/
 
 A VAGABOiND IN ARTS 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 NEW NOVELS AT ALL LIBRARIES. 
 
 HOIST WITH HER OWN PETARD. By Reginald 
 
 Lucas. 3 vols. 
 
 THE LIGHT OF OTHER DAYS. By Mrs. Forrester, 
 
 author of 'Viva,' 'Of the World, Worldly.' &c. 2 vols. 
 
 MARY FENWICK'S DAUGHTER. By Beatrice Whitby, 
 
 author of ' The Awakening of Mary Fenwick,' &c. 3 vols. 
 
 THE FOOL OF DESTINY. By Colin Middleton, author 
 
 of ' Innes of Blairavon.' 3 vols. 
 
 SHALLOWS. By Myra Swan. 2 vols. 
 
 LONDON: HURST & BLACKETT, LIMITED.
 
 A VAGABOND IN ARTS 
 
 BY 
 
 ALGERNON GISSING 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 A MOORLAND IDYL,' *A VILLAGE HAMPDEN,' ETC. 
 
 IN THREE VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 HURST AND BLACKETT, LIMITED. 
 
 13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET. 
 
 1894. 
 
 All rights reserved
 
 r^ 3 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 
 OF 
 
 THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 ^ 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 PAGE 
 
 
 I. 
 
 Two Generations .... 
 
 1 
 
 V 
 
 ^ 
 
 II. 
 
 Handsel 
 
 28 
 
 III. 
 
 The Scholar Gipsy .... 
 
 57 
 
 ^ 
 
 IV. 
 
 An Unbidden Guest .... 
 
 86 
 
 1 
 
 V. 
 
 The Burden of the Hills . 
 
 118 
 
 ^^ 
 
 VI. 
 
 Prospective 
 
 149 
 
 >-> 
 
 VII. 
 
 Head and Tail 
 
 189 
 
 _^ 
 
 VIII. 
 
 Philosophy at Issue .... 
 
 213 
 
 
 IX. 
 
 The Following Page 
 
 248 
 
 X. 
 
 A First Draught .... 
 
 271 
 
 4
 
 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 TWO GENERATIONS. 
 
 ' Wholly preposterous, Shiel ! I think 
 father was entirely right, and you egre- 
 giously — ridiculously wrong,' exclaimed 
 Ebba, throwing down the book she had 
 been reading, so as to face her brother 
 undividedly in giving her answer to his 
 peremptory question. 
 
 The youth glanced surprise, then abrupt 
 displeasure. 
 
 VOL. I. B 

 
 2 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 ' You do ?' was, however, all lie could, 
 for the moment, discharge at her. 
 
 ' Certainly I do,' continued the sister, 
 with unflinching steadiness, stayed in part 
 apparently by just the slightest shaft of 
 disdain. ' Your position is perhaps the 
 most ignominious one open to a person 
 laying any claim to the title of civilised 
 being ' 
 
 ' Have I ever laid claim to such a — such 
 a despicable denomination ?' he demanded, 
 vehemently. ' Are you a hypocrite. Abb, 
 or a traitor — which T 
 
 ' I hope neither.' 
 
 ' One of them you must be. A week 
 ago you agreed with me in this. Are 
 you ' 
 
 ' In what?' asked Ebba, composedly. 
 
 • In my attitude to things. Have I not
 
 TWO GENERATIONS. 3 
 
 grown to it with you ? Have we not carved 
 our way shoulder to shoulder through 
 these huge snowdrifts which have settled 
 upon humanity — this earthly freight, this 
 custom which lies upon us with a weight 
 heavy as frost, deep almost — nay, deeper 
 far than life, such as we have made it? 
 Haven't we, Ebba ? Were you not the 
 first to show the way to me ? Dare you 
 not now breathe the atmosphere that we 
 have reached ? It is too strong for you. 
 You must prove yourself a woman, after 
 all; 
 
 ' Not less, I hope, at any rate,' replied 
 the girl, haughtily. ' But stay, Shiel.' 
 
 'Well?' 
 
 He turned back, frowning impatiently. 
 
 ' Supposing I admit the whole of the 
 imputation, T can't see how that affects the 
 
 B 2
 
 4 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 issue. You are surely not unreasonable 
 enough to reflect back upon an innocent 
 party what is at most an idiosyncrasy of 
 my own or yours ? Even from the atmo- 
 sphere that you are breathing, you must 
 surely admit the purely speculative nature 
 
 of your impressions ' 
 
 ' Idiosyncrasy — speculation ! These are 
 your words now, Abb ! Isn't it as plain 
 as Tam Tallon's Crag yonder, that my 
 impressions are received from the irresist- 
 ible — the universal truth only ? Show 
 me, by the very sorriest shred of evidence, 
 that I asked, or had the remotest wish, to 
 be sent into this world, and 1 will instantly 
 admit my responsibility, and plunge into 
 any trade or calling that you or father may 
 like to dictate to me. Until you can pro- 
 duce such evidence, I decline to accept one
 
 TWO GENERATIONS. 5 
 
 particle of responsibility for or in my 
 existence here.' 
 
 ' — And to live in a state of grossly 
 selfish indolence ' 
 
 ' Traitor again !' roared he. ' You can- 
 not be idle or selfish if you are absolutely 
 without responsibility. You have asserted 
 this to me yourself, Abb, times without 
 number.' 
 
 ' Certainly, with regard to dependent 
 responsibility,' asserted the maiden with 
 calm vigour and dignity ; ' that arising 
 from direct action of one's own. But to 
 disclaim a responsibility imposed by the 
 sheer nature of things — well, well, what 
 at least seemed to our father to be the 
 nature of things in his happier philosophy 
 — is in the last deo:ree io^noble. If we, 
 out of superior wisdom, excogitate a
 
 6 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 wholly clifFerent nature of tilings, it sure- 
 ly dates from our moment only, and can 
 but be of future application. Even in 
 positive life are not ex post facto laws 
 considered the height of iniquity ? How 
 much more so in matters of spec — of 
 reflection then !' 
 
 ' I cannot draw such casuistical dis- 
 tinctions,' said Shiel, curling his youth- 
 fully-fringed lip majestically. 
 
 ' But, Shiel, look at the baldest facts 
 of the case,' pursued Ebba, in a softer, 
 more conciliatory tone. ' Can our father 
 support us to the end of time upon his 
 three hundred a-year?' 
 
 ' Is it my fault if he cannot ?' 
 
 '• Look what a cruel burden you impose 
 upon him.' 
 ' ' Cruel — humbug ! You talk as the
 
 TWO GENERATIONS. 7 
 
 Pharisees, Ebba. Until this moment you 
 have invariably seen that he has laid the 
 burden upon us.' 
 
 ' Ex post facto again, Shiel,' she re- 
 marked, placidly. 'To us, as regards 
 any to come after us, it may seem so ; 
 but did it to our father ? You are per- 
 fectly well aw^are that, at the time of 
 father's marriage, he thought it a heaven- 
 born duty to enter into that estate, and 
 by God's blessing to multiply souls for 
 the full enjoyment of this glorious uni- 
 verse.' 
 
 Shiel glanced quickly at his sister, but 
 she w^as immovable. Her large dark 
 eyes rested upon him in serenity. 
 
 'And am I to sustain the fatuity?' 
 growded the youth, sullenly. 
 
 ' In your own self I expect not ; but as
 
 8 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 regards /zzm, most undoubtedly you are. 
 It is your clear duty ' 
 
 ' How often shall I tell you, Abb, that 
 without responsibility there can be no 
 such thing as duty?' he hurled fiercely 
 out at her. 
 
 ' Then it ought to be your pleasure,' she 
 returned, emphatically ; ' it ought to be 
 your pleasure to lighten his life by your 
 labour. I have never supposed that you 
 would mould responsibilities on your own 
 account ; but existing ones you cannot in 
 honour repudiate. Some work you must 
 select, if only out of regard for father. 
 Only with his death can your free- 
 dom from responsibility commence, and 
 your ' 
 
 ' Monstrous !' cried Shiel in real anger. 
 ' Just like a woman ! Once in face of a
 
 TWO GENERATIONS. 9 
 
 logical issue and you become a treacher- 
 ous, a paltry casuist.' 
 
 And therewith he turned, and the door 
 slammed noisily after him. 
 
 Ebba linked her hands behind her, and 
 walked slowly to the window. She saw 
 her brother bound into the garden, trot 
 lightly down the path, and at one pro- 
 digious leap clear the five-barred gate 
 which ended it. A smile flitted across 
 her expressive features, and she muttered 
 something. Her brother's figure was no 
 longer visible, but her eyes were not yet 
 withdrawn from the outward prospect. 
 
 The view from this Linnbrig vicarage 
 was not extensive, nor was it commanding 
 enough to earn the epithet grand. It was 
 as impressive certainly as your spirit Avas 
 inclined to make it, for, pitched near the
 
 10 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 head of a singularly desolate valley in the 
 heart of northern moors, it was limited, 
 at a distance of scarce a bowshot, by 
 steep and frowning hills of irregularly 
 conical shape which, shoulder to shoulder, 
 asserted each a prominent individuality, 
 and stood there but as the vanguard of 
 leagues of similar ranks behind. The 
 head waters of the Linnburn tumbled 
 along the bottom, and, except when its 
 murmur was drowned by the deafening 
 anger of the wind, no sound disturbed its 
 territories beyond the note of a shy moor- 
 land bird, the voice of a climbing sheep, 
 or the cracked despairing bell of the little 
 solitary church. The sun frequently shone 
 here, illumining the green slopes studded 
 with golden knobs of gorse, betraying the 
 purple clumps of heath sprinkled amidst
 
 TWO GENERATIONS. 11 
 
 the bent, and causing the grey limbs of 
 the battered birks which marked the 
 crease of the burn in the hill-side to 
 glisten in the breeze ; but its more char- 
 acteristic aspect was after all the sunless 
 grey. Under that only could the scene 
 do full justice to itself, and reveal the 
 subtle depth of its peculiar genius. Like 
 its brother in art, our maligned misinter- 
 preted November, its genius lay not in 
 the superficial geniality of an ever-smiling 
 complacency. Like him, if chary of smiles, 
 it could smile, or even laugh, with the 
 merriest, but never with such heedless 
 unphilosophical abandonment as to lead 
 you to forget that there was aye an ' o'er- 
 word to the sang.' 
 
 As Ebba now regarded the scene, it 
 lay betwixt tears and smiling. The win-
 
 12 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 ter snows had finally vanished from such 
 hills as were visible from the window, — 
 although lingering on some greater heights 
 behind, — but scarcely warmer hues had 
 as yet replaced them. The sunshine was 
 weak and fitful, lighting up the valley 
 but momentarily, as now, in its flight 
 before the scudding columns of blinding 
 sleet which rushed on enveloping the 
 mountains. With her proud appreciative 
 smile the girl watched the gradual trans- 
 formation. The patch of clear blue was 
 vanishing from the zenith, encroached 
 upon by the fringed storm-cloud, which 
 leaning from heaven to earth advanced in 
 extinguishing progress. As it came strid- 
 ing down the slopes, one familiar object 
 after another disappeared : the sheep, 
 with fleeces ruflled by the wind and faces
 
 TWO GENERATIONS. 13 
 
 lowered, were seen trudging to the bushes 
 or the crags, but faded on the way ; the 
 last fir-tree was hidden ; birch after birch 
 went out. As the sun left the ruddy alder 
 clump below, it encountered another ob- 
 ject ahiiost familiar as these. Ebba's 
 glance too had caught it, and there her 
 eye remained. It stood, but its shadow 
 moved around it: then, as it seemed, with 
 a flourish of an arm, figure and shadow 
 were caught into the cloud, and the sun- 
 light sped onwards. 
 
 It was just as the last of the scene — 
 the gate, the garden, the nearest flower- 
 bed — had disappeared, and the rain and 
 hail dashed in a boisterous swirl against 
 the windows, that Ebba turned, aware of 
 another sound within the room. 
 
 ' Abb, will you come ?'
 
 14 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 ' Yes, father.' 
 
 And with alacrity the girl followed her 
 father to the library. 
 
 There was no sort of restraint on the 
 daughter's part, but the gentleman, as it 
 seemed, was by no means at his ease. As 
 Ebba drew up an old stool, with four 
 black carved feet and a crimson cushion, 
 close to the fender, Mr. Wanless trifled 
 with a fossil on the mantel-piece. The 
 storm beat musically upon the panes. 
 
 ' You are troubled about Shiel, father ?' 
 suggested the girl, looking up from her 
 crouching posture with her chin resting in 
 the hollow of one hand. 
 
 ' Troubled ! I am dazed, stupefied,' said 
 he, without altering his position. ' What 
 on earth is his meaning?'
 
 TWO GENERATIONS. 15 
 
 ' What did he say to you ?' asked Ebba, 
 cautiously. 
 
 ' That he has uo intention of earning a 
 livelihood.' 
 
 The words, the tone and the clergy- 
 man's rueful countenance struck Ebba 
 as irresistibly ludicrous, and laughing she 
 asked, 
 
 ' Didn't he say present intention, 
 father?' 
 
 ' I don't recollect the word present,' 
 returned he impatiently ; ' but surely, 
 Ebba, this is no laughing matter. Shiel 
 would hardly make fun of me, — moreover 
 he ' 
 
 ' Xo, forgive me, dear father. It is 
 not a laughing matter, but, you know, 
 tragedies are often irresistibly comic.
 
 16 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 He is not making fun of you. He is 
 quite in earnest, and in his present 
 mood I am convinced that nothing will 
 persuade him to submit to a wage-earning 
 existence.' 
 
 ' Mood, Abb ? But the question of 
 one's existence is hardly to be approached 
 as a matter of mood. In what mood will 
 he starve, do you suppose ?' 
 
 ' In an heroic one, I do not doubt,' 
 replied Ebba, readily. 
 
 The clergyman again deprecated any 
 approach to levity in the discussion. 
 
 ' I am far from intending it, father. 
 But you have hardly expected that Shiel 
 was to be drafted off like any mere 
 ordinary individual ?' the girl again looked 
 up as she put the question. 
 
 ' I have had no wish to draft him off,
 
 TWO GENERATIONS. 17 
 
 and certainly the proposal I have been 
 able to make to him is very far from 
 ordinary. He has always been an odd 
 boy, I admit, and no doubt I never 
 properly understood him ; but, Nabbs,' 
 continued the father, looking down and 
 touching her head affectionately, ' he is 
 no longer a boy, unless your new-fangled 
 notions allow such subterfuge to a fellow 
 of twenty-two, and a graduate of Oxford. 
 I had thought modern tendencies lay in a 
 somewhat different direction.' 
 
 ' He is not a boy assuredly.' 
 
 ' I could have understood it if his dis- 
 position had been different,' pursued the 
 perplexed father, ' if he had been weak, 
 
 indolent, dissipated, or , but he is 
 
 none of these. I have had most admirable 
 reports of him, and indeed his successes 
 
 VOL. I. c
 
 18 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 and his conduct here speak for them- 
 selves. And such an offer. He told you, 
 of course.' 
 
 ' Not definitely,' replied Ebba, not wish- 
 ing to hurt her father by Shields own 
 characterization of the offer, ' a sublimated 
 species of pedagogy,' to wit. 
 
 ' It is a tutorship to Lord Purbeck's son, 
 with a salary of two hundred pounds a 
 year. Two hundred a year !' repeated the 
 clergyman, energetically. ' Nearly as much 
 as I can lay claim to, after a lifetime's 
 effort. Think of it, Ebba. Is it to be 
 sacrificed ?' 
 
 ' I am afraid it will have to be,' replied 
 the girl, with calm philosophy. 
 
 ' It will not have to be,' exclaimed the 
 other, with unprecedented warmth. ' It 
 cannot, and shall not be. If the boy does
 
 TWO GENERATIONS. 19 
 
 not know what is for his own benefit, it is 
 my place to teach it him, and — and, I will 
 do my duty. You, Ebba, I shall expect 
 to help me. I have been working for this 
 for years, and are all my efforts to be 
 flung away ? Impossible !' 
 
 Ebba looked into the fire. The shower 
 without had passed, and the sun was out 
 again, so all was still. This agitation of 
 her father had taken the girl wholly by 
 surprise. That the man had some inward 
 fund of firmness and resolve she could not 
 doubt, judging merely from the character 
 of herself and brother ; but hitherto it had 
 never appeared in any practical manage- 
 ment of his children. She was not en- 
 gaged with the merely ignoble consider- 
 ation of a contest between ill-matched 
 powers ; she only felt a human sympathy 
 
 C2
 
 20 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 with her father m his inevitable disquiet. 
 
 ' I require your promise, Abb, to help 
 me. You have the greatest influence with 
 him.' 
 
 ' Did he give any reason for his de- 
 cision ?' asked Ebba. 
 
 ' Reason ! How could he T cried the 
 clergyman, with sarcasm. ' He is not 
 deficient in intellect, Ebba, whatever else 
 he may be lacking. He vouchsafed no 
 explanation. I had to be content with a 
 dogged, savage negative. Can you en- 
 lighten me ?' 
 
 The young lady, of course, could not. 
 She was sufficiently thankful that some 
 measure of self-restraint was possible to 
 her brother. 
 
 ' You have said, father, that I have the 
 greatest influence over Shiel ; that means.
 
 TWO GENEKATIONS. 21 
 
 I suppose, that you think I can under- 
 stand hira best. If this is so, will you 
 forgive me if I ask you to act by my 
 direction?' 
 
 ' If it is to compass my end,' replied 
 he. 
 
 ' For the present it is not to be com- 
 passed ; I beseech you to believe that. 
 You know enough of Shiel's nature ' 
 
 ' Ebba, it must be compassed. This 
 offer must not be lost. The efforts — nay, 
 the humiliation I have undergone to 
 bring Shiel to his present position ; do 
 they count for nothing? You at least 
 will admit that I have had no self- 
 ish aim in pursuing such an object. 
 I thouo;ht that he would recoo;nise 
 
 my efforts, instead of Has he any 
 
 alternative to offer ? You know I am
 
 22 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 not unreasonable. Of course, if he has 
 any definite preferences, I should be the 
 last to thwart them. All I could get 
 from him was a savage repudiation of all 
 employment. Surely I am under some 
 gross misapprehension ?' 
 
 ^ I am afraid you are not, father. I 
 believe Shiel does at present savagely 
 repudiate all species of remunerative 
 employment. You are ]3erfectly right 
 in that. But humiliation, father, — you 
 said humiliation ? You had undergone ?' 
 
 ' I did, Ebba,' returned the other, with 
 undiminished agitation, ' and I repeat 
 it. Can a man undergo viler than in 
 — in borrowing a thousand pounds ? Can 
 he, I say ?' 
 
 The girl was enlightened, but she be-
 
 TWO GENERATIONS. 23 
 
 trayed no symptom of surprise, if indeed 
 she felt it. 
 
 ' It is vile,' she said, quietly. ' It is 
 vile.' 
 
 ' Do not misunderstand me, Ebba !' he 
 cried, with a revulsion of feeling wrought 
 of her instant sympathy. ' I grudge the 
 boy nothing. It was a clear enough duty 
 in such a case. But you see my position. 
 Without induloins: such baseness as to 
 impute it to him for a debt, not unnatur- 
 ally I thought that the opportunities which 
 it would buy for him would enable him 
 with ease, and as I even thought with 
 pleasure, to give me some little assistance 
 in repaying it. You will not be surprised, 
 then, at his behaviour having appalled 
 me. On his account, mind. Bless me, if
 
 24 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 he was well provided for, you and I could 
 find no difficulty in saving this amount in 
 a few years ourselves, if we had to do it; 
 but for it to be all frustrated !' 
 
 'You did not tell Shiel of this?' said 
 Ebba, starting up with her first display of 
 anxiety. 
 
 ' Of course not, dear girl. But I am 
 undecided as to whether it is not my duty 
 to do so. It might certainly have weight 
 with him, and anything that would ' 
 
 ' Promise me, father, that you will not,' 
 exclaimed the girl, with real solemnity. 
 ' Anything but that. He must not know 
 that. I know him, father, and be assured 
 that I am right in this. It would be 
 disastrous.' 
 
 The father eyed his daughter curiously. 
 He was not given to confidential inter-
 
 TWO GENERATIONS. 25 
 
 course with his children. The expression 
 of her features struck him deeply, and he 
 felt in the humiliating position of being 
 subject to the judgment of a girl perhaps 
 one-third his age. He a man of middle 
 life and a clergyman. 
 
 ' You promise this, dear father?' 
 
 ' I must do, Abb, for the present, at any 
 rate, since you beg it so seriously. If you 
 also promise to exert your influence over 
 Shiel.' 
 
 ' That I shall certainly do ; but I must 
 tell you openly that as regards this first 
 offer, at any rate, I shall not be success- 
 ful. I should mislead you, father, if I 
 suggested the slightest hope otherwise.' 
 
 ' Don't say that, Abb. I have shown 
 you how deeply I feel upon the subject. 
 I know you will do your duty. Come to
 
 26 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 me here at this same hour to-morrow 
 morning,' he said, placing his finger upon 
 the face of the clock. 
 
 The vicar sat to his table, and Ebba left 
 the room. 
 
 Some such issue as this had, of course,, 
 not been unforeseen by the young lady, 
 since the youthful speculation upon which 
 it was founded had, truly to her brother's- 
 imputation, been shared by both of them. 
 The only difference was that Ebba could 
 indulge in any excess of intellectual va- 
 gary from its mere interest in the abstract, 
 whilst such experience in Shiel became an 
 irresistible conviction, upon which a defi- 
 nite world's action had to be based. If it 
 stopped short of this, what was the value 
 of it to its holder? or what was the 
 guarantee of his sincerity ?
 
 TWO GENERATIONS. 27 
 
 As Ebba pondered the topic in her own 
 room, dallying Avith her pencil (for she 
 had an artistic turn), she became unusu- 
 ally grave. Nobody knew her brother as 
 she did, that she could with safety assume, 
 but in this issue the knowledge brought 
 her little confidence. Had she known him 
 less, she would have proceeded the more 
 buoyantly.
 
 28 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 HANDSEL. 
 
 Shiel Wanless undoubtedly appeared a 
 fine fellow as he trotted down the garden- 
 path and cleared the five-barred gate 
 beyond. In his mere stature there was 
 nothing extraordinary, for, as had but just 
 been shown, his sister's eyes were fully 
 on a level with his throat, and Ebba in 
 physical development was not a giantess. 
 But there was a graceful vigour of build 
 about the man which could never escape
 
 HANDSEL. 29 
 
 immediate recognition. Looking at his 
 movements from the back, he might have 
 been pronounced a model athlete, in whom 
 lay no suggestion of development exceed- 
 ing the needs of the perfected human 
 frame. ]Nro excessive muscular bulge about 
 the calves of the stockings, (he was wear- 
 ing knickerbockers,) — no sinewy ropes to 
 flank the throat, which in a loose white 
 flannel collared shirt was open to the 
 breeze, — no Herculean hands and wrists : 
 graceful, vigorous all, suggestive of elastic 
 heaven-born health rather than excessive, 
 unnatural endeavour. Whatever he did, 
 was obviously done instinctively and with 
 ease. 
 
 True, as he now bounded over fences, 
 spanned the sunlit pasture, and leapt the 
 burn boiling in its rocky bed, there was
 
 30 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 an appearance of reckless exertion hardly 
 at one with this allusion to instinctive 
 ease. But the occasion was exceptional. 
 He was deeply moved, and, as the time 
 had gone by when he gave vent to fits of 
 passion by means of bullets and a stable- 
 door, the emotion had to find deliverance 
 in some other less purposeful manner : as 
 it seemed now, indeed, by way of mere 
 kicking up of heels, or pawing the turf, 
 like any other infuriated animal. 
 
 He confronted the slope with no dimi- 
 nution of energy, sniffing the aromatic 
 breath of the bog-myrtle which he bruised 
 beneath his feet, and yelling an expletive 
 if his foot missed the solid hassock which 
 his instinct knew so well. Here he startled 
 an angry grouse, there a swiftly darting 
 snipe which glistened in the sun. Now
 
 HANDSEL. 31 
 
 his thudcliDg foot aroused the sheep, and, 
 looking up in quick alarm, they rushed 
 into a flock, all tails and flanks bobbing 
 up in ungainly flight. But once away, 
 and no resonant bark ensuing, all in an 
 instant wheeled, and, wdth their white 
 comely faces erect, the w^hole regiment 
 cast an inquiring glance upon the intruder 
 and the sun together. 
 
 This first brought Shiel to pause, and as 
 though the brief scrutiny of those placid 
 features had suddenly imparted some de- 
 gree of composure to himself, he proceeded 
 more leisurely thereafter. 
 
 It was now, in his cahner advance, that 
 he first caught sight of the approaching 
 storm. Tlie sunlight was still about him, 
 and as he looked up at the dimly looming 
 heights, the expression of his face under-
 
 »S2 A VAGABOND IN AETS. 
 
 went still another change. This remark- 
 able flexibility of feature was one of Shiel's 
 noticeable attributes, and it may in some 
 measure have been the result of a life spent 
 in most part in the society of his own un- 
 controlled thoughts. What in others 
 might have passed as a casual remark to 
 a companion, (or, in most, might never 
 have occurred at all,) took in this silent 
 ungregarious animal, the form of a self- 
 communing facial expression. Hence his 
 features had gained what his tongue had 
 lost in the power or the habit of emotional 
 utterance. This latest aspect seemed one 
 of simple, let us say physical elation : 
 anger had gone ; the mild momentary 
 ■flash of spiritual sensibility had followed 
 it ; now, in the face of the rolling cloud, 
 the lips closed and the eyelids quivered in
 
 HANDSEL. 33 
 
 the intensity of defiant ecstasy. He paused 
 again : the increasing wind came rushing 
 around him, flinging the first drops against 
 his cheeks which the sun illumined, and 
 making his loose jacket swell and flap like 
 an unfurling sail. This he caught together 
 and buttoned ; he strained his cap over his 
 ears and forehead ; and then stood like a 
 warrior to receive the volley. He had not 
 to wait long. The whirling column ad- 
 vanced; a stinging salute of glistening 
 bullets was ofl'ered him ; then flourishing 
 his arm and sheltering his face by lower- 
 ing it, Shiel plunged manfully into the 
 assailing cloud. 
 
 For five minutes he was enveloped in 
 the blinding hail, every crease and cranny 
 in his clothing getting filled with the driven 
 ice. Through it all he strode vigorously 
 
 VOL. I. i>
 
 34 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 forward, and not until he saw the ground 
 alight and sparkling and felt the genial 
 touch of the sunlit atmosphere around him 
 did he raise his face. When first he did 
 so, he took a deep draught of the sparkling 
 current, and threw his eyes upon the re- 
 treating storm. His next action was to 
 divest himself of his jacket and shake it 
 violently in the breeze. This replaced, 
 his cap was similarly handled, but before 
 his head was covered his hand was checked 
 by the sound of a ringing laugh. He 
 turned sharply round and confronted this 
 new and unexpected assailant. 
 ' Ye'll be wet likely, Mr. Shiel.' 
 ' What of that, my lass ? I'm not made 
 of sugar.' 
 
 ' True enough,' cried she readily, with a 
 significant nod.
 
 HANDSEL. 35 
 
 ' I suppose you are, as you take so much 
 trouble to keep yourself dry,' was his 
 retort, eyeing her from head to foot. 
 
 ' Daursay.' 
 
 ' Where did you get to ?' 
 
 ' Under the whin buss, o' course. 
 There's no that choice of bield on the 
 heugh side.' 
 
 ' There isn't, and I'm not fond of curling 
 up like a hedgehog for any ^Durpose Avhat- 
 soever,' returned Shiel, scornfully. 
 
 ' I ken that nicely,' came from the other, 
 Avith unabashed incisiveness, as she turned 
 and unconcernedly drew out an axe, the 
 handle of which protruded from a tuft of 
 gorse. And their unceremonious greeting 
 was apparently at an end. 
 
 Without further speech Shiel watched 
 the young woman don her leather gloves 
 
 d2
 
 36 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 and ply her implement vigorously to the 
 root of the stubborn bush. Branch after 
 branch she drew forth and laid apart, and 
 at each disturbance of the dry impenetrable 
 heart of the furze, where was accumulated 
 the dust of years of crumbling decay, a dazed 
 moth or two would flutter into the unwel- 
 come day and be carried off irresistibly by 
 the breeze. 
 
 Despite the commonplaceness of the 
 young woman's garb, she could not present 
 other than a picturesque object as she 
 bent gracefully to her employment. Her 
 skirts, enveloped in a coarse grey pina- 
 fore, were sufficiently short to show the 
 masculine boots and a good share of the 
 incipient muscular moulding above them. 
 A bit of her arm peeped out between the 
 top of the glove and her frock sleeve, and
 
 HANDSEL. 37 
 
 the skin was white and smooth as marble. 
 Her head was screened by a great wide 
 bonnet of ample scope for repelling a too 
 inquisitive sun or a rudely intrusive 
 rain. 
 
 Shiel could not see her face, but he was 
 familiar enough with its details. It was 
 true that by his academical residence of 
 late years the thread of old unsophisticated 
 associations seemed to have been broken, 
 — the behaviour of everybody at any rate 
 thrust upon Shiel that it was so, — but none 
 of them knew with what savage pertinacity 
 the youth himself longed to repudiate 
 such suggestion, and to take up the thread 
 exactly where he had left it. Even such 
 of the country's kin, (like this girl's own 
 brother,) as were able to get through to 
 college with their face full to the ministry,
 
 38 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 were never the same thereafter; how much 
 more pronouncedly, therefore, must the 
 son of ' the priest ' have altered? None 
 the less surely, for the paragraphs in the 
 local paper that had chronicled his father's 
 pride in his various academical distinc- 
 tions. 
 
 But although Shiel knew well the out- 
 lines of Handsel's face, he could not have 
 filled in the shading necessary to repro- 
 duce the expression which at this moment 
 characterised it, had he been affected with 
 any thought of doing so. As a matter of 
 fact, for all his familiarity with her, of her 
 face as an object of expression, or of her- 
 self as an attractive or unattractive woman, 
 he was very far from thinking. Another 
 might have noted that there was upon the 
 girl's face an expression of intelligent
 
 HANDSEL. 39 
 
 humour not common to the features of a 
 pastoral coquette. 
 
 ' Let me have the axe, Handsel,' said 
 Shiel. at length, after some minutes' 
 silence. ' I'm wet. It will dry me.' 
 
 Without waiting for assent or its opposite 
 he stepped up to her, and leaning took the 
 weapon from her hand. 
 
 ' Certainly,' she said, relinquishing it, 
 and stepping aside with that peculiar 
 smile. 
 
 She took a piece of rope from the 
 ground, and, as Shiel hewed manfully at 
 the gorse, she bound together some of the 
 pieces already severed. This done, she 
 rolled the long end two or three times 
 round her hand, and, casting the rope over 
 one shoulder, set off to drag the bundle 
 behind her.
 
 40 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 ' Where are you taking it ?' 
 
 ' To the dike yonder,' she replied, 
 without turning round. 
 
 ' Leave it there, and don't build it,' — 
 but she went on without response. 
 
 The distance was some two hundred 
 yards from where they were cutting, and, 
 whilst Handsel went, her companion con- 
 tinued his labour. Presently he looked 
 up, and, seeing her returning, again phed 
 the axe. 
 
 ' Why are you doing this ?' he demanded, 
 as the girl was tying another bundle. 
 ' Isn't your father well yet?' 
 
 'Why shouldn't I?' was the hasty, 
 inconsequent reply. 
 
 Disregarding it, Shiel again fell to. 
 
 ' He's no well yet,' said she, presently, 
 with tacit retraction of her former protest.
 
 HANDSEL. 41 
 
 * But I didna think you'd do this after 
 you'd been to college.' 
 
 ' Why shouldn't I ?' 
 
 But, looking up, her laugh was irresis- 
 tible, and Shiel was constrained to join 
 in it. 
 
 'Why shouldn't I, Handsel? Tell e 
 that.' 
 
 'That's just what I canna do,' was her 
 quick response. 'But I ken that it aye 
 makes a difference, although I could never 
 rightly guess why it should." 
 
 ' It only does so in feeble creatures,' 
 -said Shiel, with energy, ' and I lay no 
 claim to be classed with such.' 
 
 ' Indeed you do not.' 
 
 ' That storm and that plover, my lass, 
 are worth a' the colleges in the uni- 
 verse.'
 
 42 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 She just glanced at liis face as he re- 
 garded the patches of prismatic hues 
 which flauked the storm columns, far 
 away down the valley, and then they both 
 worked again. 
 
 As she came and went in silent execu- 
 tion of her necessary labour, Shiel pon- 
 dered her toilsome movements through 
 the hazy medium of his own individual 
 fancy, although the April sunshine obvi- 
 ously glistened in her eyes, and the care- 
 less elasticity never for a moment left her 
 limbs. Shiel had been, with apparent 
 truth, pronounced absolutely deficient in 
 the sentimental, and it was from no mis- 
 taken solicitude for womanhood in the 
 abstract that he grudged to his companion's 
 muscles their healthful occupation. In- 
 deed, amongst such as had contact with
 
 HANDSEL. 43- 
 
 him, his aggressive plea for the absolute 
 independence of women was held his char- 
 acteristic feature at present ; but the subtle 
 source from which this requirement sprang 
 was not so generally known, and owing to 
 recent circumstances it was the parent phi- 
 losophy which prevailed at the present mo- 
 ment. This independence of women was 
 necessary only to check the multiplication 
 of those in the predicament of these very 
 independents, held Shiel, and everything 
 ought to be sacrificed to the attainment of 
 this end ; but this did not by any means 
 prevent his indulging a savage arraign- 
 ment of the antecedent circumstances when 
 he saw any particular occasion, such as he 
 discerned, for instance, in the position of 
 this moorland girl. 
 
 After the manner of subjective philoso-
 
 44 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 phers, it mattered not that the subject 
 chosen for the lavishment of his principles 
 should be a peculiarly unfortunate one. 
 Apt ones enough there might be, but this 
 chanced to have come to his hand. No- 
 body knew better than Shiel the ridiculous 
 buoyancy of Handsel, her health, her alto- 
 gether uncommon intelligence. The soli- 
 tary toil amid Avide wastes of barren moor 
 had cast no shadow on her vigorous face, 
 as obviously it ought. Flung, unasked, 
 on the peaty desert of a hungry planet, 
 she had readily found her feet and her 
 sunward eyes, and made good use of both, 
 instead of groping on all fours with a 
 spine horizontal, as was theoretically to 
 have been expected. The sun consequent- 
 ly, it seemed, had fallen in love with 
 Handsel (whose very name implied the
 
 HAISDSEL. 45 
 
 sense of pleasure and gift in a fanciful 
 mother, for she was born on Xew Year's 
 Day, and had evidently come ' for handsel,' 
 as is said in the district of her nativity,) 
 and he had showered some of his enviable 
 blessings on her. Her smock was coarse, 
 certainly, her boots huge and masculine ; 
 but these were extrinsic, and not of the 
 sun. His work only began in a closer 
 intimacy than either of them. The warm 
 clay was his, and the flame which inspired 
 it, and both were his glory. In immacu- 
 late sport he had rounded and rounded 
 the one, — adding day by day some subtle, 
 beauteous line here, some tender, ampler 
 moulding there, some richness of appro- 
 priate tint everywhere, — and for the other 
 he seemed simply to have parted with one 
 whole sparkling ray of his own. Shiel,
 
 46 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 however, viewed her with commiserating 
 indignation. 
 
 When she returned to him and said that 
 there was enough, the sounds of the axe 
 ceased. Shiel took the rope from her 
 without comment, tied the branches to- 
 gether, and dragged them away over the 
 wet and glittering grass. 
 
 They worked jointly at the building of 
 the gorse into the wall, placing the pieces 
 under the heavy top stones, so that their 
 ends protruded from each side, and thus 
 served as an effectual check to the ' loup- 
 ing ' sheep, to whom a five-foot wall is in 
 itself but a trumpery obstacle. 
 
 ' You'll know nothing of my cousin 
 Glen, Mr. Shiel ?' asked the girl presently. 
 
 ' I don't ; except that she is still in her 
 situation at Oxford, and that I don't
 
 HANDSEL. 47 
 
 think the town a particularly good place 
 for her.' 
 
 ' Likely,' muttered Handsel. ' She has 
 not written to me for two months.' 
 
 ' What else can you expect ?' cried 
 Shiel. ' So long as the crime of parent- 
 age is perpetrated, do you look for bliss 
 in the land ?' 
 
 ' Certainly I do,' laughed the other, not 
 new to one or other of his extravagances. 
 
 'Well, Handsel, tell me this,' he re- 
 newed in all solemnity, standing back in 
 order to face her : ' your father is ill ; very 
 likely will never be well again, you say ; 
 can you pretend to say that his conduct 
 is other than criminal in flinging you 
 alone on an inhuman world, to let you 
 shift as you best can ?' 
 
 ' He has not killed himself.'
 
 48 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 ' How on earth does that aiFect the 
 argument ? I am not talking of his death 
 only, but of his marriage and parentage 
 of you. He didn't ask you if you would 
 like to come here and fight with all the 
 darknesses of a universe ' 
 
 ' I should have said ay if he had,' 
 laughed the girl, putting her hair behind 
 her ear as the wind ruffled it. ' Look 
 ahint you, man. Do you call that 
 darkness ?' 
 
 • — Not intellectual darknesses merely, 
 for some peoj)le are too obtuse to discern 
 any : but material squalor. Wait until 
 you have had a month or two of service 
 with aliens, like your cousin Glen, and 
 then tell me how you a|)preciate your 
 world of blessings. You'll alter your phi- 
 losophy, I think/
 
 HANDSEL. 49 
 
 ' I diima think it. For one thing, I 
 should never enter into that service of 
 aliens.' 
 
 ' What difference can it make ? What 
 will you do when you are alone, then ?' 
 
 ' Oh, just cry a little, and then work 
 again.' 
 
 Shiel looked at her with one gathered 
 stare of inexpressible impatience, then 
 turned and incontinently left her. 
 
 Handsel showed no surprise. She just 
 paused in her work and looked after him, 
 smiling supremely. 
 
 ' Ye're a fine lad, Mr. Shiel,' was the 
 complacent soliloquy, ' but ye're sair fashed 
 the day.' 
 
 She glanced once or twice at the im- 
 petuous figure as it scaled the slope 
 behind her, but she looked again and it 
 
 VOL. I. E
 
 50 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 was gone. Handsel proceeded with her 
 work, feeling no more lonely than before. 
 
 A few minutes later she chanced to 
 look again, and then, on the top of the 
 cairn which crowned the fell, prominent 
 against the sky, she saw a human form 
 facing the wind. Apparently she had ex- 
 pected it, for, after making an audible 
 comment, she went on as before. But 
 she could not, on the instant, dispel all 
 thought of her erratic visitor. It was 
 lonsr since she had seen him — several 
 months, that was ; longer since she had 
 had Avith him such scrap of familiar 
 contact; yet she found him, in gener- 
 alities, little altered. Aggressive, impul- 
 sive above all else in her experience, 
 he had ever been, and her estimate car- 
 ried her far back into the unrestrained
 
 HANDSEL. 51 
 
 familiarity of childhood. There was the 
 inevitable smile as she recalled those far- 
 oiF incidents ; unconsciously formative for 
 her, too, in the experience — hardly more 
 consciously so in the now maturer retro- 
 spect. Those impetuous explorations of 
 the hills, in which the o-oats were rivalled 
 in temerity and immunity from harm, 
 when, the strength of the slighter Ebba 
 giving out perchance, his unflinching hand 
 dragged her alone to his fearless enter- 
 prise. As a contrast to her own less hardy 
 brothers, Shiel had then slipped into 
 Handsel's vigorous ideals of the race, and 
 if, with the inevitable modification of 
 years, he still presided there, it must but 
 be in a calm, impersonal manner, seeing 
 the frank ingenuousness of her demeanour 
 towards him. 
 
 E 2 
 
 UBRARY
 
 52 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 The wind whistled around her, and the 
 curlews called, and Handsel gradually 
 passed on to her own more peculiar topics. 
 There Avas no self-pity about her, no meta- 
 physical introspection. Educated she was 
 to a somewhat exceptional degree owing 
 to peculiar opportunities, but something 
 in her constitution had precluded the fos- 
 tering of subjective growths. Life re- 
 mained to her a humorous, but verv 
 practical matter. 
 
 It was scarcely with surprise that, as 
 she worked and pondered, she heard that 
 voice once more behind her. 
 
 ' Is James a minister yet?' asked Shiel, 
 as though their conversation had never 
 been broken. 
 
 ' He is.' 
 
 'Where has he gone to ?'
 
 HANDSEL. 53 
 
 'Assistant to the minister at Morpeth.' 
 
 ' I suppose you would live with him if 
 your father died?' 
 
 ' I dinna think it . . . But I hardly 
 know yet what I'd do.' 
 
 ' Oh, well, good-bye . . .' When a few 
 yards off he stopped and turned. ' I shall 
 go back to Oxford this afternoon,' he 
 asked. ' Anything I can take for you to 
 Glen?' 
 
 ' Nothing, thank you.' 
 
 Shiel strode down the hill in the direc- 
 tion of the church and his father's vicarage. 
 
 He went straight to his sister's room, 
 just tapping at the door and entering. She 
 looked up from a pen-and-ink drawing over 
 which she bent. 
 
 ' I'm going after lunch, Abb. It will be 
 better at present.'
 
 54 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 ' In what direction ?' 
 
 ' Address to Oxford. I will in due 
 course send you any change.' He looked 
 over her as he spoke. ' That's not bad.' 
 
 ' You think not?' she said, drawing back 
 her head in a pose. 
 
 ^ Not at all ; and, by-the-by, they've 
 printed a paper of mine in this month's 
 " Wargent's," ' added he, glancing off. 
 'About women, mainly. You would hard- 
 ly care to see it, I suppose?' 
 
 ' Certainly I should.' 
 
 ' I thought that after your desertion to 
 the Philistines it would only irritate you.' 
 
 ' I should like to see it none the less.' 
 
 He went from the room and returned 
 with a black bag. From it he took out 
 and handed to his sister the well-known 
 monthly, with a carelessness w^hich, even
 
 HANDSEL. 55 
 
 in him, was doubtless mainly affected. 
 Ebbatook no pains to conceal her interest. 
 She handed the periodical for a few 
 seconds like a connoisseur would do an 
 article of vertu^ and then she ran the edges 
 off her thumb before it. 
 
 ' Why not get your living by literature, 
 Shiel ? Surely that would preserve 
 the ' 
 
 ' Don't reopen that, Ebba,' he exclaimed 
 with a frown. ' You know my position, 
 and that settles it. I am not going to 
 part with you in a quarrel. If I like to 
 write anything you needn't call it getting 
 my living.' 
 
 Ebba glanced at the pages in silence, 
 then put the book down. 
 
 ' Yes, it looks promising.' 
 
 ' By-the-by, does that girl Glen Aiken-
 
 56 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 shaw ever communicate with you ? . . . . 
 Just write to her, will you?' 
 
 Mr. Wanless had his dinner in the 
 library alone, and after the two others had 
 had theirs, Shiel left the vicarage again.
 
 Oi 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE SCHOLAR GIPSY. 
 
 According to intent, then, Shiel departed, 
 mainly in pique and without any defined 
 purpose in his steps. He had come to 
 Linnbrig but the day before, with the 
 object of indulging in a period of ima- 
 p^inative indolence amidst the rugged soli- 
 tudes upon which his intellectual frame 
 had even yet very much of its conscious 
 foundation, and when his father's unex- 
 pected attitude had routed this intention,
 
 58 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 once more the youth had impetuously 
 wandered forth. 
 
 When he reached the station he resolved 
 upon Oxford as his destination. His 
 academical career had as a fact ended with 
 the last Michaelmas term ; but pending 
 the discovery of some new and sufficiently 
 elastic scope for his imaginative capabili- 
 ties, Shiel still retained rooms in the town, 
 for the accommodation mainly of such 
 multifarious possessions as time had accu- 
 mulated about him, — not least, many hun- 
 dreds of volumes in the most various 
 branches of literature, — and to this shelter 
 he now accordingly repaired. 
 
 It was not from any pronounced sense 
 of congeniality that Wanless retained a 
 footing in the purlieus of his university. 
 His position there had been throughout an
 
 THE SCHOLAR GIPSY. 59* 
 
 extremely odd one, and not such as was 
 likely to give rise to any strong social 
 or intellectual predilection, had such ever 
 been Shiel's constitutional propensity. 
 Even amongst men of his own time and 
 standing he had made few friends, and 
 positively no intimates ; and by those who 
 were set in authority over him, he was 
 viewed fron first to last with a more or 
 less hopeless curiosity. 
 
 Of course his life in the hills had much 
 to answer for in this unconventional 
 development. An intellect of restless 
 activity nursed up amidst a rugged seclu- 
 sion of place and circumstance gets inevi- 
 tably thrust very near to the root of 
 things. The whole of Shiel's life had 
 been passed in the vicarage of Linnbrig, 
 where the remoteness of mere locality had
 
 60 A VAGABOND IN AKTS. 
 
 been immeasurably intensified, by the ab- 
 sence of a mother's society and by the 
 presence of a father given over wholly to 
 the habits of a recluse. The fervid ima- 
 ginations of the brother and sister had, 
 under such circumstances, found for them- 
 selves all sorts of extraordinary outlets, 
 largely in independence of any existing 
 world about them, and not unnaturally, 
 upon occasion, in actual defiance of it. 
 The only restraints of which their intel- 
 lects were conscious were those gleaned 
 from a library of notable comprehen- 
 siveness, wherein both were permitted to 
 browse indiscriminately without restric- 
 tion or interference, if also without guid- 
 ance of any sort. In what we speak of 
 technically as ' education,' they had cer- 
 tainly been conducted with particular
 
 THE SCHOLAR GIPSY. 61 
 
 efficiency by their father who, probably 
 for his own convenience rather than from 
 any principle or conviction, had liberally 
 ignored the matter of sex in his instruc- 
 tions. How thoroughly the vicar had 
 done his work was subsequently proved 
 by Shiel at Oxford, and his successes 
 might be fairly taken as representative 
 also of the attainments of his sister, as 
 the clergyman had alwa3^s averred that 
 he was unable to distinguish between 
 the intellectual capabilities of his two 
 children. 
 
 This education, however, formed but a 
 small part of the development of Shiel 
 and Ebba in their life of seclusion, and 
 certainly that part the least significant. 
 Of their imaginative efforts, of their specu- 
 lations dauntless and profound upon any
 
 62 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 and every topic which can occur to the 
 mind of man, their father knew virtually 
 nothing. That his daughter gave him oc- 
 casionally a sketch of remarkable excel- 
 lence, and that his son had been known 
 to versify with accuracy and taste, were 
 small matters to the clergyman ; for as he 
 had never been deluded into imagining 
 himself an ordinary individual, he would 
 hardly be surprised at offspring from 
 himself proving in its turn somewhat ex- 
 traordinary. However, he never displayed 
 the smallest curiosity with regard to that 
 or anything else about them. He talked 
 to them as to independent equals, but 
 always upon some independent topic far 
 removed from individual concerns. 
 
 It is needless to say that a young man
 
 THE SCHOLAR GIPSY. 63 
 
 of such unusual antecedents, appeared as 
 rather an unmanageable quantity upon 
 the social scene of Oxford, and that he 
 should in the air of academic polish find 
 himself singularly alone. Being of dis- 
 tinctly picturesque exterior, the customary 
 overtures could readily have been his, had 
 he not shown so unmistakably the attitude 
 he assumed. The more civilized element 
 about him naturally soon tired of making 
 effort at a thankless manipulation of so 
 tantalizing an anomaly. This un club- 
 ability, very early detected, had influ- 
 enced strongly the undergraduate's de- 
 velopment ; for it had engrafted upon 
 a constitutional pride of sufficiently in- 
 convenient proportions an unreasoning 
 devotion to the ungregarious quality
 
 64 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 which circumstances had fostered, at the 
 same time that it had incited to a pug- 
 nacious assertion of the intellectual power 
 latent in the individual. Thus his rugged 
 power, uncontrolled by any civilized 
 convention, alternately attracted and re- 
 pelled. Even his tutor had failed to 
 handle him. This gentleman was more 
 than satisfied with him academically, — 
 after the recognition of the savage re- 
 ticence of the intelligent nondescript, — 
 and had unwittingly earned the ardent, 
 if undemonstrative affection of his pupil, 
 by dubbing him the Scholar Gipsy, a 
 title betraying a piece of definite insight 
 in the former, which ought to have led to 
 more determinate issues between them. 
 But this tutor was not the gentleman for 
 the opportunity. It j)^ssed, and the
 
 THE SCHOLAR GIPSY. Q5 
 
 scholar's development proceeded as 
 thougH the modifying influence had 
 never dawned. 
 
 To all the general influences of the 
 place, Wanless was equally impervious. 
 From active religious matters he held 
 himself strictly aloof, as also from the 
 other numerous forms of social amenities 
 by which active undergraduates are way- 
 laid. Even athletics he had eyed askance, 
 with the solitary exception of boating. 
 As in all else that he selected, Shiel's 
 power upon the river was soon a matter 
 of common approbation. With the under- 
 graduates' literar}^ circle, as was to be 
 expected, he occasionally dallied ; but, 
 despite his omnivorous propensities in the 
 direction of imaginative letters, in com- 
 pany he was found singularly uncom- 
 
 VOL. I. F
 
 6^ A VAGABOND IN dVRTS. 
 
 municative, and generally confined his 
 efforts to some sava,ge cataclysmic criti- 
 cism of the idol of his friends, or some 
 equally exaggerative laudation of an ob- 
 scure effort of which nobody else had ever 
 heard. But although in this, as in all 
 else he touched, the man's power was not 
 to be ignored, the effect was little less 
 than that of a bomb when one day it was 
 announced that Mr. Shiel Wanless was 
 the winner of Sir Roger Newdigate's prize 
 for English verse ; an effect in no degree 
 lessened by the publication of the poem, 
 either as regarded the mystery of its 
 authorship, or the singular boldness of 
 the august judges in awarding it the palm. 
 It was rumoured, by more or less waggish 
 or malicious gossips, that these latter 
 privately apologized to any ladies or
 
 THE SCHOLAR GIPSY. 67 
 
 others of the Tapper persuasion who 
 ventured to hold up their temerity to 
 criticism, offering, in extenuation of their 
 audacity, the overpowering literary pre- 
 eminence of Shiel's production over those 
 entering into competition with it. Un- 
 deniably it created a stir, and to any that 
 had been in doubt, the perusal of his 
 verses, whether by way of approbation 
 or the reverse, brought irresistible con- 
 viction that there was something in that 
 enigmatical ' man from the north,' as 
 Shiel was very generally designated, 
 beyond what his repellent ungeniality 
 gave hint of. 
 
 Clearly, then, it was not to the charms 
 of social divertisement that Wanless 
 yielded when he turned his steps in the 
 
 direction of Oxford. Social needs were 
 
 f2
 
 68 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 altogether beyond him, and although as 
 an individual he indulged in no flagrant 
 warfare with the conventions of society, 
 there was an aggressive independence in 
 his general demeanour, aiFording evidence 
 that the bland respectability and cul- 
 tivated aplomb which follow as of course 
 in the academic wake, had not found 
 soil whereon to flourish in this particular 
 graduate. 
 
 Shiel travelled direct, but was unable 
 to get beyond Birmingham on the day of 
 his departure. In the course of the fol- 
 lowing afternoon he completed what 
 remained of his journey. 
 
 Sundry letters awaited him at his 
 lodgings, — arrived that day. There were 
 but four, — from which two were to be 
 deducted as impersonal circulars, — but
 
 THE SCHOLAR GIPSY. 69 
 
 apparently they required prolonged con- 
 sideration. From five o'clock, the hour 
 of his arrival, until twilight had closed 
 in resolutely about him, he sat with his 
 pipe, drinking tea, and with no more 
 obvious employment than those two or 
 three letters afforded. After dark he 
 went out. 
 
 It was a fine, windy night, and Shiel 
 walked briskly, as it seemed with a pur- 
 pose. At Carfax he was touched upon 
 the shoulder, and, looking up, he greeted 
 an acquaintance. 
 
 ' What — you here !' cried the assailant, 
 in surprise. ' By-the-by, have you seen 
 Borland ?' 
 
 ^ Borland — no,' growled Shiel, as though 
 sniffing an assault. 
 
 ' You'd better. I believe Lord Purbeck — '
 
 70 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 ' Damn Lord Purbeck !' vociferated the 
 other, and turned to go ; but checking him- 
 self, he refaced his antagonist, whose 
 features betrayed a broad grin in the lamp- 
 light. ' Do you know whether Pettipher 
 is up ?' 
 
 * He is. I have seen him to-night. I 
 believe he is at this moment at a symposium 
 of Burgundy Smart's of New.' 
 
 ' Thank you. Good-night.' 
 
 Therewith Shiel crossed over to the 
 High Street, his purpose shelved for the 
 course of that night at least. He strode 
 down the deserted pavement, with much 
 the same step as he had traversed his 
 northern moors, glancing occasionally at a 
 glimpse of architectural picturesqueness 
 revealed by the lamps, and sometimes at
 
 THE SCHOLAR GIPSY. 71 
 
 the very brilliant stars overhead. He made 
 no pause until he was at Magdalen 
 Bridge ; then he stopped to look over at 
 the water. 
 
 Truth to tell, the man was in something 
 of an exhilarating glow. Even to his self- 
 reliant soul there was, after all, something 
 animating in being intellectually sought 
 after, and such he deemed his pre-eminent 
 position at that particular moment. 
 Visions of universal war stretched far out 
 into the darkness around him — for his 
 intellect at this phase was nothing if not 
 pugnacious, — and he could novf convince 
 himself that he felt definite inclination for 
 the conflict. Why should he not, after all, 
 mobilize his forces and give system to his 
 spasmodic onslaughts ? The sense of
 
 72 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 vigour was not wanting, and at Shiel's 
 age this is simply synonymous with ac- 
 complishment. 
 
 The clue lay in one of his letters. It 
 was from a gentleman of moment, Mr. 
 Pettipher by name, and, amongst other of 
 his ponderous recommendations, sole or 
 main proprietor of an established London 
 newspaper. By possession and by occa- 
 sional residence he was a territorial neigh- 
 bour of Linnbrig, and of generous con- 
 descension to the vicar there. It was 
 for his son that Shiel had made inquiry ; 
 Mr. Cornelius Pettipher being still an 
 undergraduate, with a term or two to run. 
 Between the young men there had been 
 acquaintanceship, but nothing more ; no 
 pronounced compatibility of temperament 
 aiding them.
 
 THE SCHOLAR GIPSY. 73 
 
 From Mr. Pettipher's neighbourly com- 
 munication had Shiel taken tire ; and in a 
 manner too which presented a marked con- 
 trast to his equally emphatic reception of 
 Lord Purbeck's very generous offer. That 
 the logical outcome of Mr. Pettipher's 
 overture could also be but a species of 
 contemptible employment, from which the 
 gross needs of material life would receive 
 adequate supply, was not for the moment 
 suspected by the enthusiast. Literary 
 warfare stood apart, assuming a dazzling 
 aspect to his gaze, and one in which the 
 mere commercial nucleus found no sort 
 of betrayal. He knew it not as a sordid 
 mercenary levy ; his vigorous idealism 
 perceiving only the generous knight- 
 errantry in which intellectual muscle might 
 find its insatiable requirements, with no
 
 74 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 incentive or reward beneath the intel- 
 lectual virtue at which it aimed. Shiel 
 was flagrantly the reverse of constitution- 
 ally indolent, — the plethoric tendency of 
 his energy being indeed the very crux 
 of his predicament, — and it is probable 
 that his mind clutched with unconscious 
 alacrity at this apparently congenial outlet 
 for his impetuous forces. More or less 
 literary his instincts had ever been, and 
 more or less combative. In the repose 
 of the artistic balance he had always been 
 far behind his sister Ebba, — the only 
 instance of intellectual acquirements with 
 which it was possible to bring him into 
 comparison. That article of his in the 
 American monthly, to which he had re- 
 ferred his sister, was not the first testi- 
 mony to the practicability of his powers,.
 
 THE SCHOLAE GIPSY. 75 
 
 but it was unquestionably the most im 
 portant, if for no other reason than that it 
 had drawn forth this stimulating proposal 
 from the mighty Pettipher. 
 
 All was silent on the bridge, the wind 
 in the trees only whistling appropriate 
 comment upon Shiel's reflections there. 
 If a passenger had passed him the man 
 was not aware of it, for his eyes were 
 bent upon the dark silently flowing water 
 below, and his ears unnoting. At length 
 he aroused himself to retrace his steps. 
 He had taken but two of them when again 
 he stopped. There ivas a figure just then 
 coming up beside him, and beneath the 
 lamp their eyes had met. That was the 
 instant when Shiel stood. The other 
 darted past him, but at the clutch of his 
 hand stood trembling, weeping, before him.
 
 76 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 Wanless leaned forward as thougli to 
 confirm his vision. 
 
 ' Yes, it's me,' whimpered the girl, for 
 girl apparently it was. 
 
 ' And what are you here for now ?' asked 
 Shiel, with singular sternness, some of 
 the impetuousness of his recent reflections 
 probably still about him. 
 
 ' I'm going,' she said, petulantly, mas- 
 tering her tears, ' going anywhere. It's 
 nothing to anybody.' 
 
 ' Stay, Glen ; you are not going. What 
 on earth is the meaning of this ?' 
 
 He positively laid hold of her to check 
 her further progress. 
 
 ' It is nothing to you, Mr. Wanless,' 
 cried she, with a renewal of her tears. 
 
 ' It is everything to me. Have you been 
 turned out?'
 
 THE SCHOLAR GIPSY. 77 
 
 Circumlocution was at no time a faculty 
 of his : at this moment he was more than 
 ordinarily trenchant. 
 
 ' I have gone,' replied the girl, as she 
 was able. 
 
 Shiel saw the necessity of a different 
 handling, so he answered mildly. Thus 
 she was induced to walk on beside him 
 and take part in more coherent conversa- 
 tion. It then gradually appeared that she 
 had abruptly relinquished her situation, 
 (the one in which Shiel's father had been 
 instrumental in placing her,) after discord 
 dire with her mistress ; a consummation 
 which, the other party to the conflict 
 being known to him, caused Wanless un- 
 mitigated astonishment. So he walked 
 on, gnawing his lips in silence for some 
 moments.
 
 78 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 ' And where do you propose to spend 
 the night ?' he at length demanded. 'You 
 know, 1 suppose, that it is after nine 
 o'clock ?' 
 
 ' Anywhere,' she muttered. 
 
 ' That is rank idiocy,' was his explosive 
 rejoinder. 'You are not in the heather.' 
 
 She shrank from him in alarm. 
 
 ' You must return to the house at once,' 
 he resumed, less fiercely. 
 
 The manner of her answer surprised 
 him, and rendered obvious the futility of 
 persuasion or command alike. 
 
 ' Then come along with me.' 
 
 The girl at length acquiesced in his 
 imperious assumption, and submissively 
 went with him. He swiftly threaded the 
 by-streets until, emerging at his lodgings, 
 unceremoniously he took her in. All op-
 
 THE SCHOLAR GIPSY. 79 
 
 position to his directions seemed at an end, 
 and a wondering, stupefied gaze summed 
 up the girl's attitude towards him. 
 
 When Shiel had turned up the gas, and 
 was about to examine his charge further, 
 she suddenly sank into an arm-chair and 
 threatened hysteria. The man's energetic 
 reception of her emotion was once more 
 effectual, and she gazed at him again. As 
 he returned the gaze, looking with rather 
 fierce criticism into her face, — a pretty one, 
 all tear-stained as it was, — he felt a singu- 
 lar thrill of enlightenment, and, turning 
 away from her, he thrust the poker into 
 the fire. 
 
 In the impetuosity of his actions, he 
 had never for an instant suspected the 
 real nature of the predicament, and, now 
 that by some sudden flash of instinct it
 
 80 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 stood revealed to him, even to his un- 
 warped sense some momentary confusion 
 was inevitable. This, however, was speed- 
 ily surmounted, and he re -faced the girl. 
 
 ' You will sleep here to-night, Glen,' — 
 there seemed some accession of gentleness 
 to his tone, — ' and go home to-morrow. 
 Promise me that.' 
 
 ' No, sir. I shall not go home.' 
 
 His brow ruffled with impatience. 
 
 ' Don't make a bad case worse,' cried 
 Shiel. ' It is not to me what it is to most 
 people, and what I tell you is only for 
 your own security. You know nothing at 
 all of the world, and, if you now rush out 
 into it, you will only bring the most hide- 
 ous distress upon yourself. The only 
 possible safety for you is to go amongst 
 friends.'
 
 THE SCHOLAR GIPSY. 81 
 
 Even to a jury of matrons there could 
 not have appeared any enormity in this 
 young man of twenty-two thus descanting 
 upon a delicate case of the kind. The 
 singular composure and reassurance of 
 the girl mainly affected by it was sufficient 
 evidence of this. 
 
 ' Then I'll go to AYindylaw,' said she^ 
 presently. ' Uncle Gilhohne '11 take me in.' 
 
 ' That will do,' assented Shiel, and then 
 withdrew to see his landlady. 
 
 Some plausible representation was ef- 
 fected, and, finding no source of astonish- 
 ment in any erratic device of her remarkable 
 lodger, the good woman readily acceded 
 to his requests. He himself should of 
 course retire to an hotel for the night. 
 
 Before leaving the house, Shiel returned 
 to the room where he had installed his 
 
 VOL. I. G
 
 82 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 ward, and gave her some further peremp- 
 tory instructions. Then, when about to 
 leave, he turned to her with some 
 abruptness. 
 
 ' Is marriage impossible ?' 
 
 The question seemed to startle her, but 
 at length she muttered an affirmative, and 
 wept afresh. 
 
 'Then I have the right to demand a 
 name,' he said, fiercely, leaning towards 
 her. 
 
 She shook her head violently, but kept 
 her face tightly screened by her two 
 hands. 
 
 Shiel stood musing. Although primar- 
 ily it was his territorial interest in this 
 girl personally which actuated his reckless 
 zeal, this by no means exhausted his con- 
 cern with the situation. Much of his
 
 THE SCHOLAR GIPSY. 83 
 
 recent speculation had turned upon what 
 might be called the rationale of woman, 
 and its relative effect upon civilization at 
 large, and the occurrence of a case so 
 immediately illustrating his topic of ne- 
 cessity appealed to him. 
 
 ' You know that I have reasons for sus- 
 picion,' he began again. ' Tell me, is it 
 he?' 
 
 She paid no heed to his inquiries for 
 some moments, and Shiel felt constrained 
 to abandon the attempt. He consequently 
 gave her some parting instruction, and, 
 walking over to the door, was about to 
 leave the room. Then the girl raised her 
 face impulsively, and stared across at 
 him. 
 
 ' Yes, it is him,' she said, ' and he has 
 refused to help me.' 
 
 g2
 
 84 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 ^ All right;' and Shiel departed forthwith. 
 
 The absorbing considerations, which had 
 so recently engaged him wholly, were non- 
 existent of an instant. Some primal chord 
 had been touched in him, and the deep 
 vibration which had succeeded throughout 
 his sensitive system had extinguished all 
 else. It was characteristic of this youth 
 that, upon a momentary summons, the 
 whole of his vehement energy could be 
 immediately concentrated, and rendered 
 available for any imperative appeal. To 
 him at such times no world unassociated 
 with the matter on his mind had any 
 manner of existence, so that the methods 
 of his action were apt to assume an aspect 
 of ridiculous, or even reprehensible, vio- 
 lence in the eyes of cool or indifferent 
 observers.
 
 THE SCHOLAR GIPSY. 85 
 
 Sundry eyed the stalking figure as it 
 again traversed the streets. Its first 
 errand was to the house whence the girl 
 had fled. A few words with the astonished 
 mistress there concluded this preliminary 
 to his mission, and forthwith Shiel stalked 
 to another quarter of the town.
 
 86 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 AN UNBIDDEN GUEST. 
 
 There was a small social celebration 
 proceeding in the rooms of Mr. Cuthbert 
 Smart of New College, a gentleman chiefly 
 famous amongst his contemporaries for 
 the singular excellence of his Burgundian 
 wines and the exceptional equability of 
 his temper. He was one of those happily 
 constituted individuals who, without any 
 very pronounced personality in themselves,
 
 AN UNBIDDEN GUEST. 87 
 
 have the faculty of recommending their 
 modest characteristics to a wide and di- 
 verse circle of acquaintances, embracing 
 representatives of most grades of intelli- 
 gence, as well as mere deficiencies of it, 
 that polished circumstances have put in 
 their way. 
 
 In the marshalling of his hospitalities 
 Cuthbert was a positive genius. A. never 
 chanced to meet there that detestable snob 
 B., just as B. himself was perfectly secure 
 in Smart from the exasperating presence of 
 that peculiarly insufferable prig A. ; not 
 that either A. or B., of course, individually, 
 was on other than the best of terms with 
 Smart, or was by any means other than 
 (occasion fitting) a genial participant of 
 Smart's catholic hospitality. 
 
 On the table were glasses, bottles, and
 
 88 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 decanters, with a sprinkling of books and 
 papers amongst them. It was late in the 
 evening and some half dozen gentlemen 
 sat or reclined in every attitude of grace- 
 ful indolence, by a constant emission of 
 fragrant whiffs, charging with an ever 
 thickening haze the already overclouded 
 atmosphere of the room. Through the 
 mist was to be seen the tall attractive 
 figure of the host, standing with his back 
 to the fire, and in one hand the peri- 
 odical from which he was audibly read- 
 ing. His eye-glasses clipped gracefully a 
 faultless nose, and the refined accents of 
 his tongue in expressive modulation found 
 their way through the effective medium of 
 a scrupulously tended light-brown mous- 
 tache. A general smoothness was the 
 characteristic note of Mr. Smart, and every
 
 AN UNBIDDEN GUEST. 89 
 
 visible trait reflected the placid tempera- 
 ment within. 
 
 Thus the whole of his personality inevi- 
 tably, almost ludicrously, suggested a 
 polite, wholly unconscious deprecation of 
 the matter he was reading, despite the 
 rhetorical enthusiasm which his tones were 
 able occasionally to assume. There was 
 nothing very astonishing in this, seeing 
 that the matter upon which he was en- 
 gaged was none other than the trenchant 
 utterances of his paradoxical, and, as most 
 asserted, dangerously heterodoxical friend 
 Shiel Wanless, recently made public in 
 the pages of that American monthly. 
 Ex^^ressions of opinion at this or that, — 
 jocular, commendatory, or unmistakably 
 antagonistic, — escaped his hearers from 
 time to time ; but for the most part they
 
 90 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 heard in silence. So the exposition pro- 
 ceeded, until a consensus of applause 
 celebrated its close. 
 
 ' Yes, Kendal, you are right,' said the 
 host judicially, replacing his glass upon 
 the mantel-piece. ' It is a matter of vital 
 moment to the future of the world.' 
 
 ' As is every matter affecting human 
 existence,' interposed a dogmatic one. 
 
 ' But this more than most.' 
 
 ' Not a bit.' 
 
 ' I contend that the sentimental relation 
 between the sexes is the pivot of the whole 
 social universe.' 
 
 ' Most sentimental intelligences do,' re- 
 plied he of dogma. 
 
 ' But, my dear fellow, it is not a ques- 
 tion of sentiment or of science. It is 
 simply a primordial fact.'
 
 AN UNBIDDEN GUEST. 91 
 
 ' Of the poetic ages, Kendal, certainly,' 
 was the jocular retort. 
 
 ' And so of every age,' asserted Kendal, 
 a handsome, blue-eyed man of extremely 
 attractive appearance. ' The fact is, that 
 that man from the north is wholly defi- 
 cient in the sexual instinct. Now, look 
 here, Pettipher, do you mean to say ' 
 
 ' I mean to say nothing, my dear sir.' 
 
 ' Can any rational civilization exist with- 
 out one at least of the sexes making as 
 it were a specialty of what you snub as 
 sentiment? Heaven knows we are desirous 
 of being material enough ' 
 
 ' In the annihilation of such specialty 
 does any rational civilization alone exist,' 
 said Pettipher, in his dogmatic sarcasm ; 
 ' in that at least Wanless is unassailably 
 right.'
 
 ^92 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 ' But look here, Kendal,' interposed 
 another, ' you ignore the real gist of the 
 question. It isn't whether the sentimental 
 interdependence of the sexes should wholly 
 cease, but whether it should be made sub- 
 sidiary to a more stable one, — one arising 
 from the reason, the intellect. You cannot 
 dispute that one point of Wanless, that the 
 exclusively sentimental woman has con- 
 spicuously failed.' 
 
 ' Failed !' cried Kendal. ' What on earth 
 do you mean ?' 
 
 ' That the professional heritage of sen- 
 timent has debilitated woman, (hence, of 
 course, men alike,) and is solely respon- 
 sible for every form of iniquity perpetrated 
 in this sort, and now hindering the progress 
 of the world.' 
 
 ' You seriously think that ? . . . It is
 
 AN UNBIDDEN GUEST. 93 
 
 worthy of a scrupulously scientific age. 
 Quietly ignore, — nay, deliberately corrupt 
 and misrepresent the essential principles 
 of the system we are investigating, then 
 sagely vilify the preposterous deductions 
 to which our fatuity compels us. You 
 have no standard of comparison. New- 
 thorpe. It isn't because we have had too 
 much sentiment, but too little of it that 
 failure is apparent. Sentiment, like ideal- 
 ism of every kind, has found no place 
 amongst mankind for many a genera- 
 tion.' 
 
 ' Then surely it would be as well to try 
 something more possible of acceptance,' 
 Pettipher observed ironically. 
 
 ' By all means,' said the pacific Smart, 
 seeing it time to interpose ; ' but look here. 
 There is another aspect. I've recently
 
 :94 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 begun to make a specialty of female phy- 
 siognomy. It is most ' 
 
 Smart's gravity of demeanour was of a 
 sudden rudely interrupted by a volley of 
 laughter. 
 
 ' You're late in the day, Smart,' cried 
 one. ' It's been my specialty since I was 
 out of petticoats, as my walls sufficiently 
 testify. Brownlow has a slight propen- 
 sity that way ; Wilkins ' 
 
 ' Pooh, pooh ! Physiognomy, I said, 
 not physical geography. A stage beyond 
 the apotheosis of the undress, Maurice. I 
 only admit competitors who are dressed 
 like Christians. It is to show how far in- 
 tellectual development affects one way or 
 the other the physical attractions. Not a 
 very artistic notion, is it, Maurice ?'
 
 AN UNBIDDEN GUEST. 95 
 
 ' You're getting as prosy as Wanless. 
 I am blessed with the poetic tempera- 
 ment.' 
 
 ' It was from a casual talk with Wanless 
 that I was led to undertake it,' said Smart, 
 as he was unfolding a paper parcel which 
 he had placed upon the table. ' You for- 
 get that he can write poetry too, old 
 man.' 
 
 ' Write poetry !' cried the other, in dis- 
 dain. 'What fool can't ? Act it, I mean.' 
 
 ' Perhaps act it too, if there's any occa- 
 sion. Now, look here !' 
 
 Smart scattered a goodly heap of ladies' 
 photographs on the table before them, in 
 such attractive profusion as to elicit a 
 whistle of surprised approval even from 
 the gallant Maurice. All hands grabbed
 
 96 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 at the enchanting pile with such marked 
 alacrity as to discountenance for the mo- 
 ment the suggestion that the school of 
 sentiment was in their day effete. 
 
 ' This isn't half a bad idea,' cried Mau- 
 rice Newthorpe, as he gazed with much 
 interest into the eyes of a beautiful young 
 lady whose countenance had instantly 
 engaged him. 
 
 ' Not half,' assented another. 'But what's 
 your theory. Smart? How does your se- 
 raglio differ from that of any poor ordinary 
 mortal?' 
 
 'Only this. So far as I can tell — from 
 their general action in the world, you 
 know — not one of these ladies is pledged 
 to sentiment as a profession. They have 
 all taken some definitely intellectual, or at 
 any rate actively practical, part in the
 
 AN UNBIDDEN GUEST, 97 
 
 doings of the world, wholly regardless of 
 that delicate specialty, Kendal, which we 
 consider their peculiar province.' 
 
 ' But where are any of these to be met 
 with in the flesh ?' demanded Maurice, 
 dallying with another set of attractive 
 features. 
 
 ' Doing their daily work, and not caring 
 two pins whether you or I make eyes at 
 them or no.' 
 
 'Don't they?' said the other, expres- 
 sively. ' Then what do they get photo- 
 graphed for ? ... To illustrate a theory, 
 no doubt ; I forgot.' 
 
 ' I say, who's this ?' called out another 
 interested one. 
 
 ' Oh, that's Miss Sinclair, exploring 
 Siberia on a donkey, you know.' 
 
 ' She was^ said Maurice, drily, ' but she's 
 
 VOL. I. H
 
 98 A VAGABOND IN AKTS. 
 
 exploring matrimony with one now. She 
 married some Colonel or other, so can now 
 drive a j)air.' 
 
 ' There are some deuced nice girls here, 
 whatever they are.' 
 
 ' I think there are,' assented Smart, 
 gravely. 'That? Oh, that's a friend of 
 Pettipher's. A lady journalist working 
 for the Herald.' 
 
 ' But look here. Smart,' cried Maurice. 
 ' Do you mean to assert that, if any one of 
 these girls gets a suitable offer of mar- 
 riage, she will forswear the sentimental 
 calling ?' 
 
 ' I assert nothing. All I know is, that 
 they have begun life in simple indifference 
 to it, and with an ambition above matri- 
 mony, and a power of enterprise out-
 
 AN UNBIDDEN GUEST. 99 
 
 stripping the traditional nursery-gover- 
 ness. I was under a misconception. The 
 odd part about it is, that I have not been 
 able to procure a really plain face with 
 which the ambition can be associated. I 
 can tell you no more. You'll see that the 
 respective profession of each is written at 
 the back of the photograph.' 
 
 After disposing of a comely young lady 
 whom he had loudly proclaimed to be a 
 medical student, Maurice had taken up 
 another which Pettipher had just replaced 
 without comment. 
 
 ' This isn't marked. Smart,' cried the 
 irrepressible chevalier, holding forth the 
 object of his inquiry to be enlightened. 
 
 Thereupon Pettipher looked with curi- 
 ous subtlety into his host's face. 
 
 H 2
 
 100 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 ' That — oh, well, she's a private lady — 
 but in the same category. It is Wanless's 
 sister.' 
 
 ' That is ! The only one I wouldn't 
 swear to succeed with,' muttered Maurice. 
 
 'Where is Wanless's sister?' cried a 
 neighbour. ' That ought to be inter- 
 esting.' 
 
 And there was a general movement to- 
 wards this centre of attraction. 
 
 Pettipher alone held back, and on this 
 account he was the only one to be cog- 
 nisant of a tap at the door. He was light- 
 ing a fresh cigar ; when his lips were free 
 he informed Smart of the occurrence. The 
 summons was more audibly repeated. 
 
 Smart walked over to the doorway. He 
 exchanged a few words with somebody 
 there, and immediately a solid figure, wrap-
 
 AN UNBIDDEN GUEST. 101 
 
 ped in an overcoat, came unceremonious- 
 ly forward into the room, introducino^ a 
 breath of the keen night air into the close 
 atmosphere of talk and tobacco-smoke. 
 There was a frown on Smart's smooth 
 countenance when he faced the room, but 
 instantly it gave place to a look of con- 
 sternation and chagrin. 
 
 The group engaged with the various 
 aspects of Ebba's photograph had not 
 turned round, and at that particular mo- 
 ment Newthorpe held the portrait aloft at 
 arm's length, whilst the several beholders 
 cast their heads into the correct pose for a 
 critical survey of the countenance. The 
 eyes of Smart and of Pettipher w^ere upon 
 the intruder — his were upon the photo- 
 graph which was exciting so much atten- 
 tion, in ominous concentration.
 
 102 A VAGABOND IN AKTS. 
 
 The disturbing influence so suddenly 
 introduced into the genial atmosphere 
 affected the group simultaneously, and 
 they turned their faces like sheep of one 
 accord. Thus they confronted Mr. Shiel 
 Wanless in person, and the effect was 
 electrical. 
 
 ' Smart ' Shiel began, but checked 
 
 himself. He simply stepped forward and 
 took the photograph from Newthorpe's 
 fingers, then thrust it into his own pocket. 
 There was an attempt at jocular famili- 
 arity, but it was disregarded, and Shiel 
 turned in grim inflexibility to Pettipher, 
 who betrayed surprise at the selection. 
 
 ' I want you,' was all he said. 
 
 ' I shall be glad to enter into any 
 appointment.' 
 
 'Come, sit down, man,' said Smart.
 
 AN UNBIDDEN GUEST. 103 
 
 ' Take off your coat. The discussion is 
 trivial without you. You see our text.' 
 He pointed to the review from which he 
 had been reading ; but the other paid no 
 heed. 
 
 ' I want you now,' said Shiel to Petti- 
 pher. ' It is important.' 
 
 Their eyes met, and to the general 
 astonishment Pettipher rose to depart. 
 
 Smart's interposition was again inef- 
 fectual, and the two went without another 
 word. 
 
 ' Confound the man for an impertinent 
 puppy,' exclaimed one, emphatically, when 
 the door was closed, and order again 
 restored. ' You ought not to have let 
 him in. Smart.' 
 
 ' There Avas small letting,' replied the 
 host, as nearly displaying vexation as
 
 104 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 was possible to him. ' Really, it isn't 
 civil. I had no idea the fellow was up 
 here.' 
 
 ' Pettipher was a fool to humour him, 
 under such circumstances.' 
 
 ' Literary independence and unconven- 
 tion, I suppose,' sugo:ested another. 
 
 Thus for a short time was much latent 
 pique and resentment against the free- 
 handed methods of Wanless in general 
 given audible vent to ; a display well ex- 
 emplifying the common attitude of rational 
 beings towards the man, quite indepen- 
 dently of the particular piece of aggra- 
 vation upon which the present remarks 
 were founded. It was some time before 
 serenity was restored. 
 
 Smart himself seemed exceptionally 
 subdued by the incident. He heard all
 
 AN UNBIDDEN GUEST. 105 
 
 that there was to be said about it with 
 apparent acquiescence, but contributed 
 nothing to the discussion. 
 
 In the meantime, Shiel had withdrawn 
 with Pettipher to the rooms of the latter. 
 "Wanless refused to enter upon any ex- 
 planation until they were enclosed there, 
 and with a singular degree of resignation 
 his companion submitted. 
 
 ' So you have been discussing the 
 woman question,' said Shiel, with superbly 
 restrained sarcasm. ' What were your 
 general conclusions ?' 
 
 ' You evidently come with a declaration 
 of war,' remarked Pettipher, making him- 
 self easy in a chair. ' I can't pretend to 
 conceive your reasons for it, or the 
 advantages you expect to derive. Pray 
 enlighten me.'
 
 106 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 ' I will. In my philosopliy of the 
 universe, tlie perception of individual 
 responsibility holds a somewhat promi- 
 nent position ; are there any circumstances 
 under which you would acknowledge its 
 influence?' 
 
 ' I have not devoted much attention to 
 speculative ethics,' replied the other, with 
 a shrug. 
 
 ' That is probable enough ; but I require 
 your attention now upon a point of prac- 
 tice. Just try for a moment to forget 
 your sleek complacency in a fat chimerical 
 existence, and fancy in its place a hungry, 
 naked reality, confronted by the world of 
 fact. It is difficult for you, I know, but 
 try. Fancy further a conscious existence 
 in this world under every possible ad- 
 versity that ironical nature and diabolical
 
 .AN UNBIDDEN GUEST. 107 
 
 human fatuity can jointly impose, and tell 
 me whether the contemplation delights you.' 
 
 ' It transcends my modest capacity,' re- 
 plied Pettipher, blowing at his cigar. 
 
 ■• Then I will illustrate it to you. Come 
 with me.' 
 
 ' I am not in the humour for it, thank 
 you. I shall he glad to discuss anything 
 you wish at a more convenient time.' 
 
 ' Do you think I am studying your 
 convenience ?' exclaimed Shiel, fiercely, 
 with a look from which the other turned. 
 ' I require you to come with me now.' 
 
 ' Hang it, man, do you think I am going 
 to tolerate this damned insolence?' cried 
 Pettipher, getting up angrily. ' I neither 
 know nor care to what all your rodomon- 
 tade may tend, but you can go. I ' 
 
 They quarrelled for a minute or two,
 
 108 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 then went out together. Shiel had 
 triumphed. 
 
 In a squalid back street some time 
 later, were two figures clad in respectable 
 overcoats striding along speechless. Of 
 a sudden, in a silent, deserted part, one 
 stopped, and drew close to a window, level 
 with the pavement; he then summoned 
 his companion beside him. No blind was 
 drawn, and the light from a tallow candle 
 flickering within illumined the dirty 
 panes faintly. Nevertheless, by peering 
 through the glass the interior was visible, 
 and it was a grimy scene which was 
 presented. Mere material squalor was 
 focussed in a human centre. On the 
 edge of a pallet bed sat a girl barely clad, 
 the heap of her thrown-ofi* garments lying
 
 AN UNBIDDEN GUEST. 109 
 
 on the floor, with an infant at her breast. 
 Grace of physique was still visible in the 
 shrunken girlish figure, as it bent over 
 the child, and the face betrayed no con- 
 sciousness of suffering, despite the sur- 
 roundings. When the girl laid the child 
 upon the bed, the onlookers had gone. 
 
 ' Presumably she knew her bargain,' 
 commented Pettipher, when they were in 
 his room again. 
 
 ' Certainly, but did the other?' 
 
 'What other?' 
 
 ' The only one for whom such episodes 
 have any shadow of significance,' said 
 Shiel, vehemently. ' Do you think I con- 
 cern myself about the conscious agents in 
 them — about their wrongs and moralities ? 
 As you delicately say, they doubtless knew
 
 110 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 tlieir bargain. But can any possible suffer- 
 ings to which they have to submit com- 
 pare with the exquisite torture they inflict 
 by originating an existence, not to say an 
 existence of that kind? Can any words 
 possibly characterise their enormity in 
 inflicting such torture?' 
 
 ' I was not aware that existence was 
 such an insufferable infliction.' 
 
 ' I should not expect you to be,' replied 
 Shiel, with difliculty repressing his excite- 
 ment. ' Some degree of honesty and 
 imagination is necessary to the perception. 
 But if I grant you that the pill is delect- 
 able through a density of gilding, what is 
 it in that form of appalling nakedness ? 
 And what would you say of this fat gilded 
 existence scattering unconcernedly those 
 hideous naked ones ?'
 
 AN UXBIDDEN GUEST. Ill 
 
 ' I want to know to Avhat this homily 
 tends?' 
 
 ' Of that you are sufficiently aware. I 
 demand some instant pecuniary reparation 
 for the girl Aikenshaw, and substantial 
 provision in case of contino^encies.' 
 
 ' I shall be glad to receive first an ex- 
 planation of your intimacy with her. I 
 hardly expected so practical a consumma- 
 tion to a diatribe so transcendental.' 
 
 ' It is only by means of such consum- 
 mations that certain organisms can be 
 affected.' 
 
 ' What do you know about her, or about 
 me in connection with her?' 
 
 Shiel gave him vaguely the facts of 
 that night's encounter. Pettipher frowned. 
 
 • If she knew her bargain,' continued
 
 112 A VAGABOND IN AKTS. 
 
 Wanless, ' I shall take it upon me to see 
 that you know yours.' 
 
 Pettipher burst into a fit of uncontrolled 
 passion, and defied his antagonist. Thus 
 for some time they wrangled. 
 
 Shiel stood immovable, as fully prepared 
 for physical as moral persuasion, if it should 
 be needful; but it was not. Presently he 
 left, with the sum w^hich he had demanded 
 in his possession. 
 
 Before leaving the college precincts he 
 went over to Smart again. He paused at 
 the door, and, hearing all silent, tapped. 
 Cuthbert was alone, nursing his foot, and 
 the re-appearance of Wanless seemed to 
 amaze him. The latter held forth his 
 hand, which the imperturbable took but 
 dubiously. 
 
 ' It was not civiL Shieh' he muttered.
 
 AN UNBIDDEN GUEST. 113 
 
 ' Was it civil to hold her up to the grins 
 of that imbecile crew?' asked Shiel. 
 
 ' Certainly,' replied the other, who had 
 now pondered the predicament. ' It was 
 in honourable discussion, and you must 
 know that had any breath of a contrary 
 colour been hazarded, I should have known 
 how to receive it.' 
 
 ' I believe you, Cuddie,' was the j)lac- 
 able rejoinder. ' I was hot. Here she is.' 
 
 And the photograph was restored. They 
 talked but for a short time and Wanless 
 departed. 
 
 Early the next morning Shiel presented 
 himself again at his lodgings. He found 
 the distressed maiden that he had be- 
 friended very much transformed, and ap- 
 parently suffering but little as she par- 
 took of the breakfast which was his. She 
 
 VOL. I. I
 
 114 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 was attractively attired, and, had his 
 benevolence reflected, in a manner wholly 
 different from that of the previous even- 
 ing. She assumed grave looks in face of 
 his sober demeanour, but they sat oddly 
 upon her. 
 
 Wanless produced a time-table from his 
 pocket, and proceeded in a most business- 
 like manner to sketch out her journey for 
 the day. The names of the places as they 
 were uttered seemed to have a stimulating 
 effect upon her, and she entered with 
 alacrity into the scheme. 
 
 The young woman was obviously en- 
 dowed with one of those lightly imaginative 
 temperaments that find a Speedy refuge 
 from themselves in any fitting change 
 of place or of circumstance. The mere 
 thought of an immediate escape to the
 
 AN UNBIDDEN GUEST. 115 
 
 lonely hills, with which she inevitably as- 
 sociated a sense of freedom and absence of 
 all care, was enough to annihilate, for the 
 present at least, the more shaded aspect of 
 her departure. Perhaps her companion 
 detected this, and felt impatience at it ; at 
 any rate, as she expanded, he assumed a 
 stricter guise, verging at times indeed upon 
 ' an austere regard of control.' 
 
 It was this interview which was able to 
 apprise even Shiel's self-contained idealism 
 that it might not be expedient for him to 
 travel northward in Glen's immediate com- 
 pany, as in the calm of previous reflection 
 he had fully determined. Consequently 
 he did not mention it as a proposal. 
 
 Later he saw her safely commence her 
 journey, then he returned to the contem- 
 plation of his own affairs. 
 
 r 2
 
 116 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 Mr. Petti23lier had asked him to come 
 and see him, dating his letter from his 
 Northumberland residence. Having ac- 
 cepted the proposal, as we know, upon his 
 own understanding, Shiel saw no reason 
 for any modification of it from the adven- 
 ture of the previous evening. That 
 Cornelius would assume his place at the 
 Herald — had indeed been elaborately 
 trained for it, — was matter of notoriety ; 
 but that hardly seemed to bear upon the 
 situation at present. Mr. Pettipher was by 
 no means an old man, and furthermore, as 
 Shiel knew him, was scarcely the in- 
 dividual to be influenced by private 
 animosities of his son's. Let what was to 
 come, therefore, have its appointed order, 
 and let the needs of to-day be sufficient 
 unto themselves. But he wasn't going
 
 AN UNBIDDEN GUEST. 117 
 
 after a situation. Moderate alacrity would 
 suit best with individual dignity upon 
 such an occasion. A wholly uncomprom- 
 ising letter was consequently sent to the 
 journalistic potentate, and Shiel deter- 
 mined to go again to the north on the 
 following day.
 
 118 
 
 CHAPTER y. 
 
 THE BURDEN OF THE HILLS. 
 
 The refuge of Windylaw had for some 
 subtle reason instantly recommended itself 
 to the fancy of Glen, although to a casual 
 observer there would have appeared as 
 Httle congruity in her presenting herself 
 in such a predicament at the door of the 
 renowned theologian David Gilholme as at 
 that of her own father. But no doubt 
 Glen had sufficient reason for her decision, 
 as, despite the present appearances, she
 
 THE BURDEN OF THE HILLS. 119 
 
 was a young lady of abundant resource in 
 matters which pertained to her own con- 
 venience. Her cousin Handsel's abode 
 was at least at no inconvenient distance 
 from the Linnbrig vicarage, and it was 
 scarcely possible that Glen could be in- 
 different to the consideration which all the 
 members of that household had persist- 
 ently extended to her. This had hitherto 
 been accepted very much as a matter of 
 course, but this last magnanimity of Shiel 
 could not easily be so. Coming at such 
 a moment, and in so completely voluntary 
 a manner, it had made deep impression, of 
 a characteristic kind, upon Glen's roman- 
 tic fancy. Disinterested philosophy scarce 
 appealed to her as such, and, failing this, 
 Shiel's activity might argue very many 
 extraordinary things, or, upon an estimate
 
 120 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 even still lower, possibilities quite as 
 extraordinary. 
 
 But, as it chanced, neither Glen nor 
 Shiel knew exactly to what circumstances 
 the fugitive was hastening; whether the 
 knowledge would have materially aifected 
 their movements, or those at least of one 
 of them, need hardly be inquired. In the 
 case of Shiel undoubtedly it would ; but, 
 after all, his influence was limited. 
 
 Not long after Shiel's parting with 
 Handsel on the hill-side, the girl had 
 gathered up her implements and trudged 
 homewards for her mid-day meal. She 
 lived alone with her father in a house at 
 the very head of the defile, about two 
 miles from Linnbrig Church and vicarage. 
 The James inquired of by Shiel was her 
 existent brother: another she had who had
 
 THE BURDEN OF THE HILLS. 121 
 
 been obliged to emigrate, or otherwise be- 
 come submerged, from an overweening con- 
 fidence in an actively imaginative tempera- 
 ment, — somebody with whom he had come 
 in contact having invoked the material 
 power in deprecation of its further play. 
 The name of their small sheep-farm was 
 Windylaw, held by David Gilholme 
 throughout his life, as it had been held 
 by his father before him. Previous to 
 that they had been a Roxburghshire family, 
 of the neighbourhood of Mossburnford. 
 
 The cloud shadows flitted over the girl 
 as she descended the bald slope, — the 
 bracken, the heather, and the grey bent 
 grass being with her alternately solemn 
 and gay. As she got down, the wind 
 ceased to ruffle her, and its jovial whistle 
 no longer drowned the soothing burden
 
 122 A VAGABOND IN AETS. 
 
 of the water rising from below. The op- 
 posing height frowned precipitous before 
 her, relieved only here and there by the 
 white dot of a climbing sheep. Naturally 
 Handsel's observation of the scene, and 
 the conscious effect of it upon her, were 
 but general enough. Her temperament 
 would have ensured this, even if the life- 
 long use had been wanting. 
 
 Presently she paused, and looked con- 
 sciously enough before her. The house 
 was scarce two hundred yards off, and 
 upon it her eyes were fixed, an expression 
 of eager scrutiny upon her comely face. 
 For a moment nothing appeared to justify 
 her action, — no sound save the whining 
 of an invisible dog and the cackle of some 
 geese which glistened in the sun at a 
 short distance from the house. Still
 
 THE BURDEN OF THE HILLS. ] 23 
 
 Handsel stood, the serenity of her features 
 still visibly affected, but the cause as per- 
 sistently obscure. Then at last that doer 
 appeared, just before the house, and again 
 raised its voice to the hills ; after standing 
 as though to receive echoing answer from 
 the mountain silences, scampered impetu- 
 ously forward to where Handsel was in 
 thought, and did not slacken his pace until 
 crouching at her feet. 
 
 ^ What news, Robin?' said the girl. 
 
 He looked at her and answered with a 
 howl ; then the two went forward. 
 
 The Linnburn was but an infant stream 
 to be leapt, here at Windylaw. A lichened 
 birch-tree or two overhung its brown spark- 
 ling course, and a stunted bush was to be 
 seen by the crease uj) the hill-side which
 
 124 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 marked the cradle of the water. Half-way 
 up, scarce a quarter of a mile off, the 
 •crease was stopped by a small ^rey crag, 
 and there the burn began. 
 
 The scene was desolate in the extreme. 
 Shut in on all sides by lofty hills (for the 
 stream took a rectangular turn not far 
 below), this nook formed a little world 
 unto itself. There was no suggestion from 
 the heights around ; for, although their 
 sides were steep, all shoulders were uni- 
 formly rounded, and wholly destitute of 
 vegetation, save that of the short wiry 
 grass with which they all Avere clad. Not 
 even the heather was to be seen here, and 
 sounds became but an emphasized variety 
 of silence. 
 
 The house which forms for us the centre 
 of this secluded world lay on the green a
 
 THE BURDEN OF THE HILLS. 1 25 
 
 few yards from the edge of the burn. It 
 was a stone building of three chambers all 
 on the ground, roofed with blue slate in 
 recent years, and at one end a piece of 
 ground had been enclosed for a cabbage- 
 garden. Handsel and her dog approached 
 the door slowly, now that they had jumped 
 the stream, for over both the solitude 
 seemed to exercise an unusual sway. A 
 cloud of solid grey fringed with silver, 
 which had just reached the sun, flung a 
 few drops over them, — drops which de- 
 scended singly in idle uncertainty, as 
 though playing with the sunbeam on 
 which they rode ; but still the girl lin- 
 gered. The dog looked up at her inquir- 
 insrly once or twice, and she returned the 
 gaze. Then he glanced at the door ajar, 
 and would have howled, but that his
 
 126 A VAGABOND IN ATITS. 
 
 mistress forbade him. When she entered, 
 he slunk in silently after her. 
 
 In the inner doorway Handsel stood 
 with her hand upon the latch. 
 
 ' Father,' she said, addressing the man 
 sitting at the table ; but he did not imme- 
 diately answer. 
 
 He was sitting there absorbed in papers 
 which lay outspread before him. The girl 
 walked forwards. 
 
 ' All right, father?' 
 
 Still he would not answer. 
 
 The face was scarcely visible in its 
 posing attitude, and shaded as it was by 
 an upraised hand. All attention was for 
 those open documents scattered in con- 
 fusion. They had a singularly sophisti- 
 cated appearance these papers, not much 
 in accord with the rugged figure to which
 
 THE BURDEN OF THE HILLS. 127 
 
 they appertained. Their methodical folds, 
 extreme accuracy of margin and caligraphy , 
 visible at a distance, suggested but one 
 extraction, and that came as an incongru- 
 ous intrusion upon the general effect. 
 Without that prim array, the old man, the 
 plain, almost bare interior, and the sense 
 of overwhelming solitude which the place 
 inspired, formed a whole apart and scarce- 
 ly touched the practical world with which 
 man is mainly familiar. From beneath 
 the paper which immediately engaged the 
 reader's attention appeared a portion of 
 bank-notes, with loose gold upon them ; 
 and it was here that Handsel's eyes were 
 resting, although, as it appeared from the 
 expression of her features, with but scant 
 consciousness of the fact. 
 
 The dog, slinking up to his master, tried
 
 128 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 to engage his attention, but, failing, uttered 
 an unearthly howl. This aroused the girl, 
 and one look from her silenced the animal. 
 She walked over to her father and took 
 his hand. Her face blanched as she did 
 so, but leaning down she took him in her 
 arms and positively lifted him to the box- 
 bed against the wall. 
 
 When she had composed him upon the 
 pillow, she gathered j)apers and money 
 from the table, and thrusting them rough- 
 ly and hurriedly into an open drawer, 
 closed and locked it, putting the key into 
 her pocket. Having also closed the bed 
 like a cupboard, she went out of the house, 
 fastening the door behind her. 
 
 Handsel's remarks to Wanless had 
 shown her not wholly unprepared for 
 this consummation, if the suddenness and
 
 THE BURDEN OF THE HILLS. 129 
 
 method of it were hardly what she had 
 looked for. It now smote her with more 
 tragic force than any mere hazy expecta- 
 tion could give her hint of. She fled from 
 the house, hurrying down the burnside in 
 heedless agitation, all the more violently 
 affected because tears had not come to her. 
 Strong, independent, and in some respects 
 masculine the girl was, — solid qualities 
 which in face of spiritual anguish exact a 
 penalty. ' Cry a little and then Avork 
 again,' she had said to Shiel in prospect of 
 this very predicament, and the words, as 
 it seemed, lightly uttered, now recurred 
 to her. If she could but cry, — ever so 
 little. The sudden revelation of unknown 
 solitude would be less intolerable. She 
 had been snow-bound in solitude in this 
 desolate valley, her father absent, when 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 130 A VAGABOND IN AKTS. 
 
 nothing but a moaning chaos of literally 
 entombing darkness overwhelmed her cot- 
 tage, and her voice, had she raised it, 
 would have had to travel miles of this icy- 
 wilderness before falling on a human ear, — 
 and she had enjoyed it ; had done battle 
 through the night with the piling snow- 
 drifts, giving them howl for howl, and 
 jubilantly resenting their wild efforts to 
 enshroud her. In autumn fogs she had 
 been benighted on the hills, lucky if there 
 were so much as a crag to screen her, or a 
 bed of deep heather wherein to fold her- 
 self, and she had reposed there gleefully. 
 In a host of other ways had she confronted 
 the essential solitude of deep mountain 
 silence in fair w^eather and in foul; but 
 never until this moment had she realized
 
 THE BURDEN OF THE HILLS. 131 
 
 what it was to feel the burden of beino; 
 alone. 
 
 It was on the arm of an alder-tree which 
 she held to cross the Avater that she 
 ultimately found relief. There she bowed 
 her face and wept freely. 
 
 A touch upon her shoulder first aroused 
 her, and looking up, affrighted at the un- 
 expected interruption, she met the bene- 
 volent gaze of an elderly gentleman just 
 alighted from his horse. His garb be- 
 tokened the ministerial profession in some 
 unsophisticated kind, and face and manner 
 fully sustained the suggestion. His hand 
 remained on the girl's shoulder where he 
 had placed it, and in a tone of simple 
 gravity, strongly tinged with the expres- 
 sive accent of the north, he said, 
 
 k2
 
 132 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 ' Then he is gone, Handsel/ 
 
 The girl was quickly composed; the 
 restored sense of human contact, — the 
 consciousness of being seen, — touched the 
 aggressive, the masculine in her, and she 
 was ao^ain erect. The manner of her dis- 
 covery was briefly detailed and practical 
 requirements immediately discussed. All 
 benevolent persuasion to induce her to 
 go with him to the manse was civilly re- 
 sisted, her only want was to be again 
 alone. 
 
 ' You'll write a word to James for me, 
 Mr. Reid. He can be through to-morrow. 
 It will be a sair shock to him, poor 
 man.' 
 
 ' To be sure ; to be sure. But you'd 
 better come beside Mrs. Reid until the 
 morning. Do now, my lass.'
 
 THE BUEDEN OF THE HILLS. 133 
 
 Handsel simply shook his hand silent- 
 ly, and turned again up the stream. She 
 was soon conscious of a sense of relief at 
 her escape from immediate contact with 
 practical persons which the minister's 
 appearance had afforded her, and under it 
 her mind speedily recovered its accustomed 
 tone. 
 
 During the hour or two which of neces- 
 sity elapsed before the return of the minis- 
 ter, the girl did not re-enter the house. 
 Some masculine employment engaged her 
 in the neighbourhood of the cottage ; her 
 father's protracted illness, and, as neigh- 
 bours failed not to insinuate, constitutional 
 parsimony, having brought all necessary 
 labour about the small moorland home- 
 stead within her immediate province. All 
 the time, her active brain, rather than her
 
 134 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 passionate emotions, kept pace with her 
 muscular effort, and she soon became ab- 
 sorbed in a more or less critical survey of 
 the j)^^^ic^^^^i^t i^ which events had 
 placed her, and which of course came not 
 wholly as a novel presentation to her 
 reflective sense. 
 
 Devoted to her father she had unques- 
 tionably been, in the more practical aspect 
 of filial devotion, that is, and so far only 
 as was consistent with a temperament in 
 no respect pre-eminently domestic. Ten- 
 derness was not one of the most obvious 
 of Handsel's attributes; just as, in all out- 
 ward manifestations, her father had been 
 absolutely without it. Either would, with- 
 out the vaguest thought of any peculiar 
 virtue or merit in it, have submitted un- 
 consciously to self-extinction on behalf of
 
 THE BURDEN OF THE HILLS. 135 
 
 the other, none the less for a caress or 
 even definite word of affection never once 
 betraying their mutual dependence in the 
 course of a twelvemonth. In the mere 
 nature of things they appertained to each 
 other, and duty had not detached itself 
 from instinct ; had not risen in conscious 
 rebellion, nor arrogated unto itself a con- 
 scious martyrdom. 
 
 This would not have been especially 
 remarkable, but for the positive nature of 
 their respective intellects and the radical 
 divergence between them. Beyond theo- 
 logical exegesis, the traditional inheritance 
 even to-day of his kind, nothing, out of the 
 material, could penetrate the old borderer : 
 with the solitary exception of theology, 
 there was nothing from which his daugh- 
 ter could not receive intellectual appeal.
 
 136 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 How far this was the result of the vicarage 
 intercourse we need not now speculate : 
 that it was considerably so cannot be 
 doubted. The mere fact, however, was 
 not without significance, since, in matters 
 dogmatic, the folk of Windy law, and Hand- 
 sel amongst them, had always been staunch 
 in their adherence to the pasturage without 
 the pale of conformity. Nor could the 
 deo;ree of intellio-ence inferred be other 
 than common property ; for mere remote- 
 ness of latitude has not of itself been 
 found to argue absence of assertive social 
 incongruities, any more than softening or 
 annihilation of the asperities of confront- 
 ing creeds, established and disrupt. But 
 the vicarage could not claim the whole of 
 Handsel's enlightenment, for she had been 
 subject to various influences. Her brother
 
 THE BURDEN OF THE HILLS. 137 
 
 James, for instance, had been both to 
 school and college at Edinburgh, and, so 
 far as was prompted in him, had spoken 
 to her freely. Her cousin Glen from the 
 valley of the Rede water, growing restless, 
 had, as we know, through the offices of 
 Mr. Wanless himself, found a situation at 
 Oxford, and this again had given Handsel 
 an independent correspondence with an- 
 other artery of the wider life. Thus, much 
 had combined to render her other than the 
 unsophisticated or boorish shepherdess 
 which our fancy so readily, and perhaps 
 exclusively, constructs. 
 
 It was as the girl forked fresh fern 
 litter into the cow-byre (dry brown bracken 
 stacked from the previous autumn, and 
 now ruddy in the sun) that her dog jumped 
 up and growled. She was prepared for
 
 138 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 the intimation, and left her work to go 
 and meet the comers. 
 
 The doctor eyed her curiously, scarce 
 knowing what tone to assume, for all out- 
 ward signs of her emotion had long since 
 gone. He was a dapper young gentleman 
 with a sandy beard, and was clad in fault- 
 less equestrian costume. He permitted 
 the horn of his riding-whip audibly to 
 smite his calf as he entered the cottage, 
 but otherwise his demeanour was com- 
 paratively subdued. After placing this 
 same whip with his hat and gloves upon 
 the table, he passed with a professional 
 sniff to the bed which Handsel had dis- 
 closed. She withdrew afar off. 
 
 ' Dead for some hours,' commented the 
 physician, in a low, sententious voice, to 
 Mr. Reid, who stood in contemplation be-
 
 THE BUKDEN OF THE HILLS. 139^ 
 
 side him. ' For some hours undoubtedly : 
 four or five hours at least.' 
 
 The minister did not dispute it, although 
 the aspect of the other seemed to implore 
 a contradiction. They turned away, and 
 the daughter re-told her brief story, which 
 was received with sympathetic nods. 
 
 ' Very sad, very sad ; unfortunately very 
 common in such cases. It is a pity he was 
 so stubborn about the attendant, but it 
 could have made no difference — no differ- 
 ence at all. You must remember that, 
 Miss Gilholme. All has been done. You 
 have my deepest sympathy. Good-bye.' :: 
 
 The elderly pastor remained until the 
 arrival of the dame who was to be the 
 girl's companion, and, after further in- 
 effectual attempts to induce Handsel to 
 accept his benevolent offer of consolatory
 
 140 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 society at the manse, he too took his leave. 
 Solitude still seemed indispensable to her. 
 Contact with any, more especially with 
 such as would feel aggressive compassion 
 to be an inevitable constituent of the situ- 
 ation, would have been intolerably irk- 
 some to Handsel. The purely mechanical 
 garrulity of old Mrs. Pringle was not 
 so intolerable, but from this also the 
 young woman soon found it necessary to 
 escape. 
 
 The news of David Gilholme's death 
 flew of course rapidly down the valley : 
 amongst the first to receive the informa- 
 tion being the immates of the vicarage. 
 It could scarce cause surprise, whatever 
 other feeling might be inspired, and the 
 principal topic arising from it was inevit- 
 ably the daughter's future, and incident-
 
 THE BURDEN OF THE HILLS. 141 
 
 ally the amount of current coin involved. 
 Speculation varied. 
 
 Mr. Wanless and his daughter talked of 
 it like the rest, perhaps with a little more 
 responsible perception than many. Ebba's 
 familiarity with Handsel was life-long^ 
 having developed by lapse of time from 
 the mere childish combination of common 
 forces into a one-sided conscious attitude 
 of intellectual analysis and speculation. 
 Solid testimony to the moorland girl's in- 
 telligence lay, no doubt, in this attitude of 
 Ebba, and in her consequent attempted 
 reconciliation of sundry preconceptions in 
 herself as to intellectual enterprise with 
 an apparently ignoble acquiescence in the 
 negation of it in her subject. 
 
 Having learned that Mr. Reid had at- 
 tended to the girl's necessities, Ebba de-
 
 142 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 layed her consolatory visit until tlie next 
 morning. Then she went in a character- 
 istically informal manner. It chanced that 
 Handsel Avas just issuing from the cottage 
 on her arrival, and she greeted the visitor 
 in the accustomed manner. 
 
 ' I know you don't want me ; but is 
 there anything at all we can do?' 
 
 ' Nothing, thank you. Miss Ebba.' 
 
 'You will come down in a few days?' 
 
 The other assented, and they seemed 
 about to part; but just then Handsel 
 turned round abruptly. 
 
 ' Will you go up with me ?' 
 
 She pointed to the slope beside them. 
 Ebba turned, scanned her, and acquiesced. 
 The two girls then strode forth in silence. 
 
 They presented a suggestive contrast as 
 they climbed the steep slope together.
 
 THE BURDEN OF THE HILLS. 143 
 
 The muscular development of Handsel 
 was of itself in no way obtrusive, for the 
 proportions were admirably preserved ; 
 none the less, upon first casual glimpse of 
 her, it was the physical completeness 
 which was primarily presented. In Ebba, 
 on the other hand, the trim, lithe, some- 
 Avhat diminutive corporeality failed wholly 
 to eno^aoje attention in face of the keen, 
 inquiring expression of the resolutely- 
 intellectual features. And this outward 
 guise accurately betokened the relative 
 temperaments of the young women. Hand- 
 sel buoyant, comely, humorous ; of intel- 
 lect not too deep for unruffled health, fenc- 
 ing with existence, but with foiled weapons 
 and never worsted even at that. Ebba, 
 subtle and daring, armed with the genu- 
 ine point against mortal assaults of which
 
 144 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 her companion knew nothing. Fearless 
 investigation, and alertness in every art of 
 defence sparkled in her dark eye ; and the 
 brow, young and white as it was, betrayed 
 in some mysterious manner the wounds 
 which had been vigorously sustained and 
 surmounted. 
 
 They talked little until they were on 
 the summit of the Hawk Knowe, a great 
 round shoulder from which the expanse 
 of the adjacent wilds of hill country were 
 for miles distinctly visible through an air 
 of marvellous transparency. Here they 
 paced to and fro in exalted intercourse, buf- 
 feted only by the whistling breezes which 
 came in mad glee ruffling the mountain 
 tops and tearing the shower clouds from 
 their magnetic clutches. In such appro- 
 priate atmosphere did the two transcen-
 
 THE BURDEN OF THE HILLS. 145 
 
 dental maidens discuss their momentous 
 issues, and through it did one at least of 
 them perceive a thrilling sense of liberty 
 to pervade the whole of her conscious 
 system, quickening that reserve force of 
 unconscious endurance to an active influ- 
 ence, surging to wide enterprise and 
 boundless hope. She felt solitude no 
 longer; could regard her silent father 
 down below yonder with complacent 
 stoicism, as one who had definitely achiev- 
 ed, and now as definitely rested. Might 
 she also do as well ! 
 
 ' There can be no disrespect to the dead, 
 Handsel, in promoting the nobility of the 
 living. The old sack-cloth and ashes must 
 not avail us now. Let us encounter every 
 blow with an act. The more necessarily 
 so in that we are women, says my brother 
 
 VOL. I. L
 
 146 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 Shiel, if you will venture to take him for 
 an authority.' 
 
 ' I will in that,' said the other, ' for I 
 agree with him, although he yesterday 
 found objection to my building a dike.' 
 
 ' But you know philosophers have the 
 privilege of being inconsistent. I can 
 forgive him a good deal, seeing that he has 
 written so much sense about us. You 
 shall see what he says ; it will interest 
 you. Shall I leave it you now, or another 
 day?' 
 
 ' Now, certainly,' said Handsel, with 
 alacrity. ' It will do me good. I can feel, 
 but canna always think, and Mr. Shiel 
 aye gives you thoughts. I shall need them 
 with poor James, I doubt.' 
 
 ' Yes, possibly. But keep to your plain 
 and simple position. You cannot improve
 
 THE BURDEN OF THE HILLS. 147 
 
 it by any amount of argument. That you 
 are not willing to go into menial service 
 will probably surprise him, but that can't 
 be helped. Your preparation has hitherto 
 been grand,' proceeded Ebba, with enthu- 
 siasm. ' Even I, Handsel, have never 
 properly understood it. Oh, how I envy 
 your " toil unsevered from tranquillity !" 
 Cling to that for dear life ! If further 
 study endangers that, fling it to the winds, 
 my lass, and come back to us here. We'll 
 herd sheep together. But it won't ; it 
 mustn't. Some day, perhaps, I shall join 
 you, and we'll front the world together. 
 Oh, how pugnacious I feel !' 
 
 And Ebba lauo^hed and fluno^ out an 
 arm at a curlew that flew whistling past. 
 Handsel who had been o;lancino^ at the 
 magazine which had been given to her 
 
 l2
 
 148 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 thrust it into her pocket, and looked about 
 her. 
 
 But they talked until the heavy clouds 
 had gathered, about noon, and then, smoth- 
 ering the fierce glow which had been so 
 ardently fanned in these inspiring altitudes, 
 they dropped, enduring maidens, into the 
 common world below.
 
 149 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PROSPECTIVE. 
 
 It was already dusk when Glen alighted 
 at the wayside station where her journey 
 ended; her railway journey, that is, for 
 there yet remained some fourteen miles 
 of hilly country between her and her des- 
 tination, Windylaw. As she looked after 
 her boxes on the silent platform, the one 
 porter of the establishment recognised her 
 beneath a lamp, and greeted her with 
 facetious familiarity.
 
 150 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 ' No, I shall stay at the " Bell" to-night/ 
 she said, coquettishly. ' Will you take 
 my luggage there ?' 
 
 She took out her purse thereupon and 
 gave him sixpence. 
 
 ' How will you get through to Highsheils 
 from here ?' he asked. ' You ought to 
 have gone to Rothbury.' 
 
 ' I should think I know that,' was the 
 disdainful answer. ' I am going to Windy- 
 law, man.' 
 
 ' Ou, ay. Ye'll be through to the 
 funeral, likely.' 
 
 ' What do you mean ?' asked the girl in 
 alarm. 
 
 ' Have ye no heard ?' 
 
 ' Heard what ? Whose funeral ? Tell 
 me quick.'
 
 PROSPECTIVE. 151 
 
 * They are to bury David Gilholme the 
 morn, hinny.' 
 
 ' You never say it.' 
 
 ' It's as I tell you, my lass. He went 
 tarr'ble sudden at the hinder end.' 
 
 The news bewildered Glen for an in- 
 stant, but no longer. She recovered herself 
 with remarkable alacrity, for as the uni- 
 verse at that period existed but for herself 
 and her requirements, she instinctively 
 saw only how the startling information 
 affected her plans, and a moment was 
 enough to suggest a favourable construc- 
 tion. Her cousin Handsel, then, was 
 alone ; this would immeasurably lighten 
 the ordeal, — for with her actual approach 
 to the hill country she perceived that an 
 ordeal there was to be. She felt an acces-
 
 152 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 sion of spriglitliness, and she sighed forth 
 her ' Poor man!' of sympathy with a heart- 
 felt deliverance. She could enter into the 
 discussion with intensity of interest, and 
 when she had procured all the informa- 
 tion which the porter could afford her, 
 she tripped away lightly to the seclusion 
 of her inn. 
 
 It was only a few minutes' walk from 
 the station ; but in the dusky stillness of 
 the road the girl felt impelled to stand 
 and regard ecstatically her picturesque 
 surroundings. The cool fragrant breeze 
 from the hills was peculiarly invigorating 
 after her long dusty ride upon the rail- 
 way, and coming as she did from a sojourn 
 of several months amongst the restraints 
 of civilization. The after-glow in the 
 West, upon which the mysteriously dark-
 
 PROSPECTIVE. 153 
 
 ening sky seemed to be bearing down im- 
 pressively, opened out a path of obscure 
 but fascinating freedom to her excited 
 fancy, and as her eye caught a bright star 
 twinkling above the crest of a dark night- 
 cloud it was irresistibly borne in upon her 
 that all the evils which were said to lie 
 in her path were wholly obliterated by 
 this exhilarating independence which they 
 alone could have purchased for her. 
 
 At the inn the news was confirmed, so 
 that Glen could build safely upon it. 
 The absence of all ordinary feeling in 
 such a connection was noticeable, but 
 scarcely strange. Death, save of such as 
 custom has made more or less a necessity 
 to us, does not sensibly touch the average 
 teens, and Avhen an interposition of the 
 kind comes so opportunely as positively
 
 154 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 to render smoother some difficult path of 
 our own, it were transcendent excess of 
 criticism to frown at the youthful com- 
 placency. Glen passed an exceedingly 
 enjoyable evening, — having previous fam- 
 iliarity with the inhabitants of the ' Bell,' — 
 and even found no occasion for the 
 exercise of inconvenient restraint in such 
 measure of bucolic diversion as a piano 
 can inspire. She was received as a trav- 
 elled guest, and the advantages which her 
 position afforded were in no way neglected 
 by the young woman herself. 
 
 Before her departure the following day, 
 (a shepherd's cart affording her the desired 
 convenience for the greater part of the 
 way.) Miss Aikenshaw had excogitated as 
 fascinating a programme as fancy could 
 desire. It was, of course, confined to the
 
 PROSPECTIVE. 155 
 
 delicate recesses of lier own bosom, for 
 vivaciously frank as lier friends continued 
 to find her, they were to marvel later over 
 the amazingly successful reticence which 
 had all the while been her own. 
 
 In the meantime, the sombre ceremony 
 was proceeding in the hills. Rude and 
 primitive as such an observance inevitably 
 was in a locality so rugged, it could 
 present nothing but an aspect of ele- 
 mentary dignity. It was very near the 
 soil, undoubtecjjiy ; but an uncontaminated 
 soil, unsuspicious of ignoble necessities 
 and sorded pains. 
 
 The heavens were grey, and all the 
 scene beneath subdued to a sober uni- 
 formity of spiritless depression. A raw 
 east wind soughed across the fells, filling 
 a rift here, and obscuring a crest yonder
 
 156 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 with the chill vapour of his breath from 
 the North Sea. The mane of the horse 
 which stood harnessed to the cart before 
 the shepherd's door was grey with moist- 
 ure, and as the animal shook from time 
 to time his doleful acquiescence in the 
 subdued monotone which issued from the 
 quiet cottage, it might have been thought 
 he wept. Even the geese wandered 
 silently, and the bereaved collie, inured 
 somewhat by recent days to the mysterious 
 circumstances, lay in uncertain meditation 
 on the threshold. 
 
 At a confused noise of footsteps on the 
 stones within, both horse and dog looked 
 up. As the door opened, the latter slunk 
 aside, and peered from beneath his eye- 
 lids at the scene which followed. A man 
 came out, clothed in black except for a
 
 PROSPECTIVE. 157 
 
 clieck plaid which enfolded his shoulders, 
 and after throwing his eyes around the 
 hills and giving a glance at his watch, he 
 let down the back of the cart. When he 
 had re-entered, a group came out with a 
 burden, which was placed in the red 
 braken lining the bed of tlie cart, and 
 very soon the informal procession began. 
 Handsel and her brother James walked 
 behind, accompanied by the minister, Mr. 
 Reid; the half dozen neighbours, shep- 
 herds all, and fellow-elders of the kirk 
 with him that was departed, walked in 
 front, engaged in sober converse. 
 
 The Presbyterian flock, comj)rising the 
 bulk of the population in the hills, had no 
 burial-ground appropriated to themselves, 
 so, upon occasions like the present, the 
 vicar, Mr. Wanless, officiated in the grave-
 
 158 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 yard of the church. Here the bones of 
 vulgar contention in matters sectarian 
 were not obtruded, owing, no doubt, to 
 the peculiarly human qualifications of 
 the two gentlemen principally concerned. 
 Neither side obtruded their individual 
 idiosyncrasies upon the other, and both 
 could even, upon occasion, combine for 
 common purposes ; therefore as Mr. Wan- 
 less, despite obvious oddities of temper- 
 ament well known to all, had in generali- 
 ties sufficiently proved himself a man of 
 God, it never occurred to anybody that a 
 departed soul would rest less comfortably 
 for being ushered hence by a priest in 
 full canonicals. 
 
 ' I wonder what Handsel will do,' re- 
 marked the vicar to his daughter during
 
 PROSPECTIVE. 159 
 
 an idle moment, before he left his house 
 for the vestry. ' It is rather awkward for 
 a girl in that position.' 
 
 ' I don't think she will find it so, father. 
 She is a girl of much resource.' 
 
 ' Do you think so. Abb ? Well, now, 
 that rather surprises me. Of course, I 
 only judge by externals, but I should 
 have thought her a very intelligent girl, 
 without sufficiency of resources. So 
 different from that cousin of hers that 
 we got to Oxford. I cannot fancy Hand- 
 sel holding positions in a civilized com- 
 munity.' 
 
 ' Not dependent positions, certainly,' 
 said Ebba. And her father looked at her 
 in his vague, meditative way for some 
 seconds, perhaps musing on possible
 
 160 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 secondary meanings to his daughter's 
 observation. 
 
 ' No,' he said at length. ' I suppose 
 she will solve it in the usual way,' he 
 added, with a smile. 
 
 ' I think not,' replied the girl. ' But 
 look, father, they are in sight.' 
 
 The small group of black objects was 
 visible from the window, and the clergy- 
 man withdrew. 
 
 Ebba still stood to watch the humble 
 procession advance, and from the ex- 
 pression of her face it was obvious that 
 the picturesqueness of the mere spectacle 
 was alone engaging her. Had there been 
 doubt, her further action resolved it. She 
 ran quickly to her room, from the window 
 of which she got an unobstructed pros- 
 pect, and there, with sketch-book in hand,
 
 PROSPECTIVE. 161 
 
 she dashed off the suggestion it had made 
 to her. Not until the mourners were at 
 the church gate did she alter her position, 
 then she hurriedly threw on some out- 
 door things, and went to take her place by 
 the grave. 
 
 According to custom, the party after- 
 wards withdrew to the vicarage, there to 
 partake of such simple refreshment as 
 homely circumstances suggested, and the 
 exigencies of mountain travel rendered 
 needful. As they were entering the gate- 
 way, Mr. Wanless and his Presbyterian 
 colleague, who walked together, paused, 
 with their eyes in the same direction. A 
 horseman at full trot appeared not far off 
 down the road coming towards them. 
 
 ' Mr. Pettipher, I think,' remarked the 
 minister, and the vicar assented. 
 
 VOL. I. M
 
 162 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 The rider was very soon beside them, 
 and he graciously raised his hat, receiving 
 a similar greeting in return. 
 
 ' Then I am too late,' said he, dismount- 
 ing. ' I am sorry. I wished to give my 
 farewell to poor David.' 
 
 ' It was kind of you, sir,' replied Mr. 
 Eeid, who was gratified by the condescen- 
 sion displayed to one of his flock, and 
 through him to the persuasion at large. 
 'We have but just laid him by.' 
 
 ' He was my oldest tenant, as you know, 
 Mr. Reid. Indeed, he was the only one 
 remaining that was on the estate when I 
 bought it. But I had a great respect for 
 the man. We seem to be losing his kind 
 in these days.' 
 
 ' Undoubtedly,' Mr. Wanless observed.
 
 PROSPECTIVE. 163 
 
 'Your opinion, Mr. Pettipher, will greatly 
 gratify his son and daughter.' 
 
 ' James is here, I suppose ?' 
 
 Thereupon they walked up to the house. 
 
 A portly gentleman of distinguished 
 appearance was Mr. Pettipher, as be- 
 came one who wielded proprietary power 
 amongst what constitutes in our day the 
 world of letters. A full English face was 
 his in hue and contour, set off by an 
 ample beard, which was just now addi- 
 tionally grizzled by the mountain mist 
 through which he had ridden. There was 
 nothing at all offensive in his dignified 
 aplomb, for it was more conscious than 
 that of the average successful Briton, and 
 was, moreover, tinged by a very substan- 
 tial fund of positive good-nature. He 
 
 M 2
 
 164 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 tendered his sympatliy to the relatives of 
 the departed with kindness and tact, and 
 after thus acquitting himself he accom- 
 panied Mr. Wanless and his daughter to 
 another room, so as to avoid all appear- 
 ance of imposing restraint upon the general 
 company. 
 
 Here they conversed in a friendly man- 
 ner for some minutes, until the visitor rose 
 to leave. They had hitherto spoken but 
 of generalities of a local or imperial inter- 
 est ; but, as Mr. Pettipher moved towards 
 the door, he asked with some abruptness 
 what had become of Shiel. The clergy- 
 man hesitated, then muttered something 
 about his being called to Oxford. Ebba 
 with some directness confirmed it. 
 
 ' A striking paper that of his in " War- 
 gent's," ' remarked the gentleman, looking
 
 PEOSPECTIVE. 165 
 
 at Ebba with a twinkle. ' Have you seen 
 it?' 
 
 ' I have, and think it much to the 
 point.' 
 
 ' You do ?' laughed the other, as he 
 went into the hall. 
 
 That was all he said about it. 
 
 The vicar accompanied Mr. Pettipher to 
 the gate. As they went down, Ebba saw 
 that they were talking. When her father 
 returned, he seemed in very contemplative 
 mood. He caught his daughter as she 
 was about to go into the dining-room. 
 
 ' One word first, Abb . . . Mr. Pettipher 
 makes an amazing suggestion.' 
 
 Then the clergyman stopped, and 
 looked absently into the young lady's 
 face. 
 
 ' About Shiel, father ?' she hazarded.
 
 166 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 ' Yes, indirectly. That debt I told you 
 about : the thousand pounds. He wants 
 to make Shiel a present of it.' 
 
 The girl had not known before that Mr. 
 Pettipher was the accommodator ; but it 
 did not surprise her. 
 
 ' It is remarkably kind of him,' said 
 she. 
 
 ' Well, it is ; but — but 1 hardly like it. 
 It rather resembles charitable education, 
 doesn't it ?' 
 
 ' Surely not. One can take as well as 
 give gracefully.' 
 
 ' But surely the boy will never take it !' 
 exclaimed the vicar, with accession of 
 energy. 
 
 ' That is Sam Johnson with the boots,' 
 laughed Ebba. ' I think it a false phi- 
 losophy. The instinct is too natural,
 
 PROSPECTIVE. 167 
 
 but it ouo;]it to be resisted. It is savao-e.' 
 ' Of course, it does not lie with Sbiel,' 
 continued Mr. Wanless, apparently follow- 
 ing out his own reflections rather than 
 responding to his daughter. ' The debt is 
 my own, and I certainly could not accept 
 it. No . . . but come, Xabbs, we must 
 0^0 in to them.' 
 
 ' But, father, you will hardly refuse — ' 
 ' Come, come,' he said, impatiently, 
 taking her arm; and they went to the 
 other room. 
 
 Here they found eager conversation pro- 
 ceeding; Mr. Duncan Anderson, the shep- 
 herd from Herdlaw, bringing his vernacular 
 harangue upon predestination to an ab- 
 rupt close upon the vicar's entrance. In 
 less abstruse matters Mr. Wanless took an 
 affable part ; Ebba, who watched him curi-
 
 168 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 ously, thinking an unusually impulsive 
 part. The considerate behaviour of Mr. 
 Pettipher served as a convenient, uncom- 
 promising topic, and it consequently re- 
 ceived exhaustive attention until Mr. Raid 
 gave the signal for departure by offering 
 his hand to his clerical friend, and with it 
 the customary thanks for their reception. 
 Thereupon plaids and over-coats were 
 donned, and with mutual civilities the 
 assembly dispersed. 
 
 When alone, the vicar drew his daughter 
 just within the library doorway. 
 
 ' Do you know anything of Shiel's 
 movements. Abb ?' he asked, this being 
 the first reference since the youth's de- 
 parture. 
 
 ' I think he is at Oxford.' 
 
 ' In connection with that matter ?'
 
 PROSPECTIVE. 169 
 
 ' Oh, no, father.' 
 
 ' Then I must see him. We cannot 
 leave things indefinite any longer. Will 
 you send my wishes to him ?' 
 
 ' Certainly ; I will write at once. But 
 I fear it will only aggravate the situation. 
 He is evidently working at literature, and 
 it is quite possible that he will make a 
 living at that.' 
 
 ' So he thinks ; so I thought. It is a 
 fatal delusion. Do you suppose he is 
 doing anything definite ? Any connection 
 with Mr. Pettipher, for instance?' 
 
 ' I can't say that I do.' 
 
 ' Then, Ebba, summon him here. I 
 must do my duty to him. I have been 
 remiss enough.' 
 
 Mr. Reid, after promising to ride up
 
 170 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 later to Windylaw, took the road with 
 Duncan Anderson, and they would scarce- 
 ly fail to improve the stretch of paces 
 which lay in common for them. James 
 Gilholme and his sister Handsel, on the 
 other hand, walked up the valley in nearly 
 unbroken silence. The monotonous plash 
 of the stony burn, and the clear whistle of 
 a startled dipper, or the cry of some dis- 
 tant moorland bird, was all the audible ac- 
 companiment to their unspoken thoughts. 
 It was a wild path this up into the hills 
 before it reposed in the green secluded 
 cup in which the Linnburn had its rise. 
 For some distance, in the middle part, it 
 traversed a narrow haugh,gorse sprinkled, 
 whilst immediately opposite, with only the 
 narrow stream between, rose a rocky 
 precipice with rowan-trees in its crevices,,
 
 PROSPECTIVE. 171 
 
 and a fringe of birch, sloe, and willow- 
 bushes at the top. In border feuds, doubt- 
 less, no band of moss-troopers would have 
 been unwary enough to take the lower 
 track ; but in later days degenerate utility 
 asserts its claims securely, and the two 
 mourners walked below. 
 
 The height above was the point that 
 their cousin Glen had reached some half- 
 hour before, and at which she had resolved 
 to pause and reconnoitre. She had watch- 
 ed from a distance the group in the church- 
 yard, then at the vicarage ; and now, with 
 palpitating satisfaction, relieved from the 
 numerous disquieting contingencies which 
 had been inevitably suggested, she beheld 
 the brother and sister appear alone below. 
 Once fully assured of this, her tactics 
 were altered, and physically weary as she
 
 172 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 was, for slie had already trudged a long 
 five miles, she broke into a hurried pace, 
 so as to reach the house before them. 
 
 They were still some distance from the 
 house when Handsel remarked upon the 
 bawling of the geese. The combined 
 clamour of a score of these animals will 
 startle the grouse for miles amongst the 
 hills, and perhaps no other natural sound, 
 certainly none which is peculiar to the 
 moorland, can be guaranteed to travel so 
 far. The yell of discordant resonance, 
 appalhng in its blatancy, triumphs by 
 sheer violence of contrast. The whistle of 
 a curlew is clear and can travel far ; the 
 hoarse piping of a grouse is resonant 
 enough ; the ' stoor quaick quaick ' of the 
 wild-duck circling the lough is a powerful 
 basso and effective in itself; but all these
 
 PROSPECTIVE. 1 73 
 
 by very reason of tlieir harmony are limit- 
 ed in their circuit. In reality, they travel 
 farther than the ear can accurately deter- 
 mine, for many of their latest vibrations 
 are only apparently lost, merged in the 
 plaintive unison which is the natural 
 breathing of the hills, and thus undistin- 
 guishable as individual elements. But 
 the uproar of a goose .... Wherewith 
 amongst moorland music shall this brazen 
 falsetto blend ? 
 
 The persistency of the noise surprised 
 Handsel, for her experienced ear detected 
 at once exceptional cause ; but as a fringe 
 of alder-trees lined the burn here, and lay 
 between her and the house, nothing could 
 be determined. Not until they emerged 
 upon the open vale beyond was the situa- 
 tion made clear.
 
 174 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 About a hundred yards before them 
 was a female figure fleeing impetuously 
 hither, with the whole flock of geese yell- 
 ing and flapping their wings in full chase 
 behind. The young minister looked up 
 in grave astonishment, and soberly ques- 
 tioned his companion. James, a young 
 man of twenty-two, was the typical thin, 
 pale youth in whom as yet the saintly 
 attainments have not adjusted themselves 
 to the modest human proportions ; and 
 although doubtless by virtue of his calling 
 he had acquired a mastery over his demon- 
 strative emotions, and had displayed a 
 resigned composure throughout the pro- 
 ceedings of the day, nobody would be in 
 danger of suspecting him of levity. Even 
 now his gravity was equal to the occasion. 
 With Handsel it was otherwise, for to her
 
 PROSPECTIVE. 175 
 
 there appeared something so irresistibly 
 ludicrous in the spectacle that, day of 
 mourning or no, she must abandon herself 
 to the resonant comment of unrestrained 
 laughter. She laughed and laughed, un- 
 able to pay any heed to the impatient re- 
 monstrance of her brother, whose only 
 anxiety was to learn the practical bearings 
 of the unlooked-for situation. 
 
 'Why, do you see, Handsel?' he ex- 
 claimed at length, blushing deeply as he 
 made the announcement. ' It is cousin 
 Glen.' 
 
 The other looked, sobered by the aston- 
 ishing assertion, then quietly acquiesced. 
 Soon they met. 
 
 The circumstances of their encounter 
 gave the visitor a favourable opportunity 
 of ignoring what she knew must be the
 
 176 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 attitude of her relatives. She sank, pant- 
 ing, into Handsel's arms, claiming refuge 
 from the geese, and amidst more or less 
 hysterical ejaculations they reached the 
 house. 
 
 ' Well, Robin, you're now masterless,' 
 said James, having entered, in a tone of 
 somewhat professional condolence to the 
 dog that had slunk in with equal gravity 
 after him. 'What will we do with you, 
 my mannie ? You'll like the flitting as 
 badly as any of us.' 
 
 He turned to invite, with a languid 
 smile, the comment of his companions, 
 and then found that, except for the dog, 
 he was in the room alone. The slight 
 flush, though, which at the instant had 
 overspread his pallid features, remained 
 there, and there was a nervous play of the
 
 PROSPECTIVE. 177 
 
 muscles around his lips as he glanced 
 with furtive expectancy towards the door. 
 The girls not immediately following, with 
 alacrity Mr. Gilholme unlocked a drawer 
 and took out those papers which his sister 
 had found as the last earthly object of 
 their father's attention. 
 
 ' And what on earth brings you here, 
 my lass?' demanded Handsel, when she 
 and her visitor had drawn away from the 
 house. 
 
 ' Han'sel, I ought not to have come by 
 you at such a time,' replied Glen. ^ You 
 don't want me, of course, and you wish 
 me at the bottom of the burn, as I often 
 do myself, — I ken nicely, now ; but look, 
 hinny, will you just have me beside you 
 for two-three days ? Don't look so glower- 
 ing, Han'sel ; don't.' 
 
 VOL. I. K
 
 178 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 It was true that the robuster cousin did 
 scrutinize her fragile companion with dis- 
 concerting directness, an effect in no degree 
 lessened by the resolute silence which she 
 kept. 
 
 ' Has Mr. Shiel Wanless told you any- 
 thing?' continued Glen, with alacrity. 
 
 ' Told me anything ?' 
 
 'About me?' 
 
 ^ What should he know of you ?' 
 
 ^ In my place, I mean.' 
 
 ' He has told me nothing.' 
 
 ' Then let me stay, Han'sel. I'll tell you 
 everything when James has gone. He'll 
 no stay long, will he ?' 
 
 ' But I'm not going to live here now. 
 What would I do with the place alone ? 
 We shall sell it up.' 
 
 ' Ay, ay, after a bit. Dinna drive me
 
 PROSPECTIVE. 179 
 
 out, — Avill you no, Han'sel ? You were 
 aye good to me, and I need your kindness 
 now.' 
 
 There was a power of appeal in Glen's 
 pretty face which her cousin was not slow 
 in discerning or construing. 
 
 ' I'll no drive you from the door, my 
 lass, of course. But why did you no gang 
 home ?' 
 
 Glen whimpered something about her 
 father, and then wept outright. Handsel 
 of course saw the whole predicament at 
 once, and despite her inevitable impatience 
 at such a complexity she felt a ready com- 
 passion for the foolish little victim, and 
 rose immediately to the necessities of the 
 case. 
 
 ' Well, well, dinna greet,' she said, more 
 kindly than anything hitherto. ' Come 
 
 N 2
 
 180 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 away and we'll see what we can do/ 
 
 When Glen was in some measure com- 
 posed they went in to the house.' 
 
 ' Glen is out of her place, James,' was 
 Handsel's simple announcement, ' and she 
 came here without knowing. But we can 
 manage for to-night.' 
 
 ' Why, certainly.' 
 
 ' Thank you, James,' muttered the cul- 
 prit from behind, and slipped away again. 
 
 As a matter of conscience James had 
 refrained from all reference to his father's 
 material affairs until after the funeral, so 
 that he now invited his sister to the 
 looked-for conference. He thought they 
 might discuss their position together be- 
 fore the arrival of Mr. Reid, who was ap- 
 pointed executor, to which Handsel readily 
 agreed.
 
 PROSPECTIVE. 181 
 
 The brief statement of affairs was to the 
 effect, that there was some fifteen hundred 
 pounds, to which present flocks had to be 
 added, left to be equally divided between 
 them, — an amount at which both son and 
 daughter confessed their supreme aston- 
 ishment. 
 
 ' But what is the matter with poor Glen ?' 
 interposed James, irrelevantly. ' She 
 doesn't look so well as she used to.' 
 
 ' Oh, nothing. You know what a rest- 
 less body she is. She wants something 
 new, I suppose.' 
 
 ' Yes, yes ; I feared she was ill — that's 
 all. Well, father wishes .... I need 
 hardly say. Handsel, that I shall not call 
 half the money mine, for I am amply pro- 
 vided for by my work, and I shall in a 
 year or two, of course, have much more.
 
 182 A VAGABOND IN AETS. 
 
 But as we shall live together, we need not 
 discuss that at present. T only mention 
 the matter at all to ask you, if you do not 
 agree with me, that it will be far the best 
 to just leave the money in its present in- 
 vestments and put the interest to our joint 
 household expenses ?' 
 
 Handsel was looking down and did not 
 immediately answer to this suggestion. 
 
 ' It brings between sixty and seventy 
 pounds a-year now,' continued James, 
 ' and the two or three hundred pounds 
 there will be to add to it will increase it 
 a little.' 
 
 ' I understand a' your feelings, James,' 
 at length replied the girl, with a little 
 nervous abruptness, ' and how kind you 
 are ; but you ken that we are different in 
 many things. I had far better go my own
 
 PROSPECTIVE. 183 
 
 way. The thirty or forty pounds a-year 
 which will be my share will give me plenty 
 to live upon.' 
 
 'But how — what do you mean, Handsel?* 
 stammered the minister of twenty-two. 
 
 This obtuseness in him was enough to 
 stimulate the girl, and her spirit of the 
 Hawk Knowe instantly inspired her. 
 
 ' Forget that I wear petticoats, my lad, 
 and you'll understand what I mean well 
 enough. I must away to the town for 
 a- while, and have my turn at books and 
 learning. There is a great deal in the 
 world that I dinna yet properly understand, 
 and I'm not content to pass through my 
 life without having a spier at it.' 
 
 She was now standing to her full height, 
 and presenting her stately figure to his 
 astonished gaze.
 
 184 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 ' But do you mean that you wish to go 
 and live in a town alone ?' 
 
 ' That is exactly what I mean, Jamie. 
 Do you see any objection to it?' 
 
 ' You cannot know what towns are, dear 
 lass,' he pursued, with genuine anxiety. 
 ' A young woman is liable to all sorts 
 of ' 
 
 ' I know that the law protects a woman 
 there as well as here,' was Handsel's 
 dignified rejoinder ; ' and for the rest, one 
 is as near one's self in the town as in the 
 country.' 
 
 A brief silent scrutiny seemed to con- 
 vince the bewildered minister of his power- 
 lessness before her. He knew that he had 
 ever been powerless before her. Some 
 instinct restrained him from direct religious 
 argument, such as with another he would
 
 PEOSPECTIVE. 185 
 
 jio doubt have immediately adopted, and 
 in any other line lie did not feel particularly 
 ^efficient. 
 
 ' You cannot possibly have any objec- 
 tion, Jamie. Surely you know me well 
 enough for that.' 
 
 ' No, no, of course not. It does not lie 
 with me. I have no thoughts but for your 
 welfare.' 
 
 As a tacit confession of the hopelessness 
 of the argument James took up a book, 
 and Handsel went out to seek refuge in 
 some mechanical employment. 
 
 She found Glen prostrate under the rick 
 of fern, immersed in tears. For no clearly 
 defined reason, the intrepid wanderer had, 
 during the few moments she had been 
 alone, felt supremely miserable. The ne- 
 Lcessity for self-control being no longer
 
 186 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 imperative, her strength had given out^ 
 and she had flung herself in the fern to 
 weej^. Handsel, coming from an interview 
 which had irritated her, chanced to be in 
 no accommodating mood for this. She 
 scanned the slight figure before her from 
 head to foot, then sternly demanded what 
 was wrong with her. 
 
 ' Cold and wretched,' sobbed the dis- 
 tressed one. 
 
 ' Yell be het enough afore yeVe done,' 
 was the merciless response. ' What for 
 do you come to travel through the moss 
 in boots like yon ? You're no on your 
 pavements here, ye ken. You're as wet 
 as a peat, lass. Come away.' 
 
 This imperious mood seemed to work 
 the desired efl'ect, for Glen leaped up with 
 alacrity, and was conducted forthwith into
 
 PROSPECTIVE. 187 
 
 the house. It took but a few minutes for 
 Handsel to get ready a bucket of hot 
 water, thrust the damp, cold feet into it, 
 and finally put her patient bodily to bed. 
 Glen slept before her nurse had left the 
 room. 
 
 ' Then she is ill,' said James, pale and 
 anxious, as Handsel came out from her 
 Samaritan labours. 
 
 'Well she may be,' was the reply, 'if 
 she'll wear such trash as this in the place 
 of boots.' 
 
 The articles in question were thrust 
 forward for his inspection, and the min- 
 ister took the little things, sodden and 
 muddy, into his own hands and regarded 
 them with close attention and gravity. 
 
 ' They are what she wore in the town, 
 of course,' was his ultimate apology.
 
 188 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 'They are not sufficient for these wet 
 hills; 
 
 ' I dinna think they are,' said Handsel, 
 with peculiar dryness. 
 
 When she had done what was needful, 
 she again went out.
 
 189 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 HEAD AND TAIL. 
 
 When all was silent. James reverted to 
 his book, but soon exchanged it for the 
 testamentary papers which his father had 
 left. Even these could not engage him 
 undividedly for many minutes, and he 
 looked out of the window idly. All was 
 still a sullen grey there, and the light 
 patter of the burn alone broke the uni- 
 versal silence. Then the bark of Hand- 
 sel's dog came from some little distance.
 
 190 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 and a single goose answered it. In the 
 quiet succeeding, the minister sank into 
 a reverie. 
 
 He was aroused from this by a light cry 
 from the room adjoining. Having been 
 so entirely absorbed in thought, he list- 
 ened for its repetition, in case his imagi- 
 nation had deceived him. The sound was 
 repeated, a scarcely articulate cry, and he 
 hastened to the door. He called Glen by 
 name twice, but got no answer. Pausing 
 for an instant, the young man glanced 
 around him, then softly raised the latch. 
 The door opened noiselessly. The face of 
 the girl was conspicuous on the pillow. 
 Lovely in its flush, the eyes closed fast in 
 sleep, and the small, rosy lips just pouting 
 naturally. Thus convinced of her security, 
 the minister, with a blush as deep as that
 
 HEAD AND TAIL. 191 
 
 of the sleeper, turned away from the door, 
 Id lit did not at once close it. The next 
 moment he was a-tiptoe in the room, his 
 eyes bending tenderly over the sleeping 
 figure. His own lips were apart with 
 nervous awe at the sight which ravished 
 him, and his features motionless. Only 
 he himself could hear the beating of his 
 heart, but in his ears it drowned all else. 
 Suddenly he laid his lips to the sheets 
 which, like a flowing billow, circled her 
 chin, and to his horror she moved and 
 uttered a muffled cry. He started up, 
 and, seeing that she dreamed only, fled 
 without sound from the room. 
 
 After that, James thrust on his hat and 
 paced the greensward outside the house. 
 He was still there when Mr. Reid came, 
 late in the afternoon, to discuss testa-
 
 192 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 mentary matters, and the perturbation of 
 his own current of thought prevented his 
 detecting anything unusual in his friend's 
 features. 
 
 ' You are right, Mr. Reid,' he hastened 
 to exclaim. ' My sister has propounded a 
 most amazing course of conduct.' 
 
 The nervous unsettlement of the younger 
 man was apparent enough in his ejacula- 
 tory and impulsive manner. 
 
 ' Come inside. All the papers are, of 
 course, in admirable order, and you are 
 appointed executor.' 
 
 ' One moment, James.' 
 
 The tone of Mr. Reid's voice caused 
 James to look suddenly back in anxious 
 surprise. 
 
 'Areyouill, Mr.^Reid?' 
 
 ' I have bad news — distressing news it
 
 HEAD AND TAIL. 193 
 
 must be under the peculiar circumstances. 
 Mr. Pettipher lias met with a very serious 
 accident.' 
 
 James's brow lightened. 
 
 ' After leaving us ?' 
 
 ' Evidently on his way from us. As 
 Duncan Anderson was returning over the 
 Rooken Edge, after we had parted, he 
 found the poor gentleman lying in the 
 moss sadly injured. The horse was not 
 to be seen, but the rider, it seemed, must 
 have been dragged for some distance in 
 the stirrup.' 
 
 ' Shocking indeed. But no danger, I 
 trust?' 
 
 ' To be sure I trust not, but it was re- 
 ported to me as very serious. The gen- 
 tleman was unconscious, so that nothing 
 can yet be certainly known of the acci- 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 194 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 dent. It has quite upset me, James.' 
 Whilst the two gentlemen still talked 
 of this disquieting addition to the day's 
 depressions, Handsel joined them ; not 
 unnaturally, as she approached, constru- 
 ing their looks of extraordinary gravity 
 into a comment upon her own revolution- 
 ary behaviour. It was this, no doubt, 
 which impelled her to assume an attitude 
 of unusual independence, in prospect of 
 the approaching interview : the few words 
 with her brother having convinced her of 
 the hopelessness of conciliatory methods. 
 The unexpected disclosure, however, 
 necessarily checked her action, and she 
 entered sympathetically into the topic of 
 conversation, until Mr. Reid paternally 
 took the arms of his two charges and led 
 them into the house.
 
 HEAD AND TAIL. 195 
 
 ' His ways are inscrutable, Jamie,' said 
 he, gravely, in doing so, ' and our only 
 duty is to bow the head submissively. 
 Our lights are sma', sma'.' 
 
 Glen, who had slept soundly, was 
 aroused by the steps and voices, and 
 in her state of semi-consciousness leapt 
 up in alarm. But a momentary glance 
 around her and a glimpse of the grey hill- 
 side without brought her speedy reassur- 
 ance, and she composed herself into as 
 luxurious an attitude as was possible in 
 Handsel's feather-bed. From that snug 
 security she looked forth complacently 
 upon the colder world. 
 
 In the adjoining room, too, a certain 
 amount of comfort was being established. 
 A becoming gravity still characterised all 
 the features, but Handsel moved about 
 
 2
 
 196 A VAGABOND IN AKTS. 
 
 with a certain deliberate alacrity which 
 was perhaps significant. She mended the 
 great fire, pulled forth her father's arm- 
 chair for the elder minister and asked him 
 if he would take anything. But Mr. Reid 
 was not of the fleshly inclined. He de- 
 clined the profl'ered hospitality, and, in- 
 stead of sitting in the chair, he knelt at it ; 
 the others, immediately acquiescing, also 
 took appropriate situations. The two or 
 three words followed in a tone of deep 
 and unaffected sincerity. Then the three 
 took their seats. 
 
 Mr. Reid took the will and read it 
 aloud, to the effect with which we are 
 already acquainted. Then the items of 
 the estate were gone through, commen- 
 datory comments from the elder being 
 interspersed and the admirable parental
 
 HEAD AND TAIL. 197 
 
 example duly enforced. Then tlie gen- 
 tleman emphasized, needlessly as he ad- 
 mitted, the interest he took in his two 
 young friends' future, and the manner in 
 which that important future was to be 
 spent. That of one of them by divine 
 grace was marked out pretty clearly, and 
 would no doubt in due course have its 
 adequate reward : that of the other was 
 more open to question, and would require 
 their most earnest and prayerful regard. 
 Was Handsel conscious of any definite 
 predilection ? 
 
 At this James shaded his brow with 
 one arcbed band and kept his eyes to the 
 floor. 
 
 Handsel did not hesitate to admit that 
 she was, and Mr. Reid's kindly face was 
 raised in patient inquiry.
 
 198 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 ' So long as my father was alive 
 I never had any doubt of my duty,' 
 remarked the girl, with distinctness. 
 ' Now that he is gone things are quite 
 changed. I am going to study for a year 
 or two in the town.' 
 
 The minister nodded a benign acqui- 
 escence : James blushed and moved his 
 feet. 
 
 ' That is the whole of my plan, Mr. 
 Reid.' 
 
 ' It is a wide one, Handsel, and one which 
 requires particular consideration ' 
 
 ' I have explained myself to James,' 
 continued the young woman, ' and I am 
 afraid what he disapproves of will hardly 
 be pleasing to you; but you know, Mr. 
 Reid, there are two opinions to a' things,
 
 HEAD AND TAIL. 199 
 
 and I dare say about women we should 
 not just exactly agree.' 
 
 ' But we agree upon what is right and 
 Avrong, my dear lassie.' 
 
 ' Certainly we do.' 
 
 Therewith Mr. Reid propounded at full 
 length the traditional generalities to which 
 James had proved unequal. Handsel 
 heard him with patience, and as calmly 
 responded. 
 
 ' That only proves what I said,' smiled 
 she. ' You do not consider that we ought 
 to be individuals, Mr. Reid ; I do. The 
 brain's a brain ; the heart's a heart ; and 
 the hand's a hand ; whether it be set to 
 the form of a man or a woman. 1 canna 
 see any law of God which prevents a 
 woman usino; her hand or her brain as
 
 200 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 well as a man, if she have a free oppor- 
 tunity of doing so, and be so minded.' 
 
 ' By no means : by no means. In 
 modesty and discretion, that is.' 
 
 ' And I hope I'll not exceed either,' ex- 
 claimed Handsel, more warmly. 
 
 ' I canna think you will. I do not see, 
 James, that we can have any objection to 
 this course. We have friends enough 
 in Edinburgh who will take a care of 
 Handsel ' 
 
 ' I shall go first to London, Mr. Reid,' 
 she interposed. 
 
 • My lass, my lass !' 
 
 Even the good old minister succumbed 
 to this, and the debate immediately as- 
 sumed a more animated aspect. Every 
 manner of persuasion and entreaty was 
 brought to bear upon the infatuated
 
 HEAD AND TAIL. 201 
 
 maiden, with such solemnity of application 
 indeed that Handsel's patience was at last 
 exhausted, and she brought the interview 
 to an abrupt termination by withdrawing 
 from the field. 
 
 So angry had she grown that, for some 
 moments, instant flight seemed the only 
 outlet for her excited energies. She paced 
 to and fro beside the fern rick, planning 
 her random departure with impetuous 
 resentment, and a rebellious disregard for 
 the most ordinary precautions of 23ractical 
 experience. The sudden recollection of 
 her cousin Glen brought an abrupt check, 
 and in face of it she attained to a more 
 collected vein of reflection. Having pro- 
 mised her a shelter, immediate flight was 
 at any rate out of the question. 
 
 Now it chanced that Glen herself, re-
 
 202 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 posing in that chamber adjoining, had in- 
 evitably overheard the bulk of the con- 
 versation which had passed between Hand- 
 sel and the ministers^ and at this moment 
 she lay there contemplating its issues. 
 That her cousin Handsel, always hitherto 
 cited as the pink of propriety, should 
 propose an independent pilgrimage to the 
 great metropolis, offered fascinations in 
 itself to one of any enterprising propen- 
 sities ; but what perhaps appealed with a 
 still more irresistible potency was the 
 cogent reflections of her cousin upon the 
 topic of female independence in general. 
 Of late even Glen herself had begun 
 strongly to suspect that this same inde- 
 pendence was a matter of much moment, 
 but, in her inexperience, she had with 
 over-sensitive scrupulosity hidden such as
 
 HEAD AND TAIL. 203^ 
 
 effrontery in the recesses of lier own 
 bosom, regarding it as a peculiarly petted 
 bit of sinfulness, only to be gloated over 
 in the darkest of secrecy. Here, upon 
 fleeing in dire humiliation to the recesses 
 of orthodoxy, was she to find herself sud- 
 denly supported in this beloved heresy by 
 no less an authority than Handsel herself, 
 and that in the teeth of two ordained 
 pillars of the kirk. Extremes, we know, 
 meet, and, moreover, to the indiscriminat- 
 ing sense, very frequently appear identical. 
 If Glen fell again to sleep with a recovered 
 even a redoubled consciousness of dignity, 
 it were scarce matter for surprise. 
 
 When she next awoke it was dusk, but 
 she could see Handsel move beside the 
 w^indow\ 
 
 'Has Mr. Shiel been here?' was her
 
 204 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 scarce voluntary ejaculation; but instantly 
 correcting herself, admitted she had been 
 dreaming. 
 
 ' Well, do you feel better, lass ?' 
 
 ' Oh, ay, I'm fine,' came in brisk re- 
 sponse. ' Has Mr. Reid gone ?' 
 
 ' Mr. Reid — what do you know about 
 him?' 
 
 ' I woke up once and heard them talk- 
 ing ; and you, Han'sel,' added Glen, with 
 insinuating archness. ' I didn't want to, 
 but really I couldn't help it. But never 
 mind, old girl, you gave it 'em fine. I 
 could have died with laughing.' 
 
 ' H'm. Are you going to get up 
 again?' 
 
 ' Now you're not cross, are you, because 
 I'll stay here if you are.' 
 
 ' You'd better get up. We shall have
 
 HEAD AND TAIL. 205 
 
 time to talk of other things in a day or 
 two.' 
 
 Glen leapt from bed, and intercepted 
 her cousin before she had reached the 
 doorway. 
 
 ' You shan't go until you promise to be 
 friends. How could I help hearing? I 
 didn't listen at the door. And what does 
 it matter ? You only said what I have 
 always thought myself. Why should they 
 have everything to themselves ?' 
 
 Handsel made no direct resjDonse. 
 
 ' Get dressed,' was all she said to it. 
 
 ' Tell me what's the matter with you.' 
 
 ' Ha'd away, you little gowk. James 
 is in the other room, ye ken.' 
 
 ' I believe you're jealous,' snapped Glen,, 
 and the other departed. 
 
 The evening was not a particularly easy
 
 206 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 one. James's efforts to be frankly agree- 
 able to his two companions, and they to 
 each other, were but moderately successful, 
 so that ultimately each relapsed into some 
 individual kind of employment. Glen 
 withdrew herself early. 
 
 When Handsel came in to her she was 
 still awake, so that when they were side 
 by side, conversation was naturally re- 
 sumed. Perhaps darkness was deemed 
 desirable for the to|)ic. 
 
 ' And, pray, why do you believe I'm 
 jealous T asked Handsel, sujoerciliously. 
 
 ' I believe you are.' 
 
 ' Of whom, hinny ?' 
 
 ' How can I say ? Mr. Shell, likely.' 
 
 It flashed across Handsel that this name 
 had been before on her visitor's lips, and 
 she became curious.
 
 HEAD AND TAIL. 207 
 
 ' What on earth has Mr. Shell got to do 
 with the matter?' 
 
 ' I ken nicely that he is a friend of 
 yours, lass.' 
 
 ' Certainly he is. Is he of yours ?' 
 
 ' But for him I'd have no been here.' 
 
 Handsel was silent for an instant, then 
 exploded. 
 
 ' I dinna believe you. Go to sleep and 
 don't make a little fool of yourself 
 
 There was an inarticulate grumble, and 
 they talked no more. 
 
 For all that, it is scarcely to be sup- 
 posed that they immediately slept. Hand- 
 sel, with the glowing enthusiasm of those 
 printed utterances of Shiel's still about 
 her, was thunderstruck by the malicious 
 audacity of her cousin. A senseless little 
 butterfly she had not unnaturally con-
 
 208 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 sidered her, and had, no doubt, greatly 
 on that account been so ready to shield 
 her from the direst penalty of her heed- 
 less frivolities; but that the gay flutterings 
 could so eiFectually hide the venom of the 
 wasp, Handsel had never before for an 
 instant suspected ; and that it was other 
 than venom, no faintest instinct of hers 
 could so much as hint to her. 
 
 With whatever innocence Glen had 
 originally made her remark, no doubt her 
 silent acquiescence in the impression 
 which she had unintentionally imjoarted, 
 and which could not but be obvious enough 
 even to her limited capacity, justified 
 Handsel's reprobation. When she first 
 perceived it, Glen was frightened, and 
 her tongue trembled with the exjDlanatory 
 confession, but some subtle influence re-
 
 HEAD AND TAIL. 20^ 
 
 strained her, and she could not get it 
 uttered. Each moment thereafter con- 
 firmed her silence. 
 
 Shields behaviour had indeed genuinely 
 touched her, and ever since their en- 
 counter on Magdalen Bridge, she had 
 harboured and cluno^ to the imao^e of him 
 with a sense of peculiar property. He 
 had crossed her path at a critical moment, 
 and saved her from what, despite her 
 frivolity, might have been serious enough. 
 This had instinctively aroused in her the 
 sense of possession, and in a nature such 
 as hers the combative resentment of 
 sharing it with anyone. Handsel, she 
 was fully aware, was in this connection 
 a subject to be feared, so that, after all, 
 this unintentional stroke of villainy would 
 do unexpected service. 
 
 VOL. I. p
 
 210 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 But Glen had miscalculated her cousin's 
 character. It happened, in the course of 
 the next morning — the two girls had 
 scarce exchanged a word in the interval, 
 — that unexpectedly they encountered. 
 Glen, as it seemed, was fleeing from the 
 house, and came upon Handsel by the 
 byre. The former was flushed before the 
 meeting, and those critical eyes did not 
 compose her. James, seeing the dilemma, 
 retreated in the opposite direction. 
 
 ' Come away here. Glen.' A little way 
 ofl* they stood. Handsel looked with 
 disconcerting directness into the pretty 
 face. ' How long do you want to stay 
 here?' 
 
 ' Only a week or two,' w^as the pouting 
 response. 
 
 ' Very good. I'm content to stay with
 
 HEAD AND TAIL. 211 
 
 you. We can put off the sale for a bit. 
 But — stay, Glen — you'll not stop here 
 with a lie on your lips. I dinna want 
 to ken any of your secrets, but this yae 
 thing you shall tell me. Did Mr. Shiel 
 Wanless bring you to this ?' 
 
 • Xo, he didn't.' 
 
 ' Then how dare you tell me that he 
 did ?' cried Handsel, indignantly. 
 
 ' I didn't mean that. But he did more 
 than he that did it would have done,' re- 
 torted Glen, in a flush of self-defence. 
 ' He took me to his own house, and gave 
 me his own bed, when I'd a mind to have 
 found one in the river. That's what he 
 did. He said that he thought none the 
 waur o' me for what I'd done, and he 
 made me promise that I'd come down here, 
 and he gave me money to come wi\ That's 
 
 ~-> 
 
 9
 
 212 A VAGABOND IN AETS. 
 
 what he did. Isn't it true that but for 
 him I'd no have been here? And he's 
 been kinder to me than anybody else in 
 the whole world, except — except your ain 
 dear self, Han'sel.' 
 
 And with this wholly unexpected turn 
 to her exclamation. Glen clasped her 
 cousin's neck and wept there.
 
 213 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 PHILOSOPHY AT ISSUE. 
 
 It was tlie day after the funeral that Shiel 
 was to reach Linnbrig, in accordance with 
 his letter to Mr. Pettipher, and a brief 
 note also which he had despatched to his 
 sister Ebba. He was wholly ignorant of 
 what was proceeding there, for the letter 
 sent to him did not arrive until after his 
 departure. He travelled therefore in the 
 state of aggressive enthusiasm to which he 
 had arrived since his brief return to 
 Oxford.
 
 214 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 Mr. Wanless chanced to take in tlie 
 letter Avhich Shiel had addressed to his 
 sister, and he went with it in person to 
 Ebba's room, where she was engaged with 
 brush and palette. She instantly saw the 
 letter in his hand, but looked away. Her 
 father glanced at her picture with the 
 careless good-humour of a parent towards 
 the handiwork of his offspring. 
 
 *Your patience is exemplary, Nabbs. 
 You will be an artist at last. What is it?' 
 
 ' A mere phantasy — the Erl-King,' said 
 the girl, getting up. 'A letter, father ?' 
 
 '• For you, from Shiel, apparently. It 
 can hardly be an answer.' 
 
 Ebba took the letter and tore it oj)en. 
 Mr. Wanless turned again to her picture, 
 as she hastily scanned the pages.
 
 PHILOSOPHY AT ISSUE. 215 
 
 ' He is corning back for a day or two 
 . . . and will be here this afternoon.' 
 
 ' H'm.' 
 
 'To talk with Mr. Pettipher is his 
 principal reason/ 
 
 ' Mr. Pettipher ... of course, he doesn't 
 know of this dreadful affair.' 
 
 Mr. Wanless turned slowly and left the 
 room. 
 
 The clergyman passed that morning 
 restlessly in his library, unable to read, 
 unable to devote sustained attention to 
 anything. A lingering hope had assailed 
 him that Shiel had recovered his reason, 
 and that Lord Purbeck's offer was ac- 
 cepted, so that the disappointment of the 
 letter affected him with whetted keenness. 
 That Shiel was to be lured into degrada-
 
 216 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 tion by the tempting munificence of their 
 wealthy acquaintance also occurred to 
 him, and, clergyman though he was, it 
 wrought in him a tremulous revolt. This 
 awakened a sense of the whole of his past 
 weakness in him, and it oppressed him 
 insufferably. Why had he deemed, or 
 rather, why had he by a too urgent per- 
 suasion been led to deem, a university 
 education so essential ? If he could have 
 given it, well ; as he could not, what could 
 such dishonourable gain possibly end in 
 but vexation and disillusionment? What, 
 indeed, had it done for himself? Im- 
 parted a sensibility to the highest refine- 
 ments of an intellectual existence, cer- 
 tainly, but with a prohibitive banishment 
 and wages inferior to those of many a 
 mechanic for the indulgence of it. Nay,
 
 PHILOSOPHY AT ISSUE. 217 
 
 was not this extraordinary development of 
 his son the direct outcome of the rotten- 
 ness of the system ? Educated honestly, 
 to such limit as the paternal possessions 
 would warrant, and the susceptible casuist 
 could not but suppose that he himself, 
 and after him his son, would have fallen 
 harmoniously into the ordinances of the 
 universe, if so far only as they might 
 be exemplified in sheep-herding on the 
 mountains. 
 
 In the afternoon Shiel appeared, walk- 
 ing in through the garden-gate as though 
 returning from shooting. The vicar was 
 on the grass at the time, so the two met 
 and shook hands formally. 
 
 * So Mr. Pettipher is dead,' said Shiel, 
 abruptly. 
 
 ' Never, Shiel !'
 
 218 A VAGABOND IN AKTS. 
 
 ' So they told me at the lodge, and the 
 blinds were down.' 
 
 ' You had not seen him, then?' 
 ' No,' said Shiel, ej^eing his father. 
 ' Had — had he made any proposal to 
 you?' 
 
 ' Not directly. I came to talk with him.' 
 ' His intention dies with him, no doubt.' 
 ' Undoubtedly.' And Shiel went in. 
 Ebba found her brother unusually lo- 
 quacious as she sat with him at the table ; 
 she having received his news in reflective 
 silence. Since the opportunity was dashed 
 from him, of course Shiel had become irre- 
 vocably convinced that it had offered the 
 only path possible to him for an existence. 
 Ebba was not so sure of it, and was evi- 
 dently intent upon impressing her con- 
 viction upon her brother.
 
 PHILOSOPHY AT ISSUE. 219 
 
 ' The customary sarcasm of fate,' said 
 Shiel, devouring his viands. 
 
 ' Was it a definite offer of journalistic 
 work ?' 
 
 ' Certainly not. I should hope he knew 
 his man better.' 
 
 ' But that must have been his object. 
 Was there anything more?' 
 
 ' I mio^ht throuo;h it have found utter- 
 ance for very much that I have to say.' 
 
 ' Did he offer you any money ?' 
 
 ' What on earth do you mean, Abb ?' 
 Her placid smile restrained his violence. 
 
 ' I should hardly have thought your 
 views sufficiently practical for contem- 
 porary journahsm.' 
 
 ' If you mean for the promotion of con- 
 temporary commercial abominations, they 
 are not practical,' roared the cataclyst.
 
 220 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 ' But I suppose there is something also 
 practical in the asseveration of the essential 
 truth of things.' 
 
 ' Possibly ; but we have voted such 
 essential truth purely a matter of specu- 
 lative opinion. In practical journalism 
 you will have to begin somewhat nearer 
 the surface, I fancy.' 
 
 ' That is as I please.' 
 
 ' Precisely, — as also your editors.' 
 
 For some time he ate and drank in 
 silence. 
 
 ' Father is anxious to speak with you 
 again of the rascal counters,' Ebba re- 
 marked presently. ' He used the ominous 
 words, " something definite." I thought 
 it as well to prepare you.' 
 
 'Very good : I am prepared.' 
 
 Ebba had, after strenuous mental debate,
 
 PHILOSOPHY AT ISSUE. 221 
 
 resolved not to tell him of the debt. That 
 her father would not she was now assured. 
 If the whole of the young lady's mind 
 were to be confessed, she did not entirely 
 find cause for regret in this action of her 
 brother's. Her extensive literary ambi- 
 tions on his behalf were lifelong, and it 
 would doubtless have been every bit as 
 painful to her to contemplate an average 
 commercial existence for him as ever it 
 Avas for Shiel himself; but a certain amount 
 of practical necessity she admitted, which 
 her brother did not. 
 
 'With anything definite ?' 
 
 ' Definite according to the gospel of 
 deo^radation, — no. I have found no reason 
 to modify my contention.' 
 
 ' But you beg the whole question of 
 mere existence. The fates seem to decree
 
 222 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 that in our universe at any rate the breath 
 shall be dependent upon, say a minimum 
 ten shillings weekly ; is there any subli- 
 mated method of acquiring these ?' 
 
 ' Have I to go again through the alpha- 
 bet with you? You know that I repu- 
 diate the responsibility of acquiring them. 
 When I am ruffian enough to impose an 
 existence upon anyone, tyrant enough to 
 flinof conscious hostao;es to a diabolical 
 fortune, I will meet my liabilities. Until 
 then I am not aware of any.' 
 
 ' You speak of Glen Aikenshaw,' suggest- 
 ed Ebba. 'What of her?' 
 
 ' I suppose you know now. Hasn't she 
 come ?' 
 
 ' I have not heard.' 
 
 ' Then you must go this afternoon to see. 
 The little criminal !'
 
 PHILOSOPHY AT ISSUE. 223 
 
 ' That, too, a case of hostages, I suj)- 
 pose.' 
 
 'The little idiot!' cried Shiel. 'She 
 ought to be thrashed; the other — shot. 
 Come, let us go. I'll walk with you.' 
 And he got up and threw his chair back. 
 
 They were soon on the track by the 
 burnside, tramping buoyantly between the 
 hills. The atmosphere, clear and cold, 
 dispelled for the nonce all speculative 
 topics. The very face of Shiel was changed. 
 The ruffle of intellectual contest which the 
 mere vicinity of human action inevitably 
 impressed on him, Avas stamped out to the 
 smoothness of the sky or water, and he 
 seemed but a part of the rugged freedom 
 of the scene around. In this locality he 
 could for a moment even divest himself of 
 his very consciousness, and identify him-
 
 224 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 self, as it were, with the inanimate buoy- 
 ancy of things. 
 
 At a linn beneath the steepest part of 
 the brae, he threw himself down and dis- 
 patched Ebba to the house alone. Very 
 soon, with his back in a crevice of the 
 rock, he was lulled by the constant plunge 
 of the burn into a poetic reverie. 
 
 That morning had witnessed the issue 
 between Glen and Handsel, not without 
 consequence to both the participators in it. 
 The mere encounter which occasioned it 
 had been immediately brought about by 
 the young minister James, unintention- 
 ally enough. His attitude to Glen in 
 times past had never been disguised ; but 
 if remembered by the young woman mainly 
 affected by it, no doubt it had been long 
 considered as wholly a thing of the past.
 
 PHILOSOPHY AT ISSUE. 225 
 
 When therefore she had been confronted, 
 under circumstances so perplexing, by 
 professed tenderness from her old lover, 
 she could only receive it by hurried and 
 shamefaced flight from his presence. He, 
 discomfited, had wandered away from the 
 house. 
 
 When Glen had sufficiently recovered 
 from her emotion she left Handsel and 
 went in. The latter watched her with a 
 mingled sense of tenderness and impatience 
 until she was hidden in the doorway, then 
 went about more work. But Handsel 
 could not easily dispose of the subject 
 which had been so forcibly thrust upon 
 her. The ludicrousness of connecting 
 Shiel Wanless with any of the tender 
 perceptions was obvious enough to her, 
 nevertheless such incongruous considera- 
 
 VOL. I. Q
 
 226 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 tion did engage her a good deal in the 
 course of the morning. 
 
 The impassioned talk with her cousin 
 had brought the -figure of Shiel very 
 vividly to the mind of Glen, and as she 
 sat brooding alone by the cottage-window 
 she felt a tremulous delight in contemplat- 
 ing it, and, as it were, sheltering herself 
 by its ample presence, to the defiance of 
 the orthodox world. How many men, and 
 young men, would have done all this for 
 her, and in such a manner as he had done ? 
 It is hardly strange if, in the ill-regulated 
 wandering of her feelings (for of intellect 
 she had surely not any,) Glen travelled 
 extraordinary and unjustifiable distances. 
 With a wholly disinterested philosophy 
 she was scarcely likely to have much 
 acquaintance.
 
 PHILOSOPHY AT ISSUE. 227 
 
 In the midst of her reflections she was 
 seized with a virtuous impulse, and she set 
 about some of the lighter household oc- 
 cupations. Despite her irritable exterior 
 to Handsel, she was, in her way, grateful 
 for the kindness which had been shown to 
 her, and was under the impression that 
 she was not willing to be exclusively a 
 burden. The exercise of broom and duster 
 seemed an earnest of her virtue, and she 
 soon struck the most excellent terms with 
 herself. She did her work thoroughly 
 enough, omitting none of the corners, 
 moving this or that that seemed necessary, 
 and gathering zeal as she proceeded. She 
 took down all the books from the dresser, 
 and dusting them one by one replaced 
 them. She even gave a glance at the 
 names of them, but with the majority in- 
 
 Q-2
 
 228 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 quired no further. One or two slie opened 
 and lingered a moment over the pages. 
 At the bottom of all was the number of 
 that American monthly w^hich Ebba had 
 left. Owing no doubt to its paper ex- 
 terior, Glen glanced also at this ; and 
 almost immediately her eye fell upon a 
 name on the back which sent an extra- 
 ordinary thrill through her system. 
 
 She looked around her in a singularly 
 guilty manner, and hastily flung down her 
 duster. When she had been to the door, 
 to assure herself of |)rivacy, she threw her- 
 self into a chair, and with flushed cheeks 
 and eyes aglow she began to devour Shiel's 
 article. A tous^h enouo;h morsel she found 
 it ; but as she proceeded, her small rosy 
 lips audibly articulating the periods, she 
 seemed to gather some thread, and a con-
 
 PHILOSOPHY AT ISSUE. 229 
 
 scions enthusiasm fired her. Some 
 sentences she could wholly appropriate, 
 and they alone struck the note of her read- 
 ing. It was enough indeed that the sub- 
 ject was woman and the freedom of her, 
 and that he was the champion of the sex. 
 What recked she that it was the very 
 antithesis of passion, — nay, how much 
 could she understand of this negation ? 
 That a man could write enthusiastically of 
 woman could mean but one thing surely, 
 however paradoxical his expression ; and 
 this one thing she naturally appropriated to 
 herself. What if Handsel had got all her 
 impulse from this same fountain ? She 
 should not have him, — no, she should not, 
 was the inaudible shriek of Glen's nature 
 as she shut up the pages, and hid them 
 away beneath the pile from which she had
 
 230 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 unearthed them. But oh, it was hard to 
 think tenderly of Handsel. 
 
 The circumstances of the trio were 
 enous^h warrant for a marked reticence 
 towards one another, and except at the 
 inevitable meal they kept parted. In the 
 course of the afternoon Glen was startled 
 by the appearance of Ebba, and succeeded 
 in making good her escape, without suffer- 
 ing a dreaded encounter. 
 
 Shiel still sat dreaming beside the water ; 
 the noise of the fall effectually restricting 
 his world, had he needed it. Between him 
 and the edge of the stream but a few feet 
 of grassy bank intervened, and it was upon 
 this space that, without the slighest warn- 
 ing, the figure of a girl was presented to 
 his gaze. Inevitably for an instant he
 
 PHILOSOPHY AT ISSUE. 231 
 
 mistrusted his vision and leapt up. Glen 
 feigned surprise at the encounter and 
 turned to disappear. But an imperious 
 summons recalled her. 
 
 'You found things hardly as we ex- 
 pected. What are you going to do ?' 
 said he, after disposing of his astonish- 
 ment. 
 
 'We are going to stay at Windylaw/ 
 was her reply, as she coloured deeply. 
 
 ' It is more than you could have ex- 
 pected. Was I right or not in sending 
 you here ?' 
 
 ' Right, of course.' 
 
 Shiel even returned the smile which she 
 archly gave to him. 
 
 ' Handsel is not an ordinary individual,' 
 he went on, taking out a pocket-book as
 
 232 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 he spoke. ' I might as well give you this, 
 Glen. You know from whom I have got 
 it for you, and what it means.' 
 
 He held forth some bank-notes, at sight 
 of which the girl's eyes opened wide in 
 amazement. She made no movement to 
 take them, and the paper rustled in the 
 breeze. 
 
 'Would you rather that I gave them to 
 Handsel?' 
 
 ' I can't take them — sir; not from you.' 
 
 ' Do you think they are out of my own 
 pocket?' he asked, derisively. 
 
 ' They can come from nowhere else.' 
 
 ' I tell you that I got them from Petti- 
 pher. Just put them in your pocket, and 
 see that Handsel is put to no expense.' 
 
 Glen could scarcely trust her senses as 
 she closed her fingers upon this amount
 
 PHILOSOPHY AT ISSUE. 233 
 
 of wealth, and it was no doubt mainly as 
 a result of this that she allowed them to 
 close also upon the hand at which she had 
 received it. Shiel was so taken aback by 
 her action that he did not at once resent 
 it. 
 
 ' You have been over-good to me, Mr. 
 Shiel,' exclaimed Glen, fixing her pathetic 
 blue eyes upon him eagerly, and still 
 holding up his hand before her. ' You 
 canna think me worth a' your trouble.' 
 
 Did Glen know how prettily this ver- 
 nacular sounded on her lips ? Rather 
 let us suppose it mere emotional instinct. 
 
 ' I don't altogether,' said Shiel, calmly, 
 as he extricated that hand of his. 
 
 'Then why have you done it?' she re- 
 turned, archly, without lowering her eyes 
 from him.
 
 234 A VAGABOND IN AETS. 
 
 ' I should clo the same for your cat^ 
 Glen; 
 
 Short of propounding a transcendent 
 theory, what could he say ? 
 
 She turned to beat a mock retreat, and 
 Shiel stepped after her ; when just on the 
 path before them appeared a man in black, 
 with an unrolled umbrella and a black, 
 shiny bag in his hand. It was, of course, 
 Mr. James Gilholme. 
 
 Glen ran on, but Shiel greeted the young 
 minister with cordiality. The latter ap- 
 peared anything but at ease. 
 
 ' Let me say good-bye, Glen,' he cried 
 in despair, seeming to disregard Shiel's 
 urbanity. 
 
 ' Oh, I thought I said good-bye.' 
 
 Wanless drew off. 
 
 'You need not avoid me,' said the young
 
 PHILOSOPHY AT ISSUE. 235 
 
 man, in a tone of mingled injury and 
 resignation. ' I shall not annoy you 
 long.' 
 
 ' Oh, James, how can you think ' 
 
 But his look and finger checked her. 
 
 ' Anything to me. Glen, but don't tell a 
 falsehood. Do you think a heart can be 
 blind, lass ? T know my words have an- 
 noyed you. T hoped that things might 
 have changed now. In parting now I 
 must say for the last time ' 
 
 ' Yes, I know, James. I wish you 
 didn't.' 
 
 ' I must — always,' was his impulsive 
 reply. ' But good-bye, and God keep 
 you.' 
 
 He seized her hand for an instant, and 
 fled. Shiel would have spoken with him, 
 but for the moment poor James was but
 
 236 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 human, and he hurried on his way. Glen 
 also was permitted to make her escape, 
 and Shiel replaced his back in the crevice. 
 
 That night Mr. Wanless had his two 
 children into the library to him ; an ideal 
 room, by the way, within strictly modest 
 proportions. Although a notable man in 
 various ways, the Reverend Edgar Rob- 
 ertson Wanless had not succeeded in es- 
 tablishing for himself any general fame 
 beyond the confines of his rugged pas- 
 torate. Doubtless he had at one time had 
 ambition — evidenced it might be by a cer- 
 tain pessimistic turn of contemplation 
 latterly apparent, as well as by some en- 
 tries in the British Museum catalogue, 
 with which his children were perfectly 
 familiar, although no single reference to
 
 PHILOSOPHY AT ISSUE. 237 
 
 them had ever been made in their hearing 
 by the author of them. Under the letter 
 W you will find this : 
 
 ' Wanless, E. R., M.A. — " The Harp of tEoIus, and other 
 Poems." 4to. Published for 
 the Author. 1849. 
 
 *' The Curlew's Cry, and other 
 
 Poems." 12mo. Published for 
 the Author. 1851. 
 
 " A Word for Outlaws : being a 
 
 collection of Country Essays." 
 Svo. London. Gammon and 
 Spinach. I860.' 
 
 If indeed it were so, the clergyman's 
 aspirations must have long since con- 
 tracted. He composed his own sermons, 
 and attended visitation, but was not 
 known now to assail the active Avorld in 
 any other direction. As already said, 
 with neither of his children had he ever, 
 even in jest, made direct reference to any 
 of his past efforts ; especially singular^
 
 238 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 perhaps, in face of their own well-known 
 persistent endeavour in imaginative pro- 
 duction. He had never encouraged or 
 restrained them in this or in anything 
 else, with the one exception' of their 
 strictly academical studies. There, we 
 know, he had guided with care and effi- 
 ciency. For years, when he had talked to 
 them, he had spoken as to equals, and 
 never slighted their opinion. If, when 
 they were younger, any of his remarks 
 had outstripped their juvenile and inex- 
 perienced comprehension, he was never 
 interrogated for elucidation. They would 
 simply withdraw on a favourable occasion, 
 and drub it out by sheer force of their 
 joint native intelligence. 
 
 That now, in more mature life, they
 
 PHILOSOPHY AT ISSUE. 239 
 
 were reserved and uncommunicative to- 
 wards him, caused the gentleman neither 
 surprise nor regret. Judging by apparent 
 action, it did not engage his thoughts, he 
 being to all appearances as independent 
 of the ordinary parental needs and ambi- 
 tions as of the social and intellectual. 
 Upon this one crisis in his son's existence 
 had he, somewhat to their surprise, ener- 
 getically joined issue, and of course they 
 were both sufficiently aware of the pur- 
 pose of this requested interview. 
 
 It was perhaps unfortunate that neither 
 father nor son indulged in the mollifica- 
 tions of tobacco-fumes. The mere trivial 
 diversion for the fingers would have been 
 of use to them on such an occasion as the 
 present, and the fragrant haze in the cham-
 
 240 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 ber would have imparted a more human 
 halo to the situation, and have dimmed 
 the tragic encounter to the superlatively 
 sensitive outlook of the reflecting Ebba. 
 
 ' 1 am anxious to know your deter- 
 minations for the future, Shiel,' Mr. Wan- 
 less lost no time in announcing, when the 
 three were enclosed within the impressive 
 walls of volumes. 
 
 ' I have none, father,' was the brief 
 reply. 
 
 ' Then I think it behoves us to formu- 
 late them without delay. I have proved 
 that mere transcedental speculation does 
 not feed a man. As your experience must 
 confirm mine now or later, how do you 
 propose to be fed?' 
 
 ' I have incurred no liability to the con- 
 sideration as yet,' said Shiel.
 
 PHILOSOPHY AT ISSUE. 241 
 
 ' I should then recommend a climb to 
 Tarn Tallon's Crag to-morrow morning, 
 fasting, as the most conclusive corrective 
 to such incomprehensible philosophy, on 
 the supposition that my table is not avail- 
 able thereafter.' 
 
 ' That could in no way affect my ar- 
 gument ' 
 
 ' But it might your practice.' 
 
 ' We have never bandied words, father, 
 and I don't wish to begin now. I con- 
 firm in toto what I told you a few days 
 ago.' 
 
 ' But don't you know, man, that there 
 is such a mortal consummation as 
 starving?' 
 
 ' I do, and I can face it with equanimity. 
 The responsibility will not be mine. I 
 resolutely refuse to take any place in a 
 
 VOL. I. R
 
 242 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 competitive existence, and at the present 
 moment no definite remunerative existence 
 is possible otherwise.' 
 
 ' Is the mere competition, then, your 
 bugbear ?' 
 
 ' It is sufficient to take as one. The 
 breath of it makes life a sordid and 
 grovelling fatuity, and I will not have my 
 life so.' 
 
 ' Then is all your preliminary cultiva- 
 tion of life to be thrown away utterly?' 
 
 ' By no means. How can it ever be 
 thrown aw^ay ? Is its return to be found 
 in the otoss accumulation of debasing 
 lucre ? Do you consider it as so much 
 material shop-keeping capital which is to 
 justify itself by a dividend of cent per 
 cent ? That is not how I regard it. Is 
 not the mere individual intellect trained
 
 PHILOSOPHY AT ISSUE. 243 
 
 and intensified, its sufficient justification?' 
 ' In an ethereal universe undoubtedly, 
 but I have not found this of ours in any 
 sense ethereal. You have a stomach.' 
 
 Shiel did not answer. The vicar was 
 agitated, trembling extremely. 
 
 ' It is your duty, Shiel,' he continued, 
 ' to select some employment which will 
 honourably sustain you, and my duty to 
 do what is in my power to enforce it. 
 You cannot think that I lay any claims 
 upon you, so you cannot possibly misun- 
 derstand my action. I may be mistaken, 
 — all human intellect is terribly liable to 
 misconception, — but it appears to me, with 
 overwhelming vehemence, that I should be 
 behaving criminally towards you if I did 
 not take action now, whilst the path is 
 still widely open before you ; whilst every- 
 
 R 2
 
 244 A VAGABOND IN AKTS. 
 
 thing in life is possible to you. Will you 
 not modify your resolution? Will you 
 not spare me the violence which is loath- 
 some and unnatural to me?' 
 
 ' My decision is unalterable,' replied 
 Shiel, coldly. 
 
 ' Then I have no escape. At any cost 
 to either of us I must take the step. You 
 must know, Shiel,' proceeded the clergy- 
 man, solemnly, and with tremulous 
 effort, ' that after the hour of noon to- 
 morrow my house and my resources are 
 no longer at your service, until you have 
 submitted to some form of regular and 
 life-sustaining occupation.' 
 
 'Be it so,' said Shiel, quietly, and an 
 impressive silence pervaded the room 
 after the utterance of such a critical 
 sentence.
 
 PHILOSOPHY AT ISSUE. 245 
 
 Ebba did not see fit to interpose a 
 syllable. The result was loojical, and this 
 at any rate was no moment for interfer- 
 ence. Shiel she could address at any 
 time, and she determined to offer no im- 
 pertinence to her father. His emotion 
 was obvious, and, seeing his life-long re- 
 ticence towards them, this in itself im- 
 pressed her deeply. In view of his phi- 
 losophy, his firmness was wholly kind. 
 Such a nature as Shiel's could not be other- 
 wise dealt with. 
 
 It was Shiel himself that first broke the 
 silence. 
 
 ' Then for the present, father, good-bye,' 
 he said, and approached with hand ex- 
 tended. 
 
 His sister's eyes shot a single glance of 
 approval of the delicate ' for the present.'
 
 246 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 ' For the present, Shiel, good-bye.' 
 
 They clasped hands and the son went 
 out. Ebba was about to follow, but her 
 father touched her, and she turned. 
 
 'Ebba, you understand me?' he said, 
 almost in a whisper. 
 
 ' Thoroughly, father,' and, singular dis- 
 play beyond the formal parting at night- 
 time, she kissed him. 
 
 As she escaped from the room, Mr. 
 Wanless sat down in his arm-chair. 
 
 The past had not prepared Shiel for 
 such a consummation, nevertheless he 
 could receive it with equanimity. 
 
 ' I don't see that it materially affects 
 me, Abb,' he was saying some time later, 
 in response to the solicitude of his sister, 
 ' It is more than six months since I had to
 
 PHILOSOPHY AT ISSUE. 247 
 
 avail myself of my father's resources, and 
 my appetite is not exceptional.' 
 
 ' But you will continue to write, you 
 mean.' 
 
 ' It is part of my breathing. If my ex- 
 halations are of interest to anybody they 
 will pay me for them; if not, they can 
 cease. But I shall certainly not blow a 
 tin whistle to sustain them.' 
 
 ' But Avhy do you confine yourself to 
 metaphysics?' 
 
 ' I shall write what I am compelled to, 
 and none other.' 
 
 And the rest of the night Shiel passed 
 alone.
 
 248 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE FOLLOWING PAGE. 
 
 Few, except tlie handful of the elect to 
 whom such reprobation pertains not, for- 
 get the youthful delight of discovering an 
 unexpectedly accredited cap for a bit of 
 coveted moral abandonment, and by which 
 the latter was confidently advanced to the 
 dignity of principle in the eyes of the tim- 
 orous conscience. This gratifying experience 
 was frankly confessed by Miss Glen Aik- 
 enshaw during the first days of her sojourn
 
 THE FOLLOWING PAGE. 249 
 
 in that upland seclusion ; the result, as 
 we know, of her cousin Handsel and Mr. 
 Shiel Wanless's attainments in philosophy, 
 which had been so unintentionally dis- 
 closed to her. Swiftly, however, Glen's 
 complacency had been interrupted, by no 
 voluntary retrogression on her own part, 
 but by an acute bodily visitation which 
 threatened to put a term to her experience 
 of philosophy and practice altogether. 
 
 Although it was a day or two in deve- 
 loping, the doctor had no difficulty in 
 attributing the unlooked-for illness to the 
 unfavourable conditions of the girl's jour- 
 ney thither. In a delicate state of the 
 system, wet and fatigue had laid intem- 
 perate hands upon her, and had flung her 
 life for a day or two into the balance. 
 However, she had recovered, and nature
 
 250 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 had been content Avith the smaller sacri- 
 fice. Glen therefore j)roceeded duly 
 towards convalescence. 
 
 She soon recaptured her tag of philo- 
 sophy which had proved such a genuine 
 acquisition to her, and she promptly began 
 to mould life upon it. In no spirit now 
 of abashed secrecy, moreover, but with 
 reference solely to the wider, more liberal 
 persuasion. She laughed and sang exu- 
 berantly, with her eyes bent only to some 
 glittering horizon where the frowns and 
 irksomenesses of an idle convention had 
 no existence. This gave material aid to 
 Glen's brisk recovery. 
 
 During the long silent hours of nursing, 
 loyally and tenderly executed. Handsel 
 too had opportunity for reflection. Had 
 not the name of Shiel, through at least the
 
 THE FOLLOWING PAGE, 251 
 
 critical stages of the illness, been con- 
 stantly thrust upon her, she must inevi- 
 tably have found it very persistently in 
 her meditations. Ever since her arrival, 
 even in unfevered moments. Glen had 
 made unhesitating use of it, not scrupling 
 at ao'orressive innuendo when her cousin 
 
 no 
 
 could by any possibility be embraced by 
 it. Calm, even coldly judicial, as Handsel 
 could be in such contact, the reference 
 had considerably amused her. She too 
 had read Shiel's lucubrations, and had 
 moreover enjoyed a lifelong intimacy with 
 him, but her deductions differed materially 
 from those of her companion. Upon them, 
 however, she had assumed an unprece- 
 dented reticence, which all Glen's efforts 
 could not succeed in breaking, so that at 
 length she too acquiesced in it.
 
 252 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 The month of May was rapidly advanc- 
 ing, and everything prompted Handsel to 
 the evacuation of her father's sheep-farm ; 
 but until the invalid was securely strength- 
 ened, she did not permit herself any 
 reference to the decisive movement. Glen 
 was allowed to repose in luxurious idle- 
 ness through all the sunshine of those 
 lengthening days, lulled in delicious reverie 
 by the unbroken silences of the surround- 
 ing hills, and regaining the incongruous 
 thread of her restless existence from all 
 the divine sources which seemed the very 
 negation of it. For her did the morning 
 sun flatter those round green mountain- 
 tops with sovereign eye, and summon into 
 sparkling life the clouds which had brood- 
 ed through the night watches in vague 
 uncertainty about them. For her did the
 
 THE FOLLOWING PAGE. 253 
 
 stately heron arouse himself in the sum- 
 mits of the silent firs and sail in airy 
 majesty over the Hawk Knowe to his 
 breakfast in the o^ilded waters of the burn. 
 For her, too, did the curlew and the plover 
 call in the still noonday, when the moun- 
 tain grass was silent and motionless in the 
 sun, thro^Ying every blade its shadow, and 
 all aspangle with the stars of tormentil 
 and daisy. And for her again did the 
 golden light, crimsoning near the summit, 
 creep up the precipitous slope, when the 
 babbling water held all the valley in the 
 evening quietude. Everything ministered 
 to her, and she condescendingly trifled 
 with them, like a royal child playing 
 chuck-farthing with rubies and pearls and 
 emeralds. 
 
 There had been naturally much talk
 
 254 A VAGABOND IN AKTS. 
 
 between Handsel and the vicarage as to 
 the invalid's future, but it was not until 
 the girl herself had provoked some charac- 
 teristic altercation that the subject was 
 broached to her. It was one afternoon 
 when Handsel returned from the fold, and 
 found her cousin eating dainty fruit sent 
 from the vicarage for her. 
 
 ' Now, Glen, we'd better understand it 
 all,' Handsel had said at a favourable op- 
 portunity. ' You must see that Avhen you 
 are strong enough you will have to do 
 something for your living.' 
 
 ' Certainly I will do something for my 
 livinof but I'll do what I like to do ' was 
 the energetic response. 
 
 ' By all means, hinny, and w^hat will it 
 be?' 
 
 ' I'll see. What are you going to do ?'
 
 THE FOLLOWING PAGE. 255 
 
 ' I clinna ken yet.' 
 
 ' Just enjoy yourself in London, I 
 suppose.' 
 
 Handsel made no response to this, 
 having proved it unarguable. 
 
 ' Why can't I go with you to London 
 and o:et somethino^ to do there ?' 
 
 It wouldna do. Glen.' 
 
 
 It would do well enough. I know a 
 girl that got some singing there, and she 
 has now four pounds a week for it. She's 
 wanted me to q-q. I can sin": far better 
 than she can ; she always said so herself.' 
 
 Handsel was amazed, then horror- 
 stricken, despite the freedom of her own 
 ideas. She turned round to her cousin, 
 took both her hands into her own, and 
 gazed into her eyes. 
 
 ' Glen, my little lass, what are you
 
 256 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 thinking about ? You must never get to 
 that ; promise me that, dearie.' 
 
 ' What for, Handsel?' asked the other, 
 with glistening eyes, half afraid of the 
 unwonted solemnity. 
 
 ' That life is no for you ; you're not 
 strong enough ; you're too bonnie.' 
 
 ' You want to gang one gate yourself, 
 Handsel, and send other folks another,' 
 pouted Glen. 
 
 ' Think so if you will. I think every- 
 body should gang the gate they're fit for.' 
 
 ' It's what I'm fit for. It's all that I 
 shall do.' 
 
 She tore her hands from her cousin's 
 kind enclosure, and let her turn away 
 without wishing to recall the touch. 
 
 Handsel said no more, and it was when 
 she returned home to dinner the following
 
 THE FOLLOWING PAGE. 257 
 
 day that she found this scrawl awaiting 
 her : 
 
 ' Thank you for what you've done for 
 me, but as we cannot agree I have just 
 gone, Handsel. Now dinna fash about 
 me, for I've got friends. — Glen.' 
 
 It was not difficult to discern the 
 tremulous excitement under which the 
 words had been written. Handsel noted 
 it, and put the paper in her pocket. Per- 
 haps it did not wholly astonish her ; she 
 knew that she could have done no more, 
 so instantly found a philosophical ac- 
 quiescence. 
 
 Glen's unrest had in reality been 
 brought to a climax by the absence of 
 Shiel. She had awakened from her fever 
 with her infatuation confirmed, and it had 
 come as a wholly disconcerting element 
 
 VOL. I. s
 
 258 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 in her calculation to find that Shiel had 
 gone, and was not likely to spend much 
 of his time henceforth at Linnbrig. With- 
 out much reason, certainly, she had con- 
 jectured otherwise. Her acquaintance 
 with the vicarage maid had rendered the 
 acquisition of his address a simple matter, 
 but she had made no immediate use of 
 it. Indeed, beyond definitely consohdat- 
 ing certain reflections of her own, the 
 discovery of Shiel's whereabouts had done 
 little but aggravate the suspicion with 
 which she viewed Handsel's movements. 
 Her cousin's behaviour was, of course, 
 invariably construed by the flickering 
 rushlight of the observer's own attenuated 
 ethics. Shiel was in London ; Handsel 
 evinced an extraordinary opposition to 
 her (Glen's) going there, whilst she her-
 
 THE FOLLOWING PAGE. 259 
 
 self had openly confessed her inclination 
 thitherwards. Was not the inference 
 irresistible? Xo wonder the wily Hand- 
 sel was so anxious to bind down a 
 dangerous rival to some distant exclusive 
 employment. But Glen was not the one 
 to be duped. 
 
 With the above consummation, Handsel 
 was soon able to bring her OAvn affairs to 
 a conclusion, and she communicated her 
 intentions to the trusty Ebba. Xow 
 these chanced to agree very favourably 
 with certain schemes of the young lady's 
 own, matured about the same time. 
 
 Ebba had observed a marked change in 
 her father's health and habits since the 
 disagreement with his son. He had de- 
 clined to discuss the matter, so that his 
 daughter was left to obvious inference 
 
 s 2
 
 260 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 and conjecture as to the cause of it. 
 From her knowledge of her father, how- 
 ever, she attributed the major part of his 
 disquietude to the pecuniary, rather than 
 to the sentimental, aspect of the matter; 
 and upon this perception she accordingly 
 acted. She resolved to grapple very 
 seriously with that incubus of a thousand 
 pounds. With no great knowledge of the 
 world, Ebba was nevertheless well aware 
 that many artists had eked out an initial 
 subsistence by doing publishers' illus- 
 trations ; and as she knew perfectly well 
 that she herself could draAv respectably, 
 it seemed to her that only some definite 
 effort was required to enable her, by this 
 unambitious means, to aiFord material as- 
 sistance to her father in his determination 
 to extinguish the debt. From this a
 
 THE FOLLOWING PAGE. 261 
 
 resolve to put her ideas to a practical 
 test was at no great distance, and accord- 
 ingly she one day indirectly broached the 
 subject to her father. 
 
 ' Will you come with me to London, 
 father?' she had said to him, abruptly. 
 'The change is needful for you.' 
 
 ' Change — for me. Nonsense, Abb, I 
 want no change. That is only a youthful 
 craze.' 
 
 ' I should like you to.' 
 
 ' Impossible. I — I can't leave the 
 parish,' halting over the consciously lame 
 excuse. ' But that shall not interfere with 
 your own wishes. You go, by all means 
 ... I see there are some good pictures 
 this year.' 
 
 There was a certain alacrity about the 
 vicar's permission which surprised Ebba.
 
 262 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 In rejecting her further persuasion, he 
 even referred to the known enterprise of 
 Handsel, and positively suggested their 
 going together. But, did he not object 
 on general principles to two girls taking 
 such a journey unaccompanied ? With 
 ordinary prudence, not at all : some girls 
 could not sit in their own doorway in 
 safety. Mr. Wanless even relaxed so far 
 as to talk of the girl's tactics, nay deport- 
 ment in the metropolis : suggested that 
 Handsel should spend at the vicarage the 
 night preceding the departure. 
 
 Naturally Ebba did not know that for 
 two whole days previously the bulk of 
 her father's taciturnity had been devoted 
 to the evolution of some plausible plan 
 for securing the temporary absence of his
 
 THE FOLLOWING PAGE. 26B 
 
 daughter. The young lady's lax attitude 
 with regard to the debt which he had felt 
 obliged to disclose to her, had inevitably 
 imposed a rigid reticence upon him for 
 the future, and that positive correspond- 
 ence had taken place concerning it, he 
 did not think it necessary to mention. 
 
 In examining his father's papers, Cor- 
 nelius Pettipher had inevitably discovered 
 a document which aroused in him the 
 intensest interest. It was a policy of 
 assurance on the life of the Reverend 
 Edgar R. Wanless for a thousand pounds, 
 and to it was pinned a note of hand, ac- 
 knowledging an advance of the same amount 
 to the gentleman in question. It ought 
 to be mentioned, in justice to the deceased 
 gentleman's generosity, that this formality
 
 264 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 was Mr. Wanless's sole doing ; the legal 
 deposit of security having apparently 
 satisfied certain honourable scruples in 
 the sensitive vicar's mind with regard to 
 gratuitous benevolences. Cornelius pon- 
 dered the matter for some time, and the 
 outcome of his meditations was a polite 
 note to the clergyman. From Oxford 
 one Sunday morning this missive was 
 despatched : 
 
 ' Dear Sir, 
 
 ' In investigating the affairs of 
 the late Mr. Pettipher, I find that a policy 
 of assurance upon your life has been de- 
 posited with him as security for the sum 
 of a thousand pounds. As I am anxious 
 to wind up these affairs as soon as pos-
 
 THE FOLLOWING PAGE. 265 
 
 sible, I shall be glad if you can make it 
 convenient to repay the sum in the course 
 of the next month. 
 
 ' Yours truly, 
 
 ' Cornelius Pettipher.' 
 
 What the real effect of this brief com- 
 munication might be upon the inmates of 
 Linnbrio; Yicaraoe, the writer had scarce 
 means of determining. All he knew was, 
 that there came as soon as post could 
 speed it to him from that remote locality 
 a reply, in length briefer even than his 
 own, in tone fully as laconical. The vicar's 
 quill wrote this : 
 
 'Sir, 
 
 ' It is as you have specified. The
 
 266 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 sum shall be transmitted to you in the 
 course of a week or two. 
 
 ' Yours obediently, 
 
 ' Edgar R. Wanless.' 
 
 This surprised Pettipher, and his sur- 
 prise was to be further intensified when, 
 within three weeks from the date of his 
 application, he received from the clergy- 
 man a draft for a thousand pounds, and 
 something over for such interest as was 
 outstanding, with a request for the return 
 of documents to which reference had been 
 made. Of this communication Mr. Wan- 
 less spoke to nobody, but it was on his 
 mind when Ebba broached her plans to 
 him. 
 
 Inevitable enthusiasm in this young
 
 THE FOLLOWING PAGE. 267 
 
 lady resulted from the prospect before 
 her, and she managed to impart a consider- 
 able measure of it to the companion of her 
 journey. The one night's sojourn under 
 the roof of Mr. Wanless exercised a 
 powerful effect upon Handsel's imagin- 
 ation. It was, and she felt it to be, the 
 beginning of a wholly new phase in her 
 existence ; one which had been long re- 
 garded in a vague and speculative way, 
 but one which, if it had never been at- 
 tained, would have provoked no vilification 
 of adverse facts. Distinctly unconven- 
 tional as Handsel was, even upon the 
 plane of her own unsophisticated sta- 
 tion, she was so far a formalist as to be 
 in unconscious subjection to the self- 
 annihilating instinct of a primitive civil-
 
 268 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 ization. Individual im23ulse was no law 
 to her, save as it was trained and modified 
 by numberless instinctive pieties, which 
 used to be thought inherent in the human 
 constitution, but which we have since 
 more fully known to be but the veneer of 
 ignorance or amiable fatuity. 
 
 Handsel was permitted to pass that 
 evening in unqualified intimacy, if also for 
 the most part luxurious silence, in the 
 library with the clergyman and his 
 daughter. Of course the room was familiar 
 enough to her under its general aspect ; 
 but between the stately composure of 
 casual encounter, and the unbending 
 warmth of social familiarity, there is a 
 radical distinction. As is more common 
 than superficially suspected, despite this 
 girl's primitive career the whole bent of
 
 THE FOLLOWING PAGE. 269 
 
 her mind was to a certain degree, and in 
 the widest of senses, literary. Her coarse 
 work had been unquestioningly acquiesced 
 in, but it had never been to her merely 
 material. She had beheld herself by 
 the light of a strong native intelligence^ 
 and from material such as this, mere 
 circumstances have from time to time 
 made much. 
 
 As she read, Mr. Wanless occasionally 
 regarded her with pronounced interest, 
 and when once they were alone spoke. 
 
 ' I question your philosophy, Handsel,' 
 he said, composedly. 
 
 ' I have none, Mr. Wanless,' was her 
 prompt reply. 
 
 He could not restrain a laugh. 
 
 ' I hope you will come back without one 
 still.'
 
 270 A VAGABOND IN AKTS. 
 
 And he said no more of what he had 
 intended. 
 
 When the girls had withdrawn, the 
 clergyman sat alone there for upwards of 
 an hour staring at his books.
 
 271 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 A FIRST DRAUGHT. 
 
 Indolence absolute was of course no 
 attribute of Shiel's character, hoAvever 
 strenuously he deprecated work as a mat- 
 ter of o'eneral principle. So long as he 
 had breath he would undoubtedly labour, 
 with whatever contemptuous disregard of 
 the commercial, merely relative, aspects of 
 it. A consuming egoism possessed him, 
 which obscured, nay annihilated, the glory 
 of labour for its own sake, or even for any
 
 272 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 exquisite product, material or artistic, 
 which should result from it. Much of his 
 instinct might no doubt have found utter- 
 ance in the doojmatic couplet wherein a 
 poet has seen fit to characterise the human 
 soul, 
 
 ' ... to promote and fortify the weal 
 Of our own being, is her paramount end.' 
 
 Nor of this, in an individual, by any 
 means as a duty, — for how can irre- 
 sponsibility imjDute duty ? — but as an 
 irresistible instinct only, — an instinct 
 w^hich dominated his nature as that of 
 passion or ambition dominate the more 
 normally constructed. Responsibility for 
 existence found no place in his individual ; 
 that could only arise from the parental 
 enormity which gave the prime instigation 
 to his fury.
 
 A FIRST DRAUGHT. 273 
 
 Of human passion, as such, it is un- 
 necessary to say that he was ignorant. 
 Not only in his own life-lono; behaviour^ 
 but in all his imaginative effort, emotional 
 and poetical as very much of it Avas, he 
 had been unconscious, or latterly vigor- 
 ously repudiative, of the bond of sex. 
 This central fire, which to most imagina- 
 tive intellects becomes the redeeming 
 leaven of our being, appeared to Shiel the 
 very acme of our woe. Nor did this spring 
 from any prudery of conviction ; it was 
 far more comprehensive than that. Born 
 simply to the negative perceptions of his 
 hour, he had found them insoluble in cer- 
 tain of his instincts, but active to the 
 extent of producing a new and admittedly 
 virulent combination. Could sexual 
 exaltation be indulged purely for the 
 
 VOL. I. T
 
 274 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 behoof of the individual, doubtless to Shiel 
 it were a legitimate stimulus to endurance ; 
 but hopelessly involved in the multiplica- 
 tion of souls, — suffering ones, of course, as 
 he held them, — what right had he to the 
 consolation? The eremite's elder phil- 
 osophy deprecated the contamination of 
 the body ; Shiel's did not so much as see 
 this insignificant fly in the ointment — 
 would have pronounced it a genuine honey 
 bee if it had. He was lost in that tragic 
 stare on the horizon. 
 
 ' If a man have not the element of hope 
 within himself,' he had not long since 
 written, — ' if he know not the extremities 
 of his being ; the heaven or hell from which 
 he rises, the heaven or hell to which he 
 sets ; with all the universe of calamity 
 which this involves — is not the imposition
 
 A FIRST DRAUGHT. 275 
 
 of his infidel transit upon a soul unasked 
 the very consummation of satanic craft ? 
 And if this array of but as yet pathetically 
 accusing e3^es be not appalling sanction 
 enough to us, are Ave to marvel if those 
 eyes shall gather frenzy and advance as 
 a consuming host to destroy us, their 
 creating demons?' 
 
 For the present Shiel himself indubitably 
 found it so, hence sensibility to woman a 
 crown of steel. 
 
 To have been strictly logical, Shiel 
 ought no doubt to have retired, from the 
 inhospitable roof of his father, to some 
 convenient cairn upon the open hills, and 
 have there awaited an inevitable dissolution, 
 bequeathing his remains to any materialist 
 crows, and the responsibility of his death 
 to the immediate author of his being. But
 
 276 A VAGABOND IN AKTS. 
 
 his intellectual vehemence saved him from 
 this. Sincere enough he was in his resolve 
 not to work for money, but the repudiation 
 of his intellect was altogether beyond 
 him. Doubtless he saw nothing of the 
 inconsistency. 
 
 The rupture with his father stimulated 
 this impulse inordinately. Within three 
 days from his dismissal from Linnbrig, he 
 sent a London address to his sister, an- 
 nouncing it his permanent one, and then 
 followed a silence. 
 
 In practical life he was taking no j^art. 
 He had no friends, — no humanizing dissi- 
 j)ations. He had simply plunged into a 
 period of furious intellectual activity. He 
 read, he wrote ; — he flitted with ruffled 
 brow through long corridors of galleries 
 and museums, inevitably exciting attention
 
 A FIRST DRAUGHT. 277 
 
 in the intelligent curious. He looked 
 alone, — aggressively, inhumanly, solitary. 
 He was drinking of the worldly pageant 
 without touching the goblet, and he grinned 
 at the bitterness of it. 
 
 But not grinning only ; he could speak 
 effectually of its flavour, and he did so 
 with accustomed impetuosity. He could 
 pour anything whatsoever into his alembic, 
 and it was distilled into an individual pro- 
 duction. If at one moment he could 
 arouse enthusiasm by a piquant plea for 
 the destiny of woman, he could at another 
 impose upon readers of reputation an 
 estimate of such familiar possessions as 
 Byron, Shelley, and Wordsworth : criti- 
 cise, suo more, members of the British 
 Parliament as easily as those of the 
 Academy or Dutch school ; and all with
 
 278 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 that curious subtlety of didacticism which 
 appeared the very antithesis of preaching. 
 A propagandist was the arch-fiend of his 
 theology, and association its inferno. 
 
 It was inevitable that such an apparition 
 should soon excite attention in the saga- 
 cious. More than one invitation Shiel 
 very speedily received, but, now, they 
 were as systematically disposed of. The 
 momentary spark which Mr. Pettipher had 
 kindled, had by the circumstances succeed- 
 ing been wholly extinguished, and Shiel 
 resented the recollection. Revolt was 
 doubly strong in him. Needless to say, 
 no offer disturbed him from Mr. Petti- 
 pher's successor in the proprietary of the 
 Herald. Mr. Cornelius was the eldest son 
 of his father, and now exercised some 
 sway in Fleet Street.
 
 A FIRST DRAUGHT. 279 
 
 ' Of course, you will rule unclividedly 
 for the present, Mr. Furbisher,' that young 
 gentleman had said in his first interview 
 with his editor succeeding his father's 
 death. ' I shall be up permanently about 
 midsummer, and shall have a spell of all 
 round work in the office ; but I have no 
 designs upon the chair. For a year or 
 two I'm nuts on Russia, and shall fre- 
 quently be looking up our men out there. 
 Of course we shall look to your stipend 
 account, but otherwise you're firm?' 
 
 ' Entirely so. I see a vast future in 
 front of us, and my only desire is to 
 brandish in its service.' 
 
 ' Good. I could never move my father 
 on the '' Evening " question, but I am 
 intent upon it. Wait until I come up.' 
 
 Cornelius was not so inexperienced as
 
 280 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 miglit be thought proper to an under- 
 graduate, but this was the result of his 
 training. On this point his father had had 
 theories, and from the successes of his 
 public school the son had been sent to 
 spend four years in the political capitals 
 of two hemispheres, returning from that 
 to his curriculum at the university. Cor- 
 nelius therefore was by no means a 
 chicken, although a month or two still 
 from the class lists. 
 
 ' Did Mr. Pettipher speak to you of his 
 designs upon literature and literary mat- 
 ters, and of things progressive? Latterly 
 he talked of a man called Wanless in this 
 connection, who has had a trenchant paper 
 or two in some of the American monthlies. 
 He writes well: you know him?' 
 
 Cornelius laughed.
 
 A FIRST DRAUGHT. 281 
 
 ' He lias just left my college. Did my 
 father seriously think of him?' 
 
 ' Quite so, and I must say I seconded 
 him. The man has some virgin vigour 
 which is worth ' 
 
 ' Any quantity, and uncommonly virgin; 
 but, my dear fellow, personally he is a 
 rank lunatic. A man of considerable 
 ability on certain lines, but he can turn 
 a corner about as sharply as a crocodile. 
 Better put an infernal machine in your 
 cellar.' 
 
 ' Ha, ha ! If you personally know the 
 man, that settles it.' 
 
 Perhaps Shiel began really to perceive 
 the impracticable limits which Ebba had 
 pointed out to him, and exultantly fostered 
 them under this mantle of rebellion. Such 
 a perception could not be other than a
 
 282 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 source of satisfaction to him under any 
 circumstances, for lie had long vaunted in 
 every conscious contrast between his tem- 
 perament and that of the outer world. At 
 any rate, he never again harboured even 
 the lightest thought of attaching himself 
 to any definite literary establishment. He 
 found his hands sufficiently full by merely 
 Avriting what clamoured in his mind for 
 impetuous utterance, and for whatever he 
 thought good to submit to a wider arbitra- 
 ment, editors shewed a remarkable partiality. 
 He had chosen his lodgings in the 
 neighbourhood of Regent's Park, in order 
 that he might have at least grass to stride 
 upon Avhen he needed, and many was the 
 sunset he would witness from the neigh- 
 bouring height of Primrose Hill, despite 
 his persistent return in a mood of cynical
 
 A FIRST DRAUGHT. 28S 
 
 raillery at the surroundings. It always 
 aroused a savage struggle within him ; for 
 one set of things drew him vehemently 
 towards the imaginative quiescence of the 
 wilderness of his nativity, whilst another 
 warned him of the intellectual sedition 
 w^hich there would inevitably assail him 
 and no doubt put him once more to flight. 
 One glorious evening in May, — it was 
 the last of the month,' — he had witnessed 
 such a sunset; a spectacle fraught with 
 primordial appeal to such as chanced to 
 be at the moment favourable to its recep- 
 tion. It had impressed Shiel inordinately, 
 for him at least it had caught at a moment 
 of exceptional emotion. He had come from 
 a day of exhausting toil, — for habitually 
 every line he wrote was dipped in the 
 blood of him, and that day he had been
 
 284 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 dipping long and vehemently. His theme 
 had been 'The Comic Muse,' — a character- 
 istic reverie inspired by the contemplation 
 of a print of the Thalia statue in the 
 Vatican, — and it had led him into deepest 
 issues. He began in a comparatively 
 jocular spirit, trifling airily with popular 
 needs ; but he had ere long drifted on to 
 the inevitably tragic vein. He confronted 
 the essential thought of balm for the o'er- 
 wrought soul — recreation and forgetfulness 
 for the suiFering consciousness, — and of 
 course instinctively the ray Avas forthwith 
 turned upon himself. Wholly novel in 
 his experience, a bit of conscious analysis 
 had resulted. With grim decision he un- 
 earthed the soul to which all relaxation is 
 rigorously prohibited, and flung it out into 
 the open there ; revealing as discovering
 
 A FIRST DRAUGHT. 285 
 
 all its shredded ligaments, its abnormal 
 accretions here, its nerveless members 
 there ; and he immediately saw it for his 
 own. But, singular confession, for the 
 first time in his history he gloried not in 
 it. Intellectual impulse had hitherto been 
 his law, an essential reality, a natural 
 truth ; but when he now discovered that 
 it was worked by springs peculiar to the 
 individual the whole illusion was altered, 
 and he drew back at pause. 
 
 In this unfamiliar frame of mind Shiel 
 had issued forth, and he was still further 
 perplexed to find the world transformed 
 about him. Instead of notes of woe, peals 
 of genuine laughter floated on the breeze. 
 He passed a gin-shop at the corner, and 
 rude mirth assailed him. On the grass, 
 children tumbled gleefully in the last sun's
 
 286 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 rays, and the bats of their elders resound- 
 ed far and wide, mingling with hilarious 
 voices. In the shade were gliding ecstatic 
 couples, needing no noise. He watched 
 it all, and his bewilderment deepened ; 
 then he went on to mount the hill. Here 
 the scene but repeated itself, — wild aban- 
 donment of glee on every hand. If it 
 were moody madness only, it was an 
 enviable form. Everybody could laugh 
 but he. He with his vaunted intellectual 
 superiority knew no unbending ; seemed 
 never to have known it. 
 
 Shiel stood long upon the summit, gaz- 
 ing at the glorious sky. Bars of gold and 
 amethyst stretched across that dazzling 
 unknown sea, and drew him on to flights 
 to which he was wholly a stranger. He 
 had gazed on many such before, had drawn
 
 A FIRST DRAUGHT. 287 
 
 from thein a certain impulsive inspiration ; 
 but never with the recognition that they 
 took their sober suggestion and colouring 
 from his eye. The discovery was a vital 
 on<^, and it shook him to the foundation. 
 When ' essential truth,' • universal edict,' 
 give place to the less exalted admission 
 of ' spectacles,' definite modification may 
 be looked for; but to what extent, of 
 course, depends upon a number of other 
 constitutional forces. At length Shiel 
 turned away, and slunk homewards in 
 the twilio'ht. 
 
 As he was thrusting his latch-key in 
 the door, he heard somebody step up 
 lightly beside him, and, turning, recog- 
 nised features in the lamplight, and heard 
 familiar accents mutter his name. He 
 stood back surprised.
 
 288 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 ' May I speak to you ?' 
 
 He only answered by turning abruptly 
 from the door and walking to the pave- 
 ment, making at the same time a signal to 
 his visitor to accompany him. 
 
 'What brings you here?' he asked, in 
 an impulsive undertone. 
 
 ' I want to ask you if you will come and 
 hear me sing.' 
 
 ' Hear you sing ? What on earth do you 
 mean ? Explain yourself.' 
 
 ' I have only had lessons for about a 
 week, but a friend of mine has fallen ill, 
 and I am going to take her place for two 
 
 nights at the Star Music Hall, in 
 
 Street." 
 
 The tremulous excitement with which 
 this important announcement was made 
 was obvious enough on the narrator's
 
 A FIRST DRAUGHT. 289 
 
 tongue, but it only served to heighten 
 Shiel's astonishment. 
 
 ' But I want to know how you have got 
 here. I left you in the wilds of Northum- 
 berland in a ' 
 
 ' Oh, I have done with all that,' inter- 
 posed the girl vivaciously, screened by the 
 darkness. ' I am going to be a singer, and 
 get my own living, and be one of that band 
 of women that you wrote about.' 
 
 So incongruous was the suggestion that 
 Shiel was at a genuine loss to perceive the 
 reference. Glen explained herself further, 
 taking care to adopt as many of his words 
 and as much of what she deemed the spirit 
 of his utterance as remained with her. 
 Shiel could now have laughed, but not 
 quite in the manner that he had recently 
 contemplated. So he refrained from it. 
 
 VOL. I. u
 
 290 A VAGABOND IN cVRTS. 
 
 ' Won't you come to hear me ?' she 
 asked, misinterpreting his silence. 
 
 ' Certainly, with pleasure.' 
 
 ' Then I can sing my best,' she cried, 
 and brought her little gloved palms sharp- 
 ly together. 
 
 Shiel retreated to his doorway, and, when 
 Glen had seen it close behind him, she too 
 went on her way. 
 
 This encounter offered a somewhat 
 ludicrous comment upon Shiel's previous 
 subject of contemplation, and in that light 
 only did he feel able to regard it. The 
 various aspects of it which, but a day ago, 
 would inevitably have been presented were 
 all hidden from him now, and only as it 
 touched that universal abandonment to 
 mirth, that cardinal deficiency of his own, 
 could it offer appeal.
 
 A FIRST DRAUGHT. 291 
 
 This consciousness of the subjectivity 
 of his soul once attained — this birth of the 
 critical faculty once definitely suspected — 
 the internal warfare in the intellect of 
 Shiel had fairly begun. When he had 
 lighted his lamp, and lay prostrate in his 
 arm-chair, he gazed for some time, in a 
 state of twilight reverie, at the manuscript 
 sheets which lay scattered around him, 
 and from which he had so precipitately 
 fled. Then he gathered sheet by sheet 
 and read them, and the tremors of his 
 soul were re-awakened. So obviously did 
 he see this efl'usion to be but a reflex ot 
 himself, rather than one of the eternal 
 voices, that impatiently he seized the 
 matches, and, lighting page after page at 
 the corner, allowed the ashes to fall crack- 
 ling into the coal-box. By this single ray 
 
 u 2
 
 292 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 how much was revealed to him ! He saw 
 how all his recent activity had been nothing 
 but the unconscious struggling of his own 
 soul to attain to another atmosphere ; to 
 shatter, when deemed firmest welded, the 
 bonds which so rigorously restrained him. 
 By virtue of his own blindness, had he 
 been vehemently proving the non-exist- 
 ence of the sun. 
 
 Of course, as yet it was but a percep- 
 tion, in supreme ignorance of much that 
 it meant to him. His only discovery was 
 that his soul knew no manner of relaxa- 
 tion, nor had to his recollection known it. 
 What Avas his savage isolation but an in- 
 ability to partake of the diversions of 
 humanity? an intolerable impatience at 
 the display of them ? Why was he alone 
 debarred ? If the barrier could be broken,
 
 A FIRST DRAUGHT. 293 
 
 might riot high flights await him ? mighty 
 deliverances ? . . . 
 
 It is hardly likely that his late feverish 
 period could, even upon physical grounds, 
 have been indefinitely prolonged. His 
 bodily prostration upon this particular 
 evening, when the sustaining impulse had 
 been momentarily removed, astonished 
 him, and added another element to the 
 novel speculation. He tried to read, but 
 everything turned to sand upon his palate. 
 He went out again, with the intention of 
 instituting an immediate search for the 
 missing intellectual commodity in quarters 
 to which he had been determinedly a 
 stranger; but, ere he reached the corner 
 of his own street, he turned back, and 
 ultimately found his refuge on the pillow. 
 
 The next mornino^ mere habit brouo;ht
 
 294 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 him to his table, resolved to try his pen 
 upon a lighter theme ; but, unknown ex- 
 perience for him, he felt complete inability 
 to concentrate his forces, and he flung all 
 from him in impatience. The day he spent 
 in wandering aimlessly about the town. 
 
 Towards evening his mind returned with 
 curiosity to his engagement. He looked to 
 it with determined eagerness, if perchance 
 it might afford him some more definite 
 clue to the maze in which he found him- 
 self As the day was closing accordingly 
 he strode off to the music-hall which had 
 been named to him, with a grim resolute- 
 ness stamped upon his features. As he 
 traversed the pavement of Trafalgar 
 Square, the lamps alight, he stopped as 
 suddenly as though a thunderbolt had 
 checked him. A moment's stare at two
 
 A FIRST DRAUGHT. 295 
 
 young women who were talking audibly 
 there, and he planted his hand firmly upon 
 the shoulder of one of them. She started 
 and faced him, revealing as she did so the 
 features of his sister Ebba. A revulsion 
 of feeling swept over Shiel, and he said 
 something joyfully. 
 
 ' You have spoilt all, Shiel,' exclaimed 
 she in return, and he turned swiftly away. 
 
 A few more words, and they parted. 
 
 Ebba chanced to have been in a trans- 
 cendent glow of incipient independence, 
 hence her repellent front to him. 
 
 In the midst of the glare, the heat, and 
 the joviality Shiel sat, a noticeable figure 
 amongst the crew assembled there. He 
 strove to examine his neighbours calmly 
 and sympathetically, to express from them,
 
 296 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 if he could, the secret which, was withheld 
 so stringently from himself. The vulgarity 
 of everything at iirst overwhelmed him, 
 but this he knew to be the inevitable first 
 skirmish of his struggle. He had never 
 drawn elaborate distinctions ; all popular 
 diversions had been vulgar to him. He 
 knew that the calibre of the present assem- 
 bly caused him at least less irritation than 
 would that of a more select company, and 
 in his present phase he considered that 
 the principle of which he was in search 
 would be as accurately exemplified here 
 as amongst the admirers of the most 
 exalted drama. All knew equally how to 
 ignore the burden of a universe, for at 
 least an hour or two, and the how of that 
 was his present absorbing inquiry. The 
 more likelihood, indeed, of its being
 
 A FIRST DRAUGHT. 297 
 
 nakedly exposed to him in the more vul- 
 garly natural assembly. 
 
 He succeeded in extracting but little 
 from his hilarious companions. That 
 genuine abandonment did beam on every 
 countenance, he could not but immedi- 
 ately recognise ; but he was as far as ever 
 from discovering the requisite clock-work. 
 He was glad therefore when the small 
 glittering constellation in which was his 
 main interest appeared upon its orbit, and 
 he resolved to concentrate his observation 
 upon this alone. The mere brilliancy of 
 her at first inevitably astounded him ; the 
 exhilarating novelty of the experience 
 stimulating all that was most fascinating 
 in Glen's sprightly characteristics. Her 
 eyes swept the wilderness of faces, and 
 soon by sheer emphasis of contrast found
 
 298 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 the point she was in search of. Their 
 glances consciously encountered, and she 
 flung oiF in wildest exuberance. 
 
 Shiel now found his struggles severe, 
 and only savage determination kept him 
 to his place. The entertainment was by no 
 means of the coarsest, but to him, in view 
 of elementary perceptions, it was pande- 
 monium enough. The vociferous applause 
 which constantly resounded rang as the 
 hilarity of the damned ; and the woman- 
 hood — yes, womanhood of Glen was the 
 price of their abandoned orgies. Never 
 before had he recognised any exclusive 
 delicacy in womanhood, but at this mo- 
 ment it was thrust on him. The fairy 
 charms of the singer rose in rebellious 
 warfare against the degradation of its 
 bonds, and the crisis was not to be re-
 
 A FIRST DRAUGHT. 299 
 
 sisted. As Glen's second song came to an 
 end, Shiel rose impetuously from his seat, 
 and struggled to the door. Just as he 
 had passed it he paused to wipe his brow, 
 and immediately he felt his arm caught 
 tremulously from behind. 
 
 ' Are you going?' 
 
 There was the fairy, in all the fasci- 
 nations of the footlights ; the flushed face 
 raised appealingly to him. 
 
 ' I am,' responded Shiel. ' Good-night.' 
 
 'But I have done,' she quickly re- 
 sponded. ' Let me go with you. I shall be 
 annoyed here. You will stay just a minute.' 
 
 ' Then be quick.' 
 
 Shiel had not progressed so far as in 
 the least to regret this. Xay, it would be 
 a momentary deliverance to see her se- 
 curely removed from it. He did not in
 
 300 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 the least know why she should appear as 
 an incongruity in its midst. Consciously, 
 an exalted moralist he had never been ; 
 nor had his impulses ever found their 
 source in a moral motive. They did not 
 do so now, for they had nothing whatever 
 definite about them. 
 
 ' You think it low,' said Glen, when 
 they had escaped from the premises and 
 were striding through the streets. 
 
 ' I think it diabolical.' 
 
 ' I shall soon get to a better place : but 
 everybody has to make a beginning.' 
 
 Glen was genuinely distressed at the 
 reception, for she had felt the completeness 
 of her triumph. 
 
 ' Yes, it is a beginning,' growled Shiel. 
 
 ' They enjoy it,' pleaded Glen. 
 
 'Do you?'
 
 A FIRST DRAUGHT. 301 
 
 ' Certainly I do. I mean no harm by it. 
 I am free, and get my own living by it.' 
 
 Shiel stopped and stared at her. 
 
 'You enjoy it?' he again demanded, 
 dwelling upon the obnoxious word. 
 
 She repeated her assurance firmly. 
 
 ' I went there to see if I could,' pursued 
 Shiel, more composedly. ' I have found 
 out that I can enjoy nothing.' 
 
 ' I have never seen vou lauo-h ' Glen 
 
 »/ 7 
 
 said, with alacrity, struck by his altered 
 tone. 
 
 ' Can you teach me ? To-night you 
 have not done it.' 
 
 Shiel spoke in grim earnestness enough, 
 for with the removal of the actual display 
 which had so exasperated him his genuine 
 purpose recurred. There was nevertheless 
 bitter sarcasm on his tongue.
 
 302 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 ' I will try,' said Glen. 
 
 ' Can you sing anything else but that?' 
 
 ' Plenty.' 
 
 No doubt if Shiel could have been 
 apprised of the furious beating of the 
 little heart beside him, he would have 
 there and then relinquished his pursuit 
 of mirth through this particular channel 
 at least. Without sensibility to female 
 light in himself, he had evolved extraor- 
 dinary sexual theories, solidified by the 
 revolt against the perpetuation of his 
 kind of w^hich he had made no secret; 
 and these left his hands exceptionally 
 free. His only error lay in extending this 
 satisfactory freedom to the general con- 
 stitution of the race. Glen knew neither 
 fear nor theory : all she recognised was 
 an ardent inclination to this insensible
 
 A FIRST DRAUGHT. 303 
 
 theorist, and inclinations she invariably 
 followed. 
 
 'Will you sing to me, then?' 
 
 ' That I will any time. But — but where?' 
 
 ' Yes, where,' mused Shiel, checked for 
 the moment. ' Have you a piano?' 
 
 "• We have at our rooms. I lodge with 
 a friend of mine.' 
 
 Shiel mused again, not adopting the 
 obvious inference. 
 
 ' W^hy, we'll go and see Handsel,' he at 
 length remarked. 
 
 Glen was shot. 
 
 'Has she come?' was all she could 
 articulate. 
 
 Without observing the tone of her in- 
 quiry, Shiel went on to particularize his 
 suggestion ; more as a species of soliloquy 
 than a definite connnunication to his com-
 
 304 A VAGABOND IN ARTS. 
 
 panion. But" Glen's enthusiasm was 
 damped for the night. 
 
 ' I will see them and let you know. 
 What is your address ?' 
 
 She gave it him, — a street not far from 
 his own locality. At a favourable point 
 Shiel hailed a 'bus, and he saw the new 
 singer safely to her door. 
 
 ' Handsel will never let me sing to you,' 
 said Glen, as he bade her good-night. 
 
 ' We'll see about that.' 
 
 As he walked to his own lodgings he 
 wondered what she meant. 
 
 END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 London : Printed hy Duncan Macdonald, Blenheim House, W. 
 
 to
 
 '■M
 
 .UNIVERSITY 
 
 2 045855100