couples ! 
 
 * This cannot be our last meeting,' said the two 
 ghosts, * there is so much to say.' 
 
 'I will meet you in the same dear spot at three 
 to-morrow,' said the woman-ghost, and thereupon 
 she vanished ; and the man-ghost smiled. 
 
 The same dear spot was a certain caf^ full of 
 quiet corners, where in the days when they were 
 alive the two ghosts had been wont to drink through 
 
THE TWO GHOSTS 313 
 
 straws to the eternity of their love for each 
 other. 
 
 Remembering the other's habits, both ghosts 
 were late, the man half an hour, the woman forty 
 minutes. 
 
 * What shall we drink ? ' said the man-ghost. 
 
 * You know/ answered the woman-ghost. 
 
 The waiter, who was an old friend, was quite 
 startled to see them. 
 
 ^ Why, I thought you were dead ! ' he exclaimed. 
 
 *We have been/ said the woman-ghost, looking 
 fondly at the man-ghost, and surreptitiously pressing 
 his hand. 
 
 The waiter didn't, of course, understand ; so, to 
 relieve his embarrassment — with that extraordinary 
 memory for the tastes of their customers which 
 good waiters possess ; ' Shall I bring you the same 
 as in the old days ? ' he asked, with a fatherly smile 
 on their re-arisen happiness. 
 
 * Do you really remember ? ' asked the woman- 
 ghost. 
 
 'You shall see, miss/ answered the waiter, and 
 presently returned with the same sacramental drink 
 he had made for them so often three years ago. 
 
 * Fancy your remembering — how dear of you, 
 John ! ' said the woman-ghost. ' Why, I believe, he 
 is quite happy to see us again/ she added, when he 
 had left them alone. 
 
314 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 * The whole world is happy with us/ said the 
 man-ghost, ' the very cars outside seem to be sing- 
 ing a happy song. And they have sounded so 
 lonely for ever so long — such a sad lost moaning 
 they made. Do you remember our old spring 
 song — 
 
 ' " Oh the gay gay people 
 
 Out in the sun, in the sun. 
 For to-day the winter is ended, 
 
 To-day the spring is begun ; 
 And the open cars are running, 
 
 And the brooks are running too, 
 And there 's a bird, dear, singing, 
 
 Singing — all of you." ' 
 
 'I love you,' said the woman-ghost, laying her 
 hand on his. 
 
 * How dear of you to say it first again — as you 
 did long ago,' laughed the man-ghost, perhaps a 
 little ambiguously. 
 
 Then they took up their straws. 
 
 *Whom are we to drink to?' asked the man-ghost. 
 
 * Us /' answered the woman-ghost. 
 ^ Us !^ said the man-ghost. 
 
 And then, with their eyes upon each other, they 
 drank through the straws. 
 
 They had a very great deal to say to each other, 
 many things out of the past to explain, many old 
 misunderstandings to discuss. They had, despite 
 their great love, lied no little to each other in the 
 old days — the man, perforce, because, as I have 
 
THE TWO GHOSTS 31S 
 
 said, he loved another woman too, and loved 
 her most ; the woman, for no particular reason 
 except that she was intriguante by nature and 
 couldn't help it. Each had found the other out — 
 the man the woman's little mean lies, the woman 
 the man's great big lies. And so they had become 
 ghosts to each other. Yet they had both cared a 
 great deal, both had suffered, and both were happy 
 to forget each other's faults for the purpose of spend- 
 ing a few hours together in a fool's-paradise. 
 
 *Ah! but I have changed so much since then!' 
 said the woman-ghost. ' The little lies have fallen 
 from me. I see now how right you were about me. 
 If only I had known then — but I was little more 
 than a child. . . .' 
 
 * Yes ! ' said the man-ghost wickedly in his own 
 heart, * it is true — you were but twenty-eight. . . .* 
 
 This was, no doubt, a little mean of the man- 
 ghost — but then if only the reader could know all, 
 he would understand. 
 
 *You have changed too,' said the woman-ghost 
 presently; 'your mouth is kinder; you too, I can 
 see, have grown truer, more sincere. . . .' 
 
 The man-ghost did his best to look like a 
 reformed character, and pressed her hand impres- 
 sively. He said nothing, but his whole attitude 
 was designed to convey that, indeed, life had at 
 last purged the dross out of him and taught him 
 
3i6 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 the long lesson of the One Woman. As a matter 
 of fact, it had, but it was by means of another 
 woman that he had learnt it, the woman whom he 
 had always loved — but deceived awhile. He was 
 not deceiving her now, for he had told her of his 
 having met the ghost, and the likelihood of his 
 meeting her again. She was so secure in his love 
 that she smiled at his vagaries and left him to go his 
 way. Wise women are not wastefully jealous. They 
 keep their jealousy for really important occasions. 
 
 Both ghosts were very delicate to avoid mention 
 of the status quo^ though by every indirect method 
 of which their subtle brains were capable they 
 sought to read each other's minds on the subject — 
 with but little result. The woman-ghost, however 
 was intuitively aware of a certain stubborn loyalty 
 to the other woman in the man-ghost's carefully 
 chosen words and nimble evasions. 
 
 Thus in retrospective readjustments, stealthy re- 
 connaissances of each other, and withal real joy in 
 each other's recovered presence, the afternoon went 
 by, and presently once more the time approached 
 for the woman-ghost to dine in the real world. 
 
 * We cannot part like this,' said the two ghosts, 
 * there is so much still to say.' So it was agreed 
 that they should meet again on the morrow at the 
 same place, at the same hour. 
 
 * You had better not come out with me,' said the 
 
THE TWO GHOSTS 317 
 
 woman-ghost at parting, for ghosts have a great 
 objection to being seen together ; so the man-ghost 
 remained behind, and watched her figure through 
 the window, and wondered if he could ever really 
 love her again as he used to do. 
 
 Next day the two ghosts were comparatively 
 punctual at the rendezvous. The woman-ghost was 
 twenty minutes late, and the man-ghost twenty- 
 five. Again they drank to 'Us' through the 
 sacramental straws, again their friend the waiter 
 beamed upon their resurrection, again they talked 
 of the past and tried in vain to wrest from each 
 other the secret of the present, and again they were 
 very happy, and again when the time came round 
 for the engaged couple to dine together, nothing 
 seemed to have been said. 
 
 So once more it was * To-morrow — at three' — and 
 the man-ghost watched the woman-ghost through 
 the window, and wondered. But he admired her 
 frock. 
 
 Thus many days went by, and the two ghosts 
 continued meeting each other according to their 
 notions of three o'clock ; and so much a custom had 
 their meetings become that they had almost for- 
 gotten that they were ghosts at all ; and, certainly, 
 any one seeing them together, seeing their close 
 colloquies, and the way their eyes hung upon each 
 other, would have had considerable difficulty in 
 
3i8 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 distinguishing them from real lovers. Each day 
 the living blood seemed to be pouring into their 
 shrunken veins, each day they grew less and less 
 like phantoms. 
 
 There is no real ghost, I need hardly say, that 
 does not own and haunt some buried treasure. 
 Now both these ghosts possessed their buried 
 treasure — treasure which three years ago they had 
 professed to destroy. One day they had dared to 
 ask each other concerning it. 
 
 ' You did not really burn them ? ' said the man- 
 ghost. 
 
 ' No, I could not bear to, and never meant to. 
 Did you ? ' 
 
 And the man-ghost said the same as the woman- 
 ghost. And both told the truth, for in their way 
 they had loved each other. 
 
 ' Oh, come and see my buried treasure,' said the 
 woman-ghost, as the time came for parting. 
 
 ' But . . . ' the eyes of the man-ghost queried, 
 ' What of the dinner-hour in the real world ? ' 
 
 As it chanced, the woman-ghost was free for this 
 night ; and as, day by day, the woman-ghost had 
 been growing more and more daring, they drove in 
 a cab together, the two ghosts, to the place of the 
 buried treasure — trusting perhaps also to the 
 alleged invisibility of ghosts. 
 
 To drive in a cab again together was for them a 
 
THE TWO GHOSTS 319 
 
 separate bliss — poor disembodied spirits; and then 
 at length they found themselves at the entrance of 
 the apartment house at which in his carnal life the 
 man-ghost had been so accustomed a presence. 
 It was but natural that he should re-enter these 
 once familiar doors with a thrill of memory. How 
 strange it was to be there again, to find every- 
 thing the same, the same clerks at the desk, as 
 she went there to inquire for her mail. . . . Yes ! 
 it was strange, and almost creepy, even for a ghost ! 
 When they came to the elevator, there was the 
 same good boy David running it, who had been so 
 kind — in exchange for dollar bills — in the old 
 time. The good David almost fainted at the sight 
 of the man-ghost. 
 
 ' Why ! I thought, sir, . . . ' he began, and stopped 
 in time. 
 
 When they were out of the elevator, the woman- 
 ghost explained that, David having so often in- 
 quired after the gentleman that came no more, she 
 had calmly told him that the gentleman was dead. 
 Hence David's natural surprise ! 
 
 * It was true, wasn't it ? ' she added. 
 
 ' Ye-es,' answered the man-ghost, with an inward 
 reflection on that old habit of unveracity. 
 
 Then they entered the rooms he had once loved 
 so well — entered them by the same door — the 
 rooms that had once seemed like the shrine of some 
 
320 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 pure spirit, the dwelling-place of a fairy woman. 
 The same rooms, the same furniture; a few more 
 books, a few more photographs, the desk three 
 years untidier — that was the only difference. 
 
 When they had closed the door they stood a 
 moment side by side, looking at the place where 
 they had both seemed so magically alive. Then 
 they fell into each other's arms, and kissed each 
 other, and kissed each other again and again, and 
 although they were ghosts, and engaged ghosts too, 
 the kisses seemed wonderfully real, and any one 
 who could have seen them might well have wished to 
 be a ghost — so happy they seemed revisiting thus 
 the glimpses of the moon in each other's company. 
 
 Neither of them could believe that they were 
 there — together; yet in a moment the three years 
 seemed to have vanished for both of them — though 
 deep in their hearts they knew they were only 
 ghosts. Still the sensation was very sweet of seem- 
 ing to be really alive again together, and who shall 
 blame them if they gave themselves up to it ? 
 
 After a while the woman-ghost said : * Come, 
 let us look at our buried treasure,' and she turned 
 to a little urn-shaped box of seventeenth-century 
 workmanship, made of wood covered with decora- 
 tive shapes of beaten copper, and a fantastic lock 
 of iron big enough to belong to the gate of a castle. 
 
 ' I have two keys to this/ she said ; ' here is one 
 
THE TWO GHOSTS 321 
 
 of them. Take it, and open the box for us, and 
 then keep the key for ever. Here is my own key. 
 No one so long as I live shall look inside this box 
 but you and I, It belongs to us. It is our year. 
 No future has any right over it. . . 
 
 Then they placed the box between them on a 
 divan, and the man -ghost set the key to the lock, 
 and raised the lid, and the two looked in as into a 
 grave — a grave filled with rose-leaves ; and as the 
 man looked, the tears came into his eyes, and he 
 took the woman's face in his hands and kissed her 
 very gently, and then they fell into each other's 
 arms over the little grave and cried bitterly. 
 
 And any one looking on would have said that 
 this was the real sorrow of real people. But 
 neither forgot in their hearts that they were ghosts. 
 
 When they had recovered themselves and were 
 drying their eyes and trying to laugh away their 
 foolishness, the man said — 
 
 * You make me believe that you did really love 
 me, after all ... ' 
 
 ' I loved you all the time,' she answered, ' it was 
 you that failed.' 
 
 Then she took up a folded paper from one of 
 the little trays. It made a withered sound when 
 she opened it. 
 
 * Do you remember the goldenrod along the 
 road — that morning ? Here is a piece of it.' 
 
 X 
 
322 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 And again she took a folded paper and opened 
 
 it. 
 
 *Do you remember/ she said, 'that old desk 
 you used to write on ? Once when you were 
 not looking I took a penknife and cut away a 
 splinter of it. Here it is.' 
 
 Can you wonder that the man-ghost felt his 
 heart fill with tears ? 
 
 ' Did you really love me so much as that ? ' 
 he said. ' How grateful you make me — how 
 happy ! ' 
 
 And then, one by one, the woman-ghost showed 
 him the hoarded treasures of her heart. It was all 
 too sacred to tell about ; but there was nothing 
 that bore the stamp of a moment's memory, how- 
 ever slight, that the woman had not saved, trifles 
 inconceivably trivial, as well as little memorials 
 heart-breakingly intimate. 
 
 The man-ghost almost forgot the personal re- 
 lation of it all to himself in his reverence at this 
 revelation of a woman's heart. 
 
 ' To think,' he kept saying over and over — 
 *to think that you loved me like that — and I 
 never knew. How can I ever be grateful enough 
 for this wonderful love that you gave me ? ' 
 
 So for a long while the two ghosts hung over 
 their buried treasure, and at length placed each 
 little memory back in its place, and locked the 
 
THE TWO GHOSTS 323 
 
 urn-shaped box, and with a sigh the man placed 
 his key in his pocket, and the woman slipped hers 
 into- her bosom — and by this the clocks were 
 striking eleven. 
 
 * I must go,' said the man, rising, but he lingered 
 still a moment while the woman held him in her 
 arms and kissed him passionately. When they 
 came out of their kiss, breathless and laughing, the 
 woman-ghost said — 
 
 * I am afraid this hardly looks as though we 
 were ghosts/ 
 
 Yet for all that both knew that they were ghosts. 
 
 As the man-ghost walked home with a curious 
 gravity in his heart, he suddenly thought of one 
 incident of the evening the significance of which 
 had not struck him at the time. While they were 
 looking over those memories in the little chest, the 
 woman-ghost had held up a piece of paper on which 
 was written some verses. 
 
 * Do you remember this ? ' she asked. 
 
 He remembered well. * But where,' he added, 
 *is the letter that came with it ? You seem to have 
 torn it off'; and he pointed to the top of the 
 paper which had evidently been cut with a pair of 
 scissors. 
 
 *Oh, that is down there among the other letters,' 
 she answered. * I wanted to have the poem by itself.' 
 It was a slight incident, and at the moment he 
 
324 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 had given it no thought ; but as he walked home 
 his memory went back to it, and suddenly recalled 
 what the letter had been which accompanied the 
 verses. It had been a very tender letter, memorial 
 of an occasion very sacred to both of them, but 
 it had been for that very reason the kind of letter 
 one would not care to see in an auction-room or 
 an autograph-dealer's catalogue. Therefore the 
 woman-ghost had destroyed it. Perhaps not un- 
 naturally, but why had she not said so ? Why had 
 she said it was there with the other letters ? 
 
 And so once more that shadow of unveracity 
 stole over the man-ghost's thoughts, and vitiated 
 the sincerity of that afternoon. 
 
 In all these meetings the two ghosts still felt that 
 they had more to say to each other, so still they 
 continued meeting, and still each evening the 
 woman-ghost returned to dinner in the real world. 
 And so the beautiful days went by. 
 
 One day, as they sat together in their caf6, the 
 woman-ghost said — 
 
 * Do you remember what day Monday will be?' 
 
 *The 1 8th of April,' answered the man-ghost, 
 promptly. So much indeed the waiter could have 
 told him ; but as men-ghosts have exceedingly bad 
 memories for anniversaries he immediately set to 
 work trying to recall the significance of the i8th of 
 April. 
 
THE TWO GHOSTS 325 
 
 * Yes ! but you remember what it means — what 
 it once meant? ' 
 
 ' Do you really think I could possibly forget?' 
 answered the man-ghost, with a certain reverential 
 reticence of manner, as though, while the occasion 
 was perfectly clear in his mind, it was one almost 
 too sacred to recall in words. By such dumb 
 show of feeling he succeeded in convincing the 
 woman-ghost that the date was indeed green 
 in his memory ; the more so as she herself had 
 her own reasons for not putting the date into 
 words. 
 
 ' Do you think we might spend the day in the 
 country, as we did three years ago ? ' said the 
 woman-ghost. ' It would be doing no wrong to — 
 anybody, would it ? ' 
 
 * Of course, it wouldn't. Ghosts cannot harm the 
 living,' said the man-ghost. * The worst they can 
 do is to haunt them. Let us go.' 
 
 ' The spring is early this year,' said the woman- 
 ghost. ^ One feels it breathing already in the town. 
 Even here the buds are thickening on the trees ; but 
 the country must already be leaf and blossom and 
 birds.' 
 
 ' Let us go and teach the birds to sing,' said the 
 man-ghost. 
 
 'We might even teach them to fly,' said the 
 woman-ghost, laughing over the two straws daintily 
 
326 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 held m her lips, like pipes of some frail forgotten 
 music. 
 
 * O winter of my heart — when comes the spring . . .* 
 the man-ghost began to recite in a low voice, half to 
 himself : 
 
 * I am sore weary of these death-like days, 
 This shroud unheaving of eternal snow — 
 O winter of my heart — when comes the spring?' 
 
 * Whom did you write that to ? ' asked the woman- 
 ghost jealously. ' It was not to me. . . 
 
 * No, it was not to you, dear ghost,' smiled the 
 man, 'it was to a living woman.' 
 
 'Don't think of the living to-day/ said the 
 woman-ghost. ' It is ungallant, at the very least' 
 
 * You are right,' answered the other. * It was but 
 a passing thought, and it is passed. Now, dear 
 ghost, I am your own ghost again. . . 
 
 ' I wonder if you really love me,' asked the 
 woman-ghost. 
 
 * So much as one ghost can love another ghost,' 
 the man-ghost answered. 
 
 And then, looking at the clock, they saw that it 
 was already the hour of the betrothed. 
 
 ^Before you go, tell me in return if you really love 
 me,' asked the man-ghost. 
 
 'As much as a living woman can love a ghost,' 
 she answered half-sadly, half-laughingly ; and her 
 skirts rustled away to leave the man-ghost pondering 
 
THE TWO GHOSTS 327 
 
 on the enigmatic reply. Suppose he should cease 
 to be a ghost! Suppose she were really a living 
 woman ! 
 
 He watched her through the caf^ window as she 
 caught the car. One thing was certain. Her new 
 spring hat was quite pretty. 
 
 On the morning of the i8th of April the two 
 ghosts met very early at their caf6, and after first 
 drinking through the straws very solemnly to the 
 anniversary they were about to celebrate — but 
 which, shame upon him ! the man-ghost had in 
 vain tried to place — they discussed their plans for 
 the day. 
 
 * Shall we go — there?' said the woman-ghost. 
 The word * there' only deepened the mystery for 
 
 the man-ghost, but he was able to say an appropriate 
 thing. 
 
 * Do you think we dare ? ' he asked. ' It is always 
 such a terrible risk, revisiting places where one has 
 been so happy.' 
 
 'Do you think we shall run any risk to-day?' 
 asked the woman-ghost, looking at once fondly and 
 searchingly into his face. 
 
 For answer the man-ghost looked at her a long, 
 long look, and presently asked the waiter to order 
 a hansom to take them to the Grand Central. He 
 could remember the Grand Central — but what on 
 earth was the name of the other station ! For, you 
 
328 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 see, they had been so often in the country together, 
 so often that New York State made a kind of 
 Palestine, sown thick for them with holy places. 
 But which was the holy place connected with 
 April 1 8th? All the way in the cab the man-ghost 
 was cudgelling his brains for the name of the place, 
 but at length they arrived at the depot without his 
 having been able to recall it. As he handed the 
 woman-ghost out of the hansom, a desperate 
 expedient occurred to him. 
 
 * I have just remembered a telegram I must send,' 
 he said. * Do you mind getting the tickets while I 
 send it?' and he pressed some money into her hand. 
 
 She went off gaily, poor little woman-ghost, and 
 the man-ghost felt the awful wretch that he was — 
 but is it the fault of man that he was not born with 
 a woman's memory for anniversaries ? 
 
 Presently they met again. She handed him the 
 tickets, and how eagerly he read them ! Now, at 
 all events, he knew the name of the station, but as 
 they had been there together at least six times, he 
 was still at a loss as to which visit they were about 
 to celebrate. However, that was a mere detail, 
 now that he knew the name of the place ; and so 
 they started off, happy as birds — for perhaps the 
 deepest bond between them had always been their 
 mutual love for what is usually called * nature,' a 
 love peculiarly their own. They both knew others 
 
THE TWO GHOSTS 329 
 
 who loved ' nature/ but no one quite as they loved 
 it. The purest hours of companionship they had 
 ever known had been out together in the fields and 
 woods ; and to be once more in the country together 
 with the perilous intoxication of spring all around 
 them, the vivid fountains of green leaves, piercingly 
 fresh, the balm in the air, and oh, the birds ! — was 
 a happiness that made them forget awhile that they 
 were only ghosts. So might two lost spirits escaped 
 awhile from Hades into the upper air scent the 
 sweet earth-smell of the mould, fill their arms with 
 fragrant boughs, and passionately feed their eyes on 
 the good sky. 
 
 ' It is good to be here,' said the man ; ' let us 
 build two tabernacles ! ' 
 
 * Two ! ' laughed the woman-ghost. 
 
 And, as by this they were in the ungossiping 
 wilderness, they took hands and ran together over 
 the rocky meadows, for sheer joy in being there 
 together under the sky. 
 
 At last they found the very meadows, the very 
 rocks, overshadowed by the very trees, where they 
 had been so happy that i8th of April. A stream 
 had been running close by three years before. It 
 was running still. All was just the same. And 
 here they were once more, to complete the punc- 
 tuality of nature. Only one object was missing 
 from the landscape — a poor old consumptive horse 
 
330 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 that had neighed mournfully and sometimes start- 
 lingly far down the meadows, on the i8th of April, 
 three years ago. 
 
 It was the woman-ghost's recalling this old 
 horse that suddenly brought back to the man- 
 ghost's mind the whole set of circumstances which 
 beforehand he had been in vain trying to piece 
 together. At last the anniversary was clear to 
 him, and he could enter into its memorial rites 
 without the sense of hypocrisy, or the fear of some 
 disastrous blunder. 
 
 And, even with a defective memory for senti- 
 ment, it surely had been strange if the man-ghost 
 had not responded to the vernal call of resurrection 
 which breathed and piped and fluted and rippled 
 all about them. The whole sunlit world was rising 
 from the dead — might not these two dead ones 
 arise also, and once again be happy together in 
 the sun? All too soon they must die the second 
 death, from which there is no resurrection. Surely 
 this day in the sun might be theirs, the last day they 
 would ever spend in the spring sunshine together. 
 Was it so very much to ask — so very much to steal ! 
 
 The two ghosts sat side by side on a ledge of 
 rock high up over the world. A great tree over- 
 shadowed them, and it was very cosy. Looking 
 down, they could see all the coloured spring : farm- 
 houses smothered in blossom, ploughed fields already 
 
THE TWO GHOSTS 331 
 
 vivid with the ascending blade, nooks and corners 
 of meadow embroidered with flowers. 
 
 * It looks almost as if it might be the spring/ 
 said the man sadly, ' the last spring.' 
 
 * The last? . . queried the woman-ghost. 
 
 ^ I mean together,' answered the man, not with 
 entire satisfaction to the woman-ghost. 
 
 Actually the man-ghost had made beautiful ar- 
 rangements for all the springs that remained for him. 
 He intended to spend them with the One Woman. 
 But the occasion demanded a certain picturesque 
 pessimism, and he lived up to the occasion. 
 
 ^ I think,* presently said the woman-ghost, who 
 loved nothing so much as a literary allusion, * that 
 Persephone must have felt as I do now when she 
 arose each year from the shades. How sweet to 
 breathe again the smell of green leaves and the 
 newly-turned mould ! How sweet to breathe it 
 with you . . 
 
 * Properly speaking,' the man-ghost answered 
 slyly, *you oughtn't to be breathing it with me; 
 I mean, of course, in your character as Persephone. 
 You should be breathing it with your mother, 
 Ceres . . .' 
 
 * I love you even more than my mother,' said 
 the woman-ghost, smiling. 
 
 'Your learned allusion,' said the man-ghost 
 presently, 'reminds me of something I forgot to 
 
332 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 say the other day when we opened that treasure- 
 chest together. It was obvious enough, of course, 
 and hardly worth mentioning. Indeed, I'm sure 
 you thought of it yourself — thought, I mean, of 
 the famous box of Pandora . . 
 
 ' Of course I did . . . but shall I tell you what 
 I chiefly thought of ? ' 
 
 * That, after all the superficial trouble occasioned 
 by the opening of the box, after all the various 
 plagues and vexations and dilemmas had made 
 their escape, there was still Hope lying at the 
 bottom of the box.' 
 
 In reply the man-ghost pressed the .woman- 
 ghost's hand and looked a long look into her face, 
 which was his way of saying everything, yet saying 
 nothing ; and the woman-ghost, who, it must have 
 been gathered, was no fool, was far from being 
 deceived by this code method of saying nothing. 
 She began to understand. 
 
 * I am hungry,' she said presently. * Suppose we 
 open this Pandora's basket?' 
 
 They had brought with them a little luncheon- 
 basket packed with dainties, and they laughingly 
 unpacked it together. 
 
 * There is, you see, Hope at the bottom of the 
 box,' said the man-ghost, lifting out a silver flask 
 of considerable dimensions, which the woman-ghost 
 
 *Do.' 
 
THE TWO GHOSTS 333 
 
 had given him as a birthday present three years 
 before. * See how faithful I am to you ! Wherever 
 I go, this goes with me/ 
 
 * Faithful creature indeed ! ' laughed the woman- 
 ghost. *I am so glad I chose something useful.' 
 
 They had no straws with them, so perforce they 
 drank out of the flask together, as indeed they had 
 drunk three years before. Then they turned to the 
 various dainties, and ate heartily, and laughed 
 together, and grew happier and happier each hour. 
 
 After they had been sitting together in silence 
 for a long time, the woman-ghost said — 
 
 * Do you remember the Day of the Marguerites ? ' 
 That day the man-ghost did in very truth re- 
 member. 
 
 *Do you remember the Day of the Tower?' 
 That also he remembered. 
 
 ' Do you remember the poem you wrote me about 
 those two days ? ' 
 
 ' I remember that I wrote a poem, but I cannot 
 remember the poem.' 
 
 * I can,' said the woman^ghost, leaning against his 
 shoulder. ' Would you like me to say it to you ? ' 
 
 And then the woman-ghost recited as follows — 
 
 * Of all the days, we said that day was good 
 
 When, *neath the blue publicity of heaven, 
 Amid the flickering marguerites we stood, 
 And gave— or thought we gave — what once is given 
 
334 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 And only once is taken quite away ; 
 
 But, child, since then how rich the months that 
 passed 
 
 With child-glad hours and many a perfect day, 
 Nor maybe yet the happiest or the last. 
 
 ' Yet, love, I wonder if the day we went 
 
 Up that high tower, and stood up in the sky, 
 Yet unto earth returned again, was meant 
 
 To symbolise our love : nay, even I, 
 In a dim-lighted, unbelieving hour, 
 Have wondered if we really climbed the tower ! ' 
 
 'You are right,' she added, *we never climbed 
 the tower ' ; and after a pause she whispered : * Is 
 it yet too late ? ' 
 
 The man-ghost shook his head sadly : ' Who 
 knows? * he said. 
 
 'What are we to do?' said the woman-ghost, 
 holding him more tightly in her arms. 
 
 'Time will show us what to do,' answered the 
 man-ghost evasively. 
 
 ' I believe in that no longer,' she answered ; ' it 
 is for us to tell Time what to do. . . 
 
 * It will all come right, . . said the man cheer- 
 fully. 
 
 * I have ceased to believe in things coming 
 right,' said the woman, * unless we make them 
 come right . . .' 
 
 At that moment the man-ghost, noting that the 
 sky was becoming overshadowed with the approach- 
 
THE TWO GHOSTS 335 
 
 ing night, involuntarily took out his watch. It was 
 later than he thought. 
 
 * My dear ! ' he said thoughtlessly, * I am sorry, 
 but we must go at once, or we shall miss your 
 train/ 
 
 ' I care nothing about trains, I care for nothing,' 
 the woman-ghost answered. ' I love you only. I 
 would rather miss my train than catch it. . . 
 
 For answer the man-ghost took the silver flask 
 by the bottom and held it with the neck down- 
 wards. It was empty. 
 
 *Dear little ghost,' he said, *I understand. It 
 has been a wonderful spring day. The spring has 
 turned our heads — but it mustn't turn our hearts. 
 You must catch your train.' 
 
 In explanation of the conclusion, I must add 
 that a ghost, however much it may love another 
 ghost, is anxious above all things to be alive 
 again, alive particularly in the social world. This 
 it can only become by attaching itself to some 
 living person, who will give it a simple undivided 
 love. Now both these ghosts with which this 
 story has dealt alike felt the need of such re- 
 vivification. The man-ghost, as I have said, had 
 never really been a ghost, for all the time another 
 living woman had been feeding him with her heart's 
 blood. 
 
336 PAINTED SHADOWS 
 
 That was why the woman-ghost, when she first 
 met him again, took him for a living man — and 
 hoped to live again through him. And a living 
 man indeed he was, for every one else but her. 
 For her only he was still a ghost. 
 
 Therefore, when she came to think over it, she 
 was thankful that he had made her catch her 
 train, and so arrive in time for dinner with her 
 betrothed. 
 
 As for the man-ghost, he went back to the 
 living woman ; and she looked up at him and 
 laughed — 
 
 'Well, how about the great anniversary?' she 
 asked. 
 
 'We are finished,' he said, laughing; *we have 
 died the second death. The ghosts have laid each 
 other.' 
 
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 is written throughout with undoubted literary skill." 
 
 By VICTORIA CROSSE 
 
 THE WOMAN WHO DIDN'T 
 
 Crown 8vo. 3^. 6d. Third Edition 
 
 Speaker: — "The feminine gift of intuition seems to be developed with 
 almost uncanny strength, and what she sees she has the power of flashing 
 upon her readers with wonderful vividness and felicity of phrase. . . . 
 A strong and subtle study of feminine nature, biting irony, restrained passion, 
 and a style that is both forcible and polished." 
 
John Lane's List of Fiction 
 
 By GEORGE EGERTON 
 
 KEYNOTES 
 
 Crown 8vo. 3J. bd. net Ninth Edition 
 
 St. James's Gazette : — "This is a collection of eight of the prettiest short 
 stories that have appeared for many a day. They turn for the most part on 
 feminine traits of character ; in fact, the book is a little psychological study 
 of woman under various circumstances. The characters are so admirably 
 drawn, and the scenes and landscapes are described with so much and so rare 
 vividness, that we cannot help being almost spell-bound by their perusal." 
 
 Daily News : — " Singularly artistic in its brilliant suggestiveness." 
 
 Literary World : — "These lovely sketches are informed by such throbbing 
 feeling, such insight into complex woman, that we with all speed and warmth 
 advise those who are in search of splendid literature to purchase ' Keynotes ' 
 without delay." 
 
 DISCORDS 
 
 Crown 8vo. 31. 6d, net Sixth Edition 
 
 Daily Telegraph .-—"These masterly word-sketches." 
 
 Literary World : — " She has given, times without number, examples of her 
 ripening powers that astonish us. Her themes astound ; her audacity is 
 tremendous. In the many great passages an advance is proved that is little 
 short of amazing." 
 
 Speaker ;— "The book is true to human nature, for the author has genius, 
 and, let us add, has heart. It is representative ; it is, in the hackneyed 
 phrase, a human document.'* 
 
 SYMPHONIES 
 
 Crown 8vo- 6j. Second Edition 
 
 St. James's Gazette: — "There is plenty of pathos and no little power in 
 the volume before us." 
 
 Daily News: — "The impressionistic descriptive passages and the human 
 touches that abound in the book lay hold of the imagination and linger in the 
 memory of the reader." 
 
 Daily Telegraph :—'' The: story entitled 'A Chilian Episode' is actually 
 alive with the warm light and the sensuous climate of the Bay of Valparaiso." 
 
 FANTASIAS 
 
 Crown 8vo. 35. 6d. net 
 
 Daily Chronicle: — "These ' Fantasias ' are pleasant reading — typical scenes 
 or tales upon the poetry and prose of life, prostitution, and the beauty of 
 dreams and truth." 
 
 ^ca(/e//7i/ ;—" The writing is often extremely clever: the clever, self- 
 conscious writing of one who has read much." 
 
John Lane's List of Fiction 
 
 By the Author of " Elizabeth's Children " 
 
 THE YOUNG O'BRIENS 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6s, 
 
 Vanity Fair: — A delightful book . . . the majority will say as we do — 
 read it." 
 
 Saturday Review ** Delightful ... the author treats them (the Young 
 O'Briens) very skilfully." 
 
 HELEN ALLISTON 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6s, 
 
 Literary World : — '* A succession of delighting chapters, ending with one in 
 which the author excels herself. It is a long time since we have read a 
 more graceful conclusion." 
 
 Pali Mall Gazette: "The book has vivacity, fluency, colour, more than a 
 touch of poetry and passion. . . . We shall look forward with interest to 
 future work by the author of ' Helen Alliston.' 
 
 Daily Graphic: — "The dialogue all through is sparkling with wit . . . 
 scarcely a dull line from beginning to end . . . the children are delightful." 
 
 Daily News : — "A singularly pretty narrative." 
 
 St. James's Gazette: — ** All child lovers will delight in this book." 
 
 Bystander: — " A delightful story, thoroughly fresh and wholesome, written 
 n a light and pleasant style, and with considerable literary skill." 
 
 ELIZABETH'S CHILDREN 
 
 Crown Svo. 6s, Fifth Edition 
 
 Daily Telegraph : — ** The book is charming . . . the author . . . has a 
 delicate fanciful touch, a charming imagination . . . skilfully suggests 
 character and moods ... is bright and witty, and writes about children 
 with exquisite knowledge and sympathy." 
 
 Daily Mail: — "The work is witty, neatly phrased, full of fun and good 
 feeling from the first page to the last." 
 
 Morning Leader: — "Very prettily written. . . . The author has a 
 charming style." 
 
 By W. S. JACKSON 
 
 HELEN OF TROY, N.Y. 
 
 Crown Svo. 6s, 
 
 Daily Chronicle: — "The story is at once original, impossible, artificial, 
 and very amusing. Go, get the work and read." 
 
 NINE POINTS OF THE LAW 
 
 Crown Svo. 6^. 
 
 Manchester Guardian :—'' The kindly humorous philosophy of this 
 most diverting story is as remarkable as its attractive style. There is hardly 
 a page without something quotable, some neat bit of phrasing or apt wording 
 of a truth." 
 
John Lane's List of Fiction 
 
 By HERBERT FLOWERDEW 
 A CELIBATE'S WIFE 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6s, Second Edition 
 
 Speaker: — "Mr. Flowerdew does undoubtedly exhibit a power of graphic 
 and vivid narration." 
 
 THE REALIST 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette : — *' Those who love a story which will hold their attention 
 closely from the first page to the last need not go further than ' The Realist.' " 
 
 By HAROLD FREDERIC 
 MARCH HARES 
 
 Crown 8vo. 3^. 6d, net Third Edition 
 
 MRS. ALBERT GRUNDY 
 
 OBSERVATIONS IN PHILISTIA 
 Fcap. 8vo. 3^. bd. net Second Edition 
 
 By ELIZABETH GODFREY 
 
 THE WINDING ROAD 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6^. Second Edition 
 
 Literary World: — "A carefully written story. . . Miss Godfrey has the 
 mind of a poet ; her pages breathe of the beautiful in nature." 
 
 THE BRIDAL OF ANSTACE 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 Westminster Gazette : — *'An individual charm and a sympathetic appli- 
 cation have gone to the conception of Miss Godfrey's book, a remarkable 
 power of characterisation to its making, and a refined literary taste to its 
 composition." 
 
 By VALENTINA HAWTREY 
 PERRONELLE 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6^. 
 
 Times : — " The story is a passionate one, a thing of lightning flashes of 
 pleasure and pain. . . . With no display of cflfort, with no laborious intro- 
 duction of correct detail, she wraps everything in an atmosphere of old Paris. 
 Here is all the mediaeval delight in beautiful things, in craftsmanship ; here 
 all the cruelty and brutality, all the passion and stress, and the brave 
 uncertainty of life." 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette : — "A piece of exquisite literary work." 
 
John Lane's List of Fiction 
 
 By RICHARD GARNETT 
 
 THE TWILIGHT OF THE 
 GODS AND OTHER STORIES 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6s, Second Edition 
 
 Daily Chronicle: — "A subtle compound of philosophy and irony. Let 
 the reader take these stories as pure fun — lively incident and droll character 
 — and he will be agreeably surprised to find how stimulating they are." 
 
 Times: — "Here is learning in plenty, drawn from all ages and most 
 languages, but of dryness or dulness not a sentence. The book bubbles 
 with laughter. . . . His sense of humour has a wide range." 
 
 By ANNIE E. HOLDSWORTH 
 
 A NEW PAOLO AND 
 FRANCESC A 
 
 Crown Svo. 6j. 
 
 Bookman : — ' ' Picturesque, intense, and poetical." 
 
 By J. HENRY HARRIS 
 CORNISH SAINTS & SINNERS 
 
 With Illustrations hy L. RAVEN - HILL. 
 Crown Svo. 6^. 
 
 THE EARL OF IDDESLEIGH 
 LUCK O' LASSENDALE 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6^. 
 
 Mr. A. T. QuiLLER-CoucH, in the Daily News: — " It puzzles me how any 
 man who admires * Mansfield Park ' intelligently can treat ' Luck o' Lassen- 
 dale ' as a thing of no account.*' 
 
 CHARMS 
 
 Crown Svo. 6^. 
 
 St. James's Gazette :—'' A charming and pathetic tale, absorbing to the 
 end." 
 
John Lane's List of Fiction 
 
 By HENRY HARLAND 
 THE 
 
 CARDINAL'S SNUFF-BOX 
 
 A New Edition, with Title-Page, Cover Design, 
 End Papers, and nearly lOO Drawings by G. C. 
 
 WiLMSHURST. 
 
 Crown 8vo. bs, 165th Thousand 
 
 Academy : — " The drawings are all excellent in style and really illustrative 
 of the tale." 
 
 Times : — "A book among a thousand." 
 Spectator : — *' A charming romance." 
 Saturday Review : — " Wholly delightful." 
 Pall IVIall Gazette : — " Dainty and delicious." 
 
 MY FRIEND FROSPERO 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. Third Edition 
 
 Times : — There is no denying the charm of the work, the delicacy and 
 frag^ancy of the style, the sunny play of the dialogue, the vivacity of the 
 wit, and the graceful flight of the fancy." 
 
 World : — " The reading of it is a pleasure rare and unalloyed." 
 
 THE LADY PARAMOUNT 
 
 Crown 8vo. 65. Fifty-fifth Thousand 
 
 COMEDIES AND ERRORS 
 
 Crown Svo. bs. Third Edition 
 
 Mr. W. L. Courtney, in the Daily Telegraph: — "A kind of younger 
 Pater, emancipated from those cramping academic bonds which occasionally 
 injured Mr. Pater's work. Mr. Harland is younger, freer, with juvenile 
 spirits and a happy keenness and interest in life. He is more of a creator 
 and_ less of a critic ; perhaps some day he will even achieve the same kind 
 of literary distinction as that which adorned his older rival." 
 
 Mr. Henry James, in Fortnightly Reuieiv : — "Mr. Harland has clearly 
 thought out a form. . . . He has mastered a method and learned how to 
 paint. . . . His art is all alive with felicities and delicacies." 
 
 GREY ROSES 
 
 Crown Svo. 31. 6d. net Fourth Edition 
 
 Daily Telegraph : — " * Grey Roses ' are entitled to rank among the choicest 
 flowers of the realms of romance." 
 
 Spectator : — " Really delightful. ' Castles near Spain * is as near perfection 
 as it could well be." 
 
 MADEMOISELLE MISS 
 
 Crown Svo. 31. 6d. Third Edition 
 
 Speaker All through the book we are pleased and entertained." 
 
John Lane's List of Fiction 
 
 By RICHARD LE GALLIENNE 
 THE QUEST OF THE 
 
 GOLDEN GIRL: A Romance 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. Fifteenth Edition 
 
 World : — ** It is certainly a book to read, for it would be a pity to miss 
 the many exquisite passages it contains." 
 Daily News : — ** A piece of literary art which compels our admiration." 
 
 THE 
 
 ROMANCE OFZION CHAPEL 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6s, Second Edition 
 
 St James's Gazette ;— *' Mr. Le Gallienne's masterpiece." 
 
 THE 
 
 BOOK BILLS OF NARCISSUS 
 
 Crown 8vo. 31. 6d. net Second Edition 
 
 THE 
 
 WORSHIPPER OF THE IMAGE 
 
 Crown 8vo. 35. 6d. net 
 
 Daily Chfonicle : — " Contains passages of a poignancy which Mr. Le 
 Gallienne has never before compassed." 
 
 By A. E. J. LEGGE 
 
 THE FORD 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. Second Edition 
 
 standard: — **An impressive work . . . clever and thoughtful. *The 
 Ford ' deserves to be largely read." 
 
 Mr. James Douglas, in Star: — "It is full of finely phrased wit and 
 costly satire. It is modern in its handling, and it is admirably written." 
 
 MUTINEERS 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 Speaker: — "An interesting story related with admirable lucidity and 
 remarkable grasp of character. Mr. Legge writes with polish and grace." 
 
 BOTH GREAT AND SMALL 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 Saturday Review : — "We read on and on with increasing pleasure.'' 
 
John Lane's List of Fiction 
 
 By WILLIAM J. LOCKE 
 Crown 8vo. Price 6s. each 
 
 THE BELOVED VAGABOND 
 
 Truth : — *' Certainly it is the most brilliant piece of work Mr. Locke has 
 done." 
 
 THE MORALS OF 
 MARCUS ORDEYNE 
 
 Mr. C. K. Shorter, in Sphere : — ** A book which has just delighted my 
 heart." 
 
 Truth ;— ** Mr. Locke's new novel is one of the most artistic pieces of work 
 I have met with for many a day." 
 
 Mr. L. F. Austin, in Daily Chronicle: — "Mr. Locke succeeds, indeed, 
 in every crisis of this most original story." 
 
 Vanity Fair: — "A very striking work.*' 
 
 IDOLS 
 
 Daily Telegraph : — "A brilliantly written and eminently readable book.*' 
 
 DERELICTS 
 
 Daily Chronicle : — '* Mr. Locke tells his story in a very true, very moving, 
 and very noble book. If anyone can read the last chapter with dry eyes we 
 shall be surprised. ' Derelicts' is an impressive and important book.*' 
 
 THE USURPER 
 
 World : — '* This quite uncommon novel." 
 
 WHERE LOVE IS 
 
 Standard : — '* A brilliant piece of work." 
 
 THE WHITE DOVE 
 
 Times : — " An interesting story, full of dramatic scenes." 
 
 AT THE GATE OF SAMARIA 
 
 Crown 8vo. Price 3^. 6d. each vol. 
 
 A STUDY IN SHADOWS 
 
 THE DEMAGOGUE AND LADY 
 PHAYRE 
 
John Lane's List of Fiction 
 
 By CHARLES MARRIOTT 
 
 THE COLUMN 
 
 Crown 8vo. 65, Thirteenth Thousand 
 
 Daily News : — " A notable book ... an important book. A novel which 
 brings together strong and subtle power of suggesting character, remarkable 
 humour, and all the best faculties of the writers known to every one." 
 
 Mr. W. L. Courtney, in Daily Telegraph Whoever Mr. Charles 
 Marriott may be, he has written a very remarkable novel. . . . Let us be 
 thankful to Mr. Charles Marriott. He has written a book very fresh, very 
 original, very interesting and suggestive. He has handled situations in 
 the true spirit of an artist. His style is careful. Above all, he thinks 
 for himself." 
 
 Tfuth : — " The promising work of a powerful pen." 
 
 LOVE WITH HONOUR 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 Mr. W. L. Courtney, in Daily Telegraph M.r. Marriott handles his 
 scenes in the true spirit of an artist. There are chapters in this book which 
 are not only picturesquely written, but intrinsically vivid and strong." 
 
 Outlook : — Mr. Charles Marriott and the public are equally to be con- 
 gratulated." 
 
 THE HOUSE ON THE SANDS 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6.^. 
 
 Daily Telegraph: — "Mr. Marriott's new book has all the qualities of a 
 good novel and many of the qualities of a great one. ... It contains some 
 superb character drawing, much subtlety of wit and genuine epigram." 
 
 By CONSTANCE E. MAUD 
 AN ENGLISH GIRL IN PARIS 
 
 Crown Svo. 6^. Fourth Edition 
 
 Onlooker : — " * An English Girl in Paris ' is tout a fait Parisienne. It is 
 chic^ it is amusing, and it is artistic." 
 
 Westminster Gazette: — "A delightful book — a book which keeps one 
 constantly interested and amused ; a book through which there is* a constant 
 ripple of humour." 
 
 Outlook : — "A charming book ; and a piece of literature as well." 
 
John Lane's List of Fiction 
 
 By T. BARON RUSSELL 
 
 BORLASE AND SON 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6s, 
 
 Bookman : — " Judged as literature, we know of no novel published this year 
 that is likely to rank higher than ' Borlase and Son.' The people are 
 intensely human ; the life it describes is every-day life ; its events grip the 
 attention and haunt the memory, as things do that have really happened." 
 
 Vanity Fair : — " Demands attention as a very notable book." 
 
 Daily Ctironicle: — " An author who thoroughly knows what he is writing 
 about. . . . The details of the life in the Peckham draper's are made 
 interesting to the reader by the sheer force of their realism. . . . Borlase 
 senior is an admirable piece of character drawing." 
 
 St. James's Gazette : — "Mr. Russell has evidently learned his subject from 
 inside, and he has a ready pen as well as the real faculty of making his 
 reader see what he himself has seen." 
 
 Morning Leader: — "The real originality of the book lies in the author's 
 remarkable knowledge of, and insight into, the life which he describes, and 
 his power of making his personages live and move." 
 
 A GUARDIAN OF THE POOR 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 Pall Mall Gazette: — "Mr. Baron Russell has succeeded so admirably, so 
 convincingly, in this difficult task, that I only check the eulogies quivering 
 at the point of my pen for fear they may read like * gush.' " 
 
 Mr. CouLSON Kernahan, in the Temple Magazine : — " Haunting, and 
 all the more haunting because pictured with such realism and such art. Mr. 
 Russell is the Zola of Camberwell and Peckham." 
 
 THE MANDATE 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 Graphic : — " Besides its merits of originality, it has those of a remarkably 
 virile style, and of a capacity for the portrayal of real passion which we 
 trust to meet again." 
 
 Bookman : — " Original and striking. . . . There is unmistakable talent 
 in the book. Mr. Russell should go far." 
 
 Outlook: — " A peculiar blending of careful realism with careful sensation. 
 The main characters are well drawn." 
 
 Morning Leader : — " ' The Mandate ' is a novel out of the common, and is 
 stamped with the impress of no little creative power." 
 
John Lane's List of Fiction 
 
 By HERMANN SUDERMANN 
 THE UNDYING PAST 
 
 A Translation of" Es War" by Beatrice Marshall 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. Fifth Thousand 
 
 standard: — '* It is practically impossible to have anything but praise for this 
 powerful and virile translation of Sudermann's impressive work. . . . The 
 book does not even suggest to one that it is a story originally written in 
 another language." 
 
 REGINA; or, THE SINS 
 OF THE FATHERS 
 
 A Translation of "Der Katzensteg," by Beatrice 
 Marshall 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. Third Edition 
 
 Spectator: — "The author has handled his terrible theme with wonderful force 
 and simplicity." 
 
 St. James's Gazette: — "A striking piece of work, full of excitement and 
 strongly-drawn character." 
 
 By HENRY SIENKIEWICZ 
 THE FIELD OF GLORY 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. Fifth Thousand 
 
 Spectator : — *'A spirited, picturesque romance . . . full of adventures, 
 related with all the author's picturesqueness of detail and vigour of outline." 
 
 By A. C. THYNNE 
 
 SIR BEVILL 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 Academy: — ** Altogether delightful, setting the reader amid broom and 
 heather on the Devon Moors, or by the sounding sea on the Cornish coast. 
 . . . All the everyday life is admirably rendered, and many of the side 
 characters are brilliantly sketched." 
 
 By FIONA MACLEOD 
 
 MOUNTAIN LOVERS 
 
 Crown 8vo. 
 
 6s. 
 
 New Edition 
 
John Lane's List of Fiction 
 
 By G. S. STREET 
 THE 
 
 WISE AND THE WAYWARD 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 Academy: — "Mr. Street writes easily, with distinction ... he wields a 
 fine swiftly-poised phrase, and has the gift of throwing his characters and 
 situations into strong relief, happily and without tediousness." 
 
 Westminster Gazette : — The cleverness of Mr. Street's analysis is 
 undeniable." 
 
 World : — " Distinctly a book to be read." 
 
 THE 
 
 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A BOY 
 
 Fcap. 8vo. 3J. 6d. net Fifth Edition 
 
 Pa/l Mall Gazette: — "A creation in which there appears to be no flaw." 
 
 Reuiew of Reuieu/s : — '* A most brilliant satire." 
 
 World : — "A delicate and delightful piece of literature." 
 
 THE 
 
 TRIALS OF THE BANTOCKS 
 
 Crown 8vo. 3^. 6d. net 
 
 Saturday Reuiew : — " Mr. Street has a very delicate gift of satire." 
 Blach and White: — "All very funny, and quite in the best style of 
 Mr. Street's humour." 
 
 Times : — '* A piece of irony that is full of distinction and wit." 
 
 By HUGH DE SELINCOURT. 
 
 A BOY'S MARRIAGE 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6;. Second Edition 
 
 Evening Standard : — ** Exceedingly realistic . . . but does not give the 
 impression that anything is expatiated upon for the sake of effect. ... A 
 daring but sincere and simple book . . . likely to attract a great deal of 
 attention." 
 
 Tribune ; — " Mr. de Selincourt has written an extremely good story of love 
 and trouble, and has managed to present a difficult problem in a delicate yet 
 forcible way." 
 
 THE STRONGEST FLUME 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6s, 
 
John Lane's List of Fiction 
 
 By EDITH WHARTON 
 THE GREATER INCLINATION 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6^. New Edition 
 
 By A. C. FOX-DAVIES 
 
 THE DANGERVILLE 
 INHERITANCE 
 
 A Detective Story. 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 By H. B. MARRIOTT WATSON 
 AT THE FIRST CORNER 
 
 Crown 8vo. 35. 6d. net 
 
 Saturday Review: — "Admirably conceived and brilliantly finished. " 
 
 GALLOPING DICK: A Romance 
 Crown 8vo. 6j. 
 
 Daily Telegmpfi : — "An always attractive theme ... a thoroughly 
 effective style." 
 
 By M. P. WILLCOCKS 
 
 WIDDICOMBE 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. 
 
 Evening Standard ;— A fine . . . unusual novel . . . striking studies of 
 women." 
 
 THE WINGLESS VICTORY 
 
 Crown 8vo. 6s. Third Edition 
 
 Times : — " Such books are worth keeping on the shelves even by the 
 classics, for they are painted in colours that do not fade." 
 
 Tribune : — "Splendid ... a novel to read and to remember." 
 Glasgow News : — ** An enthralling book." 
 
 LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD, VIGO ST., W. 
 NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY, 110-114, WEST 32nd ST.