i?:y!^^b-- 
 
 ^L I B RARY 
 
 OF THE 
 UN IVERSITY 
 or ILLINOIS 
 
 nS56to 
 
 V.I
 
 
 TO HIS OWN MASTER
 
 NEW HOVELS AT EVERY LIBRARY. 
 
 THE DICTATOR. By Justin McCarthy, M. P. 3 vols. 
 THE RED SULTAN. By J. Maclaren Cobban. 3 vols. 
 HEATHER AND SNOW. By George MacDonald. 2 vols. 
 THE REBEL QUEEN. By Walter Besant. 3 vols. 
 THE SCALLYWAG. By Grant Allen. 3 vols. 
 THE WOMAN OF THE IRON BRACELETS. By Frank 
 
 Barrett. 3 vols. 
 TO HIS OWN MASTER. By Alan St. Aubyn. 3 vols. 
 THE GUN-RUNNER. By Bertram Mitford. i vol. 
 THE CONSTABLE OF ST. NICHOLAS. By Edwin Lester 
 
 Arnold, i vol. 
 DOCTOR PASCAL. By E. Zola, i vol. 
 'TO LET,' etc. By B. M. Croker. i vol. 
 A TRYING PATIENT, etc. By James Pavn. i vol. 
 
 London : CHATTO & WINDUS, Piccadilly.
 
 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 31 Wovcl 
 
 BY 
 
 ALAN ST. AUBYN 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 A FELLOW OF TRINITY,' 'THE JUNIOR DEAN,' ' THE OLD MAID'S 
 
 SWEETHEART,' ETC. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES 
 VOL. L 
 
 llont)on 
 CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY 
 
 1893
 
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 
 
 CHAPTER I'AGE 
 
 J' I. THE CROOKED STICK - - - - r 
 
 "" II. THE CURATE OF ST. MICHAEL'S - 17 
 
 III. LADY CAMILLA - - - 37 
 
 ^4 IV. RUS IN URBE - - - " 5^ 
 
 '^ V. BARBE BLEUE - - - "76 
 
 ^^ VI. NAUSICAA - - - - - lOO 
 
 ^ VII. ST. HELENA - - - - - 1 29 
 
 ' VIII. MAD AS A HATTER - - - '157 
 
 IX. ALL IN A GARDEN FAIR - - - 1 69 
 
 v^ X. DOLL - - - - - - 190 
 
 ["^^Xl. MAJOR GROVE - _ . . 207 
 
 ^VXII. A MIRACLE - - - - - 227 
 
 x5 

 
 Digitized by tine Internet Arcinive 
 
 in 2009 with funding from 
 
 University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/tohisownmasterno01stau
 
 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE CROOKED STICK. 
 
 The Rev. Thomas Banister, M.A., was 
 really a lucky fellow. Providence had been 
 good to him all round. 
 
 It would be hard to give a list of the 
 good things that a Kind Hand^ — let us call 
 it by the right name, not chance or Provi- 
 dence — had heaped upon this young man's 
 head. 
 
 It had given him, to begin with, a good 
 father, the Vicar of a West Country parish ; 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 2 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 a good mother goes without saying. What 
 man ever did anything in the world, or was 
 worth anything, who hadn't a good mother ? 
 
 The paternal living in the sweet West 
 Country was a poor living to be held by a 
 poor man, and Tom Banister's father had 
 no private means ; and he had by way of 
 compensation a large family. 
 
 He had no means whatever outside his 
 profession. His one aim in life, besides the 
 duties of his sacred office, which no man ever 
 more conscientiously fulfilled, was to give his 
 sons an education befitting their station. 
 
 He had nothing else to give them. 
 
 There were five sons in that poor W^est 
 Country Vicarage, and, one by one, by dint 
 of much self-denial — that seemed to them 
 in after-life, looking back to it across the 
 years, nothing short of heroic — they were 
 sent out from the parent nest equipped for 
 the batde of life.
 
 THE CROOKED STICK 3 
 
 They knew something even at the time 
 of the daily denial of those gentle, self-less 
 lives, and of the suffering, and pinching, and 
 scraping of those hard, hard times. They 
 knew enough to thank God every day of 
 their lives, when they had grown to be men, 
 for His unspeakable gift — the gift of loving, 
 self-denying parents. 
 
 Those who had borne the suffering and 
 privation so willingly were asleep now under 
 the grass in the green churchyard outside 
 the Vicarage gate, where they had lived and 
 suffered. 
 
 All the sons who had once gathered round 
 that frugal board were provided for now — 
 well provided for. The truth of the old 
 adage had been proved : the righteous had 
 not been forsaken for a single day, and 
 his seed were certainly not begging their 
 bread. 
 
 Tom Banister, the youngest of the five
 
 4 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 Stalwart sons, was so fortunate as to win a 
 sizarship at a college in Cambridge, which 
 we will call St. Botolph's, St. Botolph being 
 the patron saint of beggars and poor men. 
 Not that there were many poor men at 
 St. Botolph's in Tom Banister's time. There 
 was not an undergraduate among them who 
 wore such a threadbare coat as poor Tom, 
 or eked out his slender allowance with such 
 painful economy and forethought. 
 
 Oh, the humiliations and shifts of those 
 early days ! 
 
 It touched him, when a man, to look back 
 on the humiliations of that bare student life, 
 its hardships and privations ; but it touched 
 him more deeply to remember that, when the 
 struggle was over and he reaped the harvest 
 of those early trials, the generous father 
 who had often sent him his last shilling, 
 when appealed to in some pressing need, 
 was no longer there to see it.
 
 THE CROOKED STICK 5 
 
 When prosperity came to Tom Banister, 
 it came with a bound. It brought him quite 
 early in his career, when most men are con- 
 tent to be curates, a Hving — a comfortable 
 living to some men, a rich living to him. 
 Providence did not stop with the living. 
 She had richer gifts in store, and she gave 
 him of her best — her very best. She gave 
 him a lovely wife, and in due course she 
 gave him two lovely children. 
 
 What more was there left for him to 
 desire ? What more could Providence find 
 to give him ? 
 
 She had given him the unspeakable gift 
 of Love. With this great gift were the 
 lesser gifts of health and strength, a hand- 
 some person, and a manly frame. 
 
 Nature had done her best for Tom Banister, 
 and Fortune, in happy emulation, had added 
 her ample store. 
 
 There was not a single cloud on his fair
 
 6 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 horizon. His cup was quite full — danger- 
 ously full — full to the brim. 
 
 The living of Thorpe Regis in the West 
 Country was a town living. There was 
 only one church in the town — the parish 
 church. 
 
 One church provided ample accommoda- 
 tion for the congregation of St. Michael's, 
 for Dissent had established a firm foothold 
 in Thorpe. 
 
 There were already five chapels belonging 
 to different denominations, and any day there 
 might be a sixth. The Christians of Thorpe 
 Regis had a habit of quarrelling among 
 themselves, and breaking up into little fac- 
 tions, and setting up rival conventicles. 
 
 Their quarrels had nothing to do with 
 Tom Banister. His congregation never 
 quarrelled. They were quite a happy family. 
 
 There were daily services in the parish 
 church ; that is, prayers were read every
 
 THE CROOKED STICK 7 
 
 day, and a sermon was preached on Wednes- 
 day evenings, and there were early celebra- 
 tions on Sundays and saints' days. There 
 were the usual parish clubs and friendly 
 societies, something going on every day in 
 the week : Bible - classes, or temperance 
 meetings, or Young Men's or Young 
 Women's Associations, or Bands of Hope, 
 or mothers' meetings. There was always 
 something to keep a curate's zeal from flag- 
 ging ; in addition to all these things there 
 was the school. 
 
 It was not a Board school ; it was an old- 
 fashioned National school, where the Bible 
 was read and taught in the old-fashioned 
 way. It wasn't read only ; it was taught, 
 and the curate had to spend one hour of his 
 busy day in teaching it. Model-drawing and 
 perspective and the piano were not in the 
 curriculum ; the budding agricultural mind 
 was sufficiently exercised in grasping, in a
 
 8 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 feeble, rudimentary way, the three R's, and 
 in stumbling through the Church Catechism. 
 
 What with visiting the sick, teaching the 
 children, attending the meetings, and taking 
 the daily services, the work of the curate of 
 St. Michael's was cut out. If he did his 
 duty he would not have a minute to himself 
 all the week. 
 
 Tom Banister had been particularly lucky 
 in his curates : it was nothing new for him 
 to be lucky ; it would have been an excep- 
 tion to the rule if anything had gone wrong 
 with him. 
 
 He had been so fortunate as to keep one 
 curate four years — an exemplary young man, 
 who had done all, and more than all, he was 
 required to do ; who had never neglected a 
 single duty during all these busy months 
 and years, and had contrived to put in not 
 a few works of supererogation. 
 
 He had his reward in due time.
 
 THE CROOKED STICK 9 
 
 When a vacancy occurred in the Hving of 
 the adjoining village of Thorpe St. Mary, 
 the Bishop of the diocese offered it to 
 Banister's hard - working curate, and the 
 Rector of Thorpe Regis had to look out 
 for a successor. He promptly advertised in 
 the Guardian for a curate. No doubt if the 
 Guardian had been in existence in St. Paul's 
 days, he would have made his wants known 
 through that excellent medium, when Barna- 
 bas had quarrelled with him and Mark had 
 turned away from the work. 
 
 It did not occur to Tom Banister, as it 
 occurs to thin-skinned people in the present 
 day, that it was humiliating to advertise for 
 a curate. He had advertised often enough 
 for a curacy in those old days, and he still 
 recollected the avidity with which he used 
 to read through the list of ' Wanted ' in the 
 columns of the Guardian. 
 
 Other curates read them with avidity now.
 
 lo TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 and the result of their reading caused his 
 post-bag to overflow for several mornings 
 after his advertisement had appeared. 
 
 The answers to this advertisement were a 
 considerable source of trouble to the Rector 
 of St. Michael's. His correspondents were 
 so full of ' views.' He hadn't any ' views ' in 
 particular himself, except to do his duty- 
 according to his lights, and teach the old- 
 fashioned doctrine of the Church of England. 
 
 From among the mass of correspondence 
 he chose a young man who hadn't any 
 ' views,' or, at least, he didn't mention 
 them. 
 
 Perhaps he did not choose wisely. 
 
 He was hampered all the time with a 
 dreadful suspicion that, according to the old 
 rhyme, he should 
 
 * Go round the wood, and round the wood, 
 And pick the crooked stick at last.' 
 
 Morally he did pick the crooked stick.
 
 THE CROOKED STICK ii 
 
 He had offered a tide for Holy Orders, 
 and the candidate he selected in due course 
 offered himself to the Bishop of the diocese 
 for ordination. 
 
 Then came the rub. 
 
 Stephen Dashwood, the candidate selected, 
 was a University man, who had taken a good 
 degree in the Natural Science Tripos ; he 
 had taken a First Class ; he had done excep- 
 tionally well. It is not an easy Tripos to 
 take a First in : many of the best men, the 
 very best men, the shining lights of the 
 age, have only taken a Second Class ; the 
 subjects it embraces are so many, and so 
 wide, practically it has no limits ; and 
 Stephen Dashwood, who had applied to 
 Tom Banister for a title for Orders, for a 
 curacy on a paltry stipend of one hundred 
 pounds a year, had taken a First Class ! 
 
 Why did he choose the Church ? Why 
 didn't he stick to his science ^
 
 12 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 There was yet time for him to go back ; 
 a stumbling-block had already been thrown 
 across the threshold he was so anxious to 
 cross. 
 
 When he applied to his tutor for the 
 customary documents to send to the Bishop's 
 chaplain, college testimonials were refused 
 to him. 
 
 He wrote to Tom Banister apprising him 
 of the fact. The letter, written under 
 such humiliating circumstances, touched him 
 deeply. 
 
 Tom remembered his own youth, and 
 he had a very tender heart. He wrote at 
 once to Dashwood's tutor for an explanation 
 of the reasons for the usual testimonials 
 being withheld. 
 
 He received a reply by return of post — a 
 courteous cut-and- dried reply — stating that 
 Mr. Dash wood had not kept the requisite 
 number of college chapels, had not pre-
 
 THE CROOKED STICK 13 
 
 sented himself at the Lord's Table at the 
 prescribed periods, had been 'sent down' 
 two terms, and had not during his residence 
 at the University given unmixed satisfaction 
 to the college authorities, and, under these 
 circumstances, they felt themselves fully 
 justified in taking the extreme measure of 
 placing a bar across the threshold of his 
 professional career. 
 
 In most cases it would have been an 
 insuperable bar, and a useful and honourable 
 profession would have been closed against 
 him. 
 
 Banister thought he knew his man ; and 
 he knew something of the even-handed 
 justice of alma mater. He remembered 
 his own old college days. He sent the 
 tutor's letter off by the next post to his 
 would-be curate, and requested an explana- 
 tion of the charges brought against him. 
 
 He got the explanation by return.
 
 14 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 Such a thorough, open, candid, outspoken 
 confession, made by one erring human 
 creature to another, he had never read. It 
 shamed him to his very soul that such a 
 confession should have been made to him. 
 
 And, after all, what were the youthful 
 follies that Dashwood confessed ? 
 
 Banister had been guilty of them all in 
 his time ; and he could name men of his own 
 year whose souls were dyed with sins — real 
 sins, ten thousand times deeper than these 
 youthful excesses — who had contrived to 
 keep their chapels, and had been dismissed 
 by alma mater with a benediction accrediting 
 them with eminent Christian graces, and 
 witnessing that they had led virtuous lives, 
 and had been diligent students in many 
 branches of knowledge. 
 
 He could recall dozens of these virtuous 
 youths, who had squandered their money in 
 wicked and foolish excesses, and wasted
 
 THE CROOKED STICK 15 
 
 their terms, taking Poll degrees, and coming 
 out at the tail of the Third Class — and his 
 man had taken a First in a Tripos. 
 
 He was deeply moved by Stephen Dash- 
 wood's manly, straightforward letter. The 
 confession of weakness and folly was so 
 frank, and there was no justification pleaded. 
 He had not, he stated in his letter to 
 Banister, in those thoughtless college days, 
 any intention whatever of entering the 
 Church as a profession. In fact, there 
 were obstacles in the way. He had, like 
 many other students of science, scruples 
 and doubts — serious doubts. Thank Heaven 
 they were all cleared away now, and he had 
 come to his right mind. While they were 
 still with him he could not conscientiously 
 approach the Lord's Table. The call had 
 not come to him until later, when those 
 stormy undergraduate days were over. It 
 had come to him at his mothers death. He
 
 1 6 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 had promised her, at her dying request, that 
 he would consecrate all the powers God had 
 given him to His service. The call had 
 come to him at this solemn time, clear and 
 imperative and unmistakable. It had come 
 to him with such insistence that he had 
 thrown aside all worldly considerations, and 
 risen up at once to follow the Master who 
 had so distinctly called him. 
 
 No one could have read that deeply 
 moving letter and doubted the sincerity of 
 Stephen Dashwood's conversion. 
 
 Banister sent his letter to the Bishop's 
 chaplain, and the Bishop accepted him with- 
 out further question. Two days after his 
 ordination Dashwood came to Thorpe Regis 
 as the curate of St. Michael's.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE CURATE OF ST. MICHAEL's. 
 
 Tom Banister's wife never could under- 
 stand why, with so many applications for the 
 vacant curacy from men with unexceptional 
 characters and quite immaculate University 
 careers, her husband should have gone out 
 of his way to pick a black sheep. 
 
 ' I wonder what your new curate will be 
 like, Tom,' Mrs. Banister said at lunch on 
 the day when Dashwood was expected ; 
 ' will he be very wicked-looking, and frighten 
 the congregation into fits ?' 
 
 Mrs. Banister had an exaggerated way of 
 putting things. 
 
 VOL. I. 2
 
 18 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 ' Why should he be at all wicked-looking, 
 darling ?' asked the Rector. 
 
 He always called his lovely wife ' darling,' 
 and the name suited her. It suited her, to 
 use the expressive phrase of colloquial slang, 
 down to the ground. 
 
 She was as lovely now as the day he 
 married her, seven years ago, when she was 
 the acknowledged belle of the county, and — 
 which was saying a great deal — she was as 
 sweet as she was lovely. He could not have 
 found a better name for her than ' darling.' 
 
 * Oh, because he's got such a bad char- 
 acter. He couldn't be such a black sheep 
 without showing it. I expect he'll have a 
 sinister expression — I wonder what a sinister 
 expression is like ? — and I shouldn't be sur- 
 prised if he had horns somewhere.' 
 
 * Darling, you'll frighten the children if 
 you say such things. Just look at Poppy's 
 face !'
 
 THE CURATE OF ST. MICHAEL'S 19 
 
 Poppy's face was worth looking at. It 
 was the exact counterpart of her beautiful 
 mother's, only it was smaller and rounder 
 and pinker. Not very much pinker. There 
 was the flush of the wild-rose on Mrs. Tom 
 Banister's cheeks that beat all the rouge in 
 the world, but Poppy's eyes were bluer and 
 rounder, and the hair was a paler flaxen. It 
 was such pretty fluffy flaxen hair, and it 
 framed her dear soft little pink face in an 
 aureole of shining gold. 
 
 The blue eyes were opened now to their 
 widest ; they were quite round with wonder. 
 
 ' It's daddy's black sheep we are talk- 
 ing about, Poppy,' Mrs. Tom explained. 
 ' Haven't you seen their dear black faces 
 and their little horns ?" 
 
 'Big horns,' corrected Poppy; 'great — 
 big — big horns !' 
 
 ' Black face, black nose, black eyes, black 
 feets ! Ba, ba, black sheep !' added Tommy-
 
 20 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 kin, who was a small edition of Poppy, only 
 pinker and rounder and curlier. 
 
 The Rector drove over in the dog-cart to 
 the railway -station two miles off, to meet 
 his new curate, and Mrs. Tom and the 
 children accompanied him to the Rectory 
 gate. 
 
 ' Not now, Poppy ; not now, Tommykin !' 
 said the Rector as he drove off, nodding to 
 the children on the path, who were stretching 
 out their little arms to be lifted up on the 
 seat beside him. ' Not now ; daddy's going 
 to fetch the black sheep !' 
 
 He heard their voices crying after him 
 down the road, ' Bring him back soon, dada 1 
 Ba, ba, black sheep !' 
 
 It was not difficult to Identify the new 
 curate among the little crowd of passengers 
 that came into Thorpe Station by the after- 
 noon train. 
 
 Banister saw him the moment the train
 
 THE CURATE OF ST. MICHAEL'S 21 
 
 stopped, as he stepped out of a third-class 
 carriage. The new curate ought to have 
 looked round for his Rector, who he knew 
 very well was coming to meet him ; but he 
 did nothing of the kind. He stood at the 
 door of the third-class carriage and lifted out 
 an innumerable quantity of bundles and 
 baskets, and finally he helped out a young 
 woman encumbered with a baby and a bird- 
 cage. 
 
 He held the baby while she got the bird- 
 cage out of the carriage, and collected to- 
 gether her miscellaneous luggage. 
 
 He was still holding the baby when Banister 
 came up to him on the platform, and he had 
 to change the baby from the right arm to 
 the left before he could shake hands with 
 him. 
 
 He was a tall, slender young man, rather 
 stooping in his gait, with a plam, sallow face 
 and thin, clear-cut, nervous lips ; but he had
 
 2 2 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 the kindest eyes that Tom had ever seen — 
 eyes that looked straight out at him with a 
 look he could almost feel. 
 
 No ; he was not disappointed in his man. 
 
 ' Now, is there anything more I can do for 
 you ?' the curate said, when the first greeting 
 was over. 
 
 He was not addressing his Rector ; he 
 was speaking to the woman whose baby he 
 still held. 
 
 She was a young thing, and evidently not 
 used to travelling ; and she stood on the 
 platform in the midst of her numerous 
 impedimenta, flushed and bewildered, and 
 making no effort to take her baby from the 
 curate's arms. 
 
 ' I expected my husband would be here to 
 meet me,' she said, looking helplessly around 
 at the fast-disappearing crowd. ' He said he 
 would be here, and bring a donkey and cart 
 for the things.'
 
 THE CURATE OF ST. MICHAEL'S 23 
 
 ' Have you far to go ?' asked the Rector. 
 
 He felt he must say something, and put 
 an end to this absurd situation. 
 
 ' About three miles, sir,' answered the 
 woman, dropping a curtsey, but making no 
 attempt to take the baby. ' My husband's 
 got a situation at Meadowsweet Farm, Mr. 
 Giles's place, and he's sent for me an' the 
 things. He ought by rights to be here to 
 meet me/ 
 
 Meadowsweet Farm was in Tom Banister's 
 parish, and he remembered that he had heard 
 that Giles had recently taken on a fresh 
 labourer, and that a cottage about a mile 
 the other side of Thorpe Regis was being 
 done up for the man's wife and family, who 
 were coming to him from another part of the 
 country. 
 
 This, then, was the man's wife, and the 
 new curate was holding the family. 
 
 He was not holding all the family ; there
 
 24 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 was a bird In a big wicker cage, tied up in 
 a coloured pocket-handkerchief, and there 
 was a cat in a basket, trying very hard to 
 get out, and there was no husband and no 
 donkey-cart to meet them. 
 
 The woman was very near crying. She 
 had no money, and she had nowhere to go ; 
 and she stood pale and bewildered among 
 her humble J>enaUs, looking helplessly around 
 the deserted platform. 
 
 The station was quite deserted now, with 
 the exception of the little group among the 
 woman's shabby nondescript luggage. The 
 porters were grinning behind their trucks, 
 and the station-master was watching them 
 from the door of his private office, and the 
 new curate was holding the baby. 
 
 It was a most undignified situation. 
 
 ' I will drive over to Mr. Giles's as I go 
 back,' said Banister, 'and ask him to send 
 a cart to fetch you.'
 
 THE CURATE OF ST. MICHAEL'S 25 
 
 * Does it lie in our way ?' said Dashwood 
 eagerly. 'How very fortunate! It'll be 
 quite as easy to take the woman up, and 
 drop her at her own door. She's had a long 
 journey already, and with all these things !' 
 
 He looked down at the bundles and 
 baskets on the platform as he spoke ; the 
 cat had already got her head out of one of 
 them, and was struggling wildly to get free. 
 
 ' I don't think there's room for all this 
 luggage,' Banister pleaded weakly, catching 
 at the first excuse that presented itself. 
 
 'Oh yes, there is,' said the curate cheer- 
 fully — ' plenty of room. My luggage '11 go 
 anywhere. I've nothing but a portmanteau 
 and a dog.' 
 
 Tom hadn't noticed the dog until Dash- 
 wood mentioned it, and, as he spoke, a sleek 
 shiny little black-and-white fox-terrier crept 
 out from between his legs and began barking 
 at the cat.
 
 26 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 Without any further permission on the 
 Rector's part, the woman's miscellaneous 
 bundles were thrown into the dog-cart, and 
 the woman herself was helped up into the 
 front seat beside him. She couldn't ride on 
 the back seat, she said, with a baby in her 
 arms ; she was quite sure she should fall 
 out. 
 
 The curate, who had superintended the 
 transfer of the luggage, brought up the rear 
 with the baby, and, having resigned his 
 charge at last, jumped up behind and drove 
 into Thorpe Regis with a birdcage between 
 his legs, and his entire attention for the re- 
 mainder of the journey concentrated upon 
 keeping the recalcitrant cat within the 
 basket, from which it was wildly struggling 
 to get free. 
 
 It was not at all a dignified introduction to 
 his new parish. Everybody they met on the 
 way no doubt thought that it was Ais wife,
 
 THE CURATE OF ST. MICHAEL'S 27 
 
 and his baby, and his birdcage in that red 
 pocket-handkerchief, and that he was dread- 
 fully ill-using the cat. 
 
 After this absurd exhibition, Banister was 
 prepared for any amount of quixotism in his 
 new curate. Perhaps because he was pre- 
 pared for it, he was a little disappointed 
 because Dashwood behaved very much like 
 other men. If he went about the parish 
 carrying babies, and helping lame dogs over 
 stiles, he did it when no one was by. He 
 created no open scandal. 
 
 The Rector's pretty wife, who happened 
 to be waiting at the Rectory gate when the 
 cavalcade drove by, was never tired of telling 
 the tale of her husband's discomfiture. She 
 used to tell it at every tea-table in Thorpe, 
 and draw a long face and pucker her smooth 
 forehead to show how Tom looked when the 
 baby squealed, and the terrier, perched on the 
 top of the bundles, yelped, and the cat, with
 
 28 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 her head out of the basket, used very un- 
 parliamentary language. 
 
 Oh the fun Mrs. Tom made of that un- 
 lucky journey, and how she teased poor Tom 
 about it ! She took the new curate up at 
 once on the strength of it. She was rather 
 fond of black sheep, if the truth must be 
 told. She was so sick of proper people ; 
 they were the bane of her life. There were 
 at least a dozen old women in Thorpe Regis 
 that she positively hated. They were always 
 preaching at her — they never ventured to 
 preach to her — and she had to sit and eat 
 their bread-and-butter, and drink their un- 
 sweetened tea, and smile in their glum faces 
 like an angel. 
 
 A rector's wife cannot pick her friends 
 like the wives of members of any other 
 learned profession — a doctor's or a lawyer's, 
 for instance. They may have cliques, but a 
 rector's wife mustn't be cliquey. She must
 
 THE CURATE OF ST. MICHAEL'S 29 
 
 be civil to everybody, and well for her if she 
 can meet the impertinences of ill-natured, 
 odious people with the smile of an angel. 
 
 Mrs. Banister introduced her husband's 
 new curate to the select society of Thorpe at 
 a tennis-party. 
 
 If she had been a right-minded clergy- 
 man's wife, she ought to have got up a 
 parish tea, or some other solemn function ; 
 and there ought to have been some hymns 
 sung, and the new deacon ought to have 
 gone round, properly dressed in sober clerical 
 habiliments, and shaken hands. But Mrs. 
 Tom was not right-minded ; she was young 
 and frivolous, and human — very human — 
 and she preferred tennis to prayer meetings. 
 
 She asked quite a large party to meet the 
 new curate. She was helping Tom to mark 
 out the two tennis-courts on the lawn, and 
 put up the nets, and roll the grass, all the 
 morning. Most people would have let the
 
 30 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 gardener do it, but Laura Banister was fond 
 of doing that sort of thing herself. She was 
 never happier than when she had a racket in 
 her hand, and was skipping in a most un- 
 dignified way about a tennis-court. 
 
 She was jumping about Hke any girl of 
 sixteen in one of the courts she had marked 
 out, with the curate for her vis-a-vis, when 
 her visitors began to arrive. 
 
 One can't jump about in a long-tailed 
 coat, with a clerical waistcoat buttoned up to 
 the throat beneath it. The dignity of the 
 Church would be at stake. 
 
 Hence Stephen Dashwood's first intro- 
 duction to Thorpe Regis and his new parish- 
 ioners was in flannels. It was a dreadfully 
 hot July day, and hopping about in the sun 
 was hot work. 
 
 The warm, perspiring man that Mrs. 
 Banister introduced to her friends didn't look 
 the least like a curate.
 
 THE CURATE OF ST. MICHAEL'S 31 
 
 His throat was open — a very fine, manly 
 throat it was, and as fair as a woman's ; and 
 his dark, crisp, curHng hair was thrown back 
 off his forehead ; his eyes^ — they were very 
 dark gray-blue eyes, and they were rather 
 fine eyes — were shining with excitement, and 
 his face was pink with heat, and decidedly 
 damp with the exercise. 
 
 Dashwood had to submit to such a lot of 
 introductions : he had to keep leaving off a 
 game to be introduced to somebody. There 
 were only women to be introduced to, so 
 that he couldn't give just a casual nod and go 
 on with his game. 
 
 There were very few men for Mrs. Tom 
 to present. Whatever sons or brothers 
 there were belonging to Thorpe Regis 
 society were drafted off to London, or some 
 other big centre, as soon as they were of an 
 age to leave the paternal roof. There was 
 nothing for young men to do in Thorpe,
 
 32 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 except play lawn-tennis, and smoke, and 
 ' hang around.' 
 
 It was not a wealthy community, and the 
 male population was distributed over the face 
 of the globe in the capacity of bank clerks, 
 law and medical students, cadets, ensigns, 
 and civil servants, and a small percentage 
 were roughing it in the Bush. 
 
 It was a great pity the girls couldn't have 
 been drafted off in a similar way. There 
 was really nothing for them to do from 
 morning till night but play croquet or tennis, 
 or make calls and talk scandal, or fall ill and 
 have the medical Adonis of the neighbour- 
 hood called in to prescribe for them. 
 
 Stephen Dashwood was introduced to 
 dozens of girls that afternoon. They had all 
 put on new summer dresses to meet him. The 
 Rectory lawn had never been so besprinkled 
 with gay colours and dainty toilettes before. 
 It really looked like a bed of poppies.
 
 THE CURATE OF ST. MICHAEL'S 33 
 
 It was a blue July day, and there wasn't a 
 cloud in the sky, and the midsummer sun 
 was blazing down upon the lawn, and upon 
 the girls in their fresh summer frocks. 
 
 Nobody would have expected them to 
 have come dressed in a sack on such a day 
 as this, but it was remarkable the singular 
 unanimity with which they had all put on 
 their most becoming gowns to meet the new 
 curate. 
 
 He had his work cut out to satisfy them 
 all. He didn't sit down once that afternoon, 
 but played religiously in every set until the 
 blessed respite for tea. 
 
 No wonder he was pink and perspiring. 
 He plumped down on a low grassy bank in 
 the delicious shade, and the girl he had been 
 playing with plumped down beside him, and 
 all the other girls looked on. 
 
 She was pink too, or red, rather, and she 
 wore a red gown — at least, a white top and a 
 
 VOL. I. 3
 
 34 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 red skirt — and she had very soft dark eyes 
 and golden-brown hair, and a sweet, reedy 
 voice, and she played tennis beautifully. 
 
 ' I am so glad you've come, Mr. Dash- 
 wood,' she was saying in her confidential, 
 free-and-easy way, as if she had known him 
 for years ; ' now we shall have someone to 
 play with. It's been awfully slow having 
 nothing but girls. I'm quite sick of girls !' 
 
 ' Really !' said the curate. He didn't 
 know what else to say. 
 
 ' Yes ; we are all girls or old women in 
 Thorpe. We have no one on earth to say a 
 word to us.' 
 
 ' Haven't you any brothers ?' 
 
 ' No, I haven't got a brother ; but that 
 doesn't matter. I prefer other people's 
 brothers.' 
 
 The sentiment was not a new one, but 
 Stephen had seldom heard it so freely ex- 
 pressed.
 
 THE CURATE OF ST. MICHAEL'S 35 
 
 ' And have not the other people got any 
 brothers ?' he asked with a laugh. 
 
 ' Oh yes ; but none of any good. All that 
 are worth anything go away. I hope we 
 shall have plenty of tennis-parties and con- 
 certs and dances now you have come. I 
 hope you dance ?' 
 
 The curate opened his eyes and looked 
 steadily at his interlocutor. 
 
 ' Yes,' he said slowly, ' I dance, certainly ; 
 at least, I have been used to dancing, but 
 I have not tried it yet in a clerical evening 
 coat.' 
 
 Then, to his great relief, Mrs. Banister 
 came and took him away. 
 
 ' How could you talk to that horrid girl T 
 she said, as she walked back to the house 
 with him across the grass. ' We could hear 
 her shouting the other side of the lawn.' 
 
 ' I'm afraid she talked to me,' he said 
 weakly. ' If you hadn't come in time and
 
 36 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 carried me away, I believe she would have 
 made me stand up and dance.' 
 
 There were at least twenty people that 
 Mrs. Tom was anxious to introduce her 
 husband's new curate to, and this minx — she 
 called her a minx — of a Dolly Grove was 
 taking up all his attention, and making a 
 spectacle of herself lolling on the grass beside 
 him in her scarlet gown. 
 
 She didn't carry him away a minute too 
 soon. Every lady on the lawn, which really 
 meant everybody in Thorpe, vowed he was 
 flirting in the most barefaced way with that 
 forward Miss Grove. He made a dozen 
 enemies that unlucky afternoon, and set all 
 the tongues in Thorpe wagging. 
 
 It was a very bad beginning for a new 
 curate.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 LADY CAMILLA. 
 
 The tennis-party was a mistake, Mrs. Tom 
 acknowledged with a sigh. 
 
 That horrid girl had spoilt it. 
 
 Everybody had gone away with the im- 
 pression that Stephen Dashwood had been 
 flirting with Dolly Grove. She was a bold, 
 designing, forward minx, so Mrs. Tom said 
 to herself; she laid herself out to entrap 
 every man that came to Thorpe. 
 
 She had done her best to entrap the last 
 curate, and now that he had gone away, she 
 was making an audacious attempt upon his 
 successor.
 
 38 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 It was very lucky that she had gone up 
 when she did and carried him away. He 
 was evidently a weak-minded young man, 
 and would fall an easy prey to any woman. 
 Having once set her heart upon anything, 
 Mrs. Tom moved heaven and earth to 
 accomplish it. She never did anything by 
 halves. 
 
 She had made up her mind that the new 
 curate should be a success ; she had taken 
 to him from that first moment when she 
 saw him driving by the Rectory gate, with 
 a birdcage between his legs, and expostu- 
 lating with the cat. 
 
 Nothing could have made her more angry 
 than this mistaken impression that the 
 scandal - loving people of Thorpe carried 
 away with them. 
 
 She thanked Heaven that she hadn't 
 asked the Bulstrode Court set. She only 
 asked the Bulstrode people to very exclusive
 
 LADY CAMILLA 39 
 
 functions — a quiet afternoon tea, or a small, 
 very small, dinner-party. There were not 
 many people in Thorpe Lady Camilla Bul- 
 strode cared to meet. 
 
 Lady Camilla was the wife of the Member 
 for the Northern Division of the county, and 
 lived in the great house two miles away from 
 Thorpe Regis. Sir Probyn Bulstrode was 
 the Master of the Foxhounds ; he didn't care 
 for many things in life except hunting 
 and shooting and Parliamentary debates. 
 Besides Bulstrode Court and a shooting- 
 box in the Highlands, he had a fine house 
 in town. 
 
 Between the long Parliamentary session 
 and the shooting in the Highlands, Sir 
 Probyn did not spend very much of the 
 year at Thorpe. 
 
 When the family were at Bulstrode the 
 house was generally filled with guests, and 
 then a mild round of dissipation sustained
 
 40 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 the drooping relations of the Court with the 
 county. 
 
 The family were at the Court now. Lady 
 Camilla had come down a week or two 
 before the end of the season, fagged out, 
 and had left Sir Probyn in town, working 
 like a horse at his Parliamentary com- 
 mittees. 
 
 Her ladyship was not so young now as 
 she once was, and she couldn't go through 
 the treadmill of a London season without 
 getting a little fagged towards its close. 
 
 She was fagged earlier than usual this 
 year, and she had come down a fortnight 
 sooner. Mrs. Tom was very anxious that 
 Dashwood should create a favourable im- 
 pression on Lady Camilla. So much 
 depended on her verdict. The little world 
 of Thorpe Regis worshipped her, and 
 accepted her judgment as gospel. Who- 
 ever she took up they admired with slavish
 
 LADY CAMILLA 41 
 
 admiration ; whoever she put down they 
 immediately sat uj3on. 
 
 She took up very funny people some- 
 times. Mrs. Tom did not tell Stephen the 
 good fortune that awaited him when she 
 asked him to come in to afternoon tea a 
 few days after that ill-starred tennis-party. 
 She did not tell him who he was going to 
 meet. 
 
 He might have been too much elated. 
 He forgot all about the afternoon tea until 
 long past five o'clock, and then he was in 
 two minds about going. He had been 
 visiting all the afternoon, and was hot and 
 tired and dusty. 
 
 It was a dreadfully hot day, and the dust 
 was intolerable. He was not really fit to 
 go into anybody's room. 
 
 Stephen Dashwood shook off as much of 
 the dust he had brought in with him from the 
 dusty country roads as he could in the hall of
 
 42 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 the Rectory, and then he followed the prim 
 parlourmaid into the drawing-room. It was 
 so dark and cool here in the carefully shaded 
 room that, coming in from the white glare of 
 the sun, he could not for a few moments dis- 
 tinguish that there was anybody in the room 
 besides the Rector's wife at the tea-table. 
 
 She rose up when he came in, and intro- 
 duced him to her visitors. 
 
 He couldn't see them very well ; his eyes 
 had not got accustomed to the light — to the 
 shade, rather — but he became aware that he 
 was in the august presence of the great 
 people from the Court. 
 
 He was rather thankful for the dusky 
 twilight of the room ; they couldn't see how 
 dusty he was. 
 
 ' I am sorry to be so late,' he said, 
 addressing Mrs. Tom. ' I have been 
 visiting all the afternoon, and I forgot all 
 about the time.'
 
 LADY CAMILLA 43 
 
 ' 1 am glad you find the people so 
 absorbing,' Mrs. Tom said, with a laugh. 
 ' How you must have enjoyed them to 
 have forgotten your tea !' 
 
 Stephen took the rebuke meekly. 
 
 * I have been breaking new ground. I 
 have found out a place called Littlecourt, 
 with quite a population of its own.' 
 
 * Littlecourt ?' said Lady Camilla. ' Oh, 
 that's our place. All the workpeople live at 
 Littlecourt. I believe it's a horrible place !' 
 
 Stephen looked at the speaker, a large, 
 well-preserved woman, who not only had 
 been a beauty, but was a beauty still. A 
 great thing to say for a woman who has a 
 grown-up daughter — a daughter as tall as 
 herself, and promising to be as handsome. 
 
 Stephen looked her ladyship in the face ; 
 he could not help even then remarking how 
 fair it was, and how well preserved ; and 
 then he said very distinctly :
 
 44 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 ' Yes, you are quite right ; it is horrible !' 
 
 Mrs. Tom looked up from the teacups ; 
 she thought Dashwood had put his foot in 
 it, but Lady Camilla laughed outright. 
 
 'Horrible isn't the word,' she said; 'it's 
 frightful ! All the scum of the county seem 
 to collect there. Sir Probyn asks such a 
 ridiculous rent for the cottages that the place 
 is full of people who ought to be in the union.' 
 
 ' Not your own people ?' 
 
 ' Oh dear no ! A lot of our workpeople 
 live there, but the rest of the cottages are 
 let to strangers. Sir Probyn has given 
 them all notice to quit, but it is of no use ; 
 they won't go, and he can't turn them into 
 the road. The only thing he can do is to 
 pull the houses down about their ears.' 
 
 ' 1 he very best thing he can do, if he will 
 build up some others first.' 
 
 And then Dashwood thought he had said 
 quite enough about the Littlecourt property,
 
 LADY CAMILLA 45 
 
 and he got up to take Miss Bulstrode's cup 
 and saucer. 
 
 She was younger than her mother, and 
 that was all that could be said about her. 
 In the dusky light of that shaded room she 
 did not look a year younger. 
 
 She had a very low voice, which we know 
 is an excellent thing in woman ; and Lady 
 Camilla had a loud voice, and that was very 
 nearly all the difference. 
 
 Having relieved her of her cup and saucer, 
 Dashwood sat down beside her, and pre- 
 sently he found her asking him questions in 
 her low, soft, patrician voice about the place 
 and the people. He answered her in his 
 outspoken way, as he had answered Lady 
 Camilla ; he did not see the necessity for 
 any reserve. 
 
 ' I think the life of the country is intoler- 
 able,' he was saying ; ' it is worse than it is 
 in towns. There there are always some
 
 46 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 distractions ; but here there is nothing, 
 nothing but the tap-room of a village inn. 
 Oh, how can we expect people to be better 
 than the animals, living as they do ?' 
 
 ' What would you do to improve them ?' 
 Miss Bulstrode asked. 
 
 ' Do } I would teach them how to live, 
 to begin with.' 
 
 ' You would set up more schools ?' 
 
 ' No ; I wouldn't set up more schools : 
 they have quite enough schools ; but I would 
 teach them something beyond the three R's. 
 I would go even beyond the sixth standard.' 
 
 ' I think they have got beyond that 
 already. I heard mamma say that the piano 
 was being taught in Board schools in some 
 places, and that the housemaids were going 
 to learn drawing.' 
 
 ' They might learn a great many worse 
 things ; but that is scarcely what I mean. 
 They will never attain any proficiency in
 
 LADY CAMILLA 47 
 
 music or drawing — ^never enough to get any 
 real pleasure or benefit out of it. I would 
 teach them to read and to think — to exercise 
 their brains as well as their muscles. I 
 would give them recreation in the true and 
 literal sense of the word.' 
 
 ' What a7^e you talking about ?' said her 
 ladyship across the room. She was not 
 accustomed to being ignored. 
 
 ' We were talking about amusing the 
 people, mamma,' said Miss Bulstrode, sup- 
 pressing a yawn. ' Mr. Dash wood doesn't 
 think music and drawing will satisfy them. 
 He thinks they ought to be amused.' 
 
 ' Miss Bulstrode is right,' said Stephen, 
 addressing Lady Camilla, who was looking 
 at him through her long eyeglass as if he 
 were some strange animal. ' I think the 
 people want to be amused. They work very 
 hard all day, and at night they have nothing 
 to fall back upon but the public-house.'
 
 48 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 ' I am sure they are quite satisfied with 
 the pubhc- house. There is nothing they 
 hke so well as getting tipsy,' 
 
 ' Exactly ; they drink to drive away dul- 
 ness. They have nothing else to do. They 
 have nothing in the world to think about but 
 what they have done to-day, and what they 
 are going to do to-morrow. They have no 
 tastes, and they have no occupations. They 
 have no means of recreating the exhausted 
 mind at the end of the day but such means 
 as are open to them in the village tap- 
 room.' 
 
 ' I don't see how you are to amuse them 
 if they have no tastes,' said Lady Camilla, 
 with some show of interest. 
 
 Really this young man was quite amusing. 
 Mrs. Tom had been telling her about that 
 absurd spectacle of the baby and the bird- 
 cage, and Lady Camilla never lost a chance 
 of amusing herself at anybody's expense.
 
 LADY CAMILLA 49 
 
 She was not at all particular. The new 
 curate was as good as a show. 
 
 ' We should have to create the taste,' said 
 Stephen quite coolly, as if he took her remark 
 ail- s^rieux. ' I don't think we should have 
 had any tastes ourselves, except, indeed, the 
 baser sort, if they hadn't been cultivated. 
 The refinement that we pride ourselves upon, 
 I take it, has nothing to do with our tastes, 
 but is due to the nature and variety of our 
 occupations. If working people had some- 
 thing else to do of nights, they would not fall 
 back upon the tap-room.' 
 
 ' What would you give them to do T 
 
 ' I would teach the men athletics, to begin 
 with ; I would give them simple lectures on 
 natural science, literature, poetry, travels. I 
 would teach the girls dancing, singing, tennis, 
 croquet. I would teach them such things as 
 would bring out and develop all the higher 
 faculties of body and mind.' 
 
 VOL. I. 4
 
 50 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 Stephen was very much in earnest ; his 
 eyes were shining and his Hps were eloquent. 
 Lady Camilla was not only amused, she was 
 quite interested in him. 
 
 ' You must come over to Bulstrode, Mr. 
 Dashwood, and tell me more of your wonder- 
 ful projects,' she said good-naturedly ; and 
 then she got up and said good-bye to Mrs. 
 Tom. 
 
 Stephen helped her into her little low 
 pony-carriage, and she gave him her hand 
 at parting ; and Miss Bulstrode nodded to 
 him, and told him to be sure to come soon. 
 
 Stephen thought he had done a great 
 thing in enlisting the interest of the great 
 people of Thorpe in his pet projects ; but 
 Mrs. Tom shook her head. 
 
 * I'm afraid you've put your foot in it,' she 
 said darkly. ' Lady Camilla hasn't a scrap 
 of interest in the people. She comes of one 
 of the oldest Tory families in the kingdom,
 
 LADY CAMILLA 51 
 
 who believe it would create nothing short of 
 a revolution in the country if you were to 
 teach working men and women to dance. 
 I'm sorry you mentioned those cottages, too, 
 at Littlecourt. Sir Probyn never troubles 
 about the property ; he leaves everything to 
 his steward.' 
 
 Mrs. Tom for once in her life reckoned 
 without her host. 
 
 Lady Camilla took to the dancing project 
 immensely. Tory as she was, she was always 
 seeking after something new, and here was 
 something quite, quite new— an untried ex- 
 periment. 
 
 She invited Stephen to Bulstrode before 
 the week was over, and talked over his 
 Utopian schemes for the higher education 
 of the people with him. 
 
 Lady Camilla quite caught his enthusiasm. 
 She took up ' fads ' very quickly, and she 
 dropped them with equal readiness ; she 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 uNivERsmr OF luwoi?
 
 52 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 would begin at once, and make the lives of 
 the poor people of Thorpe lovely and gracious 
 and refined. She hardly knew where to 
 begin, and she certainly did not know where 
 to stop. 
 
 Stephen would have suggested building 
 some new cottages at Littlecourt, and 
 pulling down the old ones ; but that was 
 Sir Probyn's work, and a reference to the 
 subject might have damped her ardour. He 
 let her go her own way. Within a month 
 of the day that Stephen had broached the 
 subject to her, the foundations had been laid 
 for a big parish hall, which was to be wholly 
 given up to social amusements for the people. 
 Here concerts were to be held, and lectures 
 given, and singing taught, and dancing — 
 real dancing. A lady was to be brought 
 down from London on purpose to teach 
 dancing, and a bandmaster from the neigh- 
 bouring city was to teach music — drum, fife,
 
 LADY CAMILLA 53 
 
 sackbut, and all manner of music. There 
 was to be a regular orchestra. 
 
 Lady Camilla's philanthropy did not stop 
 with the dancing. She shocked the sensi- 
 bilities of the small gentry of Thorpe Regis, 
 who drew a line of demarcation between the 
 amusements of the upper and the lower 
 classes, by laying out a ground for tennis, 
 and providing nets and rackets for the use 
 of the people. 
 
 Oh, it was going too far ! 
 
 Croquet would have been all very well, 
 and bowls, and skittles for the men, and 
 cricket — they had these, besides — but tennis ! 
 Lady Camilla was certainly going too far. 
 
 Everybody blamed Stephen for leading 
 her ladyship on. There were so many other 
 things wanted in the parish more than a 
 tennis -ground and a dancing -booth. A 
 hospital was sadly needed, and new schools, 
 and a mission-room at the farther end of the
 
 54 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 parish ; and the winter would be coming on 
 soon, and there would be blankets and fuel 
 and beef for the poor wanted. Oh, it was 
 a great waste of money ! 
 
 Stephen threw himself into all these 
 schemes of Lady Camilla's with all his heart, 
 while his Rector looked on with a certain 
 amount of disfavour and suspicion. 
 
 He would have interfered about the dancing 
 — he drew a line at the dancino-, as the ladies 
 had drawn a line at the tennis — but for Mrs. 
 Tom. Lady Camilla had won her over, and 
 Mrs. Tom, as everybody knew, ruled the 
 parish by proxy ; so the great recreation 
 scheme was allowed to go on unchecked. 
 
 No one could say that the new curate 
 neglected his work, his visiting, and his 
 clubs and his services, for these Arcadian 
 schemes. He did his duty as thoroughly as 
 his predecessor, the model curate, and he 
 found leisure to carry out Lady Camilla's
 
 LADY CAMILLA 55 
 
 programme ; but everybody said that he had 
 turned the parish upside down. 
 
 The visiting ladies who went round with 
 a little bag for the clothing club pennies, and 
 distributed tracts on the immorality of dancing 
 and such frivolous amusements, complained 
 that he had spoiled the morale of the people. 
 
 Some ladies went so far as to say that 
 the Bishop had made a great mistake in 
 admitting a young man with such worldly 
 views into the Church, and that old story 
 of the black sheep, which Mrs. Tom had 
 dropped accidentally at a tea-party, was 
 revived with additions. 
 
 There was no doubt that Mr. Banister, 
 among all his candidates, had chosen the 
 black sheep.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 RUS IN URBE. 
 
 Thorpe Regis was a delightful little country 
 town, just large enough to mind its own 
 business, but not too large for gossip and 
 slander. 
 
 There was a broad, sunny High Street, 
 with a bank, and a post-office, and a town- 
 hall, and a fair sprinkling of shops. There 
 were still a few old-fashioned red-bricked 
 houses abutting on the street as they used 
 to do in the old days. These were generally 
 distinguished by immaculate white doorsteps 
 and shining brass knockers ; and one or two 
 — the doctor's and the lawyer's — had a row
 
 RUS IN URBE 57 
 
 of green posts In front, with chains festooned 
 between, to keep off cattle, perhaps, or to 
 add dignity to the tenements they pro- 
 tected. 
 
 There was a delightful shady street that 
 led out of the High Street, up a rather steep 
 hill to the church, and here the (^lite of 
 Thorpe Regis lived. People like to con- 
 gregate round a church. The people who 
 lived in this delightful street could see the 
 gray tower every time they looked out of 
 their windows, and the cawing of the rooks 
 in the old elms in the churchyard woke them 
 up betimes every morning, and the church- 
 bell— it was a very sweet-toned old bell — 
 called them to matins every day ; to busy 
 people that bell seemed to be never still. 
 It was always chiming the hours and the 
 half-hours and the quarters, and the ringers 
 were always ready for any excuse to ring a 
 peal.
 
 58 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 The houses In Church Street stood well 
 away from the road — modest little houses, 
 buried in greenery, and covered with 
 creepers, and embosomed in flowers. The 
 Rectory was not far off from the church ; 
 a gate from the Rectory garden led into the 
 churchyard, but it was a long garden, and 
 there were delightful orchard lawns spreading 
 between it and the church. 
 
 There were a number of other unimportant 
 narrow winding streets, all uphill and down- 
 hill, and leading to nowhere particular ; and 
 in the lower part of the town, near the river, 
 was a woollen factory that employed several 
 hundred hands. It was a decayed old town, 
 and in the old part, beyond the church and 
 the Rectory, were still standing some dilapi- 
 dated old-fashioned houses, that had once 
 been the residences of the wealthy in- 
 habitants of Thorpe. Fashion had removed 
 now to Church Street, and Ring's End, as
 
 RUS IN URBE 59 
 
 this part of the parish was called, probably 
 from its proximity to the old bull-ring, was 
 deserted. 
 
 Some of the old houses were divided off 
 and let to poorer tenants, and others were 
 empty and falling to decay. One of these 
 houses, to the surprise of everybody, had 
 been let, about a twelvemonth before 
 Stephen came to Thorpe, to a lady of title — 
 a Russian Baroness, it was reported. 
 
 Very few people would have cared to take 
 the gloomy old house. It stood a long way 
 back from the road, and was approached by 
 a path through a dense shrubbery, which 
 hadn't been trimmed or attended to for 
 years. This cavernous-like entrance opened 
 out upon a lawn surrounded by gloomy old 
 trees ; the house itself was covered with ivy 
 and creepers, and was about as damp and 
 depressing a place as could be well found, 
 and it was in dreadfully bad repair.
 
 6o TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 The first thing the Baroness von Eberlein 
 did was to alter the name of the house from 
 Rus in Urbe to the Hermitage, and then she 
 set about furnishing it. 
 
 Nobody seemed to know where she came 
 from. She came quite suddenly ; she might 
 have dropped down from the skies. She 
 brought an old servant with her, and a 
 young girl — a companion— who was said to 
 be a cousin, and — and half a dozen cats. 
 
 There was no doubt about the cats. No 
 other inhabitant of the Hermitage could be 
 seen over that jealous wall that shut it out 
 so completely from the road, but the cats 
 were seen on the wall taking an airing by 
 day, and heard taking part in a concert by 
 night. Some people averred that they had 
 counted twelve cats on the wall at one time, 
 and others were prepared to state that they 
 had heard — distinctly heard — and identified 
 twelve separate voices in these midnight
 
 RUS IN URBE 6 1 
 
 performances of the Ring's End Harmonic 
 Society. 
 
 The Baroness von Eberlein, though she 
 retained her title, had dropped the trappings 
 and surroundings of rank. She had brought 
 only one female servant with her — an old 
 woman, lean and brown, and wrinkled like 
 an autumn pear, who could not speak a 
 word of English, and she had not engaged 
 any Thorpe servants. She had brought 
 with her, besides, an old piebald pony, and 
 had hired a low pony-carriage, and engaged 
 a small boy from the country to look after it. 
 She had put the boy into livery, with a big 
 coronet on every one of his shining gilt 
 buttons. The page-boy and the old woman 
 comprised the entire establishment of the 
 Hermitage. 
 
 The Baroness was as remarkable as her 
 surroundings. 
 
 She was a widow — a fair white plump
 
 62 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 widow — decidedly plump, but not fat. A 
 woman made on a grand scale, not petite 
 by any means, and not a giantess — a woman 
 of middle height, with a fine figure, and 
 handsome arms that her perfectly fitting 
 dress showed to perfection, and a handsome 
 bust that it also displayed in the same liberal 
 spirit. 
 
 She might be any age from twenty to 
 forty ; her face was an unusual one, and 
 not without attraction — a dead white, waxen 
 complexion, soft and white and velvety, 
 with pale-brown eyebrows strongly marked, 
 and pale -brown chestnut hair, and full red 
 lips; a strong mouth — strong and wide, 
 almost too wide for perfect beauty — and a 
 nose of no distinct type, and decidedly 
 retroussd. 
 
 It was her distinctive feature, and it 
 marred what might have been a beautiful 
 face. The colourinor of the face was remark-
 
 RUS IN URBE 63 
 
 able — chestnut hair and amber eyes, and a 
 waxen, creamy complexion. 
 
 Her eyes were soft and sleepy, and she 
 did not often open them wide enough for 
 their unusual colour to be seen ; but when 
 she did open them they were yellow — tawny 
 golden yellow — like a tiger's. 
 
 No one was quite sure of her nationality. 
 She was not English, everyone agreed ; she 
 might be German, or French, or Italian, or 
 Russian — most likely Russian. As no one 
 in Thorpe had ever seen a subject of the 
 Czar's, and the stranger's unusual appear- 
 ance did not correspond to any familiar type 
 they were acquainted with, with general 
 consent she was voted Russian. 
 
 And if Russian, probably a Nihilist 
 seeking refuge in England, perhaps plot- 
 ting secretly in the seclusion of the 
 Hermitage. 
 
 This suggestion explained everything :
 
 64 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 the seclusion, the mysterious dropping 
 down from the clouds, the absence of 
 antecedents, the smallness of the establish- 
 ment. It explained everything but the 
 cats. 
 
 The Baroness gave no references ; she 
 paid the landlord of the Hermitage half a 
 year's rent in advance, and she paid the 
 tradespeople liberally. There was no lack 
 of money ; the establishment was not re- 
 stricted to one old servant and a page-boy 
 for lack of means. 
 
 People called on the Baroness when she 
 first came to the Hermitage, the Rector's 
 wife among them, and for a time she 
 created quite a flutter in the little exclusive 
 society of Thorpe Regis. 
 
 But the acquaintance never went any 
 farther, never ripened into friendships. 
 People were afraid of her. Perhaps they 
 discovered something lacking — they were
 
 RUS IN URBE 65 
 
 not accustomed to the society of Russian 
 Baronesses and Nihilists — and she never 
 talked about her husband. 
 
 Women are so much quicker to find out 
 things about each other than men — quicker 
 to suspect, and quicker to put things 
 together and form conclusions. 
 
 They would have liked to have known 
 more about her, but the Baroness had a 
 way of parrying inquiries that baffled all 
 their ingenuity. 
 
 She refused to gratify their curiosity ; she 
 paid her way, and she outraged no social 
 laws ; she had a right to live as she liked, 
 and keep a dozen cats and no servants to 
 speak of, and have an entrance to her house 
 as dark as Avernus. 
 
 She dressed beautifully, both she and 
 her companion, her cousin Bebee, as she 
 called the girl she had brought with her. 
 The Baroness always dressed in dark rich 
 
 VOL. I. 5
 
 66 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 colours that set off the creamy, waxen 
 whiteness of her marvellous complexion, 
 and Bebee wore light delicate tints and 
 flimsy materials, made in an old - world, 
 childish fashion that Kate Greenaway has 
 made popular — a fashion that suited well her 
 ridiculous name and her unformed, gawkish 
 figure. 
 
 She was a namby-pamby creature, child 
 or woman ; pale and puny, with pink circles 
 round her eyes, which were very light in 
 colour — a light gray-green, decidedly green 
 in some lights — and she had pale-pink lips, 
 and drab hair, and drab eyelashes, and 
 deplorable teeth. She bore a distinct re- 
 semblance to a white mouse. 
 
 She was a washed - out edition of the 
 Baroness, a pale, spiritless creature, with a 
 shy, frightened, timid manner. It was 
 rumoured that the Baroness bullied her 
 dreadfully in secret. Screams had been
 
 RUS IN URBE 67 
 
 heard proceeding from the back regions of 
 that mysterious house after dark — screams, 
 and hysterical sobbing and wild appeals for 
 help. 
 
 The Baroness Eberlein had explained, 
 when questioned about these sounds, that 
 Bebee was hysterical, and that she was a 
 martyr to neuralgia. 
 
 The girls of Thorpe Regis, who were not 
 ill-natured, would have taken up poor Bebee, 
 but she was such a shy, frightened creature ; 
 she would not stir an inch without her kins- 
 woman. 
 
 ' I am sure she treats that poor little thing 
 shamefully, and beats her black and blue,' 
 a girl who had caught Bebee weeping sur- 
 reptitiously in church said at an afternoon 
 tea ; and forthwith everybody in Thorpe 
 agreed that the Baroness was a female 
 Bluebeard, and that she had a secret 
 chamber in the Hermitage full of murdered
 
 68 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 B6b6es, or as much of them as the cats 
 had not consumed. 
 
 The Baroness and her companion were 
 always in their seat at church — the front seat ; 
 they were the most regular of the small select 
 congregation who attended the daily services. 
 The Rector ought to have made more 
 of them, for the Baroness's purse was always 
 open to every charitable call that was made 
 upon it. She subscribed liberally to all the 
 local charities, and she put half-crowns in 
 the plate in church when other people put 
 in sixpences. 
 
 Still, in spite of the half-crowns and the 
 regular attendance at the daily services, the 
 Rector's wife cooled after a short acquaint- 
 ance with Baroness Eberlein. 
 
 Then other people began to cool, but not 
 all at once. They found out, or thought 
 they found out, certain indications lacking 
 of — well, of gentle breeding.
 
 RUS IN URBE 69 
 
 And they couldn't hear anything of the 
 Baroness's late husband. 
 
 It was while her friends were falling away 
 from her, and stories — -rather ugly stories — 
 were being whispered about her, that 
 Stephen Dashwood came as curate to 
 Thorpe Regis. 
 
 It was quite by accident Stephen called 
 at the Hermitage in the quite early days 
 of his parochial visits. 
 
 He had no list given him by his Rector 
 of the people he ought to visit ; the parish 
 was mapped out into districts, and a district 
 was apportioned to each day. When Ring's 
 End came in turn to be visited, Stephen 
 called upon the Baroness. He had called 
 upon her ]:)oorer neighbours on either side, 
 and not recognising any distinction in one 
 decayed-looking old tenement from another, 
 he had penetrated into the very secret 
 recesses of the Hermitage.
 
 70 70 HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 He had not gone up to the front-door, as 
 he ought to have done ; he had turned to 
 the left instead of turning to the right when 
 he had passed through the gloomy cavern 
 that the people of Thorpe termed Avernus, 
 and he had found his way to the back- 
 door. 
 
 He had stumbled over half a dozen cats 
 by the way, and he had penetrated into the 
 kitchen of the Hermitage before he found 
 out his mistake. 
 
 It was a large, gloomy kitchen, and it 
 was not remarkably clean, and an old crone, 
 brown and wrinkled, and bent double with 
 age, was preparing some kind of savoury- 
 soup over the fire. 
 
 Stephen was in the kitchen before she 
 noticed him ; she had been so engrossed 
 bending over the pot on the fire that she 
 had not heard him knock at the door. 
 
 At the sound of his voice she turned
 
 RUS IN URBE 71 
 
 round and saw him standing in the middle 
 of the kitchen. It is no unusual thing for 
 a clergyman to enter a cottage and make 
 himself at home without very much cere- 
 mony, and Stephen couldn't understand the 
 panic that seized the poor old creature when 
 she saw him standing there. 
 
 Her jaw fell, and she raised her hands 
 with a terror-stricken gesture, and Stephen 
 saw that she was trembling all over. He 
 hastened to reassure her, and explained the 
 nature of his visit ; and took out his little 
 book — he always carried a little black book 
 with him in these visits — and began to 
 deliver his message. 
 
 He delivered it to unwilling ears. The 
 old woman was mumbling something he 
 could not understand; in a barbarous language 
 he had never heard before, and she was ges- 
 ticulating wildly in the direction of the door. 
 
 He could not mistake her meaning. She
 
 72 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 wanted neither him nor his message ; she 
 only wanted him to go. 
 
 He wasn't at all sure he hadn't come 
 across a lunatic. He looked helplessly round 
 the kitchen, vaguely wondering whether it 
 were safe for such a person to be at large ; 
 and while he was looking round, an inner 
 door opened and a girl came running in. A 
 pale, frightened girl, crying bitterly, and fol- 
 lowed by an enormous fierce-looking black 
 cat. 
 
 ' Oh, Annette !' cried the girl, ' she has 
 set that brute at me again, and it has bitten 
 my arm ' 
 
 She stopped suddenly when she saw 
 Stephen, and she involuntarily made a move- 
 ment to cover up her arm, which was bleed- 
 ing profusely, with her hand. 
 
 Stephen recognised her in a moment as 
 the girl he had seen in church in the quaint 
 Kate Greenaway gowns.
 
 RUS IN URBE 73 
 
 He came forward at once, and offered his 
 help, and insisted on examining the wounded 
 Hmb. It was only a little superficial wound, 
 but it was bleeding freely ; and while he was 
 still examining it, the Baroness came in. 
 
 She had heard a strange voice in the 
 kitchen, and she came fron-froumo; with her 
 rich trailing skirts along the passage to see 
 to whom it belonged. 
 
 She took in the situation in a moment, and 
 came forward in her delightful frank foreign 
 way and held out her hand to the curate. 
 
 ' Ah !' she said, smiling, ' you have come 
 in the wrong way. Why, what is the matter 
 with Bebee ? Oh, you silly Bebee ; you 
 have been teasing the cats again ! I am 
 always scolding her, Mr. Dash wood ' — ^she 
 knew his name quite well — ' for teasing the 
 cats. She is such a child, she can't leave 
 them alone ; and when they scratch her, she 
 begins to cry.'
 
 74 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 * I am afraid it is more than a scratch,' 
 said Stephen gravely ; ' I think the brute 
 has bitten hen' 
 
 ' No, no,' said the girl eagerly ; * it is 
 only a scratch. It is not really anything ; 
 it was my own fault. I was teasing the 
 cat — and — and it flew at me — and I was 
 frightened.' 
 
 ' No,' said the Baroness, in her soft, purring 
 voice ; ' no, fortunately, it is only a scratch. 
 Poor litde Bebee !' 
 
 She took out of her pocket a little dainty 
 flimsy handkerchief edged with old Flemish 
 lace, and wound it tenderly round the girl's 
 arm. 
 
 ' My poor little Bebee !' she said, in her 
 soft, caressing voice ; ' did the naughty 
 kitsey-mew scratch her !' 
 
 She playfully pinched the girl's pale cheeks 
 and kissed her, and throwing her arm tenderly 
 round her waist, she led her out of the
 
 RUS IN URBE 75 
 
 kitchen, and the curate meekly followed 
 them hat in hand. 
 
 He forgot all about the old woman and 
 his ' message,' and he slipped the shabby 
 little black book into his pocket.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 BARBE BLEUE. 
 
 Stephen came often to the Hermitage after 
 that day. The acquaintance, begun under 
 such ridiculous circumstances, soon ripened 
 into intimacy. 
 
 The Baroness understood him, Stephen 
 found out, and she was interested in all his 
 schemes. She had a delightful caressing 
 way of showing her interest in him that 
 quite won his confidence, and the foolish, 
 impressionable fellow had not known her a 
 month before he had bared his whole heart 
 to her. 
 
 She threw her house open to him, and he
 
 BARBE BLEUE 77 
 
 went in and out of the Hermitage as if it 
 had been his home. 
 
 He hated sitting down to a lonely meal, 
 and there was always a lovely supper, 
 cooked to perfection — rumour said that the 
 Baroness cooked it herself — waiting for him 
 at Ring's End. 
 
 There never were such cutlets and curries 
 as the Baroness's, and she always had some 
 delicate French wine to wash them down. 
 
 There was every excuse for Stephen find- 
 ing his way so often from his gloomy lodgings 
 to the Hermitage. 
 
 He hated to sit down alone to his solitary 
 mutton-chop — his landlady seldom varied 
 this dainty — and there was never a bottle 
 of French wine in the cellarette of those bare 
 rooms. But it was not altogether for the 
 loaves and fishes that Stephen came over 
 evening after evening to Ring's End. He 
 liked to talk to the Baroness about his
 
 78 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 schemes. Lady Camilla had gone away to 
 Scotland, and there was nobody who took 
 so much interest in the work as the Baroness. 
 She entered into everything — the dancing, 
 and the singing, and the cooking classes ; 
 she was quite ready to help in all. 
 
 Stephen never could have got through the 
 winter without her help ; there was nobody 
 else to stand by him. Everybody said he 
 was demoralizing the parish. Lady Camilla 
 did not come back till just before Christmas, 
 and by that time her enthusiasm had cooled. 
 The dancing-mistress was not forthcoming, 
 and the bandmaster did not turn up ; and if 
 the Baroness and Bebee had not helped him 
 to get up some concerts for the people, the 
 whole thing would have turned out a failure, 
 and he would have got well laughed at for 
 his pains. 
 
 He got laughed at as it was. 
 
 One can't do very much towards helping
 
 BARBE BLEUE 79 
 
 one's fellow - creatures without exciting a 
 little laughter. People laughed at him for 
 being mixed up with that foreign woman, 
 and a great many people who might have 
 helped him — among them, it was rumoured, 
 Lady Camilla — held aloof on that account. 
 
 The Rector and his wife withdrew entirely 
 from these recreation schemes when they no 
 longer had Lady Camilla's countenance ; and 
 the great room, that was to have been a 
 dancing-booth and a concert-hall through the 
 winter, was devoted to lectures and parish 
 meetings. 
 
 Stephen bore the disappointment with an 
 ill grace ; he could not have borne it at all 
 if his friends at the Hermitage hadn't com- 
 forted him and helped him with their 
 sympathy. He was one of those ridiculous 
 young men who wear their hearts upon their 
 sleeve, and when they get wounded go to the 
 first woman they meet to bandage them up.
 
 So TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 Stephen got a great many wounds during 
 that hard first winter at Thorpe, and he 
 generally went to the Hermitage to get them 
 bound up. 
 
 Everything was new and strange to him, 
 and he was so ridiculously thin-skinned and 
 emotional that if anything went wrong in the 
 parish or the church he broke down, and 
 then he wanted a good deal of comforting. 
 
 He generally got as much as he wanted 
 — sometimes more. It would have been 
 much better for him, when he was smarting 
 under some fancied slight, if he had gone 
 back to his own rooms and borne his trouble 
 in secret. It would have been healthier and 
 better ; he would have got strength, at any 
 rate, and he would have learnt endurance. 
 
 Anything would have been better and 
 more manly than, directly anything went 
 wrong, to go howling up to the Hermitage. 
 
 Perhaps it is not fair to condemn him.
 
 BARBE BLEUE 81 
 
 There was every excuse for his going up 
 to the Hermitage so often. The Baroness 
 understood him. It was more Hke home to 
 him — home with its freedom — than any 
 other place in Thorpe. 
 
 He was generally quite tired by the end 
 of the day ; and, after having had his nerves 
 strung at tension with the visiting and the 
 services and the meetings for so many hours, 
 he was not unwilling to relax a little when 
 an opportunity came. He was quite ready 
 to take off his armour when the day's work 
 was done. He could not always be preach- 
 ing and praying — at least, he told himself 
 so, when his conscience took him to task, 
 as it sometimes did, after these little 
 suppers. A man must take his armour off 
 sometimes. 
 
 Stephen generally took off his armour — 
 his spiritual armour — when he got the other 
 side of Avernus. It would have been quite 
 
 VOL. I. 6
 
 82 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 out of place in the Baroness's little drawing- 
 room. 
 
 A delightful cosy, cushiony little room, 
 with soft carpets and couches and low 
 lounging -chairs — a room where everything 
 seemed to invite repose. It was always 
 exactly the right temperature — not a cold, 
 bare, draughty room like an ice-house — and 
 it was always carefully shaded ; and the 
 air, if not exactly heavy, was odorous with 
 some subtle kind of Eastern perfume, and 
 there was always an enormous black cat 
 drowsing on the hearthrug. 
 
 Oh no ! it was not at all the place to 
 wear one's armour in. 
 
 After these little suppers there was music ; 
 sometimes the Baroness would sing to him — 
 little sparkling French and German songs — 
 but she preferred to sit in one of the low 
 chairs beside Stephen, and talk to him about 
 his work while Bebee played or sang.
 
 BARBE BLEUE 83 
 
 She had a very great interest in his work. 
 She used to make him tell her what he had 
 been doing all day, and whom he had seen ; 
 she might have been his Rector for the 
 account she made him render. While they 
 talked Bebee played a low, soft accompani- 
 ment on the piano ; she played beautifully, 
 and she never tired. She played sometimes 
 the whole evening- without a pause, and 
 while she played they talked. 
 
 She paused sometimes for a moment's 
 rest, and the Baroness would say something 
 in German or Russian — something that 
 sounded very soft and sweet to Stephen, 
 who couldn't understand a word of it — and 
 poor Bebee would begin afresh. 
 
 ' The child is passionately fond of music,' 
 she used to explain to Stephen, 'and she 
 looks forward to these delightful practices. 
 You are sure you don't mind her practising 
 while you are here ?'
 
 84 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 And Stephen, of course, would say ' No.' 
 
 She had such a deHghtful way of showing 
 her interest In Stephen ; only women of a 
 certain age can safely show an interest in a 
 man — a very young man — In this delightful 
 way. It Is scarcely maternal, but It Is the 
 next thing to It, and It affords endless oppor- 
 tunities for all sorts of little tender offices- 
 little playful, caressing attentions that an old 
 woman can lavish upon a man young enough 
 to be her son. 
 
 The Baroness used to call herself an old 
 woman— it was her favourite fiction — at 
 these times, as she sat petting Stephen in 
 the soft, shaded light of the dusky room. 
 
 vShe found out everything about him as 
 she sat there night after night, questioning 
 him in her wheedling way. It was decidedly 
 a wheedling way ; there was no other name 
 for it. 
 
 She laid bare all the little secrets of his
 
 BARBE BLEUE 85 
 
 life ; she found out exactly why his tutor 
 had refused him college testimonials ; there 
 was nothing in his whole career, no youthful 
 folly, that she did not hunt out. He could 
 keep nothing from her. 
 
 'And you are really twenty-five, Stephen,' 
 she said to him one day — she called him 
 Stephen now — ' and you have never, never 
 been in love ?' 
 
 ' No ; never seriously,' he answered with 
 a laugh. ' I'm afraid I don't know what the 
 genuine thing is.' 
 
 ' No ? You have never met the right 
 woman, or you would know,' she said softly. 
 And then she sighed. 
 
 ' I suppose not,' said Stephen, laughing. 
 ' How should I know she was the right 
 woman if I did meet her ?' 
 
 ' Oh, you would know, Stephen. Your 
 heart would tell you. You could not make 
 a mistake.'
 
 86 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 Again the Baroness sighed. 
 
 She had a very taking sigh — large women 
 have. It seemed to come up from very 
 deep down, and it was of considerable 
 volume. It contained at least material for a 
 dozen ordinary sighs. 
 
 Stephen hadn't the least idea what she 
 was sighing for. 
 
 ' What kind of women do you admire ? 
 Do you like fair women or dark ? Do you 
 like a cold, phlegmatic woman, devoted to 
 Sunday-schools and mothers' meetings, or 
 a woman with a warm Southern nature, 
 whose love you would never probe the 
 depths of ' 
 
 Stephen didn't know what was coming, 
 and he began to feel — not exactly cold 
 shivers down his back — and he looked up, 
 and caught a gleam in the golden -yellow 
 eyes that were looking fondly down into his 
 — he happened to be sitting on a low chair,
 
 BARBE BLEUE 87 
 
 and the Baroness was on the couch beside 
 him — that he had never seen there before, 
 and it gave him that curious sensation down 
 his spine. 
 
 ' I think I prefer the lady who would 
 look after the Sunday-schools, and take the 
 mothers' meetings,' he said promptly ; and 
 then he got up and went away. 
 
 It was quite time he went away. 
 
 His visits to the Hermitage had not 
 passed unnoticed in that gossiping, scandal- 
 loving community. Every tea - table in 
 Thorpe had for its chief topic the doings 
 of the worldly - minded curate that Mr. 
 Banister had unwisely selected. He ought 
 to have called a meeting of elderly spinsters 
 and laid the applications of the various 
 candidates before them, and they would 
 have selected a delightful young man after 
 their own heart. Some people went so far 
 as to say that Mrs. Banister had chosen
 
 88 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 Stephen, that poor Mr. Tom was so hen- 
 pecked that he had no voice in the selec- 
 tion. 
 
 Mrs. Tom gave quite sufficient grounds 
 for the report. She took Stephen's part 
 in everything ; she was loyal even in the 
 matter of the dancing. 
 
 ' I hope you have got over your dis- 
 appointment about the dancing,' she said to 
 him one day when she thought he was 
 looking unusually gloomy, and she had an 
 idea that the failure of his pet scheme was 
 rankling in his mind. ' I should have liked 
 it myself, and I'm sure it wouldn't have done 
 the people any harm ; see how they dance 
 in Italy and in France. I don't know that 
 we are any better for taking things so 
 gloomily ; but, you see, it wouldn't have 
 done for Tom to take it up. There are a 
 lot of old women always waiting to find 
 fault. Oh, what a story they would have
 
 BARBE BLEUE 89 
 
 made of it ! They would have written to 
 the Bishop.' 
 
 'Yes,' Stephen admitted sadly; *I sup- 
 pose they would have found fault. They 
 find fault with most things ; but I don't 
 think they are altogether to be considered. 
 I think we should take a higher stand than 
 public opinion.' 
 
 'Oh, I'm not a bit afraid of Mrs. Grundy 
 personally. Nothing gives me more pleasure 
 than to hear her squeal ; but there is Tom 
 to consider, and the parish. I suppose it's 
 one's duty to live peaceably with one's flock, 
 not to set everybody's back up if one can 
 help it. Still, I wish it could have been 
 arranged. ' 
 
 'It's a pity,' Stephen said; 'and I think 
 it's an opportunity lost. It isn't as if the 
 people didn't like it and didn't do it already. 
 At the fair last week there was dancing kept 
 up until daylight ; and at Easter and Whit-
 
 90 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 suntide there is always dancing at the pubHc- 
 houses. They do it secretly, as it were, and 
 there is a good deal of drinking going on 
 with it. If we could have made it a credit- 
 able and lawful amusement, there would 
 have been no need for it to take place in 
 the back-rooms of a public-house. If we 
 had taken it up, it would immediately have 
 become an innocent and quite decent and 
 reputable recreation. Oh, I am sure we 
 are doing wrong by putting our foot upon 
 the amusements of the people. We pervert 
 their moral sense. They will have amuse- 
 ment of some kind, and if we refuse them 
 what is really innocent, we encourage them to 
 seek for it in a baser form. I don't know 
 why we should go out of our way to teach 
 people that recreation is wicked ; we have 
 no authority for it — certainly no Divine 
 authority.' 
 
 ' You should tell Tom all this ; it is
 
 BARBE BLEUE 91 
 
 no use telllno- me,' the Rector's wife said. 
 ' I think he wouldn't have raised any objec- 
 tion if Lady Camilla hadn't cooled. It would 
 have been her project, not his ; and she is 
 thought so much of here that people wouldn't 
 have dared to say anything.' 
 
 ' We have got the room, at any rate. We 
 should not have got the room if it hadn't 
 been for the dancing. I don't know what 
 we should do without it, it is so useful for 
 lectures and meetings.' 
 
 * You have got more than the room, 
 Mr. Dashwood. You don't know what 
 you have got. A surveyor and an archi- 
 tect have been down, and Sir Probyn is 
 going to build some new cottages at Little- 
 court. They are to be built with all the 
 latest sanitary improvements. It will be a 
 great boon to those poor creatures. When 
 you ask for one thing you often get another. 
 Providence, I suppose, knows what is best.'
 
 92 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 Stephen couldn't but own, perhaps a Httle 
 grudgingly, that Providence knew what was 
 best. It certainly knew better than he did. 
 He had asked for a dancing-booth, and it 
 had given him a spacious, much -needed 
 parish-room, and now it had put it into the 
 heart of the most indifferent landlord in the 
 county to build some model, quite model, 
 cottages on his estate in the place of those 
 horrible, unsanitary dwellings at Littlecourt 
 that were not fit for pigs to live in. 
 
 They were not small things, they were 
 really great things, he had to be thankful 
 for. He was quite ashamed of himself for 
 not being more thankful, for still hankering 
 after the things that had been denied. 
 
 Perhaps the time was not ripe for them. 
 
 Stephen did not go to the Hermitage again 
 for some time. When he did go he went a 
 little earlier than usual, intending not to
 
 BARBE BLEUE 93 
 
 stay late. He had come to think lately 
 that it would be much better for him to 
 go to the Hermitage earlier in the day 
 than was his wont — say to luncheon or tea, 
 five o'clock tea, and a little gossip ; to 
 any meal, in fact, except supper. That 
 taking off of armour — the spiritual armour, 
 that is always fraught with danger to take 
 off — at the end of the day, when the work 
 was over, and sitting down to feasting, and — 
 not exactly revelry — soft music and lowered 
 lights, was not exactly the kind of discipline 
 he needed. He didn't find it out until that 
 night when the Baroness asked that funny 
 question about the lady and the Sunday- 
 schools. Then, quite suddenly, he scented 
 danger. He found out, all at once, that 
 what he was accustomed to call sympathy 
 was 'spooning.' It is so much better to 
 call things by their right names. 
 
 This explained his calling earlier to-day.
 
 94 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 He called so much earlier that nobody was 
 expecting him. Bebee was dusting the 
 drawing-room, and arranging some flowers 
 in vases. She didn't do much arranging ; 
 she just stuck the flowers anyhow in the 
 pots in a sulky, spiritless way. She looked 
 as if she had been crying all day : her eyes 
 were pinker than ever : her nose was very 
 pink, and her face was white — quite white 
 and colourless — and she wore a big white 
 pinafore-apron that covered up her frock. 
 
 Stephen could not help remarking how 
 exactly she resembled a white mouse as 
 she stood beside the table sticking the 
 flowers into the vases ; and then he noticed 
 that her arms and hands were red, too — 
 barred or striped with red — as if they had 
 been torn by brambles. He could think of 
 nothing else that could tear them in that way. 
 
 ' Did you do that in getting the flowers ?' 
 he asked.
 
 BARBE BLEUE 95 
 
 B6bee looked up suddenly, and then he 
 noticed what very green eyes she had — 
 perhaps in contrast to the pink lids — and 
 that her lips were quivering. 
 
 * It isn't that,' she said, glancing fearfully 
 at the door ; ' she set that brute at me again. 
 Oh, how I wish I was dead !' 
 
 She left off sticking the flowers into the 
 vases, and put her apron to her eyes, and 
 Stephen thought she was going off into one 
 of those fits of hysterics he had heard of 
 
 ' She ?' he repeated vaguely. 
 
 He was so taken aback by the girl's words 
 that he didn't know what to say. 
 
 ' Yes ; she's a tiger ! She isn't a woman. 
 You can see it in her eyes. Did you ever 
 see a woman with such eyes "^ Her paws 
 are velvet ; but, oh ! you should feel her 
 claws. She has beaten me and pinched 
 me so long as I can remember ; and now, 
 when I tell tales about her, she sets that
 
 96 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 brute at me. It is not a cat ; it is a tiger 
 like herself.' 
 
 Clearly the girl was not accountable for 
 what she said. Stephen tried to remember 
 the tales he had heard about hysterical 
 people saying the wildest things while the 
 fit is on them. 
 
 Bebee was certainly hysterical. He ex- 
 pected to see her go off every moment into 
 a laughing fit, or a crying fit, or both. He 
 was very sorry, after all, that he had come so 
 early. If he had come at the usual time, 
 that Bluebeard cupboard he had just got a 
 peep into would have been closed. He was 
 sorry that the door had been left ajar for him 
 to get that unpleasant glimpse within ; he 
 would have liked to have shut it softly and 
 gone away. 
 
 ' Poor pussy !' he said, with a dreary 
 attempt at a laugh. ' I dare say she got 
 the worst of it. I expect you were teasing
 
 BARBE BLEUE 97 
 
 her. Sit down, Bebee, and play one of 
 those Lieder you are so fond of; it will 
 calm your nerves.' 
 
 ' I hate the piano, and 1 hate the ever- 
 lasting Lieder! 1 wish Mendelssohn had 
 never lived ! I hate them all — Beethoven, 
 or Bach, or Schumann, or Mozart — oh, how 
 I hate them !' 
 
 The girl shuddered as she spoke, and a 
 faint pink flush crept up under her white 
 skin. 
 
 *Ah,' she went on in her rapid, excited 
 way, and pausing every now and then to 
 cast fearful glances in the direction of the 
 door, ' you don't know what reason I have 
 to hate them ! She makes me play for hours 
 and hours, until my fingers ache, and my 
 back aches, and my eyes ache, and I get 
 so giddy in my head that I can hardly keep 
 from falling off the stool. If I stop without 
 her permission, she beats me. She often 
 VOL. 1. 7
 
 98 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 threatens me when you are sitting here 
 talking to her — she Hkes to hear you talk — 
 she speaks so soft, you do not guess what 
 she is saying. Oh, if you only knew !' 
 
 The Baroness came into the room while 
 Bebee was speaking ; she had evidently 
 stayed to dress, and she was smoothing 
 down her laces as she came into the 
 room. 
 
 Something in the girl's face or manner 
 caught her eye as she came in smiling, with 
 her shapely white jewelled hand outstretched 
 to Stephen. 
 
 ' What is the matter } what are you 
 talking about, Bebee ?' 
 
 The great black cat had glided in beside 
 her, and it stood rubbing itself against the 
 table where the girl was standing. 
 
 Bebee had dropped her apron, and was 
 sullenly sticking the flowers in the vases 
 before her.
 
 BARBE BLEUE 99 
 
 ' I was telling Mr. Dashwood that I had 
 got my hands scratched with the brambles 
 in getting these horrid flowers,' she said 
 sullenly. 
 
 And then she gathered up the litter she 
 had made on the table, and took herself and 
 her litter out of the room. 
 
 Stephen felt exactly as if he had been 
 detected with the key of the Bluebeard 
 cupboard in his hand.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 NAUSICAA. 
 
 The curate of St. Michael's did not find out 
 everything about his parish at once. 
 
 There were a great many places and 
 people he had not visited when he had been 
 in Thorpe Regis a year. He had called on 
 most of the poor people, and he had visited 
 the sick ; there were a good many sick 
 people in Thorpe. The lower end of the 
 town, near the river, was damp and un- 
 healthy, and if he had no other virtue, he was 
 unfailing in his ministrations to the sick. 
 
 Perhaps for this reason Stephen got on 
 better with his poorer parishioners than he
 
 NAUSICAA loi 
 
 did with the rich ; they understood him 
 better. He was more familiar with poor 
 men's dwelHngs than with their wealthier 
 neighbours. He saw more of them at those 
 solemn seasons when pretences are laid 
 aside, and they had learnt to speak to him 
 unreservedly of their cares and fears for 
 this world and the next. If he had accom- 
 plished nothing else during his first year of 
 work in Thorpe, he was the sympathizing 
 friend of every working man, woman, and 
 child in the parish. 
 
 There were some outlying districts which 
 he had not yet visited ; he had quite enough 
 to do to visit the people in the parish, with- 
 out going out of his way to call upon people 
 who lived outside it. 
 
 During all the year he had been in 
 Thorpe, he had never found out Wellbrook 
 Lane until one hot August noon, when, 
 returning from a dusty walk along the
 
 102 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 dreary, scorching highroad, he was tempted 
 to turn down the shady lane, that led 
 apparently to nowhere, out of the glare and 
 heat of the sun. 
 
 Then he made a discovery. 
 
 All precious things, we are told, are dis- 
 covered late. If he had gone down Well- 
 brook Lane in the spring-time, he would 
 have found that not only primroses decked 
 the bank's green side, but violets, harebells, 
 daffodils, wood orchis, hyacinth — every sweet 
 thing of the copse or meadow — crowded up 
 here in its season, and that the air was 
 always fragrant with blossom and tuneful 
 with song. There was always a lark going 
 up or coming down in Wellbrook Lane, and 
 there was a brook, from which it took its 
 name, murmuring hard by. 
 
 The harebells and the wood orchis were 
 over now ; they had bloomed their short 
 windy day, and the hawthorns that had
 
 NAUSICAA 103 
 
 whitened the hedges had gone too, and the 
 sweet wild roses that had blushed in the 
 July sun had faded, but the perfume of the 
 honeysuckle was still sweet and strong, and 
 the foxgloves were tall and brave, and the 
 little speedwell's darling blue was every- 
 where reflecting back the blue, blue August 
 sky. 
 
 Stephen thought he had never seen such 
 a delightful country lane in his life. 
 
 Perhaps it was the relief of the coolness 
 after the glare and heat of the dusty high- 
 way. He couldn't think why he hadn't 
 found it out before. 
 
 He was sure that all this wealth of beauty 
 was the prelude to something sweeter yet. 
 He had no idea where this fairy glade led 
 to ; he was sure he was on the verge of a 
 discovery. 
 
 He might have been another fairy 
 prince.
 
 104 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 It used to be his favourite myth In those 
 old wild days when he had differences with 
 the college authorities. He always thought 
 he should discover a sleeping princess. He 
 certainly hadn't discovered one at the 
 Hermitage. He had discovered a Blue- 
 beard cupboard that he would rather have 
 been ignorant of. The discovery had made 
 his visits awkward. He always felt he was 
 sharing a secret with Bebee, and he was 
 positively afraid of the Baroness — and he 
 hated the cats. 
 
 No ; the sleeping princess, that he was some 
 day to awake, was not at the Hermitage. 
 
 He had often wondered what had become 
 of that girl everybody said he was flirting 
 with at Mrs. Tom's unlucky tennis-party. 
 He had never seen her since that day ; he 
 had forgotten even her name, and he had 
 behaved so badly on that occasion that he 
 hadn't dared to ask about her since.
 
 NAUSICAA 105 
 
 She had disappeared as completely from 
 Thorpe society as if some malignant fairy 
 had caught her up, and whisked her a 
 thousand miles away. 
 
 He was quite certain of one thing — she 
 was not in Thorpe. He was thinking about 
 her as he wandered idly down Wellbrook 
 Lane. Something in the atmosphere of the 
 place recalled her. Faint shadows from the 
 branches overhead fell across his path — faint 
 murmurs from the fields, where the corn 
 was already ripening for the harvest, and 
 whispering vague hints and echoes of the 
 days to come. 
 
 Something of the mystery, the silence, 
 and sweet, sweet sadness of the time and 
 place stirred his blood, and brought back 
 the face of the girl he had met for the last 
 and first time on that well-remembered day. 
 Perhaps it was the scent of the honeysuckle 
 in the hedge that brought her back so
 
 io6 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 vividly. He remembered then, for the first 
 time, that she had some crimson - tipped 
 honeysuckle at her waist. She might have 
 gathered it from a trailing branch that grew 
 above his head. He made a leap and 
 caught it, and crushed it, as men crush 
 sweetness, in nis hand, and in a moment the 
 whole scene was before him — Rectory, lawn, 
 and a rosebud garden of girls, and a girl on 
 the turf by his side, panting and pink — no, 
 scarlet — who was lily and rose in one. 
 
 A bit of honeysuckle had brought it all 
 back. 
 
 A wall of greenery and creeping plants had 
 shut out a house that lay back from the road 
 from his view. He did not see it till he 
 reached the gate, and then, as he stood 
 looking over the gate, he remembered he had 
 never seen the house before. 
 
 It was only a cottage, rather out of repair, 
 covered with creepers and parasites that
 
 NAUSICAA T07 
 
 wanted fastening up dreadfully. There was 
 an ill-kept garden in front of the cottage, 
 and a gravelled path that was overgrown 
 with weeds. It had such a forlorn, neglected 
 look that, if it hadn't been for the smoke 
 that was curling up into the blue sky from 
 one of the chimneys, Stephen would have 
 thought it was uninhabited. Reassured by 
 the smoke, and remembering that he had 
 done no visiting this hot, idle summer day, 
 he opened the garden-gate and went up to 
 the door. 
 
 He went up quite boldly ; he did not 
 pause or hesitate. He climbed the two 
 steps that led to the front-door as if they had 
 been one, and then he rapped boldly at the 
 door. There was no bell to the house, so 
 that he couldn't ring ; and there was no 
 knocker, so he rapped at the door with the 
 knob of his stick. He rapped as boldly as 
 if it had been a door on a college staircase,
 
 io8 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 and he waited with the handle in his hand 
 ready to turn when the voice within shouted, 
 ' Come in !' 
 
 But no one shouted, * Come in !' and the 
 handle wouldn't turn. 
 
 He waited a few moments, and then he 
 rapped again a little louder and a more 
 imperative summons than before ; and then, 
 while he stood sunning himself on the door- 
 steps and noting all the signs of neglect and 
 decay about the place, somebody opened the 
 door. 
 
 He would have taken off his hat if he 
 had known it was a Girton girl who had 
 opened the door ; he ought to have taken it 
 off as it was ; and the vision that he saw — 
 the quite unexpected vision — dazzled him, 
 and he was rather sorry he had made such 
 a noise with that confounded stick. 
 
 He had only expected to find quite 
 ordinary working people living in this
 
 NAUSICAA 109 
 
 gloomy little house, hiding away from the 
 road, when he opened the garden-gate and 
 went in. 
 
 The girl who answered his impatient 
 summons didn't look the least like a Girton 
 girl when she opened the door. 
 
 Stephen Dashwood was a little short- 
 sighted, and this vision of a lovely young 
 woman, with her sleeves turned up above 
 her elbows — and very pretty elbows they 
 were — and her skirts gathered up about her 
 knees, and a big coarse apron tied round 
 her waist, with a big coarse bib pinned under 
 her chin, rather took away his breath. He 
 couldn't be sure if it was the maid or the 
 mistress he was speaking to, and he didn't 
 at all expect to see a lady in Wellbrook 
 Lane. 
 
 * I beg your pardon ' he said, and 
 
 paused. 
 
 Something in the girl's eyes had stopped
 
 no TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 that ready flow of words with which he 
 addressed himself to his humbler parish- 
 ioners. 
 
 ' Yes ?' said the Girton girl, looking 
 straight at him, and holding the door wide 
 open, but not inviting him to walk in. 
 
 ' I — I am afraid I haven't the pleasure of • 
 knowing the name. I have only recently 
 come to the parish.' 
 
 ' No,' said the Girton girl. 
 
 She didn't at all attempt to help him 
 out. 
 
 ' May I ask the name ?' Stephen said 
 desperately. 
 
 'Grove,' said the girl — 'Mary Grove. 
 Perhaps you'd like to see m^y mother ?' 
 
 ' I should like to see her very much, if 
 it's convenient — if I'm not intruding. Pray 
 don't let me interrupt you ! Pray don't stop 
 your work for me ! I can talk to you while 
 you are at work if you will allow me.'
 
 J 
 
 NAUSICAA 
 
 ' Just as you please,' said Mary Grove, 
 with just a suspicion of a smile about the 
 corners of her lips ; ' I am washing, and 
 my mother is hanging out the clothes. 
 Perhaps you would like to talk to her in the 
 garden. ' 
 
 She led the way through the passage to 
 the garden at the back of the house — a big 
 green garden, full of sunshine and homely 
 flowers. Some lines had been stretched 
 across between the apple-trees, and a frail- 
 looking, shabby little woman was hanging 
 out some linen. 
 
 * Mamma, this is Mr. Banister's new 
 curate,' Mary Grove said, introducing the 
 visitor ; and then she retired to a bench that 
 stood outside the kitchen-door, with a tub 
 of steaming soap-suds upon it, and re- 
 commenced her washing. 
 
 Mrs. Grove put down her clothes-pegs, 
 and held out her hand to him ; it was a
 
 112 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 thin, wasted hand, and her face, he remarked, 
 looked worn and sad. It was the face of a 
 lady, and, faded and shabby as she looked 
 in the morning sunshine, Stephen knew he 
 was talking to a gentlewoman. 
 
 ' I ought to have introduced myself to 
 your daughter,' he said. ' My name is 
 Dash wood — Stephen Dash wood. I have 
 only lately come to Thorpe. I am trying 
 to call upon everybody ; I should have 
 called before, but I have only just found 
 out Wellbrook Lane.' 
 Mrs. Grove smiled. 
 
 ' Few people find out Wellbrook Lane,' 
 she said, just smothering a sigh. 
 
 ' Then you have not many visitors T 
 ' We have no visitors.' 
 
 Stephen glanced unconsciously in the 
 direction of the bench. Mary was bending 
 over the wash-tub, and she was singing at 
 her work. She had forgotten all about
 
 NAUSICAA 113 
 
 him already ; she was deep in soapsuds, 
 and singing a sweet low cradle-song : 
 ' Sweet and low, sweet and low.' 
 
 Sweet, sweet, sweet ! he had never heard 
 any sound so sweet in his life, and he had 
 never seen such a comely pair of ankles ; 
 and the profile that was bending over the 
 wash-tub might have been the profile of 
 Nausicaa herself. Looking at Mary Grove, 
 standing there at the wash-tub in the sweet 
 morning sunshine, he recalled Homer's 
 idyllic episode of Alcinous' daughter going 
 washing with her maidens. 
 
 Washing clothes was not considered un- 
 refined in those old simple days, and a 
 king's daughter could go clown with her 
 maidens to the stream and wash the clothes 
 of the household ; and a poet too refined to 
 see anything mean or ridiculous in healthy 
 natural labour immortalizes the idyllic scene 
 in his noble verse. 
 
 VOL. I. 8
 
 114 ^O HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 Mrs. Grove followed the direction of 
 Stephens eyes, and sighed. She knew 
 nothing about Nausicaa. She had never 
 read a line of Homer in her life. Girls 
 did not go up to Girton in her days. 
 
 'You are thinking it is dull for Mary,' 
 she said. ' I think not. She would not 
 like to see any visitors now ;' and then 
 the tears came into her eyes, and she 
 broke down. 
 
 * I am afraid you are in trouble,' said 
 the curate gently ; and he laid his hand on 
 the thin, worn hand that was still grasping 
 the clothes-pegs. It was but a light touch — 
 a mere feather-weight — but it broke down 
 all her reticence, and her tears flowed freely. 
 She was not used to sympathy. 
 
 ' Is it possible you have not heard T she 
 said. 
 
 * No ; I have heard nothing. I have 
 come here so lately. I am a stranger to
 
 NAUSICAA 115 
 
 the place and the people. If you will tell 
 me your trouble I shall be very glad to help 
 you, to be of service to you in any way I 
 can ;' and again he glanced at Nausicaa, 
 though, as her back was turned to him, he 
 only caught a glimpse of her ankles. 
 
 The poor woman looked at Stephen 
 through her tears. It was a kind face, if 
 not a strong face. It was a face tliat a 
 woman couldn't help trusting. 
 
 And sitting there on the garden-bench, 
 with a basket of wet linen at her feet, and 
 her hands full of clothes- pegs, Mrs. Grove 
 told him her story. 
 
 A sad little story of sorrow and loss and 
 endurance and heroism. 
 
 It was very commonplace heroism ; it was 
 the endurance that is practised every day of 
 their lives by thousands of women ; it was 
 the old, old story of trial and loss. There 
 was nothing in the story itself remarkable ;
 
 It 6 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 it was exactly like the story that thousands 
 of women could tell, and are telling daily, 
 until the world gets tired of listening to 
 them. Stephen, hearing it from Mrs. Grove's 
 lips as he sat in the shade of the apple-trees, 
 with the basket of wet linen that Mary 
 Grove had just washed at his feet, thought 
 it the saddest story he had ever heard ; it 
 brought the tears smarting into his eyes. 
 
 Mary Grove's father was a drunkard. 
 
 He had been a major in the army, and 
 he was a major now only in name. He had 
 sold out years ago. He had parted with a 
 great many other things besides his com- 
 mission. House and lands, and furniture 
 and plate — everything that could be turned 
 into money had gone. It had all gone one 
 way. 
 
 He had drunk it all. 
 
 Lower and lower he had sunk year by 
 year, dragging his family with him into the
 
 NAUSICAA 117 
 
 dust, and now there was nothing left but 
 the dwindling interest of a small freehold 
 that had been his wife's jointure. 
 
 There were two girls — only girls — no boys 
 to drag down with him to this low level. 
 It would have been dreadful to a boy, this 
 slipping down, down, down! It was bad 
 enough to girls. One girl had got out of 
 it ; she was a teacher in a foreign boarding- 
 school, and she was blissfully ignorant of the 
 low level that had already been reached. 
 What was the use of telling her ? fhe 
 other girl was a student of a woman's 
 college. She had won a scholarship, and a 
 maiden aunt had left her a small legacy, and 
 with these slender means she had gone to 
 Girton. 
 
 Everything was slipping away — every- 
 thing here : it would soon be all gone ; 
 but what she gained at Girton — and she 
 had already gained, oh, so much ! — was
 
 ii8 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 beyond the reach of loss or accident. If 
 she took a First Class she would be able 
 to look the future in the face without fear 
 or dismay ; she would be quite prepared for 
 that black day she saw so surely coming. 
 
 The black day came sooner than she 
 expected. It came when her three years' 
 work at Girton — it had been very hard 
 work ; nobody but herself knew how hard 
 — ^was drawing to a close ; when success, 
 so hardly earned, was assured. It would 
 not be delayed a single day ; if it could 
 have been delayed a single term she would 
 have been prepared to meet it. 
 
 Year by year everything had been going 
 from bad to worse, and now the worst had 
 been reached. Major Grove had had a dread- 
 ful fit of delirium tremens, and the doctor 
 who attended him had said that a recurrence 
 of the attack was inevitable, and that the 
 dear, patient woman who had clung to him
 
 NAUSICAA 119 
 
 with uncomplaining love and fidelity through 
 all these unhappy years ran a daily, hourly 
 risk of her life. 
 
 Mary Grove threw up Girton and her 
 First Class, and stayed at home with her 
 mother. 
 
 She was doing the washing now, outside 
 the kitchen-door, and she was singing at her 
 work. She had already resigned herself to 
 her lot ; undertaken her dreary rnMer 
 practically, if not pathetically, without the 
 least cynicism or tragedy airs. 
 
 Stephen listened to the litde sad story 
 with a white, set face and tightening lips, 
 and when she came to the end — to that last 
 sad chapter, to the crowning sacrifice, Mary's 
 refusal to go back to Girton — the tears 
 rushed into his eyes, and he covered his 
 face with his hands. He was a dreadfully 
 emotional, highly-strung young man, and he 
 couldn't control himself
 
 I20 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 * It was against my wish she stayed,' Mrs. 
 Grove was saying ; ' I could have borne it 
 for three months longer. I would have 
 borne it. I would have suffered anything 
 for Mary to have gone up this last term, to 
 have gone in for the examination she had 
 been working so hard for. She would have 
 taken a high place, I am told ' 
 
 ' I am sure she would !' said Stephen 
 hotly. 
 
 What did he know about it ? 
 
 ' Miss English, the Principal, wrote and 
 offered to forego the fees if she would go 
 up for the examination. They had counted 
 so much upon her at Girton ; it was a great 
 disappointment. I think they expected she 
 would take a First Class.' 
 
 ' Of course she would take a First !' said 
 Stephen warmly. He was quite as certain 
 of it as if he had been one of the examiners, 
 and had the papers before him.
 
 NAUSICAA 121 
 
 ' Nothing would persuade Mary to go 
 back,' continued Mrs. Grove, fondly smooth- 
 ing down the wooden pegs in her lap ; ' she 
 would not hear of it. She would not leave 
 me alone with him again ; she is so careful 
 for me, and so indifferent for herself, and — 
 and, in spite of all, she really loves her 
 father. No one can manage him as she 
 does when he is really violent, and he is 
 very violent at times. I sometimes think 
 he will kill her, but she is never afraid. 
 She is so brave, and so tender and patient, 
 it breaks my heart to see her doing this 
 work, but she will not have a woman in to 
 do it. She will not let any stranger come 
 in to see our trouble. It is a dreadful, a 
 shameful, sight at times, and she cannot bear 
 that anyone should come in and see it. Oh, 
 no one knows what she has to jj^o throucrh ! 
 My poor child !' 
 
 Stephen could stand it no longer ; he got
 
 122 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 up from the garden-seat, and walked back- 
 ward and forward across the lawn, with the 
 wet clothes on the line flapping against his 
 face. 
 
 Once, and once only, he glanced over to 
 Nausicaa, who was singing at her work, 
 and caught a glimpse of the bright chestnut 
 hair, and the lovely profile, and the dainty 
 curve of the dainty neck, and the sweep of 
 the handsome shoulders bending over the 
 wash-tub. He was so moved, so infatuated, 
 with this bit of humble heroism., with this 
 Girton girl who had formed for herself such 
 a high and pure ideal of duty in the most 
 commonplace surroundings, in this menial 
 occupation, that he likened her in his 
 emotional mind to the heroes of old — the 
 true, simple old heroes — who were kinsmen 
 of the gods. 
 
 He would have liked to have fallen down 
 at her feet beside the wash - tub, and
 
 NAUSICAA 123 
 
 worshipped her, as he worshipped, rightly 
 or wrongly, the saintly women of old, who» 
 in their infinite sense of duty, raised the ideal 
 of human nobleness. 
 
 How could he help this girl ? he asked 
 himself, as he walked backward and forward 
 among the wet clothes. 
 
 ' Would it be any use my seeing Mr. — 
 Major Grove ?' he asked presently, stopping 
 before the orarden-seat. 
 
 ' I don't think it would be any use,' the 
 j)oor woman said with a sigh. * He is past 
 seeing anyone. He would be very angry 
 if anyone were brought in, and — and he 
 might insult you. He forgets sometimes 
 that he is a gentleman. He might be 
 violent and use dreadful language. No ; I 
 don't think you can see him.' 
 
 Stephen groaned inwardly. The man 
 was too dreadful for him to see, and this 
 girl had to endure it day and night — the
 
 124 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 coarseness, and the violence, and the dread- 
 ful language ! 
 
 ' I shouldn't mind his being angry,' he 
 said, ' if I can do him any good. Where is 
 he now ?' 
 
 ' Oh, he is not up yet ! He never comes 
 down till the afternoon. The morning is 
 our only happy time. Mary ought to be 
 lying down now ; she was up all night, and 
 if he is violent again to-night, she will not 
 dare' to go to bed until morning. He 
 generally gets quieter towards morning.' 
 
 ' I will come again, if you will let me, 
 Mrs. Grove,' Stephen said, as he took his 
 leave. ' I should like to help you if I can — 
 if you will let me try.' 
 
 'It is very kind of you,' said the poor 
 little woman sadly ; ' but we see no one now. 
 I don't think we can trespass upon your 
 time ' 
 
 ' It isn't my time,' interrupted Stephen,
 
 NAUSICAA 125 
 
 with a look in his eyes that Mrs. Grove 
 hadn't seen there before ; ' it's my Master's 
 time. I don't think the age of miracles 
 has passed. Will you let me try, Mrs. 
 Grove ?' 
 
 'You must ask Mary. If she thinks that 
 you can do any good, come — come by 
 all means, and God bless you for coming !' 
 
 It was one thing to say, ' Ask Mary,' and 
 another thing to ask her. 
 
 Stephen Dashwood approached Mary 
 Grove with his heart beating dreadfully, and 
 the tell-tale colour in his face ; but the white- 
 armed Nausicaa did not look up until he 
 paused beside the wash-tub. 
 
 ' You have had a long talk with my 
 mother,' she said, smilino- across the tub ; 
 but she did not leave off her everlasting rub- 
 rub, scrub-scrub. 
 
 She was not the least ashamed of her 
 dress or her occupation. She was as cool
 
 126 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 and composed as if she were in the lecture- 
 room at Girton. 
 
 'Yes,' he said gravely; 'she has been 
 telling me about her great trial. She has 
 taken me into her confidence — I hope you 
 will not think it misplaced — and she has 
 promised, with your consent, to let me help 
 her.' 
 
 ' With my consent ?' Mary repeated ; and 
 she paused in her work, and the blood 
 rushed up into her face. ' Has she told you 
 all— all r 
 
 ' She has told me all.' 
 
 Mary took her hands out of the water ; 
 she didn't wipe them on her apron as a 
 washerwoman should have done, but she 
 stood with them hanging down by her side, 
 with the soapy water dripping off her slender 
 fingers and her white arms, and the sun- 
 shine shining on the soap - bubbles, and 
 irradiating them with the most glorious
 
 NAUSICAA 127 
 
 prismatic colours, till they shone like rubies, 
 and sapphires, and opals, and diamonds — 
 living jewels coming and going in the sun- 
 
 light. 
 
 'You know all — everything; and — and 
 you think you can help us ?' 
 
 ' I know everything, and I am sure I can 
 help you.' 
 
 His tone was confident, and his lips were 
 firm and strong, and his eyes were shining. 
 
 Mary measured him with one quick, 
 searching glance. She had not spent three 
 years at Girton for nothing. She was quick 
 to perceive the character of this Ulysses 
 who had interrupted her washing — this 
 champion who was eager to fight her battles 
 for her. 
 
 * If you can help us, we shall be very 
 grateful,' she said softly ; and he saw that 
 her lip trembled as she spoke. 
 
 * When may I come ?' he said eagerly —
 
 128 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 ' when may I begin ? May I come to-night 
 — to-morrow ?' 
 
 She smiled at his eagerness ; she did not 
 know what tales her mother had been tell- 
 ing him about her having been up all the 
 night before, and w^hat she would have to 
 ofo throuQfh aorain to-nio^ht. 
 
 'Come to-morrow,' she said — 'come in 
 the afternoon ;' and then, with her jewelled 
 arms still dripping, she took him back 
 through the house, and opened the front- 
 door to let him out. 
 
 ' My hands are wet,' she said, smiling, and 
 drawing back when he would have shaken 
 hands with her at the door. 
 
 He shook hands, nevertheless, and his 
 hands were tingling with that warm, damp 
 touch all the way back to Thorpe.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ST. HELENA. 
 
 If Staying at home and doing one's duty 
 is a form of heroism, Mary Grove was 
 a heroine. 
 
 If she had stayed at Girton and taken 
 her First Class, she would certainly have 
 been a heroine — the world would not have 
 disputed her claim — but to stay at home, 
 and take care of a drunken old father and 
 a poor broken - hearted mother, it really 
 seemed such a common-place thing that it 
 was no wonder the people of Thorpe Regis 
 saw nothing heroic in it. 
 
 It is so hard to define heroism. There 
 VOL. L 9
 
 I30 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 is no fixed standard. It is not duty, though 
 it is its perfect fulfilment. It goes beyond 
 duty ; it is a work of supererogation. 
 
 There are heroines — the world is full of 
 them — who neglect every duty. It is so 
 much easier to step out of one's sphere to 
 do some big thing, with the world look- 
 ing on and applauding, than to do the 
 mean, troublesome, disagreeable little duties 
 that hang like a millstone about one's 
 neck. 
 
 Perhaps that is where the heroism comes 
 in. The big thing may be, after all, the 
 result of pride, self-will, discontent, emula- 
 tion ; and the true hero or heroine stays at 
 home and does the humble work, and is 
 never heard of 
 
 Who shall say ? 
 
 It is only fair to Mary Grove to say that 
 it never entered into her head that she was 
 doing anything unusual — anything beyond
 
 ST. HELENA 131 
 
 her duty. She stayed at home, and threw 
 up her First Class, and accepted her humble 
 lot cheerfully. 
 
 It was a hard, ungracious lot, as well as a 
 humble one. Everything had slipped away, 
 and it was a hard struggle to eke out the 
 little slender income that had been saved out 
 of the wreck. 
 
 This accounted for the poor cottage, and 
 the neglected garden, and the wash-tub out- 
 side the kitchen door. 
 
 Wellbrook Lane was so far away from 
 the town, and the place was in such a dilapi- 
 dated condition, that the rent was low, and 
 there were no neighbours to spy out the 
 nakedness of the land. 
 
 Mary Grove never could be thankful 
 enough that Wellbrook Lane was not in the 
 town. There might have been houses on 
 either side if it had been a street, and there 
 would have been neighbours always listen-
 
 132 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 ing and hearing those dreadful, dreadful 
 noises. 
 
 Fortunately the house lay well back from 
 the road, and the Major could scream and 
 swear to his heart's content without disturb- 
 ing anybody. He raved and swore all day 
 now, and the two trembling women kept the 
 windows and doors that looked out on the 
 road close shut, vainly trying to cover up 
 their shame and misery. 
 
 There really was no need to keep the 
 front-door so carefully closed against the 
 world, for no one ever called in Wellbrook 
 Lane now. People did not care to run the 
 risk of encountering a drunken, raving mad- 
 man. There could be no question of social 
 intercourse, so Mrs. Grove and her daughter 
 dropped out of Thorpe society. Mary 
 Grove was very glad to have it so. Not a 
 soul, except the butcher and the baker and 
 the milkman, had called at the house since
 
 ST. HELENA 133 
 
 she had come back from Girton in March, 
 and now it was August, until that day when 
 Stephen found her out. 
 
 He hadn't found her out a minute too 
 soon. 
 
 He couldn't get that picture of the Girton 
 girl at the wash-tub out of his mind — out 
 of his sight, indeed — do what he would, all 
 that day. 
 
 He could see her quite plainly, every time 
 he shut his eyes, standing in the sunshine, 
 with her arms bare and her skirts gathered 
 up, bending over the steaming tub. He 
 could see the beautiful profile, and the pose 
 of the stately head, rising like a flower on 
 a stalk. He saw it all quite plainly ; he 
 even recalled a dimple that he had seen but 
 one second, when she smiled at him across 
 the wash-tub ; and all about her was a subtle 
 atmosphere like the cloud-like atmosphere 
 of the gods — it might have been steam.
 
 134 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 He drew the picture from memory, steam 
 and all, only he idealized it as clouds — clouds 
 about her feet and about her head, and 
 angels — little fat, chubby angels, that looked 
 very much like Cupids — perched on the 
 clouds, and looking down upon her. 
 
 Then It occurred to him that he had 
 seen a picture somewhere exactly like it — a 
 picture by an old Master, Raphael or Paul 
 Veronese — a kind of St. Helena at the wash- 
 tub, with angels watching her. 
 
 No ; it wasn't St. Helena. 
 
 Where had he seen it ? 
 
 Perhaps in a stained-glass window at 
 Cambridge — one of the wonderful windows 
 at King's College Chapel. He remembered 
 them all. Hadn't he sat under them, and 
 looked up at them, term after term, for 
 three years, and puzzled them painfully out 
 bit by bit, making many mistakes, and going- 
 over them again and again ? He knew them
 
 ST. HELENA 135 
 
 all by heart at last, every one of them, and, 
 maybe, had learnt some of the lessons they 
 taught. He couldn't sit under them for 
 three years without learning something. 
 
 He recalled them all, type and anti-type, 
 but he couldn't recall a woman at a washing- 
 tub among them. Then he turned over his 
 lives of the saints with the same result. 
 He lingered over them lovingly— he was 
 very fond of the saints — St. Dorothy with 
 her flowers, St. Barbara with her tower, 
 St. Gertrude with her loaf, St. Faith with 
 her rods, St. Margaret trampling on the 
 dragon, St. Catherine and her wheel : no, 
 there wasn't a wash-tub among them. 
 
 Clearly, if Mary Grove were put into a 
 church-window, the Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury would have to canonize a new saint. 
 
 Well, he might go farther for a saintly ideal 
 of heroism than theGirton girl at the wash-tub. 
 
 Stephen talked the matter over with his
 
 136 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 Rector the same evening. He found 
 Banister smoking his post-prandial pipe in 
 the Rectory garden among the flower-beds. 
 Mrs. Tom had gone up to the nursery to 
 hear Tommy and Poppy say their evening 
 prayers, and the Rector was alone. 
 
 * I have made a discovery,' Stephen began, 
 trying to keep his voice steady, and looking 
 down at the gravel path ; ' I have found out 
 a new parishioner. I have been in Well- 
 brook Lane.' 
 
 The Rector stopped in the middle of the 
 path. 
 
 ' You don't mean to say you have called 
 upon the Groves ?' he said in a tone of 
 positive alarm. 
 
 ' I have indeed ; why shouldn't I call ? 
 They are quite within the boundary of the 
 parish.' 
 
 ' It isn't that, but the circumstances are 
 peculiar— ^ I might say embarrassing.'
 
 ST. HELENA 137 
 
 * So I should suppose, but that wouldn't 
 have prevented my calling, even if I had 
 known it ; but I didn't know it when I 
 knocked at the door. I expected to find 
 labouring people.' 
 
 ' Who did you see ?' 
 
 ' I saw Miss Grove. She opened the door 
 to me.' 
 
 * Mary ? Poor girl ! So she let you in ? 
 She doesn't let many people in. She won't 
 let my wife in very often, though she's the 
 only friend she has in the place ; and she 
 won't let me in when the Major's violent. 
 She always sends a message out by the 
 girl that he isn't well enough to see any- 
 one.' 
 
 . ' I didn't see him, but I'm going to see 
 him to-morrow.' 
 
 ' I don't think you will. The women 
 won't let anyone see him. I don't wonder 
 at it. It must be a shameful spectacle. He
 
 138 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 is never sober, I hear, and he leads them a 
 terrible life. He spends every penny he has 
 got in the world on drink. One can't blame 
 them for refusing to see anyone. It must be 
 hard enough to bear without the shame of it, 
 and the exposure.' 
 
 ' They are going to let me see him to- 
 morrow : Mrs. Grove has promised me, and 
 Mary — Miss Grove — has given her con- 
 sent.' 
 
 ' I can't understand it ; I think you must 
 have charmed them, Dashwood ;' and the 
 Rector paused in his walk and looked 
 straight in his curate's face. 
 
 There was really no reason why Stephen 
 should blush like a girl. He had only been 
 doing his duty. He had only paid a purely 
 parochial visit to a shabby old woman who 
 was hanging out the clothes. 
 
 ' Well,' said the Rector good-humouredly, 
 with a twinkle in his eyes — he had drawn
 
 ST. HELENA 139 
 
 his own conclusions from that ridiculous 
 poppy colour in his curate's face — ' well, 
 and what was Mary doing ? Was she 
 deep in moral science ?' 
 
 'She was washing.' 
 
 ' Washing ! What do you mean ? Did 
 you surprise her at her toilet ?' 
 
 ' She was washing clothes — linen — at a 
 wash-tub, and her mother was hanging it 
 out on a line to dry.' 
 
 ' Mary Grove washing ! Why, do you 
 know what she is, Dashwood ? She is a 
 (jirton girl. She has done splendidly in 
 Cambridge. She has taken a First in every 
 exam, she has gone into, and she was safe 
 for a First in her Tripos, if this old rascal 
 of a father of hers hadn't broken out, and 
 kept her at home out of sheer terror for 
 what he might do, and for what he may at 
 any moment do, to that poor, long-suffering 
 woman.'
 
 I40 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 ' You don't mean that you think that 
 they — that Mrs. Grove is in actual bodily 
 danger ?' Stephen said, turning quite white 
 at the bare suggestion. 
 
 ' I do indeed. I shouldn't be the least 
 surprised any morning to hear that he had 
 murdered one or both of the women in the 
 night. He is always worse of nights.' 
 
 'Good heavens! And can no one inter- 
 fere r 
 
 ' I don't see that they can. The man 
 isn't mad. He's as sane as you and I are 
 in his sober moments. No one has any 
 right to interfere. So long as the women 
 don't complain and ask for protection from 
 a justice of the peace, no one can interfere.' 
 
 ' Not if he murders them in their beds i^' 
 
 ' No ; not if he murders them in their 
 beds. Not unless they happen to cry out, 
 and open their door for the police to come 
 in ; they have no right to break in, whatever
 
 Sr. HELENA 141 
 
 they may hear going on inside. An 
 Englishman's house is his castle, you know.' 
 
 ' And he has the right to bully and beat 
 the helpless women about him whenever he 
 likes ?' Stephen said bitterly. 
 
 ' Exactly ; he has a perfect right. The 
 law cannot interfere unless a complaint is laid 
 before a magistrate, or some definite charge 
 is made. A man has a right to frighten and 
 beat his womenkind to death, stopping short 
 at actual murder, and the law cannot inter- 
 fere. If he were out of his mind, it would 
 be another thing ; but he is not out of his 
 mind — at least, the doctors say he is sane, 
 and able to manage his own affairs, although 
 I have my own opinion on that point' 
 
 ' You think he is mad ?' 
 
 ' Undoubtedly. Whatever he may be 
 physically, morally he is not answerable for 
 anything that he may do or say. He is as 
 mad as any lunatic tied up in a strait-
 
 142 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 jacket in the county asylum. I am not sure 
 that a strait-jacket would not be the best 
 thing for him.' 
 
 ' Does Mary — Mrs. Grove — know any- 
 thing of this ?' 
 
 ' She may ; she must guess it. She 
 cannot go on witnessing the scenes she does 
 witness, and know that this is not the same 
 man who, a dozen years ago, was one of the 
 most polished gentlemen in the county. 
 The worst of it is, she shuts herself out 
 from the world -she will not see anyone if 
 they call upon her — and then, poor soul ! 
 she fancies that everybody has heard her 
 story, and that people look down upon her 
 because she has fallen in the world and is 
 tied to a drunken husband.' 
 
 ' Poor soul !' said Stephen ; but he was 
 thinking of the daughter, not of the mother. 
 He was very sorry for the poor lady who 
 suffered in silence, but his heart was full to
 
 ST. HELENA 143 
 
 bursting for the sufferings of that sweet soul 
 who bent her meek face- — no ; it was not a 
 meek face — who bowed her meek shoulders 
 over the washing-tub. 
 
 He had the picture before his eyes the 
 next day, when he knocked at the door of 
 the little house in Wellbrook Lane. He 
 quite expected to see Mary open the door, 
 as he had seen her open it the day before, 
 with her arms bare, and her skirts gathered 
 up, and with a subtle aroma of soapsuds 
 surrounding her. 
 
 He was conscious of a feeling of dis- 
 appointment, not to say disillusion, when the 
 door was opened by a maid-servant in a 
 spotless white apron and conventional cap. 
 It was an undersized maid-servant ; the most 
 had been made of her years by gathering 
 her hair up in a knot behind beneath her 
 cap and lengthening her skirts. If it hadn't 
 been for her long frock, and the funny little
 
 144 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 knot of hair behind, one would have doubted 
 the vigilance of the Board school inspector. 
 
 She dropped Stephen a little curtsey, and 
 took him into an inner room that looked out 
 into the garden. He had time enough, 
 when she had shut the door behind her, to 
 take a hasty survey of the room before Mrs. 
 Grove entered. 
 
 It was a wee back room, and it led out 
 by a glass door into the garden. Meagre 
 and bare and poor as it was, it was a lady's 
 room. There were few signs of feminine 
 occupation ; there was no fancy work — no 
 antimacassars, or lace things, or china orna- 
 ments, or dainty chairs, or five o'clock tea- 
 tables, or brackets. There was a little old- 
 fashioned writing -bureau, like they use at 
 Girton, with some papers scattered about, 
 as if someone had just risen from it ; and 
 above it was a small bookshelf — a lady's 
 bookshelf — of well-used scholastic books.
 
 57. HELENA 145 
 
 Stephen glanced through them, as he stood 
 there hat In hand, and he traced Mary 
 Grove's University progress by them. 
 Classics and mathematics on the top shelves, 
 the authors she had read, and the cribs she 
 had used, and the dictionaries that had 
 assisted her — the smaller Smith, and the 
 little Liddell and Scott; she had had to 
 make the most she could of these modest 
 helps. They had done more for her than 
 big quartos do for some University students 
 — they had helped her into the First Class 
 of the ' Previous.' 
 
 On the lower shelf were the German 
 books she had used in her Additionals ; and 
 below, on the lowest shelf, were the moral 
 science books that she had read for her 
 Tripos. 
 
 Stephen turned away from that tale-telling 
 bookshelf with a sigh. He didn't know- 
 how sorry he was for Mary Grove until he 
 
 VOL. I. 10
 
 146 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 had seen that mute witness of her self- 
 sacrifice. He remembered how eagerly he 
 had looked forward to his own Tripos, and 
 he knew exactly how she felt. 
 
 There were one or two photographs on 
 the walls, all telling their own tale. One of 
 King's College Chapel, another of the long- 
 avenue of Trinity, the world-famous bridge 
 of St. John's, and the willows and sloping 
 meadows of the Backs. 
 
 Stephen knew and loved them all, as 
 every Cambridge man loves them. He had 
 seen the originals thousands of times, but 
 they had never stirred his pulse before ; but 
 now the sight of them in this poor room, 
 amid such surroundings, brought a mist 
 before his eyes. 
 
 He was still looking at them when Mary 
 Grove entered the room. 
 
 She came in through the glass door from 
 the garden. She came in so softly that she
 
 ST. HELENA 147 
 
 surprised him looking at the pictures, and 
 he turned round, confused and bewildered, 
 with those foolish tears in his eyes, as if he 
 had been detected in a guilty act. He 
 hardly knew her for a moment. He couldn't 
 recognise, until she spoke to him, the girl 
 in the gray gown, that really touched the 
 ground, and the tight -fitting bodice with 
 sleeves that reached to the wrist, for the 
 white - armed, short - skirted Nausicaa of 
 yesterday. Of course Mary Grove could not 
 always be washing ; it must come to an end 
 sometimes. 
 
 It was the same, but not the same. 
 
 Nausicaa shorn of her wash-tub and her 
 jewelled arms ; St. Helena without the 
 clouds and the Cupids. 
 
 She looked taller and statelier, and 
 decidedly graver ; perhaps that was because 
 her hair wasn't blowing about all over her 
 face, and her petticoats were not tucked up.
 
 148 10 HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 Her face was a little flushed, and her eyes 
 were harder and brighter than when Stephen 
 last saw her bending over the wash-tub. 
 
 * I did not think you would come so early, 
 Mr. Dash wood,' she said. 
 
 Was it his fancy, or was her voice 
 harder and sharper, like her eyes ? 
 
 * Have 1 come too soon ?' he said, smiling, 
 and making an utterly futile effort to hide 
 his tears — his foolish tears. 
 
 ' Papa is only just up,' said Miss Grove 
 in her hard, forced voice, ' and — and he is 
 worse than usual to-day. I don't think you 
 can see him.' 
 
 Stephen's face fell. 
 
 * Is he more violent than usual, or is he 
 really ill ?' he asked, with just a perceptible 
 quiver in his voice. 
 
 He was so anxious to help this girl ; he 
 was so afraid, so dreadfully afraid, what 
 might happen if he didn't interfere at once,
 
 ST. HELENA 149 
 
 that he couldn't keep that quiver of dis- 
 appointment out of his voice. 
 
 ' I am afraid he is not well enough to see 
 strangers,' she answered in her strained, 
 forced voice, not looking at him, but 
 looking out in the garden with a hard 
 misery in her eyes that went to Stephen's 
 heart. * He has had a bad night ; we have 
 been up all night with him, and — and he is 
 only just up. He is not in a fit state to see 
 anybody.' 
 
 ' Is — is he ' 
 
 His lips wouldn't frame the question. He 
 was ashamed of himself, and hung his head. 
 What right had he to shame her with such a 
 question ? 
 
 'Yes,' she said impatiently ; 'he is — he is 
 never sober. He is mad— quite mad! he 
 cannot know what he is saying. He is very 
 violent this morning ; he is saying at this 
 moment the most dreadful things, and — and
 
 150 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 I am afraid mamma is not safe to be left 
 alone with him. If you'll excuse me, 
 Mr. Dashwood, I think I must go ' 
 
 Even as she spoke there came a cry for help 
 from a room at the other end of the passage. 
 Mary Grove opened the door and fled down 
 the passage, and Stephen followed her. 
 
 He followed her to the door of the room, 
 and there he waited while the girl went in. 
 
 She threw back the door in her fright, 
 and he could see all that was happening 
 inside the room as he stood at the door. 
 There was a fire burning in the grate, 
 although it was full summer, and a couch 
 was drawn up beside the fireplace. Mrs. 
 Grove was bending over a prostrate figure 
 on the floor when Mary rushed into the 
 room. The Major had fallen down in his 
 efforts to rise from the couch, and the two 
 women were trying vainly to raise him. 
 
 Stephen didn't pause to consider whether
 
 ST. HELENA 151 
 
 he was wanted or not. He strode into the 
 room, and, putting the women aside, he 
 picked up the prostrate figure, and laid him 
 gently on the couch. 
 
 ' I don't think he is much hurt,' he said 
 as he laid him back on the couch. 
 
 There was no need for him to loosen his 
 collar or undo his necktie ; Major Grove 
 had made his toilet without these adjuncts. 
 He hadn't even thought it necessary to 
 shave this morning, nor, apparently, for 
 many mornings. 
 
 There was a grizzly beard of several days' 
 growth on his chin, and his hair, which was 
 iron-gray and wanted cutting dreadfully, was 
 unkempt and falling low over his forehead. 
 
 His unshaven face, and his untidy dress, 
 and his heavy breathing, told their miserable 
 tale. He had been a handsome man once, 
 but he was a wreck now a complete wreck. 
 If it had ever been a good face, or an intel-
 
 152 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 lectual face, or a kind face, it was none of 
 these now. 
 
 Whatever beauty, or goodness, or intellect 
 there had ever been in it had dropped out 
 of it. It was a coarse, soddened, flabby face, 
 with swollen, discoloured features, and ereat 
 dark, loose bags under the eyes. 
 
 It had drink — drink — drink — written — 
 branded, rather — on every feature. The 
 image of the heavenly, if it had ever been 
 there, was quite effaced, and it was stamped 
 in ineffaceable characters with the image of 
 the earthy. At least, this was what Stephen 
 Dashwood thought, as he stood beside the 
 couch, looking down upon Mary Grove's 
 father. He tried in vain to trace any 
 resemblance between the drink - soddened 
 face on the pillow and the white, set face 
 of the girl bending over him. 
 
 The Major was quite drunk, hopelessly 
 drunk at that early hour of the day, and he
 
 57. HELENA 153 
 
 lay back on the couch In a deep sleep, 
 breathing heavily. Clearly nothing could 
 be done with him to-day. It was no use 
 talking to a man in that state. 
 
 Stephen said a few words to Mrs. Grove, 
 and then Mary beckoned him out of the 
 room. He left the poor lady standing 
 beside the couch wringing her hands. She 
 had wrung them, doubtless, hundreds of 
 times before, and she was wringing them 
 still in her dumb, dreadful agony. There 
 was nothing else left for her to do. 
 
 Stephen followed Mary Grove back to the 
 little room he had left, not exactly wringing 
 his hands, but clasping them tightly together 
 in a way that he had when he was very much 
 moved. It looked like a devotional attitude, 
 but it was only his way of repressing his 
 feelings. They wanted repressing very 
 often, and he had found this way of clasp- 
 ing his hands very effectual.
 
 154 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 He was so ashamed of the spectacle he 
 had just witnessed that he could not look 
 at the girl before him when she had led 
 him into the room and shut the door. 
 
 It seemed to him that the shame was his 
 own, not hers. 
 
 'You have seen him,' she said, speaking 
 breathlessly, ' and you know what he is 
 exactly. Do you still think that — that any- 
 thing can be done ?' 
 
 ' Ye-e-s,' said Stephen slowly, ' 1 still think 
 that something can be done ;' but he didn't 
 say it very confidently. 
 
 'In what way?' said the girl impatiently. 
 * Oh, if you could only tell me in what way ! 
 We have tried everything — everything.' 
 
 ' Yes, I am sure you have. You have had 
 a doctor, of course ; what doctor has he 
 had?' 
 
 * None lately ; he will not hear of a doctor. 
 He drove Dr. Merivale out of the house.
 
 ST. HELENA 155 
 
 He shut the door in his face because he told 
 him the truth.' 
 
 ' I think he should see a doctor, whether 
 he is willing or not. I think — I may be 
 wrong — that it is a case that only a doctor 
 can deal with. It seems to me, judging 
 from what I have seen, that he cannot 
 control himself, and — and I am afraid you 
 have no control over him.' 
 
 'No,' said the girl bitterly; 'we have no 
 control over him — none.' 
 
 She stood in her white wretchedness dry- 
 eyed, looking out into the little green 
 garden, and Stephen stood silent and 
 ashamed beside her. He had promised to 
 help her, and he could do nothing but 
 suggest a doctor. He would have given 
 anything to help her if he only knew how. 
 
 ' Will you let Dr. Merivale see him if I 
 fetch him now .^ It cannot matter to him 
 in his present state who sees him ; he will
 
 156 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 not recognise him, and if he should, the fact 
 of his falling down in a fit — it really is a kind 
 of fit — is a sufficient reason for sending for 
 medical aid.' 
 
 ' You think it is a fit ?' Mary asked 
 eagerly. ' He has fallen down suddenly 
 two or three times lately, and lain uncon- 
 scious, like he now is, sometimes for hours 
 after, and when he awakes he is bewildered, 
 and does not seem to know us.' 
 
 ' I am sure it is a fit. Something serious 
 might happen- — I do not say it will, but it 
 might at any moment — and he might not 
 recover consciousness. I think Mrs. Grove 
 should send for a doctor.' 
 
 Stephen did not leave the house until he 
 had wrung an unwilling consent from Mary 
 Grove to let him tell Dr. Merivale to call 
 in.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 MAD AS A HATTER. 
 
 It was not until the day following that 
 Stephen heard the result of Dr, Merivale's 
 visit. Major Grove had recovered con- 
 sciousness before the doctor arrived, and the 
 interview hadn't been a pleasant one. 
 
 He resented the doctors interference ; he 
 refused to answer his questions ; and — well, 
 he didn't exactly insult him — he remem- 
 bered, which fact he very often forgot when 
 he was alone with his womenfolk, that he 
 was a gentleman — but he let him understand 
 that his visit was unacceptable. 
 
 The next morning, before it was time for
 
 158 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 the doctor to start upon his rounds, a letter 
 was brought to him from Wellbrook Lane, 
 stating that Major Grove had quite re- 
 covered from his sHght attack — he called it 
 a slioht attack — and that he would not 
 
 o 
 
 trouble Dr. Merivale to call again. The 
 letter was in Mary Grove's handwriting, 
 and it was evidently written at the Major's 
 dictation. 
 
 ' Well,' said Stephen, when he had perused 
 the precious epistle, ' and what are you going 
 to do ?' 
 
 * Do ?' replied the doctor ; ' do nothing. 
 What can I do ? I have received my dis- 
 missal ; I can only wait until some tragedy 
 occurs — until he cuts his own throat or some- 
 body else's.' 
 
 ' You don't mean you are going to leave 
 him in that state ? Think of those help- 
 less women, and the life he is leading 
 them !'
 
 MAD AS A HATTER 159 
 
 ' My dear fellow, what can I do ? I can't 
 attend a man against his will.' 
 
 ' You could lock him up in an asylum. 
 You say he is not responsible for what may 
 happen. You could put him away where 
 he would be looked after, and he couldn't do 
 any injury to those dear women.' 
 
 ' Ah, I see you don't know anything about 
 the lunacy laws ! A man may murder a 
 houseful of people, but nobody can interfere 
 until after the event, and then it isn't 
 generally very much use.' 
 
 ' But he is quite mad.' 
 
 ' He is as mad as a hatter !' 
 
 ' And you can do nothing ?' 
 
 ' Nothing!' 
 
 Stephen had to rest satisfied with Dr. 
 Merivale's report. He had to reconcile 
 himself to the thought that the madman in 
 Wellbrook Lane could murder those two 
 dear women^ — he always spoke of them to
 
 i6o TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 himself as those 'dear women/ not 'dear 
 sisters ' — and no one could interfere to 
 prevent him. 
 
 He could do exactly as he liked with his 
 own ; he could ill-treat and torture them to 
 any extent up to positive murder ; he could 
 bully them to his heart's content ; he could 
 make their days and nights miserable, almost 
 unbearable ; he could make their lives a 
 very— well, the reverse of a paradise upon 
 earth, and no one could interfere. 
 
 The law distinctly refused to interfere. 
 After a tragedy had occurred it would be 
 time for the law to step in. 
 
 Stephen drew gruesome pictures of the 
 situation all through that day — it was quite 
 gruesome enough without any deepening of 
 the shadows — and in the afternoon he could 
 contain himself no longer ; he went boldly 
 up to the door of VVellbrook Cottage and 
 inquired for Mary Grove.
 
 MAD AS A HATTER i6i 
 
 The small servant-maid opened the door, 
 and admitted him unwillingly. She thought 
 the ladies were engaged, but she would go 
 and see. 
 
 Stephen didn't give her an opportunity to 
 go and see. He followed her to the door 
 of the little room where Mary Grove kept 
 her books, and where were those well- 
 remembered pictures of Cambridge. 
 
 Mary Grove was not engaged — at least, 
 she w^as only writing a letter. She rose up 
 from the table where she was writing when 
 Stephen came in, and he noticed that her 
 face was paler than he had yet seen it, and 
 that there were dark circles beneath her 
 eyes. 
 
 He took her hand silently. What could 
 he say ? He was thankful she wasn't 
 murdered. He was quite sure she had been 
 up all the previous night, and very likely she 
 was going to sit up again to-night. 
 
 VOL. I. II
 
 i62 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 She saw the concern in his tell-tale face, 
 and she smiled — a weak little wintry smile — 
 and then the tears came into her eyes, and 
 she broke down. 
 
 ' It is nothing!' she said impatiently, almost 
 fiercely, as he murmured some stupid plati- 
 tudes. 
 
 He realiy didn't know what to say to her. 
 
 Me could say the nicest possible things to 
 the poor people in the parish when he visited 
 them in trouble and bereavement. He had 
 a special gift of sympathy ; he could speak 
 soothing words to the sick, and he could 
 comfort the bereaved, and cheer the sorrow- 
 ful ; he could enter into all their griefs, and 
 had a special message for each, but he had 
 no message for iMary Grove. 
 
 It was not exactly a parochial visit. 
 
 ' I have had bad news,' she explained 
 presently^' at least, unexpected news, and 
 it has upset me.'
 
 MAD AS A HATTER 163 
 
 ' I am very sorry,' he said awkwardly, but 
 he meant it. 
 
 'It is nothing to be sorry about,' said 
 Mary Grove, smiHng through her tears. 
 * My sister is coming home from Germany ; 
 she is the dearest girl in the world, and I 
 ought not to be sorry that she is coming, 
 only the news was so unexpected, and she 
 is coming so suddenly there is no time to 
 — to explain anything.' 
 
 ' When is she coming ?' 
 
 * She is coming to-morrow — perhaps to- 
 night.' 
 
 ' So soon ? And you did not at all expect 
 her?' 
 
 He really didn't know what else to say. 
 
 ' Not the least. She was getting- on so 
 well when we last heard. She was at a 
 school in Dresden — quite a big school, 
 almost a college — and she taught English 
 to the German girls. She was very much
 
 1 64 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 liked — no one could help liking Doll ; the 
 girls used to rave about her.' 
 
 ' Why is she coming home so suddenly ?' 
 
 Mary Grove's face clouded. 
 
 'That is what I am anxious about,' she 
 said. ' I cannot understand it. We had a 
 letter from Doll only two days ago — a bright, 
 chatty letter, full of her plans for the summer 
 — and now, this morning, we have a letter to 
 say that she is on the road to England, that 
 she will be with us almost as soon as her 
 letter reaches us.' 
 
 ' And she gives no explanation ?' 
 
 ' None ; only a few hastily scribbled lines. 
 Oh, I hope nothing wrong has happened ! I 
 hope she has not been sent home in dis- 
 grace !' 
 
 ' What could have happened ?' 
 
 ' I don't know. I can't think what she 
 can have done. She was always doing wild 
 things, and getting into scrapes, when she
 
 MAD AS A HATTER 165 
 
 was at school in England ; but since she 
 has been in Germany she has been steadier, 
 and we have had such good accounts of 
 her.' 
 
 ' Why should she have done anything ? 
 She may be coming home to — to be married,' 
 Stephen suggested in as sanguine a tone as 
 he could manage. 
 
 Mary Grove shook her head. 
 
 ' No — o,' she said slowly ; ' I don't think 
 Doll is going to be married.' 
 
 ' Why shouldn't your sister be going to be 
 married ?' he asked brusquely. 
 
 Mary smiled up into his face and shook 
 her head. 
 
 ' No,' she said decidedly, ' Doll isn't the 
 kind of girl to get married off-hand in that 
 way. Doll will take a great deal of 
 marrying — I mean a great deal of prepara- 
 tions beforehand. I am afraid there is 
 something wrong. I am so anxious for
 
 1 66 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 mother's sake. Poor mother ' she has so 
 much to trouble her already, and if any- 
 thing went wrong with Doll it would break 
 her heart.' 
 
 Then Stephen suddenly remembered he 
 had come to inquire after the Major. He 
 had forgotten all about him while they had 
 been talking about Mary Grove's sister. 
 
 As he had surmised, Mary had been up 
 all night. The Major had been unusually 
 violent ; the doctor's visit had ' upset ' him, 
 and he had kept the litde household up all 
 night, and in the morning he had made 
 Mary write that letter to Dr. Merivale. 
 
 ' I suppose it will be no use my asking to 
 see him ?' he said, with a vehement desire in 
 his mind to have just a quarter of an hour's 
 interview with the Major, to tell him exactly 
 what his conduct amounted to. He would 
 have liked to have told him that, if he had 
 told him nothing else.
 
 MAD AS A HATTER 167 
 
 Perhaps Mary Grove read what was 
 passing in the young man's mind. 
 
 ' It would be quite no use. It would only 
 make matters worse if you were to see him, 
 and to — to attempt to reason with him. We 
 should only suffer for it. It would make it 
 harder for us to bear.' 
 
 Stephen groaned. If he hadn't been 
 recently ordained he might have expressed 
 his feelings more strongly. That uncom- 
 fortable dog-collar that was always cutting 
 into his Hesh under his chin restrained him. 
 It served as a perpetual reminder. 
 
 'Then I'm afraid I cannot help you,' he 
 said, rising. 
 
 ' No, not in that way ; but mother will 
 always be glad to see you. Your visit the 
 other day comforted her so much.' 
 
 ' Did it, really ?' he said, his face brighten- 
 ing ; ' I am so glad. I will come again at 
 any time when she can see me. I shall be
 
 1 68 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 SO glad to be of use to her. May I call 
 to-morrow and see if — if your sister has 
 arrived safely ?' 
 
 Mary Grove did not say no, but she 
 smiled — a smile that was a trifle hard — and 
 lifted her lips at the corners. 
 
 * You will soon see whether Doll has 
 arrived safely,' she said, her voice almost 
 imperceptibly hardening. ' You will meet 
 her half a dozen times a day m Thorpe. 
 She couldn't be here a day without every- 
 body in Thorpe Regis knowing it.'
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 ALL IN A GARDEN FAIR. 
 
 Stephen lay awake all night thinking about 
 the inmates of Wellbrook Cottage — to speak 
 more correctly, thinking about Mary Grove 
 and her sister who was comincr home so 
 unexpectedly from Germany. 
 
 He was not at all sorry that she was 
 coming home. It would be one more in the 
 house — one more woman. He pictured her 
 young and strong, with round, white arms 
 like Nausicaa — three women instead of two 
 against one man, and that a madman. 
 
 He wished devoutly that she might 
 already have arrived, that she might be in
 
 I70 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 the house to-night, sleeping under the same 
 roof as those dear women, who were in such 
 hourly peril of their lives. 
 
 Suppose the Major should already have 
 murdered them before Doll arrived ! 
 
 Between sleeping and waking, he drew 
 a picture of Doll, wondering vaguely what 
 her real name might be. 
 
 He pictured her tall and strong, large- 
 limbed, and of generous proportions like 
 Mary. She would not be so fair, living 
 abroad — not so white and statue-like ; she 
 would have more colour and vivacity. She 
 would bring with her some of the brightness 
 of Continental life. She would be blue-eyed, 
 and have brown hair, with, perhaps, little 
 soft curls on her forehead. He had got as 
 far as the curls when he fell asleep. 
 
 When Stephen went his little round the 
 next morning- — he usually paid half a dozen 
 parochial visits before dinner, and he taught
 
 ALL IN A GARDEN FAIR 171 
 
 an hour in the school — he was shocked to 
 find that a man that he ou^rht to have visited 
 the previous day was dead. 
 
 He had called in the morning, and the 
 man was asleep, and he had promised to 
 call again in the afternoon ; in the afternoon 
 he had gone to see Mary Grove, and he 
 had forgotten all about it. Now the man 
 was dead ; he was past calling upon — past 
 the reach of preaching and praying. 
 
 ' An' he was sensible to the last, sir, an' 
 he would have liked to have had a prayer 
 said over him before he died,' said his wife 
 between her sobs, when Stephen called the 
 next day. ' He'd been a wild one in his 
 time, but he was as humble as a little child 
 at the last. ''Say a prayer, Mary — say a 
 prayer!" he kep' whisperin', an' I — I was 
 that sick wi' grief that the words stuck in 
 my throat, an' I couldn't say a word !' 
 
 Stephen's conscience pricked him dread-
 
 172 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 fully all through that day. He had been 
 neglecting his duty ; he had missed an 
 opportunity. 
 
 He went over to the Rectory in the after- 
 noon, and told his Rector all about it. 
 
 He went straight into the study — he 
 wouldn't see Mrs. Tom — and he passed 
 Poppy unkindly without a word. He 
 nodded to her, but he didn't rumple her 
 hair, or pinch her cheeks, or chase her 
 across the lawn, or toss her up to the ceiling 
 of the hall, or exchange any of the customary 
 amenities with her, and Poppy's feelings were 
 dreadfully hurt. 
 
 The Rector looked grave when Stephen 
 had told his story. He told it straight- 
 forwardly, not seeking to exculpate himself 
 for his forgetful ness. The tears were in his 
 eyes when he spoke of the man pleading in 
 vain for one little prayer, and the wife too 
 choked with u-rief to utter a word.
 
 ALL IN A GARDEN FAIR 173 
 
 ' We must leave him to his Master,' the 
 Rector said gravely — ' his Master and ours. 
 We are quite sure of one thing — that your 
 neglect will not be visited upon him. Stick 
 to your duty in future, Dashwood ; duty 
 first, and — and sympathy after. I am sure 
 we are all very sorry for Miss Grove and 
 her trials, but there are a great many other 
 people in the parish to be sorry for.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Stephen meekly. 
 
 He knew he had earned the rebuke. 
 
 * You say the other girl is coming home 
 to-day unexpectedly ? I am very sorry for 
 that poor woman. I hope this doesn't mean 
 any fresh trouble for her.' 
 
 The Rector discussed the news that 
 Stephen had told him with his wife at tea, 
 but he didn't say anything about that 
 promised visit to poor Will Jones that his 
 curate had forgotten to pay. 
 
 Will Jones was dead — past all praying
 
 174 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 for — and there was no use in harrowing 
 Laura's feelings with the details of that death- 
 bed repentance. 
 
 ' Mary Grove's sister is coming back 
 from Dresden,' he said, ' all of a hurry.' 
 
 ' What, Doll r 
 
 ' Yes ; Doll, or Dolores, or some such 
 idiotic name.' 
 
 ' I think Doll suits her best,' Mrs. Tom 
 said dryly. ' Doll suits her exactly. What 
 is she coming home for, and when is she 
 coming ?' 
 
 ' She is coming home to-day. Nobody 
 knows yet what she is coming home for.' 
 
 ' She has got into a scrape for certain, 
 and they have sent her away in a hurry. I 
 shouldn't wonder if they haven't packed her 
 off at a moment's notice.' 
 
 ' It would be very unjust if they have. 
 The people she was with in Dresden were 
 old friends of Mrs. Grove's, and they would
 
 ALL IN A GARDEN FAIR 175 
 
 know how she is situated. It is a cruel 
 thing to send a girl back to such a home.' 
 
 ' I have no doubt she deserves it !' 
 
 ' Hush, darling ! don't be too hard upon 
 her. Remember she is down. She is 
 coming back in trouble, perhaps disgrace, 
 and I don't think we should be the first to 
 throw stones at her.' 
 
 ' I'm afraid I shan't be able to help it,' 
 Mrs. Tom said, shrugging her shoulders, 
 * I have no patience with Doll — I never had 
 any patience with her little airs and her 
 tricksy ways — and now, when those poor 
 things are in such trouble, to come back 
 upon them is shameful !' 
 
 * Perhaps she can't help it. Perhaps she 
 is sent home. Where else could she go but 
 to her home ?' 
 
 ' I wish she were going anywhere else but 
 here. I am sure we shall have trouble with 
 her. Uo you remember how shamefully she
 
 176 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 behaved at that tennis-party when we intro- 
 duced Mr. Dash wood to the parish ?' 
 
 ' I'm afraid I don't remember any special 
 dehnquency of Doll's on that occasion.' 
 
 ' Oh yes, you must. She flirted openly 
 with Mr. Dashwood. She wouldn't let him 
 speak to anyone else. She quite spoiled 
 the whole thing. I made up my mind I 
 would never ask her again. It was quite 
 lucky for him that she went to Dresden 
 the next week ; she would have made a 
 dead set at him. Nobody knows what 
 would have happened ; and now she is 
 coming back again !' 
 
 ' I don't think she will do Dashwood any 
 harm ; I fancy it's the other one.' 
 
 ' What, Mary ? Oh, Mary would never 
 look at him. She is making a martyr of 
 herself for the sake of that dreadful man ; 
 she is not at all the girl to fall in love. But 
 Doll, she wouldn't be particular who it was.
 
 ALL IN A GARDEN FAIR 177 
 
 I shall call upon Mrs. Grove to-morrow. I 
 dare say she won't see me, but I shall see 
 Mary, and I shall find out all about it. I 
 don't think Doll ought to come back to 
 the parish until there is some explanation — 
 until we know what she has been doing, and 
 what she is sent home for.' 
 
 Mrs. Tom had quite decided in her own 
 mind that Doll had ' done something.' 
 
 Stephen Dashwood had no heart to call 
 at Wellbrook Cottage to inquire after Mary 
 Grove's sister that day. He had been 
 thinking so much about those dear women, 
 and Doll in particular, that he had neglected 
 his duty. 
 
 He didn't fail to tell himself this in pretty 
 round terms. He was rather free in his 
 language when it related to himself If it 
 hadn't been for Mary Grove's anxiety about 
 her sister he would not have forgotten his 
 promise. 
 
 VOL. I. 12
 
 178 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 He didn't go near Wellbrook Lane for 
 two whole days, and the amount of visiting 
 he did in that time was prodigious. 
 
 He didn't exactly call at every house in 
 the parish, but he looked up all the old 
 women who had ague, and all the old men 
 who were crippled with rheumatism. It was 
 an aguish, rheumaticky place, this sweet 
 green West Country, and all the people 
 who had grown old upon the soil — and 
 there was very little in the cottages except 
 a lime-and-sand floor to separate them from 
 the moist soil beneath — were crippled more 
 or less from rheumatism or shaken with 
 ague. Stephen had his work cut out, and 
 he did it diligently. Once or twice during 
 those penitential days he found his mind 
 wandering in the direction of Wellbrook 
 Lane, when he ought to have been listen- 
 ing to the harrowing details of Betty Broom's 
 ailments.
 
 ALL IN A GARDEN FAIR 179 
 
 Betty Broom had a good many for one 
 old woman — she rather prided herself upon 
 their number and variety — and no doubt it 
 relieved her immensely to talk about them. 
 Stephen's mind would wander during- the 
 recital — he had heard it before — he wasn't 
 quite sure sometimes, when his wandering- 
 attention was recalled suddenly, whether it 
 was the head or the leg that was affected, 
 and his sympathy was sometimes irrelevant. 
 
 Old Betty found him out. Poor people 
 have a wonderful knack of finding out 
 whether one's sympathy is real or forced. 
 
 They know the genuine thing when they 
 see it. Betty Broom saw that the curate 
 was not listening to her, that he didn't care 
 a button for her aches and pains, and she 
 shut up with a snap, and refused to finish 
 the harrowing tale, It was long enough 
 already, and sad enough, but the curate 
 ought to have listened to it if he couldn't
 
 i8o TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 relieve it. What are curates for but to 
 listen to sad stories, and to help people to 
 bear their lot with patience ? 
 
 It's of no use preaching to people if you 
 don't set them an example ; and here was 
 Stephen, impatient already of even hearing 
 of the burden the poor old soul had to carry 
 every day, and yawming in her face, and 
 mixing up her ailments in a most ridiculous 
 way. 
 
 No wonder Old Betty shut up and refused 
 to say another word. 
 
 Stephen came away dreadfully humiliated ; 
 the old woman would hardly say good-day 
 to him. She only turned on her pillow and 
 groaned. He heard her groaning all the 
 way down the stairs. He sent in a woman 
 who lived in an adjoining cottage as he 
 went by. 
 
 ' I am afraid Betty Broom is taken worse,' 
 he said ; ' she is groaning dreadfully. '
 
 ALL IN A GARDEN FAIR 
 
 i8i 
 
 ' Oh, that's nothing to the way her groans 
 sometimes !' the woman said cheerfully. ' I 
 can hear her through the wall, groaning all 
 night. Her groan'th night an' day when 
 her's tooked real bad.' 
 
 Stephen felt dreadfully ashamed of him- 
 self. He couldn't listen for ten consecutive 
 minutes to the ills that occupied the whole 
 of the poor old woman's thoughts and atten- 
 tion night and day. 
 
 He drew his cap over his eyes — it was 
 one of those sweet things in felt that can 
 be dragged into any shape — but it hadn't a 
 cord and tassel round it. He dragged it 
 down over his eyes, that were full of peni- 
 tential tears, and he set his lips hard, and he 
 walked briskly down the street. 
 
 He walked so briskly, and he was so 
 entirely oblivious of anything that was going 
 on an inch beyond his nose, that he ran 
 against a lady coming round the corner.
 
 1 82 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 He turned to beg her pardon, and then he 
 became aware that he was addressing a 
 stranger — a lady he had certainly never seen 
 in Thorpe Regis before. 
 
 He had forgotten all about Mary Grove's 
 sister, but he was quite sure, from the brief 
 glance he got of the stranger as he turned 
 the corner, and nearly knocked her down, 
 that it was Doll. 
 
 She was not the least like Mary. 
 
 She was petite and fair, and had an 
 immense nimbus of fluffy, golden-brown hair, 
 and she had the most glorious eyes in the 
 world — at least, they looked so to Stephen in 
 that brief glance he had of them. 
 
 She really wasn't unlike a doll. Pink and 
 white, red-lipped, round-eyed, and with beau- 
 tiful fluffy hair. 
 
 The sight of her after Betty Broom and 
 her groanings seemed almost a mockery. 
 
 Let us hope that Betty will not always
 
 ALL IN A GARDEN FAIR 183 
 
 ^^roan ; that she, too, will be young and 
 fair some day — fairer than the daughters of 
 men. 
 
 Stephen was quite right in his conclusions ; 
 it really was Doll. 
 
 She was in the j^arden when he called at 
 
 o 
 
 Wellbrook Cottage the next day ; he couldn't 
 put off calling any longer. 
 
 His penance was over ; he had paid all 
 those visits ; he had done various works of 
 supererogation ; the balance of duty was 
 on the right side ; and he called at Well- 
 brook Cottage with a quiet mind. His 
 mind was so free and unembarrassed, indeed 
 
 — perhaps it was the reaction of those 
 penitential tears — that he ran up the steps 
 of the cottage — he took them two at a time 
 
 — instead of climbing them slowly and 
 soberly, as befitted a curate making a 
 parochial visit. 
 
 It was not exactly a parochial visit. It
 
 1 84 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 was like the fairy prince going up the steps 
 of the sleeping palace. His heart was beat- 
 ing with expectation ; he did not know what 
 he should find. 
 
 After that vision of yesterday, he thought 
 he should light on something fair. 
 
 He was not disappointed. 
 
 The small servant-maid opened the door 
 to him. She was smarter than usual, and 
 had a bow of ribbon in her cap. He didn't 
 know why he remarked this detail, but he 
 remembered it afterwards when he recalled 
 this day. She wore a smile as well as a 
 bow, and he thought — he might have been 
 mistaken — that there was a twinkle in her 
 eyes when he asked if the ladies were at 
 home. 
 
 Oh, if Mary Grove had seen that 
 twinkle ! 
 
 She showed him into the little room where 
 the books were, and the familiar photo-
 
 ALL IN A GARDEN FAIR 185 
 
 graphs, and the water - colour sketch of 
 Girton. 
 
 The elass door that led out into the 
 garden was open, and Mary was coming to 
 him across the orass. It was but a little 
 strip of grass, with boughs of trees over- 
 hanging it — the boughs, he remembered, on 
 which the lines were strung and the clothes 
 were hanging on the day of his first visit. 
 
 There were no clothes hanging there now, 
 but there was a hammock swung between 
 the branches in the coolest, shadiest spot. 
 Ihe lawn was not smooth or well-kept, but 
 it was green — delightfully green — which is 
 more than well-kept lawns in scorching 
 August days often are. It was choked with 
 dandelions, and tall yellow-eyed daisies, and 
 clover in bloom, and scarlet pimpernel, and 
 it had no edges to speak of; it didn't leave 
 off anywhere in particular. 
 
 It was no good for tennis or croquet ; it
 
 i86 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 was only fit to sit on in the sweet, dusky 
 shade of the apple-laden branches overhead, 
 or to hang up clothes in. It would be a 
 lovely place for drying clothes on a windy 
 March day, when the apple-trees were bare, 
 and the playful east wind frolicked among 
 the wet garments, and filled them out as 
 their owners were not accustomed to fill 
 them. 
 
 There were no clothes hanging there to- 
 day ; no corpulent bodies or gouty limbs 
 swinging spasmodically on the line. There 
 was only a low chair, and a work-table, and 
 a hammock swinging in a cool corner. 
 
 The little green garden was certainly 
 sweeter without the wet clothes. The 
 flower- borders were visible, and a rustic 
 bower covered with honeysuckle. There 
 was nothing in the flower-borders to speak 
 of — only yellow marigolds and mignonette, 
 a bush of lavender, and some sweet, old-
 
 ALL IN A GARDEN FAIR 187 
 
 fashioned lad's-love ; and there were monthly 
 roses and sweet-smelHng white jasmine dimb- 
 ing over the garden wall. 
 
 It was all sweet-smelling and homely, and 
 seemed as if it had grown up of itself — as 
 if a gardener had never set foot in the little 
 green enclosure since it was first planted. 
 
 ' Doll is in the garden,' Mary Grove said, 
 when the formal greeting was over. ' She 
 has put up a hammock, and has swung her- 
 self to sleep.' 
 
 ' And your mother ?^ he said hurriedly. 
 
 He was glad to ask about Mrs. Grove, to 
 give himself time. His heart was beating 
 so ridiculously that he couldn't trust himself 
 to speak about Doll. 
 
 * Oh, mother is so much better for Doll's 
 coming — better and brighter! She looks 
 years younger in these few days ; she is 
 looking almost like her old self She is so 
 wrapped up in Doll.'
 
 1 88 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 ' And your father ?' he ventured to say. 
 
 ' Oh, papa is changed too. Doll's coming- 
 has done him a world of good. He has 
 been better, so much better, since she came 
 back. He has not disturbed us at all of 
 nights. I hope the change will last. It 
 has been quite wonderful. I think that is 
 why we are all feeling so much brighter and 
 better.' 
 
 She was certainly looking brighter, and 
 there was some colour in her cheeks, and a 
 light in her eyes. Her eyes were as steady 
 and as serious as ever, but they were softer. 
 A woman's eyes ought to be soft, and Mary 
 Grove's were rather hard. Perhaps her lot 
 had been hard lately, but they were soften- 
 ing now. If Doll had done nothing else, 
 she had taken the edge — ^just the edge only 
 — off Nausicaa's hard lot, and had cleared 
 her brow. 
 
 ' Do you think now, now that your sister
 
 ALL IN A GARDEN FAIR 189 
 
 is here, before the freshness of her comintx 
 wears away, that it would be a good time 
 for me to see Major Grove ? He might 
 Hsten to me now, when he would refuse, 
 perhaps altogether, to see me by-and-by.' 
 . Stephen asked the question eagerly. He 
 was quite honest and sincere in his desire 
 to reach Mary Grove's father, but, with the 
 words on his lips, his heart was out in the 
 green garden, in that cool spot under the 
 apple-trees where Doll was s wringing in her 
 hammock. 
 
 He had come there to see — well, he didn't 
 know what he had come to see, but, with 
 that magic music beating in his heart, he 
 hadn't come so joyfully up the steps of 
 Wellbrook Cottage to see a raving mad- 
 man.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 DOLL. 
 
 * More close and close his footsteps wind ; 
 The magic music in his heart 
 Beats quick and quicker, till he find 
 The quiet chamber far apart.' 
 
 'We must ask Doll,' Mary Grove said, as 
 she walked across the grass by his side. 
 ' She has so much influence over papa ; she 
 can do anything with him.' 
 
 They were approaching the hammock 
 swung between the branches of the apple- 
 trees, and Stephen's heart was beating faster 
 and faster. 
 
 He was feeling more and more like the 
 fairy prince. He didn't at all know what
 
 DOLL 191 
 
 he was going to find. The hammock 
 covered up every inch of Doll except a bit 
 of ribbon, which was fluttering idly in the 
 breeze. 
 
 It was a bit of pink ribbon, and it looked 
 like the end of a sash. 
 
 He saw the ribbon, and he flushed up 
 with quite a guilty feeling. He almost felt 
 as if he were treading on sacred orround. 
 He didn't dare approach the hammock ; he 
 stood blushing ridiculously a couple of yards 
 off while Mary Grove called to her sister. 
 
 'Doll! Dolir 
 
 There came no response from the ham- 
 mock, and Mary Grove called again. 
 
 'Doll! Doll! It's no use your pretend- 
 ing to be asleep ; you are no more asleep 
 than I am !' she said sharply ; and she gave 
 the hammock a shake that ought to have 
 aroused any moderate sleeper, but it didn't 
 awake Doll.
 
 192 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 She refused to be awakened by any sisterly 
 admonition ; clearly it was time for the fairy 
 prince to step in. 
 
 Stephen had approached a yard nearer — 
 he couldn't help it — and he could see quite 
 clearly into the hammock. 
 
 He saw — well, it doesn't matter what he 
 really saw ; it depends so much on one's 
 eyes and heart and brain what one does see. 
 We colour everything with our own fancies 
 and emotions ; we create the atmosphere, 
 and the atmosphere gives the tone to the 
 picture. 
 
 Stephen, with his spirit fluttering like a 
 lark, and that poppy colour in his cheeks, 
 saw a vision he never forgot. It was only 
 a girl in a summer frock curled up in a 
 hammock, and wilfully keeping her eyes 
 close shut. To Stephen it was a goddess 
 on a summer cloud — a red-lipped goddess, 
 golden -haired, amid billows of soft white
 
 DOLL 193 
 
 muslin draperies. A pink and white 
 goddess, too, with dark, level brows and 
 dark lashes — long lashes that lay like a 
 fringe upon her cheeks, and made him 
 wonder what colour the eyes might be 
 beneath. 
 
 Women would have likened the sleeping 
 figure to a doll in a cradle — a lovely wax 
 doll — delicately tinted and beautifully 
 arranged ; they wouldn't have compared it 
 to a woman — a real woman — live with 
 sorrow and sin, live with pain and with 
 passion. 
 
 Stephen compared her to a goddess. 
 Should he go on his knee and awake her 
 like the fairy prince of old ? 
 
 ' Nonsense, Doll ; wake up !' Mary said 
 sharply, shaking the hammock vigorously, 
 and nearly shaking the sleeper out. 
 
 Doll yawned, and showed her teeth. 
 They were lovely little white teeth, and they 
 
 VOL. I. 13
 
 194 ^O HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 were worth showing. She didn't open her 
 mouth wide, Hke some people do in yawn- 
 ing, and show a dreadful gaping red cavern. 
 She yawned very nicely, and disclosed two 
 rows of very white teeth. She opened her 
 eyes by degrees — not all at once — taking 
 just a peep cit the blue sky, and the waving 
 green boughs overhead, through her dark 
 lashes. 
 
 She never looked in the direction of 
 Stephen. How should she know that the 
 fairy prince had been watching her for the 
 last five minutes, and was ready at any 
 moment to do all that the situation required 
 of him ? 
 
 Ready and waiting. 
 
 ' Get up, Doll! iMr. Dash wood has called 
 to see you.' 
 
 The speaker's voice was impatient, not 
 to say scornful, and Stephen remarked, with 
 as much surprise as he was just then capable
 
 DOLL 195 
 
 of feeling, that It was very unlike Mary 
 Grove's usual voice. It wasn't a bit soft, 
 or tender, or sisterly. 
 
 Doll opened her eyes in surprise, as if the 
 curate's visit were the most unexpected thing 
 in the world, as if she hadn't spent an hour 
 before her glass that afternoon arranging 
 herself for it. She blushed like a red, red 
 rose when she saw a man on the grass, and 
 she sprang out of the hammock and stood 
 before him, rosy and downcast, amid the 
 billows of white muslin. 
 
 It was exactly like Venus rising from the 
 sea. 
 
 At least, Stephen made that idiotic com- 
 parison. 
 
 'Oh, Mary -gold, why didn't you wake 
 me !' she said reproachfully. 
 
 Mary Grove didn't exactly sniff, but she 
 smiled that hard little smile of hers that 
 lifted the corners of her lips.
 
 196 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 * I did everything short of turning you 
 out upon the grass,' she said sweetly ; and 
 then she introduced her sister Dolores to 
 Mr. Banister's curate. 
 
 He had divined rightly when he met Doll 
 outside Betty Broom's cottage — the girl he 
 had run against was Mary Grove's sister — 
 and then all at once he recognised her as 
 the girl he had met at that tennis-party at 
 the Rectory a year ago. He hadn't taken 
 very much notice of her then ; he had time 
 to observe her more closely now. He could 
 see exactly what she was like. He could 
 see that her hair wasn't pale, or flaxen, or 
 golden, like other women's ; it was the colour 
 the Old Masters loved to paint. It was the 
 colour of Raphael's Madonnas, and Titian's 
 Magdalenes, and Rubens' women — a warm, 
 rich auburn that sunbeams lost themselves 
 among. 
 
 Her eyes ought to have been blue, but
 
 DOLL 197 
 
 they matched her hair, and were changing 
 in their hue — hazel sometimes, and shining- 
 like wine sparkHng in the cup. 
 
 She was utterly unlike Mary — as unlike 
 as two sisters could be. Mary Grove was 
 bounteously made, like a goddess ; but 
 Dolores was petite — a slender, childish little 
 figure, with sweet wine-coloured eyes that 
 were inexpressibly wistful beneath their 
 shining. 
 
 Stephen thought her the loveliest creature 
 he had ever seen in his life, and the words 
 stuck in his throat when he tried to speak to 
 her. She was quite as engagmg as she was 
 sweet, and she thanked him in the prettiest 
 manner for the kindness he had shown her 
 mother, and Mary-gold — she always spoke 
 of her sister as Mary-gold — and the ir^terest 
 he had taken in her ' poor father.' 
 
 At the mention of her father her eyes 
 brimmed over.
 
 198 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 They were such sweet downcast eyes, and 
 they brimmed over so readily. 
 
 Stephen wasn't aware that he had shown 
 any kindness in particular to Mrs. Grove 
 and her daughter, or any interest in her 
 reprobate old father to call for tears ; but he 
 was touched — distinctly touched. 
 
 ' I shall be so glad to be of use !' he 
 murmured ; ' your sister thinks that with 
 your help I may be able to reach him. If 
 you could make the opportunity, I would 
 come to him at any time. I am sure we 
 must not lose a chance.' 
 
 Dolores looked at him through her tears ; 
 her eyes were not so blurred that she did 
 not see that he was a tall young man, rather 
 slight in figure, that he had straight, regular 
 features, and that he was clean-shaven, and 
 had a sensitive mouth, and his eyes . were 
 earnest and grave in expression. 
 
 * Oh no !' she said eagerly ; ' we must not
 
 DOLL 199 
 
 lose a chance. You really think there is 
 — a — a chance — of— of poor papa's re- 
 covery ?' 
 
 ' I hope so,' he said earnestly. 
 
 'Oh, Mr. Dashwood, if you only knew 
 what it meant to us ! We have lost every- 
 thing through this terrible thing that has 
 happened to poor papa. We have lost our 
 home, our position, our friends — all — every- 
 thing ! Oh, it is dreadful I We, who were 
 brought up so differently, reduced to this 
 — this dreadful place ! Cut off from every- 
 body — from everything ; nobody will notice 
 us now, and nobody calls ; and — and we 
 have to work for our living !' 
 
 Dolpres' voice rose to a wail as she ended 
 this dismal summary, but Mary Grove 
 looked on unmoved, only her eyes 
 hardened. 
 
 ' I don't think that is the hardest part,' 
 she said gravely ; ' it is the dreadful wreck
 
 200 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 that poor papa has become, and the trial it 
 is to mother — poor mother !' 
 
 It was always her cry — ' poor mother !' 
 
 ' Ah ! you don't feel things so keenly, 
 Mary-gold, you are so wrapped up in your 
 work. You Girton girls don't see things 
 like other people. You are above society 
 and that sort of thing. You don't realize 
 what it is to poor little me — to be cut off 
 from everything ; to have no tennis-parties, 
 no dances, no new gowns, and to grind all 
 one's days in a horrible stuffy schoolroom. 
 Oh, it's cruel — it's horrible !' 
 
 The poor little thing subsided into tears, 
 and Mary Grove looked coolly on. 
 
 * I don't think weeping about it will mend 
 it,' she said, in a most unsympathetic voice. 
 * Mr. Dashwood knows exactly what it is. 
 Mother has told him all about it — all ; she 
 has kept nothing back. He knows the 
 terror that we live in by night and by day.
 
 DOLL 20I 
 
 and that everybody is afraid to come 
 near us. Papa has frightened everybody 
 away. ' 
 
 ' Not everybody,' Stephen said, looking 
 for the first time at the elder sister. He 
 was moved to see how steady her eyes were, 
 and her face was calm and grave. She was 
 quite reconciled to her lot ; she had grown 
 used to it. The spectacle of her own loss 
 and trial and sacrifice didn't move her in 
 the least. * I don't think Major Grove will 
 frighten me away. I have only been wait- 
 ing for an opportunity. Now that you have 
 come, 1 hope you will make the oppor- 
 tunity. ' 
 
 Stephen was tremendously in earnest. 
 He didn't exactly know what he was going 
 to say or do to Major Grove ; whether he 
 was going to exorcise the evil spirit by any 
 of the ancient modes of healing, or whether, 
 coming down to more prosaic modern forms,
 
 202 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 he was going to prevail upon him to sign 
 the pledge and join the Blue Ribbon Army. 
 
 He hadn't made up his mind what he was 
 going to do. He was waiting for an oppor- 
 tunity to do something, and Dolores pro- 
 mised him, before he went away, that she 
 would make that opportunity. 
 
 ' If I get papa^ in the humour to see you, 
 will you come at any time I send for you T 
 she said. ' It may be late at night ; it may 
 be early in the morning. Will you come at 
 once, whenever I send ?' 
 
 ' I will come at once,' he said. 
 
 Mrs. Grove did not appear during his 
 visit. She was sitting with her husband ; 
 she could not leave him a minute. 
 
 ' Oh, Mary-gold !' Doll exclaimed in her 
 exaggerated little way when he had gone, and 
 throwing herself into the low chair beside 
 the work-table, ' we have found a champion ! 
 We have found someone to fight our battles.
 
 DOLL 203 
 
 It is like a story of the Middle Ages. We 
 are two distressed damsels shut up in a 
 castle with a dragon — a cruel, wicked dragon 
 — and he is going to slay the dragon and 
 rescue us. He will have to marry one of 
 us ; we can't say no, Mary-gold, if he really 
 rescues us. I wonder which of us he is 
 going to marry.' 
 
 ' You need not wonder. If he married 
 anybody, he would marry you.' 
 
 * Me ? Oh no ; he wouldn't marry me 
 — poor little me! He would marry you, 
 Mary -gold. He would choose the best — 
 men always choose the best. You would 
 keep him a knight-errant always ; you would 
 fill him with noble ambitions ; while I — I 
 should drag him down off his pedestal. A 
 champion wouldn't marry me.' 
 
 Dolores' face was flushed, and her eyes 
 were soft, and her heart was beating fast 
 under her white bodice, as she spoke of the
 
 204 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 knight - errant who was coming to marry 
 Mary-gold. 
 
 * 1 don't think Mr. Dashwood is coming 
 here to marry anybody,' Mary said severely. 
 ' He is very good to take an interest in us ; 
 everybody else has given us up — everybody 
 but Mrs. Banister ; she had not called for 
 months until she called yesterday ' 
 
 ' She only called to hnd out why I had 
 come back,' interrupted Doll, with a sudden 
 scarlet colour coming into her cheeks. ' She 
 thought I had done something, and she 
 wanted to find out what it was. Oh, you 
 needn't thank her for calling, Mary-gold ; I 
 know exactly why she called.' 
 
 ' I'm afraid she went away disappointed, 
 then, though I don't see any reason why 
 she shouldn't have been told. She would 
 have seen that you could have done nothing 
 else but come home. You couldn't have 
 stayed in the place a single day after '
 
 DOLL 205 
 
 * No,' Doll interrupted hurriedly, with that 
 scarlet colour glowing in her cheeks, ' of 
 course I couldn't ! But I don't think we 
 need talk about it, Mary-gold ; we are not 
 bound to explain to people why I came 
 back in a hurry. We are not bound to tell 
 people that that man — that horrid, horrid 
 man — made it impossible for me to stay a 
 day longer. People here would put a 
 different colour on the story. There is no 
 knowing what they would say !' 
 
 ' No — o ; there is no knowing. But M rs. 
 Banister would say you had done right to 
 come home. I think we must tell her, Doll ; 
 I should like her to know the truth. She 
 will think there is some mystery in it, and I 
 hate mysteries.' 
 
 ' She would be sure to think that I was 
 to blame, that — that I had given the man 
 some encouragement. She wouldn't under- 
 stand the hot, passionate nature of foreigners.
 
 2o6 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 She would think everybody was cold and 
 dull and proper like her husband. She has 
 never seen a man infatuated — madly in- 
 fatuated ^ a man who loves the air you 
 breathe, who would go down upon his knees 
 to kiss the print of your footsteps on the 
 ground.' 
 
 'No; I should hope not! I am sure 
 Mr. Banister never went down on his knees 
 to kiss the ground his wife had trod upon, 
 and a man has no right to kiss anybody 
 else's footsteps.' 
 
 ' No — o, perhaps not ; but they do.' 
 And Doll laughed a little low laugh, as if 
 the recollection of the horrid, horrid man 
 who used to kiss her footprints were not so 
 very hateful, although she had run away 
 from him, or been sent away, which was 
 much the same thing ; it was only another 
 way of putting it.
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 MAJOR GROVE. 
 
 The opportunity that Doll had promised to 
 make came earlier than Stephen Dashwood 
 expected. It came the next day. 
 
 He had just sat down to his frugal mid- 
 day meal, which represented both lunch and 
 dinner, when a note was put into his hands. 
 It was a hastily-scribbled note, and it was 
 written in pencil ; it was from Doll. 
 
 It was dreadfully badly written ; it was 
 scrawled all over the page in a sprawling, 
 untidy hand ; it was not in the least like 
 Mary Grove's beautiful neat writing. 
 
 * Papa will see you,* the letter ran, ' if you
 
 2o8 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 will come at once. A terrible thing has 
 happened to mamma — a seizure of some 
 kind — and the doctor does not think she 
 will recover. Papa is broken down ; he 
 thinks he has killed her. If you come 7tow 
 he may listen to you. 
 
 ' Yours in haste, 
 
 * Doll.' 
 
 Stephen didn't stay to eat his dinner. He 
 left the mutton - chop that did duty for 
 that double meal untasted, and hurried 
 away. 
 
 He was so afraid of being late that he 
 ran nearly all the way to Wellbrook Cottage. 
 
 He met the Baroness Eberlein and Bebee 
 driving just outside the town, and the 
 Baroness stopped the pony-chaise when he 
 came up to her, and called to him to stop ; 
 but he only nodded to her, and ran on. 
 
 ' Where can he be going at that pace ?'
 
 MAJOR GROVE 209 
 
 she said to Bebee impatiently. ' I think he 
 might have stopped a minute. I was going 
 to ask him to come in to supper. He hasn't 
 been in to supper for a long time.' 
 
 ' P'raps somebody's ill,' Bebee suggested. 
 ' I shouldn't wonder if that dreadful Major 
 Grove hasn't killed somebody. Mr. Dash- 
 wood was afraid he would kill those poor 
 women.' 
 
 ' Bother the poor women !' muttered the 
 Baroness sulkily ; ' he might have stopped 
 to speak to me !' 
 
 And then she gave the unoffending old 
 pony a sharp cut across his ears, and drove 
 back to the town. She always took it out 
 of the first dumb creature she came across 
 if anything happened to go wrong with 
 her. It was one of her gracious foreign 
 ways. 
 
 Stephen arrived breathless at Wellbrook 
 Cottage. He had time to cool himself and 
 
 VOL. I. 14
 
 2IO TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 recover his breath while he waited on the 
 steps. He had to ring twice before the 
 door was opened. It was opened at last b) 
 the small servant-maid. Her eyes were 
 red, as if she had been crying, and her face 
 had a tired, soddened look, as if she had 
 been up all night, and she had on a dread- 
 fully dirty apron, and her cap was awry. 
 
 She opened the door a few inches, and 
 put out her untidy head and her dirty 
 cap. 
 
 ' Oh !' she said, with an air of relief, ' it's 
 you. I thought it was the perlice.' 
 
 ' Why did you think it was the police T 
 Stephen asked, when he had got both his 
 feet on the mat. He never felt sure in that 
 house until he was well on the mat ; he 
 always expected the door to be shut in his 
 face. 
 
 ' Oh, because there's been such a rumpus ! 
 He was orful last night ' — she pointed with
 
 MAJOR GROVE 211 
 
 her thumb as she spoke in the direction of 
 the room that Major Grove occupied. ' He 
 tried to kill all three of em ; an' the missus, 
 her fell down in a fit, an' he thought he'd 
 a-killed her, an' that sobered him all of a 
 suddent. He's been a-cryin' like a babby 
 all the morning, an' he keeps sayin' the 
 perlice are after him. He wouldn't let me 
 open the door when you ringed first ; he said 
 it were the perlice.' 
 
 ' Leah, Leah !' a voice called impatiently 
 from the end of the passage. The glass- 
 door that led into the garden was closed, 
 the shutter had not been taken down, and 
 the passage was in darkness ; but Stephen 
 recognised the voice. 
 
 It was the voice of Doll. 
 
 'Who are you talking to, Leah? If it 
 is the doctor, take him upstairs at once.' 
 
 'It is not the doctor,' said Stephen, 
 stepping forward; 'it is I. I happened to
 
 212 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 be at home when your letter arrived, and I 
 came away at once.' 
 
 ' So soon ?' she said ; ' we did not expect 
 you so soon. The messenger we sent with 
 the letter has not come back yet. It is 
 very good of you to come at once. Oh, 
 you don't know what trouble we are in !' 
 
 He took both the hands that she had 
 stretched out to him, and he led her into 
 the little room at the end of the passage, 
 the door of which was open — Mary-gold's 
 room. The blinds were still drawn down, 
 as if it were night, and the windows were 
 closed, and the air of the room was close 
 and stuffy. Nobody seemed to have remem- 
 bered to draw up the blinds or open the 
 shutters. 
 
 ' I am so sorry ' Stephen began, and 
 
 stopped. 
 
 He was so shocked by the change in Doll 
 that he couldn't go on ; he was obliged to stop.
 
 MAJOR GROVE 213 
 
 The Doll of to-day was not the Doll of 
 yesterday. 
 
 All the pretty colour had gone out of her 
 cheeks — the pretty brilliant colour that made 
 her eyes so bright, and contrasted with the 
 pearly white of her skin. 
 
 It was quite gone now, as if it had been 
 washed out, and her eyes were swollen with 
 weeping, and looked washed out, too, and 
 her beautiful hair was gathered up in an 
 untidy little knot. Stephen remarked that 
 all the curl had gone out of it, too, and that 
 her nose was red — decidedly red. One 
 cannot weep all night without getting a red 
 nose, and it was dreadfully mean of Stephen 
 at such a time to make comparisons. 
 
 Perhaps if he had not come quite so soon, 
 if he had been as tardy as the messenger 
 who had not yet come back, Doll would 
 have been better prepared to receive liim. 
 She would have had time to bathe her eyes,
 
 2 14 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 and smooth her hair, and look in the glass, 
 and — and he would not have had occasion to 
 make that odious comparison. 
 
 He should have lingered over his mutton- 
 chop, and walked quietly through the town, 
 and chatted by the way with the Baroness, 
 instead of tearing through the streets in that 
 mad fashion. 
 
 * We've had a dreadful night !' Doll said, 
 speaking hurriedly, and turning her back to 
 the light that he should not see her 
 miserable face. ' Papa has nearly murdered 
 us all. He was so violent after you had 
 gone ; he thought we had let someone in 
 the house — a keeper, who had come to take 
 him away. He would not be persuaded to 
 go to bed ; he sat up all night watching, for 
 the man, he thought, was hiding somewhere, 
 and he had armed himself with a poker : we 
 could not take it away. He seemed to doze 
 off about daybreak, and mamma made us,
 
 MAJOR GROVE 215 
 
 Mary-gold and me, lie down. We had not 
 been out of the room five minutes before 
 we heard a scream and a fall, and — and when 
 we opened the door mamma was on the floor 
 insensible, and papa was standing over her 
 with the poker.' 
 
 ' Good heavens !' said Stephen, turning as 
 white as the girl before him ; ' had — had he 
 struck her ?' 
 
 ' We don't know ; we fear he had. She 
 has not been conscious since.' 
 
 ' How did you get the poker from him ?' 
 
 ' Mary-gold took it from him. I couldn't 
 go near him, I was so dreadfully afraid. He 
 was brandishing it over his head like a mad- 
 man ; he would have killed anyone who had 
 gone near him.' 
 
 ' How did Mary-gold — how did your sister 
 take it from him ?" 
 
 ' Oh, Mary-gold is not frightened of him 
 like 1 am. She lifted mamma u[), and told
 
 2i6 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 him he had murdered her. She thought he 
 had. " Look, look," she said, " at your 
 wicked work ! She is dead, quite dead !" 
 The sight of mamma on the floor and 
 Mary-gold's words seemed to sober him for 
 a moment, and he let his arm that was 
 brandishing the poker fall, and she took it 
 from him.' 
 
 ' And your mother ?' 
 
 ' Oh, mamma has not spoken since. We 
 carried her to bed and sent for a doctor : he 
 thinks it is a seizure ; he cannot tell whether 
 he has really struck her ; but papa believes 
 that he has murdered her ; his remorse is 
 dreadful !' 
 
 * 1 should think so !' said Stephen indig- 
 nantly. 
 
 ' He has been weeping all the morning, 
 ever since the doctor told him mamma was 
 not likely to recover. He is quite sober 
 now, and we thought if he is ever to be
 
 MAJOR GROVE 217 
 
 reached it would be now, while he is full 
 of remorse for what he has done.' 
 
 ' Surely,' said Stephen, but he said it with 
 a shiver of repugnance. He had no heart 
 for the task he had undertaken. He could 
 hardly trust himself to speak to the miserable 
 bully and coward who had led these dear 
 women such a terrible life, and had ended 
 by murdering one of them. 
 
 ' I think you must go and see mamma 
 first,' Doll said, in a flat, hopeless voice, and 
 with her eyes brimming over ; ' you must 
 make your visit to mamma a reason for 
 coming. She will not know you ; she 
 doesn't know anybody.' 
 
 Stephen followed her upstairs into the 
 room where Mrs. Grove lay. The blinds 
 were down in this room, like they were in 
 the rest of the house. Mary Grove was 
 sitting beside the bed, and she was apply- 
 ing some cooling lotion to the poor woman's
 
 2t8 to his own master 
 
 head. She looked up when Stephen entered, 
 but she did not take any notice of him ; she 
 still continued applying the lotion. In that 
 dim light Stephen could see that her face 
 was as white as the face on the pillow, white 
 and set ; only the face on the pillow was 
 calm and placid, all the lines were smoothed 
 out of it, while the girl's face was white and 
 drawn ; it looked ten years older than when 
 he had seen it yesterday. 
 
 'How is she ?' he asked softly, as he 
 stood bareheaded beside the bed. 
 
 ' She will never be any better,' said the 
 girl in a hard voice that with an effort she 
 kept from breaking. ' It is a seizure — and — 
 and she is not likely to recover.' 
 
 ' You think it is a seizure T Stephen said 
 softly, but his eyes asked a different question. 
 
 • Hush ! Of course it is a seizure !' 
 
 She looked across the bed at Doll as she 
 spoke, and Doll dropped her eyes.
 
 MAJOR GROVE 219 
 
 ' I couldn't help it, Mary-gold ! I couldn't 
 indeed !' she sobbed. * I was obliged to tell 
 Mr. Dashwood the truth. How could he 
 speak to papa if he didn't know the truth ?' 
 
 ' We do not know ourselves yet, Doll. 
 We are not at all sure that — that it is not 
 a seizure ; so many people mamma's age are 
 suddenly cut off like this, and mamma has 
 been tried a good deal lately, and she has 
 not been so strong as usual ' 
 
 ' She was quite well when we left her, 
 five minutes before we heard her scream and 
 fall, Mary, and papa was standing over her 
 when we came back with 
 
 ' Hush !' Mary Grove said sternly ; ' hush ! 
 would you betray your own father, Doll } 
 No one saw it but ourselves — and — and we 
 must give him the benefit of the doubt' 
 
 ' Of course you must give him the benefit 
 of the doubt,' Stephen murmured ; he could 
 not but see how that cruel night's work had
 
 220 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 shaken Mary Grove, and how desperately 
 she was trying to shield her father. 
 
 * You will go and see papa,' she said, but 
 she did not look at Stephen, she was so 
 occupied applying the lotion ; ' and you will 
 make him understand — that — that this would 
 not have happened but for the continual 
 strain that mamma has had for so long, and 
 that she has broken down under it. He is 
 overwhelmed with grief, and now, while he 
 is softened and penitent, he may listen to 
 you.' 
 
 Stephen bowed his head in silence and 
 followed Doll out of the room. 
 
 ' I couldn't help it,' Doll sobbed, when 
 she had got outside. ' I was obliged to tell 
 you the truth. If mamma dies, he has 
 killed her. Oh, I don't know how I shall 
 ever look at him aorain !' 
 
 o 
 
 What comfort could Stephen give her ? 
 
 * She may not die,' he said softly, but he
 
 MAJOR GROVE 221 
 
 could not say it hopefully ; ' she -may 
 recover. You must pray for her — and for 
 him.' 
 
 ' Oh, I can't pray for him ; I can't forgive 
 him ! I can't bear to speak to him ; his 
 tears and his grief do not affect me like 
 they do Mary-gold She thinks of nothing 
 but sheltering him. She will never forgive 
 me for having told you.' 
 
 * Your secret is safe with me,' Stephen 
 said gravely. 
 
 And then he followed the weeping girl 
 down the stairs. 
 
 In that sad house, in the face of such 
 tragedies, he had ceased to remark the 
 change in Doll. He thought her sister 
 was hard upon her — decidedly hard upon 
 her. 
 
 Major Grove was sitting in the arm-chair 
 before the fire. It was the middle of 
 August, but there was a fire burning in the
 
 222 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 grate, and the Major was cowering over it 
 with his face buried in his hands. 
 
 A sad, drooping figure, with bowed head 
 and shrunken shoulders — the figure of a man 
 who had been beaten in the battle of life, 
 and had thrown up the game. 
 
 The attitude of the man as he cowered 
 over the embers in the grate was inex- 
 pressibly sad. He had heard the door open, 
 and the strange footstep on the floor, and 
 he raised his head slowly, with a hopeless 
 ashen misery in his face that went to 
 Stephen's heart, in spite of all his preju- 
 dice. 
 
 ' So you have come for me ?' he said 
 sadly, speaking in a low thrilling voice, with 
 something in it that reminded Stephen of 
 Mary Grove. ' I am quite ready. I have 
 been expecting you all day. She is dead, 
 and — and I have killed her !' 
 
 ' No ; she is not dead, and you have not
 
 MAJOR GROVE 223 
 
 killed her,' said Stephen reassuringly. 
 ' Please God she will not die.' 
 
 ' Oh yes, she will die. He told me to 
 kill her. He has told me so often to kill 
 her, and I had not the heart to. She has 
 been a good wife to me — a good mother 
 to her children ; there was never a better 
 wife or a better mother, and — I have killed 
 her!' 
 
 He let his face fall into his hands again, 
 and he shivered and cowered over the fire. 
 Stephen could see his thin shoulders quiver- 
 ing beneath his shabby coat, which hung 
 so loosely upon him, and his lean white 
 hands trembling as they supported his droop- 
 ing head. 
 
 It was a miserable picture. - 
 
 It disarmed Stephen's anger, and it 
 brought the tears to his eyes. 
 
 To think that a man could fall so low ! 
 
 ' Are you going to take me away }' he
 
 224 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 asked presently, in his sad, hopeless voice. 
 The voice was like the face he raised to 
 Stephen's as he spoke — unutterably hopeless 
 and sad. 
 
 * No,' Stephen said, speaking as re- 
 assuringly as he could ; ' I am not come to 
 take you away. Why should I ? You are 
 not responsible to man for what you 
 have done. You are only responsible to 
 God.' 
 
 ' Stop !' said the Major hastily, with a 
 sudden light coming in his dull eyes — ' stop ! 
 I am responsible to Him no longer. He 
 has given me up. He has sent — that — that 
 Other — to — to torment me before the time. 
 I am not my own master. I am responsible 
 — to — to no one but to him !' 
 
 He spoke rapidly, in disconnected sen- 
 tences, and there was a strange wildness in 
 his eyes that Stephen had never seen in any 
 eyes before.
 
 MAJOR GROVE 225 
 
 ' Oh yes, you are !' he said, sitting down 
 on a chair on the opposite side of the fire- 
 place, and speaking in an easy, assured 
 manner, as if this were an afternoon call 
 and the subject an everyday topic. ' You 
 are as responsible as I am to your own 
 Master — each to his own. There is only 
 one Master for us, you know ; we cannot 
 serve another. The enemy may take us 
 prisoner, but he can't make us serve him 
 against our will. We have all of us free 
 will, thank God !' 
 
 The Major shook his head. 
 
 ' You don't know,' he said — ' oh, you don't 
 know !' 
 
 And then Stephen looked up, and saw 
 Doll standing by the door watching them. 
 Her eyes were dilated, and her pretty l^rows 
 were knit, and her mouth was drawn and 
 hard. She was looking at the pitiful sight 
 with unutterable disgust and loathing. 
 
 VOL. I. 15
 
 2 26 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 There was not a gleam of compassion in her 
 beautiful eyes. The pity of it did not move 
 her one whit. 
 
 ' I think you had better leave us alone for 
 the present,' Stephen said, when he saw her 
 standing there. 
 
 And he got up and held the door open 
 for her to pass out, and closed it after 
 her.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 A MIRACLE. 
 
 The Rector of Thorpe Regis was sitting in 
 his study after lunch on that same afternoon 
 — it was a Saturday afternoon — preparing his 
 sermon for the following day. 
 
 He usually left the preparation of his 
 Sunday sermons until the Saturday ; it was 
 not a commendable practice, but, as he 
 explained, they had the benefit of simmer- 
 ing in his mind all the week, and were not 
 the raw, undigested things they would have 
 been if he had sat down and written them 
 off-hand on Monday morning. 
 
 The simmering process that had been
 
 2 28 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 going on all the week had not produced any 
 great results. It had only produced two 
 texts, and he was still undecided which text 
 he should settle upon, when from his study- 
 window he saw his curate, Stephen Dash- 
 wood, tearing across the lawn. 
 
 He ought to have been too much 
 engrossed with his rival texts to have looked 
 out of window, but Tom Banister was very 
 fond of looking out of window. 
 
 It was a convenient window to look out 
 of; he had only to raise his eyes from his 
 work, and there was the window just in front 
 of them. It ought to have looked out upon 
 a back wall, or a laurel hedge, or a kitchen- 
 garden ; it ought not to have presented any 
 temptation to the scholar and student within 
 to take his eyes from his book, or his manu- 
 script, if it had any claim to be called ' a 
 stu.dy window.' 
 
 Instead of this the study window of the
 
 A MIRACLE 229 
 
 Rectory looked out on a broad sunny lawn. 
 The lawn was all ablaze now with brilliant 
 beds of scarlet geraniums and blue lobelias ; 
 it was trim and close-shaven, and there were 
 noble trees upon it that cast cool, delight- 
 ful shadows on the smooth grass ; and 
 there were two children playing on the 
 lawn. 
 
 Tt was the ordinary thing. A green ex- 
 panse, not very big, but soft and mossy and 
 well mown, shaded by some fine old beeches, 
 and a thick hedge of evergreens shutting 
 out the road beyond. There was nothing 
 remarkable in it, only green grass and a 
 blaze of scarlet blossoms, and the pleasant 
 shade of some old trees. 
 
 There are hundreds of rectory houses 
 with exactly the same things, but to Tom 
 Banister, looking out of his study window, 
 when he oucjht to have been lookinc: at the 
 manuscript page before him, on which to-
 
 230 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 morrow's sermon was to be written, it was 
 the fairest picture in the world. 
 
 There was something quite remarkable 
 about those old beeches — there always is 
 about one's own trees ; there was never a 
 better-kept lawn ; the colour of that blue 
 lobelia border was a shade deeper than any 
 other lobelia border in the county. It was 
 as blue as heaven itself. 
 
 Heaven and home were not very far 
 separated iii Tom Banister's mind. The 
 terms were nearly synonymous. 
 
 He couldn't keep his wandering attention 
 from straying from his sermon to the green 
 pleasance outside on this bright afternoon. 
 Poppy and Tommykin were out there, play- 
 ing on the lawn, and every time their happy 
 laughter was wafted in at the open study 
 window he looked up. 
 
 He was looking up when he saw his 
 curate dashing in that unaccustomed way,
 
 A MIRACLE 23 T 
 
 with his long coat-tails flying behind him, 
 across the grass. 
 
 ' Not now, Tommykin ; not now, Poppy,' 
 Stephen said breathlessly, as the children 
 tried to stop him in his flight. 
 
 He distanced them, and reached the hall 
 door, which stood open, before them. 
 
 Poppy pouted and turned back, but 
 Tommykin, with his finger in his mouth, 
 stood looking after the curate. 
 
 ' Somefing's going to happen,' I fink,' he 
 remarked, with an air of immense wisdom. 
 * Let's do and see !' 
 
 So they went to see. That is, they ran 
 over to the open study window, and stood 
 on tip-toe looking in. 
 
 Two bright faces, two pairs of shining 
 eyes, and, oh ! such a confusion of little curly 
 wigs. 
 
 'I — I have come for the pledge-book,' 
 Dashwood said, or, rather, panted, as he
 
 232 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 burst into the Rector's study ; ' Major Grove 
 is going to sign the pledge !' 
 
 ' Major Grove ?' 
 
 ' Yes ; Major Grove. He has ' He 
 
 was going to say, ' He has nearly killed his 
 wife, and now, in a fit of remorse, he is 
 ready to do anything,' but he remembered 
 himself in time. ' He is willing and anxious 
 to sign the pledge.' 
 
 ' He'll never keep it if he signs it. It'll 
 only be a farce.' 
 
 ' Let him try it. For Heaven's sake let 
 him try it ! Give him a chance. He is in 
 earnest now, at any rate ; he swears he will 
 never taste the accursed thing again !' 
 
 The Rector shrugged his shoulders. He 
 had not much faith in Major Grove. He 
 had lived longer than Dashwood, and he 
 knew more about human nature. He knew, 
 or he thought he knew, exactly how weak it 
 was. He had seen so many pledges broken.
 
 A MIRACLE 233 
 
 He went over to a shelf and took down 
 a book, the book wherein the temperance 
 pledges of the neighbourhood were written. 
 
 There were hundreds of pledges in that 
 shabby book, and nearly all of them had 
 been broken. Some had been renewed time 
 after time, and few, very few. had been faith- 
 fully kept. 
 
 It was like the pavement of the nether 
 regions ; It was a miserable record of good 
 Intentions. 
 
 ' I wish you success,' the Rector said, as 
 he put the book in Dash wood's hands. ' If 
 you can persuade him to keep the pledge 
 after he has signed it, you will have done 
 niore than I have been able to do. You 
 will have worked a miracle. How long has 
 he been in this mind ?' 
 
 ' Only now. I have just left him. I 
 hurried here to get the book as quick as 
 possible, in case '
 
 234 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 ' In case he should change his mind,' said 
 the Rector. ' Exactly. I'm afraid if your 
 protege can't be trusted half an hour without 
 risk of his changing his mind, there will be 
 small chance of his keeping the pledge after 
 he has signed it.' 
 
 ' No,' Stephen said sadly ; ' no, perhaps 
 not ; still, we must give him the chance. 
 His intention is good, and he is in earnest, 
 if ever a man was in earnest ; and, after all, 
 if he fall, if he have not strength to stand — 
 we are all weak, God knows, miserably weak ! 
 — he is answerable to his own Master.' 
 
 ' Yes,' said Banister gravely. ' He is the 
 judge, not we. To his own Master he 
 stands or falls ; He only knows the strength 
 of the temptation, and — and the weakness of 
 His poor tried servant. Take the book, 
 Dashwood, and God give the poor wretch 
 strength to keep the pledge when he has 
 taken it !'
 
 A MIRACLE 235 
 
 Poppy, with her elbows on the window- 
 sill and her chin in her hands, and Tommy- 
 kin on his ' tippety-toe,' as Poppy termed 
 it, were spectators of the interview, and 
 watched Stephen crossing the lawn with the 
 pledge-book under his arm. 
 
 ' I said we was doing to see somefing,' 
 Tommykin said, in his oracular manner, re- 
 moving a damp forefinger from his mouth to 
 give effect to the utterance. ' Dare is doing 
 to be a miracle ' — only he called it ' miwacle.' 
 
 Banister's sermons had to simmer in his 
 mind for the rest of the afternoon. He 
 couldn't apply himself to settling the rival 
 claims of the texts that were balancing them- 
 selves in his mind after that interview. He 
 had to call Mrs. Tom down, and talk 
 Stephen's errand over with her. 
 
 ' What's he been doing ?' she asked, when 
 Tom told her his news. ' I'm sure Major 
 Grove wouldn't do an)'thing of the kind if
 
 236 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 he weren't driven up in a corner. I shouldn't 
 wonder if he hasn't nearly murdered some 
 of those women, and he's frightened out of 
 his wits, or into his wits.' 
 
 Mrs. Tom was not far wrong. 
 
 The doctor was at Wellbrook Cottage 
 when Stephen got back. He had just come 
 down from seeing Mrs. Grove, and he had 
 told the weeping girls that their mother 
 might not live through the night. 
 
 ' I am very glad you have come,' he said 
 to Stephen. ' I wanted to talk to you about 
 that madman. He is not fit to be left alone 
 with only women in the house. He may 
 break out again at any moment and murder 
 them all.' 
 
 Then Stephen told him about his talk 
 with Major Grove, his grief and repentance, 
 and his desire to sign the pledge. 
 
 The doctor, who knew Major Grove of 
 old, smiled when he heard about the pledge.
 
 A MIRACLE 237 
 
 ' Try him,' he said, ' try him by all means. 
 He will break it in twenty-four hours.' 
 
 Nobody had any faith in him, not even 
 his own children. Mary Grove shook her 
 head, and Doll laughed outright, when 
 Stephen produced his book. 
 
 The Major was in his old place by the 
 fire, sitting in his old attitude, with his 
 face in his hands and his elbows resting 
 on his knees, when Stephen went into his 
 room with the book. The fire had gone 
 nearly out, but he still crouched over the 
 few dying embers in the nearly empty 
 grate. 
 
 ' I have brought the book,' Stephen said 
 cheerfully when he had closed the door. 
 
 The Major looked up. His face was 
 pale, almost bloodless, and his eyes were 
 wild and bloodshot. His hands were tremb- 
 ling, and his lips quivering, and his voice 
 shook like his hands.
 
 238 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 ' It will be no use,' he said in a hollow, 
 hopeless voice ; ' it will be no use my siorn- 
 ing anything. I am ready, quite ready, God 
 knows, to sign anything, to promise any- 
 thing, if it will be any good ; but it will not 
 be — it will be only a form, a mockery ! I 
 warn you it will be no good. It wall only 
 be holding out a rope of sand to a drowning 
 man. I shall break it the moment the 
 temptation comes to me. I shall not be 
 able to keep it a day — an hour.' 
 
 ' Oh yes, you will be able to keep it,' 
 Stephen said reassuringly ; and then he 
 opened his book at a fair unsullied page, 
 and laid a nice clean piece of blotting paper 
 across it, and dipped a new pen in the ink. 
 He had got the new pen and the blotting 
 paper from Mary Grove's room, while Doll 
 looked on in scornful silence. She had no 
 faith in her drunken old father ; she had no 
 patience with him.
 
 A MIRACLE 239 
 
 ' You will not take the promise In your 
 own strength, you know, and if you are 
 kept, you will be kept by the power of God. 
 He will with the temptation give you a way 
 of escape.' 
 
 The Major shook his head. 
 
 ' Oh, you don't know !' he said, or moaned. 
 'You don't know! How should you? You 
 have never felt what It Is. I tell you, if I 
 were holden with cords of steel, when this 
 thirst comes upon me I should burst them. 
 I have struggled — God only knows how I 
 have struggled against It ! You don't think, 
 young man, that I have made no resistance 
 — that I have given In without a struggle ?' 
 
 There was a dignity about the wretched 
 man as he spoke that touched Stephen ; 
 some latent fire of his lost manliness lin- 
 gered, and a dull-red glow crept up under 
 his skin. 
 
 ' No,' said Stephen warmly ; ' I am sure
 
 240 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 you have made a resistance ; if not for your 
 own sake, for the sake of your wife and 
 your daughters. You would make a stand 
 for their sake.' 
 
 The Major sighed, and the flush faded 
 from his thin cheeks. 
 
 ' I could once,' he said in the old despair- 
 ing voice. ' I had the strength once to 
 resist the devil — ^it is a real devil, a roaring 
 devil going about seeking whom he may 
 devour, and he has devoured me ! — but I 
 have no strength left now to resist him. 
 Ah ! young man, you don't know what it 
 is to be old and worn out, and too feeble 
 to help yourself.' 
 
 ' That is just the time to go to the Great 
 Helper and put one's self in His hands. You 
 will never be able to keep this pledge in 
 your own strength ' 
 
 ' No, no, no !' interrupted the Major 
 almost fiercely. ' I tell you I have no fight
 
 A MIRACLE 241 
 
 left In me. I will sign whatever you like, 
 but I warn you that nothing can keep me 
 when — when ' 
 
 ' We won't talk about that,' said Stephen. 
 'We'll just ask Him who has said that 
 there shall no temptation happen to man 
 stronger than he can bear, that with the 
 temptation, with this temptation, there shall 
 be a way of escape.' 
 
 Then Stephen knelt down beside the table, 
 with the fair unsullied pages of the pledge- 
 book open before him, and asked God to 
 keep his weak, erring servant from falling, 
 to strengthen him in his hour of temptation, 
 to raise him up out of the mire and slough 
 of moral degradation into which he had 
 fallen, and to beat down Satan under his 
 feet. It was a great deal to ask. 
 
 While he asked it the unhappy man 
 slipped off the chair on which he was sitting, 
 and knelt down before the grate, with its 
 
 VOL. I. 16
 
 242 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 white ashes and dying embers ; and, kneel- 
 ing on the hearth he had outraged, he raised 
 his feeble hands to Heaven, and solemnly- 
 pledged himself, with God's help, to resist 
 the Devil, and wrestle with all the strength 
 that God had given him against princi- 
 palities and powers, against the awful, un- 
 utterable legion that Satan might bring 
 against him, and in that dread hour, Stephen 
 Dashwood, kneeling by his side, prayed that 
 he should not be left alone. 
 
 * Give me the pen,' he said eagerly, when 
 he got up from his knees — 'give me the 
 pen !' 
 
 Stephen gave him the pen. and he signed 
 his name, the honourable name he had 
 dragged in the dust : 
 
 Augustus Drummond Grove. 
 
 He wrote it in full, a long, nervous, aristo- 
 cratic signature — a signature of which every
 
 A MIRACLE 243 
 
 letter was so shaky and Irregular that it was 
 impossible to recognise it. A spider released 
 from an inkpot, trailing over the page, 
 might have produced a similar result. 
 
 He threw the pen down, and dropped 
 wearily into his chair, and let his face fall 
 into his hands in the old manner. 
 
 Stephen, seeing that he desired to be 
 alone, went out, carrying the book with him. 
 Before he went he laid his hand gently on 
 the Major's shoulder and bent over him. 
 
 ' God bless you,' he said, in a voice that 
 he could not keep quite steady, ' and give 
 you strength to keep the pledge you have 
 taken ! Remember, *' To him that over- 
 cometh 
 
 Major Grove slipped his shoulder from 
 under Stephen's hand. 
 
 'Yes, yes,' he said impatiently ; 'but what 
 to him that is overcome ?' 
 
 Stephen sighed as he closed the door ; It
 
 244 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 wasn't very encouraging, though he had his 
 signature, such as it was, in the shabby book 
 under his arm. He hadn't much faith in him. 
 
 Doll was waiting for him in the passage 
 outside ; she had been walking up and down 
 the passage all the time, and most likely 
 she had heard every word that had been 
 spoken behind that closed door. 
 
 She had had time, while Stephen had 
 gone to the Rectory to fetch the book, to 
 look in the glass. She was always ready to 
 look in the glass ; she ought to have known 
 pretty well by this time the image she saw 
 reflected there, but to-day what she saw there 
 startled her. It showed her what she would 
 be some day, what sorrow and suffering 
 might make her any day. 
 
 It was a dreadful revelation ; she had to 
 look twice to be sure it was her own dis- 
 ordered image that the unsympathizing glass 
 gave back.
 
 A MIRACLE 245 
 
 She had found time to bathe her eyes, 
 and gather up her beautiful hair ; she would 
 have given it a twist with the tongs, but 
 Mary was calling her. She looked more 
 like the old Doll when Stephen came back, 
 but her face was hard, and there were two 
 red spots burning on her white cheeks. 
 
 ' Well,' she said, when the door had closed 
 behind him ; ' has he signed it ?' 
 
 ' Yes,' Stephen said, as cheerfully as he 
 could — 'oh yes, he has signed the pledge.' 
 
 * How long will he keep it .'^' Doll said 
 scornfully, with a hard glitter in her eyes. 
 * Oh, I have no patience with him ! He 
 has only done this because he is frightened. 
 When — when it is over he will break out 
 again. He will kill Mary -gold or me, most 
 likely.' 
 
 ' I trust not,' Stephen said sadly ; ' there 
 is nothing else, I'm afraid, to be done — not 
 — not at present. W^e can only pray for
 
 246 TO HIS OWN MASTER 
 
 him. You must ask God to give him 
 strength to keep the promise he has made. 
 You and your sister, you must both pray for 
 him. You must ask in faith.' 
 
 Doll's thin lips curled. 
 
 ' I am afraid our prayers will not be much 
 good to him,' she said dryly. ' Mother and 
 Mary-gold haven't ceased praying for him 
 for years and years, and they don't seem to 
 have done him any good.' 
 
 ' We don't know,' Stephen said sadly. 
 ' Prayer is often answered in a way we 
 least expect ; we are sure only of one thing, 
 that God hears it, and in His own time and 
 His own way He will answer it.' 
 
 He went sadly down the steps of the chill, 
 darkened house, into the sweet summer sun- 
 shine. A weight was on his heart, and there 
 was a mist before his eyes. He hadn't much 
 faith in Major Grove. 
 
 * What else could he do ?' he asked him-
 
 A MIRACLE 247 
 
 self all the way back to the Rectory, and 
 he hadn't answered the question when he 
 reached the gate. 
 
 The work was not his, he told himself ; 
 it was his Master's. If there was to be 
 a miracle. He alone could work it. If the 
 tiny seed of repentance was ever to wake 
 to life, the Divine Husbandman alone could 
 awake it ; and this late awakening would be 
 the beginning of miracles. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDKORD.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS-URBANA 
 
 3 0112 051354014