1 files changed, 4410 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/15381.txt b/15381.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..53f8660
--- /dev/null
+++ b/15381.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,4410 @@
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Victorian Short Stories, by Various
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Victorian Short Stories
+
+Author: Various
+
+Release Date: March 16, 2005  [eBook #15381]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VICTORIAN SHORT STORIES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+
+
+
+VICTORIAN SHORT STORIES
+
+Stories of Courtship
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+   ANGELA, An Inverted Love Story, by William Schwenk Gilbert
+
+   THE PARSON'S DAUGHTER OF OXNEY COLNE, by Anthony Trollope
+
+   ANTHONY GARSTIN'S COURTSHIP, by Hubert Crackanthorpe
+
+   A LITTLE GREY GLOVE, by George Egerton (Mary Chavelita [Dunne] Bright)
+
+   THE WOMAN BEATER, by Israel Zangwill
+
+
+
+
+
+ANGELA
+
+An Inverted Love Story
+
+By William Schwenk Gilbert
+
+(_The Century Magazine_, September 1890)
+
+
+I am a poor paralysed fellow who, for many years past, has been confined
+to a bed or a sofa. For the last six years I have occupied a small room,
+giving on to one of the side canals of Venice, and having no one about
+me but a deaf old woman, who makes my bed and attends to my food; and
+there I eke out a poor income of about thirty pounds a year by making
+water-colour drawings of flowers and fruit (they are the cheapest models
+in Venice), and these I send to a friend in London, who sells them to a
+dealer for small sums. But, on the whole, I am happy and content.
+
+It is necessary that I should describe the position of my room rather
+minutely. Its only window is about five feet above the water of the
+canal, and above it the house projects some six feet, and overhangs the
+water, the projecting portion being supported by stout piles driven into
+the bed of the canal. This arrangement has the disadvantage (among
+others) of so limiting my upward view that I am unable to see more than
+about ten feet of the height of the house immediately opposite to me,
+although, by reaching as far out of the window as my infirmity will
+permit, I can see for a considerable distance up and down the canal,
+which does not exceed fifteen feet in width. But, although I can see but
+little of the material house opposite, I can see its reflection upside
+down in the canal, and I take a good deal of inverted interest in such
+of its inhabitants as show themselves from time to time (always upside
+down) on its balconies and at its windows.
+
+When I first occupied my room, about six years ago, my attention was
+directed to the reflection of a little girl of thirteen or so (as nearly
+as I could judge), who passed every day on a balcony just above the
+upward range of my limited field of view. She had a glass of flowers and
+a crucifix on a little table by her side; and as she sat there, in fine
+weather, from early morning until dark, working assiduously all the
+time, I concluded that she earned her living by needle-work. She was
+certainly an industrious little girl, and, as far as I could judge by
+her upside-down reflection, neat in her dress and pretty. She had an old
+mother, an invalid, who, on warm days, would sit on the balcony with
+her, and it interested me to see the little maid wrap the old lady in
+shawls, and bring pillows for her chair, and a stool for her feet, and
+every now and again lay down her work and kiss and fondle the old lady
+for half a minute, and then take up her work again.
+
+Time went by, and as the little maid grew up, her reflection grew down,
+and at last she was quite a little woman of, I suppose, sixteen or
+seventeen. I can only work for a couple of hours or so in the brightest
+part of the day, so I had plenty of time on my hands in which to watch
+her movements, and sufficient imagination to weave a little romance
+about her, and to endow her with a beauty which, to a great extent, I
+had to take for granted. I saw--or fancied that I could see--that she
+began to take an interest in _my_ reflection (which, of course, she
+could see as I could see hers); and one day, when it appeared to me that
+she was looking right at it--that is to say when her reflection appeared
+to be looking right at me--I tried the desperate experiment of nodding
+to her, and to my intense delight her reflection nodded in reply. And so
+our two reflections became known to one another.
+
+It did not take me very long to fall in love with her, but a long time
+passed before I could make up my mind to do more than nod to her every
+morning, when the old woman moved me from my bed to the sofa at the
+window, and again in the evening, when the little maid left the balcony
+for that day. One day, however, when I saw her reflection looking at
+mine, I nodded to her, and threw a flower into the canal. She nodded
+several times in return, and I saw her direct her mother's attention to
+the incident. Then every morning I threw a flower into the water for
+'good morning', and another in the evening for 'goodnight', and I soon
+discovered that I had not altogether thrown them in vain, for one day
+she threw a flower to join mine, and she laughed and clapped her hands
+when she saw the two flowers join forces and float away together. And
+then every morning and every evening she threw her flower when I threw
+mine, and when the two flowers met she clapped her hands, and so did I;
+but when they were separated, as they sometimes were, owing to one of
+them having met an obstruction which did not catch the other, she threw
+up her hands in a pretty affectation of despair, which I tried to
+imitate but in an English and unsuccessful fashion. And when they were
+rudely run down by a passing gondola (which happened not unfrequently)
+she pretended to cry, and I did the same. Then, in pretty pantomime, she
+would point downwards to the sky to tell me that it was Destiny that had
+caused the shipwreck of our flowers, and I, in pantomime, not nearly so
+pretty, would try to convey to her that Destiny would be kinder next
+time, and that perhaps tomorrow our flowers would be more fortunate--and
+so the innocent courtship went on. One day she showed me her crucifix
+and kissed it, and thereupon I took a little silver crucifix that always
+stood by me, and kissed that, and so she knew that we were one in
+religion.
+
+One day the little maid did not appear on her balcony, and for several
+days I saw nothing of her; and although I threw my flowers as usual, no
+flower came to keep it company. However, after a time, she reappeared,
+dressed in black, and crying often, and then I knew that the poor
+child's mother was dead, and, as far as I knew, she was alone in the
+world. The flowers came no more for many days, nor did she show any sign
+of recognition, but kept her eyes on her work, except when she placed
+her handkerchief to them. And opposite to her was the old lady's chair,
+and I could see that, from time to time, she would lay down her work and
+gaze at it, and then a flood of tears would come to her relief. But at
+last one day she roused herself to nod to me, and then her flower came,
+day by day, and my flower went forth to join it, and with varying
+fortunes the two flowers sailed away as of yore.
+
+But the darkest day of all to me was when a good-looking young
+gondolier, standing right end uppermost in his gondola (for I could see
+_him_ in the flesh), worked his craft alongside the house, and stood
+talking to her as she sat on the balcony. They seemed to speak as old
+friends--indeed, as well as I could make out, he held her by the hand
+during the whole of their interview which lasted quite half an hour.
+Eventually he pushed off, and left my heart heavy within me. But I soon
+took heart of grace, for as soon as he was out of sight, the little maid
+threw two flowers growing on the same stem--an allegory of which I could
+make nothing, until it broke upon me that she meant to convey to me
+that he and she were brother and sister, and that I had no cause to be
+sad. And thereupon I nodded to her cheerily, and she nodded to me, and
+laughed aloud, and I laughed in return, and all went on again as before.
+
+Then came a dark and dreary time, for it became necessary that I should
+undergo treatment that confined me absolutely to my bed for many days,
+and I worried and fretted to think that the little maid and I should see
+each other no longer, and worse still, that she would think that I had
+gone away without even hinting to her that I was going. And I lay awake
+at night wondering how I could let her know the truth, and fifty plans
+flitted through my brain, all appearing to be feasible enough at night,
+but absolutely wild and impracticable in the morning. One day--and it
+was a bright day indeed for me--the old woman who tended me told me that
+a gondolier had inquired whether the English signor had gone away or had
+died; and so I learnt that the little maid had been anxious about me,
+and that she had sent her brother to inquire, and the brother had no
+doubt taken to her the reason of my protracted absence from the window.
+
+From that day, and ever after during my three weeks of bed-keeping, a
+flower was found every morning on the ledge of my window, which was
+within easy reach of anyone in a boat; and when at last a day came when
+I could be moved, I took my accustomed place on my sofa at the window,
+and the little maid saw me, and stood on her head (so to speak) and
+clapped her hands upside down with a delight that was as eloquent as my
+right-end-up delight could be. And so the first time the gondolier
+passed my window I beckoned to him, and he pushed alongside, and told
+me, with many bright smiles, that he was glad indeed to see me well
+again. Then I thanked him and his sister for their many kind thoughts
+about me during my retreat, and I then learnt from him that her name was
+Angela, and that she was the best and purest maiden in all Venice, and
+that anyone might think himself happy indeed who could call her sister,
+but that he was happier even than her brother, for he was to be married
+to her, and indeed they were to be married the next day.
+
+Thereupon my heart seemed to swell to bursting, and the blood rushed
+through my veins so that I could hear it and nothing else for a while.
+I managed at last to stammer forth some words of awkward congratulation,
+and he left me, singing merrily, after asking permission to bring his
+bride to see me on the morrow as they returned from church.
+
+'For', said he, 'my Angela has known you very long--ever since she was a
+child, and she has often spoken to me of the poor Englishman who was a
+good Catholic, and who lay all day long for years and years on a sofa at
+a window, and she had said over and over again how dearly she wished she
+could speak to him and comfort him; and one day, when you threw a flower
+into the canal, she asked me whether she might throw another, and I told
+her yes, for he would understand that it meant sympathy for one sorely
+afflicted.'
+
+And so I learned that it was pity, and not love, except indeed such love
+as is akin to pity, that prompted her to interest herself in my welfare,
+and there was an end of it all.
+
+For the two flowers that I thought were on one stem were two flowers
+tied together (but I could not tell that), and they were meant to
+indicate that she and the gondolier were affianced lovers, and my
+expressed pleasure at this symbol delighted her, for she took it to
+mean that I rejoiced in her happiness.
+
+And the next day the gondolier came with a train of other gondoliers,
+all decked in their holiday garb, and on his gondola sat Angela, happy,
+and blushing at her happiness. Then he and she entered the house in
+which I dwelt, and came into my room (and it was strange indeed, after
+so many years of inversion, to see her with her head above her feet!),
+and then she wished me happiness and a speedy restoration to good health
+(which could never be); and I in broken words and with tears in my eyes,
+gave her the little silver crucifix that had stood by my bed or my table
+for so many years. And Angela took it reverently, and crossed herself,
+and kissed it, and so departed with her delighted husband.
+
+And as I heard the song of the gondoliers as they went their way--the
+song dying away in the distance as the shadows of the sundown closed
+around me--I felt that they were singing the requiem of the only love
+that had ever entered my heart.
+
+
+
+
+THE PARSON'S DAUGHTER OF OXNEY COLNE
+
+By Anthony Trollope
+
+(_London Review_, 2 March 1861)
+
+
+The prettiest scenery in all England--and if I am contradicted in that
+assertion, I will say in all Europe--is in Devonshire, on the southern
+and southeastern skirts of Dartmoor, where the rivers Dart and Avon and
+Teign form themselves, and where the broken moor is half cultivated, and
+the wild-looking uplands fields are half moor. In making this assertion
+I am often met with much doubt, but it is by persons who do not really
+know the locality. Men and women talk to me on the matter who have
+travelled down the line of railway from Exeter to Plymouth, who have
+spent a fortnight at Torquay, and perhaps made an excursion from
+Tavistock to the convict prison on Dartmoor. But who knows the glories
+of Chagford? Who has walked through the parish of Manaton? Who is
+conversant with Lustleigh Cleeves and Withycombe in the moor? Who has
+explored Holne Chase? Gentle reader, believe me that you will be rash in
+contradicting me unless you have done these things.
+
+There or thereabouts--I will not say by the waters of which little river
+it is washed--is the parish of Oxney Colne. And for those who would wish
+to see all the beauties of this lovely country a sojourn in Oxney Colne
+would be most desirable, seeing that the sojourner would then be brought
+nearer to all that he would delight to visit, than at any other spot in
+the country. But there is an objection to any such arrangement. There
+are only two decent houses in the whole parish, and these are--or were
+when I knew the locality--small and fully occupied by their possessors.
+The larger and better is the parsonage in which lived the parson and his
+daughter; and the smaller is the freehold residence of a certain Miss Le
+Smyrger, who owned a farm of a hundred acres which was rented by one
+Farmer Cloysey, and who also possessed some thirty acres round her own
+house which she managed herself, regarding herself to be quite as great
+in cream as Mr. Cloysey, and altogether superior to him in the article of
+cider. 'But yeu has to pay no rent, Miss,' Farmer Cloysey would say, when
+Miss Le Smyrger expressed this opinion of her art in a manner too
+defiant. 'Yeu pays no rent, or yeu couldn't do it.' Miss Le Smyrger was
+an old maid, with a pedigree and blood of her own, a hundred and thirty
+acres of fee-simple land on the borders of Dartmoor, fifty years of age,
+a constitution of iron, and an opinion of her own on every subject under
+the sun.
+
+And now for the parson and his daughter. The parson's name was
+Woolsworthy--or Woolathy as it was pronounced by all those who lived
+around him--the Rev. Saul Woolsworthy; and his daughter was Patience
+Woolsworthy, or Miss Patty, as she was known to the Devonshire world of
+those parts. That name of Patience had not been well chosen for her for
+she was a hot-tempered damsel, warm in her convictions, and inclined to
+express them freely. She had but two closely intimate friends in the
+world, and by both of them this freedom of expression had been fully
+permitted to her since she was a child. Miss Le Smyrger and her father
+were well accustomed to her ways, and on the whole well satisfied with
+them. The former was equally free and equally warm-tempered as herself,
+and as Mr. Woolsworthy was allowed by his daughter to be quite paramount
+on his own subject--for he had a subject--he did not object to his
+daughter being paramount on all others. A pretty girl was Patience
+Woolsworthy at the time of which I am writing, and one who possessed
+much that was worthy of remark and admiration had she lived where beauty
+meets with admiration, or where force of character is remarked. But at
+Oxney Colne, on the borders of Dartmoor, there were few to appreciate
+her, and it seemed as though she herself had but little idea of carrying
+her talent further afield, so that it might not remain for ever wrapped
+in a blanket.
+
+She was a pretty girl, tall and slender, with dark eyes and black hair.
+Her eyes were perhaps too round for regular beauty, and her hair was
+perhaps too crisp; her mouth was large and expressive; her nose was
+finely formed, though a critic in female form might have declared
+it to be somewhat broad. But her countenance altogether was very
+attractive--if only it might be seen without that resolution for
+dominion which occasionally marred it, though sometimes it even added
+to her attractions.
+
+It must be confessed on behalf of Patience Woolsworthy that the
+circumstances of her life had peremptorily called upon her to exercise
+dominion. She had lost her mother when she was sixteen, and had had
+neither brother nor sister. She had no neighbours near her fit either
+from education or rank to interfere in the conduct of her life,
+excepting always Miss Le Smyrger. Miss Le Smyrger would have done
+anything for her, including the whole management of her morals and
+of the parsonage household, had Patience been content with such an
+arrangement. But much as Patience had ever loved Miss Le Smyrger, she
+was not content with this, and therefore she had been called on to put
+forth a strong hand of her own. She had put forth this strong hand
+early, and hence had come the character which I am attempting to
+describe. But I must say on behalf of this girl that it was not only
+over others that she thus exercised dominion. In acquiring that power
+she had also acquired the much greater power of exercising rule over
+herself.
+
+But why should her father have been ignored in these family
+arrangements? Perhaps it may almost suffice to say, that of all living
+men her father was the man best conversant with the antiquities of the
+county in which he lived. He was the Jonathan Oldbuck of Devonshire, and
+especially of Dartmoor,--but without that decision of character which
+enabled Oldbuck to keep his womenkind in some kind of subjection, and
+probably enabled him also to see that his weekly bill did not pass their
+proper limits. Our Mr. Oldbuck, of Oxney Colne, was sadly deficient in
+these respects. As a parish pastor with but a small cure he did his duty
+with sufficient energy to keep him, at any rate, from reproach. He was
+kind and charitable to the poor, punctual in his services, forbearing
+with the farmers around him, mild with his brother clergymen, and
+indifferent to aught that bishop or archdeacon might think or say of
+him. I do not name this latter attribute as a virtue, but as a fact. But
+all these points were as nothing in the known character of Mr.
+Woolsworthy, of Oxney Colne. He was the antiquarian of Dartmoor. That
+was his line of life. It was in that capacity that he was known to the
+Devonshire world; it was as such that he journeyed about with his humble
+carpetbag, staying away from his parsonage a night or two at a time; it
+was in that character that he received now and again stray visitors in
+the single spare bedroom--not friends asked to see him and his girl
+because of their friendship--but men who knew something as to this
+buried stone, or that old land-mark. In all these things his daughter
+let him have his own way, assisting and encouraging him. That was his
+line of life, and therefore she respected it. But in all other matters
+she chose to be paramount at the parsonage.
+
+Mr. Woolsworthy was a little man, who always wore, except on Sundays,
+grey clothes--clothes of so light a grey that they would hardly have
+been regarded as clerical in a district less remote. He had now reached
+a goodly age, being full seventy years old; but still he was wiry and
+active, and shewed but few symptoms of decay. His head was bald, and the
+few remaining locks that surrounded it were nearly white. But there was
+a look of energy about his mouth, and a humour in his light grey eye,
+which forbade those who knew him to regard him altogether as an old man.
+As it was, he could walk from Oxney Colne to Priestown, fifteen long
+Devonshire miles across the moor; and he who could do that could hardly
+be regarded as too old for work.
+
+But our present story will have more to do with his daughter than with
+him. A pretty girl, I have said, was Patience Woolsworthy; and one, too,
+in many ways remarkable. She had taken her outlook into life, weighing
+the things which she had and those which she had not, in a manner very
+unusual, and, as a rule, not always desirable for a young lady. The
+things which she had not were very many. She had not society; she had
+not a fortune; she had not any assurance of future means of livelihood;
+she had not high hope of procuring for herself a position in life by
+marriage; she had not that excitement and pleasure in life which she
+read of in such books as found their way down to Oxney Colne Parsonage.
+It would be easy to add to the list of the things which she had not; and
+this list against herself she made out with the utmost vigour. The
+things which she had, or those rather which she assured herself of
+having, were much more easily counted. She had the birth and education
+of a lady, the strength of a healthy woman, and a will of her own. Such
+was the list as she made it out for herself, and I protest that I assert
+no more than the truth in saying that she never added to it either
+beauty, wit, or talent.
+
+I began these descriptions by saying that Oxney Colne would, of all
+places, be the best spot from which a tourist could visit those parts
+of Devonshire, but for the fact that he could obtain there none of the
+accommodation which tourists require. A brother antiquarian might,
+perhaps, in those days have done so, seeing that there was, as I have
+said, a spare bedroom at the parsonage. Any intimate friend of Miss Le
+Smyrger's might be as fortunate, for she was also so provided at Oxney
+Colne, by which name her house was known. But Miss Le Smyrger was not
+given to extensive hospitality, and it was only to those who were bound
+to her, either by ties of blood or of very old friendship, that she
+delighted to open her doors. As her old friends were very few in number,
+as those few lived at a distance, and as her nearest relations were
+higher in the world than she was, and were said by herself to look down
+upon her, the visits made to Oxney Colne were few and far between.
+
+But now, at the period of which I am writing, such a visit was about to
+be made. Miss Le Smyrger had a younger sister who had inherited a
+property in the parish of Oxney Colne equal to that of the lady who
+lived there; but this younger sister had inherited beauty also, and she
+therefore, in early life, had found sundry lovers, one of whom became
+her husband. She had married a man even then well to do in the world,
+but now rich and almost mighty; a Member of Parliament, a Lord of this
+and that board, a man who had a house in Eaton Square, and a park in the
+north of England; and in this way her course of life had been very much
+divided from that of our Miss Le Smyrger. But the Lord of the Government
+board had been blessed with various children, and perhaps it was now
+thought expedient to look after Aunt Penelope's Devonshire acres. Aunt
+Penelope was empowered to leave them to whom she pleased; and though it
+was thought in Eaton Square that she must, as a matter of course, leave
+them to one of the family, nevertheless a little cousinly intercourse
+might make the thing more certain. I will not say that this was the sole
+cause for such a visit, but in these days a visit was to be made by
+Captain Broughton to his aunt. Now Captain John Broughton was the second
+son of Alfonso Broughton, of Clapham Park and Eaton Square, Member of
+Parliament, and Lord of the aforesaid Government Board.
+
+And what do you mean to do with him? Patience Woolsworthy asked of Miss
+Le Smyrger when that lady walked over from the Colne to say that her
+nephew John was to arrive on the following morning.
+
+'Do with him? Why, I shall bring him over here to talk to your father.'
+
+'He'll be too fashionable for that, and papa won't trouble his head
+about him if he finds that he doesn't care for Dartmoor.'
+
+'Then he may fall in love with you, my dear.'
+
+'Well, yes; there's that resource at any rate, and for your sake I dare
+say I should be more civil to him than papa. But he'll soon get tired of
+making love to me, and what you'll do then I cannot imagine.'
+
+That Miss Woolsworthy felt no interest in the coming of the Captain I
+will not pretend to say. The advent of any stranger with whom she would
+be called on to associate must be matter of interest to her in that
+secluded place; and she was not so absolutely unlike other young ladies
+that the arrival of an unmarried young man would be the same to her as
+the advent of some patriarchal pater-familias. In taking that outlook
+into life of which I have spoken she had never said to herself that she
+despised those things from which other girls received the excitement,
+the joys, and the disappointment of their lives. She had simply given
+herself to understand that very little of such things would come in her
+way, and that it behoved her to live--to live happily if such might be
+possible--without experiencing the need of them. She had heard, when
+there was no thought of any such visit to Oxney Colne, that John
+Broughton was a handsome clever man--one who thought much of himself and
+was thought much of by others--that there had been some talk of his
+marrying a great heiress, which marriage, however had not taken place
+through unwillingness on his part, and that he was on the whole a man of
+more mark in the world than the ordinary captains of ordinary regiments.
+
+Captain Broughton came to Oxney Colne, stayed there a fortnight--the
+intended period for his projected visit having been fixed at three or
+four days--and then went his way. He went his way back to his London
+haunts, the time of the year then being the close of the Easter
+holy-days; but as he did so he told his aunt that he should assuredly
+return to her in the autumn.
+
+'And assuredly I shall be happy to see you, John--if you come with a
+certain purpose. If you have no such purpose, you had better remain
+away.'
+
+'I shall assuredly come,' the Captain had replied, and then he had gone
+on his journey.
+
+The summer passed rapidly by, and very little was said between Miss Le
+Smyrger and Miss Woolsworthy about Captain Broughton. In many
+respects--nay, I may say, as to all ordinary matters,--no two women
+could well be more intimate with each other than they were; and more
+than that, they had the courage each to talk to the other with absolute
+truth as to things concerning themselves--a courage in which dear
+friends often fail. But, nevertheless, very little was said between them
+about Captain John Broughton. All that was said may be here repeated.
+
+'John says that he shall return here in August,' Miss Le Smyrger said
+as Patience was sitting with her in the parlour at Oxney Colne, on the
+morning after that gentleman's departure.
+
+'He told me so himself,' said Patience; and as she spoke her round dark
+eyes assumed a look of more than ordinary self-will. If Miss Le Smyrger
+had intended to carry the conversation any further she changed her mind
+as she looked at her companion. Then, as I said, the summer ran by, and
+towards the close of the warm days of July, Miss Le Smyrger, sitting in
+the same chair in the same room, again took up the conversation.
+
+'I got a letter from John this morning. He says that he shall be here on
+the third.'
+
+'Does he?'
+
+'He is very punctual to the time he named.'
+
+'Yes; I fancy that he is a punctual man,' said Patience.
+
+'I hope that you will be glad to see him,' said Miss Le Smyrger.
+
+'Very glad to see him,' said Patience, with a bold clear voice; and then
+the conversation was again dropped, and nothing further was said till
+after Captain Broughton's second arrival in the parish.
+
+Four months had then passed since his departure, and during that time
+Miss Woolsworthy had performed all her usual daily duties in their
+accustomed course. No one could discover that she had been less careful
+in her household matters than had been her wont, less willing to go
+among her poor neighbours, or less assiduous in her attentions to her
+father. But not the less was there a feeling in the minds of those
+around her that some great change had come upon her. She would sit
+during the long summer evenings on a certain spot outside the parsonage
+orchard, at the top of a small sloping field in which their solitary cow
+was always pastured, with a book on her knees before her, but rarely
+reading. There she would sit, with the beautiful view down to the
+winding river below her, watching the setting sun, and thinking,
+thinking, thinking--thinking of something of which she had never spoken.
+Often would Miss Le Smyrger come upon her there, and sometimes would
+pass her even without a word; but never--never once did she dare to ask
+of the matter of her thoughts. But she knew the matter well enough. No
+confession was necessary to inform her that Patience Woolsworthy was in
+love with John Broughton--ay, in love, to the full and entire loss of
+her whole heart.
+
+On one evening she was so sitting till the July sun had fallen and
+hidden himself for the night, when her father came upon her as he
+returned from one of his rambles on the moor. 'Patty,' he said, 'you
+are always sitting there now. Is it not late? Will you not be cold?'
+
+'No papa,' she said, 'I shall not be cold.'
+
+'But won't you come to the house? I miss you when you come in so late
+that there's no time to say a word before we go to bed.'
+
+She got up and followed him into the parsonage, and when they were in
+the sitting-room together, and the door was closed, she came up to him
+and kissed him. 'Papa,' she said, 'would it make you very unhappy if I
+were to leave you?'
+
+'Leave me!' he said, startled by the serious and almost solemn tone of
+her voice. 'Do you mean for always?'
+
+'If I were to marry, papa?'
+
+'Oh, marry! No; that would not make me unhappy. It would make me very
+happy, Patty, to see you married to a man you would love;--very, very
+happy; though my days would be desolate without you.'
+
+'That is it, papa. What would you do if I went from you?'
+
+'What would it matter, Patty? I should be free, at any rate, from a
+load which often presses heavy on me now. What will you do when I shall
+leave you? A few more years and all will be over with me. But who is it,
+love? Has anybody said anything to you?'
+
+'It was only an idea, papa. I don't often think of such a thing; but I
+did think of it then.' And so the subject was allowed to pass by. This
+had happened before the day of the second arrival had been absolutely
+fixed and made known to Miss Woolsworthy.
+
+And then that second arrival took place. The reader may have understood
+from the words with which Miss Le Smyrger authorized her nephew to make
+his second visit to Oxney Colne that Miss Woolsworthy's passion was not
+altogether unauthorized. Captain Broughton had been told that he was not
+to come unless he came with a certain purpose; and having been so told,
+he still persisted in coming. There can be no doubt but that he well
+understood the purport to which his aunt alluded. 'I shall assuredly
+come,' he had said. And true to his word, he was now there.
+
+Patience knew exactly the hour at which he must arrive at the station at
+Newton Abbot, and the time also which it would take to travel over those
+twelve up-hill miles from the station to Oxney. It need hardly be said
+that she paid no visit to Miss Le Smyrger's house on that afternoon; but
+she might have known something of Captain Broughton's approach without
+going thither. His road to the Colne passed by the parsonage-gate, and
+had Patience sat even at her bedroom window she must have seen him. But
+on such an evening she would not sit at her bedroom window;--she would
+do nothing which would force her to accuse herself of a restless longing
+for her lover's coming. It was for him to seek her. If he chose to do
+so, he knew the way to the parsonage.
+
+Miss Le Smyrger--good, dear, honest, hearty Miss Le Smyrger, was in a
+fever of anxiety on behalf of her friend. It was not that she wished her
+nephew to marry Patience,--or rather that she had entertained any such
+wish when he first came among them. She was not given to match-making,
+and moreover thought, or had thought within herself, that they of Oxney
+Colne could do very well without any admixture from Eaton Square. Her
+plan of life had been that when old Mr. Woolsworthy was taken away from
+Dartmoor, Patience should live with her, and that when she also shuffled
+off her coil, then Patience Woolsworthy should be the maiden-mistress
+of Oxney Colne--of Oxney Colne and of Mr. Cloysey's farm--to the utter
+detriment of all the Broughtons. Such had been her plan before nephew
+John had come among them--a plan not to be spoken of till the coming of
+that dark day which should make Patience an orphan. But now her nephew
+had been there, and all was to be altered. Miss Le Smyrger's plan would
+have provided a companion for her old age; but that had not been her
+chief object. She had thought more of Patience than of herself, and now
+it seemed that a prospect of a higher happiness was opening for her
+friend.
+
+'John,' she said, as soon as the first greetings were over, 'do you
+remember the last words that I said to you before you went away?' Now,
+for myself, I much admire Miss Le Smyrger's heartiness, but I do not
+think much of her discretion. It would have been better, perhaps, had
+she allowed things to take their course.
+
+'I can't say that I do,' said the Captain. At the same time the Captain
+did remember very well what those last words had been.
+
+'I am so glad to see you, so delighted to see you, if--if--if--,' and
+then she paused, for with all her courage she hardly dared to ask her
+nephew whether he had come there with the express purport of asking Miss
+Woolsworthy to marry him.
+
+To tell the truth--for there is no room for mystery within the limits of
+this short story,--to tell, I say, at a word the plain and simple truth,
+Captain Broughton had already asked that question. On the day before he
+left Oxney Colne he had in set terms proposed to the parson's daughter,
+and indeed the words, the hot and frequent words, which previously to
+that had fallen like sweetest honey into the ears of Patience
+Woolsworthy, had made it imperative on him to do so. When a man in such
+a place as that has talked to a girl of love day after day, must not he
+talk of it to some definite purpose on the day on which he leaves her?
+Or if he do not, must he not submit to be regarded as false, selfish,
+and almost fraudulent? Captain Broughton, however, had asked the
+question honestly and truly. He had done so honestly and truly, but in
+words, or, perhaps, simply with a tone, that had hardly sufficed to
+satisfy the proud spirit of the girl he loved. She by that time had
+confessed to herself that she loved him with all her heart; but she had
+made no such confession to him. To him she had spoken no word, granted
+no favour, that any lover might rightfully regard as a token of love
+returned. She had listened to him as he spoke, and bade him keep such
+sayings for the drawing-rooms of his fashionable friends. Then he had
+spoken out and had asked for that hand,--not, perhaps, as a suitor
+tremulous with hope,--but as a rich man who knows that he can command
+that which he desires to purchase.
+
+'You should think more of this,' she had said to him at last. 'If you
+would really have me for your wife, it will not be much to you to return
+here again when time for thinking of it shall have passed by.' With
+these words she had dismissed him, and now he had again come back to
+Oxney Colne. But still she would not place herself at the window to look
+for him, nor dress herself in other than her simple morning country
+dress, nor omit one item of her daily work. If he wished to take her at
+all, he should wish to take her as she really was, in her plain country
+life, but he should take her also with full observance of all those
+privileges which maidens are allowed to claim from their lovers. He
+should curtail no ceremonious observance because she was the daughter of
+a poor country parson who would come to him without a shilling, whereas
+he stood high in the world's books. He had asked her to give him all
+that she had, and that all she was ready to give, without stint. But the
+gift must be valued before it could be given or received. He also was to
+give her as much, and she would accept it as being beyond all price. But
+she would not allow that that which was offered to her was in any degree
+the more precious because of his outward worldly standing.
+
+She would not pretend to herself that she thought he would come to her
+that afternoon, and therefore she busied herself in the kitchen and
+about the house, giving directions to her two maids as though the day
+would pass as all other days did pass in that household. They usually
+dined at four, and she rarely, in these summer months, went far from the
+house before that hour. At four precisely she sat down with her father,
+and then said that she was going up as far as Helpholme after dinner.
+Helpholme was a solitary farmhouse in another parish, on the border of
+the moor, and Mr. Woolsworthy asked her whether he should accompany her.
+
+'Do, papa,' she said, 'if you are not too tired.' And yet she had
+thought how probable it might be that she should meet John Broughton on
+her walk. And so it was arranged; but, just as dinner was over, Mr.
+Woolsworthy remembered himself.
+
+'Gracious me,' he said, 'how my memory is going! Gribbles, from
+Ivybridge, and old John Poulter, from Bovey, are coming to meet here by
+appointment. You can't put Helpholme off till tomorrow?'
+
+Patience, however, never put off anything, and therefore at six o'clock,
+when her father had finished his slender modicum of toddy, she tied on
+her hat and went on her walk. She started forth with a quick step, and
+left no word to say by which route she would go. As she passed up along
+the little lane which led towards Oxney Colne she would not even look to
+see if he was coming towards her; and when she left the road, passing
+over a stone stile into a little path which ran first through the upland
+fields, and then across the moor ground towards Helpholme, she did not
+look back once, or listen for his coming step.
+
+She paid her visit, remaining upwards of an hour with the old bedridden
+mother of the farmer of Helpholme. 'God bless you, my darling!' said the
+old lady as she left her; 'and send you someone to make your own path
+bright and happy through the world.' These words were still ringing in
+her ears with all their significance as she saw John Broughton waiting
+for her at the first stile which she had to pass after leaving the
+farmer's haggard.
+
+'Patty,' he said, as he took her hand, and held it close within both his
+own, 'what a chase I have had after you!'
+
+'And who asked you, Captain Broughton?' she answered, smiling. 'If the
+journey was too much for your poor London strength, could you not have
+waited till tomorrow morning, when you would have found me at the
+parsonage?' But she did not draw her hand away from him, or in any way
+pretend that he had not a right to accost her as a lover.
+
+'No, I could not wait. I am more eager to see those I love than you seem
+to be.'
+
+'How do you know whom I love, or how eager I might be to see them? There
+is an old woman there whom I love, and I have thought nothing of this
+walk with the object of seeing her.' And now, slowly drawing her hand
+away from him, she pointed to the farmhouse which she had left.
+
+'Patty,' he said, after a minute's pause, during which she had looked
+full into his face with all the force of her bright eyes; 'I have come
+from London today, straight down here to Oxney, and from my aunt's
+house close upon your footsteps after you to ask you that one question.
+Do you love me?'
+
+'What a Hercules?' she said, again laughing. 'Do you really mean that
+you left London only this morning? Why, you must have been five hours in
+a railway carriage and two in a post-chaise, not to talk of the walk
+afterwards. You ought to take more care of yourself, Captain Broughton!'
+
+He would have been angry with her,--for he did not like to be
+quizzed,--had she not put her hand on his arm as she spoke, and the
+softness of her touch had redeemed the offence of her words.
+
+'All that have I done,' said he, 'that I may hear one word from you.'
+
+'That any word of mine should have such potency! But, let us walk on, or
+my father will take us for some of the standing stones of the moor. How
+have you found your aunt? If you only knew the cares that have sat on
+her dear shoulders for the last week past, in order that your high
+mightyness might have a sufficiency to eat and drink in these desolate
+half-starved regions.'
+
+'She might have saved herself such anxiety. No one can care less for
+such things than I do.'
+
+'And yet I think I have heard you boast of the cook of your club.' And
+then again there was silence for a minute or two.
+
+'Patty,' said he, stopping again in the path; 'answer my question. I
+have a right to demand an answer. Do you love me?'
+
+'And what if I do? What if I have been so silly as to allow your
+perfections to be too many for my weak heart? What then, Captain
+Broughton?'
+
+'It cannot be that you love me, or you would not joke now.'
+
+'Perhaps not, indeed,' she said. It seemed as though she were resolved
+not to yield an inch in her own humour. And then again they walked on.
+
+'Patty,' he said once more, 'I shall get an answer from you
+tonight,--this evening; now, during this walk, or I shall return
+tomorrow, and never revisit this spot again.'
+
+'Oh, Captain Broughton, how should we ever manage to live without you?'
+
+'Very well,' he said; 'up to the end of this walk I can bear it
+all;--and one word spoken then will mend it all.'
+
+During the whole of this time she felt that she was ill-using him. She
+knew that she loved him with all her heart; that it would nearly kill
+her to part with him; that she had heard his renewed offer with an
+ecstasy of joy. She acknowledged to herself that he was giving proof of
+his devotion as strong as any which a girl could receive from her lover.
+And yet she could hardly bring herself to say the word he longed to
+hear. That word once said, and then she knew that she must succumb to
+her love for ever! That word once said, and there would be nothing for
+her but to spoil him with her idolatry! That word once said, and she
+must continue to repeat it into his ears, till perhaps he might be tired
+of hearing it! And now he had threatened her, and how could she speak it
+after that? She certainly would not speak it unless he asked her again
+without such threat. And so they walked on again in silence.
+
+'Patty,' he said at last. 'By the heavens above us you shall answer me.
+Do you love me?'
+
+She now stood still, and almost trembled as she looked up into his face.
+She stood opposite to him for a moment, and then placing her two hands
+on his shoulders, she answered him. 'I do, I do, I do,' she said, 'with
+all my heart; with all my heart--with all my heart and strength.' And
+then her head fell upon his breast.
+
+Captain Broughton was almost as much surprised as delighted by the
+warmth of the acknowledgment made by the eager-hearted passionate girl
+whom he now held within his arms. She had said it now; the words had
+been spoken; and there was nothing for her but to swear to him over and
+over again with her sweetest oaths, that those words were true--true as
+her soul. And very sweet was the walk down from thence to the parsonage
+gate. He spoke no more of the distance of the ground, or the length of
+his day's journey. But he stopped her at every turn that he might press
+her arm the closer to his own, that he might look into the brightness of
+her eyes, and prolong his hour of delight. There were no more gibes now
+on her tongue, no raillery at his London finery, no laughing comments on
+his coming and going. With downright honesty she told him everything:
+how she had loved him before her heart was warranted in such a passion;
+how, with much thinking, she had resolved that it would be unwise to
+take him at his first word, and had thought it better that he should
+return to London, and then think over it; how she had almost repented
+of her courage when she had feared, during those long summer days, that
+he would forget her; and how her heart had leapt for joy when her old
+friend had told her that he was coming.
+
+'And yet,' said he, 'you were not glad to see me!'
+
+'Oh, was I not glad? You cannot understand the feelings of a girl who
+has lived secluded as I have done. Glad is no word for the joy I felt.
+But it was not seeing you that I cared for so much. It was the knowledge
+that you were near me once again. I almost wish now that I had not seen
+you till tomorrow.' But as she spoke she pressed his arm, and this
+caress gave the lie to her last words.
+
+'No, do not come in tonight,' she said, when she reached the little
+wicket that led up the parsonage. 'Indeed you shall not. I could not
+behave myself properly if you did.'
+
+'But I don't want you to behave properly.'
+
+'Oh! I am to keep that for London, am I? But, nevertheless, Captain
+Broughton, I will not invite you either to tea or to supper tonight.'
+
+'Surely I may shake hands with your father.'
+
+'Not tonight--not till--. John, I may tell him, may I not? I must tell
+him at once.'
+
+'Certainly,' said he.
+
+'And then you shall see him tomorrow. Let me see--at what hour shall I
+bid you come?'
+
+'To breakfast.'
+
+'No, indeed. What on earth would your aunt do with her broiled turkey
+and the cold pie? I have got no cold pie for you.'
+
+'I hate cold pie.'
+
+'What a pity! But, John, I should be forced to leave you directly after
+breakfast. Come down--come down at two, or three; and then I will go
+back with you to Aunt Penelope. I must see her tomorrow.' And so at last
+the matter was settled, and the happy Captain, as he left her, was
+hardly resisted in his attempt to press her lips to his own.
+
+When she entered the parlour in which her father was sitting, there
+still were Gribbles and Poulter discussing some knotty point of Devon
+lore. So Patience took off her hat, and sat herself down, waiting till
+they should go. For full an hour she had to wait, and then Gribbles and
+Poulter did go. But it was not in such matters as this that Patience
+Woolsworthy was impatient. She could wait, and wait, and wait, curbing
+herself for weeks and months, while the thing waited for was in her eyes
+good; but she could not curb her hot thoughts or her hot words when
+things came to be discussed which she did not think to be good.
+
+'Papa,' she said, when Gribbles' long-drawn last word had been spoken at
+the door. 'Do you remember how I asked you the other day what you would
+say if I were to leave you?'
+
+'Yes, surely,' he replied, looking up at her in astonishment.
+
+'I am going to leave you now,' she said. 'Dear, dearest father, how am I
+to go from you?'
+
+'Going to leave me,' said he, thinking of her visit to Helpholme, and
+thinking of nothing else.
+
+Now there had been a story about Helpholme. That bedridden old lady
+there had a stalwart son, who was now the owner of the Helpholme
+pastures. But though owner in fee of all those wild acres and of the
+cattle which they supported, he was not much above the farmers around
+him, either in manners or education. He had his merits, however; for he
+was honest, well to do in the world, and modest withal. How strong love
+had grown up, springing from neighbourly kindness, between our Patience
+and his mother, it needs not here to tell; but rising from it had come
+another love--or an ambition which might have grown to love. The young
+man, after much thought, had not dared to speak to Miss Woolsworthy, but
+he had sent a message by Miss Le Smyrger. If there could be any hope for
+him, he would present himself as a suitor--on trial. He did not owe a
+shilling in the world, and had money by him--saved. He wouldn't ask the
+parson for a shilling of fortune. Such had been the tenor of his
+message, and Miss Le Smyrger had delivered it faithfully. 'He does not
+mean it,' Patience had said with her stern voice. 'Indeed he does, my
+dear. You may be sure he is in earnest,' Miss Le Smyrger had replied;
+'and there is not an honester man in these parts.'
+
+'Tell him,' said Patience, not attending to the latter portion of her
+friend's last speech, 'that it cannot be,--make him understand, you
+know--and tell him also that the matter shall be thought of no more.'
+The matter had, at any rate, been spoken of no more, but the young
+farmer still remained a bachelor, and Helpholme still wanted a
+mistress. But all this came back upon the parson's mind when his
+daughter told him that she was about to leave him.
+
+'Yes, dearest,' she said; and as she spoke, she now knelt at his knees.
+'I have been asked in marriage, and I have given myself away.'
+
+'Well, my love, if you will be happy--'
+
+'I hope I shall; I think I shall. But you, papa?'
+
+'You will not be far from us.'
+
+'Oh, yes; in London.'
+
+'In London.'
+
+'Captain Broughton lives in London generally.'
+
+'And has Captain Broughton asked you to marry him?'
+
+'Yes, papa--who else? Is he not good? Will you not love him? Oh, papa,
+do not say that I am wrong to love him?'
+
+He never told her his mistake, or explained to her that he had not
+thought it possible that the high-placed son of the London great man
+shall have fallen in love with his undowered daughter; but he embraced
+her, and told her, with all his enthusiasm, that he rejoiced in her joy,
+and would be happy in her happiness. 'My own Patty,' he said, 'I have
+ever known that you were too good for this life of ours here.' And then
+the evening wore away into the night, with many tears but still with
+much happiness.
+
+Captain Broughton, as he walked back to Oxney Colne, made up his mind
+that he would say nothing on the matter to his aunt till the next
+morning. He wanted to think over it all, and to think it over, if
+possible, by himself. He had taken a step in life, the most important
+that a man is ever called on to take, and he had to reflect whether or
+no he had taken it with wisdom.
+
+'Have you seen her?' said Miss Le Smyrger, very anxiously, when he came
+into the drawing-room.
+
+'Miss Woolsworthy you mean,' said he. 'Yes, I've seen her. As I found
+her out I took a long walk and happened to meet her. Do you know, aunt,
+I think I'll go to bed; I was up at five this morning, and have been on
+the move ever since.'
+
+Miss Le Smyrger perceived that she was to hear nothing that evening, so
+she handed him his candlestick and allowed him to go to his room.
+
+But Captain Broughton did not immediately retire to bed, nor when he
+did so was he able to sleep at once. Had this step that he had taken
+been a wise one? He was not a man who, in worldly matters, had allowed
+things to arrange themselves for him, as is the case with so many men.
+He had formed views for himself, and had a theory of life. Money for
+money's sake he had declared to himself to be bad. Money, as a
+concomitant to things which were in themselves good, he had declared to
+himself to be good also. That concomitant in this affair of his
+marriage, he had now missed. Well; he had made up his mind to that, and
+would put up with the loss. He had means of living of his own, though
+means not so extensive as might have been desirable. That it would be
+well for him to become a married man, looking merely to that state of
+life as opposed to his present state, he had fully resolved. On that
+point, therefore, there was nothing to repent. That Patty Woolsworthy
+was good, affectionate, clever, and beautiful, he was sufficiently
+satisfied. It would be odd indeed if he were not so satisfied now,
+seeing that for the last four months he had declared to himself daily
+that she was so with many inward asseverations. And yet though he
+repeated now again that he was satisfied, I do not think that he was so
+fully satisfied of it as he had been throughout the whole of those four
+months. It is sad to say so, but I fear--I fear that such was the case.
+When you have your plaything how much of the anticipated pleasure
+vanishes, especially if it have been won easily!
+
+He had told none of his family what were his intentions in this second
+visit to Devonshire, and now he had to bethink himself whether they
+would be satisfied. What would his sister say, she who had married the
+Honourable Augustus Gumbleton, gold-stick-in-waiting to Her Majesty's
+Privy Council? Would she receive Patience with open arms, and make much
+of her about London? And then how far would London suit Patience, or
+would Patience suit London? There would be much for him to do in
+teaching her, and it would be well for him to set about the lesson
+without loss of time. So far he got that night, but when the morning
+came he went a step further, and began mentally to criticize her manner
+to himself. It had been very sweet, that warm, that full, that ready
+declaration of love. Yes; it had been very sweet; but--but--; when,
+after her little jokes, she did confess her love, had she not been a
+little too free for feminine excellence? A man likes to be told that he
+is loved, but he hardly wishes that the girl he is to marry should fling
+herself at his head!
+
+Ah me! yes; it was thus he argued to himself as on that morning he went
+through the arrangements of his toilet. 'Then he was a brute,' you say,
+my pretty reader. I have never said that he was not a brute. But this I
+remark, that many such brutes are to be met with in the beaten paths of
+the world's high highway. When Patience Woolsworthy had answered him
+coldly, bidding him go back to London and think over his love; while it
+seemed from her manner that at any rate as yet she did not care for him;
+while he was absent from her, and, therefore, longing for her, the
+possession of her charms, her talent, and bright honesty of purpose had
+seemed to him a thing most desirable. Now they were his own. They had,
+in fact, been his own from the first. The heart of this country-bred
+girl had fallen at the first word from his mouth. Had she not so
+confessed to him? She was very nice,--very nice indeed. He loved her
+dearly. But had he not sold himself too cheaply?
+
+I by no means say that he was not a brute. But whether brute or no he
+was an honest man, and had no remotest dream, either then, on that
+morning, or during the following days on which such thoughts pressed
+more thickly on his mind--of breaking away from his pledged word. At
+breakfast on that morning he told all to Miss Le Smyrger, and that lady,
+with warm and gracious intentions, confided to him her purpose regarding
+her property. 'I have always regarded Patience as my heir,' she said,
+'and shall do so still.'
+
+'Oh, indeed,' said Captain Broughton.
+
+'But it is a great, great pleasure to me to think that she will give
+back the little property to my sister's child. You will have your
+mother's, and thus it will all come together again.'
+
+'Ah!' said Captain Broughton. He had his own ideas about property, and
+did not, even under existing circumstances, like to hear that his aunt
+considered herself at liberty to leave the acres away to one who was by
+blood quite a stranger to the family.
+
+'Does Patience know of this?' he asked.
+
+'Not a word,' said Miss Le Smyrger. And then nothing more was said upon
+the subject.
+
+On that afternoon he went down and received the parson's benediction and
+congratulations with a good grace. Patience said very little on the
+occasion, and indeed was absent during the greater part of the
+interview. The two lovers then walked up to Oxney Colne, and there were
+more benedictions and more congratulations. 'All went merry as a
+marriage bell', at any rate as far as Patience was concerned. Not a word
+had yet fallen from that dear mouth, not a look had yet come over that
+handsome face, which tended in any way to mar her bliss. Her first day
+of acknowledged love was a day altogether happy, and when she prayed for
+him as she knelt beside her bed there was no feeling in her mind that
+any fear need disturb her joy.
+
+I will pass over the next three or four days very quickly, merely saying
+that Patience did not find them so pleasant as that first day after her
+engagement. There was something in her lover's manner--something which
+at first she could not define--which by degrees seemed to grate against
+her feelings. He was sufficiently affectionate, that being a matter on
+which she did not require much demonstration; but joined to his
+affection there seemed to be--; she hardly liked to suggest to herself a
+harsh word, but could it be possible that he was beginning to think that
+she was not good enough for him? And then she asked herself the
+question--was she good enough for him? If there were doubt about that,
+the match should be broken off, though she tore her own heart out in the
+struggle. The truth, however, was this,--that he had begun that teaching
+which he had already found to be so necessary. Now, had any one essayed
+to teach Patience German or mathematics, with that young lady's free
+consent, I believe that she would have been found a meek scholar. But it
+was not probable that she would be meek when she found a self-appointed
+tutor teaching her manners and conduct without her consent.
+
+So matters went on for four or five days, and on the evening of the
+fifth day, Captain Broughton and his aunt drank tea at the parsonage.
+Nothing very especial occurred; but as the parson and Miss Le Smyrger
+insisted on playing backgammon with devoted perseverance during the
+whole evening, Broughton had a good opportunity of saying a word or two
+about those changes in his lady-love which a life in London would
+require--and some word he said also--some single slight word, as to the
+higher station in life to which he would exalt his bride. Patience bore
+it--for her father and Miss Le Smyrger were in the room--she bore it
+well, speaking no syllable of anger, and enduring, for the moment, the
+implied scorn of the old parsonage. Then the evening broke up, and
+Captain Broughton walked back to Oxney Colne with his aunt. 'Patty,' her
+father said to her before they went to bed, 'he seems to me to be a most
+excellent young man.' 'Dear papa,' she answered, kissing him. 'And
+terribly deep in love,' said Mr. Woolsworthy. 'Oh, I don't know about
+that,' she answered, as she left him with her sweetest smile. But though
+she could thus smile at her father's joke, she had already made up her
+mind that there was still something to be learned as to her promised
+husband before she could place herself altogether in his hands. She
+would ask him whether he thought himself liable to injury from this
+proposed marriage; and though he should deny any such thought, she would
+know from the manner of his denial what his true feelings were.
+
+And he, too, on that night, during his silent walk with Miss Le Smyrger,
+had entertained some similar thoughts. 'I fear she is obstinate', he had
+said to himself, and then he had half accused her of being sullen also.
+'If that be her temper, what a life of misery I have before me!'
+
+'Have you fixed a day yet?' his aunt asked him as they came near to her
+house.
+
+'No, not yet; I don't know whether it will suit me to fix it before I
+leave.'
+
+'Why, it was but the other day you were in such a hurry.'
+
+'Ah--yes-I have thought more about it since then.'
+
+'I should have imagined that this would depend on what Patty thinks,'
+said Miss Le Smyrger, standing up for the privileges of her sex. 'It is
+presumed that the gentleman is always ready as soon as the lady will
+consent.'
+
+'Yes, in ordinary cases it is so; but when a girl is taken out of her
+own sphere--'
+
+'Her own sphere! Let me caution you, Master John, not to talk to Patty
+about her own sphere.'
+
+'Aunt Penelope, as Patience is to be my wife and not yours, I must claim
+permission to speak to her on such subjects as may seem suitable to me.'
+And then they parted--not in the best humour with each other.
+
+On the following day Captain Broughton and Miss Woolsworthy did not meet
+till the evening. She had said, before those few ill-omened words had
+passed her lover's lips, that she would probably be at Miss Le
+Smyrger's house on the following morning. Those ill-omened words did
+pass her lover's lips, and then she remained at home. This did not come
+from sullenness, nor even from anger, but from a conviction that it
+would be well that she should think much before she met him again. Nor
+was he anxious to hurry a meeting. His thought--his base thought--was
+this; that she would be sure to come up to the Colne after him; but she
+did not come, and therefore in the evening he went down to her, and
+asked her to walk with him.
+
+They went away by the path that led by Helpholme, and little was said
+between them till they had walked some mile together. Patience, as she
+went along the path, remembered almost to the letter the sweet words
+which had greeted her ears as she came down that way with him on the
+night of his arrival; but he remembered nothing of that sweetness then.
+Had he not made an ass of himself during these last six months? That was
+the thought which very much had possession of his mind.
+
+'Patience,' he said at last, having hitherto spoken only an indifferent
+word now and again since they had left the parsonage, 'Patience, I hope
+you realize the importance of the step which you and I are about to
+take?'
+
+'Of course I do,' she answered: 'what an odd question that is for you to
+ask!'
+
+'Because,' said he, 'sometimes I almost doubt it. It seems to me as
+though you thought you could remove yourself from here to your new home
+with no more trouble than when you go from home up to the Colne.'
+
+'Is that meant for a reproach, John?'
+
+'No, not for a reproach, but for advice. Certainly not for a reproach.'
+
+'I am glad of that.'
+
+'But I should wish to make you think how great is the leap in the world
+which you are about to take.' Then again they walked on for many steps
+before she answered him.
+
+'Tell me, then, John,' she said, when she had sufficiently considered
+what words she would speak;--and as she spoke a dark bright colour
+suffused her face, and her eyes flashed almost with anger. 'What leap do
+you mean? Do you mean a leap upwards?'
+
+'Well, yes; I hope it will be so.'
+
+'In one sense, certainly, it would be a leap upwards. To be the wife of
+the man I loved; to have the privilege of holding his happiness in my
+hand; to know that I was his own--the companion whom he had chosen out
+of all the world--that would, indeed, be a leap upward; a leap almost to
+heaven, if all that were so. But if you mean upwards in any other
+sense--'
+
+'I was thinking of the social scale.'
+
+'Then, Captain Broughton, your thoughts were doing me dishonour.'
+
+'Doing you dishonour!'
+
+'Yes, doing me dishonour. That your father is, in the world's esteem, a
+greater man than mine is doubtless true enough. That you, as a man, are
+richer than I am as a woman is doubtless also true. But you dishonour
+me, and yourself also, if these things can weigh with you now.'
+
+'Patience,--I think you can hardly know what words you are saying to
+me.'
+
+'Pardon me, but I think I do. Nothing that you can give me--no gifts of
+that description--can weigh aught against that which I am giving you. If
+you had all the wealth and rank of the greatest lord in the land, it
+would count as nothing in such a scale. If--as I have not doubted--if in
+return for my heart you have given me yours, then--then--then, you have
+paid me fully. But when gifts such as those are going, nothing else can
+count even as a make-weight.'
+
+'I do not quite understand you,' he answered, after a pause. 'I fear you
+are a little high-flown.' And then, while the evening was still early,
+they walked back to the parsonage almost without another word.
+
+Captain Broughton at this time had only one more full day to remain at
+Oxney Colne. On the afternoon following that he was to go as far as
+Exeter, and thence return to London. Of course it was to be expected,
+that the wedding day would be fixed before he went, and much had been
+said about it during the first day or two of his engagement. Then he had
+pressed for an early time, and Patience, with a girl's usual diffidence,
+had asked for some little delay. But now nothing was said on the
+subject; and how was it probable that such a matter could be settled
+after such a conversation as that which I have related? That evening,
+Miss Le Smyrger asked whether the day had been fixed. 'No,' said Captain
+Broughton harshly; 'nothing has been fixed.' 'But it will be arranged
+before you go.' 'Probably not,' he said; and then the subject was
+dropped for the time.
+
+'John,' she said, just before she went to bed, 'if there be anything
+wrong between you and Patience, I conjure you to tell me.'
+
+'You had better ask her,' he replied. 'I can tell you nothing.'
+
+On the following morning he was much surprised by seeing Patience on the
+gravel path before Miss Le Smyrger's gate immediately after breakfast.
+He went to the door to open it for her, and she, as she gave him her
+hand, told him that she came up to speak to him. There was no hesitation
+in her manner, nor any look of anger in her face. But there was in her
+gait and form, in her voice and countenance, a fixedness of purpose
+which he had never seen before, or at any rate had never acknowledged.
+
+'Certainly,' said he. 'Shall I come out with you, or will you come
+upstairs?'
+
+'We can sit down in the summer-house,' she said; and thither they both
+went.
+
+'Captain Broughton,' she said--and she began her task the moment that
+they were both seated--'You and I have engaged ourselves as man and
+wife, but perhaps we have been over rash.'
+
+'How so?' said he.
+
+'It may be--and indeed I will say more--it is the case that we have made
+this engagement without knowing enough of each other's character.'
+
+'I have not thought so.'
+
+'The time will perhaps come when you will so think, but for the sake of
+all that we most value, let it come before it is too late. What would be
+our fate--how terrible would be our misery, if such a thought should
+come to either of us after we have linked our lots together.'
+
+There was a solemnity about her as she thus spoke which almost repressed
+him,--which for a time did prevent him from taking that tone of
+authority which on such a subject he would choose to adopt. But he
+recovered himself. 'I hardly think that this comes well from you,' he
+said.
+
+'From whom else should it come? Who else can fight my battle for me;
+and, John, who else can fight that same battle on your behalf? I tell
+you this, that with your mind standing towards me as it does stand at
+present you could not give me your hand at the altar with true words and
+a happy conscience. Is it not true? You have half repented of your
+bargain already. Is it not so?'
+
+He did not answer her; but getting up from his seat walked to the front
+of the summer-house, and stood there with his back turned upon her. It
+was not that he meant to be ungracious, but in truth he did not know how
+to answer her. He had half repented of his bargain.
+
+'John,' she said, getting up and following him so that she could put her
+hand upon his arm, 'I have been very angry with you.'
+
+'Angry with me!' he said, turning sharp upon her.
+
+'Yes, angry with you. You would have treated me like a child. But that
+feeling has gone now. I am not angry now. There is my hand;--the hand of
+a friend. Let the words that have been spoken between us be as though
+they had not been spoken. Let us both be free.'
+
+'Do you mean it?' he asked.
+
+'Certainly I mean it.' As she spoke these words her eyes were filled
+with tears in spite of all the efforts she could make to restrain them;
+but he was not looking at her, and her efforts had sufficed to prevent
+any sob from being audible.
+
+'With all my heart,' he said; and it was manifest from his tone that he
+had no thought of her happiness as he spoke. It was true that she had
+been angry with him--angry, as she had herself declared; but
+nevertheless, in what she had said and what she had done, she had
+thought more of his happiness than of her own. Now she was angry once
+again.
+
+'With all your heart, Captain Broughton! Well, so be it. If with all
+your heart, then is the necessity so much the greater. You go tomorrow.
+Shall we say farewell now?'
+
+'Patience, I am not going to be lectured.'
+
+'Certainly not by me. Shall we say farewell now?'
+
+'Yes, if you are determined.'
+
+'I am determined. Farewell, Captain Broughton. You have all my wishes
+for your happiness.' And she held out her hand to him.
+
+'Patience!' he said. And he looked at her with a dark frown, as though
+he would strive to frighten her into submission. If so, he might have
+saved himself any such attempt.
+
+'Farewell, Captain Broughton. Give me your hand, for I cannot stay.' He
+gave her his hand, hardly knowing why he did so. She lifted it to her
+lips and kissed it, and then, leaving him, passed from the summer-house
+down through the wicket-gate, and straight home to the parsonage.
+
+During the whole of that day she said no word to anyone of what had
+occurred. When she was once more at home she went about her household
+affairs as she had done on that day of his arrival. When she sat down to
+dinner with her father he observed nothing to make him think that she
+was unhappy, nor during the evening was there any expression in her
+face, or any tone in her voice, which excited his attention. On the
+following morning Captain Broughton called at the parsonage, and the
+servant-girl brought word to her mistress that he was in the parlour.
+But she would not see him. 'Laws miss, you ain't a quarrelled with your
+beau?' the poor girl said. 'No, not quarrelled,' she said; 'but give him
+that.' It was a scrap of paper containing a word or two in pencil. 'It
+is better that we should not meet again. God bless you.' And from that
+day to this, now more than ten years, they have never met.
+
+'Papa,' she said to her father that afternoon, 'dear papa, do not be
+angry with me. It is all over between me and John Broughton. Dearest,
+you and I will not be separated.'
+
+It would be useless here to tell how great was the old man's surprise
+and how true his sorrow. As the tale was told to him no cause was given
+for anger with anyone. Not a word was spoken against the suitor who had
+on that day returned to London with a full conviction that now at least
+he was relieved from his engagement. 'Patty, my darling child,' he said,
+'may God grant that it be for the best!'
+
+'It is for the best,' she answered stoutly. 'For this place I am fit;
+and I much doubt whether I am fit for any other.'
+
+On that day she did not see Miss Le Smyrger, but on the following
+morning, knowing that Captain Broughton had gone off,--having heard the
+wheels of the carriage as they passed by the parsonage gate on his way
+to the station,--she walked up to the Colne.
+
+'He has told you, I suppose?' said she.
+
+'Yes,' said Miss Le Smyrger. 'And I will never see him again unless he
+asks your pardon on his knees. I have told him so. I would not even give
+him my hand as he went.'
+
+'But why so, thou kindest one? The fault was mine more than his.'
+
+'I understand. I have eyes in my head,' said the old maid. 'I have
+watched him for the last four or five days. If you could have kept the
+truth to yourself and bade him keep off from you, he would have been at
+your feet now, licking the dust from your shoes.'
+
+'But, dear friend, I do not want a man to lick dust from my shoes.'
+
+'Ah, you are a fool. You do not know the value of your own wealth.'
+
+'True; I have been a fool. I was a fool to think that one coming from
+such a life as he has led could be happy with such as I am. I know the
+truth now. I have bought the lesson dearly--but perhaps not too dearly,
+seeing that it will never be forgotten.'
+
+There was but little more said about the matter between our three
+friends at Oxney Colne. What, indeed, could be said? Miss Le Smyrger for
+a year or two still expected that her nephew would return and claim his
+bride; but he has never done so, nor has there been any correspondence
+between them. Patience Woolsworthy had learned her lesson dearly. She
+had given her whole heart to the man; and, though she so bore herself
+that no one was aware of the violence of the struggle, nevertheless the
+struggle within her bosom was very violent. She never told herself that
+she had done wrong; she never regretted her loss; but yet--yet!--the
+loss was very hard to bear. He also had loved her, but he was not
+capable of a love which could much injure his daily peace. Her daily
+peace was gone for many a day to come.
+
+Her father is still living; but there is a curate now in the parish. In
+conjunction with him and with Miss Le Smyrger she spends her time in the
+concerns of the parish. In her own eyes she is a confirmed old maid; and
+such is my opinion also. The romance of her life was played out in that
+summer. She never sits now lonely on the hillside thinking how much she
+might do for one whom she really loved. But with a large heart she loves
+many, and, with no romance, she works hard to lighten the burdens of
+those she loves.
+
+As for Captain Broughton, all the world knows that he did marry that
+great heiress with whom his name was once before connected, and that he
+is now a useful member of Parliament, working on committees three or
+four days a week with zeal that is indefatigable. Sometimes, not often,
+as he thinks of Patience Woolsworthy a smile comes across his face.
+
+
+
+
+ANTHONY GARSTIN'S COURTSHIP
+
+By Hubert Crackanthorpe
+
+(_Savoy_, July 1896)
+
+
+I
+
+A stampede of huddled sheep, wildly scampering over the slaty shingle,
+emerged from the leaden mist that muffled the fell-top, and a shrill
+shepherd's whistle broke the damp stillness of the air. And presently a
+man's figure appeared, following the sheep down the hillside. He halted
+a moment to whistle curtly to his two dogs, who, laying back their ears,
+chased the sheep at top speed beyond the brow; then, his hands deep in
+his pockets, he strode vigorously forward. A streak of white smoke from
+a toiling train was creeping silently across the distance: the great,
+grey, desolate undulations of treeless country showed no other sign of
+life.
+
+The sheep hurried in single file along a tiny track worn threadbare amid
+the brown, lumpy grass: and, as the man came round the mountain's
+shoulder, a narrow valley opened out beneath him--a scanty patchwork of
+green fields, and, here and there, a whitewashed farm, flanked by a dark
+cluster of sheltering trees.
+
+The man walked with a loose, swinging gait. His figure was spare and
+angular: he wore a battered, black felt hat and clumsy, iron-bound
+boots: his clothes were dingy from long exposure to the weather. He had
+close-set, insignificant eyes, much wrinkled, and stubbly eyebrows
+streaked with grey. His mouth was close-shaven, and drawn by his
+abstraction into hard and taciturn lines; beneath his chin bristled an
+unkempt fringe of sandy-coloured hair.
+
+When he reached the foot of the fell, the twilight was already blurring
+the distance. The sheep scurried, with a noisy rustling, across a flat,
+swampy stretch, over-grown with rushes, while the dogs headed them
+towards a gap in a low, ragged wall built of loosely-heaped boulders.
+The man swung the gate to after them, and waited, whistling
+peremptorily, recalling the dogs. A moment later, the animals
+reappeared, cringing as they crawled through the bars of the gate. He
+kicked out at them contemptuously, and mounting a stone stile a few
+yards further up the road, dropped into a narrow lane.
+
+Presently, as he passed a row of lighted windows, he heard a voice call
+to him. He stopped, and perceived a crooked, white-bearded figure,
+wearing clerical clothes, standing in the garden gateway.
+
+'Good-evening, Anthony. A raw evening this.'
+
+'Ay, Mr. Blencarn, it is a bit frittish,' he answered. 'I've jest bin
+gittin' a few lambs off t'fell. I hope ye're keepin' fairly, an' Miss
+Rosa too.' He spoke briefly, with a loud, spontaneous cordiality.
+
+'Thank ye, Anthony, thank ye. Rosa's down at the church, playing over
+the hymns for tomorrow. How's Mrs. Garstin?'
+
+'Nicely, thank ye, Mr. Blencarn. She's wonderful active, is mother.'
+
+'Well, good night to ye, Anthony,' said the old man, clicking the gate.
+
+'Good night, Mr. Blencarn,' he called back.
+
+A few minutes later the twinkling lights of the village came in sight,
+and from within the sombre form of the square-towered church, looming by
+the roadside, the slow, solemn strains of the organ floated out on the
+evening air. Anthony lightened his tread: then paused, listening; but,
+presently, becoming aware that a man stood, listening also, on the
+bridge some few yards distant, he moved forward again. Slackening his
+pace, as he approached, he eyed the figure keenly; but the man paid no
+heed to him, remaining, with his back turned, gazing over the parapet
+into the dark, gurgling stream.
+
+Anthony trudged along the empty village street, past the gleaming
+squares of ruddy gold, starting on either side out of the darkness. Now
+and then he looked furtively backwards. The straight open road lay
+behind him, glimmering wanly: the organ seemed to have ceased: the
+figure on the bridge had left the parapet, and appeared to be moving
+away towards the church. Anthony halted, watching it till it had
+disappeared into the blackness beneath the churchyard trees. Then, after
+a moment's hesitation, he left the road, and mounted an upland meadow
+towards his mother's farm.
+
+It was a bare, oblong house. In front, a whitewashed porch, and a narrow
+garden-plot, enclosed by a low iron railing, were dimly discernible:
+behind, the steep fell-side loomed like a monstrous, mysterious curtain
+hung across the night. He passed round the back into the twilight of a
+wide yard, cobbled and partially grass-grown, vaguely flanked by the
+shadowy outlines of long, low farm-buildings. All was wrapped in
+darkness: somewhere overhead a bat fluttered, darting its puny scream.
+
+Inside, a blazing peat-fire scattered capering shadows across the
+smooth, stone floor, flickered among the dim rows of hams suspended from
+the ceiling and on the panelled cupboards of dark, glistening oak. A
+servant-girl, spreading the cloth for supper, clattered her clogs in and
+out of the kitchen: old Mrs. Garstin was stooping before the hearth,
+tremulously turning some girdle-cakes that lay roasting in the embers.
+
+At the sound of Anthony's heavy tread in the passage, she rose, glancing
+sharply at the clock above the chimney-piece. She was a heavy-built
+woman, upright, stalwart almost, despite her years. Her face was gaunt
+and sallow; deep wrinkles accentuated the hardness of her features. She
+wore a black widow's cap above her iron-grey hair, gold-rimmed
+spectacles, and a soiled, chequered apron.
+
+'Ye're varra late, Tony,' she remarked querulously.
+
+He unloosened his woollen neckerchief, and when he had hung it
+methodically with his hat behind the door, answered:
+
+''Twas terrible thick on t' fell-top, an' them two bitches be that
+senseless.'
+
+She caught his sleeve, and, through her spectacles, suspiciously
+scrutinized his face.
+
+'Ye did na meet wi' Rosa Blencarn?'
+
+'Nay, she was in church, hymn-playin', wi' Luke Stock hangin' roond
+door,' he retorted bitterly, rebuffing her with rough impatience.
+
+She moved away, nodding sententiously to herself. They began supper:
+neither spoke: Anthony sat slowly stirring his tea, and staring moodily
+into the flames: the bacon on his plate lay untouched. From time to time
+his mother, laying down her knife and fork, looked across at him in
+unconcealed asperity, pursing her wide, ungainly mouth. At last,
+abruptly setting down her cup, she broke out:
+
+'I wonder ye hav'na mare pride, Tony. For hoo lang are ye goin' t'
+continue settin' mopin' and broodin' like a seck sheep? Ye'll jest mak
+yesself ill, an' then I reckon what ye'll prove satisfied. Ay, but I
+wonder ye hav'na more pride.'
+
+But he made no answer, remaining unmoved, as if he had not heard.
+
+Presently, half to himself, without raising his eyes, he murmured:
+
+'Luke be goin' South, Monday.'
+
+'Well, ye canna tak' oop wi' his leavin's anyways. It hasna coom't that,
+has it? Ye doan't intend settin' all t' parish a laughin' at ye a second
+occasion?'
+
+He flushed dully, and bending over his plate, mechanically began his
+supper.
+
+'Wa dang it,' he broke out a minute later, 'd'ye think I heed the
+cacklin' o' fifty parishes? Na, not I,' and, with a short, grim laugh,
+he brought his fist down heavily on the oak table.
+
+'Ye're daft, Tony,' the old woman blurted.
+
+'Daft or na daft, I tell ye this, mother, that I be forty-six year o'
+age this back-end, and there be some things I will na listen to. Rosa
+Blencarn's bonny enough for me.'
+
+'Ay, bonny enough--I've na patience wi' ye. Bonny enough--tricked oot
+in her furbelows, gallivantin' wi' every royster fra Pe'rith. Bonny
+enough--that be all ye think on. She's bin a proper parson's niece--the
+giddy, feckless creature, an she'd mak' ye a proper sort o' wife, Tony
+Garstin, ye great, fond booby.'
+
+She pushed back her chair, and, hurriedly clattering the crockery, began
+to clear away the supper.
+
+'T' hoose be mine, t' Lord be praised,' she continued in a loud, hard
+voice, 'an' as long as he spare me, Tony, I'll na see Rosa Blencarn set
+foot inside it.'
+
+Anthony scowled, without replying, and drew his chair to the hearth. His
+mother bustled about the room behind him. After a while she asked:
+
+'Did ye pen t' lambs in t' back field?'
+
+'Na, they're in Hullam bottom,' he answered curtly.
+
+The door closed behind her, and by and by he could hear her moving
+overhead. Meditatively blinking, he filled his pipe clumsily, and
+pulling a crumpled newspaper from his pocket, sat on over the
+smouldering fire, reading and stolidly puffing.
+
+
+II
+
+The music rolled through the dark, empty church. The last, leaden
+flicker of daylight glimmered in through the pointed windows, and beyond
+the level rows of dusky pews, tenanted only by a litter of prayer-books,
+two guttering candles revealed the organ pipes, and the young girl's
+swaying figure.
+
+She played vigorously. Once or twice the tune stumbled, and she
+recovered it impatiently, bending over the key-board, showily
+flourishing her wrists as she touched the stops. She was bare-headed
+(her hat and cloak lay beside her on a stool). She had fair, fluffy
+hair, cut short behind her neck; large, round eyes, heightened by a
+fringe of dark lashes; rough, ruddy cheeks, and a rosy, full-lipped,
+unstable mouth. She was dressed quite simply, in a black, close-fitting
+bodice, a little frayed at the sleeves. Her hands and neck were coarsely
+fashioned: her comeliness was brawny, literal, unfinished, as it were.
+
+When at last the ponderous chords of the Amen faded slowly into the
+twilight, flushed, breathing a little quickly, she paused, listening to
+the stillness of the church. Presently a small boy emerged from behind
+the organ.
+
+'Good evenin', Miss Rosa', he called, trotting briskly away down the
+aisle.
+
+'Good night, Robert', she answered, absently.
+
+After a while, with an impatient gesture, as if to shake some
+importunate thought from her mind, she rose abruptly, pinned on her hat,
+threw her cloak round her shoulders, blew out the candles, and groped
+her way through the church, towards the half-open door. As she hurried
+along the narrow pathway that led across the churchyard, of a sudden, a
+figure started out of the blackness.
+
+'Who's that?' she cried, in a loud, frightened voice.
+
+A man's uneasy laugh answered her.
+
+'It's only me, Rosa. I didna' think t' scare ye. I've bin waitin' for
+ye, this hoor past.'
+
+She made no reply, but quickened her pace. He strode on beside her.
+
+'I'm off, Monday, ye know,' he continued. And, as she said nothing,
+'Will ye na stop jest a minnit? I'd like t' speak a few words wi' ye
+before I go, an tomorrow I hev t' git over t' Scarsdale betimes,' he
+persisted.
+
+'I don't want t' speak wi' ye: I don't want ever to see ye agin. I jest
+hate the sight o' ye.' She spoke with a vehement, concentrated
+hoarseness.
+
+'Nay, but ye must listen to me. I will na be put off wi' fratchin
+speeches.'
+
+And gripping her arm, he forced her to stop.
+
+'Loose me, ye great beast,' she broke out.
+
+'I'll na hould ye, if ye'll jest stand quiet-like. I meant t' speak fair
+t' ye, Rosa.'
+
+They stood at a bend in the road, face to face quite close together.
+Behind his burly form stretched the dimness of a grey, ghostly field.
+
+'What is't ye hev to say to me? Hev done wi' it quick,' she said
+sullenly.
+
+'It be jest this, Rosa,' he began with dogged gravity. 'I want t' tell
+ye that ef any trouble comes t'ye after I'm gone--ye know t' what I
+refer--I want t' tell ye that I'm prepared t' act square by ye. I've
+written out on an envelope my address in London. Luke Stock, care o'
+Purcell and Co., Smithfield Market, London.'
+
+'Ye're a bad, sinful man. I jest hate t' sight o' ye. I wish ye were
+dead.'
+
+'Ay, but I reckon what ye'd ha best thought o' that before. Ye've
+changed yer whistle considerably since Tuesday. Nay, hould on,' he
+added, as she struggled to push past him. 'Here's t' envelope.'
+
+She snatched the paper, and tore it passionately, scattering the
+fragments on to the road. When she had finished, he burst out angrily:
+
+'Ye cussed, unreasonable fool.'
+
+'Let me pass, ef ye've nought mare t'say,' she cried.
+
+'Nay, I'll na part wi' ye this fashion. Ye can speak soft enough when ye
+choose.' And seizing her shoulders, he forced her backwards against the
+wall.
+
+'Ye do look fine, an' na mistake, when ye're jest ablaze wi' ragin','
+he laughed bluntly, lowering his face to hers.
+
+'Loose me, loose me, ye great coward,' she gasped, striving to free her
+arms.
+
+Holding her fast, he expostulated:
+
+'Coom, Rosa, can we na part friends?'
+
+'Part friends, indeed,' she retorted bitterly. 'Friends wi' the likes o'
+you. What d'ye tak me for? Let me git home, I tell ye. An' please God
+I'll never set eyes on ye again. I hate t' sight o' ye.'
+
+'Be off wi' ye, then,' he answered, pushing her roughly back into the
+road. 'Be off wi' ye, ye silly. Ye canna say I hav na spak fair t' ye,
+an', by goom, ye'll na see me shally-wallyin this fashion agin. Be off
+wi' ye: ye can jest shift for yerself, since ye canna keep a civil
+tongue in yer head.'
+
+The girl, catching at her breath, stood as if dazed, watching his
+retreating figure; then starting forward at a run, disappeared up the
+hill, into the darkness.
+
+
+III
+
+Old Mr. Blencarn concluded his husky sermon. The scanty congregation, who
+had been sitting, stolidly immobile in their stiff, Sunday clothes,
+shuffled to their feet, and the pewful of school children, in clamorous
+chorus, intoned the final hymn. Anthony stood near the organ, absently
+contemplating, while the rude melody resounded through the church,
+Rosa's deft manipulation of the key-board. The rugged lines of his face
+were relaxed to a vacant, thoughtful limpness, that aged his expression
+not a little: now and then, as if for reference, he glanced
+questioningly at the girl's profile.
+
+A few minutes later the service was over, and the congregation sauntered
+out down the aisle. A gawky group of men remained loitering by the
+church door: one of them called to Anthony; but, nodding curtly, he
+passed on, and strode away down the road, across the grey upland
+meadows, towards home. As soon as he had breasted the hill, however, and
+was no longer visible from below, he turned abruptly to the left, along
+a small, swampy hollow, till he had reached the lane that led down from
+the fell-side.
+
+He clambered over a rugged, moss-grown wall, and stood, gazing
+expectantly down the dark, disused roadway; then, after a moment's
+hesitation, perceiving nobody, seated himself beneath the wall, on a
+projecting slab of stone.
+
+Overhead hung a sombre, drifting sky. A gusty wind rollicked down from
+the fell--huge masses of chilly grey, stripped of the last night's mist.
+A few dead leaves fluttered over the stones, and from off the fell-side
+there floated the plaintive, quavering rumour of many bleating sheep.
+
+Before long, he caught sight of two figures coming towards him, slowly
+climbing the hill. He sat awaiting their approach, fidgeting with his
+sandy beard, and abstractedly grinding the ground beneath his heel. At
+the brow they halted: plunging his hands deep into his pockets, he
+strolled sheepishly towards them.
+
+'Ah! good day t' ye, Anthony,' called the old man, in a shrill,
+breathless voice. ''Tis a long hill, an' my legs are not what they were.
+Time was when I'd think nought o' a whole day's tramp on t' fells. Ay,
+I'm gittin' feeble, Anthony, that's what 'tis. And if Rosa here wasn't
+the great, strong lass she is, I don't know how her old uncle'd manage;'
+and he turned to the girl with a proud, tremulous smile.
+
+'Will ye tak my arm a bit, Mr. Blencarn? Miss Rosa'll be tired, likely,'
+Anthony asked.
+
+'Nay, Mr. Garstin, but I can manage nicely,' the girl interrupted
+sharply.
+
+Anthony looked up at her as she spoke. She wore a straw hat, trimmed
+with crimson velvet, and a black, fur-edged cape, that seemed to set off
+mightily the fine whiteness of her neck. Her large, dark eyes were fixed
+upon him. He shifted his feet uneasily, and dropped his glance.
+
+She linked her uncle's arm in hers, and the three moved slowly forward.
+Old Mr. Blencarn walked with difficulty, pausing at intervals for breath.
+Anthony, his eyes bent on the ground, sauntered beside him, clumsily
+kicking at the cobbles that lay in his path.
+
+When they reached the vicarage gate, the old man asked him to come
+inside.
+
+'Not jest now, thank ye, Mr. Blencarn. I've that lot o' lambs t' see to
+before dinner. It's a grand marnin', this,' he added, inconsequently.
+
+'Uncle's bought a nice lot o' Leghorns, Tuesday,' Rosa remarked.
+Anthony met her gaze; there was a grave, subdued expression on her face
+this morning, that made her look more of a woman, less of a girl.
+
+'Ay, do ye show him the birds, Rosa. I'd be glad to have his opinion on
+'em.'
+
+The old man turned to hobble into the house, and Rosa, as she supported
+his arm, called back over her shoulder:
+
+'I'll not be a minute, Mr. Garstin.'
+
+Anthony strolled round to the yard behind the house, and waited,
+watching a flock of glossy-white poultry that strutted, perkily pecking,
+over the grass-grown cobbles.
+
+'Ay, Miss Rosa, they're a bonny lot,' he remarked, as the girl joined
+him.
+
+'Are they not?' she rejoined, scattering a handful of corn before her.
+
+The birds scuttled across the yard with greedy, outstretched necks. The
+two stood, side by side, gazing at them.
+
+'What did he give for 'em?' Anthony asked.
+
+'Fifty-five shillings.'
+
+'Ay,' he assented, nodding absently.
+
+'Was Dr. Sanderson na seein' o' yer father yesterday?' he asked, after a
+moment.
+
+'He came in t' forenoon. He said he was jest na worse.'
+
+'Ye knaw, Miss Rosa, as I'm still thinkin' on ye,' he began abruptly,
+without looking up.
+
+'I reckon it ain't much use,' she answered shortly, scattering another
+handful of corn towards the birds. 'I reckon I'll never marry. I'm jest
+weary o' bein' courted--'
+
+'I would na weary ye wi' courtin',' he interrupted.
+
+She laughed noisily.
+
+'Ye are a queer customer, an' na mistake.'
+
+'I'm a match for Luke Stock anyway,' he continued fiercely. 'Ye think
+nought o' taking oop wi' him--about as ranty, wild a young feller as
+ever stepped.'
+
+The girl reddened, and bit her lip.
+
+'I don't know what you mean, Mr. Garstin. It seems to me ye're might
+hasty in jumpin' t' conclusions.'
+
+'Mabbe I kin see a thing or two,' he retorted doggedly.
+
+'Luke Stock's gone to London, anyway.'
+
+'Ay, an' a powerful good job too, in t' opinion o' some folks.'
+
+'Ye're jest jealous,' she exclaimed, with a forced titter. 'Ye're jest
+jealous o' Luke Stock.'
+
+'Nay, but ye need na fill yer head wi' that nonsense. I'm too deep set
+on ye t' feel jealousy,' he answered, gravely.
+
+The smile faded from her face, as she murmured:
+
+'I canna mak ye out, Mr. Garstin.'
+
+'Nay, that ye canna. An' I suppose it's natural, considerin' ye're
+little more than a child, an' I'm a'most old enough to be yer father,'
+he retorted, with blunt bitterness.
+
+'But ye know yer mother's took that dislike t' me. She'd never abide the
+sight o' me at Hootsey.'
+
+He remained silent a moment, moodily reflecting.
+
+'She'd jest ha't' git ower it. I see nought in that objection,' he
+declared.
+
+'Nay, Mr. Garstin, it canna be. Indeed it canna be at all. Ye'd best jest
+put it right from yer mind, once and for all.'
+
+'I'd jest best put it off my mind, had I? Ye talk like a child!' he
+burst out scornfully. 'I intend ye t' coom t' love me, an' I will na tak
+ye till ye do. I'll jest go on waitin' for ye, an', mark my words, my
+day 'ull coom at last.'
+
+He spoke loudly, in a slow, stubborn voice, and stepped suddenly towards
+her. With a faint, frightened cry she shrank back into the doorway of
+the hen-house.
+
+'Ye talk like a prophet. Ye sort o' skeer me.'
+
+He laughed grimly, and paused, reflectively scanning her face. He seemed
+about to continue in the same strain; but, instead, turned abruptly on
+his heel, and strode away through the garden gate.
+
+
+IV
+
+For three hundred years there had been a Garstin at Hootsey: generation
+after generation had tramped the grey stretch of upland, in the
+spring-time scattering their flocks over the fell-sides, and, at the
+'back-end', on dark, winter afternoons, driving them home again, down
+the broad bridle-path that led over the 'raise'. They had been a race of
+few words, 'keeping themselves to themselves', as the phrase goes;
+beholden to no man, filled with a dogged, churlish pride--an upright,
+old-fashioned race, stubborn, long-lived, rude in speech, slow of
+resolve.
+
+Anthony had never seen his father, who had died one night, upon the
+fell-top, he and his shepherd, engulfed in the great snowstorm of 1849.
+Folks had said that he was the only Garstin who had failed to make old
+man's bones.
+
+After his death, Jake Atkinson, from Ribblehead in Yorkshire, had come
+to live at Hootsey. Jake was a fine farmer, a canny bargainer, and very
+handy among the sheep, till he took to drink, and roystering every week
+with the town wenches up at Carlisle. He was a corpulent, deep-voiced,
+free-handed fellow: when his time came, though he died very hardly, he
+remained festive and convivial to the last. And for years afterwards, in
+the valley, his memory lingered: men spoke of him regretfully, recalling
+his quips, his feats of strength, and his choice breed of Herdwicke
+rams. But he left behind him a host of debts up at Carlisle, in Penrith,
+and in almost every market town--debts that he had long ago pretended to
+have paid with money that belonged to his sister. The widow Garstin sold
+the twelve Herdwicke rams, and nine acres of land: within six weeks she
+had cleared off every penny, and for thirteen months, on Sundays, wore
+her mourning with a mute, forbidding grimness: the bitter thought that,
+unbeknown to her, Jake had acted dishonestly in money matters, and that
+he had ended his days in riotous sin, soured her pride, imbued her with
+a rancorous hostility against all the world. For she was a very proud
+woman, independent, holding her head high, so folks said, like a Garstin
+bred and born; and Anthony, although some reckoned him quiet and of
+little account, came to take after her as he grew into manhood.
+
+She took into her own hands the management of the Hootsey farm, and set
+the boy to work for her along with the two farm servants. It was
+twenty-five years now since his uncle Jake's death: there were grey
+hairs in his sandy beard; but he still worked for his mother, as he had
+done when a growing lad.
+
+And now that times were grown to be bad (of late years the price of
+stock had been steadily falling; and the hay harvests had drifted from
+bad to worse) the widow Garstin no longer kept any labouring men; but
+lived, she and her son, year in and year out, in a close parsimonious
+way.
+
+That had been Anthony Garstin's life--a dull, eventless sort of
+business, the sluggish incrustation of monotonous years. And until Rosa
+Blencarn had come to keep house for her uncle, he had never thought
+twice on a woman's face.
+
+The Garstins had always been good church-goers, and Anthony, for years,
+had acted as churchwarden. It was one summer evening, up at the
+vicarage, whilst he was checking the offertory account, that he first
+set eyes upon her. She was fresh back from school at Leeds: she was
+dressed in a white dress: she looked, he thought, like a London lady.
+
+She stood by the window, tall and straight and queenly, dreamily gazing
+out into the summer twilight, whilst he and her uncle sat over their
+business. When he rose to go, she glanced at him with quick curiosity;
+he hurried away, muttering a sheepish good night.
+
+The next time that he saw her was in church on Sunday. He watched her
+shyly, with a hesitating, reverential discretion: her beauty seemed to
+him wonderful, distant, enigmatic. In the afternoon, young Mrs. Forsyth,
+from Longscale, dropped in for a cup of tea with his mother, and the two
+set off gossiping of Rosa Blencarn, speaking of her freely, in tones of
+acrimonious contempt. For a long while he sat silent, puffing at his
+pipe; but at last, when his mother concluded with, 'She looks t' me fair
+stuck-oop, full o' toonish airs an' graces,' despite himself, he burst
+out: 'Ye're jest wastin' yer breath wi' that cackle. I reckon Miss
+Blencarn's o' a different clay to us folks.' Young Mrs. Forsyth tittered
+immoderately, and the next week it was rumoured about the valley that
+'Tony Garstin was gone luny over t' parson's niece.'
+
+But of all this he knew nothing--keeping to himself, as was his wont,
+and being, besides, very busy with the hay harvest--until one day, at
+dinner-time, Henry Sisson asked if he'd started his courting; Jacob
+Sowerby cried that Tony'd been too slow in getting to work, for that the
+girl had been seen spooning in Crosby Shaws with Curbison the
+auctioneer, and the others (there were half-a-dozen of them lounging
+round the hay-waggon) burst into a boisterous guffaw. Anthony flushed
+dully, looking hesitatingly from the one to the other; then slowly put
+down his beer-can, and of a sudden, seizing Jacob by the neck, swung him
+heavily on the grass. He fell against the waggon-wheel, and when he rose
+the blood was streaming from an ugly cut in his forehead. And
+henceforward Tony Garstin's courtship was the common jest of all the
+parish.
+
+As yet, however, he had scarcely spoken to her, though twice he had
+passed her in the lane that led up to the vicarage. She had given him a
+frank, friendly smile; but he had not found the resolution to do more
+than lift his hat. He and Henry Sisson stacked the hay in the yard
+behind the house; there was no further mention made of Rosa Blencarn;
+but all day long Anthony, as he knelt thatching the rick, brooded over
+the strange sweetness of her face, and on the fell-top, while he tramped
+after the ewes over the dry, crackling heather, and as he jogged along
+the narrow, rickety road, driving his cartload of lambs into the auction
+mart.
+
+Thus, as the weeks slipped by, he was content with blunt, wistful
+ruminations upon her indistinct image. Jacob Sowerby's accusation, and
+several kindred innuendoes let fall by his mother, left him coolly
+incredulous; the girl still seemed to him altogether distant; but from
+the first sight of her face he had evolved a stolid, unfaltering
+conception of her difference from the ruck of her sex.
+
+But one evening, as he passed the vicarage on his way down from the
+fells, she called to him, and with a childish, confiding familiarity
+asked for advice concerning the feeding of the poultry. In his eagerness
+to answer her as best he could, he forgot his customary embarrassment,
+and grew, for the moment, almost voluble, and quite at his ease in her
+presence. Directly her flow of questions ceased, however, the returning
+perception of her rosy, hesitating smile, and of her large, deep eyes
+looking straight into his face, perturbed him strangely, and, reddening,
+he remembered the quarrel in the hay-field and the tale of Crosby Shaws.
+
+After this, the poultry became a link between them--a link which he
+regarded in all seriousness, blindly unconscious that there was aught
+else to bring them together, only feeling himself in awe of her, because
+of her schooling, her townish manners, her ladylike mode of dress. And
+soon, he came to take a sturdy, secret pride in her friendly familiarity
+towards him. Several times a week he would meet her in the lane, and
+they would loiter a moment together; she would admire his dogs, though
+he assured her earnestly that they were but sorry curs; and once,
+laughing at his staidness, she nick-named him 'Mr. Churchwarden'.
+
+That the girl was not liked in the valley he suspected, curtly
+attributing her unpopularity to the women's senseless jealousy. Of
+gossip concerning her he heard no further hint; but instinctively, and
+partly from that rugged, natural reserve of his, shrank from mentioning
+her name, even incidentally, to his mother.
+
+Now, on Sunday evenings, he often strolled up to the vicarage, each time
+quitting his mother with the same awkward affectation of casualness;
+and, on his return, becoming vaguely conscious of how she refrained from
+any comment on his absence, and appeared oddly oblivious of the
+existence of parson Blencarn's niece.
+
+She had always been a sour-tongued woman; but, as the days shortened
+with the approach of the long winter months, she seemed to him to grow
+more fretful than ever; at times it was almost as if she bore him some
+smouldering, sullen resentment. He was of stubborn fibre, however,
+toughened by long habit of a bleak, unruly climate; he revolved the
+matter in his mind deliberately, and when, at last, after much plodding
+thought, it dawned upon him that she resented his acquaintance with Rosa
+Blencarn, he accepted the solution with an unflinching phlegm, and
+merely shifted his attitude towards the girl, calculating each day the
+likelihood of his meeting her, and making, in her presence, persistent
+efforts to break down, once for all, the barrier of his own timidity. He
+was a man not to be clumsily driven, still less, so he prided himself, a
+man to be craftily led.
+
+It was close upon Christmas time before the crisis came. His mother was
+just home from Penrith market. The spring-cart stood in the yard, the
+old grey horse was steaming heavily in the still, frosty air.
+
+'I reckon ye've come fast. T' ould horse is over hot,' he remarked
+bluntly, as he went to the animal's head.
+
+She clambered down hastily, and, coming to his side, began breathlessly:
+
+'Ye ought t' hev coom t' market, Tony. There's bin pretty goin's on in
+Pe'rith today. I was helpin' Anna Forsyth t' choose six yards o'
+sheetin' in Dockroy, when we sees Rosa Blencarn coom oot o' t' 'Bell and
+Bullock' in company we' Curbison and young Joe Smethwick. Smethwick was
+fair reelin' drunk, and Curbison and t' girl were a-houldin' on to him,
+to keep him fra fallin'; and then, after a bit, he puts his arm round
+the girl t' stiddy hisself, and that fashion they goes off, right oop t'
+public street--'
+
+He continued to unload the packages, and to carry them mechanically one
+by one into the house. Each time, when he reappeared, she was standing
+by the steaming horse, busy with her tale.
+
+'An' on t' road hame we passed t' three on' em in Curbison's trap, with
+Smethwick leein' in t' bottom, singin' maudlin' songs. They were passin'
+Dunscale village, an't' folks coom runnin' oot o' houses t' see 'em go
+past--'
+
+He led the cart away towards the stable, leaving her to cry the
+remainder after him across the yard.
+
+Half-an-hour later he came in for his dinner. During the meal not a word
+passed between them, and directly he had finished he strode out of the
+house. About nine o'clock he returned, lit his pipe, and sat down to
+smoke it over the kitchen fire.
+
+'Where've ye bin, Tony?' she asked.
+
+'Oop t' vicarage, courtin', he retorted defiantly, with his pipe in his
+mouth.
+
+This was ten months ago; ever since he had been doggedly waiting. That
+evening he had set his mind on the girl, he intended to have her; and
+while his mother gibed, as she did now upon every opportunity, his
+patience remained grimly unflagging. She would remind him that the farm
+belonged to her, that he would have to wait till her death before he
+could bring the hussy to Hootsey: he would retort that as soon as the
+girl would have him, he intended taking a small holding over at
+Scarsdale. Then she would give way, and for a while piteously upbraid
+him with her old age, and with the memory of all the years she and he
+had spent together, and he would comfort her with a display of brusque,
+evasive remorse.
+
+But, none the less, on the morrow, his thoughts would return to dwell on
+the haunting vision of the girl's face, while his own rude, credulous
+chivalry, kindled by the recollection of her beauty, stifled his
+misgivings concerning her conduct.
+
+Meanwhile she dallied with him, and amused herself with the younger men.
+Her old uncle fell ill in the spring, and could scarcely leave the
+house. She declared that she found life in the valley intolerably dull,
+that she hated the quiet of the place, that she longed for Leeds, and
+the exciting bustle of the streets; and in the evenings she wrote long
+letters to the girl-friends she had left behind there, describing with
+petulant vivacity her tribe of rustic admirers. At the harvest-time she
+went back on a fortnight's visit to friends; the evening before her
+departure she promised Anthony to give him her answer on her return.
+But, instead, she avoided him, pretended to have promised in jest, and
+took up with Luke Stock, a cattle-dealer from Wigton.
+
+
+V
+
+It was three weeks since he had fetched his flock down from the fell.
+
+After dinner he and his mother sat together in the parlour: they had
+done so every Sunday afternoon, year in and year out, as far back as he
+could remember.
+
+A row of mahogany chairs, with shiny, horse-hair seats, were ranged
+round the room. A great collection of agricultural prize-tickets were
+pinned over the wall; and, on a heavy, highly-polished sideboard stood
+several silver cups. A heap of gilt-edged shavings filled the unused
+grate: there were gaudily-tinted roses along the mantelpiece, and, on a
+small table by the window, beneath a glass-case, a gilt basket filled
+with imitation flowers. Every object was disposed with a scrupulous
+precision: the carpet and the red-patterned cloth on the centre table
+were much faded. The room was spotlessly clean, and wore, in the chilly
+winter sunlight, a rigid, comfortless air.
+
+Neither spoke, or appeared conscious of the other's presence. Old Mrs.
+Garstin, wrapped in a woollen shawl, sat knitting: Anthony dozed
+fitfully on a stiff-backed chair.
+
+Of a sudden, in the distance, a bell started tolling. Anthony rubbed his
+eyes drowsily, and taking from the table his Sunday hat, strolled out
+across the dusky fields. Presently, reaching a rude wooden seat, built
+beside the bridle-path, he sat down and relit his pipe. The air was very
+still; below him a white filmy mist hung across the valley: the
+fell-sides, vaguely grouped, resembled hulking masses of sombre shadow;
+and, as he looked back, three squares of glimmering gold revealed the
+lighted windows of the square-towered church.
+
+He sat smoking; pondering, with placid and reverential contemplation,
+on the Mighty Maker of the world--a world majestically and inevitably
+ordered; a world where, he argued, each object--each fissure in the
+fells, the winding course of each tumbling stream--possesses its
+mysterious purport, its inevitable signification....
+
+At the end of the field two rams were fighting; retreating, then running
+together, and, leaping from the ground, butting head to head and horn to
+horn. Anthony watched them absently, pursuing his rude meditations.
+
+... And the succession of bad seasons, the slow ruination of the farmers
+throughout the country, were but punishment meted out for the
+accumulated wickedness of the world. In the olden time God rained
+plagues upon the land: nowadays, in His wrath, He spoiled the produce of
+the earth, which, with His own hands, He had fashioned and bestowed upon
+men.
+
+He rose and continued his walk along the bridle-path. A multitude of
+rabbits scuttled up the hill at his approach; and a great cloud of
+plovers, rising from the rushes, circled overhead, filling the air with
+a profusion of their querulous cries. All at once he heard a rattling of
+stones, and perceived a number of small pieces of shingle bounding in
+front of him down the grassy slope.
+
+A woman's figure was moving among the rocks above him. The next moment,
+by the trimming of crimson velvet on her hat, he had recognized her. He
+mounted the slope with springing strides, wondering the while how it was
+she came to be there, that she was not in church playing the organ at
+afternoon service.
+
+Before she was aware of his approach, he was beside her.
+
+'I thought ye'd be in church--' he began.
+
+She started: then, gradually regaining her composure, answered, weakly
+smiling:
+
+'Mr. Jenkinson, the new schoolmaster, wanted to try the organ.'
+
+He came towards her impulsively: she saw the odd flickers in his eyes as
+she stepped back in dismay.
+
+'Nay, but I will na harm ye,' he said. 'Only I reckon what 'tis a
+special turn o' Providence, meetin' wi' ye oop here. I reckon what ye'll
+hev t' give me a square answer noo. Ye canna dilly-dally everlastingly.'
+
+He spoke almost brutally; and she stood, white and gasping, staring at
+him with large, frightened eyes. The sheep-walk was but a tiny
+threadlike track: the slope of the shingle on either side was very
+steep: below them lay the valley; distant, lifeless, all blurred by the
+evening dusk. She looked about her helplessly for a means of escape.
+
+'Miss Rosa,' he continued, in a husky voice, 'can ye na coom t' think on
+me? Think ye, I've bin waitin' nigh upon two year for ye. I've watched
+ye tak oop, first wi' this young fellar, and then wi' that, till
+soomtimes my heart's fit t' burst. Many a day, oop on t' fell-top, t'
+thought o' ye's nigh driven me daft, and I've left my shepherdin' jest
+t' set on a cairn in t' mist, picturin' an' broodin' on yer face. Many
+an evenin' I've started oop t' vicarage, wi' t' resolution t' speak
+right oot t' ye; but when it coomed t' point, a sort o' timidity seemed
+t' hould me back, I was that feared t' displease ye. I knaw I'm na
+scholar, an' mabbe ye think I'm rough-mannered. I knaw I've spoken
+sharply to ye once or twice lately. But it's jest because I'm that mad
+wi' love for ye: I jest canna help myself soomtimes--'
+
+He waited, peering into her face. She could see the beads of sweat above
+his bristling eyebrows: the damp had settled on his sandy beard: his
+horny fingers were twitching at the buttons of his black Sunday coat.
+
+She struggled to summon a smile; but her under-lip quivered, and her
+large dark eyes filled slowly with tears.
+
+And he went on:
+
+'Ye've coom t' mean jest everything to me. Ef ye will na hev me, I care
+for nought else. I canna speak t' ye in phrases: I'm jest a plain,
+unscholarly man: I canna wheedle ye, wi' cunnin' after t' fashion o'
+toon folks. But I can love ye wi' all my might, an' watch over ye, and
+work for ye better than any one o' em--'
+
+She was crying to herself, silently, while he spoke. He noticed nothing,
+however: the twilight hid her face from him.
+
+'There's nought against me,' he persisted. 'I'm as good a man as any one
+on 'em. Ay, as good a man as any one on 'em,' he repeated defiantly,
+raising his voice.
+
+'It's impossible, Mr. Garstin, it's impossible. Ye've been very kind to
+me--' she added, in a choking voice.
+
+'Wa dang it, I didna mean t' mak ye cry, lass,' he exclaimed, with a
+softening of his tone. 'There's nought for ye t' cry ower.'
+
+She sank on to the stones, passionately sobbing in hysterical and
+defenceless despair. Anthony stood a moment, gazing at her in clumsy
+perplexity: then, coming close to her, put his hand on her shoulder, and
+said gently:
+
+'Coom, lass, what's trouble? Ye can trust me.'
+
+She shook her head faintly.
+
+'Ay, but ye can though,' he asserted, firmly. 'Come, what is't?'
+
+Heedless of him, she continued to rock herself to and fro, crooning in
+her distress:
+
+'Oh! I wish I were dead!... I wish I could die!'
+
+--'Wish ye could die?' he repeated. 'Why, whatever can't be that's
+troublin' ye like this? There, there, lassie, give ower: it 'ull all
+coom right, whatever it be--'
+
+'No, no,' she wailed. 'I wish I could die!... I wish I could die!'
+
+Lights were twinkling in the village below; and across the valley
+darkness was draping the hills. The girl lifted her face from her hands,
+and looked up at him with a scared, bewildered expression.
+
+'I must go home: I must be getting home,' she muttered.
+
+'Nay, but there's sommut mighty amiss wi' ye.'
+
+'No, it's nothing... I don't know--I'm not well... I mean it's
+nothing... it'll pass over... you mustn't think anything of it.'
+
+'Nay, but I canna stand by an see ye in sich trouble.'
+
+'It's nothing, Mr. Garstin, indeed it's nothing,' she repeated.
+
+'Ay, but I canna credit that,' he objected stubbornly.
+
+She sent him a shifting, hunted glance.
+
+'Let me get home... you must let me get home.'
+
+She made a tremulous, pitiful attempt at firmness. Eyeing her keenly, he
+barred her path: she flushed scarlet, and looked hastily away across the
+valley.
+
+'If ye'll tell me yer distress, mabbe I can help ye.'
+
+'No, no, it's nothing... it's nothing.'
+
+'If ye'll tell me yer distress, mabbe I can help ye,' he repeated, with
+a solemn, deliberate sternness. She shivered, and looked away again,
+vaguely, across the valley.
+
+'You can do nothing: there's nought to be done,' she murmured drearily.
+
+'There's a man in this business,' he declared.
+
+'Let me go! Let me go!' she pleaded desperately.
+
+'Who is't that's bin puttin' ye into this distress?' His voice sounded
+loud and harsh.
+
+'No one, no one. I canna tell ye, Mr. Garstin.... It's no one,' she
+protested weakly. The white, twisted look on his face frightened her.
+
+'My God!' he burst out, gripping her wrist, 'an' a proper soft fool
+ye've made o' me. Who is't, I tell ye? Who's t' man?'
+
+'Ye're hurtin' me. Let me go. I canna tell ye.'
+
+'And ye're fond o' him?'
+
+'No, no. He's a wicked, sinful man. I pray God I may never set eyes on
+him again. I told him so.'
+
+'But ef he's got ye into trouble, he'll hev t' marry ye,' he persisted
+with a brutal bitterness.
+
+'I will not. I hate him!' she cried fiercely.
+
+'But is he _willin'_ t' marry ye?'
+
+'I don't know ... I don't care ... he said so before he went
+away ... But I'd kill myself sooner than live with him.'
+
+He let her hands fall and stepped back from her. She could only see his
+figure, like a sombre cloud, standing before her. The whole fell-side
+seemed still and dark and lonely. Presently she heard his voice again:
+
+'I reckon what there's one road oot o' yer distress.'
+
+She shook her head drearily.
+
+'There's none. I'm a lost woman.'
+
+'An' ef ye took me instead?' he said eagerly.
+
+'I--I don't understand--'
+
+'Ef ye married me instead of Luke Stock?'
+
+'But that's impossible--the--the--'
+
+'Ay, t' child. I know. But I'll tak t' child as mine.'
+
+She remained silent. After a moment he heard her voice answer in a
+queer, distant tone:
+
+'You mean that--that ye're ready to marry me, and adopt the child?'
+
+'I do,' he answered doggedly.
+
+'But people--your mother--?'
+
+'Folks 'ull jest know nought about it. It's none o' their business. T'
+child 'ull pass as mine. Ye'll accept that?'
+
+'Yes,' she answered, in a low, rapid voice.
+
+'Ye'll consent t' hev me, ef I git ye oot o' yer trouble?'
+
+'Yes,' she repeated, in the same tone.
+
+She heard him draw a long breath.
+
+'I said 't was a turn o' Providence, meetin' wi' ye oop here,' he
+exclaimed, with half-suppressed exultation.
+
+Her teeth began to chatter a little: she felt that he was peering at
+her, curiously, through the darkness.
+
+'An' noo,' he continued briskly, 'ye'd best be gettin' home. Give me
+ye're hand, an' I'll stiddy ye ower t' stones.'
+
+He helped her down the bank of shingle, exclaiming: 'By goom, ye're
+stony cauld.' Once or twice she slipped: he supported her, roughly
+gripping her knuckles. The stones rolled down the steps, noisily,
+disappearing into the night.
+
+Presently they struck the turf bridle-path, and, as they descended
+silently towards the lights of the village, he said gravely:
+
+'I always reckoned what my day 'ud coom.'
+
+She made no reply; and he added grimly:
+
+'There'll be terrible work wi' mother over this.'
+
+He accompanied her down the narrow lane that led past her uncle's house.
+When the lighted windows came in sight he halted.
+
+'Good night, lassie,' he said kindly. 'Do ye give ower distressin'
+yeself.'
+
+'Good night, Mr. Garstin,' she answered, in the same low, rapid voice in
+which she had given him her answer up on the fell.
+
+'We're man an' wife plighted now, are we not?' he blurted timidly.
+
+She held her face to his, and he kissed her on the cheek, clumsily.
+
+
+VI
+
+The next morning the frost had set in. The sky was still clear and
+glittering: the whitened fields sparkled in the chilly sunlight: here
+and there, on high, distant peaks, gleamed dainty caps of snow. All
+the week Anthony was to be busy at the fell-foot, wall-building against
+the coming of the winter storms: the work was heavy, for he was
+single-handed, and the stone had to be fetched from off the fell-side.
+Two or three times a day he led his rickety, lumbering cart along the
+lane that passed the vicarage gate, pausing on each journey to glance
+furtively up at the windows. But he saw no sign of Rosa Blencarn; and,
+indeed, he felt no longing to see her: he was grimly exultant over the
+remembrance of his wooing of her, and over the knowledge that she was
+his. There glowed within him a stolid pride in himself: he thought of
+the others who had courted her, and the means by which he had won her
+seemed to him a fine stroke of cleverness.
+
+And so he refrained from any mention of the matter; relishing, as he
+worked, all alone, the days through, the consciousness of his secret
+triumph, and anticipating, with inward chucklings, the discomforted
+cackle of his mother's female friends. He foresaw without misgiving, her
+bitter opposition: he felt himself strong; and his heart warmed towards
+the girl. And when, at intervals, the brusque realization that, after
+all, he was to possess her swept over him, he gripped the stones, and
+swung them almost fiercely into their places.
+
+All around him the white, empty fields seemed slumbering breathlessly.
+The stillness stiffened the leafless trees. The frosty air flicked his
+blood: singing vigorously to himself he worked with a stubborn,
+unflagging resolution, methodically postponing, till the length of the
+wall should be completed, the announcement of his betrothal.
+
+After his reticent, solitary fashion, he was very happy, reviewing his
+future prospects, with a plain and steady assurance, and, as the
+week-end approached, coming to ignore the irregularity of the whole
+business: almost to assume, in the exaltation of his pride, that he had
+won her honestly; and to discard, stolidly, all thought of Luke Stock,
+of his relations with her, of the coming child that was to pass for his
+own.
+
+And there were moments too, when, as he sauntered homewards through the
+dusk at the end of his day's work, his heart grew full to overflowing of
+a rugged, superstitious gratitude towards God in Heaven who had granted
+his desires.
+
+About three o'clock on the Saturday afternoon he finished the length of
+wall. He went home, washed, shaved, put on his Sunday coat; and,
+avoiding the kitchen, where his mother sat knitting by the fireside,
+strode up to the vicarage.
+
+It was Rosa who opened the door to him. On recognizing him she started,
+and he followed her into the dining-room. He seated himself, and began,
+brusquely:
+
+'I've coom, Miss Rosa, t' speak t' Mr. Blencarn.'
+
+Then added, eyeing her closely:
+
+'Ye're lookin' sick, lass.'
+
+Her faint smile accentuated the worn, white look on her face.
+
+'I reckon ye've been frettin' yeself,' he continued gently, 'leein'
+awake o' nights, hev'n't yee, noo?'
+
+She smiled vaguely.
+
+'Well, but ye see I've coom t' settle t' whole business for ye. Ye
+thought mabbe that I was na a man o' my word.'
+
+'No, no, not that,' she protested, 'but--but--'
+
+'But what then?'
+
+'Ye must not do it, Mr. Garstin ... I must just bear my own trouble the
+best I can--' she broke out.
+
+'D'ye fancy I'm takin' ye oot of charity? Ye little reckon the sort o'
+stuff my love for ye's made of. Nay, Miss Rosa, but ye canna draw back
+noo.'
+
+'But ye cannot do it, Mr. Garstin. Ye know your mother will na have me at
+Hootsey.... I could na live there with your mother.... I'd sooner bear
+my trouble alone, as best I can.... She's that stern is Mrs. Garstin. I
+couldn't look her in the face.... I can go away somewhere.... I could
+keep it all from uncle.'
+
+Her colour came and went: she stood before him, looking away from him,
+dully, out of the window.
+
+'I intend ye t' coom t' Hootsey. I'm na lad: I reckon I can choose my
+own wife. Mother'll hev ye at t' farm, right enough: ye need na distress
+yeself on that point--'
+
+'Nay, Mr. Garstin, but indeed she will not, never... I know she will
+not... She always set herself against me, right from the first.'
+
+'Ay, but that was different. T' case is all changed noo,' he objected
+doggedly.
+
+'She'll support the sight of me all the less,' the girl faltered.
+
+'Mother'll hev ye at Hootsey--receive ye willin' of her own free
+wish--of her own free wish, d'ye hear? I'll answer for that.'
+
+He struck the table with his fist heavily. His tone of determination
+awed her: she glanced at him hurriedly, struggling with her
+irresolution.
+
+'I knaw hoo t' manage mother. An' now,' he concluded, changing his tone,
+'is yer uncle about t' place?'
+
+'He's up the paddock, I think,' she answered.
+
+'Well, I'll jest step oop and hev a word wi' him.'
+
+'Ye're ... ye will na tell him.'
+
+'Tut, tut, na harrowin' tales, ye need na fear, lass. I reckon ef I can
+tackle mother, I can accommodate myself t' parson Blencarn.'
+
+He rose, and coming close to her, scanned her face.
+
+'Ye must git t' roses back t' yer cheeks,' he exclaimed, with a short
+laugh, 'I canna be takin' a ghost t' church.'
+
+She smiled tremulously, and he continued, laying one hand affectionately
+on her shoulder:
+
+'Nay, but I was but jestin'. Roses or na roses, ye'll be t' bonniest
+bride in all Coomberland. I'll meet ye in Hullam lane, after church
+time, tomorrow,' he added, moving towards the door.
+
+After he had gone, she hurried to the backdoor furtively. His retreating
+figure was already mounting the grey upland field. Presently, beyond
+him, she perceived her uncle, emerging through the paddock gate. She ran
+across the poultry yard, and mounting a tub, stood watching the two
+figures as they moved towards one another along the brow, Anthony
+vigorously trudging, with his hands thrust deep in his pockets; her
+uncle, his wideawake tilted over his nose, hobbling, and leaning stiffly
+on his pair of sticks. They met; she saw Anthony take her uncle's arm:
+the two, turning together, strolled away towards the fell.
+
+She went back into the house. Anthony's dog came towards her, slinking
+along the passage. She caught the animal's head in her hands, and bent
+over it caressingly, in an impulsive outburst of almost hysterical
+affection.
+
+
+VII
+
+The two men returned towards the vicarage. At the paddock gate they
+halted, and the old man concluded:
+
+'I could not have wished a better man for her, Anthony. Mabbe the
+Lord'll not be minded to spare me much longer. After I'm gone Rosa'll
+hev all I possess. She was my poor brother Isaac's only child. After her
+mother was taken, he, poor fellow, went altogether to the bad, and until
+she came here she mostly lived among strangers. It's been a wretched
+sort of childhood for her--a wretched sort of childhood. Ye'll take care
+of her, Anthony, will ye not? ... Nay, but I could not hev wished for a
+better man for her, and there's my hand on 't.'
+
+'Thank ee, Mr. Blencarn, thank ee,' Anthony answered huskily, gripping
+the old man's hand.
+
+And he started off down the lane homewards.
+
+His heart was full of a strange, rugged exaltation. He felt with a
+swelling pride that God had entrusted to him this great charge--to tend
+her; to make up to her, tenfold, for all that loving care, which, in her
+childhood, she had never known. And together with a stubborn confidence
+in himself, there welled up within him a great pity for her--a tender
+pity, that, chastening with his passion, made her seem to him, as he
+brooded over that lonely childhood of hers, the more distinctly
+beautiful, the more profoundly precious. He pictured to himself,
+tremulously, almost incredulously, their married life--in the winter,
+his return home at nightfall to find her awaiting him with a glad,
+trustful smile; their evenings, passed together, sitting in silent
+happiness over the smouldering logs; or, in summer-time, the midday rest
+in the hay-fields when, wearing perhaps a large-brimmed hat fastened
+with a red ribbon, beneath her chin, he would catch sight of her,
+carrying his dinner, coming across the upland.
+
+She had not been brought up to be a farmer's wife: she was but a child
+still, as the old parson had said. She should not have to work as other
+men's wives worked: she should dress like a lady, and on Sundays, in
+church, wear fine bonnets, and remain, as she had always been, the belle
+of all the parish.
+
+And, meanwhile, he would farm as he had never farmed before,
+watching his opportunities, driving cunning bargains, spending
+nothing on himself, hoarding every penny that she might have what
+she wanted.... And, as he strode through the village, he seemed to
+foresee a general brightening of prospects, a sobering of the fever
+of speculation in sheep, a cessation of the insensate glutting, year
+after year, of the great winter marts throughout the North, a slackening
+of the foreign competition followed by a steady revival of the price
+of fatted stocks--a period of prosperity in store for the farmer at
+last.... And the future years appeared to open out before him, spread
+like a distant, glittering plain, across which, he and she, hand in
+hand, were called to travel together....
+
+And then, suddenly, as his iron-bound boots clattered over the cobbled
+yard, he remembered, with brutal determination, his mother, and the
+stormy struggle that awaited him.
+
+He waited till supper was over, till his mother had moved from the table
+to her place by the chimney corner. For several minutes he remained
+debating with himself the best method of breaking the news to her. Of a
+sudden he glanced up at her: her knitting had slipped on to her lap: she
+was sitting, bunched of a heap in her chair, nodding with sleep. By the
+flickering light of the wood fire, she looked worn and broken: he felt a
+twinge of clumsy compunction. And then he remembered the piteous, hunted
+look in the girl's eyes, and the old man's words when they had parted at
+the paddock gate, and he blurted out:
+
+'I doot but what I'll hev t' marry Rosa Blencarn after all.'
+
+She started, and blinking her eyes, said:
+
+'I was jest takin' a wink o' sleep. What was 't ye were saying, Tony?'
+
+He hesitated a moment, puckering his forehead into coarse rugged lines,
+and fidgeting noisily with his tea-cup. Presently he repeated:
+
+'I doot but what I'll hev t' marry Rosa Blencarn after all.'
+
+She rose stiffly, and stepping down from the hearth, came towards him.
+
+'Mabbe I did na hear ye aright, Tony.' She spoke hurriedly, and though
+she was quite close to him, steadying herself with one hand clutching
+the back of his chair, her voice sounded weak, distant almost.
+
+'Look oop at me. Look oop into my face,' she commanded fiercely.
+
+He obeyed sullenly.
+
+'Noo oot wi 't. What's yer meanin', Tony?'
+
+'I mean what I say,' he retorted doggedly, averting his gaze.
+
+'What d'ye mean by sayin' that ye've _got_ t' marry her?'
+
+'I tell yer I mean what I say,' he repeated dully.
+
+'Ye mean ye've bin an' put t' girl in trouble?'
+
+He said nothing; but sat staring stupidly at the floor.
+
+'Look oop at me, and answer,' she commanded, gripping his shoulder and
+shaking him.
+
+He raised his face slowly, and met her glance.
+
+'Ay, that's aboot it,' he answered.
+
+'This'll na be truth. It'll be jest a piece o' wanton trickery!' she
+cried.
+
+'Nay, but't is truth,' he answered deliberately.
+
+'Ye will na swear t' it?' she persisted.
+
+'I see na necessity for swearin'.'
+
+'Then ye canna swear t' it,' she burst out triumphantly.
+
+He paused an instant; then said quietly:
+
+'Ay, but I'll swear t' it easy enough. Fetch t' Book.'
+
+She lifted the heavy, tattered Bible from the chimney-piece, and placed
+it before him on the table. He laid his lumpish fist on it.
+
+'Say,' she continued with a tense tremulousness, 'say, I swear t' ye,
+mother, that 't is t' truth, t' whole truth, and noat but t' truth,
+s'help me God.'
+
+'I swear t' ye, mother, it's truth, t' whole truth, and nothin' but t'
+truth, s'help me God,' he repeated after her.
+
+'Kiss t' Book,' she ordered.
+
+He lifted the Bible to his lips. As he replaced it on the table, he
+burst out into a short laugh:
+
+'Be ye satisfied noo?'
+
+She went back to the chimney corner without a word. The logs on the
+hearth hissed and crackled. Outside, amid the blackness the wind was
+rising, hooting through the firs, and past the windows.
+
+After a long while he roused himself, and drawing his pipe from his
+pocket almost steadily, proceeded leisurely to pare in the palm of his
+hand a lump of black tobacco.
+
+'We'll be asked in church Sunday,' he remarked bluntly.
+
+She made no answer.
+
+He looked across at her.
+
+Her mouth was drawn tight at the corners: her face wore a queer, rigid
+aspect. She looked, he thought, like a figure of stone.
+
+'Ye're not feeling poorly, are ye, mother?' he asked.
+
+She shook her head grimly: then, hobbling out into the room, began to
+speak in a shrill, tuneless voice.
+
+'Ye talked at one time o' takin' a farm over Scarsdale way. But ye'd
+best stop here. I'll no hinder ye. Ye can have t' large bedroom in t'
+front, and I'll move ower to what used to be my brother Jake's room. Ye
+knaw I've never had no opinion of t' girl, but I'll do what's right by
+her, ef I break my sperrit in t' doin' on't. I'll mak' t' girl welcome
+here: I'll stand by her proper-like: mebbe I'll finish by findin' soom
+good in her. But from this day forward, Tony, ye're na son o' mine. Ye've
+dishonoured yeself: ye've laid a trap for me--ay, laid a trap, that's t'
+word. Ye've brought shame and bitterness on yer ould mother in her ould
+age. Ye've made me despise t' varra sect o' ye. Ye can stop on here, but
+ye shall niver touch a penny of my money; every shillin' of 't shall go
+t' yer child, or to your child's children. Ay,' she went on, raising her
+voice, 'ay, ye've got yer way at last, and mebbe ye reckon ye've chosen a
+mighty smart way. But time 'ull coom when ye'll regret this day, when ye
+eat oot yer repentance in doost an' ashes. Ay, Lord 'ull punish ye, Tony,
+chastize ye properly. Ye'll learn that marriage begun in sin can end in
+nought but sin. Ay,' she concluded, as she reached the door, raising her
+skinny hand prophetically, 'ay, after I'm deed and gone, ye mind ye o' t'
+words o' t' apostle--"For them that hev sinned without t' law, shall also
+perish without t' law."'
+
+And she slammed the door behind her.
+
+
+
+
+A LITTLE GREY GLOVE
+
+By George Egerton (Mary Chavelita [Dunne] Bright)
+
+(_Keynotes_, London: Elkin Mathews and John Lane, Vigo Street, 1893)
+
+Early-Spring, 1893
+
+
+_The book of life begins with a man and woman in a garden and ends--with
+Revelations._
+
+OSCAR WILDE
+
+
+Yes, most fellows' book of life may be said to begin at the chapter
+where woman comes in; mine did. She came in years ago, when I was a raw
+undergraduate. With the sober thought of retrospective analysis, I may
+say she was not all my fancy painted her; indeed now that I come to
+think of it there was no fancy about the vermeil of her cheeks, rather
+an artificial reality; she had her bower in the bar of the Golden Boar,
+and I was madly in love with her, seriously intent on lawful wedlock.
+Luckily for me she threw me over for a neighbouring pork butcher, but at
+the time I took it hardly, and it made me sex-shy. I was a very poor man
+in those days. One feels one's griefs more keenly then, one hasn't the
+wherewithal to buy distraction. Besides, ladies snubbed me rather, on
+the rare occasions I met them. Later I fell in for a legacy, the
+forerunner of several; indeed, I may say I am beastly rich. My tastes
+are simple too, and I haven't any poor relations. I believe they are of
+great assistance in getting rid of superfluous capital, wish I had some!
+It was after the legacy that women discovered my attractions. They found
+that there was something superb in my plainness (before, they said
+ugliness), something after the style of the late Victor Emanuel,
+something infinitely more striking than mere ordinary beauty. At least
+so Harding told me his sister said, and she had the reputation of being
+a clever girl. Being an only child, I never had the opportunity other
+fellows had of studying the undress side of women through familiar
+intercourse, say with sisters. Their most ordinary belongings were
+sacred to me. I had, I used to be told, ridiculous high-flown notions
+about them (by the way I modified those considerably on closer
+acquaintance). I ought to study them, nothing like a woman for
+developing a fellow. So I laid in a stock of books in different
+languages, mostly novels, in which women played title roles, in order to
+get up some definite data before venturing amongst them. I can't say I
+derived much benefit from this course. There seemed to be as great a
+diversity of opinion about the female species as, let us say, about the
+salmonidae.
+
+My friend Ponsonby Smith, who is one of the oldest fly-fishers in the
+three kingdoms, said to me once: Take my word for it, there are only
+four true salmo; the salar, the trutta, the fario, the ferox; all the
+rest are just varieties, subgenuses of the above; stick to that. Some
+writing fellow divided all the women into good-uns and bad-uns. But as a
+conscientious stickler for truth, I must say that both in trout as in
+women, I have found myself faced with most puzzling varieties, that were
+a tantalizing blending of several qualities. I then resolved to study
+them on my own account. I pursued the Eternal Feminine in a spirit of
+purely scientific investigation. I knew you'd laugh sceptically at that,
+but it's a fact. I was impartial in my selection of subjects for
+observation--French, German, Spanish, as well as the home product.
+Nothing in petticoats escaped me. I devoted myself to the freshest
+_ingenue_ as well as the experienced widow of three departed; and I may
+as well confess that the more I saw of her, the less I understood her.
+But I think they understood me. They refused to take me _au serieux_.
+When they weren't fleecing me, they were interested in the state of my
+soul (I preferred the former), but all humbugged me equally, so I gave
+them up. I took to rod and gun instead, _pro salute animae_; it's
+decidedly safer. I have scoured every country in the globe; indeed I can
+say that I have shot and fished in woods and waters where no other white
+man, perhaps ever dropped a beast or played a fish before. There is no
+life like the life of a free wanderer, and no lore like the lore one
+gleans in the great book of nature. But one must have freed one's spirit
+from the taint of the town before one can even read the alphabet of its
+mystic meaning.
+
+What has this to do with the glove? True, not much, and yet it has a
+connection--it accounts for me.
+
+Well, for twelve years I have followed the impulses of the wandering
+spirit that dwells in me. I have seen the sun rise in Finland and gild
+the Devil's Knuckles as he sank behind the Drachensberg. I have caught
+the barba and the gamer yellow fish in the Vaal river, taken muskelunge
+and black-bass in Canada, thrown a fly over _guapote_ and _cavallo_ in
+Central American lakes, and choked the monster eels of the Mauritius
+with a cunningly faked-up duckling. But I have been shy as a chub at the
+shadow of a woman.
+
+Well, it happened last year I came back on business--another confounded
+legacy; end of June too, just as I was off to Finland. But Messrs.
+Thimble and Rigg, the highly respectable firm who look after my affairs,
+represented that I owed it to others, whom I kept out of their share of
+the legacy, to stay near town till affairs were wound up. They told me,
+with a view to reconcile me perhaps, of a trout stream with a decent inn
+near it; an unknown stream in Kent. It seems a junior member of the firm
+is an angler, at least he sometimes catches pike or perch in the Medway
+some way from the stream where the trout rise in audacious security from
+artificial lures. I stipulated for a clerk to come down with any papers
+to be signed, and started at once for Victoria. I decline to tell the
+name of my find, firstly because the trout are the gamest little fish
+that ever rose to fly and run to a good two pounds. Secondly, I have
+paid for all the rooms in the inn for the next year, and I want it to
+myself. The glove is lying on the table next me as I write. If it isn't
+in my breast-pocket or under my pillow, it is in some place where I can
+see it. It has a delicate grey body (suede, I think they call it) with a
+whipping of silver round the top, and a darker grey silk tag to fasten
+it. It is marked 5-3/4 inside, and has a delicious scent about it, to
+keep off moths, I suppose; naphthaline is better. It reminds me of a
+'silver-sedge' tied on a ten hook. I startled the good landlady of the
+little inn (there is no village fortunately) when I arrived with the
+only porter of the tiny station laden with traps. She hesitated about a
+private sitting-room, but eventually we compromised matters, as I was
+willing to share it with the other visitor. I got into knickerbockers at
+once, collared a boy to get me worms and minnow for the morrow, and as I
+felt too lazy to unpack tackle, just sat in the shiny armchair (made
+comfortable by the successive sitting of former occupants) at the open
+window and looked out. The river, not the trout stream, winds to the
+right, and the trees cast trembling shadows into its clear depths. The
+red tiles of a farm roof show between the beeches, and break the
+monotony of blue sky background. A dusty waggoner is slaking his thirst
+with a tankard of ale. I am conscious of the strange lonely feeling that
+a visit to England always gives me. Away in strange lands, even in
+solitary places, one doesn't feel it somehow. One is filled with the
+hunter's lust, bent on a 'kill', but at home in the quiet country, with
+the smoke curling up from some fireside, the mowers busy laying the hay
+in swaths, the children tumbling under the trees in the orchards, and a
+girl singing as she spreads the clothes on the sweetbriar hedge, amidst
+a scene quick with home sights and sounds, a strange lack creeps in and
+makes itself felt in a dull, aching way. Oddly enough, too, I had a
+sense of uneasiness, a 'something going to happen'. I had often
+experienced it when out alone in a great forest, or on an unknown lake,
+and it always meant 'ware danger' of some kind. But why should I feel it
+here? Yet I did, and I couldn't shake it off. I took to examining the
+room. It was a commonplace one of the usual type. But there was a
+work-basket on the table, a dainty thing, lined with blue satin. There
+was a bit of lace stretched over shiny blue linen, with the needle
+sticking in it; such fairy work, like cobwebs seen from below, spun from
+a branch against a background of sky. A gold thimble, too, with
+initials, not the landlady's, I know. What pretty things, too, in the
+basket! A scissors, a capital shape for fly-making; a little file, and
+some floss silk and tinsel, the identical colour I want for a new fly I
+have in my head, one that will be a demon to kill. The northern devil I
+mean to call him. Some one looks in behind me, and a light step passes
+upstairs. I drop the basket, I don't know why. There are some reviews
+near it. I take up one, and am soon buried in an article on Tasmanian
+fauna. It is strange, but whenever I do know anything about a subject,
+I always find these writing fellows either entirely ignorant or damned
+wrong.
+
+After supper, I took a stroll to see the river. It was a silver grey
+evening, with just the last lemon and pink streaks of the sunset
+staining the sky. There had been a shower, and somehow the smell of the
+dust after rain mingled with the mignonette in the garden brought back
+vanished scenes of small-boyhood, when I caught minnows in a bottle, and
+dreamt of a shilling rod as happiness unattainable. I turned aside from
+the road in accordance with directions, and walked towards the stream.
+Holloa! someone before me, what a bore! The angler is hidden by an
+elder-bush, but I can see the fly drop delicately, artistically on the
+water. Fishing upstream, too! There is a bit of broken water there, and
+the midges dance in myriads; a silver gleam, and the line spins out, and
+the fly falls just in the right place. It is growing dusk, but the
+fellow is an adept at quick, fine casting--I wonder what fly he has
+on--why, he's going to try downstream now? I hurry forward, and as I
+near him, I swerve to the left out of the way. S-s-s-s! a sudden sting
+in the lobe of my ear. Hey! I cry as I find I am caught; the tail fly is
+fast in it. A slight, grey-clad woman holding the rod lays it carefully
+down and comes towards me through the gathering dusk. My first impulse
+is to snap the gut and take to my heels, but I am held by something less
+tangible but far more powerful than the grip of the Limerick hook in my
+ear.
+
+'I am very sorry!' she says in a voice that matched the evening, it was
+so quiet and soft; 'but it was exceedingly stupid of you to come behind
+like that.'
+
+'I didn't think you threw such a long line; I thought I was safe,' I
+stammered.
+
+'Hold this!' she says, giving me a diminutive fly-book, out of which she
+has taken a scissors. I obey meekly. She snips the gut.
+
+'Have you a sharp knife? If I strip the hook you can push it through; it
+is lucky it isn't in the cartilage.'
+
+I suppose I am an awful idiot, but I only handed her the knife, and she
+proceeded as calmly as if stripping a hook in a man's ear were an
+everyday occurrence. Her gown is of some soft grey stuff, and her grey
+leather belt is silver clasped. Her hands are soft and cool and steady,
+but there is a rarely disturbing thrill in their gentle touch. The
+thought flashed through my mind that I had just missed that, a woman's
+voluntary tender touch, not a paid caress, all my life.
+
+'Now you can push it through yourself. I hope it won't hurt much.'
+Taking the hook, I push it through, and a drop of blood follows it.
+'Oh!' she cries, but I assure her it is nothing, and stick the hook
+surreptitiously in my coat sleeve. Then we both laugh, and I look at her
+for the first time. She has a very white forehead, with little tendrils
+of hair blowing round it under her grey cap, her eyes are grey. I didn't
+see that then, I only saw they were steady, smiling eyes that matched
+her mouth. Such a mouth, the most maddening mouth a man ever longed to
+kiss, above a too-pointed chin, soft as a child's; indeed, the whole
+face looks soft in the misty light.
+
+'I am sorry I spoilt your sport!' I say.
+
+'Oh, that don't matter, it's time to stop. I got two brace, one a
+beauty.'
+
+She is winding in her line, and I look in her basket; they _are_
+beauties, one two-pounder, the rest running from a half to a pound.
+
+'What fly?'
+
+'Yellow dun took that one, but your assailant was a partridge spider.' I
+sling her basket over my shoulder; she takes it as a matter of course,
+and we retrace our steps. I feel curiously happy as we walk towards the
+road; there is a novel delight in her nearness; the feel of woman works
+subtly and strangely in me; the rustle of her skirt as it brushes the
+black-heads in the meadow-grass, and the delicate perfume, partly
+violets, partly herself, that comes to me with each of her movements is
+a rare pleasure. I am hardly surprised when she turns into the garden of
+the inn, I think I knew from the first that she would.
+
+'Better bathe that ear of yours, and put a few drops of carbolic in the
+water.' She takes the basket as she says it, and goes into the kitchen.
+I hurry over this, and go into the little sitting-room. There is a tray
+with a glass of milk and some oaten cakes upon the table. I am too
+disturbed to sit down; I stand at the window and watch the bats flitter
+in the gathering moonlight, and listen with quivering nerves for her
+step--perhaps she will send for the tray, and not come after all. What a
+fool I am to be disturbed by a grey-clad witch with a tantalizing mouth!
+That comes of loafing about doing nothing. I mentally darn the old fool
+who saved her money instead of spending it. Why the devil should I be
+bothered? I don't want it anyhow. She comes in as I fume, and I forget
+everything at her entrance. I push the armchair towards the table, and
+she sinks quietly into it, pulling the tray nearer. She has a wedding
+ring on, but somehow it never strikes me to wonder if she is married or
+a widow or who she may be. I am content to watch her break her biscuits.
+She has the prettiest hands, and a trick of separating her last fingers
+when she takes hold of anything. They remind me of white orchids I saw
+somewhere. She led me to talk; about Africa, I think. I liked to watch
+her eyes glow deeply in the shadow and then catch light as she bent
+forward to say something in her quick responsive way.
+
+'Long ago when I was a girl,' she said once.
+
+'Long ago?' I echo incredulously, 'surely not?'
+
+'Ah, but yes, you haven't seen me in the daylight,' with a soft little
+laugh. 'Do you know what the gipsies say? "Never judge a woman or a
+ribbon by candle-light." They might have said moonlight equally well.'
+
+She rises as she speaks, and I feel an overpowering wish to have her put
+out her hand. But she does not, she only takes the work-basket and a
+book, and says good night with an inclination of her little head.
+
+I go over and stand next to her chair; I don't like to sit in it, but I
+like to put my hand where her head leant, and fancy, if she were there,
+how she would look up.
+
+I woke next morning with a curious sense of pleasurable excitement. I
+whistled from very lightness of heart as I dressed. When I got down I
+found the landlady clearing away her breakfast things. I felt
+disappointed and resolved to be down earlier in future. I didn't feel
+inclined to try the minnow. I put them in a tub in the yard and tried to
+read and listen for her step. I dined alone. The day dragged terribly. I
+did not like to ask about her, I had a notion she might not like it. I
+spent the evening on the river. I might have filled a good basket, but I
+let the beggars rest. After all, I had caught fish enough to stock all
+the rivers in Great Britain. There are other things than trout in the
+world. I sit and smoke a pipe where she caught me last night. If I half
+close my eyes I can see hers, and her mouth, in the smoke. That is one
+of the curious charms of baccy, it helps to reproduce brain pictures.
+After a bit, I think 'perhaps she has left'. I get quite feverish at the
+thought and hasten back. I must ask. I look up at the window as I pass;
+there is surely a gleam of white. I throw down my traps and hasten up.
+She is leaning with her arms on the window-ledge staring out into the
+gloom. I could swear I caught a suppressed sob as I entered. I cough,
+and she turns quickly and bows slightly. A bonnet and gloves and lace
+affair and a lot of papers are lying on the table. I am awfully afraid
+she is going. I say--
+
+'Please don't let me drive you away, it is so early yet. I half expected
+to see you on the river.'
+
+'Nothing so pleasant; I have been up in town (the tears have certainly
+got into her voice) all day; it was so hot and dusty, I am tired out.'
+
+The little servant brings in the lamp and a tray with a bottle of
+lemonade.
+
+'Mistress hasn't any lemons, 'm, will this do?'
+
+'Yes,' she says wearily, she is shading her eyes with her hand;
+'anything; I am fearfully thirsty.'
+
+'Let me concoct you a drink instead. I have lemons and ice and things.
+My man sent me down supplies today; I leave him in town. I am rather a
+dab at drinks; I learnt it from the Yankees; about the only thing I did
+learn from them I care to remember. Susan!' The little maid helps me to
+get the materials, and _she_ watches me quietly. When I give it to her
+she takes it with a smile (she _has_ been crying). That is an ample
+thank you. She looks quite old. Something more than tiredness called up
+those lines in her face.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Well, ten days passed, sometimes we met at breakfast, sometimes at
+supper, sometimes we fished together or sat in the straggling orchard
+and talked; she neither avoided me nor sought me. She is the most
+charming mixture of child and woman I ever met. She is a dual creature.
+Now I never met that in a man. When she is here without getting a letter
+in the morning or going to town, she seems like a girl. She runs about
+in her grey gown and little cap and laughs, and seems to throw off all
+thought like an irresponsible child. She is eager to fish, or pick
+gooseberries and eat them daintily, or sit under the trees and talk. But
+when she goes to town--I notice she always goes when she gets a lawyer's
+letter, there is no mistaking the envelope--she comes home tired and
+haggard-looking, an old woman of thirty-five. I wonder why. It takes
+her, even with her elasticity of temperament, nearly a day to get young
+again. I hate her to go to town; it is extraordinary how I miss her; I
+can't recall, when she is absent, her saying anything very wonderful,
+but she converses all the time. She has a gracious way of filling the
+place with herself, there is an entertaining quality in her very
+presence. We had one rainy afternoon; she tied me some flies (I shan't
+use any of them); I watched the lights in her hair as she moved, it is
+quite golden in some places, and she has a tiny mole near her left ear
+and another on her left wrist. On the eleventh day she got a letter but
+she didn't go to town, she stayed up in her room all day; twenty times I
+felt inclined to send her a line, but I had no excuse. I heard the
+landlady say as I passed the kitchen window: 'Poor dear! I'm sorry to
+lose her!' Lose her? I should think not. It has come to this with me
+that I don't care to face any future without her; and yet I know nothing
+about her, not even if she is a free woman. I shall find that out the
+next time I see her. In the evening I catch a glimpse of her gown in the
+orchard, and I follow her. We sit down near the river. Her left hand is
+lying gloveless next to me in the grass.
+
+'Do you think from what you have seen of me, that I would ask a question
+out of any mere impertinent curiosity?'
+
+She starts. 'No, I do not!'
+
+I take up her hand and touch the ring. 'Tell me, does this bind you to
+any one?'
+
+I am conscious of a buzzing in my ears and a dancing blurr of water and
+sky and trees, as I wait (it seems to me an hour) for her reply. I felt
+the same sensation once before, when I got drawn into some rapids and
+had an awfully narrow shave, but of that another time.
+
+The voice is shaking.
+
+'I am not legally bound to anyone, at least; but why do you ask?' she
+looks me square in the face as she speaks, with a touch of haughtiness
+I never saw in her before.
+
+Perhaps the great relief I feel, the sense of joy at knowing she is
+free, speaks out of my face, for hers flushes and she drops her eyes,
+her lips tremble. I don't look at her again, but I can see her all the
+same. After a while she says--
+
+'I half intended to tell you something about myself this evening, now I
+_must_. Let us go in. I shall come down to the sitting-room after your
+supper.' She takes a long look at the river and the inn, as if fixing
+the place in her memory; it strikes me with a chill that there is a
+goodbye in her gaze. Her eyes rest on me a moment as they come back,
+there is a sad look in their grey clearness. She swings her little grey
+gloves in her hand as we walk back. I can hear her walking up and down
+overhead; how tired she will be, and how slowly the time goes. I am
+standing at one side of the window when she enters; she stands at the
+other, leaning her head against the shutter with her hands clasped
+before her. I can hear my own heart beating, and, I fancy, hers through
+the stillness. The suspense is fearful. At length she says--
+
+'You have been a long time out of England; you don't read the papers?'
+
+'No.' A pause. I believe my heart is beating inside my head.
+
+'You asked me if I was a free woman. I don't pretend to misunderstand
+why you asked me. I am not a beautiful woman, I never was. But there
+must be something about me, there is in some women, "essential
+femininity" perhaps, that appeals to all men. What I read in your eyes
+I have seen in many men's before, but before God I never tried to rouse
+it. Today (with a sob), I can say I am free, yesterday morning I could
+not. Yesterday my husband gained his case and divorced me!' she closes
+her eyes and draws in her under-lip to stop its quivering. I want to
+take her in my arms, but I am afraid to.
+
+'I did not ask you any more than if you were free!'
+
+'No, but I am afraid you don't quite take in the meaning. I did not
+divorce my husband, he divorced _me_, he got a decree _nisi_; do you
+understand now? (she is speaking with difficulty), do you know what that
+implies?'
+
+I can't stand her face any longer. I take her hands, they are icy cold,
+and hold them tightly.
+
+'Yes, I know what it implies, that is, I know the legal and social
+conclusion to be drawn from it--if that is what you mean. But I never
+asked you for that information. I have nothing to do with your past. You
+did not exist for me before the day we met on the river. I take you from
+that day and I ask you to marry me.'
+
+I feel her tremble and her hands get suddenly warm. She turns her head
+and looks at me long and searchingly, then she says--
+
+'Sit down, I want to say something!'
+
+I obey, and she comes and stands next the chair. I can't help it, I
+reach up my arm, but she puts it gently down.
+
+'No, you must listen without touching me, I shall go back to the
+window. I don't want to influence you a bit by any personal magnetism
+I possess. I want you to listen--I have told you he divorced me, the
+co-respondent was an old friend, a friend of my childhood, of my
+girlhood. He died just after the first application was made, luckily for
+me. He would have considered my honour before my happiness. _I_ did not
+defend the case, it wasn't likely--ah, if you knew all? He proved his
+case; given clever counsel, willing witnesses to whom you make it worth
+while, and no defence, divorce is always attainable even in England. But
+remember: I figure as an adulteress in every English-speaking paper. If
+you buy last week's evening papers--do you remember the day I was in
+town?'--I nod--'you will see a sketch of me in that day's; someone,
+perhaps he, must have given it; it was from an old photograph. I bought
+one at Victoria as I came out; it is funny (with an hysterical laugh) to
+buy a caricature of one's own poor face at a news-stall. Yet in spite of
+that I have felt glad. The point for you is that I made no defence to
+the world, and (with a lifting of her head) I will make no apology, no
+explanation, no denial to you, now nor ever. I am very desolate and your
+attention came very warm to me, but I don't love you. Perhaps I could
+learn to (with a rush of colour), for what you have said tonight, and it
+is because of that I tell you to weigh what this means. Later, when your
+care for me will grow into habit, you may chafe at my past. It is from
+that I would save you.'
+
+I hold out my hands and she comes and puts them aside and takes me by
+the beard and turns up my face and scans it earnestly. She must have
+been deceived a good deal. I let her do as she pleases, it is the wisest
+way with women, and it is good to have her touch me in that way. She
+seems satisfied. She stands leaning against the arm of the chair and
+says--
+
+'I must learn first to think of myself as a free woman again, it almost
+seems wrong today to talk like this; can you understand that feeling?'
+
+I nod assent.
+
+'Next time I must be sure, and you must be sure,' she lays her fingers
+on my mouth as I am about to protest, 'S-sh! You shall have a year to
+think. If you repeat then what you have said today, I shall give you
+your answer. You must not try to find me. I have money. If I am living,
+I will come here to you. If I am dead, you will be told of it. In the
+year between I shall look upon myself as belonging to you, and render an
+account if you wish of every hour. You will not be influenced by me in
+any way, and you will be able to reason it out calmly. If you think
+better of it, don't come.'
+
+I feel there would be no use trying to move her, I simply kiss her hands
+and say:
+
+'As you will, dear woman, I shall be here.'
+
+We don't say any more; she sits down on a footstool with her head
+against my knee, and I just smooth it. When the clocks strike ten
+through the house, she rises and I stand up. I see that she has been
+crying quietly, poor lonely little soul. I lift her off her feet and
+kiss her, and stammer out my sorrow at losing her, and she is gone. Next
+morning the little maid brought me an envelope from the lady, who left
+by the first train. It held a little grey glove; that is why I carry it
+always, and why I haunt the inn and never leave it for longer than a
+week; why I sit and dream in the old chair that has a ghost of her
+presence always; dream of the spring to come with the May-fly on the
+wing, and the young summer when midges dance, and the trout are growing
+fastidious; when she will come to me across the meadow grass, through
+the silver haze, as she did before; come with her grey eyes shining to
+exchange herself for her little grey glove.
+
+
+
+
+THE WOMAN BEATER
+
+By Israel Zangwill
+
+(_The Grey Wig/Stories and Novelettes_, New York: The Macmillan Company,
+1903)
+
+
+I
+
+She came 'to meet John Lefolle', but John Lefolle did not know he was
+to meet Winifred Glamorys. He did not even know he was himself the
+meeting-point of all the brilliant and beautiful persons, assembled in
+the publisher's Saturday Salon, for although a youthful minor poet, he
+was modest and lovable. Perhaps his Oxford tutorship was sobering. At
+any rate his head remained unturned by his precocious fame, and to meet
+these other young men and women--his reverend seniors on the slopes of
+Parnassus--gave him more pleasure than the receipt of 'royalties'. Not
+that his publisher afforded him much opportunity of contrasting the two
+pleasures. The profits of the Muse went to provide this room of old
+furniture and roses, this beautiful garden a-twinkle with Japanese
+lanterns, like gorgeous fire-flowers blossoming under the white
+crescent-moon of early June.
+
+Winifred Glamorys was not literary herself. She was better than a
+poetess, she was a poem. The publisher always threw in a few realities,
+and some beautiful brainless creature would generally be found the
+nucleus of a crowd, while Clio in spectacles languished in a corner.
+Winifred Glamorys, however, was reputed to have a tongue that matched
+her eye; paralleling with whimsies and epigrams its freakish fires and
+witcheries, and, assuredly, flitting in her white gown through the dark
+balmy garden, she seemed the very spirit of moonlight, the subtle
+incarnation of night and roses.
+
+When John Lefolle met her, Cecilia was with her, and the first
+conversation was triangular. Cecilia fired most of the shots; she was
+a bouncing, rattling beauty, chockful of confidence and high spirits,
+except when asked to do the one thing she could do--sing! Then she
+became--quite genuinely--a nervous, hesitant, pale little thing.
+However, the suppliant hostess bore her off, and presently her rich
+contralto notes passed through the garden, adding to its passion and
+mystery, and through the open French windows, John could see her
+standing against the wall near the piano, her head thrown back, her eyes
+half-closed, her creamy throat swelling in the very abandonment of
+artistic ecstasy.
+
+'What a charming creature!' he exclaimed involuntarily.
+
+'That is what everybody thinks, except her husband,' Winifred laughed.
+
+'Is he blind then?' asked John with his cloistral _naivete_.
+
+'Blind? No, love is blind. Marriage is never blind.'
+
+The bitterness in her tone pierced John. He felt vaguely the passing of
+some icy current from unknown seas of experience. Cecilia's voice soared
+out enchantingly.
+
+'Then, marriage must be deaf,' he said, 'or such music as that would
+charm it.'
+
+She smiled sadly. Her smile was the tricksy play of moonlight among
+clouds of faery.
+
+'You have never been married,' she said simply.
+
+'Do you mean that you, too, are neglected?' something impelled him to
+exclaim.
+
+'Worse,' she murmured.
+
+'It is incredible!' he cried. 'You!'
+
+'Hush! My husband will hear you.'
+
+Her warning whisper brought him into a delicious conspiracy with her.
+'Which is your husband?' he whispered back.
+
+'There! Near the casement, standing gazing open-mouthed at Cecilia. He
+always opens his mouth when she sings. It is like two toys moved by the
+same wire.'
+
+He looked at the tall, stalwart, ruddy-haired Anglo-Saxon. 'Do you mean
+to say he--?'
+
+'I mean to say nothing.'
+
+'But you said--'
+
+'I said "worse".'
+
+'Why, what can be worse?'
+
+She put her hand over her face. 'I am ashamed to tell you.' How adorable
+was that half-divined blush!
+
+'But you must tell me everything.' He scarcely knew how he had leapt
+into this role of confessor. He only felt they were 'moved by the same
+wire'.
+
+Her head drooped on her breast. 'He--beats--me.'
+
+'What!' John forgot to whisper. It was the greatest shock his recluse
+life had known, compact as it was of horror at the revelation, shamed
+confusion at her candour, and delicious pleasure in her confidence.
+
+This fragile, exquisite creature under the rod of a brutal bully!
+
+Once he had gone to a wedding reception, and among the serious presents
+some grinning Philistine drew his attention to an uncouth club--'a
+wife-beater' he called it. The flippancy had jarred upon John terribly:
+this intrusive reminder of the customs of the slums. It grated like
+Billingsgate in a boudoir. Now that savage weapon recurred to him--for a
+lurid instant he saw Winifred's husband wielding it. Oh, abomination of
+his sex! And did he stand there, in his immaculate evening dress, posing
+as an English gentleman? Even so might some gentleman burglar bear
+through a salon his imperturbable swallow-tail.
+
+Beat a woman! Beat that essence of charm and purity, God's best gift to
+man, redeeming him from his own grossness! Could such things be? John
+Lefolle would as soon have credited the French legend that English wives
+are sold in Smithfield. No! it could not be real that this flower-like
+figure was thrashed.
+
+'Do you mean to say--?' he cried. The rapidity of her confidence alone
+made him feel it all of a dreamlike unreality.
+
+'Hush! Cecilia's singing!' she admonished him with an unexpected smile,
+as her fingers fell from her face.
+
+'Oh, you have been making fun of me.' He was vastly relieved. 'He beats
+you--at chess--or at lawn-tennis?'
+
+'Does one wear a high-necked dress to conceal the traces of chess, or
+lawn-tennis?'
+
+He had not noticed her dress before, save for its spiritual whiteness.
+Susceptible though he was to beautiful shoulders, Winifred's enchanting
+face had been sufficiently distracting. Now the thought of physical
+bruises gave him a second spasm of righteous horror. That delicate
+rose-leaf flesh abraded and lacerated!
+
+'The ruffian! Does he use a stick or a fist?'
+
+'Both! But as a rule he just takes me by the arms and shakes me like a
+terrier a rat. I'm all black and blue now.'
+
+'Poor butterfly!' he murmured poetically.
+
+'Why did I tell you?' she murmured back with subtler poetry.
+
+The poet thrilled in every vein. 'Love at first sight', of which he had
+often read and often written, was then a reality! It could be as mutual,
+too, as Romeo's and Juliet's. But how awkward that Juliet should be
+married and her husband a Bill Sykes in broad-cloth!
+
+
+II
+
+Mrs. Glamorys herself gave 'At Homes', every Sunday afternoon, and so, on
+the morrow, after a sleepless night mitigated by perpended sonnets, the
+love-sick young tutor presented himself by invitation at the beautiful
+old house in Hampstead. He was enchanted to find his heart's mistress
+set in an eighteenth-century frame of small-paned windows and of high
+oak-panelling, and at once began to image her dancing minuets and
+playing on virginals. Her husband was absent, but a broad band of velvet
+round Winifred's neck was a painful reminder of his possibilities.
+Winifred, however, said it was only a touch of sore throat caught in the
+garden. Her eyes added that there was nothing in the pathological
+dictionary which she would not willingly have caught for the sake of
+those divine, if draughty moments; but that, alas! it was more than a
+mere bodily ailment she had caught there.
+
+There were a great many visitors in the two delightfully quaint rooms,
+among whom he wandered disconsolate and admired, jealous of her
+scattered smiles, but presently he found himself seated by her side on
+a 'cosy corner' near the open folding-doors, with all the other guests
+huddled round a violinist in the inner room. How Winifred had managed it
+he did not know but she sat plausibly in the outer room, awaiting
+newcomers, and this particular niche was invisible, save to a determined
+eye. He took her unresisting hand--that dear, warm hand, with its
+begemmed artistic fingers, and held it in uneasy beatitude. How
+wonderful! She--the beautiful and adored hostess, of whose sweetness and
+charm he heard even her own guests murmur to one another--it was her
+actual flesh-and-blood hand that lay in his--thrillingly tangible. Oh,
+adventure beyond all merit, beyond all hoping!
+
+But every now and then, the outer door facing them would open on some
+newcomer, and John had hastily to release her soft magnetic fingers and
+sit demure, and jealously overhear her effusive welcome to those
+innocent intruders, nor did his brow clear till she had shepherded them
+within the inner fold. Fortunately, the refreshments were in this
+section, so that once therein, few of the sheep strayed back, and the
+jiggling wail of the violin was succeeded by a shrill babble of tongues
+and the clatter of cups and spoons. 'Get me an ice, please--strawberry,'
+she ordered John during one of these forced intervals in manual
+flirtation; and when he had steered laboriously to and fro, he found a
+young actor beside her in his cosy corner, and his jealous fancy almost
+saw _their_ hands dispart. He stood over them with a sickly smile, while
+Winifred ate her ice. When he returned from depositing the empty saucer,
+the player-fellow was gone, and in remorse for his mad suspicion he
+stooped and reverently lifted her fragrant finger-tips to his lips. The
+door behind his back opened abruptly.
+
+'Goodbye,' she said, rising in a flash. The words had the calm
+conventional cadence, and instantly extorted from him--amid all his
+dazedness--the corresponding 'Goodbye'. When he turned and saw it was Mr.
+Glamorys who had come in, his heart leapt wildly at the nearness of his
+escape. As he passed this masked ruffian, he nodded perfunctorily and
+received a cordial smile. Yes, he was handsome and fascinating enough
+externally, this blonde savage.
+
+'A man may smile and smile and be a villain,' John thought. 'I wonder
+how he'd feel, if he knew I knew he beats women.'
+
+Already John had generalized the charge. 'I hope Cecilia will keep him
+at arm's length,' he had said to Winifred, 'if only that she may not
+smart for it some day.'
+
+He lingered purposely in the hall to get an impression of the brute, who
+had begun talking loudly to a friend with irritating bursts of laughter,
+speciously frank-ringing. Golf, fishing, comic operas--ah, the Boeotian!
+These were the men who monopolized the ethereal divinities.
+
+But this brusque separation from his particular divinity was
+disconcerting. How to see her again? He must go up to Oxford in the
+morning, he wrote her that night, but if she could possibly let him
+call during the week he would manage to run down again.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+'Oh, my dear, dreaming poet,' she wrote to Oxford, 'how could you
+possibly send me a letter to be laid on the breakfast-table beside _The
+Times_! With a poem in it, too. Fortunately my husband was in a hurry to
+get down to the City, and he neglected to read my correspondence. (The
+unchivalrous blackguard,' John commented. 'But what can be expected of a
+woman beater?') Never, never write to me again at the house. A letter,
+care of Mrs. Best, 8A Foley Street, W.C., will always find me. She is my
+maid's mother. And you must not come here either, my dear handsome
+head-in-the-clouds, except to my 'At Homes', and then only at judicious
+intervals. I shall be walking round the pond in Kensington Gardens at
+four next Wednesday, unless Mrs. Best brings me a letter to the contrary.
+And now thank you for your delicious poem; I do not recognize my humble
+self in the dainty lines, but I shall always be proud to think I
+inspired them. Will it be in the new volume? I have never been in print
+before; it will be a novel sensation. I cannot pay you song for song,
+only feeling for feeling. Oh, John Lefolle, why did we not meet when I
+had still my girlish dreams? Now, I have grown to distrust all men--to
+fear the brute beneath the cavalier....'
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mrs. Best did bring her a letter, but it was not to cancel the
+appointment, only to say he was not surprised at her horror of the male
+sex, but that she must beware of false generalizations. Life was still a
+wonderful and beautiful thing--_vide_ poem enclosed. He was counting the
+minutes till Wednesday afternoon. It was surely a popular mistake that
+only sixty went to the hour.
+
+This chronometrical reflection recurred to him even more poignantly in
+the hour that he circumambulated the pond in Kensington Gardens. Had she
+forgotten--had her husband locked her up? What could have happened? It
+seemed six hundred minutes, ere, at ten past five she came tripping
+daintily towards him. His brain had been reduced to insanely devising
+problems for his pupils--if a man walks two strides of one and a half
+feet a second round a lake fifty acres in area, in how many turns will
+he overtake a lady who walks half as fast and isn't there?--but the
+moment her pink parasol loomed on the horizon, all his long misery
+vanished in an ineffable peace and uplifting. He hurried, bare-headed,
+to clasp her little gloved hand. He had forgotten her unpunctuality, nor
+did she remind him of it.
+
+'How sweet of you to come all that way,' was all she said, and it was a
+sufficient reward for the hours in the train and the six hundred minutes
+among the nursemaids and perambulators. The elms were in their glory,
+the birds were singing briskly, the water sparkled, the sunlit sward
+stretched fresh and green--it was the loveliest, coolest moment of the
+afternoon. John instinctively turned down a leafy avenue. Nature and
+Love! What more could poet ask?
+
+'No, we can't have tea by the Kiosk,' Mrs. Glamorys protested. 'Of course
+I love anything that savours of Paris, but it's become so fashionable.
+There will be heaps of people who know me. I suppose you've forgotten
+it's the height of the season. I know a quiet little place in the High
+Street.' She led him, unresisting but bemused, towards the gate, and
+into a confectioner's. Conversation languished on the way.
+
+'Tea,' he was about to instruct the pretty attendant.
+
+'Strawberry ices,' Mrs. Glamorys remarked gently. 'And some of those nice
+French cakes.'
+
+The ice restored his spirits, it was really delicious, and he had got so
+hot and tired, pacing round the pond. Decidedly Winifred was a practical
+person and he was a dreamer. The pastry he dared not touch--being a
+genius--but he was charmed at the gaiety with which Winifred crammed
+cake after cake into her rosebud of a mouth. What an enchanting
+creature! how bravely she covered up her life's tragedy!
+
+The thought made him glance at her velvet band--it was broader than
+ever.
+
+'He has beaten you again!' he murmured furiously. Her joyous eyes
+saddened, she hung her head, and her fingers crumbled the cake. 'What is
+his pretext?' he asked, his blood burning.
+
+'Jealousy,' she whispered.
+
+His blood lost its glow, ran cold. He felt the bully's blows on his own
+skin, his romance turning suddenly sordid. But he recovered his
+courage. He, too, had muscles. 'But I thought he just missed seeing me
+kiss your hand.'
+
+She opened her eyes wide. 'It wasn't you, you darling old dreamer.'
+
+He was relieved and disturbed in one.
+
+'Somebody else?' he murmured. Somehow the vision of the player-fellow
+came up.
+
+She nodded. 'Isn't it lucky he has himself drawn a red-herring across
+the track? I didn't mind his blows--_you_ were safe!' Then, with one of
+her adorable transitions, 'I am dreaming of another ice,' she cried with
+roguish wistfulness.
+
+'I was afraid to confess my own greediness,' he said, laughing. He
+beckoned the waitress. 'Two more.'
+
+'We haven't got any more strawberries,' was her unexpected reply.
+'There's been such a run on them today.'
+
+Winifred's face grew overcast. 'Oh, nonsense!' she pouted. To John the
+moment seemed tragic.
+
+'Won't you have another kind?' he queried. He himself liked any kind,
+but he could scarcely eat a second ice without her.
+
+Winifred meditated. 'Coffee?' she queried.
+
+The waitress went away and returned with a face as gloomy as Winifred's.
+'It's been such a hot day,' she said deprecatingly. 'There is only one
+ice in the place and that's Neapolitan.'
+
+'Well, bring two Neapolitans,' John ventured.
+
+'I mean there is only one Neapolitan ice left.'
+
+'Well, bring that. I don't really want one.'
+
+He watched Mrs. Glamorys daintily devouring the solitary ice, and felt a
+certain pathos about the parti-coloured oblong, a something of the
+haunting sadness of 'The Last Rose of Summer'. It would make a graceful,
+serio-comic triolet, he was thinking. But at the last spoonful, his
+beautiful companion dislocated his rhymes by her sudden upspringing.
+
+'Goodness gracious,' she cried, 'how late it is!'
+
+'Oh, you're not leaving me yet!' he said. A world of things sprang to
+his brain, things that he was going to say--to arrange. They had said
+nothing--not a word of their love even; nothing but cakes and ices.
+
+'Poet!' she laughed. 'Have you forgotten I live at Hampstead?' She
+picked up her parasol.
+
+'Put me into a hansom, or my husband will be raving at his lonely
+dinner-table.'
+
+He was so dazed as to be surprised when the waitress blocked his
+departure with a bill. When Winifred was spirited away, he remembered
+she might, without much risk, have given him a lift to Paddington. He
+hailed another hansom and caught the next train to Oxford. But he was
+too late for his own dinner in Hall.
+
+
+III
+
+He was kept very busy for the next few days, and could only exchange a
+passionate letter or two with her. For some time the examination fever
+had been raging, and in every college poor patients sat with wet towels
+round their heads. Some, who had neglected their tutor all the term, now
+strove to absorb his omniscience in a sitting.
+
+On the Monday, John Lefolle was good-naturedly giving a special audience
+to a muscular dunce, trying to explain to him the political effects of
+the Crusades, when there was a knock at the sitting-room door, and the
+scout ushered in Mrs. Glamorys. She was bewitchingly dressed in white,
+and stood in the open doorway, smiling--an embodiment of the summer he
+was neglecting. He rose, but his tongue was paralysed. The dunce became
+suddenly important--a symbol of the decorum he had been outraging. His
+soul, torn so abruptly from history to romance, could not get up the
+right emotion. Why this imprudence of Winifred's? She had been so
+careful heretofore.
+
+'What a lot of boots there are on your staircase!' she said gaily.
+
+He laughed. The spell was broken. 'Yes, the heap to be cleaned is rather
+obtrusive,' he said, 'but I suppose it is a sort of tradition.'
+
+'I think I've got hold of the thing pretty well now, sir.' The dunce
+rose and smiled, and his tutor realized how little the dunce had to
+learn in some things. He felt quite grateful to him.
+
+'Oh, well, you'll come and see me again after lunch, won't you, if one
+or two points occur to you for elucidation,' he said, feeling vaguely a
+liar, and generally guilty. But when, on the departure of the dunce,
+Winifred held out her arms, everything fell from him but the sense of
+the exquisite moment. Their lips met for the first time, but only for an
+instant. He had scarcely time to realize that this wonderful thing had
+happened before the mobile creature had darted to his book-shelves and
+was examining a Thucydides upside down.
+
+'How clever to know Greek!' she exclaimed. 'And do you really talk it
+with the other dons?'
+
+'No, we never talk shop,' he laughed. 'But, Winifred, what made you come
+here?'
+
+'I had never seen Oxford. Isn't it beautiful?'
+
+'There's nothing beautiful _here_,' he said, looking round his sober
+study.
+
+'No,' she admitted; 'there's nothing I care for here,' and had left
+another celestial kiss on his lips before he knew it. 'And now you must
+take me to lunch and on the river.'
+
+He stammered, 'I have--work.'
+
+She pouted. 'But I can't stay beyond tomorrow morning, and I want so
+much to see all your celebrated oarsmen practising.'
+
+'You are not staying over the night?' he gasped.
+
+'Yes, I am,' and she threw him a dazzling glance.
+
+His heart went pit-a-pat. 'Where?' he murmured.
+
+'Oh, some poky little hotel near the station. The swell hotels are
+full.'
+
+He was glad to hear she was not conspicuously quartered.
+
+'So many people have come down already for Commem,' he said. 'I suppose
+they are anxious to see the Generals get their degrees. But hadn't we
+better go somewhere and lunch?'
+
+They went down the stone staircase, past the battalion of boots, and
+across the quad. He felt that all the windows were alive with eyes, but
+she insisted on standing still and admiring their ivied picturesqueness.
+After lunch he shamefacedly borrowed the dunce's punt. The necessities
+of punting, which kept him far from her, and demanded much adroit
+labour, gradually restored his self-respect, and he was able to look the
+uncelebrated oarsmen they met in the eyes, except when they were
+accompanied by their parents and sisters, which subtly made him feel
+uncomfortable again. But Winifred, piquant under her pink parasol, was
+singularly at ease, enraptured with the changing beauty of the river,
+applauding with childish glee the wild flowers on the banks, or the
+rippling reflections in the water.
+
+'Look, look!' she cried once, pointing skyward. He stared upwards,
+expecting a balloon at least. But it was only 'Keats' little rosy
+cloud', she explained. It was not her fault if he did not find the
+excursion unreservedly idyllic.
+
+'How stupid,' she reflected, 'to keep all those nice boys cooped up
+reading dead languages in a spot made for life and love.'
+
+'I'm afraid they don't disturb the dead languages so much as you think,'
+he reassured her, smiling. 'And there will be plenty of love-making
+during Commem.'
+
+'I am so glad. I suppose there are lots of engagements that week.'
+
+'Oh, yes--but not one per cent come to anything.'
+
+'Really? Oh, how fickle men are!'
+
+That seemed rather question-begging, but he was so thrilled by the
+implicit revelation that she could not even imagine feminine
+inconstancy, that he forebore to draw her attention to her inadequate
+logic.
+
+So childish and thoughtless indeed was she that day that nothing would
+content her but attending a 'Viva', which he had incautiously informed
+her was public.
+
+'Nobody will notice us,' she urged with strange unconsciousness of her
+loveliness. 'Besides, they don't know I'm not your sister.'
+
+'The Oxford intellect is sceptical,' he said, laughing. 'It cultivates
+philosophical doubt.'
+
+But, putting a bold face on the matter, and assuming a fraternal air, he
+took her to the torture-chamber, in which candidates sat dolefully on a
+row of chairs against the wall, waiting their turn to come before the
+three grand inquisitors at the table. Fortunately, Winifred and he were
+the only spectators; but unfortunately they blundered in at the very
+moment when the poor owner of the punt was on the rack. The central
+inquisitor was trying to extract from him information about Becket,
+almost prompting him with the very words, but without penetrating
+through the duncical denseness. John Lefolle breathed more freely when
+the Crusades were broached; but, alas, it very soon became evident that
+the dunce had by no means 'got hold of the thing'. As the dunce passed
+out sadly, obviously ploughed, John Lefolle suffered more than he. So
+conscience-stricken was he that, when he had accompanied Winifred as
+far as her hotel, he refused her invitation to come in, pleading the
+compulsoriness of duty and dinner in Hall. But he could not get away
+without promising to call in during the evening.
+
+The prospect of this visit was with him all through dinner, at once
+tempting and terrifying. Assuredly there was a skeleton at his feast, as
+he sat at the high table, facing the Master. The venerable portraits
+round the Hall seemed to rebuke his romantic waywardness. In the
+common-room, he sipped his port uneasily, listening as in a daze to the
+discussion on Free Will, which an eminent stranger had stirred up. How
+academic it seemed, compared with the passionate realities of life. But
+somehow he found himself lingering on at the academic discussion,
+postponing the realities of life. Every now and again, he was impelled
+to glance at his watch; but suddenly murmuring, 'It is very late,' he
+pulled himself together, and took leave of his learned brethren. But in
+the street the sight of a telegraph office drew his steps to it, and
+almost mechanically he wrote out the message: 'Regret detained. Will
+call early in morning.'
+
+When he did call in the morning, he was told she had gone back to London
+the night before on receipt of a telegram. He turned away with a bitter
+pang of disappointment and regret.
+
+
+IV
+
+Their subsequent correspondence was only the more amorous. The reason
+she had fled from the hotel, she explained, was that she could not
+endure the night in those stuffy quarters. He consoled himself with the
+hope of seeing much of her during the Long Vacation. He did see her once
+at her own reception, but this time her husband wandered about the two
+rooms. The cosy corner was impossible, and they could only manage to
+gasp out a few mutual endearments amid the buzz and movement, and to
+arrange a _rendezvous_ for the end of July. When the day came, he
+received a heart-broken letter, stating that her husband had borne her
+away to Goodwood. In a postscript she informed him that 'Quicksilver was
+a sure thing'. Much correspondence passed without another meeting being
+effected, and he lent her five pounds to pay a debt of honour incurred
+through her husband's 'absurd confidence in Quicksilver'. A week later
+this horsey husband of hers brought her on to Brighton for the races
+there, and hither John Lefolle flew. But her husband shadowed her, and
+he could only lift his hat to her as they passed each other on the
+Lawns. Sometimes he saw her sitting pensively on a chair while her lord
+and thrasher perused a pink sporting-paper. Such tantalizing proximity
+raised their correspondence through the Hove Post Office to fever heat.
+Life apart, they felt, was impossible, and, removed from the sobering
+influences of his cap and gown, John Lefolle dreamed of throwing
+everything to the winds. His literary reputation had opened out a new
+career. The Winifred lyrics alone had brought in a tidy sum, and though
+he had expended that and more on despatches of flowers and trifles to
+her, yet he felt this extravagance would become extinguished under daily
+companionship, and the poems provoked by her charms would go far towards
+their daily maintenance. Yes, he could throw up the University. He would
+rescue her from this bully, this gentleman bruiser. They would live
+openly and nobly in the world's eye. A poet was not even expected to be
+conventional.
+
+She, on her side, was no less ardent for the great step. She raged
+against the world's law, the injustice by which a husband's cruelty was
+not sufficient ground for divorce. 'But we finer souls must take the law
+into our own hands,' she wrote. 'We must teach society that the ethics
+of a barbarous age are unfitted for our century of enlightenment.' But
+somehow the actual time and place of the elopement could never get
+itself fixed. In September her husband dragged her to Scotland, in
+October after the pheasants. When the dramatic day was actually fixed,
+Winifred wrote by the next post deferring it for a week. Even the few
+actual preliminary meetings they planned for Kensington Gardens or
+Hampstead Heath rarely came off. He lived in a whirling atmosphere of
+express letters of excuse, and telegrams that transformed the situation
+from hour to hour. Not that her passion in any way abated, or her
+romantic resolution really altered: it was only that her conception of
+time and place and ways and means was dizzily mutable.
+
+But after nigh six months of palpitating negotiations with the adorable
+Mrs. Glamorys, the poet, in a moment of dejection, penned the prose
+apophthegm, 'It is of no use trying to change a changeable person.'
+
+
+V
+
+But at last she astonished him by a sketch plan of the elopement, so
+detailed, even to band-boxes and the Paris night route _via_ Dieppe,
+that no further room for doubt was left in his intoxicated soul, and he
+was actually further astonished when, just as he was putting his
+hand-bag into the hansom, a telegram was handed to him saying: 'Gone to
+Homburg. Letter follows.'
+
+He stood still for a moment on the pavement in utter distraction. What
+did it mean? Had she failed him again? Or was it simply that she had
+changed the city of refuge from Paris to Homburg? He was about to name
+the new station to the cabman, but then, 'letter follows'. Surely that
+meant that he was to wait for it. Perplexed and miserable, he stood with
+the telegram crumpled up in his fist. What a ridiculous situation! He
+had wrought himself up to the point of breaking with the world and his
+past, and now--it only remained to satisfy the cabman!
+
+He tossed feverishly all night, seeking to soothe himself, but really
+exciting himself the more by a hundred plausible explanations. He was
+now strung up to such a pitch of uncertainty that he was astonished for
+the third time when the 'letter' did duly 'follow'.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+'Dearest,' it ran, 'as I explained in my telegram, my husband became
+suddenly ill'--('if she _had_ only put that in the telegram,' he
+groaned)--'and was ordered to Homburg. Of course it was impossible to
+leave him in this crisis, both for practical and sentimental reasons.
+You yourself, darling, would not like me to have aggravated his illness
+by my flight just at this moment, and thus possibly have his death on my
+conscience.' ('Darling, you are always right,' he said, kissing the
+letter.) 'Let us possess our souls in patience a little longer. I need
+not tell you how vexatious it will be to find myself nursing him in
+Homburg--out of the season even--instead of the prospect to which I had
+looked forward with my whole heart and soul. But what can one do? How
+true is the French proverb, 'Nothing happens but the unexpected'! Write
+to me immediately _Poste Restante_, that I may at least console myself
+with your dear words.'
+
+The unexpected did indeed happen. Despite draughts of Elizabeth-brunnen
+and promenades on the Kurhaus terrace, the stalwart woman beater
+succumbed to his malady. The curt telegram from Winifred gave no
+indication of her emotions. He sent a reply-telegram of sympathy with
+her trouble. Although he could not pretend to grieve at this sudden
+providential solution of their life-problem, still he did sincerely
+sympathize with the distress inevitable in connection with a death,
+especially on foreign soil.
+
+He was not able to see her till her husband's body had been brought
+across the North Sea and committed to the green repose of the old
+Hampstead churchyard. He found her pathetically altered--her face wan
+and spiritualized, and all in subtle harmony with the exquisite black
+gown. In the first interview, he did not dare speak of their love at
+all. They discussed the immortality of the soul, and she quoted George
+Herbert. But with the weeks the question of their future began to force
+its way back to his lips.
+
+'We could not decently marry before six months,' she said, when
+definitely confronted with the problem.
+
+'Six months!' he gasped.
+
+'Well, surely you don't want to outrage everybody,' she said, pouting.
+
+At first he was outraged himself. What! She who had been ready to
+flutter the world with a fantastic dance was now measuring her
+footsteps. But on reflection he saw that Mrs. Glamorys was right once
+more. Since Providence had been good enough to rescue them, why should
+they fly in its face? A little patience, and a blameless happiness lay
+before them. Let him not blind himself to the immense relief he really
+felt at being spared social obloquy. After all, a poet could be
+unconventional in his _work_--he had no need of the practical outlet
+demanded for the less gifted.
+
+
+VI
+
+They scarcely met at all during the next six months--it had, naturally,
+in this grateful reaction against their recklessness, become a sacred
+period, even more charged with tremulous emotion than the engagement
+periods of those who have not so nearly scorched themselves. Even in her
+presence he found a certain pleasure in combining distant adoration with
+the confident expectation of proximity, and thus she was restored to
+the sanctity which she had risked by her former easiness. And so all was
+for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
+
+When the six months had gone by, he came to claim her hand. She was
+quite astonished. 'You promised to marry me at the end of six months,'
+he reminded her.
+
+'Surely it isn't six months already,' she said.
+
+He referred her to the calendar, recalled the date of her husband's
+death.
+
+'You are strangely literal for a poet,' she said. 'Of course I _said_
+six months, but six months doesn't mean twenty-six weeks by the clock.
+All I meant was that a decent period must intervene. But even to myself
+it seems only yesterday that poor Harold was walking beside me in the
+Kurhaus Park.' She burst into tears, and in the face of them he could
+not pursue the argument.
+
+Gradually, after several interviews and letters, it was agreed that they
+should wait another six months.
+
+'She _is_ right,' he reflected again. 'We have waited so long, we may as
+well wait a little longer and leave malice no handle.'
+
+The second six months seemed to him much longer than the first. The
+charm of respectful adoration had lost its novelty, and once again his
+breast was racked by fitful fevers which could scarcely calm themselves
+even by conversion into sonnets. The one point of repose was that
+shining fixed star of marriage. Still smarting under Winifred's reproach
+of his unpoetic literality, he did not intend to force her to marry him
+exactly at the end of the twelve-month. But he was determined that she
+should have no later than this exact date for at least 'naming the day'.
+Not the most punctilious stickler for convention, he felt, could deny
+that Mrs. Grundy's claim had been paid to the last minute.
+
+The publication of his new volume--containing the Winifred lyrics--had
+served to colour these months of intolerable delay. Even the reaction of
+the critics against his poetry, that conventional revolt against every
+second volume, that parrot cry of over-praise from the very throats that
+had praised him, though it pained and perplexed him, was perhaps really
+helpful. At any rate, the long waiting was over at last. He felt like
+Jacob after his years of service for Rachel.
+
+The fateful morning dawned bright and blue, and, as the towers of
+Oxford were left behind him he recalled that distant Saturday when he
+had first gone down to meet the literary lights of London in his
+publisher's salon. How much older he was now than then--and yet how much
+younger! The nebulous melancholy of youth, the clouds of philosophy, had
+vanished before this beautiful creature of sunshine whose radiance cut
+out a clear line for his future through the confusion of life.
+
+At a florist's in the High Street of Hampstead he bought a costly
+bouquet of white flowers, and walked airily to the house and rang the
+bell jubilantly. He could scarcely believe his ears when the maid told
+him her mistress was not at home. How dared the girl stare at him so
+impassively? Did she not know by what appointment--on what errand--he
+had come? Had he not written to her mistress a week ago that he would
+present himself that afternoon?
+
+'Not at home!' he gasped. 'But when will she be home?'
+
+'I fancy she won't be long. She went out an hour ago, and she has an
+appointment with her dressmaker at five.'
+
+'Do you know in what direction she'd have gone?'
+
+'Oh, she generally walks on the Heath before tea.'
+
+The world suddenly grew rosy again. 'I will come back again,' he said.
+Yes, a walk in this glorious air--heathward--would do him good.
+
+As the door shut he remembered he might have left the flowers, but he
+would not ring again, and besides, it was, perhaps, better he should
+present them with his own hand, than let her find them on the hall
+table. Still, it seemed rather awkward to walk about the streets with a
+bouquet, and he was glad, accidentally to strike the old Hampstead
+Church, and to seek a momentary seclusion in passing through its avenue
+of quiet gravestones on his heathward way.
+
+Mounting the few steps, he paused idly a moment on the verge of this
+green 'God's-acre' to read a perpendicular slab on a wall, and his face
+broadened into a smile as he followed the absurdly elaborate biography
+of a rich, self-made merchant who had taught himself to read, 'Reader,
+go thou and do likewise,' was the delicious bull at the end. As he
+turned away, the smile still lingering about his lips, he saw a dainty
+figure tripping down the stony graveyard path, and though he was somehow
+startled to find her still in black, there was no mistaking Mrs.
+Glamorys. She ran to meet him with a glad cry, which filled his eyes
+with happy tears.
+
+'How good of you to remember!' she said, as she took the bouquet from
+his unresisting hand, and turned again on her footsteps. He followed her
+wonderingly across the uneven road towards a narrow aisle of graves on
+the left. In another instant she has stooped before a shining white
+stone, and laid his bouquet reverently upon it. As he reached her side,
+he saw that his flowers were almost lost in the vast mass of floral
+offerings with which the grave of the woman beater was bestrewn.
+
+'How good of you to remember the anniversary,' she murmured again.
+
+'How could I forget it?' he stammered, astonished. 'Is not this the end
+of the terrible twelve-month?'
+
+The soft gratitude died out of her face. 'Oh, is _that_ what you were
+thinking of?'
+
+'What else?' he murmured, pale with conflicting emotions.
+
+'What else! I think decency demanded that this day, at least, should be
+sacred to his memory. Oh, what brutes men are!' And she burst into
+tears.
+
+His patient breast revolted at last. 'You said _he_ was the brute!' he
+retorted, outraged.
+
+'Is that your chivalry to the dead? Oh, my poor Harold, my poor Harold!'
+
+For once her tears could not extinguish the flame of his anger. 'But you
+told me he beat you,' he cried.
+
+'And if he did, I dare say I deserved it. Oh, my darling, my darling!'
+She laid her face on the stone and sobbed.
+
+John Lefolle stood by in silent torture. As he helplessly watched her
+white throat swell and fall with the sobs, he was suddenly struck by the
+absence of the black velvet band--the truer mourning she had worn in the
+lifetime of the so lamented. A faint scar, only perceptible to his
+conscious eye, added to his painful bewilderment.
+
+At last she rose and walked unsteadily forward. He followed her in mute
+misery. In a moment or two they found themselves on the outskirts of the
+deserted heath. How beautiful stretched the gorsy rolling country! The
+sun was setting in great burning furrows of gold and green--a panorama
+to take one's breath away. The beauty and peace of Nature passed into
+the poet's soul.
+
+'Forgive me, dearest,' he begged, taking her hand.
+
+She drew it away sharply. 'I cannot forgive you. You have shown yourself
+in your true colours.'
+
+Her unreasonableness angered him again. 'What do you mean? I only came
+in accordance with our long-standing arrangement. You have put me off
+long enough.'
+
+'It is fortunate I did put you off long enough to discover what you
+are.'
+
+He gasped. He thought of all the weary months of waiting, all the long
+comedy of telegrams and express letters, the far-off flirtations of the
+cosy corner, the baffled elopement to Paris. 'Then you won't marry me?'
+
+'I cannot marry a man I neither love nor respect.'
+
+'You don't love me!' Her spontaneous kiss in his sober Oxford study
+seemed to burn on his angry lips.
+
+'No, I never loved you.'
+
+He took her by the arms and turned her round roughly. 'Look me in the
+face and dare to say you have never loved me.'
+
+His memory was buzzing with passionate phrases from her endless letters.
+They stung like a swarm of bees. The sunset was like blood-red mist
+before his eyes.
+
+'I have never loved you,' she said obstinately.
+
+'You--!' His grasp on her arms tightened. He shook her.
+
+'You are bruising me,' she cried.
+
+His grasp fell from her arms as though they were red-hot. He had become
+a woman beater.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VICTORIAN SHORT STORIES***
+
+
+******* This file should be named 15381.txt or 15381.zip *******
+
+
+This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/5/3/8/15381
+
+
+
+Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
+will be renamed.
+
+Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
+one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
+(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
+permission and without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/pglaf.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://www.gutenberg.org/about/contact
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit:
+https://www.gutenberg.org/fundraising/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+