Literature
I. Hymn to the Sea . . By William Watson .
II. The Papers of Basil Fillimer
H. D. Traill . . . 19
III. A Song . . . . Richard Le
Gallienne . 33
IV. The Pleasure-Pilgrim
. Ella D'Arcy . . . 34
V. Two Songs . . . Rosamund
Marriott-Watson 71
VI. The Inner Ear
. . Kenneth Grahame . . 73
VII. Rosemary for Remembrance
Henry Harland . . 77
VIII. Three Poems . . Dauphin
Meunier . . 101
IX. Two Studies
. . . Mrs. Murray Hickson . 104
X. The Ring of Life . . Edmund
Gosse . . 117
XI. Pierre Gascon
. . Charles Kennett Burrow . 121
XII. Refrains . . . Leila Macdonald
. . 130
XIII. The Haseltons . . Hubert Crackanthorpe . 132
XIV. Perennial . . . Ernest
Wentworth . . 171
XV. For Ever and Ever
. . C. S. . . . . 172
XVI. Mr. Meredith in Little . G. S.
Street . . . 174
XVII. Shepherds' Song
. . Nora Hopper . . . 189
XVIII. The Phantasies of Philarete
James Ashcroft Noble . 195
XIX. Pro Patria . . . B. Paul
Neuman . . 226
XX. Puppies and
Otherwise . Evelyn Sharp . . . 235
XXI. Oliver Goldsmith's Grave
W. A. Mackenzie . . 247
XXII. Suggestion . . . Mrs. Ernest
Leverson . 249
XXIII. The Sword of
Cæsar Borgia
Richard Garnett, LL.D., C.B..... 258
XXIV. M. Anatole France . The Hon.
Maurice Baring 263
XXV. The Call
. . . Norman Gale . . . 280
XXVI. L'Evêché de Tourcoing . Anatole France . . 283
XXVII. A Fleet
Street Eclogue . John Davidson . . 299
Art
I. Bodley Heads. No. 3 : George Egerton By E. A. Walton . .
II. The Chrysanthemum Girl
R. Anning Bell . . 68
III. Trees . . . . Alfred Thornton
. . 97
IV. Study of Durham . . F. G. Cotman . . 118
V. Portrait of Mrs. James Welch
P. Wilson Steer . . 164
VI. The Mantelpiece .
VII. The Mirror . .
VIII. The Prodigal Son . . A. S.
Hartrick . . 186
IX. Portrait of a Girl
. . Robert Halls . . . 191
X. Portrait of Mrs. Ernest Leverson
Walter Sickert . . 229
XI. The Middlesex Music Hall
XII. A Sketch . . . Constantin Guys
. . 259
XIII. Study of a Head . .
Sydney Adamson . . 290
XIV. A Drawing . . . Patten Wilson
. . 293
The Yellow Book
Volume V April, 1895
The Editor of THE YELLOW BOOK can in no case
hold himself responsible for
rejected manuscripts;
when, however, they are accompanied by stamped
addressed envelopes, every effort will be made to
secure their prompt
return.
accompanied by
stamped addressed envelopes will be neither
read nor returned.
MY name is Johnson, just plain John Johnson—nothing more
subtle
than that ; and my individuality is, as they say, "in a
concatenation
accordingly." In other words, the character of my
intellect is exactly
what you would expect in a man of my name.
This was well known to my old
friend, schoolmate, and fellow-
student at Oxford, the late Basil Fillimer
; a man of the very
subtlest mind that I should think has ever housed
itself in human
body since the brain of the last mediæval schoolman ceased
to
"distinguish." Yet Basil Fillimer must needs appoint me—
all men in the world—his literary
executor, and charge me with
the duty of making a selection from his
papers and preparing them
for publication. They include a series of "
Analytic Studies," a
diary extending over several years, and a
three-volume novel
turning on the question whether the hero before
marrying the
heroine was or was not bound to communicate to her the fact
that he had once unjustly suspected her mother of circulating
reports injurious to the reputation of his aunt.
Basil knew, I say—he must have known—that I was quite
unable
to follow him in these refined speculations. Hence I can
only suppose that
at the time when his will was drawn he had not
yet discovered my
psychological incompetence, and that after he
had made that discovery his somewhat sudden death prevented
him from
appointing some one of keener analytical acumen in my
place.
It would not be fair to the novel, in case it should ever be
published, to
give any specimens of it here ; it might discount the
reader's interest in
the development of the plot. But this is the
sort of thing the diary
consists of:
"
found her more troubled than ever about the foundations of
her
faith. It is a singular phenomenon this awakening of doubt in
an
elderly mind—this 'St. Martin's summer' of scepticism if I
may so
call it ; an intensely curious and at the same time a
painful study. For
me it has so potent a fascination, that I
never say or do anything, even
in what at the time seems to me
perfect good faith, to invite a
continuance of my aunt's con-
fidences, without afterwards suspecting my
own motives. My
first inclination was to divert her mind to other
subjects. Why,
I asked myself, should an old lady of seventy-two who has
all her
life accepted the conventional religion without question be
encouraged to what the French call
extremely late hour of the day ? Still you can't very well tell any
old lady, even though she is your aunt, that you think she is too
old to begin bothering herself with these high matters. You
have to put it
just the other way, and suggest that she has
probably many years of life
before her, and will have plenty of
time for such speculations later on.
But the first sentence I tried
to frame in this sense reminded me so
ludicrously of Mrs.
Quickly's consolations of the dying Falstaff, that I
had to stop
for fear of laughing, and allow her to go on. For reply I put
her
off at the time with commonplaces, but she has since renewed the
conversation so often that I feel I shall be obliged to disclose
some of my own opinions, which are of course of a much
more advanced
scepticism than hers. I have considered the
question of disguising or
qualifying them, and have come
without doubt—or I think without
much doubt—to the con-
clusion that I am not justified in doing so.
I have never believed
in the morality of—
"Besides, there is no interpretation clause at the end of
Memoriam
Moreover, I have every reason to suspect that my aunt Catherine
has ceased to pray, and I am sure her days are anything but
'melodious' just now, poor old soul. It is all very well to respect
other
people's religious illusions as long as they remain undisturbed
in the
minds of those who harbour them. So long the maxim
if the Divine Deceiver begins to lose his power of
deceiving ? Is
it the business of any of his creatures to come to his
assistance ?
"
my aunt, who almost immediately opened out on the question
of
her doubts. She spoke of them in tones of profound, indeed of
almost tragic agitation ; and I could not bring myself to say any-
thing
which would increase her mental anguish, as I thought might
happen if I
confessed to sharing them. I accordingly found
myself reverting after all
to the old commonplaces,—that 'these
things were mysteries' and so
forth (which of course is exactly the
trouble), and the rest of the
'vacant chaff well meant for grain.'
It had a soothing effect at the time,
and I returned home well
pleased with my own wise humanity, as I thought it. But now
that I look
back upon it and examine my mixed motives, I am
forced to admit that there
was more of cowardice than compassion
in the amalgam. I was not even quite
sincere, I now find, in
pleading to myself my aunt's distress of mind as
an excuse for the
concealment, or rather the misrepresentation, of my
opinions. I
knew at the time that she had had a bad night and that she is
suf-
fering severely just now from suppressed gout. In other words, I
was secretly conscious at the back of my mind that the abnormal
excess of her momentary sufferings was due to physical and not
mental
causes, and would yield readily enough to colchicum or
salicylic acid,
which no one has ever ranked among Christian
apologetics. Yet I persuaded
myself for the moment that it was
this quite exceptional and transitory
state of my aunt's feelings
which compelled me to keep silence.
"
I have not yet had time for a thorough
analysis—a clear indication
of my only rational and legitimate
course. My aunt Catherine said
plainly to me this afternoon that as she
had gathered from our
conversations that my views were strictly orthodox,
she would not
pain me in future by any further disclosures of her own
doubts.
At the same time, she added, it was only right to tell me that my
pious advice had done her no good, but, on the contrary, harm, since
there was to her mind nothing so calculated to confirm scepticism
as the
sight of a man of good understanding thus firmly wedded
to certain
received opinions of which nevertheless he was unable to
offer any
reasonable defence or even intelligible explanation whatso-
ever. Upon
this hint I of course spoke. It was clear that if my
silence only
increased my aunt's trouble, and that if, further, it
threatened to
convict me unjustly of stupidity, I was clearly
entitled, as well on
altruistic as on self-regarding grounds, to reveal
my true opinions. In fact, I thought at the time that I had never
acted
under the influence of a motive so clearly visible along its
whole course
from Thought to Will, and so manifestly free from
any the smallest fibre
of impulse having its origin in the subliminal
consciousness. Yet now I am
beginning to doubt.
"
to vindicate my own intelligence and of a praiseworthy
anxiety not
to add to my aunt's spiritual perplexities, but that it was
subtly
tainted with an illegitimate longing to continue my study of her
curious case. Consequently, I cannot now assure myself that if I
had
not known that further concealment of my opinions would
arrest my aunt's
confidences and thus deprive me of a keen
psychological pleasure (which I
have no right to enjoy at her
expense) the legitimate inducements to
candour that were
presented to me would of themselves have prevailed."
There is much more of the same kind ; but I will cut it short
at this
point, not only to escape a headache, but to ask any
impartial reader into
whose hands this apology may fall, whether,
I—who as I said before
am not only John Johnson by name but
by nature—am a fit and proper
person to edit the posthumous
papers of Basil Fillimer.
I come now, however, to what I consider my strongest justifi-
cation for
declining this literary trust. Though I had, and
indeed still retain, the
highest admiration for Basil Fillimer's
intellectual subtlety, and though,
confessing myself absolutely
unable to follow him into his refinements of
analysis, I hazard
this opinion with diffidence, I do not think that,
except in their
curiosity as infinitely delicate and minute mental
processes, his
speculations are of any value to the world. I have formed
this
opinion in my rough-and-ready way from a variety of circum-
stances ; but in support of it I rely mainly upon an incident
which
occurred within a few months of my lamented friend's
death, and which
formed to the best of my knowledge the sole
passage of sentiment in his
intensely speculative career.
To say that he fell in love would be to employ a metaphor of
quite
inappropriate violence. He "shaded off" from a colourless
indifference to
a certain young woman of his acquaintance
through various neutral tints of
regard into a sort of pale sunset
glow of affection for her. Eleanor
Selden was a first cousin of
my own. We had seen much of each other from
childhood
upwards, and I knew—or thought I knew—her well.
She was a
lively, good-natured, commonplace girl, without a spark of
romance about her, and all a woman's eye to the main chance. I
don't mean
by this that she was more mercenary than most girls.
She merely took that
practical view of life and its material
requirements which has always
seemed to me (only I am not a
psychologist) to be so much more common
among young people
of what is supposed to be the sentimental sex, than of
the other.
I daresay she was not incapable of love—among
appropriate
surroundings. Unlike some women, she was not constitutionally
unfitted to appear with success in the matrimonial drama ; but
she
was particular about the
would not have suited her at all. She would have played the
wife's part with no spirit, I feel convinced. As to "Act V., A
Cottage," with an "interval of twenty years supposed to elapse"
between
that and the preceding act, I doubt whether she would
ever have reached it
at all.
I imparted these views of mine as delicately as I could to my
accomplished
friend, but they produced no impression on him.
He told me kindly but
firmly that I was altogether mistaken.
He had, he said, made a
particularly careful study of Eleanor's
character and had arrived at the confident conclusion that absolute
unselfishness formed its most distinctive feature. Nor was he at
all
shaken in this opinion by the fact that when a little later on
he informed
her of the nature of his sentiments towards her, he
found that she agreed
with him in thinking that his then income
was not enough to marry upon,
and that they had better wait
until the death of an uncle of his from whom
he had expectations.
I felt rather curious to know what passed at the
interview between
them, and questioned him on the subject.
"As to this objection on the ground of the insufficiency of
your income,
did it come from you," I asked, "or from her ?"
"What a question," said Basil, contemptuously. "From me
of course."
"But at once?"
"How do you mean, at once ?"
"Well, was there any interval between your telling her you
loved her and
your adding that you did not think you were well
enough off to marry just
at present ?"
" Any interval ? No, of course not. It would have been
obviously unfair and
ungenerous on my part to have made her a
declaration of love without at
the same time adding that I could
not ask her to share my present poverty
and—"
"Oh," I interrupted, "you said that at the same time, did you ?
Then she
had nothing to do but to agree ?"
"Well, no, of course not," said Basil. "But, my dear fellow,"
he continued,
with his usual half-pitying smile, "you don't see the
point. The point is,
that she agreed reluctantly—indeed with quite
obvious reluctance."
" Did she press you to reconsider your decision ? '
" Well, no, she could hardly do that, you know. It would not
be quite
consistent with maidenly reserve and so forth. But
she again and again declared her perfect readiness to share my
present
fortunes."
" Ah ! she did that, did she ? "
" Yes, and even after she must have seen that my decision was
inflexible."
" Oh !
understand."
And I thought I did, as also did Basil. But I fancy our read-
ing of the
incident was not the same.
A closer intimacy now followed between the two. They were
not engaged ;
Basil had been beforehand in insisting that her future
freedom of choice
should not be fettered, and she again " reluctantly,
—indeed with
quite obvious reluctance," had agreed. They were
much in each other's
company, and Basil, who used to read her
some of the most intricate
psychological chapters in his novel, in
which she showed the greatest
interest, conceived a very high idea
of her intellectual gifts. "She has,"
he said, "by far the subtlest
mind for a woman that I ever came in contact
with."
" Do you ever talk to her about your uncle ? " I asked him one day.
" Oh yes, sometimes," he replied. " And, by the way," he
added, suddenly, "
that reminds me. To show you how unjust is
the view you take of your
cousin's motives, as no doubt you do of
human nature generally like most
superficial students of it (excuse
an old friend's frankness), I may tell
you that although there have
been many occasions when she might have put
the question with
perfect naturalness and propriety, she has never once
inquired the
amount of my uncle's means."
" It is very much to her credit," said I.
" It is true," he added, after a moment's reflection and with a
half-laugh, " I could not have told her if she had. His money is
all in
personalty, and he is a close old chap."
" Oh," I said, " have you ever by chance mentioned that to
her?"
" Eh ? What ? " answered Basil, absently, for, as his manner
was, he was
drifting away on some underground stream of his own
thoughts. " Mentioned
it ? I don't recollect. I daresay I have.
Probably I must have done. Why
do you ask ? "
"Well," said I, " because if she knew you could not answer the
question
that might account for her not asking it."
But he was already lost in reverie, and I did not feel justified in
rousing
him from it for no worthier purpose than that of hinting
suspicion of the
disinterestedness of a blood relation.
In due time—or at least in what the survivors considered due
time,
though I don't suppose the poor old gentleman so regarded
it—Basil's uncle died, and the nephew found himself the heir to a
snug little fortune of about £,900 a year. As soon as he was in
possession
of it he wrote to Eleanor, acquainting her with the
change in his
circumstances, and renewing his declaration of love,
accompanied this time
with a proposal of immediate marriage. I
happened to look in upon him at
his chambers on the evening of
the day on which the letter had been
despatched, and he told me
what he had done.
" Ah ! " said I, " now, then, we shall see which of us is right.
But no," I
added, on a moment's reflection, "after all, it won't
prove anything ; for
I suppose we both agree that she is likely to
accept you now, and I can't
deny that she can do so with perfect
propriety."
Basil looked at me as from a great height, a Gulliver conversing
with a
Lilliputian.
" Dear old Jack," he said, after a few moments of obviously
amused
silence, " you are really most interesting. What makes
you think she will
say Yes ? "
" What ! " I exclaimed in astonishment. " Don't you think
so yourself ? "
" On the contrary," replied Basil, with that sad patient smile of
his, " I
am perfectly convinced that she will say No."
I did not pursue the conversation, for my surprise at his opinion
had by
this time disappeared. It occurred to me that after all it
was not
unnatural in a man who had conceived so exalted an
estimate of Eleanor's
character. No doubt he thought her too
proud to incur the suspicion which
might attach to her motives in
accepting him after this accession to his
fortunes. I felt sure,
however, that he was mistaken, and it was therefore
with
renewed and much increased surprise that I read the letter which
he placed in my hand with quiet triumph a few days after-
wards.
It was a refusal. Eleanor thanked him for his renewal of his
proposal, said
she should always feel proud of having won the
affection of so
accomplished a man, but that having carefully
examined her own heart, she
felt that she did not love him enough
to marry him.
Basil, I feel sure, was as fond of my cousin as it was in his
nature to be
of anybody ; but he was evidently much less dis-
appointed by her
rejection than pleased with the verification of his
forecast. I confess I
was puzzled at its success.
" How did you know she would refuse you ? " I asked. " I
must say that
to accept you."
Basil gently shook his head.
"But I suppose
of being considered mercenary."
Basil still continued to shake his head, but now with a pro-
vokingly
enigmatic smile.
" No ? But confound it," I cried, out of patience, " there are
only these
two alternatives in every case of this kind."
" My dear Jack," said Basil, after a few moments' contemplation
of me, "
you have confounded it yourself. You are confusing act
with motive. It is
true there are only two possible replies to the
question I asked Miss
Selden ; but the series af alternating motives
for either answer is
infinite."
" Infinite ? " echoed I, aghast.
"Yes," said Basil, dreamily. " It is obviously infinite, though
the human
faculties in their present stage of development can only
follow a few
steps of it. Would you really care to know," he con-
tinued kindly, after
a pause, " the way in which I arrived at my
conclusion ? "
" I should like it of all things," I said.
" Then you had better just take a pencil and a sheet of paper,"
said Basil.
"You will excuse the suggestion, but to any one un-
familiar with these
trains of thought some aid of the kind is posi-
tively necessary. Now,
then, let us begin with the simplest case,
that of a girl of selfish
instincts and blunt sensibilities, who
looks out for as good a match, from
the pecuniary point of view,
as she can make, and doesn't very much care
to conceal the
fact."
(" Eleanor down to the ground," I thought to myself.)
" She would have said Yes to my question, wouldn't she ? "
" No doubt."
" Very well, then, kindly mark that
I did so.
" Next, we come to a girl of a somewhat higher type, not per-
haps
indifferent to pecuniary considerations, but still too proud to
endure the
suspicion of having acted upon them in the matter of
marriage. She would
answer No, wouldn't she ? "
" Yes," said I, eagerly. " And surely that is the way in which
"Pardon me," said Basil, raising a deprecating hand, "it is not
quite so
simple as that. But have you got that down? If so,
please mark it
nature who would have too much faith in her lover s generosity to
believe
him capable of suspecting her motives, and who would wel-
come the
opportunity of showing that faith. Have you got that
down ? "
"Yes, every word," said I. "But, my dear fellow, that is a
woman whose
answer would be Yes."
"Exactly," replied Basil, imperturbably. "Mark it
And now," he continued, lighting a cigarette, " have the
goodness
to favour me with your particular attention to this. There is a
woman of moral sensibilities yet more refined who would fear lest
her lover should suspect her of being actuated by motives
mercenary, but veiled under the
her reliance on his faith in her disinterestedness,
and who would
consequently answer No. Do you follow that ? "
" No, I'll be damned if I do ! " I cried, throwing down the
pencil.
" Ah," said Basil, sadly, " I was afraid so. Nevertheless, for
convenience
of reference, mark it
numberless others ; the series, as I have said, is infinite. There
is Case E, that of the woman who rises superior to this last-men-
tioned
fear, and says Yes ; and there is Case F, that of the
woman who fears to
be suspected of only feigning such superiority,
and says No. But it is
probably unnecessary to carry the analysis
further. You believe that Miss
Selden's refusal of me comes under
Case B ; I, on the other hand, from my
experience of the singular
subtlety and delicacy of her intellectual
operations, am persuaded
that it belongs to the D category. Her alleged excuse is, of course,
purely
conventional. Her plea that she is unable to love me," he
added with an
indescribable smile, " is, for instance, absurd. I will
let a couple of
months or so elapse, and shall then take steps to
ascertain from her
whether it was the motive of Case B or that of
Case D by which she has
been really actuated."
The couple of months, alas ! were not destined to go by in
Basil's
lifetime. Three weeks later my poor friend was carried off
by an attack of
pneumonia, and I was left with this unsolved pro-
blem of conduct on my
mind.
I was, however, determined to seek the solution of it, and the
first time I
met Eleanor I referred it to herself. I had taken the
precaution to bring
my written notes with me so as to be sure
that the question was correctly
stated.
" Nelly," said I, for, as I have already said, we were not only
cousins,
but had been brought up together from childhood, " I
want you to tell me,
your oldest chum,
Fillimer. Was it because you were too proud to endure the
suspicion of
having married for money, or was it—now for
goodness' sake don't
interrupt me just here," for I saw Nelly's
smiling lips opening to speak ;
"or was it," I continued, carefully
reading from my paper, " because you
feared lest he should suspect
you of being actuated by motives
under the
faith in your disinterestedness ? "
The smile broke into a ringing laugh.
"Why, you stupid Jack," cried Eleanor, "what nonsense of
poor dear old
Basil's have you got into your head ? Why did I
refuse him ? You who have
known me all my life to ask such a
question ! Now did you—
marry a
man with only nine hundred a year ? "
Candidly, I did not. But poor Basil did. And that, as I said
before, is one
and perhaps the strongest among many reasons why
I think that his studies
of human character and analyses of human
motive, though intellectually
interesting, would not be likely to
prove of much practical value to the
world.
CAMPBELL was on his way to Schloss Altenau, for a second
quiet season with
his work. He had spent three profitable
months there a year ago, and now he
was devoutly hoping for a
repetition of that good fortune. His thoughts
outran the train ;
and long before his arrival at the Hamelin railway
station, he was
enjoying his welcome by the Ritterhausens, was revelling in
the
ease and comfort of the old castle, and was contrasting the
pleasures
of his home-coming—for he looked upon Schloss Altenau as a
sort
of temporary home—with his recent cheerless experiences of
lodging-houses in London, hotels in Berlin, and strange indifferent
faces
everywhere. He thought with especial satisfaction of the
Maynes, and of the
good talks Mayne and he would have together,
late at night, before the
great fire in the hall, after the rest of the
household had gone to bed. He
blessed the adverse circumstances
which had turned Schloss Altenau into a
boarding-house, and
had reduced the Freiherr Ritterhausen to eke out his
shrunken
revenues by the reception, as paying guests, of English and
American pleasure-pilgrims.
He rubbed the blurred window-pane with the fringed end of the
strap hanging from it, and, in the snow-covered landscape reeling
towards
him, began to recognise objects that were familiar.
Hamelin could not be
far off..... In another ten minutes the
train came to a standstill.
He stepped down from the overheated atmosphere of his com-
partment into the
cold bright February afternoon, and through
the open station doors saw one
of the Ritterhausen carriages
awaiting him, with Gottlieb in his
second-best livery on the
box. Gottlieb showed every reasonable
consideration for the
Baron's boarders, but he had various methods of
marking his sense of
the immense abyss separating them from the family. The
use of
his second-best livery was one of these methods. Nevertheless,
he
turned a friendly German eye up to Campbell, and in response
to his
cordial " Guten Tag, Gottlieb. Wie geht's ? Und die
Herrschaften ? "
expressed his pleasure at seeing the young man
back again.
While Campbell stood at the top of the steps that led down to
the carriage
and the Platz, looking after the collection of his
luggage and its bestowal
by Gottlieb's side, he became aware of
two persons, ladies, advancing
towards him from the direction of
the Wartsaal. It was surprising to see
any one at any time in
Hamelin station. It was still more surprising when
one of these
ladies addressed him by name.
"You are Mr. Campbell, are you not?" she said. "We
have been waiting for you
to go back in the carriage together.
When we found this morning that there
was only half-an-hour
between your train and ours, I told the Baroness it
would be
perfectly absurd to send to the station twice. I hope you
won't
mind our company ? "
The first impression Campbell received was of the magnificent
apparel of the
lady before him ; it would have been noticeable in
Paris or Vienna—it was extravagant here. Next, he perceived
that the
face beneath the upstanding feathers and the curving hat-
brim was that of
so very young a girl as to make the furs and
velvets seem more incongruous
still. But the incongruity vanished
with the intonation of her first
phrase, which told him she was an
American. He had no standards for
American dress or manners.
It was clear that the speaker and her companion
were inmates of
the Schloss.
Campbell bowed, and murmured the pleasure he did not feel.
A true Briton, he
was intolerably shy; and his heart sank at the
prospect of a three-mile
drive with two strangers who evidently
had the advantage of knowing all
about him, while he was in
ignorance of their very names. As he took his
place opposite to
them in the carriage, he unconsciously assumed a cold
blank stare,
pulling nervously at his moustache, as was his habit in
moments
of discomposure. Had his companions been British also, the
ordeal of the drive would certainly have been a terrible one ; but
these
young American girls showed no sense of embarrassment
whatever.
"We've just come back from Hanover," said the one who had
already spoken to
him. "I go over once a week for a singing
lesson, and my little sister
comes along to take care of me."
She turned a narrow, smiling glance from Campbell to her
little sister, and
then back to Campbell again. She had red hair,
freckles on her nose, and
the most singular eyes he had ever seen ;
slit-like eyes, set obliquely in
her head, Chinese fashion.
" Yes, Lulie requires a great deal of taking care of," assented
the little
sister, sedately, though the way in which she said it
seemed to imply
something less simple than the words themselves.
The speaker bore no
resemblance to Lulie. She was smaller,
thinner, paler. Her features were
straight, a trifle peaked ; her
skin sallow ; her hair of a nondescript brown. She was much
less gorgeously
dressed. There was even a suggestion of shabbi-
ness in her attire, though
sundry isolated details of it were hand-
some too. She was also much less
young ; or so, at any rate,
Campbell began by pronouncing her. Yet
presently he wavered.
She had a face that defied you to fix her age.
Campbell never
fixed it to his own satisfaction, but veered in the course
of that drive
(as he was destined to do during the next few weeks) from
point
to point up and down the scale between eighteen and thirty-five.
She wore a spotted veil, and beneath it a pince-nez, the lenses of
which
did something to temper the immense amount of humorous
meaning which lurked
in her gaze. When her pale prominent
eyes met Campbell's, it seemed to the
young man that they were
full of eagerness to add something at his expense
to the stores of
information they had already garnered up. They chilled
him
with misgivings ; there was more comfort to be found in her
sister's shifting red-brown glances.
" Hanover is a long way to go for lessons," he observed, forcing
himself to
be conversational. " I used to go myself about once a
week, when I first
came to Schloss Altenau, for tobacco, or note-
paper, or to get my hair
cut. But later on I did without, or
contented myself with what Hamelin, or
even the village, could
offer me."
" Nannie and I," said the young girl, " meant to stay only a
week at
Altenau, on our way to Hanover, where we were going
to pass the winter ;
but the Castle is just too lovely for any-
thing," she added softly. She
raised her eyelids the least little bit
as she looked at him, and such a
warm and friendly gaze shot out
that Campbell was suddenly thrilled. Was
she pretty, after all ?
He glanced at Nannie ; she, at least, was
indubitably plain. " It's
the very first time we've ever stayed in a
castle," Lulie went on ;
" and we're going to remain right along now, until we go home
in the spring.
Just imagine living in a house with a real moat,
and a drawbridge, and a
Rittersaal, and suits of armour that have
been actually worn in battle !
And oh, that delightful iron collar
and chain ! You remember it, Mr.
Campbell ? It hangs right
close to the gateway on the court-yard side. And
you know, in
old days, the Ritterhausens used it for the punishment of
their
serfs. There are horrible stories connected with it. Mr. Mayne
can tell you them. But just think of being chained up there like
a dog ! So
wonderfully picturesque."
" For the spectator perhaps," said Campbell, smiling. " I
doubt if the
victim appreciated the picturesque aspect of the
case."
With this Lulie disagreed. " Oh, I think he must have been
interested," she
said. " It must have made him feel so absolutely
part and parcel of the
Middle Ages. I persuaded Mr. Mayne to
fix the collar round my neck the
other day ; and though it was
very uncomfortable, and I had to stand on
tiptoe, it seemed to me
that all at once the court-yard was filled with
knights in armour,
and crusaders, and palmers, and things ; and there were
flags flying
and trumpets sounding ; and all the dead and gone
Ritterhausens
had come down from their picture-frames, and were
walking
about in brocaded gowns and lace ruffles."
" It seemed to require a good deal of persuasion to get Mr.
Mayne to unfix
the collar again," said the little sister. " How at
last did you manage it
? "
But Lulie replied irrelevantly : " And the Ritterhausens are
such perfectly
lovely people, aren't they, Mr. Campbell ? The
old Baron is a perfect dear.
He has such a grand manner. When
he kisses my hand I feel nothing less than
a princess. And the
Baroness is such a funny, busy, delicious little round
ball of a
thing. And she's always playing bagatelle, isn't she ? Or else
cutting up
skeins of wool for carpet-making." She meditated a
moment. "Some people
always
join
them together again," she announced, in her fresh drawling
little
voice.
" And some people cut things up, and leave other people to do
all the
reparation," commented the little sister, enigmatically.
And all this time the carriage had been rattling over the
cobble-paved
streets of the quaint mediæval town, where the
houses stand so near
together that you may shake hands with
your opposite neighbour ; where
allegorical figures, strange birds
and beasts, are carved and painted over
the windows and doors ;
and where to every distant sound you lean your ear
to catch the
fairy music of the Pied Piper, and at every street corner you
look
to see his tatterdemalion form with the frolicking children at
his
heels.
Then the Weser bridge was crossed, beneath which the ice-
floes jostled and
ground themselves together, as they forced a way
down the river ; and the
carriage was rolling smoothly along
country roads, between vacant
snow-decked fields.
Campbell's embarrassment was wearing off. Now that he was
getting accustomed
to the girls, he found neither of them awe-
inspiring. The red-haired one
had a simple child-like manner
that was charming. Her strange little face,
with its piquant
irregularity of line, its warmth of colour, began to
please him.
What though her hair was red, the uncurled wisp which
strayed
across her white forehead was soft and alluring ; he could see
soft
masses of it tucked up beneath her hat-brim as she turned her
head. When she suddenly lifted her red-brown lashes, those
queer eyes of
hers had a velvety softness too. Decidedly, she
struck him as being
pretty—in a peculiar way. He felt an
immense accession of interest in her. It seemed to him that he
was the
discoverer of her possibilities. He did not doubt that the
rest of the
world called her plain, or at least odd-looking. He, at
first, had only
seen the freckles on her nose, her oblique-set eyes.
He wondered what she
thought of herself, and how she appeared
to Nannie. Probably as a very
commonplace little girl ; sisters
stand too close to see each other's
qualities. She was too young
to have had much opportunity of hearing
flattering truths from
strangers ; and, besides, the ordinary stranger
would see nothing
in her to call for flattering truths. Her charm was
something
subtle, out-of-the-common, in defiance of all known rules of
beauty.
Campbell saw superiority in himself for recognising it, for
formu-
lating it ; and he was not displeased to be aware that it
would,
always remain caviare to the multitude.
" I'm jolly glad to have you back," Mayne said, that same
evening, when, the
rest of the boarders having retired to their
rooms, he and Campbell were
lingering over the hall-fire for a
talk and smoke. " I've missed you
awfully, old chap, and the
good times we used to have here. I've often
meant to write to
you, but you know how one shoves off letter-writing day
after
day, till at last one is too ashamed of one's indolence to write
at
all. But tell me—you had a pleasant drive from Hamelin ?
What do you think of our young ladies ? "
"Those American girls? But they're charming," said Campbell,
with
enthusiasm. " The red-haired one is particularly charming."
At this Mayne laughed so oddly that Campbell questioned him
in surprise. "
Isn't she charming ? "
" My dear chap," said Mayne, " the red-haired one, as you call
her, is the
most remarkably charming young person I've ever met
or read of. We've had a
good many American girls here before
now—you remember the good old
Clamp family, of course ?—
they were here in your time, I think
?—but we've never had any-
thing like this Miss Lulie Thayer. She is
something altogether
unique."
Campbell was struck with the name. " Lulie— Lulie Thayer,"
he
repeated. " How pretty it is." And, full of his great discovery,
he felt he
must confide it to Mayne, at least. " Do you know,"
he went on, "
first, but after a bit I discovered that she is positively quite
pretty
—in an odd sort of way."
Mayne laughed again. " Pretty, pretty ! " he echoed in
derision. " Why,
Pretty ! The girl is beautiful, gorgeously beautiful ; every trait,
every
tint, is in complete, in absolute harmony with the whole.
But the truth is,
of course, we've all grown accustomed to the
obvious, the commonplace ; to
violent contrasts ; blue eyes, black
eyebrows, yellow hair ; the things
that shout for recognition.
You speak of Miss Thayer's hair as red. What
other colour
would you have, with that warm creamy skin ? And then,
what
a red it is ! It looks as though it had been steeped in red
wine."
" Ah, what a good description," said Campbell, appreciatively.
" That's just
it—steeped in red wine."
"And yet it's not so much her beauty," Mayne continued.
" After all, one has
met beautiful women before now. It's her
wonderful generosity, her
complaisance. She doesn't keep her
good things to herself. She doesn't
condemn you to admire from
a distance."
" How do you mean ? " Campbell asked, surprised again.
"Why, she's the most egregious little flirt I've ever met.
And yet, she's
not exactly a flirt, either. I mean she doesn't flirt
in the ordinary way.
She doesn't talk much, or laugh, or appar-
ently make the least claims on
masculine attention. And so all
the women like her. I don't believe there's
one, except my wife,
who has an inkling as to her true character. The
Baroness, as
you know, never observes anything.
the things I could tell her about
Miss Lulie ! For I've had
opportunities of studying her. You see, I'm a
married man, and
not in my first youth ; out of the running altogether.
The
looker-on gets the best view of the game. But you, who are
young
and charming and already famous—we've had your book
here, by the
bye, and there's good stuff in it—you're going to
have no end of
pleasant experiences. I can see she means to add
you to her ninety-and-nine
other spoils ; I saw it from the way
she looked at you at dinner. She
always begins with those
velvety red-brown glances. She began that way with
March and
Prendergast and Willie Anson, and all the men we've had here
since her arrival. The next thing she'll do will be to press your
hand
under the tablecloth."
" Oh, come, Mayne ; you're joking," cried Campbell, a little
brusquely. He
thought such jokes in bad taste. He had a high
ideal of Woman, an immense
respect for her ; he could not endure
to hear her belittled even in jest.
"Miss Thayer is refined and
charming. No girl of her class would do such
things."
" What is her class ? Who knows anything about her ? All
we know is that she
and her uncanny little friend—her little
sister, as she calls her,
though they're no more sisters than you
and I are—they're not even
related—all we know is that she
and Miss Dodge (that's the little
sister's name) arrived here
one memorable day last October from the Kronprinz Hotel at
Waldeck-Pyrmont.
By the bye, it was the Clamps, I believe,
who told her of the
Castle—hotel acquaintances—you know how
travelling Americans
always cotton to each other. And we've
picked up a few little biographical
notes from her and Miss Dodge
since.
in
Michigan, who supplies her with all the money she wants.
And she's been
travelling about since last May : Paris, Vienna,
the Rhine, Düsseldorf, and
so on here. She must have had some
rich experiences, by Jove. For she's
done everything. Cycled in
Paris : you should see her in her cycling
costume ; she wears it
when the Baron takes her out shooting—she's
an admirable shot,
by the way, an accomplishment learned, I suppose, from
some
American cow-boy. Then in Berlin she did a month's hospital
nursing ; and now she's studying the higher branches of the
Terpsichorean
art. You know she was in Hanover to-day. Did
she tell you what she went for
? "
" To take a singing lesson," said Campbell, remembering the
reason she had
given.
" A singing lesson ! Do you sing with your legs ? A dancing
lesson,
Hof Theater. She could deposit a kiss on your forehead with her
foot, I don't doubt. I wonder if she can do the
And when Campbell, in astonishment, wondered why on
earth she
should wish to do such things, " Oh, to extend her
opportunities,"
Mayne explained, "and to acquire fresh sensations. She's
an
adventuress. Yes, an adventuress, but an end-of-the-century one.
She doesn't travel for profit, but for pleasure. She has no desire to
swindle her neighbour of dollars, but to amuse herself at his expense.
And
she's clever ; she's read a good deal ; she knows how to apply
her reading
to practical life. Thus, she's learned from Herrick
not to be coy ; and from Shakespeare that sweet-and-twenty is the
time for
kissing and being kissed. She honours her masters in the
observance. She
was not in the least abashed when, one day, I
suddenly came upon her
teaching that damned idiot, young Anson,
two new ways of kissing."
Campbell's impressions of the girl were readjusting themselves
completely,
but for the moment he was unconscious of the change.
He only knew that he
was partly angry, partly incredulous, and
inclined to believe that Mayne
was chaffing him.
" But Miss Dodge," he objected, " the little sister, she is older ;
old
enough to look after her friend. Surely she could not allow
a young girl
placed in her charge to behave in such a way—"
" Oh, that little Dodge girl," said Mayne contemptuously ;
" Miss Thayer
pays the whole shot, I understand, and Miss Dodge
plays gooseberry,
sheep-dog, jackal, what you will. She finds her
reward in the other's
cast-off finery. The silk blouse she was wear-
ing to-night, I've good
reason for remembering, belonged to Miss
Lulie. For, during a brief season,
I must tell you, my young lady
had the caprice to show attentions to your
humble servant. I suppose
my being a married man lent me a factitious
fascination. But I didn't
see it. That kind of girl doesn't appeal to me.
So she employed Miss
Dodge to do a little active canvassing. It was really
too funny ;
I was coming in one day after a walk in the woods ; my wife
was
trimming bonnets, or had neuralgia, or something. Anyhow, I
was
alone, and Miss Dodge contrived to waylay me in the middle
of the
court-yard. 'Don't you find it vurry dull walking all by
yourself ?' she
asked me ; and then blinking up in her strange
little short-sighted
way—she's really the weirdest little creature—
'Why don't you
make love to Lulie ?' she said ; 'you'd find her
vurry charming.' It took
me a minute or two to recover presence
of mind enough to ask her whether
Miss Thayer had commissioned
her to tell me so. She looked at me with that cryptic smile of hers ;
'She'd
like you to do so, I'm sure,' she finally remarked, and
pirouetted away.
Though it didn't come off, owing to my bash-
fulness, it was then that Miss
Dodge appropriated the silk bodice ;
and Providence, taking pity on Miss
Thayer's forced inactivity,
sent along March, a young fellow reading for
the army, with
whom she had great doings. She fooled him to the top of his
bent;
sat on his knee ; gave him a lock of her hair, which, having no
scissors handy, she burned off with a cigarette taken from his
mouth ; and
got him to offer her marriage. Then she turned
round and laughed in his
face, and took up with a Dr. Weber, a
cousin of the Baron's, under the
other man's very eyes. You
never saw anything like the unblushing coolness
with which she
would permit March to catch her in Weber's arms."
" Come," Campbell protested, "aren't you drawing it rather
strong ? "
"On the contrary, I'm drawing it mild, as you'll discover pre-
sently for
yourself; and then you'll thank me for forewarning you.
For she makes
love—desperate love, mind you—to every man she
meets. And
goodness knows how many she hasn't met, in the
course of her career, which
began presumably at the age of ten,
in some 'Amur'can' hotel or
watering-place. Look at this."
Mayne fetched an alpenstock from a corner of
the hall ; it was
decorated with a long succession of names, which,
ribbon-like, were
twisted round and round it, carved in the wood. " Read
them,"
insisted Mayne, putting the stick in Campbell's hands. "You'll
see they're not the names of the peaks she has climbed, or the
towns she
has passed through ; they're the names of the men she
has fooled. And
there's room for more ; there's still a good deal
of space, as you see.
There's room for yours."
Campbell glanced down the alpenstock—reading here a name,
there an initial, or just a date—and jerked it impatiently from him
on to a couch. He wished with all his heart that Mayne would stop,
would
talk of something else, would let him get away. The
young girl had
interested him so much ; he had felt himself so
drawn towards her ; he had
thought her so fresh, so innocent. But
Mayne, on the contrary, was warming
to his subject, was enchanted
to have some one to listen to his stories, to
discuss his theories, to
share his cynical amusement.
" I don't think, mind you," he said, " that she is a bit interested
herself
in the men she flirts with. I don't think she gets any of
the usual
sensations from it, you know. I think she just does it
for devilry, for a
laugh. Sometimes I wonder whether she does it
with an idea of retribution.
Perhaps some woman she was fond
of, perhaps her mother even—who
knows ?—was badly treated at
the hands of a man. Perhaps this girl
has constituted herself the
Nemesis for her sex, and goes about seeing how
many masculine
hearts she can break by way of revenge. Or can it be that
she is
simply the newest development of the New Woman—she who
in
England preaches and bores you, and in America practises and
pleases ? Yes, I believe she's the American edition, and so new
that she
hasn't yet found her way into fiction. She's the pioneer
of the army coming
out of the West, that's going to destroy the
existing scheme of things and
rebuild it nearer to the heart's
desire."
" Oh, damn it all, Mayne," cried Campbell, rising abruptly,
"why not say at
once that she's a wanton, and have done with it ?
Who wants to hear your
rotten theories ? " And he lighted his
candle without another word, and
went off to bed.
It was four o'clock, and the Baron's boarders were drinking
their afternoon
coffee, drawn up in a circle round the hall fire.
All but Campbell, who had
carried his cup away to a side-table,
and, with a book open before him,
appeared to be reading assidu-
ously. In reality he could not follow a line
of what he read ; he
could not keep his thoughts from Miss Thayer. What
Mayne
had told him was germinating in his mind. Knowing his friend
as
he did, he could not on reflection doubt his word. In spite of
much
superficial cynicism, Mayne was incapable of speaking
lightly of any young
girl without good cause. It now seemed
to Campbell that, instead of
exaggerating the case, Mayne had
probably understated it. The girl repelled
him to-day as much
as she had charmed him yesterday. He asked himself with
horror,
what had she not already known, seen, permitted ? When now
and
again his eyes travelled over, perforce, to where she sat, her red
head
leaning against Miss Dodge's knee, seeming to attract and
concentrate all
the glow of the fire, his forehead set itself in
frowns, and he returned
with an increased sense of irritation to his
book.
" I'm just sizzling up, Nannie," Miss Thayer presently com-
plained, in her
child-like, drawling little way ; " this fire is too hot
for anything." She
rose and shook straight her loose tea-gown,
a marvellous garment created in
Paris, which would have accused
a duchess of wilful extravagance. She stood
smiling round a
moment, pulling on and off with her right hand the big
diamond
ring which decorated the left. At the sound of her voice
Campbell had looked up ; now his cold unfriendly eyes en-
countered hers. He glanced rapidly past her, then back to his
book. But she,
undeterred, with a charming sinuous movement
and a frou-frou of trailing
silks, crossed over towards him. She
slipped into an empty chair next
his.
" I'm going to do you the honour of sitting beside you, Mr.
Campbell," she
said sweetly.
" It's an honour I've done nothing whatever to merit," he
answered, without
looking at her, and turned a page.
" The right retort," she approved ; " but you might have said
it a little
more cordially."
"I don't feel cordial."
" But why not ? What has happened ? Yesterday you were
so nice."
" Ah, a good deal of water has run under the bridge since
yesterday."
" But still the river remains as full," she told him, smiling,
" and still
the sky is as blue. The thermometer has even risen
six degrees.
Out-of-doors, to-day, I could feel the spring-time
in the air. You, too,
love the spring, don't you ? I know that
from your books. And I wanted to
tell you, I think your books
perfectly lovely. I know them, most all. I've
read them away
home. They're very much thought of in America. Only
last
night I was saying to Nannie how glad I am to have met you,
for I
think we're going to be great friends ; aren't we, Mr.
Campbell ? At least,
I hope so, for you can do me so much
good, if you will. Your books always
make me feel real good ;
but you yourself can help me much more."
She looked up at him with one of her warm, narrow red-
brown glances, which
yesterday would have thrilled his blood, and
to-day merely stirred it to
anger.
"You over-estimate my abilities," he said coldly ; "and on the
whole, I fear you will find writers a very disappointing race.
You see, they
put their best into their books. So, not to dis-
illusion you too rapidly
"—he rose—" will you excuse me ? I
have some work to do." And
he left her sitting there alone.
But he did no work when he got to his room. Whether
Lulie Thayer was
actually present or not, it seemed that her
influence was equally
disturbing to him. His mind was full of
her : of her singular eyes, her
quaint intonation, her sweet
seductive praise. Yesterday such praise would
have been delight-
ful to him : what young author is proof against
appreciation of
his books ? To-day, Campbell simply told himself that she
laid
the butter on too thick ; that it was in some analogous manner
she had flattered up March, Anson, and all the rest of the men
that Mayne
had spoken of. He supposed it was the first step in
the process by which he
was to be fooled, twisted round her
finger, added to the list of victims
who strewed her conquering
path. He had a special fear of being fooled. For
beneath a
somewhat supercilious exterior, the dominant note of his
character
was timidity, distrust of his own merits ; and he knew he
was
single-minded—one-idea'd almost ; if he were to let himself go,
to
get to care very much for a woman, for such a girl as this girl,
for instance, he would lose himself completely, be at her mercy
absolutely.
Fortunately, Mayne had let him know her character :
he could feel nothing
but dislike for her—disgust, even ; and yet
he was conscious how
pleasant it would be to believe in her
innocence, in her candour. For she
was so adorably pretty :
her flower-like beauty grew upon him ; her head,
drooping a
little on one side when she looked up, was so like a flower
bent
by its own weight. The texture of her cheeks, her lips, were
delicious as the petals of a flower. He found he could recall with
perfect
accuracy every detail of her appearance : the manner in
which the red hair grew round her temples ; how it was loosely
and
gracefully fastened up behind with just a single tortoise-shell
pin. He
recalled the suspicion of a dimple which shadowed
itself in her cheek when
she spoke, and deepened into a delicious
reality every time she smiled. He
remembered her throat ; her
hands, of a beautiful whiteness, with pink
palms and pointed
fingers. It was impossible to write. He speculated long
on the
ring she wore on her engaged finger. He mentioned this ring to
Mayne the next time he saw him.
" Engaged ? very much so I should say. Has got a
every capital of Europe probably. But the ring-man is
the
en titre
love with her. She shows me his letters. When
she's had her
fling, I suppose, she'll go back and marry him. That's
what
these little American girls do, I'm told ; sow their wild oats
here
with us, and settle down into
Meanwhile, are you having any fun with
her ? Aha, she presses
your hand ? The 'gesegnete Mahlzeit' business after
dinner is an
excellent institution, isn't it ? She'll tell you how much
she
loves you soon ; that's the next move in the game."
But so far she had done none of these things, for Campbell
gave her no
opportunities. He was guarded in the extreme,
ungenial ; avoiding her even
at the cost of civility. Sometimes
he was downright rude. That especially
occurred when he felt
himself inclined to yield to her advances. For she
made him all
sorts of silent advances, speaking with her eyes, her sad
little
mouth, her beseeching attitude. And then one evening she went
further still. It occurred after dinner in the little green drawing-
room.
The rest of the company were gathered together in the
big drawing-room
beyond. The small room has deep embrasures
to the windows. Each embrasure
holds two old faded green
velvet sofas in black oaken frames, and an oaken oblong table
stands between
them. Campbell had flung himself down on one
of these sofas in the corner
nearest the window. Miss Thayer,
passing through the room, saw him, and sat
down opposite.
She leaned her elbows on the table, the laces of her
sleeves
falling away from her round white arms, and clasped her
hands.
"Mr. Campbell, tell me what have I done? How have I
vexed you ? You have
hardly spoken two words to me all day.
You always try to avoid me." And
when he began to utter
evasive banalities, she stopped him with an
imploring " Don't ! I
love you. You know I love you. I love you so much I
can't
bear you to put me off with mere phrases."
Campbell admired the well-simulated passion in her voice,
remembered Mayne's
prediction, and laughed aloud.
" Oh, you may laugh," she said, " but I am serious. I love
you, I love you
with my whole soul." She slipped round the end
of the table, and came close
beside him. His first impulse was to
rise ; then he resigned himself to
stay. But it was not so much
resignation that was required, as
self-mastery, cool-headedness.
Her close proximity, her fragrance, those
wonderful eyes raised so
beseechingly to his, made his heart beat.
" Why are you so cold ? " she said. " I love you so ; can't you
love me a
little too ? "
"My dear young lady," said Campbell, gently repelling her,
" what do you
take me for ? A foolish boy like your friends
Anson and March ? What you
are saying is monstrous, pre-
posterous. Ten days ago you'd never even seen
me."
" What has length of time to do with it ? " she said. " I loved
you at first
sight."
" I wonder," he observed judicially, and again gently removed
her hand from his, " to how many men you have not already said
the same
thing."
"I've never meant it before," she said quite earnestly, and
nestled closer
to him, and kissed the breast of his coat, and held
her mouth up towards
his. But he kept his chin resolutely high,
and looked over her head.
" How many men have you not already kissed, even since you've
been here ?
"
"But there've not been many here to kiss!" she exclaimed
naïvely.
" Well, there was March ; you kissed him ? "
" No, I'm quite sure I didn't."
" And young Anson ; what about him ? Ah, you don't
answer ! And then the
other fellow—what's his name—Pren-
dergast—you've
kissed him ? "
"But, after all, what is there in a kiss ? " she cried ingenuously.
" It
means nothing, absolutely nothing. Why, one has to kiss all
sorts of people
one doesn't care about."
Campbell remembered how Mayne had said she had probably
known strange kisses
since the age of ten ; and a wave of anger
with her, of righteous
indignation, rose within him.
" To me," said he, " to all right-thinking people, a young girl's
kisses are
something pure, something sacred, not to be offered in-
discriminately to
every fellow she meets. Ah, you don't know
what you have lost ! You have
seen a fruit that has been
handled, that has lost its bloom ? You have seen
primroses,
spring flowers gathered and thrown away in the dust ? And
who
enjoys the one, or picks up the others ? And this is what you
remind me of—only you have deliberately, of your own perverse
will,
tarnished your beauty, and thrown away all the modesty,
the reticence, the
delicacy, which make a young girl so infinitely
dear. You revolt me, you disgust me. I want nothing from you,
but to be let
alone. Kindly take your hands away, and let me go."
He roughly shook her off and got up, then felt a moment's
curiosity to see
how she would take the repulse.
Miss Thayer never blushed : had never, he imagined, in her
life done so. No
faintest trace of colour now stained the
warm pallor of her rose-leaf skin
; but her eyes filled up with
tears ; two drops gathered on the
under-lashes, grew large,
trembled an instant, and then rolled unchecked
down her cheeks.
Those tears somehow put him in the wrong, and he felt he
had
behaved brutally to her for the rest of the night.
He began to find excuses for her : after all, she meant no
harm : it was her
up-bringing, her
loathed ; but perhaps he need not have spoken so
harshly to her.
He thought he would find a more friendly word for her
next
morning ; and he loitered about the Mahlsaal, where the boarders
come in to breakfast as in an hotel, just when it suits them, till
past
eleven ; but the girl never turned up. Then, when he
was almost tired of
waiting, Miss Dodge put in an appear-
ance, in a flannel wrapper, and her
front hair twisted up in steel
pins.
Campbell judged Miss Dodge with even more severity than he
did Miss Thayer ;
there was nothing in this weird little creature's
appearance to temper
justice with mercy. It was with difficulty
that he brought himself to
inquire after her friend.
" Lulie is sick this morning," she told him. " I've come down
to order her
some broth. She couldn't sleep any last night,
because of your unkindness
to her. She's vurry, vurry unhappy
about it."
" Yes, I'm sorry for what I said. I had no right to speak so
strongly, I
suppose. But I spoke strongly because I feel strongly.
However, there's no reason why my bad manners should make her
unhappy."
"Oh, yes, there's vurry good reason," said Miss Dodge.
" She's vurry much in
love with you."
Campbell looked at the speaker long and earnestly to try and
read her mind ;
but the prominent blinking eyes, the cryptic
physiognomy, told him
nothing.
" Look here," he said brusquely, " what's your object in trying
to fool me
like this ? I know all about your friend. Mayne has
told me. She has cried
'Wolf' too often before to expect to be
believed now."
"But after all," argued Miss Dodge, blinking more than ever
behind her
glasses, " the wolf did really come at last, you know ;
didn't he ? Lulie
is really in love this time. We've all made
mistakes in our lives, haven't
we ? But that's no reason for not
being right at last. And Lulie has cried
herself sick."
Campbell was a little shaken. He went and repeated the
conversation to
Mayne, who laughed derisively.
" Capital, capital ! " he cried ; "excellently contrived. It quite
supports
my latest theory about our young friend. She's an
actress, a born
comédienne. She acts always, and to every one :
to you, to me, to the
Ritterhausens, to the Dodge girl—even to
herself when she is quite
alone. And she has a great respect for
her art ; she'll carry out her rôle,
She
chooses to pose as in love with you ; you don't respond ; the
part now
requires that she should sicken and pine. Consequently
she takes to her
bed, and sends her confidante to tell you so. Oh,
it's colossal, it's
"If you can't really love me," said Lulie Thayer—" and I know
I've
been a bad girl and don't deserve that you should—at least,
will you
allow me to go on loving you ? "
She walked by Campbell's side, through the solitary uncared-
for park of
Schloss Altenau. It was three weeks later in the
year, and the spring
feeling in the air stirred the blood. All
round were signs and tokens of
spring : in the busy gaiety of bird
and insect life ; in the purple
flower-tufts which thickened the
boughs of the ash trees ; in the young
green things pushing up
pointed heads from amidst last season's dead leaves
and grasses. The
snow-wreathes, that had for so long decorated the distant
hills, were
shrinking perceptibly away beneath the strong March
sunshine.
There was every invitation to spend one's time out of doors,
and Campbell
passed long mornings in the park, or wandering
through the woods or the
surrounding villages. Miss Thayer
often accompanied him. He never invited
her to do so, but when
she offered him her company, he could not, or at
least did not,
refuse it.
" May I love you ? Say," she entreated.
" 'Wenn ich Dich liebe, was geht 's Dich an ?' " he quoted
lightly. " Oh,
no, it's nothing to me, of course. Only don't
expect me to believe
you—that's all."
This disbelief of his was the recurring decimal of their con-
versation. No
matter on what subject they began, they always
ended thus. And the more
sceptical he showed himself, the
more eager she became. She exhausted
herself in endeavours to
convince him.
They had reached the corner in the park where the road to the
castle turns
off at right angles from the road to Dürrendorf. The
ground rises gently on
the park-side to within three feet of the
top of the wall, although on the
other side there is a drop of at
least twenty feet. The broad wall-top
makes a convenient seat.
Campbell and the girl sat down on it. At his last
words she wrung
her hands together in her lap.
"But how can you disbelieve me ? " she cried, "when I tell
you I love you, I
adore you ? When I swear it to you ? And
can't you see for yourself ? Why,
every one at the Castle
sees it."
" Yes, you afford the Castle a good deal of unnecessary amuse-
ment. And
that shows you don't understand what love really is.
Real love is full of
delicacy, of reticences, and would feel itself
profaned if it became the
jest of the servants hall."
" I think it's not so much my love for you," said Lulie gently,
" as your
rejection of it, which has made me talked about."
" No ; isn't it rather on account of the favours you've lavished
on all my
predecessors ? "
She sprang from the wall to her feet, and walked up and down
in
agitation.
"But after all, surely, mistakes of that sort are not to be
counted against
us ? I did really think I was in love with Mr.
March. Willie Anson doesn't
count. He's an American too,
and he understands things. Besides, he is only
a boy. And how
could I know I should love you before I had met you ?
And
how can I help loving you now I have ? You're so different from
other men. You're good. You're honourable, you treat women
with respect.
Oh, I do love you so, I do love you ! Ask Nannie
if I don't."
The way in which Campbell shrugged his shoulders clearly
expressed the amount of reliance he would place on any testimony
from Miss
Dodge. He could not forget her " Why don't you
make love to Lulie ? "
addressed to a married man. Such a want
of principle argued an equal want
of truth.
Lulie seemed on the brink of weeping.
" Oh, I wish I were dead," she struggled to say ; " life's
impossible if you
won't believe me. I don't ask you to love me
any longer. I know I've been a
bad girl, and I don't deserve
that you should ; but if you won't believe
that I love you, I don't
want to live any longer."
Campbell confessed to himself that she acted admirably, but that
the
damnable iteration of the one idea became monotonous. He
sought a change of
subject. " Look there," he said, " close by
the wall, what's that jolly
little blue flower ? It's the first I've
seen this year."
He pointed to where a periwinkle grew at the base of the wall,
lifting its
bright petals gaily from out its dark glossy leaves.
Lulie, all smiles again, picked it with child-like pleasure. " Oh,
if that's
the first you've seen," she cried, " you can take a wish.
Only you mustn't
speak until some one asks you a question."
She began to fasten it in his coat. " It's just as blue as your
eyes," she
said, " You have such blue and boyish eyes, you know.
Stop, stop, that's
not a question," and seeing that he was about to
speak, she laid her finger
across his mouth. " You'll spoil the
charm."
She stepped back, folded her arms, and seemed to dedicate
herself to eternal
silence ; then relenting suddenly :
" Do you believe me ? " she entreated.
" What's become of your ring ? " Campbell answered irrelevantly.
He had
noticed its absence from her finger while she had been
fixing in the
flower.
" Oh, my engagement's broken."
Campbell asked how the fiancé would like that.
" Oh, he won't mind. He knows I only got engaged because
he worried so. And
it was always understood between us, that I
was to be free if I ever met
any one I liked better."
Campbell asked her what sort of fellow this accommodating
fiancé was.
"Oh, he's all right. And he's very good too. But he's not a
bit clever, and
don't let us talk about him. He makes me
tired."
" But you're wrong," Campbell told her, " to throw away a
good, a sincere
affection. If you really want to reform and turn
over a new leaf, as you
are always telling me, I should advise you
to go home and marry him."
" What, when I'm in love with you ! " she cried reproachfully.
" Would that
be right ? "
" It's going to rain," said Campbell. " Didn't you feel a drop
just then ?
And it's getting near lunch-time. Shall we go
in ? "
Their shortest way led through the little cemetery in which
the dead and
gone Ritterhausens lay at peace, in the shadow of
their sometime home.
" When I die the Baron has promised I shall be buried here," said
Lulie
pensively ; "just here, next to his first wife. Don't you
think it would be
lovely to be buried in a beautiful, peaceful
baronial graveyard instead of
in some horrid crowded city
cemetery ? "
Mayne met them as they entered the hall. He noticed the
flower in his
friend's coat. " Ah, my dear chap, been treading
the periwinkle path of
dalliance, I see ? How many desirable
young men have I not witnessed, led
down the same broad way
by the same seductive lady ! Always the same thing, nothing
changed, but the
flower, according to the season."
When Campbell reached his room and changed his coat, he
threw the flower
away into his stove.
Had it not been for Mayne, Miss Thayer might have triumphed
after all ;
might have convinced Campbell of her passion, or have
added another victim
to her long list. But Mayne had set him-
self as determinedly to spoil her
game as she was bent on winning
it. He had always the cynical word, the apt
reminiscence ready,
whenever he saw signs on Campbell's part of yielding.
He was
very fond of Campbell. He did not wish to see him fall a prey
to
the wiles of this little American syren. He had watched her
conduct
in the past with a dozen different men ; he genuinely
believed she was only
acting now.
Campbell, for his part, began to feel a curious and growing
irritation in
the girl's presence. Yet he did not avoid it ; he could
not well avoid it,
she followed him about so persistently ; but his
speech began to overflow
with bitterness towards her. He said the
cruellest things ; then
remembering them afterwards when alone,
he blushed at his brutalities. But
nothing he said ever altered her
sweetness of temper or weakened the
tenacity of her purpose. His
rebuffs made her beautiful eyes run over with
tears, but the harshest
of them never elicited the least sign of
resentment. There would
have been something touching as well as comic in
this dog-like
forgiveness, which accepted everything as welcome at his
hands,
had he not been imbued with Mayne's conviction that it was all
an
admirable piece of acting. When for a moment he forgot the
histrionic theory, then invariably there would come a chance word
in her
conversation which would fill him with cold rage. They
would be talking of
books, travels, sport, what not, and she would
drop a reference to this man
or to that. So-and-so had taken her to
Bullier's, she had learned skating with this other. She was a capital
shot,
Hiram P. Ladd had taught her ; and he got glimpses of long
vistas of
amourettes played in every State in America, and in every
country of
Europe, since the very beginning, when, as a mere
child, elderly men,
friends of her father's, had held her on their
knee and fed her with
sweetmeats and kisses. It was sickening to
think of ; it was pitiable. So
much youth and beauty tarnished :
the possibility for so much good thrown
away. For if one could
only blot out her record, forget it, accept her for
what she chose
to appear, a more endearing companion no man could
desire.
It was a wet afternoon. Mayne had accompanied his wife and the
Baroness into
Hamelin. " To take up a servant's character, and ex-
postulate with a
recalcitrant dressmaker," he explained to Campbell,
and wondered what women
would do to fill up their days, were it
not for the perennial villanies of
dressmakers and domestic servants.
He himself was going to look in at the
English Club ; wouldn't
Campbell come too ? There was a fourth seat in the
carriage.
But Campbell was in no social mood ; he felt his temper going
all
to pieces ; a quarter of an hour of Mrs. Mayne's society would
have brought on an explosion. He felt he must be alone ; yet
when he had
read for half an hour in his room he wondered
vaguely what Lulie was doing
; he had not seen her since luncheon.
She always gave him her society when
he could very well dispense
with it, but on a wet day like this, when a
little conversation would
be tolerable, of course she stayed away. Then
there came down the
long Rittersaal the tapping of high heels and a
well-known knock
at his door.
"Am I disturbing you?" she asked ; and his mood was so
capricious that, now
she was standing there on his threshold, he
thought he was annoyed at it. "
It's so dull," she said, persuasively :
" Nannie's got a sick headache, and
I daren't go downstairs, or the
Baron will annex me to play Halma. He
always wants to play
Halma on wet days."
" And what do you want to do? " said Campbell, leaning against
the doorpost,
and letting his eyes rest on the strange piquant face
in its setting of red
hair.
" To be with you, of course."
" Well," said he, coming out and closing the door, " I'm at your
service.
What next ? "
" What would you like to do ? Shall I fetch over my pistols,
and we'll
practise with them ? You've no notion how well I can
shoot. We couldn't
hurt anything here, could we ? "
The Rittersaal is an immense room occupying all the space on
the first floor
that the hall and four drawing-rooms do on the floor
below. Wooden pillars
support the ceiling, and divide the room
lengthwise into three parts. Down
the centre are long tables,
used for ceremonial banquets. Six windows look
into the court-
yard, and six out over the open country. The centre pane
of
each window is emblazoned with a Ritterhausen shield. The sills
are
broad and low, and cushioned in faded velvet. Between the
windows hang
family portraits, and a fine stone-sculptured six-
teenth-century fireplace
and overmantel at one end of the
faces a
magnificent black carved buffet at the other. Lulie,
bundling up her
duchess tea-gown over one arm, danced off down
the long room in very
unduchess-like fashion to fetch the case.
It was a charming little box of
cedar-wood and mother-o'-pearl,
lined with violet velvet ; and two tiny
revolvers lay inside, hardly
more than six inches long, with silver
engraved handles.
" I won them in a bet," she observed complacently, " with the
Hon. Billie
Thornton. He's an Englishman, you know, the son
of Lord Thornton. I knew
him in Washington two years ago
last fall. He bet I couldn't hit a
three-cent piece at twenty feet,
and I did. Aren't they perfectly sweet ?
Now, can't you con-
trive a target ? "
Campbell went back to his room, drew out a rough diagram,
and pasted it down
on to a piece of stout cardboard. Then this
was fixed up by means of a
penknife driven into the wood against
one of the pillars, and Campbell,
with his walking-stick laid
down six successive times, measured off the
distance required,
and set a chalk mark across the floor. Lulie took the
first shot.
She held the little weapon out at arm's length—pulled
the trigger.
There was the sharp report, and when Campbell went up to
examine results, he found she had only missed the very centre by
half an
inch.
Lulie was exultant. " I don't seem to have got out of practice
any," she
remarked. " I'm so glad, for I used to be a very good
shot. It was Hiram P.
Ladd who taught me. He's the crack
shot of Montana. What ! you don't know
Hiram P. ? Why, I
should have supposed every one must have heard of him. He
had
the next ranche to my Uncle Samuel's, where I used to go
summers,
and he made me do an hour's pistol practice every
morning after bathing. It
was he who taught me swimming too
—in the river."
" Damnation," said Campbell under his breath, then shot in his
turn, and
shot wide. Lulie made another bull's-eye, and after
that a white. She urged
Campbell to continue, which he sullenly
did, and again missed.
" You see I don't come up to your Hiram P. Ladd," he
remarked savagely, and
after a few more shots on either side he
put the pistol down, and walked over to the window. He stood
with one foot
on the cushioned seat, staring out at the rain, and
pulling at his
moustache moodily.
Lulie followed him, nestled up to him, lifted the hand that
hung passive by
his side, put it round her waist, and held it there.
Campbell, lost in
thought, let it remain so for a second : then
remembered how she had
doubtless done this very same thing
with other men in this very room. All
her apparently spontaneous
movements, he told himself, were but the
oft-used pieces in the
game she played so skilfully.
" Let go," he said, and flung himself down on the window-
seat, looking up
at her with darkening eyes.
She sat meekly in the other corner, and folded her offending
hands in her
lap.
" Do you know, your eyes are not a bit nice when you're
cross ; " she said,
" they seem to become quite black."
He maintained a discouraging silence.
She looked over at him meditatively.
" I never cared a bit for Hiram P., if that's what you mean,"
she remarked
presently.
" Do you suppose I care a button if you did ? "
" Then why did you leave off shooting, and why won't you
talk to me ? "
He vouchsafed no reply.
Lulie spent some moments wrapped in thought. Then she
sighed deeply, and
recommenced on a note of pensive regret :
"Ah, if I'd only met you sooner in life, I should be a very
different
girl."
The freshness which her quaint, drawling enunciation lent to
this
time-dishonoured formula, made Campbell smile. Then
remembering all its
implications, his face set in frowns again.
Lulie continued her discourse. "You see," said she, "I never
had any one to
teach me what was right. My mother died when
I was quite a child, and my
father has always let me do exactly as
I pleased, so long as I didn't
bother him. Then I've never had a
home, but have always lived around in
hotels and places ; all
winter in New York or Washington, and summers out
at Long-
branch or Saratoga. It's true we own a house in Detroit on
Lafayette Avenue, that we reckon as home, but we don't ever
go there. It's
a bad sort of life for a girl, isn't it ? " she questioned,
pleadingly.
His mind was at work. The loose threads of his angers, his
irritations, his
desires were knitting themselves together, weaving
themselves into
something overmastering and definite.
The young girl meanwhile was moving up towards him along
the seat, for the
effect which his sharpest rebuke produced on her
never lasted more than
four minutes. She now again possessed
herself of his hand, and holding it
between her own, began to
caress it in child-like fashion, pulling the
fingers apart and closing
them again ; spreading it, palm downwards on her
lap, and
laying her own little hand over it, to exemplify the
differences
between them. He let her be ; he seemed unconscious of her
pro-
ceedings.
" And then," she continued, " I've always known a lot of
young fellows
who've liked to take me round ; and no one ever
objected to my going with
them, and so I went. And I liked it,
and there wasn't any harm in it, just
kissing and making believe,
and nonsense. And I never really cared for one
of them—I can
see that now, when I compare them with you ; when I
compare
what I felt for them, with what I feel for you. Oh, I do love
you so much," she said ; "don't you believe me ? " She lifted his
hand to
her lips and covered it with kisses.
He pulled it roughly away, got up, walked to the table, came
back again,
stood looking at her with sombre eyes and dilating
pupils.
" I do love you," she repeated, rising and advancing towards
him.
" For God's sake, drop that damned rot," he cried with sudden
fury. " It
wearies me, do you hear ? it sickens me. Love, love,
my God, what do you
know about it ? Why, if you really loved
me, really loved any man—if
you had any conception of what the
passion of love is, how beautiful, how
fine, how sacred—the mere
idea that you could not come to your lover
fresh, pure, untouched,
as a young girl should—that you had been
handled, fondled, and
God knows what besides, by this man and the
other—would fill
you with such horror for yourself, with such
supreme disgust—you
would feel yourself so unworthy, so polluted . .
. that . . .
that . . . by God ! you would take up that pistol there,
and
blow your brains out ! "
Lulie seemed to find the idea quite entertaining. She picked
the pistol up
from where it lay in the window, examined it with
her pretty head drooping
on one side, looked at it critically, and
then sent one of her long,
red-brown caressing glances up towards
him.
" And suppose I were to," she asked lightly, " would you
believe me then ?
"
" Oh, . . . well . . . then, perhaps ; if you showed suffi-
cient decency to
kill yourself, perhaps I might," said he, with
ironical laughter. His
ebullition had relieved him ; his nerves
were calmed again. "But nothing
short of that would ever
make me."
With her little tragic air which seemed so like a smile dis-
guised, she
raised the weapon to the bosom of her gown. There
came a sudden, sharp crack, a tiny smoke film. She stood an
instant swaying
slightly, smiling certainly, distinctly outlined
against the background of
rain-washed window, of grey falling
rain, the top of her head cutting in
two the Ritterhausen
escutcheon. Then all at once there was nothing at all
between
him and the window ; he saw the coat-of-arms entire ; but a
motionless, inert heap of plush and lace, and fallen wine-red hair,
lay at
his feet upon the floor.
" Child, child, what have you done ? " he cried with anguish,
and kneeling
beside her, lifted her up, and looked into her
face.
* * * * *
When from a distance of time and place Campbell was at last
able to look
back with some degree of calmness on the catastrophe,
the element which
stung him most keenly was this : he could
never convince himself that Lulie
had really loved him after all.
And the only two persons who had known them
both, and the
circumstances of the case, sufficiently well to have
resolved
his doubts one way or the other, held diametrically opposite
views.
"Well, just listen, then, and I'll tell you how it was," Miss
Nannie Dodge
had said to him impressively, the day before he
left Schloss-Altenau for
ever, " Lulie was tremendously, terribly
in love with you. And when she
found that you wouldn't care
about her, she didn't want to live any more.
As to the way in
which it happened, you don't need to reproach yourself for
that.
She'd have done it, anyhow : if not then, why, later. But it's
all
the rest of your conduct to her that was so cruel. Your cold,
complacent British unresponsiveness. I guess you'll never find
another
woman to love you as Lulie did. She was just the
darlingest, the sweetest,
the most loving girl in the world."
Mayne, on the other hand, summed it up in this way :
" Of course, old chap,
it's horrible to think of: horrible, horrible,
horrible ! I can't tell you
how badly I feel about it. For she
was a gorgeously beautiful creature.
That red hair of hers !
Good Lord ! You won't come across such hair as that
twice in a
lifetime. But, believe me, she was only fooling with you.
Once
she had you in her hunting-noose, once her buccaneering instincts
satisfied, and she'd have chucked you as she did all the rest.
As to her
death, I've got three theories—no, two—for the first
is that
she compassed it in a moment of genuine emotion, and
that, I think, we may
dismiss as quite untenable. The second
is, that it arose from pure
misadventure. You'd both been
shooting, hadn't you ? Well, she took up the
pistol and pulled
the trigger from mere mischief, and quite forgetting one
barrel
was still loaded. And the third is, it was just her histrionic
sense
of the fitness of things. The rôle she had played so long and so
well now demanded a sensational finale in the centre of the stage.
And it's
the third theory I give the preference to. She was the
most consummate
little actress I ever saw."
To all of us journeymen in this great whirling London mill, it
happens
sooner or later that the clatter and roar of its ceaseless
wheels—a
thing at first portentous, terrifying, nay, not to be
endured—becomes a part of our nature, with our clothes and our
acquaintances ; till at last the racket and din of a competitive
striving
humanity not only cease to impinge on the sense, but
induce a certain
callosity in the organ, while that more sensitive
inner ear of ours, once
almost as quick to record as his in the fairy
tale, who lay and heard the
grass-blades thrust and sprout, from lack
of exercise drops back to the
rudimentary stage. Hence it comes
about, that when we are set down for a
brief Sunday, far from the
central roar, our first sensation is that of a
stillness corporeal,
positive, aggressive. The clamorous ocean of sound has
ebbed to
an infinite distance ; in its place this other sea of fullest
silence
comes crawling up, whelming and flooding us, its crystalline
waves
lapping us round with a possessing encirclement as distinct as
that
of the other angry tide now passed away and done with. The
very
Spirit of Silence is sitting hand in hand with us, and her touch
is a real
warm thing.
And yet, may not our confidence be premature ? Even as we
bathe and steep
our senses refreshingly in this new element, that
inner ear of ours begins to revive and to record, one by one, the
real facts
of sound. The rooks are the first to assert themselves. All
this time that
we took to be so void of voice they have been volubly
discussing every
detail of domestic tree-life, as they rock and sway
beside their nests in
the elm-tops. To take in the varied chatter
of rookdom would in itself be a
full morning's occupation, from
which the most complacent might rise humble
and instructed.
Unfortunately, their talk rarely tends to edification. The
element
of personality —the
fatally soon, that long ere a
syllogism has been properly unrolled,
the disputants have clinched on
inadequate foothold, and flopped
thence, dishevelled, into space. Somewhere
hard by, their jackdaw
cousins are narrating those smoking-room stories
they are so fond
of, with bursts of sardonic laughter at the close. For
theology or
the fine arts your jackdaw has little taste ; but give him
something
sporting and spicy, with a dash of the divorce court, and no
Sunday
morning can ever seem too long. At intervals the drum of the
woodpecker rattles out from the heart of a copse ; while from
every quarter
birds are delivering each his special message to the
great cheery-faced
postman who is trudging his daily round over-
head, carrying good tidings
to the whole bird-belt that encircles the
globe. To all these wild, natural
calls of the wood, the farmyard
behind us responds with its more cultivated
clamour and cackle ;
while the very atmosphere is resonant of its airy
population, each
of them blowing his own special trumpet. Silence, indeed !
why,
as the inner ear awakes and develops, the solid bulk of this
sound-
in-stillness becomes in its turn overpowering, terrifying. Let
the
development only continue, one thinks, but a little longer, and
the
very rush of sap, the thrust and foison of germination, will join
in
the din, and go far to deafen us. One shrinks, in fancy, to a dwarf
of meanest aims and pettiest account before this army of full-blooded,
shouting soldiery, that possesses land and air so completely, with
such an
entire indifference, too, towards ourselves, our conceits,
and our
aspirations.
Here it is again, this lesson in modesty that nature is eternally
dinning
into us ; and the completeness of one's isolation in the
midst of all this
sounding vitality cannot fail to strike home
to the most self-centred.
Indeed, it is evident that we are
entirely superfluous here ; nothing has
any need of us, nor
cares to know what we are interested in, nor what other
people
have been saying of us, nor whether we go or stay. Those rooks
up above have their own society and occupations, and don't wish to
share or
impart them ; and if haply a rook seems but an insignifi-
cant sort of
being to you, be sure that you are quite as insignificant
to the rook. Nay,
probably more so ; for while you at least allot
the rook his special small
niche in creation, it is more than doubtful
whether he ever troubles to "
place " you at all. He has weightier
matters to occupy him, and so long as
you refrain from active
interference, the chances are that for him you
simply don't exist.
But putting birds aside, as generally betraying in their startled,
side-glancing mien some consciousness of a featherless unaccount-
able
tribe that may have to be reckoned with at any moment,
those other winged
ones, the bees and their myriad cousins, simply
insult one at every turn
with their bourgeois narrowness of non-
recognition. Nothing, indeed, could
be more unlike the wary
watchful marches of the bird-folk than the bustling
self-centred
devotion to business of these tiny brokers in Nature's
busy
mart. If you happen to get in their way, they jostle up against
you, and serve you right ; if you keep clear of the course, they
proceed
serenely without so much as a critical glance at your
hat or your boots.
Snubbed, hustled, and ignored, you feel, as you
retire from the unequal
contest, that the scurrying alarm of bird
or beast is less hurtful to your self-respect than this complacent
refusal
of the insect to admit your very existence.
In sooth, we are at best poor fusionless incapable bodies ;
unstable of
purpose, veering betwixt hot fits and chill, doubtful at
times whether we
have any business here at all. The least we
can do is to make ourselves as
small as possible, and interfere as
little as may be with these lusty
citizens, knowing just what they
want to do, and doing it, at full work in
a satisfactory world that
is emphatically theirs, not ours.
The more one considers it, the humbler one gets. This
pleasant, many-hued,
fresh-smelling world of ours would be every
whit as goodly and fair, were
it to be rid at one stroke of us
awkward aliens, staggering pilgrims
through a land whose customs
and courtesies we never entirely master, whose
pleasant places we
embellish and sweeten not at all. We, on the other hand,
would
be bereft indeed, were we to wake up one chill morning and find
that all these practical capable cousins of ours had packed up and
quitted
in disgust, tired of trying to assimilate us, weary of our
aimlessness, our
brutalities, our ignorance of real life.
Our dull inner ear is at last fully awake, fully occupied. It
must be a full
three hundred yards away, that first brood of duck-
lings, fluffily proud
of a three-days-old past; yet its shrill peep-
peep reaches us as
distinctly as the worry-worry of bees in the
peach-blossom a foot from our
head. Then suddenly— the clank
of a stable-bucket on the tiles, the
awakening of church-bells—
humanity, with its grosser noises, is
with us once more, and at
the first sound of it, affrighted, the
multitudinous drone of the
under-life recedes, ebbs, vanishes ; Silence,
the nymph so shy and
withdrawn, is by our side again, and slips her hand
into ours.
I WONDER why I dreamed last night of Zabetta. It is years
since she made
her brief little transit through my life, and
passed out of it utterly. It
is years since the very recollection of
her—which for years, like
an accusing spirit, had haunted me too
often—like a spirit was
laid. It is long enough, in all conscience,
since I have even thought of
her, casually, for an instant. And
then, last night, after a perfectly
usual London day and evening, I
went to bed and dreamed of her vividly.
What had happened to
bring her to my mind ? Or is it simply that the god
of dreams is
a capricious god ?
The influence of my dream, at any rate,—the bitter-sweet
savour of
it,—has pursued me through my waking hours. All day
long to-day
Zabetta has been my phantom guest. She has walked
with me in the streets ;
she has waited at my elbow while I wrote
or talked or read. Now, at
tea-time, she is present with me by
my study fireside, in the twilight.
Her voice sounds faintly,
plaintively, in my ears ; her eyes gaze at me
sadly from a pale
reproachful face. . . . She bids me to the theatre of
memory, where
my youth is rehearsed before me in mimic-show. There was
one—
no, there were two little scenes in which Zabetta played the part of
leading lady.
I do not care to specify the year in which it happened ; it
happened a
terrible number of years ago ; it happened when I was
twenty. I had passed
the winter in Naples,—oh, it had been a
golden winter !—and
now April had come, and my last Neapolitan
day. To-morrow I was to take
ship for Marseilles, on the way to
join my mother in Paris.
It was in the afternoon ; and I was climbing one of those
crooked
staircase alleys that scale the hillsides behind the town,
the
Salita—is there, in Naples, a Salita Santa Margherita ? I had
lunched (for the last time !) at the Café d'Europe, and had then
set forth
upon a last haphazard ramble through the streets. It was
tremulous spring
weather, with blue skies, soft breezes, and a
tender sun ; the sort of
weather that kindles perilous ardours even
in the blood of middle age, and
that turns the blood of youth to
wildfire.
Women sat combing their hair, and singing, and gossiping, before
the
doorways of their pink and yellow houses ; children sprawled,
and laughed,
and quarrelled in the dirt. Pifferari, in sheep-skins
and sandles,
followed by prowling, gaunt-limbed dogs, droned
monotonous nasal melodies
from their bagpipes. Priests picked
their way gingerly over the muddy
cobble stones, sleek, black-
a-vised priests, with exaggerated hats, like
Don Basilio's in the
soldier ; or a white-robed penitent, whose eyes glimmered uncannily
from the peep-holes of the hood that hid his face ; or a comely
contadina, in her smart costume, with a pomegranate-blossom flam-
ing behind her ear, and red lips that curved defiantly as she met the
covetous glances wildfire-and-twenty no doubt bestowed upon her,
—whereat, perhaps, wildfire-and-twenty halted and hesitated for an
instant, debating whether to accept the challenge and turn and follow
her.
A flock of milk-purveying goats jangled their bells a few
yards below me.
Hawkers screamed their merchandise, fish, and
vegetables, and early
fruit—apricots, figs, green almonds. Brown-
skinned, bare-legged
boys shouted at long-suffering donkeys, and
whacked their flanks with
sticks. And everybody, more or less,
importuned you for coppers. " Mossou,
mossou ! Un piccolo
soldo, per l'amor di Dio ! " The air was vibrant with
southern
human noises, and dense with southern human smells—amongst
which, here and there, wandered strangely a lost waft of perfume
from some neighbouring garden, a scent of jasmine or of orange
flowers.
And then, suddenly, the salita took a turn, and broadened into a
small
piazza. At one hand there was a sheer terrace, dropping to
tiled roofs
twenty feet below ; and hence one got a splendid view,
over the town, of
the blue bay, with its shipping, and of Capri, all
rose and purple in the
distance, and of Vesuvius with its silver
wreath of smoke. At the other
hand loomed a vast, discoloured,
pink-stuccoed palace, with grated
windows, and a porte-cochère
black as the mouth of a cavern ; and the
upper stories of the palace
were in ruins, and out of one corner of their
crumbling walls a
palm-tree grew. The third side of the piazza was
inevitably occu-
pied by a church, a little pearl-grey rococo edifice,
with a bell, no
deeper-toned than a common dinner-bell, which was now
frantic-
ally ringing. About the doors of the church countless written
notices were pasted, advertising indulgences ; beggars clung to
the
steps, like monster snails ; and the greasy leathern portière was
constantly being drawn aside, to let someone enter or come out.
It was here that I met Zabetta.
The heavy portère swung open, and a young girl stepped from
the darkness
behind it into the sunshine.
I saw a soft face, with bright brown eyes ; a plain black frock,
with a
little green nosegay stuck in its belt ; and a small round
scarlet hat.
A hideous old beggar woman stretched a claw towards this appa-
rition,
mumbling something. The apparition smiled, and sought
in its pocket, and
made the beggar woman the richer by a soldo.
I was twenty, and the April wind was magical. I thought I
had never seen so
beautiful a smile, a smile so radiant, so tender.
I watched the young girl as she tripped down the church steps,
and crossed
the piazza, coming towards me. Her smile lingered,
fading slowly, slowly,
from her face.
As she neared me, her eyes met mine. For a second we looked
straight into
each other's eyes. . . .
Oh, there was nothing bold, nothing sophisticated or immodest,
in the
momentary gaze she gave me. It was a natural, spontane-
ous gaze of
perfectly frank, of perfectly innocent and impulsive
interest, in exchange
for mine of open admiration. But it touched
the wildfire in my veins, and
made it leap tumultuously.
Happiness often passes close to us without our suspecting it, the
proverb
says.
The young girl moved on ; and I stood still, feeling dimly that
something precious had passed close to me. I had not turned back
to follow
any of the brazenly provocative contadine. But now I
could not help it.
Something precious had passed within arm's
reach of me. I must not let it
go, without at least a semblance of
pursuing it. If I waited there passive
till she was out of sight,
my regrets would be embittered by the
recollection that I had not
even tried.
I followed her eagerly, but vaguely, in a tremor of unformu-
lated hopes
and fears. I had no definite intentions, no designs.
Presently, doubtless,
she would come to her journey's end—she
would disappear in a house
or shop—and I should have my labour
for my pains. Nevertheless, I
followed. What would you ?
She was young, she was pretty, she was neatly
dressed. She had
big bright brown eyes, and a slender waist, and a little
round
scarlet hat set jauntily upon a mass of waving soft brown hair.
And she walked gracefully, with delicious undulations, as if to
music, lifting her skirts up from the pavement, and so disclosing
the
daintiest of feet, in trim buttoned boots, of glazed leather,
with high
Italian heels. And her smile was lovely—and I was
twenty—and
it was April. I must not let her escape me, without
at least a semblance
of pursuit.
She led me down the salita that I had just ascended. She could
scarcely
know that she was being followed, for she had not once
glanced behind her.
At first I followed meekly, unperceived, and contented to
remain so.
But little by little a desire for more aggressive measures grew
within me.
I said, "Why not—instead of following meekly—
why not overtake and outdistance her, then turn round, and come
face to
face with her again ? And if again her eyes should meet
mine as frankly as
they met them in the piazza. . . ."
The mere imagination of their doing so made my heart stop
beating.
I quickened my pace. I drew nearer and nearer to her. I
came abreast of
her—oh, how the wildfire trembled ! I pressed
on for a bit, and
then, true to my resolution, turned back.
Her eyes did meet mine again quite frankly. What was more,
they brightened
with a little light of surprise, I might almost have
fancied a little
light of pleasure.
If the mere imagination of the thing had made my heart stop
beating, the
thing itself set it to pounding, racing, uncontrollably,
so that I felt
all but suffocated, and had to catch my breath.
She knew now that the young man she had passed in the piazza
had followed
her of set purpose ; and she was surprised, but,
seemingly, not
displeased. They were wonderfully gentle, won-
derfully winning eyes,
those eyes she raised so frankly to my
desirous ones ; and innocent,
innocent, with all the unsuspecting
innocence of childhood. In years she
might be seventeen, older
perhaps ; but there was a child's fearless
unconsciousness of evil in
her wide brown eyes. She had not yet been
taught (or, anyhow,
she clearly didn't believe) that it is dangerous and
unbecoming to
exchange glances with a stranger in the streets.
She was as good as smiling on me. Might I dare the utmost ?
Might I venture
to speak to her ? . . . My heart was throbbing
too violently. I could not
have found an articulate human word,
nor a shred of voice, nor a
pennyweight of self-assurance, in my
body.
So, thrilling with excitement, quailing in panic, I passed her
again.
I passed her, and kept on up the narrow alley for half a dozen
steps, when
again I turned.
She was standing where I had left her, looking after me.
There was the
expression of unabashed disappointment in her dark
eyes now ; which, in a
minute, melted to an expression of appeal.
" Oh, aren't you going to speak to me, after all ? " they pleaded.
Wooed by those soft monitors, I plucked up a sort of desperate
courage. Hot
coals burned in my cheeks, something fluttered
terribly in my breast ; I
was literally quaking in every limb. My
spirit was exultant, but my flesh
was faint. Her eyes drew me,
drew me. ... I fancy myself awkwardly raising
my hat ; I hear
myself accomplish a half-smothered salutation.
" Buon' giorno, Signorina."
Her face lit up with that celestial smile of hers ; and in a voice
that was
like ivory and white velvet, she returned, " Buon' giorno,
Signorino."
And then I don't know how long we stood together in silence.
This would never do, I recognised. I must not stand before
her in silence,
like a guilty schoolboy. I must feign composure.
I must carry off the
situation lightly, like a man of the world, a
man of experience. I groped
anxiously in the confusion of my
wits for something that might pass for an
apposite remark.
At last I had a flash of inspiration. " What—what fine
weather," I
gasped. " Che bel tempo ! "
" Oh, molto bello," she responded. It was like a cadenza on a
flute.
" You—you are going into the town ? " I questioned.
" Yes," said she.
"May I—may I have the pleasure——" I faltered.
" But yes," she consented, with an inflection that wondered
" What else
have you spoken to me for ? "
And we set off down the salita, side by side.
She had exquisite little white ears, with little coral earrings, like
drops
of blood ; and a perfect rosebud mouth, a mouth that
matched her eyes for
innocence and sweetness. Her scarlet hat
burned in the sun, and her brown
hair shook gently under it.
She had plump little soft white hands.
Presently, when I had begun to feel more at my ease, I
hazarded a question.
" You are a republican, Signorina ? "
" No," she assured me, with a puzzled elevation of the brows.
" Ah, well, then you are a cardinal," I concluded.
She gave a silvery trill of laughter, and asked, " Why must I be
either a
republican or a cardinal ? "
" You wear a
At which she laughed again, crisply, merrily.
"You are French," she said.
"Oh, am I?"
" Aren't you ? "
" As you wish, Signorina ; but I had never thought so."
And still again she laughed.
"You have come from church," said I.
" Già," she assented ; " from confession."
" Really ? And did you have a great many wickednesses to
confess ? "
" Oh, yes ; many, many," she answered simply.
" And now have you got a heavy penance to perform ? "
" No ; only twenty
times in my mouth before I speak, whenever I am angry."
" Ah, then you are given to being angry ? You have a bad
temper ? "
" Oh, dreadful, dreadful," she cried, nodding her head.
It was my turn to laugh now. "Then I must be careful not
to vex you."
"Yes. But I will turn my tongue seven times before I speak,
if you do," she
promised.
" Are you going far ? " I asked.
" I am going nowhere. I am taking a walk."
" Shall we go to the Villa Nazionale, and watch the driving ? "
" Or to the Toledo, and look at the shop-windows ? "
" We can do both. We will begin at the Toledo, and end in
the Villa."
" Bene," she acquiesced.
After a little silence, " I am so glad I met you," I informed
her, looking
into her eyes.
Her eyes softened adorably. " I am so glad too," she said.
" You are lovely, you are sweet," I vowed, with enthusiasm.
" Oh, no ! " she protested. " I am as God made me."
" You are lovely, you are sweet. I thought—when I first saw
you,
above there, in the piazza—when you came out of church,
and gave
the soldo to the old beggar woman—I thought you had
the loveliest
smile I had ever seen."
A beautiful blush suffused her face, and her eyes swam in a
mist of
pleasure. " E vero ? " she questioned.
" Oh, vero, vero. That is why I followed you. You don't
mind my having
followed you ? "
" Oh, no ; I am glad."
After another interval of silence, " You are not Neapolitan ? "
I said. "
You don't speak like a Neapolitan."
" No ; I am Florentine. We live in Naples for my father's
health. He is not
strong. He cannot endure the cold winters of
the North."
I murmured something sympathetic ; and she went on, " My
father is a
violinist. To-day he has gone to Capri, to play at a
festival. He will not
be back until to-morrow. So I was very
lonesome."
" You have no mother ? "
" My mother is dead," she said, crossing herself. In a moment
she added,
with a touch of pride, " During the season my father
plays in the
orchestra of the San Carlo."
" I am sure I know what your name is," said I.
" Oh ? How can you know ? What is it ? "
" I think your name is Rosabella."
" Ah, then you are wrong. My name is Elisabetta. But in
Naples everybody
says Zabetta. And yours ? "
" Guess."
" Oh, I cannot guess. Not—not Federico ? "
" Do I look as if my name were Federico ? "
She surveyed me gravely for a minute, then shook her head
pensively. " No ;
I do not think your name is Federico."
And therewith I told her my name, and made her repeat it till
she could
pronounce it without a struggle. It sounded very
pretty, coming from her
pretty lips, quite southern and romantic,
with its r's tremendously
enriched.
" Anyhow, I know your age," said I.
" What is it ? "
"You are seventeen."
" No—ever so much older."
" Eighteen then."
" I shall be nineteen in July. "
Before the brilliant shop-windows of the Toledo we dallied for
an hour or
more, Zabetta's eyes sparkling with delight as they
rested on the
bright-hued silks, the tortoise-shell and coral, the
gold and silver
filagree-work, that were there displayed. But when
she admired some one
particular object above another, and I
besought her to let me buy it for
her, she refused austerely.
"But no, no, no ! It is impossible." Then we
went on to the
Villa, and strolled by the sea-wall, between the blue-green
water
and the multicoloured procession of people in carriages. And by
and by Zabetta confessed that she was tired, and proposed that we
should sit down on one of the benches. " A café would be better
fun,"
submitted her companion. And we placed ourselves at one
of the out-of-door
tables of the café in the garden, where, after
some urging, I prevailed
upon Zabetta to drink a cup of chocolate.
Meanwhile, with the ready
confidence of youth, we had each been
desultorily autobiographical ; and
if our actual acquaintance was
only the affair of an afternoon, I doubt if
in a year we could have
felt that we knew each other better.
" I must go home," Zabetta said at last.
" Oh, not yet, not yet," cried I.
"It will be dinner-time. I must go home to dinner."
" But your father is at Capri. You will have to dine alone."
" Yes."
" Then don't. Come with me instead, and dine at a res-
taurant."
Her eyes glowed wistfully for an instant ; but she replied,
" Oh, no ; I
cannot."
" Yes, you can. Come."
" Oh, no ; impossible."
" Why ? "
" Oh, because."
" Because what ? "
" There is my cat. She will have nothing to eat."
" Your cook will give her something."
" My cook ! " laughed Zabetta. " My cook is here before
you."
" Well, you must be a kind mistress. You must give your
cook an evening
out."
"But my poor cat ? "
" Your cat can catch a mouse."
" There are no mice in our house. She has frightened them all
away."
" Then she can wait. A little fast will be good for her soul."
Zabetta laughed, and I said, " Andiamo ! "
At the restaurant we climbed to the first floor, and they gave us
a table
near the window, whence we could look out over the villa
to the sea
beyond. The sun was sinking, and the sky was gay with
rainbow tints, like
mother-of-pearl.
Zabetta's face shone joyfully. " This is only the second time in
my life
that I have dined in a restaurant," she told me. " And the
other time was
very long ago, when I was quite young. And it
wasn't nearly so grand a
restaurant as this, either."
" And now what would you like to eat ? " I asked, picking up
the bill of
fare.
" May I look ? " she said.
I handed her the document, and she studied it at length. I
think, indeed, she read it through. In the end she appeared rather
bewildered.
" Oh, there is so much. I don't know. Will you choose,
please ? "
I made a shift at choosing, and the sympathetic waiter flourished
kitchenwards with my commands.
" What is that little green nosegay you wear in your belt,
Zabetta ? " I
inquired.
" Oh, this—it is rosemary. Smell it," she said, breaking off a
sprig
and offering it to me.
" Rosemary—that's for remembrance," quoted I.
" What does that mean ? What language is that ? " she asked.
I tried to translate it to her. And then I taught her to say it
in English.
" Rrosemèrri—tsat is forr rremembrrance."
" Will you write it down for me ? " she requested. " It is
pretty."
And I wrote it for her on the back of one of my cards.
After dinner we crossed the garden again, and again stood
by the sea-wall.
Over us the soft spring night was like a dark
sapphire. Points of red,
green, and yellow fire burned from the
ships in the bay, and seemed of the
same company as the stars above
them. A rosy aureole in the sky, to the
eastward, marked the
smouldering crater of Vesuvius. Away in the Chiaja a
man was
singing comic songs, to an accompaniment of mandolines and
guitars ; comic songs that sounded pathetic, as they reached us in
the
distance.
I asked Zabetta how she wished to finish the evening.
" I don't care," said she.
" Would you like to go to the play ? "
" If you wish."
" What do
" I think I should like to stay here a little longer. It is pleasant."
We leaned on the parapet, close to each other. Her face was
very pale in the
starlight ; her eyes were infinitely deep, and dark,
and tender. One of
her little hands lay on the stone wall, like a
white flower. I took it. It
was warm and soft. She did not
attempt to withdraw it. I bent over it and
kissed it. I kissed it
many times. Then I kissed her lips. "
Zabetta—I love you—I
love you," I murmured
fervently.—Don't imagine that I didn't
mean it. It was April, and I
was twenty.
" I love you, Zabetta. Dearest little Zabetta ! I love you so."
" E vero ? " she questioned, scarcely above her breath.
" Oh, si ; é vero, vero, vero," I asseverated. " And you ? And
you ? "
" Yes, I love you," she whispered.
And then I could say no more. The ecstasy that filled my heart
was too
poignant. We stood there speechless, hand in hand, and
breathed the air of
heaven.
By and by Zabetta drew her bunch of rosemary from her belt,
and divided it
into two parts. One part she gave to me, the
other she kept. "
Rosemary—it is for constancy," she said. I
pressed the cool herb to
my face for a moment, inhaling its bitter-
sweet fragrance ; then I
fastened it in my buttonhole. On my
watchchain I wore—what
everybody in Naples used to wear—a
little coral hand, a little
clenched coral hand, holding a little golden
dagger. I detached it now,
and made Zabetta take it. " Coral—
that is also for constancy," I
reminded her ; "and besides, it protects
one from the Evil Eye."
At last Zabetta asked me what time it was ; and when she
learned that it
was half-past nine, she insisted that she really must
go home. " They shut
the outer door of the house we live in at
ten o'clock, and I have no key."
" You can ring up the porter."
" Oh, there is no porter."
"But if we had gone to the theatre ? "
" I should have had to leave you in the middle of the play."
" Ah, well," I consented ; and we left the villa, and took a cab.
" Are you happy, Zabetta ? " I asked her, as the cab rattled us
towards our
parting.
" Oh, so happy, so happy ! I have never been so happy before."
" Dearest Zabetta ! "
" You will love me always ? "
" Always, always."
" We will see each other every day. We will see each other to-
morrow ? "
" Oh, to-morrow ! " I groaned suddenly, the actualities of life
rushing all
at once upon my mind.
" What is it ? What of to-morrow ? "
" Oh, to-morrow, to-morrow ! "
" What ? What ? " Her voice was breathless with suspense,
with alarm.
" Oh, I had forgotten. You will think I am a beast."
" What is it ? For heaven's sake, tell me."
"You will think I am a beast. You will think I have deceived
you.
To-morrow—I cannot help it—I am not my own master
—I am summoned by my parents—to-morrow I am going away—
I am leaving Naples."
" You are leaving Naples ? "
" I am going to Paris."
" To Paris ? "
" Yes."
There was a breathing-space of silence. Then " Oh, Dio ! "
sobbed Zabetta ;
and she began to cry as if her heart would break.
I seized her hands ; I drew her to me. I tried to comfort her.
But she only
cried and cried and cried.
" Zabetta . . . Zabetta ! . . . Don't cry. . . . Forgive me.
. . . Oh,
don't cry like that."
" Oh, Dio ! Oh, caro Dio ! " she sobbed.
" Zabetta—listen to me," I began. " I have something to say
to you.
. . ."
" Cosa ? " she asked faintly.
" Zabetta—do you really love me ? "
" Oh, tanto, tanto ! "
" Then, listen, Zabetta. If you really love me—come with
me."
" Come with you. How ? "
" Come with me to Paris."
" To Paris ? "
" Yes, to-morrow."
There was another instant of silence, and then again Zabetta
began to cry.
" Will you ? Will you ? Will you come with me to Paris ? "
I implored her.
"Oh, I would, I would. But I can't. I can't."
"Why not?"
" Oh, I can't."
" Why ? Why can't you ? "
" Oh, my father—I cannot leave my father."
" Your father ? But—if you love me——"
" He is old. He is ill. He has no one but me. I cannot
leave him."
" Zabetta ! "
" No, no. I cannot leave him. Oh, Dio mio ! "
" But Zabetta——"
" No. It would be a sin. Oh, the worst of sins. He is old
and ill. I cannot
leave him. Don't ask me. It would be
dreadful."
" But then ? Then what ? What shall we do ? "
"Oh, I don't know. I wish I were dead."
The cab came to a standstill, and Zabetta said, " Here we are."
I helped
her to descend. We were before a dark porte-cochère,
in some dark
back-street, high up the hillside.
"Addio," said Zabetta, holding out her hand.
" You won't come with me ? "
I can't. I can't. Addio."
" Oh, Zabetta ! Do you—— Oh, say, say that you forgive
me."
" Yes. Addio."
" And, Zabetta,you—you have my address. It is on the card
I gave
you. If you ever need anything—if you are ever in
trouble of any
kind—remember you have my address—you will
write to me."
" Yes. Addio."
" Addio."
She stood for a second, looking up at me from great brim-
ming eyes, and
then she turned away and vanished in the darkness
of the porte-cochère. I
got into the cab, and was driven to my
hotel.
And here, one might have supposed, was an end of the episode ;
but no.
I went to Paris, I went to New York, I returned to Paris,
I came on to
London ; and in this journeying more than a
year was lost. In the
beginning I had suffered as much as you
could wish me in the way of
contrition, in the way of regret too.
I blamed myself and pitied myself
with almost equal fervour. I
had trifled with a gentle human heart ; I had
been compelled to
let a priceless human treasure slip from my possession.
But—I
was twenty. And there were other girls in the world. And a
year is a long time, when we are twenty. Little by little the
image
of Zabetta faded, faded. By the year's end, I am afraid it
had become very
pale indeed. . . .
It was late June, and I was in London, when the post brought
me a letter.
The letter bore an Italian stamp, and had originally
been directed to my
old address in Paris. Thence (as the
numerous re-directions on the big
square foreign envelope attested)
it had been forwarded to New York ;
thence back again to Paris ;
and thence finally to London.
The letter was written in the neatest of tiny copperplates ; and
this is a
translation of what it said :
"DEAR FRIEND :
after an illness of twenty-one days. Pray for his soul.
" I am now alone and free, and if you still wish it, can come to
you. It
was impossible for me to come when you asked me ; but you
have not ceased
to be my constant thought. I keep your coral hand.
Enclosed in the letter there was a sprig of some dried, bitter-
sweet-smelling herb ; and, in pencil, below the signature,—
laboriously traced, as I could guess, from what I had written for
her on
my visiting-card,—the English phrase : " Rosemary—
that's
for remembrance."
The letter was dated early in May, which made it six weeks old.
What could I do ? What answer could I send ?
Of course, you know what I did do. I procrastinated and
vacillated, and
ended by sending no answer at all. I could not
write and say "Yes, come to
me." But how could I write
and say, " No, do not come ? " Besides, would
she not have
given up hoping for an answer, by this time ? It was six
weeks since she had written. I tried to think that the worst
was
over.
But my remorse took a new and a longer and a stronger lease
of life. A
vision of Zabetta, pale, with anxious eyes, standing at
her window,
waiting, waiting for a word that never came,—for
months I could not
chase it from my conscience ; it was years
before it altogether ceased its
accusing visits.
And then, last night, after a perfectly usual London day and
evening, I
went to bed and dreamed of her vividly ; and all day
long to-day the
fragrance of my dream has clung about me,—a
bitter-sweet fragrance,
like that of rosemary itself. Where is
Zabetta now ? What is her life ?
How have the years treated
her ? ... In my dream she was still eighteen.
In reality—it is
melancholy to think how far from eighteen she has
had leisure,
since that April afternoon, to drift.
Youth faces forward, impatient of the present, panting to antici-
pate the
future. But we who have crossed a certain sad meridian,
we turn our gaze
backwards, and tell the relentless gods what we
would sacrifice to recover
a little of the past, one of those shining
days when to us also it was
given to sojourn among the Fortunate
Islands.
(
(
(
" For to no man is it given to understand a woman, nor to
any woman to understand a man."
THE boat from Dieppe had just arrived, and the passengers
were pushing from
the decks on to the quay. A tall
woman, wrapped in a handsome mantle
trimmed with sables,
waited for her turn to cross the gangway. Her eyes,
wandering
restlessly over the little crowd of spectators that had
assembled to
watch for the arrival of the boat, met those of a man who
pressed
into the throng towards her. She started, and a sudden flush,
beautiful but transitory, touched her face into a youthfulness
which
it did not otherwise possess. The man took off his hat
in salute, and,
holding it above his head, thrust forward to the
foot of the gangway. He
kept his eyes fastened upon her face ;
and the expression of his own, in
spite of the smile on his lips,
was doubtful and anxious. She returned his
look gravely, yet
with a certain tenderness in her glance. Beckoning to
the maid
who followed her, she slipped adroitly before a party of
staggering
sea-sick tourists, and made her way on to the quay.
Their hands met in a pressure, which, on his part, was both
close and
lingering.
"I could not help it," he said. "You will forgive me for
coming ? "
She smiled a little. "But I meant to stay all night at the
hotel. I am
tired. My maid is always ill on the crossing,
so I wrote from Paris, and
ordered rooms and dinner to be ready
for us."
" Yes, so they told me at the hotel. I must go up to town
this evening, but
I could not wait until to-morrow to see you."
He said the last words under
his breath. The maid had gone
to pass the luggage through the
custom-house. Her mistress
sat down on a bench inside the waiting-room.
She looked up at
the man beside her, and sighed a little.
" I am glad that you came," she said gently.
" You got my letter ? "
" Yes."
The colour had faded from her face, the light from her eyes.
She rose and
turned towards the door.
"It is hardly necessary for us to wait here," she said. "Let
us go on to
the hotel. Mary can follow with the luggage."
They walked together side by side ; he, trying to shelter her
from the
driving rain, she, heedless of the present, shrinking from
what was to
come with an unavailing dread.
The dull October afternoon was closing in ; already the gas
was lit in the
sitting-room into which they were shown. She
reached up to it and turned
down the glaring flame till it burned
low and dim. The room was cheerless
and dreary : on one side a
long black horsehair-covered sofa ; on the
other a chiffonier, with
coloured bead mats and models of flowers in wax
upon it. A
square table, covered with a red cloth, stood in the middle of
the
room, and on it was a large battered tea-tray. A waiter brought
in a teapot
and some hot water, stirred the fire into a blaze, and
retired, shutting
the door carefully behind him.
The woman threw off her cloak, and sat down beside the table.
She took up
the heavy metal teapot and poised it in her slender
hand.
" Will you have some tea ? " she said to her companion.
He was standing beside her, and she looked at him as she
spoke. Something
in the strained expression of his face shook her
hardly-held composure
beyond the power of control. Her hands
trembled, and setting the teapot
down again unsteadily, she rose
to her feet and confronted him. Her own
face was as pale as his ;
their eyes looked into each other's, his
seeking, hers evading, a
solution to the problem which confronted them.
"For God's sake," said the man, "don't let us meet like this.
Anything is
better than aloofness between us two. If you cannot
forgive me, say so ; I
deserve it." He stretched out his hands to
her as he spoke ; but she,
shivering a little, drew back from his
touch.
" If it were only that," she said, "the matter would be simple
enough.
Forgive you ! I don't feel—at least the soul of me
doesn't—that I have much to forgive. When one demands an
impossibility, one should not complain of failure."
He looked bewildered. " I don't think I understand," he said
gently. "Sit
down here and explain what you mean, and I will
try to see the matter
through your eyes. It looks black enough
now through mine—I can
imagine it to be unpardonable in yours,"
he added bitterly. She sat down
obediently upon the sofa. He
was going to take his place beside her, but
hesitated and finally
drew a chair opposite.
She looked at him despairingly. "I shall never make you
understand," she said. " I don't understand myself. You will
have to give
me time."
" Perhaps, after keeping silence so long, I ought never to have
told you.
Such vulgar infidelities are better left unrevealed."
She was silent. Her hands, which she held clenched in her lap,
were very
cold, and presently she fell to rubbing them softly one
over the other.
The man set his lips closer together ; he had
often so chafed her hands
for her, and he longed to do so now. It
seemed monstrous that, when at
last their love was free and
admissible, they two should feel apart the
one from the other.
Yet he recognised, with dreary assent, that such was
the case.
He regretted the sense of honour which had goaded him, ere he
and she should begin their new life together, into an absolute
frankness about the past. And yet did he regret it ? He doubted
his power
to possess his soul in secret, away from hers, and, if that
were so,
better a confession now than later, when their union would
be irrevocable.
He looked once more at the little hands, motion-
less again in her lap,
and longed to take them in his own. But
his heart failed him. It was the
old trouble, the old difficulty ;
the difference of outlook between the
sexes. A pity, he thought,
that this modern woman whom he loved, had so
imbued him with
her modern views that he had been unable to keep his own
counsel. And yet, even if her gospel of equality separated them,
he
felt it to be, after all, a true one. He would not have forgiven
her such
a fault as he had confessed, and for which, manlike, he
expected
absolution. But there the difference of sex came in,
while, when absolute
confidence only was demanded, he felt
that she had an equal right to it
with himself. After all, she
expected, and he had given, only what was her
due. If it
ruined both their lives so much the worse for them. He won-
dered—would it ?
" I shall never make you understand," she repeated, breaking a
silence
which both felt unendurable. " But try to be patient with
me. It is not
that I do not love you ; at least I think not. It
is not that I do not
forgive you. It seems to me that I need
your forgiveness more than you
need mine. But I feel that
we have both failed, and that the failure has
soiled and spoilt our
love." She looked at him piteously.
" Yes ? " he said. " Go on."
" All these years that we have loved one another and hidden it
from the
world, I thought our love was a beautiful thing, good for
us both. Though
I could not be your wife, I imagined that I
was everything else you needed
: your friend, your comrade, your
very heart and life. As your love raised
and made me a better
woman, so I believed that my love made you a better
man."
He was leaning forward in his chair ; a puzzled frown upon his
forehead.
" It did," he said ; " it does. Go on."
" Then, when I heard at last that he was dead, and that we
were
free—you and I, to love and to marry—it seemed as if the
joy
would kill me. I wrote to you—you know what I wrote.
And then your
letter. . . . Perhaps I was over-sensitive ; perhaps
it came at the wrong
moment——"
She stopped, and he rose to his feet.
" Never mind," he said. " Don't say any more ; it hurts
you. You can't get
over it, and no wonder. I despise myself,
and I am going."
She put out her hands to stop him.
"Wait," she said. " Indeed—indeed, you do not understand."
She rose
also, and stood before him. "Oh ! " she went on, with
shaking lips, " but
you must understand, you
suppose that I expected too much. All that hopeless waiting—
all those long years—and then the constant strain and restlessness
of it all. Don't think I blame you—much. I think I com-
prehend. It
is not that, though that hurts me too ; but I
see now that the whole thing
has been a horrible mistake from
the first. It was insane pride that made
me so sure your welfare
lay in my hands. I was dragging you down, not, as
I imagined,
helping you to be what I believed you were. I was selfish ; I
thought more of myself than I did of you——"
" If that is your opinion of yourself," he interrupted bitterly,
" what
must you think of me ? I—who took all you could give
to me, and
then had not the manhood to keep out of vulgar
dissipation, nor the pluck
to hold my tongue about it and save
you the pain and humiliation of the
knowledge."
Suddenly she stretched out her hands to him.
" Oh, no ! not that ! " she said, with a sob ; " don't say that.
You were
right to tell me."
He took her hands in his, and, almost timidly, drew her
towards him.
" I expected more than a man is capable of; it is my fault. I
dragged you
down," she repeated, insistently.
"That is not true, and you know it," he answered. "The
fault was mine,
but——"
He drew her closer. " Can't you forgive it ? " he whispered.
" You were not
my wife—I had no hope of ever winning you—
yet I could give
my love to no one else. My heart has never
been disloyal to you for a
moment, and——" he hesitated.
" There are so few who would
have done otherwise," he added,
hurriedly.
She still held herself braced away from his gentle compulsion.
" I—I
suppose so," she said, under her breath.
" And now—now, when at last you will be my own, surely
you could not doubt me ? It would be horrible, impossible."
His voice
dropped again into a murmur.
" Can't you forgive me—and forget ? "
There was a pause. His eyes devoured her face.
" Give me time," she said. " I don't think we see it in
the same light ;
and if you do not understand I cannot explain
myself. But give me time, I
beg of you."
* * * * *
An hour afterwards the maid came in, and found her mistress
sitting over
the dying fire. The girl turned up the gas and, in
the sudden glare, the
dreary hotel sitting-room looked more
tawdry and commonplace than ever.
The tablecover was pulled
awry ; the curtains, dragged across the window,
were ragged and
dirty ; under the maid's feet, as she crossed the floor,
some bits
of scattered coal crunched uncomfortably. She knelt on the
hearth-rug and raked the ashes together, trying to rekindle a
blaze. Her
mistress looked on apathetically.
" That is how I feel," she said to herself. " It is all dead now ;
he will
never understand it ; but that is how I feel. If it had
been before his
love for me—but now I know I was no help to him,
only a hindrance,
and all the best of me seems cold and numb."
The maid rose from her knees ; a tiny flame was flickering in
the grate.
She went out again, and left her mistress sitting there
before the
reviving fire.
WHEN ten o'clock struck she moved uneasily in her chair.
The dainty Dresden
china timepiece on the overmantel
had been a wedding present, and, as the
soft notes of the hour
broke upon the silence, her thoughts turned swiftly into memories.
The
years had been few and short, yet the changes they had
brought, though
subtle, were unmistakable. There was nothing
tangible, nothing of which
she could complain, and yet, for the
last few months, she had known, in a
vague, puzzled way, that
trouble was closing in upon her. The nature of
that trouble she
had not faced or analysed ; she put all definition away
for as long
as might be possible.
To-night she had not felt any special uneasiness. He might
have stayed at
the club, or been detained in the City—such delays
had happened
frequently of late, and had not seemed to her of
much moment. She had
grown accustomed to the lack of con-
sideration which made him neglect to
send her a telegram, but
now the chiming of the clock caught her
attention, and, of a
sudden, her mind awoke, expanding to receive the
impression of
impending disturbance. There was no particular reason for
this
impression, only a certainty of misfortune which she felt advancing
towards her in the coming hours.
She rose and crossed the hall into the dining-room. She had
waited for him
until half-past eight, and then had dined alone,
after which the table was
relaid in readiness for his return. That
morning, when he left the house,
he had kissed her with almost
his old tenderness, and she wanted to
express her gratitude for that
kiss. She wandered round the table,
rearranging the silver with
solicitous fingers. It was still just possible
that he had not dined
in town ; his wife hoped not. He would be sure to
catch the
10.15 down train—never since their marriage had he been
later
—his supper should be a cosy meal. There were oysters in the
house, and she went into the kitchen to see that they were
opened.
The kitchen was warm and comfortable. She stood for a few
minutes, her foot upon the fender, chatting to the servants ; they
had been
with her since her marriage, and they loved and cared for
her.
" Your master won't be home till past eleven," she said ; " when
you have
laid the supper you can go to bed. I will wait upon him
myself." She
turned to leave the kitchen, but lingered for a
moment in the red glow of
the fire. Her own part of the house
was so still and lonely ; here, at any
rate, was companionship and
a refuge from haunting fancies. Her maid
dragged forward a chair,
but she shook her head, smiling.
" I have so much to do, and my book is interesting," she said,
as she
opened the door. It swung behind her, and the cook, knife
in hand, paused
to lift her eyes and meet those of her fellow-servant.
Neither of the
women said a word. They heard the drawing-room
door shut softly. The maid
sat down again beside the hearth, and
the cook went on with her work.
* * * * *
At a quarter to eleven the servants fastened the doors and went
upstairs to
bed. The silence settled down again. Now and then
she heard the regular
beat of hoofs upon the road as a carriage
passed the windows ; a wind got
up and flicked the frozen snow
against the panes ; the fire burned clear
and bright, with a regular
throb of flame or the occasional splutter and
crackle of a log.
At eleven o'clock she laid her open book upon the table, and
went out into
the hall. It was very cold, and she shivered a little
as she opened the
door and looked out upon the night. The air
was keen and frosty, a frail
moon, its edges veiled by intermittent
cloud, rode in the sky, and the
stars snapped as though the
sharpened atmosphere struck sparks from their
steady shining.
The road lay white and deserted, here and there a light
shone
from the neighbouring houses, but for the most part the village
had already gone to sleep. Presently, as she stood there, the
distant sound
of a train sweeping through the country caught her
listening ears. It
paused, then broke again upon the silence. She
smiled a little and went
back into the house, shutting the door
behind her. The train was late, but
it had come at last ; in ten
minutes he would be here. There was no use in
sitting down
again during those ten short minutes ; she wanted to be
ready,
when his step rang on the hard road, to open the door immediately.
Meantime she trod softly about the drawing-room, shifting the
ornaments upon the overmantel a shade to right or left, and ex-
amining
the pretty things upon her silver table with abstracted,
unremarking eyes.
For many weeks the rift between her and her husband had
been widening.
To-day, by his unaccustomed tenderness, he had
re-awakened hers, and she
longed for him as she had longed for
him in the dead days which seemed so
far away. But the minutes
slipped into half an hour, and still he did not
come. Then fear
crept into her heart, and her imagination—always
vivid—left now
alone in the solitude of the night, played havoc
with her reason.
As the quarters struck slowly from the church clock in
the village,
and her own little timepiece chimed in musical response,
terror
and foreboding shook her spirit in their grip. She sat down again
before the fire, and tried to reason out some plausible excuse for
this unusual delay. No business that she was able to think of
could thus
detain her husband, nor had she ever known him to remain
away a whole
night without due notice given. He was often late
for dinner—that
signified nothing. Once or twice lately he had
come down by this last
train ; but even then he had prepared her
for his absence. Something very
grave, very unusual, must have
happened.
She lifted her head, and bent forward to rearrange the logs upon
the hearth. In so doing she dropped the poker, which fell with a
clash into
the fender, and the loud noise startled the echoes of the
sleeping house,
awaking in her mind a fresh train of thought. She
imagined him
ill—hurt—in some danger. And it was impossible
at this hour
to go to him or to be of any use. Besides, where
could she find him, how
penetrate the mystery and terror of this
long uncertainty ?
She went back into the hall and consulted a time-table. At
four o'clock a
train reached Wensbury ; if he came by that and
walked (he must walk,
since no cab would be available), he might
get home about five o'clock. If
he was unhurt she would know
—she would feel—— If he
did not come she must herself start
early in the morning and go up to town
to make inquiries.
Perhaps he had been run over in the streets, and she
would find
him in one of the hospitals. He might not be seriously hurt,
and
yet, again, if not seriously hurt why had no message come to her ?
Perhaps he was dead, and she—and she a widow. Her fingers
closed convulsively over the time-table in her hand, and she walked
back
to her seat before the fire, leaving the door into the hall open
behind
her. It was one o'clock now : hours must pass, even if he
came to
Wensbury, before this weight of suspense could be lifted
from her heart.
And what if he never came ? What if she never
saw him again alive ? She
considered that, if an accident only
had detained him—an accident
from which he should recover—she
could be glad and thankful.
Perhaps the pain, and her care,
might bring them once more together. And
if not, better even
death than another explanation which had flashed
across the back-
ground of her brain, to be dismissed with horror and
self-loathing.
If only there had been a reason for their slipping away
from one
another she could have borne it better. The very vagueness and
unreality of the gulf between them frightened her, and rendered
her more inarticulate. She had suffered and been still ; now, her
faculties
sharpened by suspense, she endured all the accumulated
pain of the last
two years fused and mingled with the fancies, fear,
and loneliness of the
moment.
Sometimes she paced the room ; sometimes, at the sound of a
chance footstep
or the rising of the wind, she opened the hall door
and stared out into
the night. Once she went upstairs to wake
the servants, but, recollecting
herself, came back and dropped once
more into the big chair by the fire.
With the self-torture of a high-strung brain she could formulate
no
explanations save the worst, until, as the hours wore on, mental
torment
brought with it the consequent relief of numbness.
* * * * *
When he came into the drawing-room the following evening
she rose from her
seat and welcomed him as usual. Her face was
drawn and white, but her
voice did not falter, and her eyes met
his unflinchingly.
He stood upon the hearth-rug before the fire, talking for a few
moments
carelessly, till a strained silence fell between them. He
took out his
watch and glanced at it, then, turning restlessly,
pushed the blazing logs
together with his foot.
" You got my letter ? I was sorry not to be home last night.
I m afraid,
little woman, that you waited dinner for me, but it was
too late to send
you a telegram."
" Yes, your letter came this morning," she said, apathetically.
The
reaction from last night's tension had brought with it a strange
indifference. She felt that his presence meant nothing to her now,
that
his absence would have meant even less. Her heart was frozen.
Active pain
would have been better than this paralysis, and she
longed to feel, but
could not do so. He faced her once more ; his
glance met hers uneasily.
" You understand how it was ? I was unable to help it," he
said, his voice
stumbling a little as he spoke. She lifted her
head.
" Yes," she said, " I understand."
He looked at her in silence, then picking up a paper, unfolded it
and began
to read. She shivered a little, and leant nearer to the
fire. Her thoughts
wandered vaguely. She knew that he had
lied to her, but she did not care.
The stealthy sorrow of her
married life, after stalking her spirit for a
couple of years, had
sprung upon her in the space of time which it took
her to read
his letter. Instinct guided her to the truth, and there it
left her.
The rest was a tangle, and, for the moment, she cared only for
the
physical comfort of apathy and quiescence.
She stretched out her cold hands to the blaze, while her husband
watched
her furtively from behind his newspaper.
The deep tones of the village clock, striking the half-hour, broke
upon the
silence ; and a moment later the timepiece on the mantel-
shelf chimed an
echoing response.
PIERRE GASCON was old, so old that he seemed to have drifted
into a
backwater of time, and to lie there forgotten. His age
had grown upon him
imperceptibly. He had not felt its steady
besiegement, like other men, in
the waning of the vital fires of life ;
it was only something more placid
than his youth ; a time of less
excursive contemplation, a season of calm
more wholly personal
than before. He had deliberately shut out the world,
and knew it
only by rumour as a place where people committed
intolerable
follies both of body and mind, rearing children to reap what
they
had sown, loving with preposterous fatuity and a devotion, Pierre
Gascon in his blind soul believed, a hundred times more worthy
than its
object.
He lived in a great house surrounded by a beautiful and luxuriant
garden,
enclosed by high walls. It was not far from a busy city,
and on silent
evenings as he sat under his lime trees, the humming
of the restless hive
reached him in an unvarying undertone. Some-
times, on clear mornings, he
caught the gleam of distant spires—
the symbols, in his eyes, of a
vain and idle worship. He argued
with the almost divine assumption of lack
of knowledge, and for
many years had held himself the only true
philosopher.
Pierre Gascon's face bore none of the marks that blazon a man's
life to the seeing eye. It was the face of a child grown old in the
smallest
part of childishness, and the white hair that crowned it
struck a note of
curious incongruity. He hung upon the fringes
of life as a cobweb may hang
upon a briar ; he breathed like
ordinary men, but was divorced from the
human impulses of the
body ; he had chosen his way and followed it almost
to the end ;
and the end, he thought, because it still seemed far off,
should be of
a piece with the rest.
One only of the associates of his early youth ever visited him.
He was a
physician in the town which smoked on the horizon ;
and sometimes Doctor
Carton, snatching a few hours from the per-
sistent ardour of his
occupation, would bring within the walls of
Pierre Gascon's house the only
manlike element that ever came
there. The Doctor had watched the course of
the man, whom he
had known in his boyhood, with a growing wonder that at
last had
settled into a steady flame of scorn. He, coming fresh from
the
great city, where life and death jostled together on the footways,
where crime and virtue lived side by side in apparent union, and
where the passions of the soul broke loose in strenuous mastery,
was amazed
at this man who knew nothing of it all. Sometimes
he found it in his heart
to pity him, but it was less a pity of the
emotions than of the mind, a
mental exercise that left no good with
the bestower. The Doctor was steeped
in the mystery and strange-
ness of life, in the element which it was his
task to nurture ; and
his familiarity with death but strung him to a higher
note of pur-
pose. In Pierre Gascon he saw a man to whom death meant
nothing but dissolution, and he shuddered to think that this man
had once
been young.
The Doctor had not seen Pierre Gascon for many months, and
one day, thinking
of him as he hurried along the street, he dis-
patched his business at an
earlier hour than usual, and, towards
evening, turned his horse in the direction of the recluse's house.
As he
cleared the squalid suburbs of the city, and emerged into the
pleasant
country beyond, he breathed more freely, and looked about
him with eyes
that carried refreshment to his mind at every turn.
It was late springtime,
and the hedgerows were bright with dog-
rose and convolvulus ; a gentle
wind rustled in the tree-tops ; the
sound of running water fell with a
dreamy murmur on his ear,
and the sky was flecked with white airy clouds
that slowly moved
from west to east. The Doctor himself was old ; his face
was lined
into a thousand wrinkles, and his back was bent with much
watch-
ing and study ; yet there moved in his blood some strong and
stirring memories of the past, and the ashes of his youth still held
some
living fire.
He found Pierre Gascon in his garden, sitting in his favourite
seat beneath
the limes. He rose to meet the Doctor slowly, with
no hint either of
pleasure or disapproval on his face. The hand
with which he greeted him
left no friendly pressure on the Doctor's
palm.
" Still here," said the Doctor ; " no change ? "
" None," replied the other. " I am content. I have here all
that I need. You
have known me long enough to understand that
I desire no change."
" Ah," said the Doctor. His quick eye observed a change of no
small moment
in Pierre Gascon's face ; the temples were a trifle
sunken, the cheeks less
full, the eyes less clouded. He knew the
signs too well to doubt them, and
Pierre Gascon was old. His
scorn turned to instant pity, not only of the
mind, but of the heart,
and as they walked towards the house together he
took the other's
arm for the first time in many years.
" Gascon," said the Doctor, " you say that you are now as you
have always
been. Think once more before you answer me."
" Why doubt it ? " replied the other. " Your eyes see me, your
hand touches
me."
" I ask no idle questions. My life is too full of striving to find
answers.
Believe me, I ask you as a doctor and as a friend."
Pierre Gascon paused and glanced at the Doctor's face.
" You think me ill ? Well, it may be so. My strength, per-
haps, has seemed
to fail a little. But what matter ? I fear
nothing."
" I see not only that you are ill, but that death is very near
to you. His
hand may at this moment be stretched out to touch
you. I am familiar with
the sight ; but does it bring no fear to
you ? "
" None," replied the other. His voice was firm, but his face had
taken a
sudden tinge of grey.
They sat down together in a small room lined with books, which
opened on the
garden. Pierre Gascon gazed steadily through
the open window. The Doctor
watched him. They were
silent for many minutes, and Doctor Carton's anger
began to rise
again.
" You say you have no fear," he said at last. " I know of one
thing only
that can save a man from that—the memory of a life
spent with some
purpose. Have you this memory ? "
" I have lived my life," replied the other calmly.
" You have lived your life ! " cried the Doctor, rising and pacing
the room.
" Lived ! You have eaten, drunk, slept, moved and
breathed, but that is not
to have lived. What good action have
you ever done, what bad impulse ever
had the strength to carry
into deed ? I deal plainly with you. Here you
stand upon the
very brink of death ; you say that you have lived. Are you
so
blind as not to see that the very words are false ? Dare you go
into eternity with a record absolutely blank ? "
Pierre Gascon followed the Doctor's figure with his eyes. The
placid stream
of his insane philosophy was rudely shaken by this
unexpected storm. He
wondered, for an instant, whether what he
regarded as his self-control had
been weakness of the basest kind.
But the old habit of thought was strong
upon him, and he slipped
back to it again.
" You talk idly, Carton," he replied. " I choose my way
deliberately with
open eyes. Blame me if you will ; I have at
least been consistent in my
course."
" True," said the Doctor, " hopelessly consistent ; that is the
only virtue
of weakness. But will that avail you when you come
to die ? Were you born a
sentient atom, with the means and
strength of life, to be damned at last
for this ? In heaven's name
do not flirt consistency in the face of
God."
Pierre Gascon moved uneasily. The threads were becoming
tangled, just when
he was ready to tie the final knot.
" You have lived in the world, Carton ; what have you done to
give you the
right to judge me now ? "
" What have I done ? " cried the Doctor. " I have grown old in
lessening
human suffering. That was my business, you may say.
Good ; I claim no
virtue for it. I have sinned open-eyed, and
sucked poison from strange
flowers. I have burnt in the fierce
fires of remorse, and thereby learnt
charity. I have reared my
children to face the world and fight through it,
not to skulk in
corners. I have only a few rags and tatters of self-conceit
left, and
I hope to strip myself of those before I die."
"Yes," said Pierre Gascon, "my life has not been like that.
Which of us is
right ? "
" Ask yourself, not me. Have you ever loved a woman ? Have
you ever made
children happy ? Have you ever cheated the devil
for an hour, and then
compounded for your virtue with a greater
crime ? That is the way with men for a time. Have you ever
done any of these
things ? If so, there may be some shadow of
hope to cling to yet."
" I have done none of these things, Carton."
Pierre Gascon sat with bowed head and trembled. He felt his
strength ebbing
from him with every heart-beat ; his mind was
confused and blurred with a
hundred accusing images, but not one
of them arose from any act of his. His
condemnation flowed in
upon him like a tide, and he had but a few hours to
live. Could
anything be done in so short a time to save him even in the
eyes
of one man ?
" For God's sake," cried the Doctor, " if nothing else remains, at
least
commit some sin to be reckoned in your account as virtue.
Show that you are
still a man, though you have spent your life in
hiding from the fact.
Something may be done yet."
" I am too old," wailed Gascon, " I am too old. Is there no
good that I can
do ? I have a nephew, my brother's son, can I do
nothing for him ? "
" He died a year ago, in poverty, wasted by disease, but fighting
to the
last. You are too late. He left a wife and child ; they too
have
vanished."
"But they can be found. Let us find them, Carton ; let us
set out at once. I
am ready to go with you now." He rose,
with eager outstretched hands, and
crossed the room to Carton's
side.
"Where shall we go ? " said Carton ; " it is already night. The
streets of
the city are full of pleasure-seekers ; the noise would stun
you, and you
are near your end."
" Let us go," said Pierre Gascon again ; " I can do nothing
here. I cannot
die here. Take me to the city. Let me see my
kind again, for the love of
God. There may be some chance yet !"
Carton watched him put on cloak and hat in feverish haste.
Then he went to a
safe and filled his pockets with gold. A few
pieces fell, and lay like
drops of light upon the floor. The Doctor
smiled grimly—strange that
even at the last he should count on
gold to help him. He did not shrink
from complying with
Gascon's wish ; it could, at most, only shorten his
life by a few
hours.
Pierre Gascon said nothing as they were rapidly driven towards
the city. The
night was warm, with little wind, and the scent of
the hedgerows and fields
hung in the air. The moon at times was
obscured by flying vapour, and again
it would shine full upon the
speeding carriage, drawing nearer and nearer
to the city lights, and
on Pierre Gascon's pallid, haunted face.
At last they were in the streets, and moving at a slower pace.
The long
lines of lamps, the swaying shadows, the roar of wheels,
and continual beat
of feet, above all the shifting faces of the crowd,
bore in on Pierre
Gascon's mind with a new terror. In any one
of all these people might lie
his hope of redemption—but how to
choose ? The faces gleamed upon
him and passed like shadows in
a dream, some glad, some beautiful, some
stern as fate, some stained
with crime. The voices surged in his ears in a
myriad conflicting
waves of sound, with every now and then a cry or
shrilling laugh
rising above the clamour like a signal. He watched them
all, as
they went by, with impotent longing, and with every minute his
agony increased.
A crowd of mingled men and women stood at the corner of a
street, listening
idly to a shrill-voiced preacher. As the carriage
passed Pierre Gascon half
rose from his seat, and, filling both hands
with gold, cast it into the
throng with a cry. They fought for it
like maniacs, the preacher amongst
the rest, and the sound of the
turmoil followed them like an echo down the
street.
"That is not the way," said Doctor Carton. "It cost you
nothing to do that.
The time is short, and I cannot guide you to
your last action. You must
choose yourself. Let us get out and
walk if you are able."
" Yes, yes," said Gascon, eagerly. The Doctor stopped the
carriage and they
alighted. Pierre Gascon leant heavily upon his
arm, and his feet moved
unsteadily upon the pavement. But he
glanced at the faces as they passed
with an awful curiosity, and
hurried on.
After a time they reached a more open space, dimly lighted
save near the
pavement, where the crowd was thick. Here they
paused, Pierre Gascon
breathing heavily, with great drops of sweat
upon his face. His terror had
grown to an intolerable agony of
dread ; he felt life slipping from him,
and yet he had not accom-
plished one saving act.
Suddenly a woman started from the crowd and reeled into the
road. She
laughed loudly as she went, and flung up her arms as
though in mock appeal.
Her face still bore some signs of beauty,
though sadly blurred and
marred.
" There," said the Doctor, " that may be your chance. Who
knows ? She may be
your nephew's wife."
Pierre Gascon heard only the last words. A sudden blinding
flash darted
across his brain. He started forward with a cry, and
reached the woman's
side, who stood half dazed in the full tide-way
of the varying traffic. He
seized her arm and cried :
" Are you his wife ? "
" His wife ? " she cried, with a bitter laugh ; " whose wife ? "
A carriage turned the corner sharply and bore down upon them
at a rapid
pace. Pierre Gascon saw it, and, with all his remaining
strength, flung the
woman into safety. Then he staggered and
fell, and the wheels passed over
his body with a sickening jolt.
When Doctor Carton stood by the dead man in a hospital ward
an hour later,
the face seemed more resolute and stronger than it
had ever been in life.
It wore a look almost of triumph, and the
lips seemed half drawn into a
smile.
" Poor Pierre Gascon ! " said the Doctor. " How many men
would have done as
much ? His last act may have saved him,
after all."
". . . Whereupon coming to the bars of his window
and looking out, he did begin to weep and lament him, and
cry out on the good sun that shone even into the King's prison.
But most he did bewail that no one should pay heed to his
death. . . . "
SHE sat in a corner of a large London drawing-room, and the
two men stood
before her—Hillier Haselton, her husband,
and George Swann, her
husband's cousin ; and, beyond them, the
mellow light of shaded candles,
vague groupings of black coats,
white shirt-fronts, and gay-tinted dresses,
and the noisy hum of
conversation.
The subject that the two men were discussing—and more
especially
Swann's blunt earnestness—stirred her, though through-
out it she
had been unpleasantly conscious of a smallness, almost a
pettiness, in
Hillier's aspect.
" Well, but why not, my dear Swann ? Why not be unjust :
man's been unjust
to woman for so many years."
Hillier let his voice fall listlessly, as if to rebuke the other's
vehemence
; and to hint that he was tired of the topic, looked
round at his wife,
noting at the same time that Swann was observ-
ing how he held her gaze in
his meaningly. And the unexpected-
ness of his own attitude charmed
him—his hot defence of an
absurd theory, obviously evoked by a
lover-like desire to please her.
Others, whose admiration he could trust,
would, he surmised, have
reckoned it a pretty pose. And she, perceiving that Swann seemed
to take her
husband's sincerity for granted, felt a sting of quick
regret that she had
ever come to understand him, and that she
could not still view him as they
all viewed him.
Hillier moved away across the room, and Swann drew a stool
beside her chair,
and asking her for news of Claude, her little boy,
talked to her of other
things—quite simply, for they were grown
like old friends. He looked
at her steadily, stroking his rough fair
beard, as if he were anxious to
convey to her something which he
could not put into words. She divined ;
and, a little startled, tried
to thank him with her eyes ; but, embarrassed
by the clumsiness of
his own attempt at sympathetic perception, he
evidently noticed
nothing. And this obtuseness of his disappointed her,
since it
somehow seemed to confirm her isolation.
She glanced round the room. Hillier stood on the hearth-rug,
his elbow on
the mantel-piece, busily talking, with slight deferen-
tial gestures, to
the great English actress in whose honour the
dinner had been given. The
light fell on his smooth glistening
hair, on his quick sensitive face ; for
the moment forcing herself
to realise him as he appeared to the rest, she
felt a thrill of jaded
pride in him, in his cleverness, in his reputation,
in his social
success.
Swann, observing the direction of her gaze, said, almost apolo-
getically, "
You must be very proud of him."
She nodded, smiled a faint, assumed smile ; then added, adopt-
ing his tone,
" His success has made him so happy."
" And you too ? " he queried.
" Of course," she answered quickly.
He stayed silent, while she continued to watch her husband
absently.
Success, an atmosphere of flattery, suited Hillier Haselton, and
stimulating
his weaknesses, continually encouraged him to display
the handsomer portion
of his nature. For though he was yet
young—and looked still
younger—there was always apparent,
beneath his frank boyish relish
of praise, a semblance of serious
modesty, a strain of genuine reserve. And
society—the smart
literary society that had taken him
up—found this combination
charming. So success had made life
pleasant for him in many
ways, and he rated its value accordingly ; he was
too able a man
to find pleasure in the facile forms of conceit, or to
accept, with
more than a certain cynical complacency, the world's
generous
judgment on his work. Indeed, the whole chorus of admiration
did but strengthen his contempt for contemporary literary judg-
ments, a
contempt which—lending the dignity of deliberate
purpose to his
indulgence of his own weakness for adulation—
procured him a
refined, a private, and an altogether agreeable self-
satisfaction. When
people set him down as vastly clever, he was
pleased ; he was unreasonably
annoyed when they spoke of him as
a great genius.
Life, he would repeat, was of larger moment than literature ;
and, despite
all the freshness of his success, his interest in himself,
in the play of
his own personality, remained keener, and, in its
essence, of more lasting
a nature, than his ambition for genuine
achievement. The
world—people with whom he was brought
into
relation—stimulated him so far as he could assimilate them
to his
conception of his own attitude ; most forms of art too, in
great
measure—and music altogether—attracted him in the pro-
portion that they played upon his intimate emotions. Similarly,
his
friendships ; and for this reason he preferred the companionship
of women.
But since his egoism was uncommonly dexterous, he
seemed endowed with a
rare gift of artistic perception, of psycho-
logical insight, of personal
charm.
It had always been his nature to live almost exclusively in the
present ;
his recollection of past impressions was grown scanty
from habitual disuse.
His sordid actions in the past he forgot
with an ever-increasing facility ;
his moments of generosity or
self-sacrifice he remembered carelessly, and
enjoyed a secret pride
in their concealment ; and the conscious
embellishment of sub-
jective experience for the purpose of " copy," he had
instinctively
disdained.
Since his boyhood, religion had been distasteful to him, though,
at rare
moments, it had stirred his sensibilities strangely. Now,
occasionally, the
thought of the nullity of life, of its great un-
satisfying quality, of the
horrid squalor of death, would descend
upon him with its crushing,
paralysing weight ; and he would
lament, with bitter, futile regret, his
lack of a secure stand-point,
and the continual limitations of his
self-absorption ; but even that,
perhaps, was a mere literary melancholy,
assimilated from certain
passages of Pierre Loti.
But now he had published a stout volume of critical essays,
and an important
volume of poetry, and society had clamorously
ratified his own conception
of himself. Certainly, now, in the
eyes of the world, it was agreed beyond
dispute that she, his wife,
was of quite the lesser importance. " She was
nice and quiet,"
which meant that she seemed mildly insignificant ; "she
had a
sense of humour," which meant that an odd note of half-stifled
cynicism sometimes escaped her. He was evidently very devoted
to her, and
on that account women trusted him—all the more
because her personality possessed no obvious glamour. Perhaps,
now and then,
his attentions to her in public seemed a little
ostentatious ; but then, in
these modern uncourtly days, that in
itself was distinctive. In private
too, especially at the moments
when he found life stimulating, he was still
tactful and expansive
with sympathetic impulse ; from habit ; from pride in
his com-
prehension of women ; from dislike to cheap hypocrisy. How
could he have divined that bitter suppressed seriousness, with
which she
had taken her disillusionment ; when not once in three
months did he
consider her apart from the play of his own person-
ality ; otherwise than
in the light of her initial attitude towards
him ?
And her disillusionment, how had it come ? Certainly not
with a rush of
sudden overwhelming revelation ; certainly it was
in no wise inspired by
the tragedy of Nora Helmer. It had been
a gradual growth, to whose obscure
and trivial beginnings she had
not had the learning to ascribe their true
significance. To sound
the current of life was not her way. She was naïve
by nature ;
and the ignorance of her girlhood had been due rather to a
natural inobservance than to carefully managed surroundings.
And yet, she
had come to disbelieve in Hillier ; to discredit his
clever attractiveness
: she had become acutely sensitive to his
instability, and, with a secret,
instinctive obstinacy, to mistrust
the world's praise of his work. Perhaps,
had he made less effort
in the beginning to achieve a brilliancy of
attitude in her eyes,
had he schooled her to expect from him a lesser
loftiness of aspira-
tion, things might have been very different ; or, at
least, there
might have resulted from the process of her disillusionment
a
lesser bitterness of conviction. But she had taken her marriage
with
so keen an earnestness of ideal, had noted every turn in his
personality
with so intense an expectation. Perhaps, too, had he
detected the first totterings of her ideal conception of him, had
he aided
her, as it were, to descend his figure from that pedestal
where he himself
had originally planted it, together they might
have set it uninjured on a
lower and less exposed plane. But he
had never heeded her subtle
indications of its insecurity ; alone,
she had watched its peril, awaiting
with a frightened fascination
the day when it should roll headlong in the
dust. And, at inter-
vals, she would vaguely marvel, when she observed
others whose
superior perspicacity she assumed, display no perception of
his
insincerity. Then the oppressive sense that she—she, his
wife,
the mother of his child—was the only one who saw him
clearly,
and the unsurmountable shrinking from the relief of sharing
this
sense with any one, made her sourly sensitive to the pettiness,
the
meanness, the hidden tragic element in life.
A gulf had grown between—that was how she described it to
herself.
Outwardly their relations remained the same ; but,
frequently, in his
continuance of his former attitude, she detected
traces of deliberate
effort ; frequently when off his guard, he
would abandon all pretension to
it, and openly betray how little
she had come to mean to him. There were,
of course, moments
also, when, at the echo of his tenderness, she would
feverishly
compel herself to believe in its genuineness ; but a minute
later
he would have forgotten his exaltation, and, almost with
irritation,
would deliberately ignore the tense yearning that was
glowing
within her.
And so, the coming of his success—a brilliant blossoming into
celebrity—had stirred her but fitfully. Critics wrote of the fine
sincerity of his poetry ; while she clung obstinately to her super-
stition
that fine poetry must be the outcome of a great nobility of
character. And,
sometimes, she hated all this success of his,
because it seemed to
emphasise the gulf between them, and in
some inexplicable way to lessen her value in his eyes : then
again, from an
impulse of sheer unselfishness, she would succeed
in almost welcoming it,
because, after all, he was her husband.
But of all this he noted nothing : only now and then he would
remind himself
vaguely that she had no literary leanings.
The little Claude was three years old. Before his birth, Hillier
had dilated
much on the mysterious beauty of childhood, had vied
with her own awed
expectation of the wonderful coming joy.
During her confinement, which had
been a severe one, for three
nights in succession he had sat, haggard with
sleepless anxiety, on
a stiff-backed dining-room chair, till all danger was
passed. But
afterwards the baby had disappointed him sorely ; and later
she
thought he came near actively disliking it. Still, reminding
herself of the winsomeness of other children at the first awakening
of
intelligence, she waited with patient hopefulness, fondly fancying
a
beautiful boy-child ; wide baby eyes ; a delicious prattle.
Claude,
however, attained no prettiness, as he grew : from an
unattractive baby he
became an unattractive child, with lanky,
carroty hair ; a squat nose; an
ugly, formless mouth. And in
addition, he was fretful, mischievous,
self-willed. Hillier at this
time paid him but a perfunctory attention ;
avoided discussing
him ; and, when that was not possible, adopted a subtle,
aggrieved
tone that cut her to the quick. For she adored the child ;
adored
him because he was hers ; adored him for his very defects ;
adored
him because of her own suppressed sadness; adored him for the
prospect of the future—his education, his development, his gradual
growth into manhood.
From the house in Cromwell Road the Haseltons had moved to
a flat near
Victoria Station : their means were moderate ; but now,
through the death
of a relative, Hillier was no longer dependent
upon literature for a
living.
George Swann was her husband's cousin ; and besides, he had
stood godfather
to the little Claude. He was the elder by eight
years ; but Hillier always
treated him as if their ages were reversed,
and, before Ella, used to
nickname him the "Anglo-Saxon,"
because of his loose physical largeness,
his flaxen hair and beard,
his strong simplicity of nature. And Swann, with
a reticent
good-humour, acquiesced in Hillier's tone towards him ; out
of
vague regard for his cousin's ability ; out of respect for him as
Ella's husband.
Swann and Ella were near friends. Since their first meeting,
the combination
of his blunt self-possession and his uncouth
timidity with women, had
attracted her. Divining his simplicity,
she had felt at once at her ease
with him, and, treating him with
open cousinly friendliness, had encouraged
him to come often to
the house.
A while later, a trivial incident confirmed her regard for him.
They had
been one evening to the theatre together—she and
Hillier and
Swann—and afterwards, since it was raining, she and
Hillier waited
under the door-way while he sallied out into the
Strand to find them a cab.
Pushing his way along the crowded
street, his eyes scanning the traffic for
an empty hansom, he
accidentally collided with a woman of the pavement,
jostling her
off the kerb into the mud of the gutter. Ella watched him
stop,
gaze ruefully at the woman's splashed skirt, take off his hat,
and
apologise with profuse, impulsive regret. The woman continued
her
walk, and presently passed the theatre door. She looked
middle-aged : her
face was hard and animal-like.
One Sunday afternoon—it was summer-time—as she was cross-
ing
the park to pay a call in Gloucester Square, she came across
him sauntering
alone in Kensington Gardens. She stopped and
spoke to him : he seemed much
startled to meet her. Three-
quarters of an hour later, when she returned,
he was sitting on a
public bench beside her path ; and immediately, from
his manner,
she half-guessed that he had been waiting for her. It was
a
fortnight after Claude's christening : he started to speak to her
of
the child, and so, talking together gravely, they turned on to
the turf,
mounted the slope, and sat down on two chairs beneath
the trees.
Touched by his waiting for her, she was anxious to make
friends with him ;
because he was the baby's godfather ;
because he seemed alone in the world
; because she trusted in
his goodness. So she led him, directly and
indirectly, to talk of
himself. At first, in moody embarrassment, he
prodded the turf
with his stick ; and presently responded, unwillingly
breaking
down his troubled reserve, and alluding to his loneliness
con-
fidingly, as if sure of her sympathy.
Unconsciously he made her feel privileged thus to obtain an
insight into the
inner workings of his heart, and gave her a
womanly, sentimental interest
in him.
Comely cloud-billows were overhead, and there was not a
breath of
breeze.
They paused in their talk, and he spoke to her of Kensington
Gardens,
lovingly, as of a spot which had signified much to him
in the
past—Kensington Gardens, massively decorous ; cere-
moniously quiet
; pompous, courtly as a king's leisure park ; the
slow, opulent contours of
portly foliage, sober-green, immobile
and indolent ; spacious groupings of
tree-trunks ; a low ceiling of
leaves ; broad shadows mottling the grass.
The Long Water,
smooth and dark as a mirror ; lining its banks, the rhododendrons
swelling
with colour, cream, purple, and carmine. The peacock's
insolent scream ; a
silently skimming pigeon ; the joyous twitter-
ings of birds ; the patient
bleating of sheep. . . .
At last she rose to go. He accompanied her as far as the
Albert Memorial,
and when he had left her, she realised, with a
thrill of contentment, that
he and she had become friends.
That had been the beginning of George Swann's great love for
her. His was a
slowly-moving nature : it was gradually therefore
that he came to value, as
a matter of almost sacred concern, the
sense of her friendship ;
reverencing her with the single-hearted,
unquestioning reverence of a man
unfamiliar with women ; re-
garding altogether gravely her relations with
him—their talks on
serious subjects, the little letters she wrote to
him, the books that
he had given to her—Swinburne's
edition of Shelley,
bound in white parchment ; Mrs. Meynell's
topics that were congenial to her, her opinions on men and
women, with a quiet, plodding earnestness ; almost as if it were
his duty.
Thus he learned her love of simple country things ;
gained a conception of
her girlhood's home ; of her father and
mother, staid country folk. He did
not know how to him alone
she could talk of these things ; or of the warm,
deep-seated
gratitude she bore him in consequence ; but he reverted
con-
stantly to the topic, because, under its influence, she always
brightened, and it seemed to ratify the bond of sympathy between
them.
How much, as the months went by, she came to mean to him,
he had not in the
least realised : he had never thought of her as
playing a part in his own
life ; only as a beautiful-natured woman,
to whom he owed everything,
because, by some strange chance,
she had made him her friend.
Not even in his moments of idle vagrant reverie, did he think
to ask more of
her than this. To intrude himself further into her
life, to offer her more
than exactly that which she was expecting
of him, naturally never occurred
to him. Yet, in a queer un-
comfortable way, he was jealous of other men's
familiarity with
her- -vaguely jealous lest they should supplant him,
mistrustful of
his own modesty. And there was no service which, if she
had
asked it of him, he would not have accomplished for her sake ; for
he had no ties.
But towards Hillier, since he belonged to her, Swann's heart
warmed
affectionately : she had loved and married him ; had
made him master of her
life. So he instinctively extended to his
cousin a portion of the unspoken
devotion inspired by Ella.
Such was the extent of his reverence for her,
and his diffidence
regarding himself, that he took for granted that Hillier
was an
ideal husband, tender, impelled by her to no ordinary daily de-
votion : for, that it should be otherwise, would have seemed
to him a
monstrous improbability. Yet latterly, since the coming
of Hillier's
success, certain incidents had disconcerted him, filled
him with
ill-defined uneasiness.
From the first, he had been one of Hillier's warmest admirers ;
praising,
whenever an opportunity offered, out of sheer loyalty to
Ella, and pride in
his cousin, the fineness of form that his poetry
revealed. To her, when
they were alone, he had talked in the
same enthusiastic strain : the first
time she had seemed listless
and tired, and afterwards he had blamed
himself for his want of
tact ; on another occasion, he had brought her a laudatory article,
and she
had turned the conversation brusquely into another
channel. And, since his
love for her—of which as yet he was
himself
unconscious—caused him to brood over means of pleasing
her (he lived
alone in the Temple), this indication that he had
jarred her sensibilities
was not lost upon him.
Hillier's attitude towards the little Claude, and the pain that it
was
causing her, would in all probabiltity have escaped him, had
she not
alluded to it once openly, frankly assuming that he had per-
ceived it. It
was not indeed that she was in any way tempted to
indulge in the
transitional treachery of discussing Hillier with him ;
but that,
distressed, yearning for counsel, she was prompted almost
irresistibly to
turn to Swann, who had stood godfather to the child,
who was ready to join
her in forming anxious speculations concern-
ing the future.
For of course he had extended his devotion to the child also,
who, at
Hillier's suggestion, was taught to call him Uncle George.
Naturally his
heart went out to children : the little Claude, since
the first awakening
of his intelligence, had exhibited a freakish,
childish liking for him ;
and, in his presence, always assumed some-
thing of the winsomeness of
other children.
The child's preference for Swann, his shy mistrust of his father,
were
sometimes awkwardly apparent ; but Hillier, so it seemed to
Ella, so far
from resenting, readily accepted his cousin's predomi-
nance. " Children
always instinctively know a good man," he
would say ; and Ella would wince
inwardly, discerning, beneath
his air of complacent humility, how far apart
from her he had come
to stand.
Thus, insensibly, Swann had become necessary to her, almost
the pivot, as it
were, of her life : to muse concerning the nature of
his feelings towards
her, to probe its sentimental aspects, to accept
his friendship otherwise than with unconscious ease, that was not
her
way.
But Hillier noted critically how things were drifting, and even
lent
encouragement to their progress in a way that was entirely
unostentatious ;
since so cynical an attitude seemed in some
measure to justify his own
conduct.
For he was unfaithful to his wife, it was inevitable that the
temptation, in
the guise of a craving for change, should come—
not from the
outside, but from within himself. And he had no
habit of stable purpose
with which to withstand it. Not alto-
gether was it a vagrant, generalised
lusting after women other than
his wife ; not a mere harking back to the
cruder experiences of his
bachelorhood ; though, at first it had seemed so
to manifest itself.
Rather was it the result of a moody restlessness, of a
dissatisfaction
(with her, consciously, no ; for the more that he sinned
against
her, the more lovable, precious her figure appeared to him)
kindled
by continual contact with her natural goodness. It was as if,
in
his effort to match his personality with hers, he had put too
severe
a strain upon the better part of him.
He himself had never analysed the matter more exhaustively than
this. The
treacherous longing had gripped him at certain mo-
ments, holding him
helpless as in a vice. He had conceived no
reckless passion for another
woman : such an eventuality, he dimly
surmised, was well-nigh impossible.
In his case brain domineered
over heart ; to meet the first outbursting of
his adoration for his
wife, he had drained every resource of his
sentimentality.
Was it then an idle craving for adventure, a school-boy curiosity
clamouring for fresh insight into the heart of women ? Mere
experience was
unnecessary for the attainment of comprehension :
"to have lived" did not
imply " to have understood " : the most
pregnant adventures, as he knew,
were those which entailed no
actual unfaithfulness.
And for these—subtle, psychological intimacies—ample occasion
offered. Yet the twist in his nature led him to profess to treat
them
heedlessly ; and, in reality, to prosecute them with no
genuine
strenuousness. They would have been obvious lapses ;
Ella would have been
pained, pitied perhaps : from that his vanity
and his sham chivalry alike
shrank.
His unfaithfulness to her, then, had been prompted by no evident
motive.
Superficially considered, it seemed altogether gratuitous,
meaningless. The
world—that is, people who knew him and her
—would probably
have discredited the story, had it come to be
bruited. And this fact he had
not omitted to consider.
She, the other woman, was of little importance. She belonged
to the higher
walks of the demi-monde : she was young ; beautiful,
too, in a manner ;
light-hearted ; altogether complaisant. She was
not the first : there had
been others before her ; but these were of
no account whatsoever : they had
but represented the bald fact of
his unfaithfulness. But
again and
again ; though afterwards, at any rate in the beginning,
he was wont to
spare himself little in the matter of self-reproach,
and even to make some
show of resisting the temptation. The
discretion of her cynical
camaraderie, however, was to be trusted ;
and that was sufficient to
undermine all virtuous resolution. She
had the knack, too, of cheering him
when depressed, and, curiously
enough, of momentarily reinstating him in
his own conceit,
though later, on his return to Ella, he would suffer most
of the
pangs of remorse.
There was something mannish about her—not about her
physiognomy, but
about her mind—derived, no doubt, from the
scantiness of her
intercourse with women. Her cynicism was
both human and humorous : she was
a person of little education,
and betrayed none of the conventionality of
her class : hence her
point of view often struck him as oddly direct and
unexpected.
He used to talk to her about himself, candidly discussing
all
manner of random and intimate matters before her, without
shyness
on his part, without surprise on hers—almost at times as
if she were
not present—and with an assumption of facile banter,
to listen to
which tickled his vanity. Only to Ella did he never
allude ; and in this,
of course, she tacitly acquiesced. She
possessed a certain quality of
sympathetic tact ; always attentive
to his talk, never critical of it ;
mindful of all that he had
previously recounted. He could always resume his
attitude at the
very point where he had abandoned it. Between them there
was
never any aping of sentimentality.
That she comprehended him—with so fatuous a delusion he
never
coquetted : nor that she interested him as a curious type.
She saw no
subtle significance in his talk : she understood nothing
of its complex
promptings : she was ordinary, uneducated, and yet
stimulating—and
that was the contrast which attracted him
towards her. Concerning the
course of her own existence he did
not trouble himself: he accepted her as
he found her ; deriving a
sense of security from the fact that towards him
her manner
varied but little from visit to visit. But, as these
accumulated,
becoming more and more regular, and his faith in her
discretion
blunted the edge of his remorse, he came to notice how she
braced him, reconciled him to his treachery (which, he argued,
in any case
was inevitable) ; lent to it a spice almost of pleasant-
ness. Neither had
he misgivings of the future, of how it would
end. One day she would pass out of his life as easily as she had
come into
it. His relations with her were odd, though not in the
obvious way. About
the whole thing he was insensibly coming
to feel composed.
And its smoothness, its lack of a disquieting aspect, impelled
him to
persevere towards Ella in cheerfulness, courteous kindness,
and a show of
continuous affection ; and to repent altogether of
those lapses into
roughness which had marred the first months of
their marriage.
The hansoms whirled their yellow, gleaming eyes down West :
hot, flapping
gusts went and returned aimlessly ; and the mirthless
twitterings of the
women fell abruptly on the sluggishly shuffling
crowd. All the sin of the
city seemed crushed to listlessness ;
vacantly wistful, the figures waited
by the street corners.
Then the storm burst. Slow, ponderous drops : a clap of thez
thunder's wrath
; a crinkled rim of light, unveiling a slab of sky,
throbbing, sullen and
violet ; small, giggling screams of alarm,
and a stampede of bunchy
silhouettes. The thunder clapped
again, impatient and imperious ; and the
rain responded, zealously
hissing. Bright stains of liquid gold straggled
across the road-
way ; a sound of splashing accompanied the thud of hoofs,
the
rumble of wheels, the clanking of chains, and the ceaseless rattle
of the drops on the hurried procession of umbrellas.
Swann, from the corner of a crowded omnibus, peered absently
through the
doorway, while the conductor, leaning into the street,
touted mechanically
for passengers.
The vehicle stopped. A woman, bare-headed and cloaked,
escorted by the
umbrella of a restaurant official, hurried to the
shelter of a cab, across the wet pavement. A man broke the
stream of the
hastening crowd ; halted beside the wheel to stare.
The woman laughed in
recognition, noisily. The man stepped
rapidly on to the foot-board, and an
instant stood there, directing
the driver across the roof. The light from a
lamp-post caught
his face : it was Hillier. The next moment he was seated
beside
the woman, who was still laughing (Swann could see the gleaming
whiteness of her teeth) : the driver had loosened the window
strap, the
glass had slid down, shutting them in. The omnibus
jolted forward, and the
cab followed in its wake, impatiently, for
the street was blocked with
traffic.
Immediately, with a fierce vividness, Ella's image sprang up
before Swann's
eyes—her face with all its pure, natural, simple
sweetness. And
there—not ten yards distant, behind the obscurity
of that blurred
glass, Hillier was sitting with another woman—a
woman concerning
whose status he could not doubt.
He clenched his gloved fists. The wild impulse spurted forth,
the impulse to
drag the cur from the cab, to bespatter him, to
throw him into the mud, to
handle him brutally, as he deserved.
It was as if Hillier had struck him a
cowardly blow in the face.
Then the hansom started to creep past the omnibus. Swann
sprang into the
roadway. A moment later he was inside another
cab, whirling in pursuit down
Piccadilly hill.
The horse's hoofs splashed with a rhythmical, accelerated
precision : he
noticed dully how the crupper-strap flapped from
side to side, across the
animal's back. Ahead, up the incline,
pairs of tiny specks, red and green,
were flitting.
" It's the cab with the lady what come out of the restaurant,
ain't it, sir
? "
" Yes," Swann called back through the trap.
The reins tightened : the horse quickened his trot.
Hyde Park Corner stood empty and resplendent with a glitter
of glamorous
gold. The cab turned the corner of Hamilton
Place, and the driver lashed
the horse into a canter up Park
Lane.
" That's 'im—jest in front—"
" All right. Follow." Swann heard himself answering. And,
amid his pain, he
was conscious that's the man's jaunty tone
seemed to indicate that this
sort of job was not unfamiliar.
He struggled to tame the savageness of his indignation ; to
think out the
situation ; to realise things coolly, that he might do
what was best for
her. But the leaping recollection of all her
trustfulness, her goodness,
filled him with a burning, maddening
compassion. . . . He could see nothing
but the great wrong done
to her. . . .
Where were they going—the green lights of that cab in front
—that woman and Hillier ? . . . Where would it end, this
horrible
pursuit—this whirling current which was sweeping him
forward.... It
was like a nightmare. . . .
He must stop them—prevent this thing . . . but, evidently,
this was
not the first time. . . . Hillier and this woman knew
one another. He had
stopped, on catching sight of her, and she
had recognised him. . . . The
thing might have been going on
for weeks—for months. . . .
. . . Yet he must stop them—not here, in the crowded street
(they
were in the Edgware Road), but later, when they had
reached their
destination—where there were no passers—where it
could be
done without scandal. . . .
. . . Yes, he must send Hillier back to her. . . . And she
believed in
him—trusted him. . . . She must know nothing—at
all costs, he
must spare her the hideous knowledge—the pain of it.
. . . And
yet—and yet? . . . Hillier—the blackguard—she
would
have to go on living with him, trusting him, confiding in him,
loving him. .
. .
And for relief he returned wearily to his indignation.
How was it possible for any man— married to her—to be so
vile,
so false ? . . . The consummate hypocrisy of it all. . . .
Swann remembered moments when Hillier's manner towards
her had appeared
redolent of deference, of suppressed affection.
And he—a man of
refinement—not a mere coarse-fibred, sensual
brute—he who
wrote poetry—Swann recalled a couplet full of fine
aspiration—that he should have done this loathsome thing—done
it callously, openly—any one might have seen it—deceived her
for some common vulgar, public creature. . . .
Suddenly the cab halted abruptly.
" They're pulled up, across the street there," the driver
whispered
hoarsely, confidentially ; and for his tone Swann could
have struck
him.
It was an ill-lit street, silent and empty. The houses were low,
semi-detached, and separated from the pavement by railings and
small
gardens.
The woman had got out of the cab and was pushing open the
swing-gate.
Hillier stood on the foot-board, paying the cab-
man. Swann, on the
opposite side of the street, hesitated.
Hillier stepped on to the pavement,
and ran lightly up the door-
step after the woman. She unlocked the door :
it closed behind
them. And the hansom which had brought them turned,
and
trotted away down the street.
Swann stood a moment before the house, irresolute. Then re-
crossed the
street slowly. And a hansom, bearing a second
couple, drew up at the house
next door.
" You can go to bed, Hodgson. I will turn off the light."
The man retired silently. It was a stage-phrase that rose
unconsciously to
her lips, a stage-situation with which she was
momentarily toying.
Alone, she perceived its absurd unreality. Nothing, of course,
would happen
to-night : though so many days and nights she had
been waiting. The details
of life was clumsy, cumbersome : the
simplification of the stage, of
novels, of dozing dreams, seemed,
by contrast, bitterly impossible.
She took up the book again, and read on, losing herself for a
while in the
passion of its pages—a passion that was all glamorous,
sentimental
felicity, at once vague and penetrating. But, as she
paused to reach a
paper-knife, she remembered the irrevocable,
prosaic groove of existence,
and that slow drifting to a dreary
commonplace—a commonplace that
was
her aching
listlessness. She let the book slip to the carpet.
Love, she repeated to herself, a silken web, opal-tinted, veiling
all life ;
love, bringing fragrance and radiance ; love with the
moonlight streaming
across the meadows ; love, amid summer-
leafed woods, a-sparkle in the
morning sun ; a simple clasping of
hands ; a happiness, child-like and
thoughtless, secure and
intimate. . . .
And she—she had nothing—only the helpless child ; her soul
was
brave and dismantled and dismal ; and once again started the
gnawing of
humiliation—inferior even to the common people,
who could be loved
and forget, in the midst of promiscuous
squalor. Without love, there seemed
no reason for life.
Away her thoughts sailed to the tale of the fairy-prince,
stepping to shore
in his silver armour, come to deliver and to
love. She would have been his
in all humility, waited on him in
fearful submission ; she would have asked
for nought but his
love.
Years ago, once or twice, men had appeared to her like that.
And Hillier,
before they were married, when they were first
engaged. A strange girl she
must have been in those days !
And now—now they were like any
husband and any wife.
" It happened by chance," the old tale began. Chance ! Yes,
it was chance
that governed all life ; mocking, ironical chance,
daintily sportive
chance, hobbled to the clumsy mechanism of
daily existence.
Twelve o'clock struck. Ten minutes more perhaps, and
Hillier would be home.
She could hear his tread ; she could see
him enter, take off his coat and
gloves gracefully, then lift her
face lightly in his two hands, and kiss
her on the forehead. He
would ask for an account of her day's doings ; but
he would
never heed her manner of answering, for he would have begun
to
talk of himself. And altogether complacently would he take up
the
well-worn threads of their common life.
And she would go on waiting, and trifling with hopelessness,
for in real
life such things were impossible. Men were dull and
incomplete, and could
not understand a woman's heart. . . .
And so she would wait till he came in, and when he had
played his part, just
as she had imagined he would play it, she
would follow him, in dumb
docility, up-stairs to bed.
* * * * *
It was past one o'clock when he appeared. She had fallen
asleep in the big
arm-chair : her book lay in a heap on the carpet
beside her. He crossed the
room, but she did not awake.
One hand hung over the arm of the chair, limp and white and
fragile ; her
head, bent over her breast, was coyly resting in the
curve of her elbow ;
her hair was a little dishevelled ; her breathing
was soft and regular,
like a child's.
He sat down noiselessly, awed by this vision of her. The cat,
which had lain
stretched on the hearth-rug, sprang into his lap,
purring and caressing. He
thought it strange that animals had
no sense of human sinfulness, and
recalled the devotion of the dog
of a prostitute, whom he had known years
and years ago. . . .
He watched her, and her unconsciousness loosed within him
the sickening
pangs of remorse. . . . He mused vaguely on
suicide as the only fitting
termination. . . . And he descended
to cheap anathemas upon life. . . .
* * * * *
By-and-by she awoke, opening her eyes slowly, wonderingly.
He was kneeling
before her, kissing her hand with reverential
precaution.
She saw tears in his eyes : she was still scarcely awake : she
made no
effort to comprehend ; only was impulsively grateful, and
slipping her arms
behind his head, drew him towards her and kissed
him on the eyes. He
submitted, and a tear moistened her lips.
Then they went up-stairs.
And she, passionately clutching at every memory of their love,
feverishly
cheated herself into bitter self-upbraiding, into attri-
buting to him a
nobility of nature that set him above all other
men. And he, at each
renewed outburst of her wild straining
towards her ideal, suffered, as if
she had cut his bare flesh with a
whip.
It was his insistent attitude of resentful humility that finally
wearied her
of the fit of false exaltation. When she sank to
sleep, the old ache was at
her heart.
Swann strode into the room. Hillier looked up at him from
his writing-table
in unfeigned surprise ; greeted him cordially,
with a couple of trite,
cheery remarks concerning the weather,
then waited abruptly for an
explanation of this morning visit ; for
Swann's trouble was written on his
face.
" You look worried. Is there anything wrong ? " Hillier
asked presently.
" Yes."
"Well, can I do anything ? If I can be of any service to you,
old fellow,
you know ——"
" I discovered last night what a damned blackguard you are."
He spoke
savagely, as if his bluntness exulted him : his tone
quivered with
suppressed passion.
Hillier, with a quick movement of his head, flinched as if he
had been
struck in the face. And the lines about his mouth were
set rigidly.
There was a long, tense silence. Hillier was drawing circles
on a corner of
the blotting-pad ; Swann was standing over him,
glaring at him with a
fierce, hateful curiosity. Hillier be-
came conscious of the other's
expression, and his fist clenched
obviously.
" I saw you get into a cab with that woman," Swann went on.
" I was in an
omnibus going home. I followed you—drove after
you. I wanted to stop
you—to stop it—I was too late."
" Ah !" An exasperated, sneering note underlined the ex-
clamation. Hillier
drove the pen-point_into the table. The nib
curled and snapped.
The blood rushed to Swarm's forehead. In a flash he caught a
glimpse of the
thought that had crossed Hillier's mind. It was
like a personal indignity ;
he struggled desperately to control
himself.
Hillier looked straight into his cousin's distorted face. At
the sight the
tightness about his own mouth slackened. His
composure returned.
" I'm sorry. Forgive me," he said simply.
" How can you be such a brute ? " Swann burst out unheeding.
" Don't you
care ? Is it nothing to you to wreck your wife's
whole happiness—to
spoil her life, to break her heart, to deceive
her in the foulest way, to
lie to her. Haven't you any conscience,
any chivalry ? "
The manly anguish in his voice was not lost upon Hillier.
He thought he
realised clearly how it was for Ella, and not for
him, that Swann was so
concerned. Once more he took stock
of his cousin's agitation, and a quick
glitter came into his eyes.
He felt as if a mysterious force had been
suddenly given to him.
Still he said nothing.
" How could you, Hillier ? How came you to do it ? "
" Sit down." He spoke coldly, clearly, as if he were playing a
part which he
knew well.
Swann obeyed mechanically.
" It's perfectly natural that you should speak to me like that.
You take the
view of the world. The view of the world I accept
absolutely. Certainly I
am utterly unworthy of Ella " (he men-
tioned her name with a curious
intonation of assertive pride).
" How I have sunk to this thing—the
whole story of how I have
come to risk my whole happiness for the sake of
another woman,
who is nothing—absolutely nothing—to me, to
whom I am
nothing, I won't attempt to explain. Did I attempt to do
so,
I see little probability of your understanding it, and little to be
gained
even if you did so.
a piece of incomprehensible infamy : I have no wish to alter your
view of me."
" You don't care . . . you've no remorse . . . you're callous
and cynical. .
. . Good God ! it's awful."
" Yes, Swann, I care," Hillier resumed, lowering his voice, and
speaking
with a slow distinctness, as if he were putting an
excessive restraint upon
his emotions. "
or any one
will ever know."
" It's horrible.... I don't know what to think. . . . Don't
you see the
awfulness of your wife's position ? . . . Don't you
realise the hideousness
of what you've done ?"
" My dear Swann, nobody is more alive to the consequences of
what I've done
than I am. I have behaved infamously—I don't
need to be told that by
you. And whatever comes to me out of
this thing" (he spoke with a grave,
resigned sadness) "I shall
bear it."
" Good God ! Can you think of nothing but yourself ?
Can't you see that
you've been a miserable, selfish beast—that
what happens to you
matters nothing ? Can't you see that the
only thing that matters is your
wife ? You're a miserable, skulking
cur—— . . . She trusted
you—she believed in you, and you've
done her an almost irreparable
wrong."
Hillier stood suddenly erect.
" What I have done, Swann, is more than a wrong. It is a
crime. Within an
hour of your leaving this room, I shall have
told Ella everything. That is
the only thing left for me to do,
and I shall not shirk it. I shall take
the full responsibility.
You did right to come to me as you did. You are
right to
consider me a miserable, skulking cur" (he brought the
words
out with an emphasised bravery). " Now you can do no
more. The remainder of
the matter rests between me and my
wife——"
He paused.
" And to think that you——" Swann began passionately.
" There is no object to be gained by our discussing the matter
further,"
Hillier interrupted a little loudly, but with a con-
centrated calm. "
There is no need for you to remain here
longer." He put his thumb to the
electric bell.
"The maid will be here in a moment to show you out," he
added.
Swann waited, blinking with hesitation. His personality seemed
to be
slipping from him.
" You are going to tell her ? " he repeated slowly.
The door opened : he hurried out of the room.
The outer door slammed : Hillier's face turned a sickly white ;
his eyes
dilated, and he laughed excitedly—a low, short, hysterical
laugh. He
looked at the clock : the whole scene had lasted but
ten minutes. He pulled
a chair to the fire, and sat staring at the
flames moodily. . . . The
tension of the dramatic situation
snapped. Before his new prospect, once
again he thought weakly
of suicide. . . .
He had told her—not, of course, the whole story—from that
his
sensitivity had shrunk. Still he had besmirched himself
bravely ; he had
gone through with the interview not without
dignity. Beforehand he had
nerved himself for a terrible ordeal ;
yet, somehow, as he reviewed it, now
that it was all over, the
scene seemed to have fallen flat. The tragedy of
her grief, of his
own passionate repentance, which he had been expecting, had
proved
unaccountably tame. She had cried, and at the sight of
those tears of hers
he had suffered intensely ; but she had displayed
no suppressed, womanish
jealousy ; had not, in her despair, ap-
peared to regard his confession as
an overwhelming shattering of
her faith in him, and so provoked him to
reveal the depth of his
anguish. He had implored her forgiveness ; he had
vowed he
would efface the memory of his treachery ; she had acquiesced
dreamily, with apparent heroism. There had been no mention of
a
separation.
And now the whole thing was ended : to-night he and she
were dining out.
He was vaguely uncomfortable ; yet his heart was full of a
sincere
repentance, because of the loosening of the strain of his
anxiety ; because
of the smarting sense of humiliation, when he
recollected Swann's words ;
because he had caused her to suffer in
a queer, inarticulate way, which he
did not altogether understand,
of which he was vaguely afraid. . . .
When at last he had left her alone, it was with a curious calm-
ness that
she started to reflect upon it all. She supposed it was
very strange that
his confession had not wholly prostrated her ;
and glancing furtively
backwards, catching a glimpse of her old
girlish self, wondered listlessly
how it was that, insensibly, all
these months, she had grown so hardened. .
. .
* * * * *
By-and-by, the recent revelation of his unfaithfulness seemed
to recede
slowly into the misty past, and, fading, losing its sharp-
ness of outline, its distinctness of detail, to resemble an irreparable
fact
to which familiarity had inured her.
And all the uneasiness of her mistrustfulness, and pain of her
fluctuating
doubtings ceased ; her comprehension of him was all
at once clarified,
rendered vivid and indisputable ; and she was
conscious of a certain sense
of relief. She was eased of those
feverish, spasmodic gaspings of her
half-starved love ; at first the
dulness of sentimental atrophy seemed the
more endurable. She
jibed at her own natural artlessness ; and insisted to
herself that
she wanted no fool's paradise, that she was even glad to see
him as
he really was, to terminate, once for all, this futile folly of love
;
that, after all, his unfaithfulness was no unusual and terrible
tragedy, but merely a commonplace chapter in the lives of smiling,
chattering women, whom she met at dinners, evening parties, and
balls. . .
.
* * * * *
There were some who simpered to her over Hillier as a
model of modern
husbands ; and she must go on listening and
smiling. . . .
. . . And the long years ahead would unroll themselves— a slow
tale
of decorous lovelessness. . . .
He would be always the same—that was the hardest to face.
His nature
could never alter, grow into something different . . .
never, never change
. . . always, always the same. . . .
Oh ! it made her dread it all—the restless round of social enjoy-
ments ; the greedy exposure of the petty weaknesses of common
acquaintance
; the ill-natured atmosphere that she felt emanating
from people herded
together. . . . All the details of her London
life looked unreal, mean,
pitiful. . . .
And she longed after the old days of her girlhood, of the smooth,
staid
country life ; she longed after the simple, restful companion-
ship of her old father and mother ; after the accumulation of little
incidents that she had loved long ago. . . . She longed too—and
the
straining at heart-strings grew tenser—she longed after her own
lost
maidenhood ; she longed to be ignorant and careless ; to see
life once
again as a simple, easy matter ; to know nothing of evil ;
to understand
nothing of men ; to trust—to trust unquestioningly.
... All that was
gone ; she herself was all changed ; those days
could never come again. . .
.
And she cried to herself a little, from weakness of spirit,
softly. . .
.
* * * * *
Then, gradually, out of the weary turmoil of her bitterness,
there came to
her a warm impulse of vague sympathy for the
countless, unknown tragedies
at work around her ; she thought of
the sufferings of outcast
women—of loveless lives, full of
mirthless laughter ; she thought of
the long loneliness of childless
women. . . .
She clutched for consolation at the unhappiness of others ; but
she only
discovered the greater ugliness of the world. And she
returned to a tired
contemplation of her own prospect. . . .
* * * * *
He had broken his vows to her—not only the solemn vow he
had taken in
the church (she recalled how his voice had trembled
with emotion as he had
repeated the words)—but all that passion-
ate series of vows he had
made to her during the spring-time of
their love. . . .
. . . Yes, that seemed the worst part of it—that, and not the
making
love to another woman. . . . What was she like ? . . .
What was it in her
that had attracted him ? . . . Oh ! but what
did that matter ? . . .
—only why were men's natures so different
from women's ? . .
.
. . . Now, she must go on—go on alone. Since her marriage she
had
lost the habit of daily converse with Christ : here in London,
somehow, He
had seemed so distant, so difficult of approach. . . .
. . . She must just go on. . . . She had the little Claude. . . .
It was to
help her that God had given her Claude. . . . Oh ! she
would pray to God to
make him good—to give him a straight,
strong, upright, honest
nature. And herself, every day, she would
watch over his growth, guide him,
teach him. . . . Yes, he
grow up good . . .
into boyhood . . . different from other boys
. . . into manhood, simple,
honourable manhood. . . . She would
be everything to him : he and she would
come to comprehend each
other, to read into each other's hearts. . . .
Perhaps, between them,
would spring up perfect love and trust. . . .
Swann had written to her :
" You are in trouble : let me come."
Gradually, between the lines of the note, she understood it all
—she
read how his love for her had leapt up, now that he knew
that she was
unhappy ; how he wanted to be near her, to comfort
her, and perhaps . . .
perhaps . . .
She was filled with great sorrow for him—and warm gratitude,
too, for
his simple, single-hearted love—but sorrow, that she could
give him
nothing in return, and because it seemed that, some-
how, he and she were
about to bid one another good-bye ; she
thought she dimly foresaw how their
friendship was doomed to
dwindle. . . .
So she let him come.
* * * * *
. . . And all this she fancied she read again in the long, grave
glance of
his greeting, and the firm clasp of his big hand.
When he spoke, his deep, steady voice dominated her : she knew
at once that
he would do what was right.
"Ella, my poor Ella, how brave you are ! " She looked up at
him, smiling
tremulously, through her quick-starting tears. . . .
The next moment it was
as if the words had escaped him—almost
as if he regretted them.
He sat down opposite her, and, lightening his voice, asked—just
as he
always did—for news of the little Claude.
And so their talk ran on.
After awhile, she came to realise that he meant to say no more :
the
strength of his great reserve became apparent, and a sense of
peace stole
over her. He talked on, and to the restful sound of
his clear, strong
voice, she abandoned herself dreamily. . . . This
he had judged the better
course. . . . that he should have adopted
any other now seemed
inconceivable. Beside him she felt weak
and helpless : she remembered the
loneliness of his life : he
seemed to her altogether noble ; and she was
vaguely remorseful
that she had not perceived from the first that it was
from him that
her help would come. . . .
She divined, too, the fineness of his sacrifice—that manly,
human
struggle with himself, through which he had passed to
attain it—how
he had longed for the right to make her his . . .
and how he had renounced.
The sureness of his victory, and the
hidden depths of his nature which it
revealed awed her . . .
now he would never swerve from what he knew to be
right. . . .
And on, through those years to come, she could trust him,
always,
always. . . .
. . . At last he bade her good-bye : even at the last his tone
remained
unchanged.
It was close upon seven o'clock. She went upstairs to dress
for dinner, and
kneeling beside the bed, prayed to God with an
outburst of passionate,
pulsing joy. . . .
Ten minutes later Hillier came in from his dressing-room. He
clasped his
hands round her bare neck, kissing her hair again and
again.
" I have been punished, Nellie," he began in a broken whisper.
" Good God !
it is hard to bear. . . . Help me, Nellie, . . . help
me to bear it."
She unclasped his fingers, and started to stroke them ; a little
mechanically, as if it were her duty to ease him of his pain. . . .
IN the cold grey dawn I sit up and look at the woman by my
side. One soft
little white hand peeps out from the dainty
lace, and on one ringer is a
gold ring. There is just such another
upon my own finger ; and these two
rings bind us to one another
for ever and ever. And I am tired already.
She moves in her sleep, and buries her face deeper in the heavy
folds of
the bed-clothes. The little hand is still out, and lies so
near me (so
temptingly near, as I should have thought only a little
while ago) that I
can trace the faint blue lines in it as I have done
many a time before.
But now . . . how horrible it all seems !
She stirs again, and draws the hand into the lace so that it is
almost
hidden. How pretty she looks ! . . . with her silky
brown hair. Ah, why do
I find it so difficult to think of her,
even when she is before my eyes
thus ? Why do I never think of
her when she is absent ? Why do great
masses of tumbling black
hair come into my mind, while I watch this soft
brown tangle on
the pillow before me ? I have tried to beat down these
thoughts
—but they will come . . . and how can I help myself?
Look at her neck—how white it is ! And yet—and yet, why
does
a warm brown something continually haunt me ? A living
something which
brings with it the sun, the sky, and the sea ?
Our boy sleeps in a little room adjoining. I creep in and look
at him. He
is asleep, and has curled himself up almost into a ball,
with one tiny
fist in his mouth. I dare not move it to give him
more air, lest he should
wake and cry out. As I look a horrible
feeling of loneliness comes over
me. . . . He is
shut ! . . . Those eyes so solemn and blue.
And in the morning she tells me a curious dream she had last
night. And
this is it :
" I dreamed that a dark woman with wonderful black hair came
and stood by
our bed ; and stooping, put her arms about you and
kissed you passionately
many times, smoothing your forehead with
her hand. And I tried to cry out,
but could not from fear. And
suddenly looking up, she saw me watching her
; and her face
grew hard and cruel. And she came round, and stood and
looked
at me ; and I trembled. And presently taking hold of me, she
tried to pull me out of bed, but something held me down : and
she gave up,
and went and sat by the dull cold grate, and wept
bitterly. And I felt
sorry for her in spite of all, because she had
no one to comfort her as I
have : and I got up to go to her. But
the cruel hard look crept back into
her face—and then I woke,
and saw you, and the empty chair, and the
bright sunlight darting
round the edges of the blinds, and found it was
only a dream."
And what can I say ? . . . What can I do ? ... How can I
help myself? . . .
IN addition to its possible concealment of irrelevant motives,
anonymous
criticism has this certain advantage, that it is not
of necessity
ridiculous. When the anonymous critic is confronted
with such a question as
that put, a trifle rudely but quite con-
clusively, by Charles Lamb to Dr.
Nott—" You think : who are
you ? " " I," he may answer proudly, " am
our hearths and homes, or to point out the approaching end of
the
century, without danger of seeming superfluous or impertinent.
To
do these things is felt to be part of the duty of
called Jones—implies a supposition that the world
will be glad to
read what he, Jones, thinks of some great contemporary, he
runs
a risk of humorous eyebrows. Even when the critic is somebody
whose name is a household word for eminence, one of those
distinguished few
before whom generations of intruders have
trembled or basked, and the
criticised only "a Mr." So-and-so—
there is a deal of national
character in that use of the indefinite
article—one suspects that
the judgment, however instructive, has
in it some possibility of the absurd. And it may be supposed that
if a
beginner in the dodge of scribbling should essay to estimate
the greatest
among living writers in his country, the proceeding
would be something
worse than ridiculous.
But it may be argued that such a critic would be in a less
obnoxious
position than any other. If he had a mind to patronise,
somebody might be
amused and nobody could be hurt ; whereas
the patronage of a superior
rankles, and that of an inferior is not
to be borne. Or if he set out to
damn, it would be nothing ; but
your eminent critic, sitting heavily upon a
writhing novice, has
an air of cruel exclusiveness.
For such reasons as these, I have far less diffidence in making
Mr.
Meredith's last published book a little more than the starting-
point of a
few digressions, than I should have in criticising Mr.
Max Beerbohm : I name, for example, an author whose
works
are of a later date and even less in bulk than my own. I should
fear the satire of Mr. Beerbohm's eulogists or detractors : from
Mr.
Meredith's, I may hope for indulgent indifference. I was
compelled in my
youth to weigh the philosophers of ancient
Greece in the balance of my
critical intelligence, and I began to
read Mr. Meredith at about the time I
was deciding the com-
parative qualities of Plato and Aristotle. To me he
was, and is,
as much a classic as they : I approach him with as little
personal
feeling, and if I have to say that all of him is not, in my
apprehension, equally good, I can say it with as little disrespect.
little. In
his bones. In
have him alive and imperfect. In
consummate.
If Mr. Meredith were one of those sympathetic writers who
can write only
when they are drunk—and is not art life as
expressed by a finely
drunken intelligence ?—I should think he
wrote
hension, the phrase and the mechanism of conveyance are there ;
the
quickening fire, the "
absent. " You
his potential puppets, and so they live—under
protest. As has
happened before, when lack of customary inspiration has
been felt,
he seems to have tried, in over self-justification, to do
what the fullest inspiration had hardly made possible. He has
offered you a
caprice of feminine emotion more incredible than is
to be found in any
other of his books. A middle-aged man,
grotesquely vulgar and abnormally
mean-minded, asks, as his
price for not exposing an old friend, this old
friend's daughter to
wife. The daughter, having set herself to make the
sacrifice, had
to find in this treacherous cad, Tinman, some human merit
for
her comfort, and for a prop of her obstinacy towards a seemlier
wooer. She found it in the fact that Tinman, being knocked
down by her
father, did not return the blow. " She had conceived
an insane idea of
nobility in Tinman that blinded her to his
face, figure, and
character—his manners, likewise. He had
forgiven a blow ! . . .
Tinman's magnanimity was present in her
imagination to sustain her." The
play of emotional fancy which
follows on this motive is delightful to read,
and you are fain to be
persuaded, for your enjoyment, of its truth ; but
when you have
shut the book the perversity is plain. Perversity is, I
think, the
word. The caprice is gratuitous. When Mr. Meredith
tried
our powers of faith most severely before, in
superhuman task of fitting a
creature of his imagination to
historical fact. I cannot help fancying that
Mrs. Norton, albeit
a wonderful member of a wonderful family, was a thought
less
fine than the lady of the book—that when she sold her
friend's
secret to
Mr. Meredith in the case of Diana. But there the
attempt,
though almost foolhardy, was successful. Mr. Meredith had set
himself a most difficult but a possible task. He was a rider
exulting in
his skill, and he forced his horse up a flight of stoned
steps. In this
my opinion has had a tumble. The heroine of the story, then, is
incredible to me as a whole ; but that point set apart, the workings
of her
mind are instructive to the student of her creator, because,
while
characteristic for certain, they are not very subtle, and are
expressed
with notable simplicity.
I cannot agree with some critics that Tinman is a glaring
failure. The
effects of the whole story are those of farce rather
than comedy, and the
most farcically funny of these, the rescue of
Tinman from his falling house
in his Court suit, is only possible
because of the grotesque vanity and
smallness of his character.
For all that, I do not think Mr. Meredith can
create people like
Tinman and his sister, with such fulness and enjoyment
to himself,
as he can create people whose folly is finer and whose manners
are
more agreeable. He overdoes silliness of a vulgar type. I have
lately, I confess by the way, reflected with much gratification on
the
fact, that of his greatest creations, the most—the exception
readiest to mind is the immortal nurse in
people of breeding and even of affluent
habits. Nobody admires
more than I, certain writers among us who take for
themes
" humble "—the satire of that word is growing crude—" humble "
and uneducated people. But I notice a growing tyranny
which ordains that
people who speak in dialect, people who live
in slums, and the more
aggressive and anachronistic order
of Bohemians, and none but these, are
fit subjects for books. I
read a story the other day which began, somewhat
in the
manner of Mr. G. P. R. James, with two men leaving a
club—a
sufficiently democratic institution nowadays, one would
have
thought—and I happened to see a criticism thereon which
objected, not that the story was bad, but that the author was a
snob for
having anything to do—any "truck," should one say ?—
with
"clubmen." Surely there is more to be said for the blatant
snobbery of an
earlier time, than for this proletarian exclusive-
ness. The accident of
Mr. Meredith's choice of material is a
consolation.
delicious farce spoiled, and the uselessness of criticising
it may be
mitigated by suggesting the question : Why did Mr. Meredith
spoil
it ? It is one I cannot answer. You are presented to a General,
stupid, respectable, complacent. He has been a conqueror of
women in his
time ; he is enormously pleased with himself. A
keenly humorous and
delightfully malicious woman has reason to
punish him. The punishment she
devises is a series of carica-
tures, the mere description of which is
irresistibly comic, and the
wretched General is driven by outraged vanity,
to show them
appealingly to his friends. The farce is furious as it
proceeds, and
you wonder what fitting climax to the ludicrousness is to end
it.
And lo ! the climax, a simple intensifying of the torture, is
passed,
and you are faced by a terrible anti-climax, which is the marriage
of the
torturer to the tortured ; nothing less, in fact, than a
command to your
common sympathies and canting kindliness
of heart, which the farce had
artistically excluded, to rush in
pell-mell. It is a slap in the face to a
worthy audience,
and I cannot understand why it was done. Mr. Meredith
is
far above all suspicion of truckling to the average reviewer,
who
insists that everybody be happy and good. Can it have
been—for the
apparent revulsion in the lady's psychology, though
not incredible, is
carried with the high hand of mere assertion
—that Mr. Meredith was
sorry to have been cruel ? Certainly
he was cruel : pain was inflicted on
the ass of a General.
Most satire and most farce involve pain, actual or
imaginary,
to some victim—if you think of it. But you should not
think
of it, and if you are a unit of a worthy audience, you do not
think of it. If it be the art of the inventor, to exclude so
far as
possible, a tendency to think of it, by his presentation of
the victim, Mr.
Meredith is here completely successful. The
General is credible and human,
but he is absurd, and the absurdity
is duly emphasised to the point of your
forgetting his humanity.
And Mr. Meredith, as an artist here of farce, has
prevented any
feeling of rancour in you towards the General, rancour
which
would have made your appreciation of his punishment, a satis-
faction of morality, and not a pure enjoyment of farce. There is
a pair of
lovers to whom the General's folly brings temporary
disaster, but they are
made—and surely the restraint was wonder-
fully artistic—so
merely abstract, that you care nothing for their
sorrow.
as artistic—and as abundantly laughable a farce as was ever
made,
until you reach the end, which to me is inexplicable. But how
many farces are there in English, for the stage or for the study,
where you laugh with all your intelligence alert ? I think they
may be
counted easily.
It is to be noticed that both these stories are simple in diction.
The
charge of obscurity, that is brought by nine of ten reviewers
against Mr.
Meredith's books, is one that may be supported with
facility. Indubitably
he is, as Mr. Henley has said, " the victim
of a monstrous cleverness that
is neither to hold nor to bind."
Over and over again, he is difficult when
he might have been easy.
He compresses impossibly, like Tacitus, or
presents a common-
place in crack-jaw oddities of expression, like
Browning. But
more often still, the obscurity is in the reader's
intelligence, not in
the writer's art. We are accustomed to novelists of
little indi-
viduality, or no individuality at all : Mr. Meredith's
intellect is as
individual as that of any poet in the English language.
Neces-
sarily, therefore, he is hard to understand. We are accustomed
to
presentations of the clothes of men and women, and of the baldest
summary of their thoughts and feelings : Mr. Meredith has
penetrated
further into character, and has exposed minuter
subtleties of thought and
feeling than any writer of English
poetry or prose. Necessarily, therefore,
he is hard to under-
stand.
I think this opinion is very well supported by these two stories.
In them he
is not concerned with any fine studies of feeling or
thought, and he is
quite simple. There are a few pomposities, a
few idle gallantries of
expression ; but in the main he is here to be
understood without a second
thought.
Mr. Meredith's prose does not satisfy my ideal. The two
qualities of prose
that I value above all others are ease and rhythm.
He can be easy, but in
his case ease has the appearance of a lapse.
He can be rhythmical, but he
is rhythmical at long intervals. That
quality of rhythm which seems to have
come so commonly to our
ancestors before the eighteenth century, seems
hardly to be sought
by the prose writers among ourselves. Were it sought
and found,
I am assured it would be hardly noticed.
Mr. Meredith is often neither musical nor easy. But as a
manipulator of
words to express complexity of thought he has no
peer. It was by this
complexity, this subtlety, and penetration of
his, that he was valuable to
me when first I read him. I imagine
there must be many in my case, to whom
he was, above all things,
an educator. It was his very obscurity, another
name, so often, for a
higher intelligence, that was the stimulating force
in him for such
as myself. Youth can rarely appreciate an achievement of
art as
such. But youth is keen to grind its intellect on the stone of
the
uncomprehended. That was the service of Mr. Meredith to those
in
my case. We puzzled and strove, and were rewarded by the
discovery of some
complexity of thought, or some subtlety of
emotion unimagined aforetime.
Fortunately for us, advance of
years and multiplying editions had not yet
earned him the homage
of the average reviewer ; for youth is conceited, and
does not care
to accept the verdict of the mass of its contemporaries.
Mr.
Meredith was sometimes an affectation in us, and sometimes the
most powerful educator we had. In the passage of years, as we
grew from
conceit of intelligence into appreciation, in our degrees,
of things artistic, we perceived that he was also a great artist, and
sympathy was merged in admiration. The
most stimulating, intellectually, of Mr. Meredith's books,
the
fullest interpreter, perhaps, of the world in which we live. In my
declining years, so to speak, I value it less than
For in a world that is become, in a superficial way,
most deplorably
intelligible, achievements of art are rare.
When I first read
edition, and I thank my gods I had not read any summary of
its
plot in a review. But from the third chapter I felt that tragedy
was in the air, for I seemed to have the impression of an inevitable
fate
drawing nearer, until I reached the end, where the fate comes
and the thing
ends sombrely. In other words, I had the im-
pression of a perfect tragedy.
I fancy it is the most perfect in form
of Mr. Meredit' s works of fiction,
except
from its length it
is even more impressive of its order, for the
air of tragedy is closer.
When you had finished
you felt
the tragedy had been inevitable, but you did not, unless
you had a far
keener sense than I, feel the tragedy all along. In
elect and wise humours of Beau Beamish, the winsomeness of
the
dairymaid duchess, the artificial sunshine of the Wells, are
perceived
only as you glance away from the shadow, where stand
Camwell,
Chloe, and Count Caseldy. One may divide them in this way,
because Duchess Susan, though a wholly realised creation in herself,
stands, as it were, in the plot for an abstract contrast to Chloe ;
another
beautiful child of English nature would have served as well.
That the tragedy is inevitable you feel altogether. And yet,
when you think
it out, you perceive that it is the wonderful art of
the telling, which
makes it so. That is more the case than even in
catastrophe following on a very natural duel.
It is the art of the
telling, that brings the truth home to you.
And the force of the tragedy is more wonderful for another
reason. Mr.
Meredith has created for it a very artificial atmo-
sphere, or has
reproduced a society which was, on the surface, as
artificial as can be
imagined. Beau Beamish, the social king of
the Wells, compelled the rude
English to conduct themselves by
ordinances of form. He ruled them with a
rod of iron ; he
must have inspired an enormous deal of hypocrisy. With a
com-
pany of bowing impostors for background, and with some of them
for actors, is played a drama of intense strength. The strongest
emotions
of our nature are presented in terms of bric-à-brac.
Everybody is " strange
and well-bred." Chloe, tying the secret
knots in her skein of silk to mark
the progress of an intrigue which
must end, as she has willed, in her
death, is gay the while, and talks
with the most natural wit. She discusses
the intrigue with Camwell
in polite enigmas. Camwell, who sees the intrigue
and foresees the
unhappiness, though not until the end, the death of his
mistress,
carries himself as a polished gentleman. Caseldy is none of
your dark conspirators. The guile of the duchess is simple hot
blood.
This delicacy of the setting assists the exquisite pathos of the
central
figure, surely one of the noblest in tragic story. The
strength of will, so
admirable and so piteous, which enables her to
impose blindness on herself
for the enjoyment of a month, and
finally to die that she may save her
weaker sister and the man she
loves, is relieved by curiously painful
touches of femininity. When
Camwell is telling her of the purposed elopement, she knows well
that
Caseldy, the traitor to herself, is the man, yet she says, " I
cannot think
Colonel Poltermore so dishonourable." By many
such touches is the darkness
of the tragedy made visible.
Chloe's words to Camwell in this last interview, are for the
grandeur of
their simple resignation, in the finest spirit of tragedy.
" Remember the
scene, and that here we parted, and that Chloe
wished you the happiness it
was not of her power to bestow,
because she was of another world, with her
history written out to
the last red streak before ever you knew her."
θάρσει · σὺ μὲν ζῇς, ἡ δἑμἡ ψνχἡ πάλαι
Antigone went not more steadily to her grave.
I fear I have been something egotistical in this attempt of mine,
and would
permit myself some apology of quotation to conclude.
Mr. Meredith has found
room in
happiest expressions of his philosophy, and some of his most perfect
images
in description. Of the ballad, which relates the marriage of
the duke and
the dairymaid, he says : " That mischief may have
been done by it to a
nobility-loving people, even to the love of our
nobility among the people,
must be granted : and for the particular
reason that the hero of the ballad
behaved so handsomely." I can-
not think what the guardians of optimism
have been about, that
they have not cried out on the " cynicism " of this
remark. Here
is a vivid summary of observation—Beau Beamish "was
neverthe-
less well supported by a sex, that compensates for dislike of
its
friend before a certain age, by a cordial recognition of him when
it
has touched the period." There are many such pregnant generalisa-
tions, and never do they intrude on the narrative.
" She smiled for answer. That smile was not the common smile;
it was one of an eager exultingness, producing as he gazed the
twitch of an
inquisitive reflection of it on his lips. . . . That is
the very heart's
language ; the years are in a look, as mount and
vale of the dark land
spring up in lightning." I question if that
can be matched for beauty and
force of imagery in Mr. Mere-
dith's works.
And this of Chloe's musings : " Far away in a lighted hall of the
west, her
family raised hands of reproach. They were minute
objects, dimly discerned
as diminished figures cut in steel. Feeling
could not be very warm for
them, they were so small, and a sea
that had drowned her ran between. . .
."
"Mr. Beamish indulges in verses above the grave of Chloe.
They are of a
character to cool emotion."
As I said in beginning, my eulogy in prose must be impotent
for such
disservice.
FOR quite a month or two it was noticed at the Shandy Club
that a certain
change had passed over Hartmann West.
West was rather a notability at the
club, though he was, com-
paratively speaking, a young member. To be
precise, he had
belonged to it just two years and a half, and six months
before
his election he had published his first book,
doxical reflection, with a dash of what was just then beginning
to
be called " the new humour " ; and the novelty, as represented by
West, found no great favour with the critics. In most quarters
the book was
either energetically slated or altogether ignored—
which, as we all
know, is a much worse fate—but somehow,
perhaps as a consequence of
the very vigour of the slating,
perhaps in virtue of that touch of
unconventional genius which
critics are not always quick to detect, the
by the great reading
public, and in half a year Hartmann West
was a hero of six editions, and a
member of the somewhat
exclusive Shandy Club.
On the whole, he was a fairly popular member, in spite of the
fact that he had what is called an uncertain temper ; but, during
the period
to which reference has been made, his popularity had
much declined, for the
uncertainty had become a very unpleasant
certainty ; and an after-dinner
chat or game of whist with Hart-
mann West was becoming, even to the most
gentle and tactful
members of the club, a thing that was to be avoided, if
avoidance
were at all possible. Most of those who had in a tepid way
liked
him, began to regard him with a dislike which was not in
the
least tepid ; but one or two Shandians—illuminated it may
be by
personal experience—had been heard to say that it was
no use being
hard upon poor West ; for as Major Forth, the
well-known African explorer,
pithily put it : " It's plain enough
that the man has had a nasty
knock-down blow of some kind or
other ; but he'll get over it all right if
fellows will only give him
a chance." The Major's intuition was wonderfully
accurate.
Hartmann West
chances were not dealt out to him in
overflowing measure, he did
get over it. At least, he seemed to get over it
; but I can't
forget the way in which Sumner told that he could have
pulled
him through the influenza, complicated as it was, if he hadn't
had
something on his mind. " He was sick of life, sir, and when a
man
gets to that, it doesn't take much to make life sick of him."
It was after
his death that I acquired the knowledge which
corroborated the Major's
theory. And this is the story.
A few months after the date of the publication of
Errington. The influence of the only acquaintance he had in
the
world who possessed any influence at all, had been exerted in his
favour,
and he had become a member of the reviewing staff of
emphasised appeal to the public that fancies literature and art,
without snubbing that other public which better loves the House
of Commons,
the Turf, and the Divorce Court. Errington's
career up to this time had not
been conspicuously successful.
All his life he had been more or less of an
invalid. In his youth
he had tried one or two callings, but ill-health had
compelled him
to abandon them ; and, having a genuine love of letters and
gift of
expression, he had—paradoxical as the sequence may
seem—
drifted into journalism. The leading paper in the northern
pro-
vincial town where he lived had, in the first instance, published
his articles, and had then gone on to pay for them, the pay
becoming
finally so assured as to justify him—that, at any rate,
was the poor
fellow's view of the case—in marrying the pretty
Alice Blundell, and
assuming the responsibilities of a British
husband and ratepayer.
They did not exactly live on the fat of the land, but they lived
somehow and
kept out of debt, and were most foolishly happy
until the fatal day when it
became known that Mr. Warlow the
proprietor of the
ments not
wisely, but too well, and that his journal had passed
into new hands. The
new hands, as is sometimes the case, did
not appreciate the old hands ; and
John Errington received an
intimation that at the end of the month his
services on the great
organ of Norton opinion would no longer be required.
Seeing
that he was a nervous, timid, and singularly unresourceful man,
he
bore the blow with more of courage than might have been
expected
from him ; perhaps because it came and did the worst
for him at once, the
really demoralising troubles being those
which arrive in instalments, each one suggesting the harassing
question "
What next? " Thus it was that he came to take a
step which to an ordinary
man would have been simple and
obvious enough, but which in John Errington
indicated the
special courage of despair, that is to ordinary courage, what
the
struggle of delirium is to healthy muscular force. He broke up
his
little Norton home ; bade good-bye to his friends, and to the
grave where
his two little children lay buried ; and carrying in
his purse the few
bank-notes which were the price of his household
goods, took his wife and
their one remaining child to London, and
pitched the family tent in a
dreary but reasonably clean and cheap
Camberwell lodging-house.
It was a step to which even despair would not have impelled
him had there
not been one chance of possible success. About
twelve months before the
trouble came, he had contributed to the
attention of Sir George Blunt, and a correspondence between
the
Baronet and himself which had arisen out of them, had been
maintained with something of regularity. Out of this corre-
spondence
sprung Errington's one hope, for Sir George, who had
always written in the
friendliest manner, was known to be a large
proprietor of
terrible
Errington accordingly presented himself at the great
house in
Prince's Gardens, and was received by the master of his fate
without any effusion, but with courtesy and kindliness. Sir
George was
sorry to hear of Mr. Errington's misfortune, and
would be pleased to be of
service to him. Mr. Errington, as a
journalist, would understand that a
proprietor felt some delicacy
in taking any step, which looked like
interference in the literary
management of a paper, that was in competent
editorial hands ;
that the hands of Mr. Mackenzie who edited
competent ; and that they belonged to a man who was very
likely
to regard suggestion as an attempt at dictation.
John Errington listened and felt chilly ; had he been standing
his legs
would have trembled.
" But," continued Sir George with a voice in a new key. " I'll
tell you what
I will do, Mr. Errington. There can be no im-
propriety in my giving you a
letter of introduction to Mr.
Mackenzie, in which I will tell him what I
know of you, and
what I think of your work. Perhaps you had better not
present
it in person, but send it by post, with a letter of your own, and
a
few specimen articles—not too many. Then if there is any
opening, he will probably make an appointment. I can't promise
you that
anything will come of it, but there is a chance, and
at any rate it is the
best thing—indeed the only thing—that I
can do. "
The two letters and the carefully selected literary specimens
reached Mr.
Mackenzie at an auspicious moment. The most
useful of his general utility
men in the literary department of
across the Atlantic, having for a companion, the beautiful
Mrs.
Greatrex, wife of the well-known dramatist. Dick Mawson's
morals—or his want of them—had long been notorious ; but Mr.
Mackenzie did not deal in morals save in his social articles, and
very
sparingly even there. What concerned him was that Mawson
was, as a writer,
clever, versatile, and best of all prompt ; and his
wrath burned as he
thought of Dick's perfidious treatment—not
of poor Mr. Greatrex, but
of
Mackenzie. And
now here was this new man. His articles
were hardly so smart as Mawson's,
but he seemed to know more,
and there was a certain finish about his work
which the erring
Dick had never attained. He should be tried. If he proved a
success, well
and good ; if a failure, he could soon be got rid of, and
there would be a
reasonable pretext—not that Mr. Mackenzie
needed any—for
saying to Sir George : " Hands off. "
And so it happened that after a brief interview with the great
man of
Street, for the Camberwell lodgings, bearing under his arm a
couple of volumes for review, and in his mind a proposal made by
the editor
that he should write one of a forthcoming series of
articles on "
Fin-de-Siècle Fiction. " Some ideas for this series,
and one quite
impossibly libellous contribution to it, were the
only keepsakes that the
amorous fugitive Dick Mawson had left
behind him for the consolation of Mr.
Andrew Mackenzie ; but
the editor made no mention of Dick to John
Errington, leaving
him indeed with a vague impression that the series was
an im-
promptu scheme, conceived and brought forth in ten minutes for
his special benefit.
Mr. Mackenzie did not find Errington a failure, so Sir George,
Blunt did not
receive the " hands off " ultimatum. Indeed the
editor rather liked the
work of his new contributor, mainly
because he found that other people
liked it ; and the cheques
which came monthly to the little house at
Shepherd's Bush (for
Camberwell had been abandoned) sometimes represented
an
amount which made Errington feel that fortune had really come
to
him at last. There was, however, a harassing irregularity in
the descent of
the golden or paper shower. Sometimes publishers
abstained from publishing
the right sort of books ; sometimes,
even in
were
months when Errington would have made a fair profit by
exchanging his
cheque for a ten pound-note. He had tried to
get work on other newspapers,
or to find an appreciative magazine
editor to accept his more thoughtful and elaborate literary essays ;
but the
newspapers had no vacancy, and the magazine editors all
wanted short
stories—the one literary commodity which he found
himself unable to
supply. In spite, therefore, of what he ad-
mitted to be his wonderful good
luck, there were seasons when
Errington felt somewhat anxious and
depressed.
He was feeling so one day, when he entered Mr. Mackenzie's
room, seeking
what he might devour. For two months the
cheques had been of the smallest ;
and before very long there
would be a new and expensive arrival in the
house at Shepherd's
Bush—a conjunction which roused the timid man to
unwonted
persistence of appeal.
" I'm afraid there's nothing, " said Mackenzie ; " the publishers
are
keeping everything back until this dynamite excitement is
over, and upon my
word I am glad they are, for it fills the paper.
This is really the only
thing I have in hand that is in your line,
and it has been here for nearly
a month. " As he spoke the
editor took down a daintily attired book from a
shelf behind him, and
continued : " I didn't intend to notice it. I think
West is a con-
ceited ass who needs snubbing ; but as you want something
you
can take it, and of course treat it on its merits. But you must
keep within a column, and if you only send half, so much the
better.
"
John Errington left Mr. Mackenzie's room with a lighter
heart than that
which he had taken there, for though the
itself, it was just then a good deal to him. He was specially
grateful to his chief for stretching a point in his favour, for he
was
inclined to agree with his opinion that
which it had been lying on Mr. Mackenzie's shelf, Errington
had
read reviews of it in the
and the
unique unanimity had pronounced it a
strained, affected, pretentious,
and entirely vapid performance. " If a
beginner, " said the
" were to ask us to
indicate the qualities of substance and work-
manship which he, in his own
attempts ought most studiously
to avoid, we should give him this volume and
say, ' My dear boy,
you will find them all here.' "
When John Errington, after going upstairs to kiss his rather
worn-looking
little wife, who was taking the afternoon rest which
had become a
necessity, lighted his pipe and began to read the
He saw nothing of strain or affectation ; and if the substance
was
slight, the style had a graceful lightsomeness which seemed to
Errington very charming. He read on and on ; his wife came
into the room
with her sewing and he never noticed her entrance ;
but when he had
finished the chapter which contains the episode
of old Antoine's daughter,
he looked up and said, " I must read
this book to you, dear love, it is
just wonderful. "
Errington did not go to bed until he had reached that last
chapter, which,
you will remember, Mr. Walter Hendon cited a
few weeks ago as the most
beautiful thing in contemporary prose.
The next morning he wrote and posted
his review, the 1200
words of which would, he knew, just fill a column of
in two days more it appeared. In
the meantime, Errington's
enforced leisure had allowed the domestic
readings to begin, and,
as the fragile wife reclined on her little couch
and sewed and
listened, her enthusiasm was not less intense than her hus-
band's.
Then, when the paper came, he read his review, and she
exclaimed :
" Oh, John, that is lovely: it is one of the best things you
have ever done.
I do wish you would send it to Mr. West and
thank him for the pleasure he
has given us. I would like to write
myself, only I express myself so
stupidly, but you will do it
perfectly ; and I am sure he would like to
know all that we feel
about the book. "
" I don't know, " said Errington, with the self-distrust always
aroused in
him by any suggestion of the mildest self-assertion, " I
don't suppose he
would care for the opinion of a man about whom
he knows nothing. "
" Oh, yes, he would ; people like sympathy, even if they don't
care for
praise ; and then, too, if it is really true that he is the sub-
editor of
Now
general, " was a monthly magazine, dealing exclusively with
litera-
ture and art in a way that appealed to the superior few ; and
some
of Errington's best essays—or those which he thought the
best—
had been declined by several editors on the ground that their
good-
ness was not of the kind to attract their miscellaneous
He had once or twice thought of
submitting to
these rejected
addresses ; but he had doubted whether they were up
to the mark, and so
they had never gone. His wife's last sugges-
tion startled him.
" Oh, I couldn't do that," he said ; " it would spoil the whole
thing. It
would take the bloom off one's gratitude for a beautiful
thing. I couldn't
do it. I would rather ask help from a perfect
stranger. "
" Well, that seems to me to be morbid ; and I don't like to hear
you talk as
if people did you a favour by accepting your work.
They accept it not for
love of you, but because they know it is
good. You remember what Professor
Miles said about your essay
on ' The Secret of Swift, ' and I am sure they
would be glad to have
it for
think you have ever repented
taking my advice, and I
to write to
Mr. West. "
Errington was not a strong man. He was too timid to initiate,
and too timid
to oppose ; and his wife was right, for he had never
adopted a suggestion
of hers without finding that she was wiser
than he. And so he sat down and
wrote :
DEAR SIR,
enclosed review of
great privilege of contributing to
issue of that journal. I
have tried my best to do justice to the
truth and beauty and tenderness of
the book ; but I feel that my best
does not say what I wanted to say. Nor
is a second attempt likely to
be one whit more successful than the first,
so I do not write now to
supplement my review ; but to express what I could
not express in
public—my own personal gratitude and that of my wife,
to whom I
have been reading it, for a book which has touched us as we have
not
often been touched before. We live a very quiet life into which
enters little of what is ordinarily called pleasure, but such a volume as
your
many days. Please accept our hearty gratitude for so great a
gift.
I cannot suppose that my name will be at all known to you, for I
am,
comparatively speaking, a new-comer in the world of London
journalism ; and
I have so far been unsuccessful in obtaining any
literary work besides that which has been given me by the editor of
another is not usual with me, but I find something in your book
which
encourages me to unwonted freedom. Just now I have special
reasons
for wishing to enlarge my slender but ordinarily sufficient
resources,
and I have thought it possible that you might be willing to look
over an
article of mine entitled " The Secret of Swift, " with a view to
giving
me your opinion as to its suitability for publication in
theory propounded in it is, I think,
a new one, and Professor Miles
has been kind enough to say that it is at
any rate sufficiently well-
supported to deserve provisional acceptance as
a working hypothesis.
But please let this matter await a perfectly free moment. I write
not to
trouble you about my poor affairs, but to express my gratitude
—to
which my wife wishes me to add hers—for the pure and rare
delight
your book has brought to us.—I am, dear sir,
Errington was not a man who expected much, yet he felt a cer-
tain
disappointment when, on the second day after the despatch of
his letter,
the postman passed and left no reply from Hartmann
West. But no postman
ever passed the office of
Errington was wondering whether the author of
be at home, Mr. Mackenzie was perusing with
ireful countenance
a letter bearing his signature. It had contained an
enclosure in a
handwriting with which the editor was familiar, and it ran
thus :
DEAR SIR,
who is, or professes to be, a member of your staff. You will see
that
he, truly or falsely, announces himself as the writer of a very
fulsome,
and yet in some respects gratuitously offensive, review of my latest
book
which appeared in your issue of Thursday last, and that he then
goes on to
tout for employment by the editor of a magazine with
which I am supposed to
be connected. I do not know whether you
have any views upon the dignity of
journalism ; but you have pro-
bably strong views upon the ethics of
advertising, and are not very
eager to give payment, instead of receiving
it, for allowing a small
scribe to introduce his wares through your
literary columns to possible
purchasers. I think it well for you to know to
what base use even
Seldom had Andrew Mackenzie felt such an access of speechless
rage ; and for
the moment he could not tell which object of his
emotion was the more
hateful. He was not a physically violent
man, but had either West or
Errington presented himself at that
moment, violence would certainly have
been done. He had not
willingly inserted the review of
fact, he had remarked to his
nephew and sub-editor that he wished
Errington had chosen any other book on
which to " tap his
d——d private cask of gush ; " but having
explicitly given the
owner of the cask a free hand, he had not felt it
consistent with
dignity implicitly to cancel the authorisation. And now
this
consummate cad, who ought to be off his head with exultation at
having been honoured with even the coolest notice of
actually dared to write of its praise as " fulsome "
and " gratui-
tously offensive. " What was meant by the latter term
Mackenzie
did not trouble to guess ; but had he done so, his trouble
would
have been fruitless, for one vain man can seldom sound the
depths
of vanity in another. The fact was that Errington had made a
veiled reference to previous criticisms of the book as " attempts
made by malignity or incompetence to crush a rising author ; "
and the word
" rising " was gall and wormwood to the man who
believed himself to have
been for at least a year on the apex of
fame's pyramid. Had he read
Errington's letter first, the un-
mistakable accent of timorous praise, and
still more the appeal
to him as a possible patron, would have titillated
his vanity and
sent him to the review with a clean palate ; but of course
a
printed cutting, headed " A Western Masterpiece, " could not
wait,
and the " rising " vitiated his taste for what would have
been to him the
dainty dish of adulation.
But Andrew Mackenzie neither knew this nor cared to know
it, and his
thoughts turned from West to Errington. It has been
said that at the moment
he knew not which he hated the more ;
but he did know upon which he could
inflict immediate
vengeance, and that was a great point. As he brooded
upon
Errington's offence, West's seemed comparatively trivial, for
was
it not Errington who had provided West with his offensive
weapon ? The
member of the Shandy Club had said that he did
not know whether Mr.
Mackenzie had any views upon the
dignity of journalism. His ignorance on
this matter was very
general ; but there were many who knew that he held
exceedingly
strong views concerning the dignity of one journal,
one journalist, Andrew Mackenzie. It was
his pride to know
that the members of his political staff were to be seen
at Govern-
ment Office receptions, hobnobbing with Cabinet Ministers,
that
his critics dined with literary peers whose logs they judiciously
rolled, and that both were frequently represented in the half-
crown
reviews. That was as it should be : and here was a
fellow who put it in the
power of a man like West to say that
one of his contributors wrote from
Titan Villas, Shepherd's
Bush, about his slender resources, and his ardent
desire to pick
up any crumbs that might fall from the table of
any rate, should be made to suffer.
While Mackenzie was devising his scheme of punishment,
John Errington was
engaged in pleasant thoughts of Hartmann
West. The expected letter might
now come by any post, and it
would be well to see whether " The Secret of
Swift " were in fit
condition to be despatched to him, or whether he must
get Alice
to make a clean copy of it in that pretty handwriting of
hers
which was always seen at its neatest in her transcript of the
MSS, of which she was so proud. The present copy was, how-
ever, in capital
order, but on examining it he found that one slip
was missing. Nervous
search through the well-filled drawer soon
convinced him that it was not
there ; but, fortunately, on
examining the two edges of the gap, he made
the discovery that
the lost leaf had been devoted to little more than a
long quotation,
which could be easily restored by a visit to the library of
the
British Museum.
He had nothing else to do, and the day was fine. He could
start at once,
copy his quotation, and have a few hours in the
metropolis of the world of
books. It was six o'clock when he
reached home again, and the dusk of an
evening in late autumn
was beginning to gather, but the lamp in the little
general
utility chamber, which served for dining and drawing room,
was
unlit. As he entered he thought no one was there, but
a second glance
revealed his wife crouching upon the floor, her
head lying upon the couch
which stood by the window.
" Dear Alice, " he said faintly as he strode forward, " are you
ill ? what is the matter ? " but there was no reply. His first
vague terror
crystallised into a definite dread, which, however,
lasted only for an
instant, for the hand he took in his, cold as it
was, had not the
unmistakable coldness of death ; and when he
kissed the lips whose
whiteness even the dusk revealed, he felt
that they were the lips of a
living woman.
" Jane, Jane, " he called loudly, " bring some water quickly ;
your mistress
has fainted ; " and rising from his knees he lit with
trembling hands the
lamp upon the table. The maid, carrying a
basin of water, bustled in with a
scared face.
" Oh, dear, dear, " she exclaimed, " she do look awful bad ; shall
I go for
the doctor ? "
" No, no—we must bring her to, first. How has it happened ?
Do you
know anything about it ? "
" No, indeed ; she was in the kitchen ten minutes ago, or it
might be a
quarter of an hour, and the postman knocked at the
door, and she says '
That will be the letter the master was
expectin',' and then she didn't come
back, but I heard nothink,
and thought nothink of it. If I'd a heard
anythink I'd have
come in. "
They lifted her on to the couch. Errington loosened her dress
and sprinkled
the water over her face, while the girl rubbed one
of her hands, but there
was no movement. The small basin was
soon emptied.
" More water, quick, " said the man ; " and oughtn't we to burn
something ?
"
" Feathers is the thing, but we haven't got no feathers ; perhaps
brown
paper'd do; I'll fetch some. "
It was brought, and the woman now sprinkled the water while
the man held
under his wife's nostrils the ignited paper which
threw off a pungent
aromatic smoke. A slight shiver ran
through the recumbent figure ; the eyelids trembled, then opened,
though
their glance was hardly recognition, and slowly closed
again.
" Alice, dear heart, " exclaimed the man brokenly as he gently
put his arm
round her neck, and drew her lips to his ; " speak to
me, darling. You will
be all right now. I am with you. What
has frightened you ? "
For a few seconds she lay apparently unconscious ; then the
eyes opened
again with less of that dreadful, unseeing look, and
she murmured sleepily,
" Where am I ? What is the matter,
John ? "
" Yes, darling, I am here. You are better now. Rest a little
bit, and then
tell me all about it. "
" She's coming to, " said the girl, " I'll go and make her a cup of
tea.
It's the best thing now. " And she left the husband and wife
together.
While the wife lay, again silent, with now and then a slight
movement as of
a shiver, a timid voice was heard at the door. " Is
mother ill ? Can I come
in ? "
" She's getting better, my pet. Run away now, and be very
quiet. You shall
come in soon. "
The figure stirred again, this time with more of voluntary
motion ; she made
as if to raise herself; her eyes met her
husband's with a look of full
recognition ; she threw her arm
round his neck and pressed herself against
him in a terrifying
outburst of hysterical weeping. It lasted for
minutes—how many
John never knew—with heavy sobs that
convulsed her, and inter-
mittent sounds of eerie laughter. At last the
words began to
struggle forth with difficulty and intermittence.
" John—John—dear John—my own dear husband—Oh my
darling—my darling—I love you, and I have ruined you—it
will
kill me ; but, oh, if I could have died before. " And then, with
less of
violence, for the paroxysm had exhausted her, she began
silently to weep
again. An hour had passed before John
Errington had heard the story, or
rather read it in the type-
written letters which had dropped from his
wife's hands as she fell,
and had been pushed under the sofa. He read them
first rapidly ;
then again more slowly, with stunned senses :
SIR,
received from Mr. Hartmann West, from which you will see that he
has done me the favour to place in my hands a letter addressed to him
by
you, and written so recently that its purport must be fresh in your
memory.
That I should see it did not enter into your calculations,
and I do not
suppose that the man capable of writing it, would in the
least understand
the emotions excited by it, in the mind of a self-
respecting journalist. I
may, however, say that never in the whole
course of my professional
experience—which has been tolerably varied
—can I remember an
instance in which a trusted contributor to a high-
class journal had
deliberately puffed a book which he knows to be
worthless (for I am assured
on all hands that the worthlessness of this
particular book would be
obvious to the meanest capacity), and has
made that puff a fulcrum for the
epistolary leverage of two or three
contemptible guineas. I congratulate
you on the invention of an
ingenious system of blackmailing, one great
merit of which is that it
evades the clutch of the criminal law, though I
cannot add to my
congratulations either a lament for its present failure or
a hope for
its future success. Though I am unfortunately powerless to
control
the operations of the inventor, I am happily able to restrict their
scope
by refusing the use of
stand that your connection with this journal is at an end. A cheque
for the
amount due to you will be at once forwarded.
Hartmann West's letter had also been read, and John Errington
was vainly
endeavouring to check his wife's outpourings of
remorse.
" I can't bear it, John. To think that I who love you should
have brought
this upon you. Oh ! I hate myself. You would
never have written it if it
hadn't been for me. You didn't want
to write, and I made you write. But oh,
I didn't know. I ought
to have known that I was foolish and that you were
wiser than I ;
but I thought of other times when I had done you good and
not
harm. Dear, dear John ; you won't hate me, will you ? "
" Don't talk like that, darling ; you will break my heart. I
should love you
more than ever, if that were possible ; but it isn't.
How could we know
that the man who seemed to us an angel
was just a devil. When I read the
book I felt that he was a man
to love, and I tried to put something of what
I felt into what I
wrote, being sure that he would understand. I wrote from
my
heart, and he calls it gratuitously offensive. Darling, you
mustn't
reproach yourself any more ; I can't bear it ; how could
you know, how
could I know, how could any one know, that
there could be such a man ?
"
John Errington passed a wakeful night, but his wife slept the
heavy sleep of
exhaustion. When at eight o'clock he quietly rose,
dressed, and went down
to breakfast with his little girl, she was
sleeping still. " It will do her
good, " thought Errington, and
when Doris had gone to school, he set to
work upon his essay,
" The Common Factor in Shakespeare's Fools," to pass
the time
until he heard her bell. It did not ring until half-past eleven, and
he ran
rapidly up the short flight of stairs.
" Well darling," he said, " you have had a good sleep. "
" Oh, I have been awake for a long time—two hours I should
think—and I have been in great pain. I didn't ring before,
because I
thought it would pass away, and I wouldn't trouble you,
but it is much
worse than it was. "
John Errington looked down tenderly upon the thin face, which
seemed to have
grown thinner during the night. The woman
closed her eyes and seemed to be
suffering. After a moment's
silence she spoke again.
" I'm better now," she said faintly, " but I think dear, Jane
had better go
for the doctor, and she might knock next door and
ask Mrs. Williams if she
can come in. "
The kindly neighbour was soon by the bedside, and the doctor,
who had been
found at home, was shortly in attendance. It was
not an obscure case, nor a
tedious one. Three hours afterwards
Alice Errington was the mother of a
dead baby-boy, and in the
early dawn of the next day Mrs. Williams with
many tears placed
the little corpse on the breast of the dead mother, and
drew the
lifeless arm around it. John Errington stood and watched her
silently ; then he came and kissed the two dead faces ; then he
threw
himself upon the bed, which shook with his tearless sobs.
John Errington, Doris, and Alice's father, Richard Blundell,
who came from
Norton for the funeral, returned from Kensal
Green, and sat down to the
untimely meal prepared for Mr.
Blundell, who in a few minutes must start to
catch his homeward
train at Willesden. He was a man of few words, and of
the very
few he now uttered, most were addressed to his little grand-
daughter. It was only as the two men stood at the door that he
spoke to his
son-in-law in that Lancashire accent that the younger
man still loved to hear. " Tha's been hard hit lad, and so have I,
God knows
; but try to keep up heart for th'little lass's sake.
We're proud folk
i'Lancashire ; mayhap too proud ; but ye won't
mind a bit of a lift in a
tight place fro' Alice's faither. Ah wish
it were ten times as much. God
bless thee—and thee, my lass. "
The old man kissed the child, wiped his eyes, and was driven
away. John
watched the cab till it turned a corner ; then looked
hard at the ten pound
note left in his hand as if it presented some
remarkable problem for
solution ; closed the door ; led Doris into
the little sitting-room ; and
began the task imposed upon him—of
keeping up his heart.
The cheque from
pocket, where also were five sovereigns and a few shillings.
The
ten-pound note was still in his hand, and a rapid calculation told
him that when the undertaker was paid, nearly a month of safety
from
absolute penury was still his. In a month surely something
could be done,
and John Errington set himself to do it. The man
to whom self-assertion and
self-advertisement had been impossible
horrors, now found himself wondering
at himself as he bearded
editors and sub-editors, and referred—in
perhaps too apologetic a
tone for persuasion—to the
tion, "
which had really excited more comment than he was aware
of in journalistic
circles. His success was small. No editor had
any immediate opening, but
one or two were friendly, and said they
would bear his name in mind. A
proprietor who was his own
editor told him that literary paragraphs
containing quite fresh infor-
mation would be always acceptable ; but of
the various paragraphs
he sent in, only two—representing a sum of
fourteen shillings or
thereabouts—found acceptance. The going up and down other
men's
stairs became as hateful to him as it was to Dante ; but he
lashed himself
into hope for the " little lass's " sake, and hope made
it endurable. At
six o'clock every evening he arrived at Titan
Villas, and for two hours,
until Doris's bedtime, in helping the
child with her lessons, or reading
aloud while she nestled up to him,
he felt something that was to happiness
as moonshine is to sunlight.
One evening, however, he had to forego this
delight, for he had
received a message from a certain editor, who had asked
him to call
after eight at his house at Wimbledon. He had seen the
great
man, who had given him a long chapter of autobiography, but had
said little of practical importance, and when, just before midnight,
he
reached home, he was weary and disspirited. He drew his arm
chair to the
fire, warmed his feet, smoked his pipe in the company
of an evening paper
for half an hour, and then went to bed, turning
for a moment—as was
his wont—into the room where the ten-
years-old little Doris must
have been asleep for hours. He held
the carrying-lamp over the child's
face, which was somewhat
flushed : and the bed-clothes were tumbled as if
the sleeper had
been restless. As he made them straight and tucked them in,
the
child stirred but did not waken, and Errington was on the point of
leaving the room, when his eye caught the little frock hanging at
the foot
of the bed. The new black cashmere looked shabby and
draggled, and as he
instinctively grasped one of its falling folds,
he felt it cold and wet.
Then he turned to the little heap of under-
linen upon a chair and was
conscious of their chill damp. " She
has been wet through, " he thought, "
and her clothes have never
been changed. Poor motherless darling. " He
gathered the little
garments together on his arm, and, taking them
downstairs, found
a clothes-horse, and spread them upon it before the fire,
which he
had replenished when he came in.
He knew how it had happened. A kindly girl who had once
been a near
neighbour had offered to give the little Doris lessons
in music, but she
had recently removed to lodgings nearly two
miles away, and the child must
have been caught in the heavy
rain which he remembered had set in just
about the time that she
would be leaving Miss Rumbold. The thoughtless Jane
had
allowed her to sit in the saturated garments until she went to
bed.
In the morning the child's eyes looked somewhat dull and
heavy, but
otherwise she was apparently quite well, and she
resisted her father's
suggestion that she should stay in bed instead
of going to school. In the
evening when Errington returned
from his wanderings she seemed much better.
Her eyes were
bright again — brighter even than usual — and
for the first time
since her mother's death she chatted to her father with
something
of her old animation. During the night Errington heard a
short,
hard cough often repeated, but when he left his bed and went to
look at her she was fast asleep. When he rose for the day and
visited her
again she seemed feverish ; the cough was more
frequent ; and her breathing
was somewhat short.
" What is the matter with her ? " said the father to the doctor
whom he had
hastily summoned. " I suppose it is nothing really
serious. "
" Well, " said the slowly-speaking young Scotsman, " I'm just
thinking it's
a case of pneumonia, and pneumonia is never exactly
a trifle, but I see no
grounds for special anxiety. You must just
keep her warm, and I'll send her
some medicine over, and look in
again to-night. "
He sent the medicine and looked in, but said little.
" Of course the temperature is higher, but that was to be
expected. I will
be down again in the morning, and she just
needs care—care.
"
The care was not lacking, for Errington was himself Doris's
nurse, but, as
Mr. Grant observed, " pneumonia is never a trifle, "
and even her father
did not know how heavily her mother's death
had taxed the child's power of
resistance. The unequal fight
lasted for five days and nights, and for the
last two of them there
could be little doubt of the issue. The end came on
Sunday
evening as the bells were ringing for church. The child had
been delirious during the latter part of the day, and had evidently
supposed herself to be talking to her mother, subsiding from the
delirium
into heavy sleep ; but about six she awakened with the
light of fever no
longer in her eyes, and stretched out a thin little
hand to Errington, and
said faintly, " Dear, dear father. "
" Are you feeling better, darling ? " he said.
" I don't know," she whispered ; " I like you holding my hand.
I feel as if
I were sinking through the bed. I think I am sleepy. "
She closed her eyes, and for ten minutes she lay quite still.
Then she
opened them very wide and looked straight before her,
lifted her free hand,
and partly raised herself from the pillow.
The glance which had been a
question became a recognition.
" Oh mother, mother, " she exclaimed in the
clear voice of health,
" it is you ; oh, I am so glad. " And then the grey
veil fell over
the child's face ; she sank back upon the pillow ; and the
eyes
closed again for the last time. In the room where there had been
two—or was it three ?—there was only one.
On the morning of the funeral there came a letter for John
Errington. It was
from the editor who lived at Wimbledon, and
was very brief.
" Mr. Joliffe regrets that on consideration he cannot entertain Mr.
Errington's proposal with regard to the series of articles for
interview with Mr. Mackenzie, he will doubtless understand
the
reasons for this decision. "
Mr. Williams, John Errington's neighbour, was standing near
him in the
darkened room. He had offered to accompany him to
Kensal Green, for Richard
Blundell was confined to bed and
could not come, and the stricken man was
alone in his grief.
When Errington had read the letter he quietly returned
it to its
envelope, and placed it in his pocket, as the undertaker
summoned
them to the waiting coach. On their return from the cemetery
Williams pressed Errington to come into his house and sit down
with his
wife and himself at their midday dinner.
" It is very kind of you, " said Errington, " but I must not be
tempted ; I
have work to do. But I will come in for a moment
and thank Mrs. Williams
for all her goodness to me and mine. "
He went in, and the thanks were tendered.
" Well, I must go, now, " he said abruptly, after a short silence.
" God
bless you both. Good-bye ! "
" Oh, Mr. Errington, not ' good-bye.' You must come in this
evening and
smoke a pipe with Robert. ' Good morning ' is
what you ought to say, if you
really can't stay now."
" I don't know. This is a world in which ' good-bye ' never
seems wrong. But
God bless you, anyhow. That must be
right—if, " he added suddenly, "
there is any God to bless. "
Then he walked hastily down the road in the direction of half
a dozen shops
which supplied suburban requirements, of suburban
quality, at suburban
prices ; went into one of them, and in a few
moments reappeared and turned
homeward. Entering the house,
he drew up the blind of the sitting-room and
sat down at the
table to write a letter. When it was finished he read it over, put
it in an
envelope, addressed it, took it to the pillar-box about
twenty yards from
his gate, and when he had dropped it in,
sauntered with a weary air back to
the house. This time he
went, not to the sitting-room, but to the
kitchen.
" Jane, " he said, " I'm tired out. I don't think I have slept
properly for
a week, but I feel very sleepy now. I shall go and
lie down on the bed, and
don't let me be disturbed, whatever
happens. If I get a chance I think I
can sleep for hours. "
He turned as if to go, and then turned back again, thrust his
hand into his
pocket, and drew from it a few coins. Two of them
were sovereigns. These he
laid upon the table.
" Your wages are due to-morrow, Jane, aren't they ? I
may as well pay you
now lest I forget. Twenty-three and
fourpence, isn't it ? "
" Yes, sir; but don't trouble about it a day like this; it'll do
any time.
"
" I would rather pay it now. I haven't the even money, but
you can get me
the change when you go out. "
" Thank you, sir ; but won't you have a chop before you lie
down? I can have
it ready in ten minutes. "
" No, I'm not hungry ; I want rest. " Then after a pause—
" I'm
afraid I spoke roughly that day—about those wet clothes,
you know.
We may all forget things. I forget many things,
and I daresay I was too
hard. "
The girl burst into tears. " Oh, sir, " she said, " it's kind of
you, but I
can't forgive myself. The sweet pet that was so fond
of her Jane, and that
I wouldn't have harmed for "—but as she
took the apron from her eyes
she saw that she had no listener.
Her master had gone upstairs.
It was half-past twelve, for the funeral had been very early.
At eight in the evening Jane was standing at the door of the next
house,
speaking eagerly in a terrified tone to Mrs. Williams's
small servant. "Oh,
will you ask Mr. Williams if he would
mind stepping in. I'm frightened
about the master. He's been
in his room since noon, and I can't make him
hear. I'm afraid
something's happened."
" What's that ? " said Williams, stepping out into the narrow
passage.
The girl repeated her story, and without putting on his hat
he followed her
into the house and up the stairs.
" It's the front room, " she said, and Williams knocked and
called loudly,
but all was silent.
" How many times did you knock ? "
" Ever so many, and very hard at last. "
" Good God ! I'm afraid you're right, " and as he spoke he
tried the handle
of the door.
" He has locked himself in. We must break the door open.
Have you a mallet ?
Anything would do. "
" There's a screwdriver ; nothing else but a little tack hammer,
that would
be of no use. "
The large screwdriver was brought, and the wood-work of the
suburban builder
soon gave way before its leverage. When Mr.
Williams entered, carrying the
lamp he had taken from Jane's
trembling hand, he saw that Errington had
undressed himself and
got into bed. He was lying with his face towards the
door, and
one arm was extended on the coverlet. He might have been
sleeping, but before Williams touched the cold hand he knew
what had
happened. There was a bedroom tumbler on the
dressing table, and beside it
an empty bottle bearing the label,
" Chloral Hydrate. Dose one tablespoon,
15 grains. " John
Errington was dead.
When during the forenoon of the next day Hartmann West
entered the Shandy
Club the correspondence awaiting him—
which was usually
heavy—consisted only of a single letter. He
glanced at the address,
which was in a handwriting that he could
not at the moment identify, though
he thought he had seen it
before. He mounted to the smoking-room on the
first floor,
holding it in his hand, and when he had established himself in
his
favourite arm-chair near one of the three windows, drew a small
paper knife from his waistcoat pocket and cut open the envelope.
The letter
began abruptly without any one of the usual forms of
address :
I do not want you to throw this letter aside until you have read it to
the
end, and therefore I mention a fact concerning it which will give
it a
certain interest—even to you. It is written by a man who, when
you
receive it, will be dead—dead by your hand—who has just come
from the grave of his dead wife and dead children, murdered by you
as
surely as if you had drawn the knife across their throats. I wonder
if you
remember me, or if you have added to all the other gifts with
which Heaven,
or Hell, has dowered you, the gift of forgetfulness. I
am the man who read
your book and loved it—loved it for itself, but
loved still more the
heart that I thought I felt was beating behind it, and
wrote of my love
which I was glad to tell—first for all who might read
what I had
written, and then for you alone. I must have written
clumsily, for I seem
to have angered you—how I know not, and because
I had angered you,
you took your revenge. I was a poor man—I told
you I was
poor—but I was rich in a wife and child who loved me, and
whom I
loved ; and I only thought of my poverty when I looked at
them, and felt the hardness of the lot to which my physical weakness,
and
perhaps other weakness as well, had led them. Then, because my
wife was
looking forward to the pains and perils of motherhood, and I
had tried in
vain to secure for her something of comfort in her time of
trial, I humbled
myself for her—you know how ; and yet, fool that I
was, I felt no
humiliation, for I thought that I was writing to, as well
as from, a human
heart. Then came the blow which your letter
rendered inevitable, the blow
which bereft me of the scanty work
which had perhaps been done clumsily,
but which I know had been
done honestly, the blow which killed a mother and
an unborn child.
I found her fainting with your letter lying beside her,
and in two days
she was dead. She left me with our little girl for a sole
remaining
possession ; but a child motherless is a child defenceless, and
to-day I
have laid her in her grave, and she is motherless no more. Only I
am
alone, and now I go to join them, if indeed the grave be not the
end
of all. I know not, for you have robbed me of faith as well as of
joy.
Within the last hour, I have with my lips and in my heart, denied
the
God whom I have loved and trusted, even as I loved and trusted the
man who has murdered my dear ones. If there be no God I will not
curse you,
for what would curses avail ? If there be a God I will not
curse you, for
my cause is His cause, and shall not the Judge of all the
earth do right ?
But remember that when you are where I am now—
the unknown now in
which you read these words—I shall summon you
with a summons you
dare not disobey, to stand as a murderer before
His judgment bar.
Hartmann West had lighted a cigar before he cut the envelope.
It had gone
out. No connoisseur relights a cigar, and Hartmann
West was a connoisseur
not only in tobacco but in many other
things. He considered
himself—quite justly—a proficient in the
art of making life
enjoyable, and his achievements in that art had
so far been successful. He
had enjoyed the writing of his letter
to Andrew Mackenzie; it was, as he put it to himself, " rather
neat. " But
it came back to him with an unexpected rebound ;
and Major Forth was not
wrong when he talked about a knock-
down blow.
For such it undoubtedly was. West was not, like Mackenzie, a
thick-skinned
and insensitive man. He was, on the contrary, a
bundle of nerves, and the
nerves were well on the surface—an
idiosyncrasy of physique which
accounted for the delicacy and
exquisiteness of sympathetic realisation
that had charmed
Errington in
egoist, and when his egoistic
instincts were aroused, the man who
became almost sick when he heard or
read a story of cruelty,
showed himself capable of a sustained and
startling ruthlessness of
malignity. When the mood passed he became again
his ordinary
self—the fastidious, sensitive creature, susceptible to
tortures
which a chance word of any coarser-fibred acquaintance might
inflict. Errington's letter appealed to the quick imagination
which was his
hell as well as his heaven. It made pictures for
him, and he turned from
one only to find himself face to face
with another. He saw the fainting
woman, the dead child, the
corpse of the man—bloody it might be, for
the tormenting fiend
of fancy provided all possible accessories of
horror—and as he
looked the tide of life ebbed within him.
Next morning this one ghastliness of terror was removed, but its
place was
taken by a new dread. He received a copy of a suburban
news-sheet, the
pencilling surrounding a report headed " Sad Suicide of a Journal-
ist. "
The details he knew and those that he did not know were
all there ; and
there, too, was the evidence of a man Williams—
by whom he rightly
conjectured this latest torture was inflicted—
who had told the jury
that Errington's misfortunes had been due
to some unpleasantness connected with a review of a book by Mr.
Hartmann
West, and would evidently have told more had not the
coroner decided that
the matter was irrelevant. The
with this horrible mention of his name, find its way into
more
highly favoured journals ? With trembling hands, which even
brandy had not served to steady, he turned over the papers of that
morning,
and the evening journals of the day before, and, as he
failed to find the
dreaded item, relief slowly came. But the older
terror remained ; the
pictures were still with him ; and though
one had lost its streak of
sanguine colour, they were still lurid
enough. Gradually the very fact upon
which, for an hour, he had
congratulated himself—the fact that the
world knew nothing, but
that he and one unknown man shared the hateful
knowledge
between them—became in itself all but unbearable. Once,
twice,
half a dozen times, he felt that he must tell the story ; but
when
he thought he had nerved himself for the attempt, the words
refused to come.
Three months later, in the morning and evening papers, which
had taken no
notice of the affair at Shepherd's Bush, there were
leaderettes lamenting,
with grave eloquence, the loss sustained by
English literature in the death
of Mr. Hartmann West. A com-
ment upon these utterances found a place in "
At the Meridian,"
the column in
editor, Mr. Andrew Mackenzie :
" Were there no such emotion as disgust I should feel nothing but
amusement
in the perusal of the eulogies upon the late Mr. Hartmann
West which have
appeared in the
than six months ago the former journal,
in reviewing Mr. West's
pretentiousness, strain, and affectation, ' and the latter
authority, with
its well-known subtlety of satire, remarked that, ' Mr. Hartmann
West's
extraordinary vogue among the shop-girls of Bermondsey, and
the junior
clerks of Peckham, will probably be maintained by a volume
which is even
richer than its predecessors in shoddy sentiment and
machine-made epigram.
' The
West's
work presented ' a remarkable combination of imaginative
veracity and
distinction of utterance, ' and the
' a writer whose death breaks a splendid promise, but whose life
has
left a splendid performance. ' The style of these belated eulogists
is
their own ; but their substance seems to have been borrowed from
this journal, which in reviewing the ' pretentious shoddy ' and
'
machine-made ' work, spoke of it as ' one of those books which make
life
better worth living by revealing its possibilities of beauty, which
touch
us by their truth not less than by their tenderness, in which the
lovely
art is all but lost in the lovely nature which the art reveals,
which make
us free of the companionship of a spirit finely touched to
fine issues. ' I
am not apt at sudden post-mortem eloquence, and I
have nothing to add to
these words, written while Hartmann West
was still alive, and able to
appreciate the sympathy he was so ready to
give. "
" Well, I never could have believed, " said a young member of
the Shandy
Club, " that Mackenzie wrote that review of poor
West's
The current issue of
before luncheon, Major Forth, who had contracted bad habits
in
Africa and elsewhere, was refreshing himself with whisky and
potash. He looked at the speaker, slowly emptied his tumbler,
and replied,
" I don't believe it now. "
THE philologist threw down his pen with an exclamation.
" It is really annoying, most annoying," he said querulously,
" I can't
endure children. They are worse than dogs. You can
kick a dog. But it is
impossible to kick a child. What is a
man to do, Parker? Why did that dolt
of a Tom recognise her?
He might at least have waited till the morning.
And how am I
to send over the hills at this time of night to tell her
father? I
am the most unfortunate of men."
"Twenty mile if it be a step, and a proper rough night,"
murmured his
housekeeper, who never allowed the details of a
catastrophe to be
neglected.
The philologist cast a distracted look over his papers and swore
softly.
"Can't you suggest something, Parker?" he demanded irritably.
"Am I to be
put to all this inconvenience just because Tom
finds a bit of a girl
thrown from her pony and is misguided
enough to bring her home ? Who did
he say she was, confound
his memory?"
"Miss Agnes, sir, only child of the Rector of Astley, sir, and
the very
happle of his eye, so Tom says, he does. And sleeping
like a lamb in the
best bedroom now, sir."
The philologist savagely kicked a footstool that was not in his
way, and
took a turn round the room. "What's the use of
standing there and
gossiping?" he shouted suddenly; "did I ask
who the brat was? Do I want to
know whether her fool of a
father dotes upon her? Tell Tom to saddle the
roan at once and
ride across with my compliments to the Reverend
What's-his-
name, and say that his daughter is here, and be hanged to
him.
" Do you hear ? And don't let me be disturbed again to-night.
Supper ? Who
said supper ? Did I say supper, Parker ? Then
go and don't make
purposeless remarks."
His housekeeper vanished precipitately, and the philologist
returned to his
great work on the Aryan roots. He was a man
to whom fame had come late in
life, when he had wholly ignored
his youth in a passionate toil after it.
At the age of twenty he
had resolved to be a successful man, and at the
age of forty-six he
found himself one, albeit a piece of soulless
mechanism with the
wine of life left untasted behind him and its richest
possibilities
lying buried in his past.
He sighed self-pityingly, and pulled his manuscript towards him
once more.
And just as he did so, the door opened from without
and the child came in.
He did not know, as any other man could have told him, that
she was already
almost a woman, even a beautiful woman with
awakening eyes and most
seductive hair; but he did recognise
with a vague feeling of
dissatisfaction that she was not what he
usually meant by a child, and
that he could not class her with
kittens and colts and all other
irresponsible animals whom he was
accustomed to regard with prejudice. And
this discovery gave
him a sharper sense of injury than before, and he sat
staring
stupidly while she walked swiftly across the room to him, holding
up her riding skirt with one hand and brushing back her tumbled
curls with
the other.
They didn t wake me in time as they promised," she said,
"and I want to get
back to Daddy. People are such idiots. Did
she take me for a baby, that
woman? Why does every one think
that children have got to be lied to? And
how soon can I have
my pony, please?"
A violent gust of wind rushed round the house at that moment
and rattled
viciously at the bolts of the shutters as though mocking
her words. But
the girl paid no heed to it, and merely tapped
her toe impatiently on the
ground, and waited expectantly for an
answer to her question. The
philologist stood up and put on his
spectacles and looked down at her.
"I — I am at a loss," he said slowly, "are you the — the person
whom Tom picked up and brought home in the gig?"
"Yes, yes, I suppose so ! At least, I think he said he was
Tom. But what
does that matter now? Oh, do order my pony
before we talk any more, won't
you? Daddy wants me, don't
you see."
"Daddy wants you," said the philologist absently, for he was
following the
train of his own thoughts rather than the meaning
of her words; "I don't
quite understand you."
"You don't look as though you did," said Agnes candidly.
"perhaps I scared
you, did I? You see, I thought if I came
across that woman again she would
tell me some more lies. And
I smelt smoke so I guessed that meant a man in
here. Men
generally stick to the truth, don't you know ; at least, you can
always tell if they don't. But I say, why don't you ring for my
pony?"
" How old are you?" said the philologist, rousing himselt with
an effort.
"What's that got to do with it?" cried the girl angrily.
"Don't you know
that all this time Daddy is — "
"Daddy be — " began the philologist, and checked himself with
a
smile; "my dear little girl, nobody is going to hurt you
here, and I shall
certainly not allow you to go out in this storm. I
really think," he
continued tentatively, " I really think you had
almost better go to bed.
It's bedtime now, isn't it?"
"Bedtime?" cried Agnes, opening her eyes, "why it's not nine
o'clock.
Besides, I told you I was going home. What's the
matter with the weather?"
" The weather is — well, inclement," said the man of learning
feebly, "and Tom has already gone to set your father's mind at
rest. It
seems to me — "
"Then why didn t you say so before? It was rather stupid of
you, wasn't
it?" rejoined Agnes cheerfully. "Well, I'm very glad
I haven't got to ride
any more to-day, my arm's horribly stiff.
Gobbo's all right, that's one
blessing."
She was sitting in the arm-chair now, with her feet on the
fender, and the
philologist, who was accustomed to be the autocrat
of his household,
somehow felt ousted from his own sanctum. He
glanced sideways at the ruddy
head that was bent towards the blaze,
and he felt a curious sensation of
discomfort.
"Gobbo? Ah, yes, my man said something about the pony
being unhurt," was
all he said, though she paid not the slightest
attention to his words, for
they might just as well have been left
unsaid.
"That's not a bad little stable you've got," she went on in her
fresh
voice, "and the puppies are just ripping, ever so much jollier
than the
Persian kittens. You shouldn't have crossed your Persian
with a tabby,
it's such a pity. Why did you?"
The philologist became suddenly conscious of being wonder-
fully ignorant by the side of this child with the red hair and the
large
open eyes, and the discovery did not add to his composure.
"I didn't know I had," he said, and sat down where he could
see her face.
"Didn't you really? And the puppies are such beauties too,
five of them.
You almost don't deserve to have puppies, do
you?"
"I'm afraid I am hardly worthy of them," owned the philologist
meekly." But
do you really like them yourself?"
"Why, I couldn't help it of course. They're such jolly little
warm
snoozling things. Don't you know the
a
puppy? What! you don't? Only wait, that s all."
She was gone before he could protest, and five minutes later she
was
teaching him how to keep two puppies warm inside his coat,
while he
wondered grimly what it was that the Aryan languages
had not succeeded in
teaching him.
"What else do you like besides puppies?" he asked; "dolls?"
"Dolls!" she said contemptuously. "As if any one who could
get animals
would ever want dead things. I've always hated
dolls."
"I," said the philologist slowly, "have lived with dead things
for twenty
years."
"Oh well," said the child, "that was really quite unnecessary.
There are
always lots of puppies about everywhere. So it was
clearly your own fault,
wasn't it?"
"Perhaps it was," said the philologist.
"Any one can see," she went on in her frank manner, "that
you're not really
fond of puppies, or else you would be able to hold
them without strangling
them. I think I'd better take them,
hadn't I?"
While she was gone the philologist lay back in his chair and
pondered. And he was looking critically at himself in the mirror
when she
opened the door and came in again.
"Sit down child, and get warm," he said brusquely; "you
shouldn't have gone
to that cold stable this time of night."
"Why not? I always do things like that. There's no one to
stop me, you see.
Besides I expect no one knows except Rob."
"Who's Rob?" was his inevitable question.
"Oh, don't you know? Rob is Daddy's pupil of course.
Daddy teaches him lots
of things, like Latin and physiology.
Rob is awfully clever, and he can
breed better terriers than Upton
at the lodge. Im awfully fond of Rob."
The philologist made a mental synopsis of Rob's character
which depicted
him as anything but a pleasant young fellow.
"I suppose you're clever too, aren't you?" he heard her
saying.
"No," he replied irritably, " I don't know anything. Go on
telling me about
yourself, child."
"But," persisted Agnes, "why do you have such a lot of papers
if you are
not clever?"
"That's just what I don't know," he said, "they have not
taught me how to
hold a puppy without strangling it, have they?"
"No," said the child, still looking straight at him with wide
open eyes,
"but you could soon learn that. It's awfully easy,
really. There's
something about a puppy that won't let you hurt
it, however stupid you
are. I could soon teach you all there is to
learn about puppies. It's the
other things I can't learn."
"Never mind about the other things, they are not worth
learning, my child,"
said the philologist, as he boldly passed his
fingers through her thick
hair. She moved a little restively, and
then looked up at him quickly with
a comical expression of
concern on her face.
"I say," she began, and paused.
"What's the matter now?" he asked.
"Well, you know, I'm — I'm hungry," she said, and then
laughed as he
called himself a brute and sprang to his feet. "No,
don't ring," she added
imploringly, "I can't stand any more of
that woman to-night. Don't you
think you could go and
forage?"
Their friendship was in no way weakened by their impromptu
meal over the
fire; and when they had finished, and the writing
table with its sheets of
valuable manuscript was strewn with
crumbs, the philologist ventured to
renew the conversation on a
more natural basis than before.
"Hands cold?" he said, and touched one of them.
"A little," she said, and put them both into his.
"It's very good of you to come and cheer a lonely old man like
this," he
went on, half expecting her to contradict his words.
"Oh, but I couldn't help coming, could I?" she cried laughing.
"And the
first thing I did was to want to go back again!"
"And I wouldn't let you, would I?" he pursued, glancing,
still nervously,
at the large grey eyes that met his so unflinchingly.
"All the same, I don't believe you are a bit lonely," said the
child,
looking away into the fire, "you have got your book about
the Aryan
things, haven't you?"
"Of course I have got my book about the Aryan things, but
that isn't
everything," exclaimed the philologist with an indefinite
feeling of
irritation; "for instance, it does not help me to amuse
you when you pay
me a visit. And to-morrow, when you get
home to your father and Rob, you
won't want to come back again
to an old man who can only talk about Aryan
roots. Do you
think you will, child?"
The last words were added insinuatingly, and the philologist
held his breath when he had said them, but Agnes only laughed
again and
kicked away a lighted coal that had fallen into the
fender.
"Why not?" she said carelessly, "I don't suppose you'd be
any worse than
Daddy when he is writing a new sermon. Only
of course that isn't often."
The philologist was seized with one of his fits of unreasonable
anger.
"Really, you are a singularly dense child," he exclaimed,
dropping her
hands roughly and thrusting his own into his
pockets; "I always knew that
children were tiresome little beasts,
but I did think they had some
perspicacity as well."
Agnes stared and asked if she had done anything.
"Done anything? " shouted the philologist, jumping out of his
chair and
scowling down at her, "it's time you learned I am not
here to be laughed
at just because I am an intellectual old fool!
Don't you know why I am
here, eh? I am here to benefit man-
kind by the knowledge I have been
accumulating for twenty
years and more; and you may stare at me as much as
you like
with those confounded great eyes of yours, but I'll drive
something
into your bit of a head before I've done with you. Oh yes, I
will. And if you don't ride that pony of yours over here once a
week
and do as I tell you when you get here, I'll be — "
He did not mention his ultimate destination, for he caught sight
of her
face in time, and he thought she looked frightened. So he
sat down again
abruptly, and growled out an apology.
"I say, do you often do that ?" she asked, hiding her face from
him with
her hand. "Because it's most awfully funny."
The astonished philologist had no time to reply before she
broke into a
great peal of maddening laughter, such mirthful,
mocking laughter that he
was almost stunned by it, and yet was
possessed at the same time of a desperate impulse to flee from
her.
When she looked up again he was lighting a candle with his
back turned to
her.
"Allow me to tell you it is bedtime," he said shortly.
She got up and came across the room, and stood just behind him.
"I say, you — you are not wild with me, are you?" she asked
wistfully.
"I think you are an exceedingly ill-mannered child," he replied
without
turning round.
She sighed penitently.
"I'm so sorry, because, you know, I do really think it was nice
of you to
offer to teach me. And if you still mean it, I will
really come over every
week and try to learn something. And —
and — do you know, I
think I'm rather glad Gobbo did put his
foot into that rabbit-hole
to-day."
The philologist moved slowly round and scanned her upturned
anxious face.
The extreme innocence of her expression, and the
utter absence of mischief
in the recesses of her deep eyes, succeeded
in dispelling his anger. But
he had a dim idea that the situation
demanded something more definite from
him, and the brilliant
thought came to him, that of course she was only a
child after all,
and had therefore to be treated like a child, and he
believed that
children always expected to be kissed when they said they
were
sorry. So he hastily put both his hands behind him, and stooped
very stiffly, and placed a kiss on her cheek, and then backed into
the
table and pushed her towards the door.
"There, there, bedtime now, and we won't say any more
about it," he
muttered awkwardly.
But to his discomfiture, she whirled round and faced him with
her eyes
blazing and her lips parted.
"How dare you?" she gasped. "I — it — it is a great shame,
and I shall tell Rob. That s the second time I've been treated
like a baby
to-day. You're a horrid, musty old man!"
The door slammed, and her exit was succeeded by a profound
silence. Then
the bewildered man returned slowly to the fire
place, and looked at the
chair in which she had just been
sitting.
"Yes," he said out loud with an effort, "I suppose there is still
my book
about the Aryan things."
∗∗∗∗∗
One sunny day in the late spring, they were sitting together
in the garden.
It was their last lesson, but they were making no
pretence of learning
anything. The philologist was feeling con-
scious of something he wanted
to say to her before she went, and
he did not know how to say it, and he
did not attempt to begin.
And Agnes, as usual, was doing most of the
talking, though when
she asked him the natural questions that belonged to
her age and
her womanhood, he ran the risk of her youthful contempt and
shook his head silently in reply, for he knew he had ignored the
same questions years ago, and it was too late now to go back and
search
for the answers to them. And the dew came at their feet
and made them
shiver, and the sun went down behind the hedge
and sent fluttering rays of
light across their faces, and the chestnut-
tree dropped fluttering
showers of pink blossoms on their bare
heads, until at last Agnes cried
out that she must be going, and
they walked across the lawn with their
arms locked.
When he lifted her on her pony he would have given all the
languages he
knew to be able to speak the one language he was
too old to learn.
"Agnes," he said, "have you enjoyed your lessons?"
She darted him a mischievous look.
"Well, there hasn't been much Sanskrit about them, has
there?" she said
demurely.
"I suppose you mean," said the philologist a little sulkily, "that
I can't
even teach you what I do know."
"No, I didn't mean that," she said composedly; " I meant that
I was too
stupid, or too old, or something, to learn."
"Old? What are you talking about, you absurd child?" he
cried angrily. "
It is the deepest hell in God's earth. Don't be ridiculous!"
"Then I don't know how it was, and it doesn't matter much,
does it? Anyhow
we have had great fun, and that is the principal
thing. Good-bye," she
said.
He only ventured to kiss her riding glove passionately, as he
guided her
pony out of the gate, though the knowledge he had once
thrown away, would
have told him that he might have done more,
and yet not offended her.
"How queer he is," thought the child at the bottom of the lane,
as she
stopped to arrange her stirrup. "I don't think I ever knew
any one quite
so musty. I shall ask Rob — "
A shout from behind made her look round, and there was the
philologist
running after her as fast as he could, with his odd
shambling gait and his
loosely swinging arms.
"It is only, that is — " he gasped wildly, " I — I have the inten-
tion of driving down to see your father to-morrow."
"Is
Agnes with a shout of laughter, as she gave her pony a cut with
the whip. And they both vanished round the corner, and left
the
philologist standing where he was, staring silently after them.
"I don't think he has often been laughed at before," she told
Rob that
evening, as they gave Gobbo his feed in the dimly lighted
stable at home.
Rob's arm was round her waist, and Rob's face was close to hers
as she said
this; and he kissed her three times very gently at the
end of her
confession, and whispered in her ear:
"Poor chap! He's got something to learn. And it isn't
Sanskrit, is it,
dear?"
But the philologist never learned it. And he never drove over
to see her
father as he had intended. He went for a long walk
instead, and his path
led him by chance through a wood some miles
off, where he found Gobbo
grazing by himself among the bracken,
and whence he returned in hot haste,
and without his hat, and very
dishevelled.
He found Tom waiting to speak to him when he at last reached
home and burst
into his study.
"What the dev — ?" he began furiously, and then stopped
for sheer
want of breath, for he had run all the way back without
stopping.
"If you please, sir," began Tom stolidly, "what be I to do with
them two
puppies you was a-keeping of for Miss Agnes? They
be nigh upon ten weeks
— "
"Do with them?" shouted the exasperated philologist. "Drown
them, of
course, you fool! Drown them, and never mention such
farmyard details to
me again. Do you take me for a young animal
with insolent eyes and a dandy
moustache and a soft voice? Eh?
Do you, sir? Then clear out of my sight at
once and go to the
deuce with your puppies. Don't you know I have got my
book
to write on the Aryan — ?"
But the philologist's words ended in a great sob, and he
dropped heavily
into a chair, while Tom slouched awkwardly out
of the room.
For Tom, too, understood.
IF Lady Winthrop had not spoken of me as " that intolerable,
effeminate
boy," she might have had some chance : of marrying
my father. She was a
middle-aged widow ; prosaic, fond of
domineering, and an alarmingly
excellent housekeeper ; the serious
work of her life was paying visits ;
in her lighter moments she
collected autographs. She was highly suitable
and altogether
insupportable; and this unfortunate remark about me was, as
people say, the last straw. Some encouragement from father Lady
Winthrop must, I think, have received ; for she took to calling at
odd
hours, asking my sister Marjorie sudden abrupt questions, and
being
generally impossible. A tradition existed that her advice
was of use to
our father in his household, and when, last year, he
married his
daughter's school-friend, a beautiful girl of twenty, it
surprised every
one except Marjorie and myself.
The whole thing was done, in fact, by suggestion. I shall
never forget that
summer evening when father first realised, with
regard to Laura Egerton,
the possible. He was giving a little dinner
of eighteen people.
Winthrop did not receive her invitation till the very last minute.
Of
course she accepted—we knew she would—but unknowing that
it
was a dinner party, she came without putting on evening-dress.
Nothing could be more trying to the average woman than such
a
and laughing, above the situation. I can see her now, in a
plaid
blouse and a vile temper, displaying herself, mentally and
physically,
to the utmost disadvantage, while Marjorie apologised the
whole
evening, in pale blue crèpe-de-chine ; and Laura, in yellow, with
mauve orchids, sat—an adorable contrast—on my father's other
side,
with a slightly conscious air that was perfectly fascinating. It is
quite extraordinary what trifles have their little effect in these
matters.
help it if she chose to think they were from my father. Also,
I
had hinted of his secret affection for her, and lent her Verlaine. I
said I had found it in his study, turned down at her favourite page.
Laura has, like myself, the artistic temperament ; she is cultured,
rather
romantic, and in search of the
times—never to me—rather charming manners ; also he is
still
handsome, with that look of having suffered that comes from
enjoying oneself too much. That evening his really sham melan-
choly and
apparently hollow gaiety were delightful for a son to
witness, and
appealed evidently to her heart. Yes, strange as it
may seem, while the
world said that pretty Miss Egerton married
old Carington for his money,
she was really in love, or thought
herself in love, with our father. Poor
girl ! She little knew what
an irritating, ill-tempered, absent-minded
person he is in private
life ; and at times I have pangs of remorse.
A fortnight after the wedding, father forgot he was married,
and began
again treating Laura with a sort of
Marjorie's friend, or else ignoring her altogether. When,
from
time to time, he remembers she is his wife, he scolds her about
the houskeeping in a fitful, perfunctory way, for he does not know
that
Marjorie does it still. Laura bears the rebukes like an angel ;
indeed, rather than take the slightest practical trouble she would
prefer
to listen to the strongest language in my father's
vocabulary.
But she is sensitive ; and when father, speedily resuming his
bachelor
manners, recommenced his visits to an old friend who
lives in one of the
little houses opposite the Oratory, she seemed
quite vexed. Father is
horribly careless, and Laura found a
letter. They had a rather serious
explanation, and for a little
time after, Laura seemed depressed. She soon
tried to rouse
herself, and is at times cheerful enough with Marjorie and
myself,
but I fear she has had a disillusion. They never quarrel now, and
I think we all three dislike father about equally, though Laura
never owns it, and is gracefully attentive to him in a gentle,
filial sort
of way.
We are fond of going to parties—not father—and Laura is a
very nice chaperone for Marjorie. They are both perfectly devoted
to me. "
Cecil knows everything," they are always saying, and
they do
nothing—not even choosing a hat—without asking my
advice.
Since I left Eton I am supposed to be reading with a tutor, but
as a matter
of fact I have plenty of leisure ; and am very glad to
be of use to the
girls, of whom I'm, by the way, quite proud.
They are rather a sweet
contrast ; Marjorie has the sort of fresh
rosy prettiness you see in the
park and on the river. She is tall,
and slim as a punt-pole, and if she
were not very careful how she
dresses, she would look like a drawing by
Pilotelle in the
Pictorial
dances ; skates, and goes
to some mysterious haunt called
Laura has that exotic beauty so much admired by Philistines ;
dreamy dark
eyes, and a wonderful white complexion. She loves
music and poetry and pictures and admiration in a lofty sort of
way ; she
has a morbid fondness for mental gymnastics, and a
dislike to physical
exertion, and never takes any exercise except
waving her hair. Sometimes
she looks bored, and I have heard
her sigh.
" Cissy," Marjorie said, coming one day into my study, " I
want to speak to
you about Laura."
" Do you have pangs of conscience too ? " I asked, lighting a
cigarette.
" Dear, we took a great responsibility. Poor girl ! Oh,
couldn't we make
Papa more—— "
"Impossible," I said ; "no one has any influence with him.
He cant't bear
even me, though if he had a shade of decency he
would dash away an
unbidden tear every time I look at him with
my mother's blue eyes."
My poor mother was a great beauty, and I am supposed to be
her living
image.
" Laura has no object in life," said Marjorie. " I have, all
girls have, I
suppose. By the way, Cissy, I am quite sure
Charlie Winthrop is
serious."
" How sweet of him ! I am so glad. I got father off my hands
last season."
"Must I really marry him, Cissy ? He bores me."
"What has that to do with it? Certainly you must. You
are not a beauty, and
I doubt your ever having a better
chance."
Marjorie rose and looked at herself in the long pier-glass that
stands
opposite my writing-table. I could not resist the tempta-
tion to go and
stand beside her.
" I am just the style that is admired now," said Marjorie, dis-
passionately.
" So am I," I said reflectively. "But
Every one says I am strangely like my mother. Her face was
of that pure and
perfect oval one so seldom sees, with delicate
features, rosebud mouth,
and soft flaxen hair. A blondness without
insipidity, for the dark-blue
eyes are fringed with dark lashes, and
from their languorous depths looks
out a soft mockery. I have a
curious ideal devotion to my mother ; she
died when I was quite
young—only two months old—and I often
spend hours thinking
of her, as I gaze at myself in the mirror.
" Do come down from the clouds," said Marjorie impatiently, for
I had sunk
into a reverie. " I came to ask you to think of some-
thing to amuse
Laura—to interest her."
" We ought to make it up to her in some way. Haven't you
tried anything ?
"
" Only palmistry ; and Mrs. Wilkinson prophesied her all that
she detests,
and depressed her dreadfully."
" What do you think she really needs most ? " I asked.
Our eyes met.
" Really, Cissy, you're too disgraceful," said Marjorie. There
was a pause.
" And so I'm to accept Charlie ? "
" What man do you like better ? " I asked.
" I don't know what you mean," said Marjorie, colouring.
"
to Laura than to you. I have just had a note from him, asking
me to tea at his studio to-day." I threw it to her. " He says
I'm to
bring you both. Would that amuse Laura ? "
"Oh," cried Marjorie, enchanted, "of course we'll go. I
wonder what he
thinks of me," she added wistfully.
" He didn't say. He is going to send Laura his verses, 'Hearts-
ease and
Heliotrope.'"
She sighed. Then she said, " Father was complaining again
to-day of your
laziness."
" I, lazy ! Why, I've been swinging the censer in Laura's
boudoir because
she wants to encourage the religious temperament,
and I've designed your
dress for the Clives fancy ball."
" Where's the design ? "
" In my head. You're not to wear white ; Miss Clive must
wear white."
" I wonder you don't marry her," said Marjorie, " you admire
her so much."
" I never marry. Besides, I know she's pretty, but that furtive
Slade-school manner of hers gets on my nerves. You don't know
how
dreadfully I suffer from my nerves."
She lingered a little, asking me what I advised her to choose for
a
birthday present for herself—an American organ, a black poodle,
or
an
least noisy. Then I told her I felt sure that in spite of her
admiration for Adrian, she was far too good-natured to interfere
with Laura's prospects. She said I was incorrigible, and left the
room
with a smile of resignation.
And I returned to my reading. On my last birthday—I was
seventeen—my father—who has his gleams of dry humour—
gave me
have an onyx-paved bath-room, with soft apricot-coloured light
shimmering through the blue-lined green curtains in my chambers,
as
soon as I get Margery married, and Laura more—settled down.
I met Adrian Grant first at a luncheon party at the Clives'. I
seemed to
amuse him ; he came to see me, and became at once
obviously enamoured of
my step-mother. He is rather an im-
pressionable impressionist, and a
delightful creature, tall and
graceful and beautiful, and altogether most
interesting. Every one
admits he's fascinating ; he is very popular and very much disliked.
He is
by way of being a painter ; he has a little money of his own
—enough for his telegrams, but not enough for his buttonholes—
and nothing could be more incongruous than the idea of his
marrying.
I have never seen Marjorie so much attracted. But
she is a good loyal
girl, and will accept Charlie Winthrop, who is
a dear person, good-natured
and ridiculously rich—just the sort of
man for a brother-in-law. It
will annoy my old enemy Lady
Winthrop—he is her nephew, and she
wants him to marry that
little Miss Clive. Dorothy dive has her failings,
but she could
not—to do her justice—be happy with Charlie
Winthrop.
Adrian's gorgeous studio gives one the complex impression of
being at once
the calm retreat of a mediaeval saint and the luxurious
abode of a modern
Pagan. One feels that everything could be
done there, everything from
praying to flirting—everything except
painting. The tea-party
amused me, I was pretending to listen to
a brown person who was talking
absurd worn-out literary clichés—
as that the New Humour is not
funny, or that Bourget understood
women, when I overheard this fragment of
conversation.
" But don't you like Society ? " Adrian was saying.
" I get rather tired of it. People are so much alike. They all
say the same
things," said Laura.
"Of course they all say the same things to
Adrian, as he affected to point out a rather curious old silver
crucifix.
" That," said Laura, " is one of the things they say."
* * * * *
About three weeks later I found myself dining alone with
Adrian Grant, at
one of the two restaurants in London. (The
cooking is better at the other,
this one is the more becoming.) I
had lilies-of-the-valley in my
button-hole, Adrian was wearing a
red carnation. Several people glanced at us. Of course he is
very well
known in Society. Also, I was looking rather nice,
and I could not help
hoping, while Adrian gazed rather absently
over my head, that the shaded
candles were staining to a richer
rose the waking wonder of my face.
Adrian was charming of course, but he seemed worried and a
little
preoccupied, and drank a good deal of champagne.
Towards the end of dinner, he said—almost abruptly for him
—"Carington."
" Cecil," I interrupted. He smiled.
" Cissy ... it seems an odd thing to say to you, but though you
are so
young, I think you know everything. I am sure you know
everything. You
know about me. I am in love. I am quite
miserable. What on earth am I to
do ! " He drank more cham-
pagne. " Tell me," he said, " what to do." For
a few minutes,
while we listened to that interminable hackneyed
reflected ; asking myself by what
strange phases I had risen to the
extraordinary position of giving advice
to Adrian on such a subject ?
Laura was not happy with our father. From a selfish motive,
Marjorie and I
had practically arranged that monstrous marriage.
That very day he had
been disagreeable, asking me with a clumsy
sarcasm to raise his allowance,
so that he could afford my favourite
cigarettes. If Adrian were free,
Marjorie might refuse Charlie
Winthrop. I don't want her to refuse him.
Adrian has treated
me as a friend. I like him—I like him
enormously. I am quite
devoted to him. And how can I rid myself of the
feeling of
responsibility, the sense that I owe some compensation to poor
beautiful Laura ?
We spoke of various matters. Just before we left the table,
I said, with
what seemed, but was not, irrelevance, " Dear Adrian,
Mrs.
Carington——"
" Go on, Cissy."
"She is one of those who must be appealed to, at first, by her
imagination.
She married our father because she thought he was
lonely and
misunderstood."
"
with delight.
" Ah, not twice ! She doesn't like that now."
I finished my coffee slowly, and then I said,
" Go to the Clives' fancy-ball as Tristan."
Adrian pressed my hand. . . .
At the door of the restaurant we parted, and I drove home
through the cool
April night, wondering, wondering. Suddenly I
thought of my
mother—my beautiful sainted mother, who would
have loved me, I am
convinced, had she lived, with an extraordinary
devotion. What would she
have said to all this ? What would
she have thought ? I know not why, but
a mad reaction seized
me. I felt recklessly conscientious. My father !
After all, he
was my father. I was possessed by passionate scruples. If I
went
back now to Adrian—if I went back and implored him,
supplicated
him never to see Laura again !
I felt I could persuade him. I have sufficient personal
magnetism to do
that, if I make up my mind. After one glance
in the looking-glass, I put
up my stick and stopped the hansom. I
had taken a resolution. I told the
man to drive to Adrian's rooms.
He turned round with a sharp jerk. In another second a
brougham passed
us—a swift little brougham that I knew. It
slackened—it
stopped—we passed it—I saw my father. He was
getting out at
one of the little houses opposite the Brompton
Oratory.
" Turn round again," I shouted to the cabman. And he drove
me straight
home.
"Aut Cæsar aut nihil "
"SOYONS des bibliophiles et lisons nos livres, mais ne les
prenons
point de toutes mains ; soyons délicats, choisis-
sons, et comme le
seigneur des comédies de Shakespeare, disons
à notre libraire : 'Je
veux qu'ils soient bien reliés et qu'ils parlent
d'amour.'"
This piece of advice occurs in the preface of the first volume of
M.
France's collected work :
that it would be difficult to prove by statistics that the advice
is
very largely taken.
The works of certain lady novelists are those which seem to
be mostly chosen
by the reading public ; and they belong to that
class of which Charles Lamb
spoke, when he said that some
books were not books, but wolves in books'
clothing. There
is no reason why we should be disturbed by this. It has
been
pointed out that the reading public has got nothing whatever to
do with books. " The reading public subscribes to Mudie, and
Happily,
gets
its intellectual like its lacteal subsistence in carts."
there is a little clan of writers who enable us to act upon
the
advice quoted above. M. France's books are not carried about
in carts. They tempt us to choose—them all. They lead us
into
committing follies at the bookbinders'. And if we are
bitterly thinking of
the morrow when a bill will come in for
the " creamiest Oxford
vellum "
and " redolent crushed Levant,"
we may
console ourselves by reflecting that we have been
fastidious and eclectic,
that we have chosen.
M. France's books do not talk of love as much as do many other
modern works,
yet we think the Shakespearean nobleman would
have chosen them to grace his
library in preference to the
technically, perhaps, and
certainly with greater exhaustiveness.
M. France has chosen a few charming themes, and played
them in different
keys with many variations.
bachelor ;
He has written stories about contemporaries of
Solomon, of
pre-Evites even (
Florentines. He has charmed us
with philosophy and with
fairy-tales, and diverted us with the adventures
of poets, poli-
ticians, and madmen of every description. His criticism he
has
defined in a famous phrase as "the adventures of his soul
among
And his creative works are not so much
the
masterpieces."
observations of a mind among men as the subdued and delicate
dreams of a soul that has fallen asleep, tired out by its enchanting
adventures. He has himself confessed that he is not a keen
observer.
" L'observateur conduit sa vue, le spectateur se laisse
prendre
par les yeux."
Thus it is that the phrase " adventures of
the
is singularly suited to him. In his whole work we
trace
soul "
the phases and the development of a gentle admiration. In
the
hood—
"Tout dans l'immuable nature Est miracle aux petits enfants Ils naissent et leur âme obscure Eclôt dans des enchantements. . . . . . . .
Leur tête légère et ravie Songe tandisque nous pensons ; Ils font de frissons en frissons La découverte de la vie."
So he sings about children.
It is very rare that a man of letters can look back through the
prison-bars
of middle-age with eyes undimmed by the mists of his
culture and
philosophy, and see the ingenuous phases, the gradual
progress from thrill
to thrill of awakening, that take place in the
soul of a child.
M. France has evoked these early "frissons" with a magic
wand. And the
penetrating psychology with which childish
" états-d'àme " are revealed is
no less striking than the charm
and poetry which animate them.
The very pulse of the machine is laid bare ; at the same
time, the book is
as loveable and lovely as a child's poem by
Victor Hugo or Robert Louis
Stevenson. The hero of the book
is Pierre Nosières, a dreamy little boy,
fond of pictures and
colours ; and the story is written entirely from the
point of view
of this child.
" Elle était toute petite, ma vie ; mais c'était une vie, c'est-a-
dire le centre des choses, le milieu du monde."
The grown-up people who enter into Pierre's life are a child's
grown-up
people ; that is, incomprehensible beings who might
play at soldiers all
day, and yet do not do so. Strange creatures,
who will not get up from
their easy-chair to look at the moon
when they are told she is to be
seen.
Mr. Stevenson tells a story of how one day, when he was
groaning aloud in
physical agony, a little boy came up and asked
him if he had seen his
cross-bow, ignoring altogether his groans
and his contortions. It is
exactly what little Pierre would have
done. The wall-paper of the
drawing-room where Pierre lived
had a pattern of dainty rose-buds which
were all exactly alike.
" Un jour, dans le petit salon, laissant sa broderie, ma mère me
souleva dans ses bras ; puis, me montrant une des fleurs du papier,
elle me dit : je te donne cette rose—et, pour la reconnaître
elle
la marqua d'une croix avec son poinçon à broder. Jamais
présent
ne me rendit plus heureux."
Another time Pierre is fired with ambition ; he desires to
leave the world
brighter for his name. Finding that military
glory is for the time being
out of his reach, and inspired by
the " Lives of the Saints," which his
mother is in the habit
of reading aloud, he decides to go down to posterity
as a saint.
Reluctantly setting aside martyrdom and missionary work as
impracticable, he confines himself to austerities, and commences
by leaving
his déjeuner untouched, which leads his mother to
believe that he is
unwell. Then, in emulation of St. Simon
Stylites, he begins a life of
self-denial on the top of the kitchen
pump ; but his nurse puts an abrupt
end to this mode of existence.
St. Nicholas of Patras is the next holy man
he tries to imitate.
St. Nicholas gave all he had to the poor ; Pierre
throws his toys
out of the window. Pierre's father, who is looking on, calls him a
stupid
little boy. Pierre is amazed and ashamed, but he soon
consoles himself:
" Je considérai que mon père n'était pas un Saint
comme moi et
ne partagerait pas avec moi la gloire des bien-
heureux."
The next thing he thinks of is a hair-shirt, which he makes by
pulling out
the horse-hair from an arm-chair. Here again he fails
more, signally than
ever. His nurse, Julie, not apprehending the
inward significance of the
action, is conscious merely of the
outward and visible arm-chair, which is
quite spoilt. So she
whips Pierre. This opens his eyes to the
insurmountable difficulty
of being a saint in the family circle, and he
understands why St.
Antony withdrew to a desert place. He resolves to
seclude himself
in the maze at the "Jardin des Plantes,"
and
he tells his mother
of his plan. She asks what put the idea into his head.
He con-
fesses to a desire to be famous and to have " Ermite et
Saint du
printed on his visiting-cards, just as
his father had
Calendrier "
" Lauréat de l'académie de médecine, etc."
on his.
Here his experiments in practical holiness cease. To the
young stoic :
"Lust of fame was but a dream That vanished with the morn,"
although he has often hankered since that day, he confesses, for
a life of
seclusion in the maze of the Jardin des Plantes.
Not unlike Shelley, who some one has said was perpetually in
the frame of
mind of saying : " Give me my cabbage and a glass
of water, and
Little Pierre passes through many phases and becomes very
clever, very
cultured, and very subtle ; but the child in him
endures and he keeps alive
a flame of wistful wonder—wonder at
the varicoloured world and the white stars—which is perhaps the
greatest charm of M. France's books.
It is true that he frequently laments the absence of the old
simple faith
which could discern
" The guardian sprites of wood and rill."
We are no doubt a faithless and prosaic generation, yet if M.
France told us
that he had heard old Triton blow his wreathed
horn, we should believe him
: we should say, at any rate, borrowing
one of his own phrases, that the
statement was true precisely
because it was imaginary.
Before altogether leaving M. France's writings about children,
I must
mention another supreme achievement in this province :
his fairy tale
stories called
head when he said that people do not write good fairy
stories now,
partly because they do not believe in their own stories,
partly
because they try to be wittier than it has pleased heaven to
make them. M. France believes in
the story to be convinced of the fact. As for being wittier
than
God has pleased to make him, M. France is far too sensible to
attempt an almost impossible task.
There is no striving after modernity in
paradoxical nor elaborate, but a real fairy tale, where there
are
stately
industrious dwarfs, and disobedient children. It
is a genuine
fairy tale, told with the sorcery that baffles analysis, which
only
the elect who believe in fairies can feel and appreciate, whether
they find it in
bit of description which I will quote, just to give an idea of
the
beauty of M. France's sentences. It is the description of the
magic lake : " Le sentier descendait en pente douce jusqu'au bord
du
lac, qui apparut aux deux enfants dans sa languissante et silen-
cieuse
beauté. Des saules arrondissaient sur les bords leur feuillage
tendre.
Des roseaux balançaient sur les eaux leurs glaives souples
et leurs
délicats panaches ; ils formaient des îles frissonnantes
autour
desquelles les nénuphars étalaient leurs grandes feuilles
en coeur et
leurs fleurs à la chair blanche. Sur ces iles fleuries
les demoiselles,
au corsage d'éméraude ou de saphir et aux ailes de
flammes, traçaient
d'un vol strident des courbes brusquement
brisées."
M. France began his career as a member of the Parnassian
Cénacle, of which
Paul Verlaine, François Coppée, and Catulle
Mendes were members. In a
delightful essay on Paul Verlaine
(
that
irresponsible period. " Le bon temps,"
he calls it, " où
nous
It was at that time that M.
France,
n'avions pas le sens commun."
in the first fine rapture of a Hellenic revival, wrote " Les
Noces
Corinthiennes," a fine and interesting poem, dealing with the
melancholy sunset of Paganism and the troubled moonrise of
Christianity. It
is a period of which he is very fond ; and he has
made it the subject of
one of his most important books—
No one has written about that age with more understanding,
for M. France has
" une âme riche et complètement humaine . . .
In a beautiful short story,
païenne et
chrétienne à la fois."
Loeta Acilia, a patrician Roman
lady. Loeta Acilia promises to
serve the new deity if he send her a son,
for although she has been
married for five years she is without children.
Mary prays that
this may happen, and her prayer is granted. Six months afterwards,
one day
when Loeta is lying languorous and happy on a couch in
the court of her
home, Mary comes to her and tells her the story
of her own conversion. She
tells Loeta how the seven devils
were cast out of her, and recounts all the
ecstasy of her life of
love and faith as a disciple, and the wonderful
story of her Saviour's
death and resurrection. Loeta Acilia's serenity is
profoundly
disturbed by the tale ; reviewing her own existence, she finds
it
monotonous indeed, compared with the life of this woman, who had
loved a God. Her days were occupied with needlework, the quiet
practice of
her religion, and the companionship of her husband,
Helvius, the knight.
Her daily round was varied only by the days
she went to the circus, or ate
cakes with her friends. Bitter
jealousy and dark regrets rise in her heart,
and bursting into tears
she calls on the Jewess to leave the house.
" Méchante femme," she cries, " tu voulais me donner le
dégoût de la
bonne vie que j'ai menée . . . Je ne veux pas
connaître ton Dieu . . .
il faut pour lui plaire se prosterner
échevelée à ses pieds . . . Je ne
veux pas d'une religion qui
dérange les coiffures . . . Je n'ai pas été
possédée de sept
démons, je n'ai pas erré par les chemins ; je suis une
femme
respectable. Va-t'-en ! "
times. Thais, the beautiful convert, is less pious and serene
than
Loeta Acilia, but the conversion is more serious.
The contrast between the end of Paganism and the beginning
of Christianity,
between the sceptical and brilliant world of
Alexandria and the savage life
of the Anchorites, is drawn with
consummate art. It is a thoughtful story,
exquisitely told,
containing some of M. France's most brilliant pages and
some of
his finest touches of irony.
Books of this kind,
collection of little masterpieces in a
made his own, and
book) is what M. France has done by
the way, so to speak.
In these we do not trace the growth of his mind so
much as in
his other books. But as far as perfection of form and delicacy
of
touch go, they are perhaps the most finished things he has
done.
Were he to republish the series under one name, we
should
recommend—
" Marguerites pour les pourceaux."
After the dreamy childhood of little Pierre comes the feverish
period of
youth ; there is an agitated violence about M. France's
work of that time
which completely disappears later on.
passion, is rather crude and unsatisfactory ; M. France has
not
yet found his medium.
in an atmosphere of hard pessimism.
interlude, a caprice
of fancy. Yet here M. France has a subject
after his own heart, and he is
completely successful. It is the
story of a youth who comes from Haiti to
pass his
he lives in a
he himself, that it never occurs to him that they are mad.
M.
France's love of madmen, of the
one of his most decided characteristics. He draws a
distinction
between madness and insanity. Madness, he says, is only a
kind
of intellectual originality. Insanity is the loss of the
intellectual
faculties. M. France leavens all his books with mad characters,
introducing
us like this to the most quaint and amusing types.
In these early books M. France was giving vent to the various
phases of his
youth. The restless preludes played on the tremulous
reeds were soon to be
merged into the broad music of the mellow
diapasons. This is satisfactory ;
because although in the crisis
of youth Moses often becomes Aaron, and
expression wells from
the hard rock, it less frequently happens that Hamlet
becomes
Prospero.
Again it often happens that Prospero is not only deserted by
Ariel, but he
is left, as Mr. Arthur Benson says,
" Pent in the circle of a rugged isle . . . . . . . . . . .
Without his large philosophy, without Miranda, and alone with Caliban."
In M. France's case the shifting restlessness of youth has only
helped to
make middle-age more tolerant, as we note in
garden fit for Prospero, a Prospero who has not perhaps forgotten
the
" Old agitations of myrtles and roses."
A garden where there is a somewhat more voluptuous fragrance
than
" A rosemary odour comingled with pansies, With rue and the beautiful Puritan pansies."
Let us now examine M. France's riper works more closely.
one of his masterpieces. It consists of two stories :
and
the one case M. Bonnard hankers after a rare MS., which is
at
last presented to him by a Russian princess whom he had once
helped, when she was poor, by sending her a
M. Bonnard rescues an orphan girl from a school where she
is
unhappy and contracts a happy marriage for her : that is his crime.
M. Bonnard is a member of the Institute, a bachelor and a
bibliophile,
seventy years old, with a large nose that betrays his
feelings. He is
afraid of his housekeeper, and rather fond of
dainty cooking and old wine.
He overflows with bavardage and
entertains his cat with suggestive
philosophy, beautifully expressed.
Kindness, tolerance, and irony are his
chief characteristics ; his
sole prejudice being the pretension of having
no prejudices.
" Cette prétention,"
says M. France (or does M. Bonnard say
it about some one else ?), "était à elle seule un gros préjugé. Il
It
détestait le fanatisme, mais il avait celui de la tolérance."
applies to M. Bonnard in any case. M. Bonnard is a child at
heart,
and his tenderness is exquisite. Delightful, too, is his
pedantry, which
leads him to handle romantic subjects and ideas
with the most elegant
precision and unfaltering exactitude. As
for his language, it is the purest
and most distinguished French ;
it is needless to say more. We will confine
ourselves to quoting
one sentence. " Etoiles qui avez lui sur la
tête legère ou pesante
de tous mes ancêtres oubliés, c'est à votre
clarté que je sens s'éveiller
en moi un regret douloureux. Je voudrais
un fils qui vous voie
encore quand je ne serai plus."
The complement of Sylvestre Bonnard is the Abbé Jérome
Coignard, the hero of
Coignard, who lived and died in the last century, was a priest
"abondant en riants propos et en belles manières."
Erudite
and
scholar though he was, he sought for happiness in other places
besides in " bloomless
which grow in the garden of the
goddess who is
buds "" crowned
which would
certainly have been Sylvestre
with calm leaves,"
Bonnard's favourite garden. The difference is
that L'Abbé Coig-
nard is an eighteenth-century priest, and "
behaves as such."
The Abbé considers that the maxims of
philosophers who seek to
establish a natural morality are but "
lubies et billevesées."
" La raison des bonnes moeurs ne se trouve point dans la
nature qui
est, par elle-même, indifferente, ignorant le mal comme
le bien. Elle
est dans la parole divine qu'il ne faut pas trans-
gresser, à moins de
s'en repentir ensuite convenablement."
The laws of men, he says, are founded on utility, a fallacious
utility,
since no one knows what in reality befits men and is
useful to them. For
this reason he breaks them, and is ready to
do it again and again.
" Les plus grands saints sont des pénitents, et comme le
The Abbé
repentir se
proportionne à la faute, c'est dans les plus grands
pécheurs que se
trouve l'étoffe des plus grands saints."
Coignard's
pupil, the simple-minded Jaques Tournebroche, ex-
presses his fear lest
this doctrine, in practice, should lead men
into wild licence :
" Ce que vous appelez désordres,"
rejoins the Abbé, " n'est
tel
en effet que dans l'opinions des juges tant civils
qu'écclésiastiques,
et par rapport aux lois humaines, qui sont
arbitraires et transi-
toires, et qu'en un mot
" Un homme d'esprit ne se pique pas d'agir selon les règles en
usage
au chàtelet et chez l'official.
It is, therefore, by the primrose path that M. l'Abbé seeks
his salvation, relying on the cleansing dews of repentance. He
is the most
subtle and entertaining arguer conceivable, but his
voyage to salvation by
a " voie detournée "
is nevertheless
brought to an abrupt
end. In abetting the elopement of a lovely
Jewess with a young marquis, he
is pursued by the Jewess's
angry father, who takes him to be his daughter's
seducer, and
murders him on the Lyons road. He died at the age of
fifty-
eight, after receiving the last sacraments, in an odour of
repentance
and sanctity, and earnestly urging his young pupil to
disregard
his old advice and forget his philosophy :
" N'écoute point ceux, qui comme moi, subtilesent sur le
bien et le
mal . . . Le royaume de Dieu ne consiste pas dans
les paroles mais dans
la vertu."
These were his last words, and in dying he made it possible for
his pupil to
obey him. Fortunately we are still able to be led
astray by the subtlety of
his discourses. They almost make us
doubt whether the Kingdom of Heaven
does not sometimes
consist in words. We may add that " Les opinions de
Jérome
Coignard " is perhaps a more edifying book than "La Rôtisserie
de la Reine Pédauque," where his discourses are blent with a record
of his
deeds.
We have now considered almost all M. France's works, with
the exception of
in the province of the modern analytic novel. The book is not
very characteristic of M. France, although it contains some
brilliant
writing, notably a dialogue, near the beginning, on
Napoleon, and a fine
study of an artist's jealousy ; the Florentine
atmosphere also is
successfully rendered ; but we would willingly
give up the romantic part of
the book for one of the Abbé
Coignard's discourses or Sylvestre Bonnard's
reveries.
" L'artiste doit aimer la vie et nous montrer qu'elle est belle.
Sans
lui nous en douterions."
M. France has accomplished the task beautifully. Nevertheless,
the shadows
of irony which temper the colour of his dream let us
more than suspect that
"even while singing the song of the
Like Mr.
Sirens, he still hearkens to
the barking of the Sphinx."
Stevenson, he has struck
sombre and eloquent chords on the
theme of
will come when our
descendants, diminishing fast on an icy and
barren earth, will be as brutal
and brainless as our cave-dwelling
ancestors.
Mr. Andrew Lang thinks that the last man will read the poems
of Shelley in
his cavern by the light of a little oil, in order to see
once more the
glory of sunset and sunrise, and the " hues of
This is hopeful ; but we are afraid M.
earthquake and
eclipse."
France's
theory is the more probable. The last man will be too
stupid and too cold
to read Shelley in a cave.
At the same time, although M. France is fond of telling us
that man can save
nothing—
"On the sands of life, in the straits of time, Who swims in front of a great third wave, That never a swimmer may cross or climb "—
he is yet of opinion that the pastimes of the beach are pleasant,
and can be
peacefully enjoyed, in spite of the billows that may be
looming in the
distance. He defends the follies of the book-
collector with warmth and
elegance on that score :
" Il faudrait plutôt les envier puisqu'ils ont orné leur vie
d'une
longue et paisible volupté . . . Que peut-on faire de plus
honnête que
de mettre des livres dans une armoire ? Cela rappelle
beaucoup à la
vérité la tâche que se donne les enfants, quand ils
font des tas de
sable au bord de la mer. ... La mer emporte
les tas de sable, le
commissaire-priseur disperse les collections. Et
pourtant on n'a rien
de mieux à faire que des tas de sable à dix ans
et des collection à
soixante."
M. France is neither a pessimist nor an optimist, but both ;
since he feels
that the world is neither good nor bad, but good
bad.
" Le mal,"
he says " est l'unique raison du bien. Que
serait le
courage loin du péril et la pitié sans la douleur ?
"
Had he made the world, he tells us, he would have made man
in the image of
an insect :
" J'aurais voulu que l'homme . . . accomplit d'abord, à l'état
As, however, we are made on a somewhat different
de
larve, les travaux dégoutants par lesquels il se nourrit. En
cette
phase, il n'y aurait point eu de sens, et la faim n'aurait
point avili
l'amour. Puis j'aurais fait de sorte que, dans une
transformation
dernière, l'homme et la femme, deployant des ailes
étincelantes,
vécussent de rosée et de désir et mourussent dans un
baiser."
plan, M. France puts his
faith in two goddesses—Irony and
Pity :
" L'une en souriant nous rend la vie aimable, l'autre qui pleure,
nous la rend sacrée. L'ironie que j'invoque n'est point cruelle.
Elle
ne raille ni l'amour ni la beauté . . . son rire calme la colère
et
c'est elle qui nous enseigne à nous moquer des méchants et des
sots,
que nous pourrions, sans elle, avoir la faiblesse de haïr."
The burden and keynote of M. France's works may be found in
the most blessed
words of the blessed saint : " Everywhere I have
sought for happiness and found it nowhere, save in a corner with
a
book."
To sum up, we have in M. Anatole France a fastidious and
distinguished
artist in prose ; an inventor of fantastic and
delightful characters ; a
thinker whose ingenious and suggestive
philosophy is based on the solid
foundations of thorough scholar-
ship. His stories are as delicate as thin
shells, and their subtle
echo evokes the music of the wide seas. On the
other hand, his
critical essays are so graceful that they read like fairy
tales. The
lightness and grace of his work have made serious people
shake
their heads. They forget that a graceful use of the snaffle is
more masterly than an ostentatious control of the curb.
" A good style,"
M. France says, " is like a ray of
sunlight,
which owes its luminous purity to the combination of the
seven
colours of which it is composed."
M. France's style has precisely this luminous and complicated
simplicity.
But a reader unacquainted as yet with M. France's
work must not expect too
much. M. France's talent is subdued
and limited. He is not an inventor of
wonderful romance ; he
has never peered into the depths of the human soul ;
neither has
his work the concise and masculine strength of a writer like
Guy
de Maupassant. He contemplates life from the Garden of
Epicurus,
smiling in plaintive tranquillity at the grotesque and
tragic masks of the
human comedy.
" L'ambition, l'amour, égaux en leur délire, Et l'inutile encens brulé sur les autels."
What the reader must expect to find in his books is an exquisite
puppet-show, where fanciful comedies and fairy interludes are
interpreted by
adorable marionnettes. M. France is not a player
of the thunderous organ or
the divine violin ; his instrument is
rather a pensive pianoforte, on which
with an incomparable touch
he plays delicate preludes and wistful
nocturnes.
"Now she was deserted by her husband, and there was a
man would die for her."
M. LE PRÉFET WORMS-CLAVELIN causait avec M. l'abbé Guitrel
dans le magasin
de Rondonnean jeune, orfevre et bijoutier.
M. Worms-Clavelin était ce
jour-là de très bonne humeur. II se
renversa dans un fauteuil et croisa les
jambes de sorte qu'une
semelle des bottines se dressait vers le menton du
doux vieillard.
— Monsieur l'abbé, vous avez beau dire ; vous êtes un prêtre
éclairé
; vous voyez dans la religion un ensemble de prescriptions
morales, une
discipline nécessaire, et non point des dogmes
surannés, des mystères dont
l'absurdité n'est que trop peu
mystérieuse.
M. Guitrel avait, comme prêtre, d'excellentes règles de conduite.
L'une de
ces règles était d'éviter le scandale, et de se taire plutôt que
d'exposer
la vérité aux risées des incrédules. Et, comme cette
précaution s'accordait
avec la prudence de son caractère, il l'observait
exactement. Mais M. le
préfet Worms-Clavelin manquait de
discrétion. Son nez vaste et charnu, ses
lèvres épaisses, apparaissaient
comme de puissants appareils pour pomper et
pour absorber, tandis
que son front fuyant, sous de gros yeux pâles,
trahissaient la
résistance à toute délicatesse morale. Il insista, poussa
contre les
dogmes chrétiens des arguments de loges maçonniques et de
cafés
littéraires, conclut qu'il était impossible à un homme intelligent
de
croire un mot du catéchisme ; puis, abattant sur l'épaule du prêtre
sa
grosse main à bagues, il dit :
—Vous ne répondez rien, mon cher abbé, vous êtes de mon
avis.
M. Guitrel, martyre en quelque manière, dut confesser sa foi.
—Pardonnez moi, monsieur le préfet, ce petit livre, qu'on
affecte de
mépriser en certains milieux, le catéchisme, contient plus
de vérités que
les gros traités de philosophie qui mènent si grand
bruit par le monde. Le
catéchisme joint la métaphysique la plus
savante à la plus efficace
simplicité. Cette appréciation n'est pas
de moi, elle est d'un philosophic
éminent, M. Jules Simon, qui
met le catéchisme audessus du Timée de
Platon.
Le préfet n'osa rien opposer au jugement d'un ancien ministre
Il lui souvint
en même temps que son supérieur hierarchique, le
ministre actuel de
l'intérieur, était protestant. Il dit :
—Comme fonctionnaire, je respecte également tous les cultes,
le
protestantisme et le catholicisme. En tant qu'homme je suis libre
penseur,
et si j'avais une préférence dogmatique, permettez moi de
vous dire,
monsieur l'abbé, qu'elle serait en faveur de la réforme.
Guitrel doux et têtu, repondit d'une voix onctueuse :
—Il y a sans doute parmi les protestants des personnes éminem-
ment
estimables au point de vue des moeurs, et j'ose dire des
personnes
exemplaires, mais l'église prétendue réformée n'est qu'un
membre tranché de
l'église catholique, et l'endroit de la rupture
saigne encore.
Indifférent à cette forte parole, empruntée à Bossuet, M. le préfet
tira de
son étui un gros cigare, l'alluma, puis tendant l'étui au
prêtre :
—Voulez vous accepter un cigare, monsieur l'abbé ?
N'ayant aucune idée de la discipline ecclésiastique, et croyant
que le tabac
à fumer était interdit aux membres du clergé, c'était
pour l'embarrasser ou le séduire, qu'il offrait un cigare à M. Guitrel.
Dans
son ignorance il croyait, par ce présent, induire le porteur
de soutane en
péché, le faire tomber dans la désobeissance, peut être
dans le sacrilège
et presque dans l'apostasie. Mais M. Guitrel prit
tranquillement le cigare,
le coula avec précaution dans la poche de
sa douillette, et dit avec bonne
grâce, qu'il le fumerait après souper,
dans sa chambre.
Ainsi M. le préfet Worms-Clavelin et M. l'abbé Guitrel, pro-
fesseur
d'èloquence sacrée au grand séminaire, conversaient dans le
cabinet de
l'orfèvre. Prè; d'eux Rondonneau jeune, fournisseur de
l'archevêché, qui
travaillait aussi pour la préfecture, assistait discrète-
ment à
l'entretien, sans y prendre part. Il faisait son courrier, et
l'on ne
voyait que son crâne nu sur la table chargée de régistres
et d'échantillons
d'orfèvrerie commerciale.
Brusquement M. le préfet se mit debout, poussa M. l'abbé
Guitrel à l'autre
bout de la pièce, dans l'embrasure de la fenêtre, et
lui dit à l'oreille
:
—Mon cher Guitrel, vous savez que l'évêché de Tourcoing
est
vacant.
- J'ai appris en effet, répondit le prêtre, la mort de mon-
seigneur Duclou.
C'est une grande perte pour l'église. Monseigneur
Duclou avait autant de
mérite que de modestie. Et il excellait
dans l'homélie. Ses instructions
pastorales sont des modèles
d'éloquence parénétique. Oserai-je rappeler que
je l'ai connu à
Orléans, du temps qu'il était encore M. l'abbé Duclou,
le
vénérable Curé de Saint-Euverte, et qu'à cette époque il daignait
m'honorer de sa bienveillante amitié ? La nouvelle de sa fin
prématurée a
été particulièrement douloureuse pour moi.
Il se tut, laissant pendre ses lèvres en signe d'affliction.
—Ce n'est pas de cela qu'il s'agit, dit le préfet. Il est mort ;
il
s'agit de le remplacer.
M. Guitrel avait changé de figure. Maintenant il faisait des
petits yeux
tous ronds, comme un rat qui voit le lard dans le
garde-manger.
—Vouz concevez, mon cher Guitrel, reprit le préfet, que toute
cette
affaire ne me regarde en aucune façon. Ce n'est pas moi
qui nomme les
évêques. Je ne suis pas le garde des Sceaux, ni le
pape, Dieu merci !
Il se mit à rire.
—A propos, en quels termes êtes vous avec le nonce ?
—Le nonce, monsieur le préfet, me regarde avec bienveillance,
comme
un enfant soumis et respectueux du Saint Père.
—Mon cher abbé, si je vous parle de cette affaire—tout à fait
entre nous, n'est ce pas ? — c'est qu'il est question d'envoyer à
Tourcoing un prêtre de mon chef-lieu. Je sais de bonne source
qu'on met en
avant le nom de M. l'abbé Lantaigne, directeur du
grand séminaire, et il
n'est pas impossible que je sois appelé à
fournir des notes confidentielles
sur le candidat. Il est votre
supérieur hiérarchique. Que pensez vous de
lui ?
M. Guitrel, les yeux baissés, répondit :
—Il est certain que M. l'abbé Lantaigne porterait sur le siége
épiscopal sanctifié jadis par Saint Loup des vertus éminentes et les
dons
précieux de la parole. Ses carêmes préchés à Saint-Exupère
ont été
justement appréciés pour l'ordonnance des idées et la
force de
l'expression, et l'on s'accorde à reconnaitre qu'il ne
manquerait rien à la
perfection de quelques uns de ses sermons, s'il
s'y tiouvait cette onction,
cette huile parfumée et bénie, oserai-je
dire, qui seule pénêtre les
coeurs. M. le Curé de Saint-Exupère
s'est plu le premier à déclarer que M.
Lantaigne, en portant la
parole dans la chaire de Saint-Exupère avait bien
mérité de ce
grand apôtre des Gaules par un zèle dont les excès même
trouvent leur excuse dans leur source charitable. Il a déploré
seulement les incursions de l'orateur dans le domaine de l'histoire
contemporaine. Car il faut avouer que M. Lantaigne ne craint
pas de marcher
sur des cendres encore brûlantes. M. Lantaigne
est éminent par la piété, la
science et le talent. Quel dommage
que ce prêtre, digne d'être élevé aux
plus hauts degrés de la
hiérarchie, croie devoir afficher un attachement
louable sans doute
dans son principe, mais immodéré dans ses effets, à une
famille
exilée dont il reçut les bienfaits ? Il se plaît à montrer un
exemplaire de
couvert de pourpre et d'or, par madame la Comtesse de Paris, et
il
étale trop volontiers les pompes de sa fidèlité et de sa
reconnaissance.
Et quel malheur que la superbe, excusable peut être dans un
si
beau génie, l'emporte jusqu'a parler sous les quinconces, publique-
ment, de Monseigneur le Cardinal-archevêque en des termes que
je n'ose
rapporter ! Hélas ! à défaut de ma voix, tous les arbres
du mail vous
rediront ces paroles tombées de la bouche de M.
Lantaigne, en présence de
M. Borgeret, professeur à la faculté des
lettres : "En esprit seulement Sa
Grandeur observe la pauvreté
évangélique." Il est coutumier de tels propos,
et ne l'entendit-on
pas dire à la dernière ordination, quand Sa Grandeur
s'avança
revêtu de ses ornements pontificaux, qu'il porte avec tant de
noblesse malgré sa petite taille : "Crosse d'or, évêque de bois."
II
censurait ainsi, mal à propos, la magnificence avec laquelle
Monseigneur
Charlot se plaît à régler l'ordonnance de ses repas
officiels, et notamment
du dîner qu'il donna au général commandant
le cinquième corps d'armée, et
auquel vous fûtes prié, monsieur le
préfet. Et c'est particulièrement votre
présence à l'archevêché qui
offusquait M. l'abbé Lantaigne, trop enclin
malheureusement à
prolonger, au mépris des préceptes de Saint Paul et des
enseigne-
ments de Sa Sainteté Leon XIII, les pénibles malentendus
dont
souffrent également l'Eglise et l'Etat.
Le préfet tendait les oreilles et ouvrait la bouche toute grande,
ayant
coutume d'écouter par la bouche.
—Mais, dit-il, ce Lantaigne est imbu du plus détestable esprit
clerical. Il m'en veut ? Que me reproche-til ? Ne suis-je pas assez
tolérant, libéral? N'ai-je pas fermé les yeux quand de toutes parts
les
moines, les soeurs, rentraient dans les couvents, dans les écoles ?
Car si
nous maintenons énergiquement les lois essentielles de la
république, nous
ne les appliquons guères. Mais les prêtres sont
incorrigibles. Vous êtes
tous les mêmes. Vous criez qu'on vous
opprime tant que vous n'opprimez pas.
Et que dit-il de moi, votre
Lantaigne ?
—On ne peut rien articuler de formel centre l'administration de
M. le
préfet Worms-Clavelin, mais une âme intransigeante comme
M. Lantaigne, ne
vous pardonne ni votre affiliation à la franc-
maçonnerie, ni vos origines
israélites.
Le préfet secoua la cendre de son cigare.
—Les juifs, dit-il, ne sont pas mes amis. Je n'ai pas d'attaches
dans
le monde juif. Mais soyez tranquille, mon cher abbé, je vous
fiche mon
billet que M. Lantaigne ne sera pas évêque de Tourcoing.
J'ai assez
d'influence dans les bureaux pour lui faire échec. Ecoutez
bien, Guitrel ;
je n'avais pas d'argent, quand j'ai débuté dans la vie.
Je me suis fait des
relations. Les relations valent la fortune. Et
moi, j'ai de belles
relations. Je veillerai à ce que l'abbé Lantaigne
se casse le cou dans les
bureaux. D'ailleurs ma femme a un can-
didat à l'évêché de Tourcoing. Et ce
candidat c'est vous, Guitrel.
A ce mot, l'abbé Guitrel leva les bras et baissa les yeux.
—Moi, dit-il, m'asseoir dans le siége sanctifié par le bienheureux
Loup et par tant de pieux apôtres des Gaules septentrionales.
Madame
Worms-Clavelin a-t-elle eu cette pensée ?
—Mon cher Guitrel, elle veut que vous portiez la mitre. Et
je vous
assure qu'elle est de force à faire un évêque. Je vous
surprendrais bien si je vous nommais le ministre qui lui doit son
portefeuille. Et moi même je ne serai pas faché de donner à la
république
un évêque républicain.
M. Guitrel, soupirant, versa des paroles indistinctes qui
coulaient de ses
lèvres comme le murmure d'une source cachée.
—Il est vrai que je porterais dans les fonctions épiscopates cet
esprit de soumission aux pouvoirs établis qui est, à mon sens,
eminemment
chrètien. Toute puissance vient de Dieu, celle de
la république comme les
autres. C'est une maxime dont je
suis intimement pénétré.
Le préfet approuva de la tête.
—C'est entendu, mon cher Guitrel ; voyez l'archevêque et le
nonce ;
ma femme et moi, nous ferons agir les bureaux.
Et M. Guitrel murmurait les mains jointes :
—Le siége antique et vénérable de Tourcoing !
—Un évêché de troisième classe, un trou, mon cher abbé.
Mais il faut
commencer. Tenez ! moi, savez vous où j'ai fait mes
débuts dans
l'administration ? A Céret ! J'ai été sous préfet de
Céret, dans les
Pyrénees-Orientales ! Adieu, monseigneur.
Le préfet tendit la main au prêtre. Et M. Guitrel s'en alla
par la tortueuse
rue des Tintelleries, humble, le dos rond, mèditant
des démarches savantes
et se promettant, au jour où il porterait la
mitre et tiendrait la crosse,
de résister, en prince de l'église, au
gouvernement civil, de combattre
les franc-maçons, et de jeter
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Literature
The Death of the Lion . . . By Henry James
Tree-Worship . .
. . . Richard Le Gallienne
A Defence of Cosmetics . . . Max Beerbohm
*** . . . . . Arthur Christopher Benson
Irremediable . . . . . Ella
D'Arcy
The Frontier . . . . . William Watson
Night on Curbar Edge . .
. " "
A Sentimental Cellar . . . George Saintsbury
Stella Maris . . .
. . Arthur Symons
Mercedes . . . . . . Henry Harland
A Broken
Looking-Glass . . . " "
Alere Flammam . . . . Edmund Gosse
A Dream of
November . . . " "
The Dedication . . . . Fred M. Simpson
A Lost
Masterpiece . . . . George Egerton
Reticence in Literature . . . Arthur
Waugh
Modern Melodrama . . . Hubert Crackanthorpe
London . . . . . .
John Davidson
Down-a-down . . . . . " "
The Love-Story of Luigi
Tansillo . Richard Garnett, LL.D.
The Fool's Hour . . . . John Oliver
Hobbes and
Art
A Study . . . . . . By Sir Frederic Leighton,
L'Education Sentimentale . . Aubrey Beardsley
Le Puy en Velay . . . .
Joseph Pennell
The Old Oxford Music Hall . . By Walter Sickert
Portrait of a Gentleman . .
. Will Rothenstein
The Reflected Faun . . . . Laurence Housman
Night
Piece . . . . . Aubrey Beardsley
A Study . . . . . . Sir Frederic Leighton,
Portrait of a Lady . . . . Will Rothenstein
Portrait of Mrs. Patrick
Campbell . Aubrey Beardsley
The Head of Minos . . . J. T. Nettleship
Portrait of a Lady . . . . Charles W. Furse
A Lady Reading . . . . Walter
Sickert
A Book Plate . . . . . Aubrey Beardsley
A Book Plate . . . .
R. Anning Bell
Vol. II.
New Decorative Cloth Cover, price 5s. net.
Literature
The Gospel of Content . . . By Frederick Greenwood
Poor
Cousin Louis . . . . Ella D Arcy
The Composer of " Carmen " . . Charles
Willeby
Thirty Bob a Week . . . . John Davidson
A Responsibility .
Henry Harland
A Song . . . . . . Dollie Radford
Passed . . . . . .
Charlotte M. Mew
Sat est Scripsisse . . . . Austin Dobson
Three
Stories . . . . . V., O., C. S.
In a Gallery . . . . . Katharine De Mattos
The Yellow Book, criticised . . Philip Gilbert Hamerton,
Dreams . . . . . . Ronald Campbell Macfie
Madame Rejane . . . . Dauphin Meunier
The Roman Road . . . . Kenneth
Grahame
Betrothed . . . . . Norman Gale
Thy Heart's Desire . . . .
Netta Syrett
Reticence in Literature . . . Hubert Crackanthorpe
My
Study . . . . . Alfred Hayes
A Letter to the Editor . . . Max Beerbohm
An Epigram . . . . . William Watson
The Coxon Fund . . . . Henry
James
Art
Renaissance of Venus . . . By Walter Crane
The Lamplighter . . . .
A. S. Hartrick
Comedy Ballet of Marionnettes as
performed by the
Troupe of the
"Theatre Impossible," posed in
three drawings by . . .
Aubrey Beardsley
Garçons de Café . . . " "
The Slippers of Cinderella
. . " "
Portrait of Madame Rejane . . " "
A Landscape . . . . . Alfred
Thornton
Ada Lundberg. . . . . Walter Sickert
The Old Bedford Music
Hall : Little
Dot Hetherington . . . " "
Portrait of Aubrey Beardsley
. . " "
The Old Man's Garden . . . E. J. Sullivan
The Quick and the
Dead . . . " "
Reminiscence of " The Trans-
gressor " . . . . .
Francis Forster
An Idyll . . . . . . W. Brown MacDougall
A Lady and
Gentleman . . . P. Wilson Steer
Portrait of Himself . . . . " "
Portrait of Henry James . . . J. S. Sargent, A.R.A.
Girl Resting . . . . .
Sydney Adamson
A Study . . . . . . Bernhard Sickert
For the Backs of
Playing Cards . Aymer Vallance
Vol. III.
New Decorative Cloth Cover, price 5s. net
Literature
Women—Wives or Mothers . . By A Woman
"Tell Me not
Now " . . . William Watson
The Headswoman . . . . Kenneth Grahame
Credo . . . . . . Arthur Symons
White Magic . . . . . Ella D'Arcy
Fleurs de Feu . . . . . José Maria de Hérédia of
Flowers of Fire, a Translation . . By Ellen M. Clerke
When I am King . . . .
Henry Harland
To a Bunch of Lilac . . . Theo Marzials
Apple-Blossom in
Brittany . . Ernest Dowson
To Salomé at St. James's . . Theodore Wratislaw
Second Thoughts . . . . Arthur Moore
Twilight . . . . . . Olive
Custance
Tobacco Clouds . . . . Lionel Johnson
Reiselust . . . . . .
Annie Macdonell
To Every Man a Damsel or Two . C. S.
A Song and a
Tale . . . . Nora Hopper
De Profundis . . . . . S. Cornish Watkins
A
Study in Sentimentality . . Hubert Crackanthorpe
George Meredith . . . .
Morton Fullerton
Jeanne-Marie . . . . . Leila Macdonald
Parson
Herrick's Muse . . . C. W. Dalmon
A Note on George the Fourth . . Max
Beerbohm
The Ballad of a Nun . . . John Davidson
Art
Mantegna . . . . . By Philip Broughton
From a Lithograph . . . .
George Thomson
Portrait of Himself . . . . Aubrey Beardsley
Lady
Gold's Escort . . . . " "
The Wagnerites . . . . " "
La Dame aux
Camélias . . . " "
From a Pastel . . . . . Albert Foschter
Collins'
Music Hall, Islington . . Walter Sickert
The Lion Comique . . . . " "
Charley's Aunt. . . . . " "
The Mirror . . . . . P. Wilson
Steer
Skirt-Dancing . . . . . " "
A Sunset . . . . . . William
Hyde
George the Fourth . . . . Max Beerbohm
Study of a Head . . . .
An Unknown Artist
Vol. IV.
Cloth Cover, price 5s. net
Literature
Home . . . . . . By Richard Le Gallienne
The Bohemian Girl
. . . . Henry Harland
Vespertilia . . . . . Graham R. Tomson
The
House of Shame . . . H. B. Marriott Watson
Rondeaux d'Amour . . . . Dolf
Wyllarde
Wladislaw's Advent . . . . Ménie Muriel Dowie
The Waking of
Spring . . . Olive Custance
Mr. Stevenson's Forerunner . . James Ashcroft
Noble
Red Rose . . . . . Leila Macdonald
Margaret . . . . . . C.
S.
Of One in Russia . . . . Richard Garnett, LL.D.
Theodora, a
Fragment . . . Victoria Cross
Two Songs . . . . . Charles Sydney
A
Falling Out . . . . . Kenneth Grahame
Hor. Car. I. 5 . . . . . Charles
Newton-Robinson
Henri Beyle . . . . . Norman Hapgood
Day and Night .
. . . E. Nesbit
A Thief in the Night . . . Marion Hepworth Dixon
An
Autumn Elegy . . . . C. W. Dalmon
The End of an Episode . . . Evelyn Sharp
1880 . . . . . . . Max Beerbohm
Proem to " The Wonderful Mission
Art
Study of a Head . . . . By H. J. Draper
A Sussex Landscape . . .
William Hyde
Hotel Royal, Dieppe . . . Walter Sickert
Bodley Heads.
No. I : Mr.
Portrait of Mr. George
Moore . . " "
Rustem Firing the First Shot . . Patten Wilson
A
Westmorland Village . . . W. W. Russell
The Knock-out . . . . A. S.
Hartrick
Design for a Fan . . . . By Charles Conder
Bodley Heads. No. 2 : Mr. John
Plein Air . . . .
. . Miss Sumner
A Lady in Grey . . . . P. Wilson Steer
Portrait of
Emil Sauer . . . " "
The Mysterious Rose Garden . . Aubrey Beardsley
The Repentance of Mrs. * * * . " "
Portrait of Miss Winifred Emery . " "
Double-Page Supplement : Frontis-
Boston :
Copeland & Day