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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes, by
+Israel Zangwill
+
+
+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: The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes
+       The Grey Wig; Chassé-Croisé; The Woman Beater; The Eternal Feminine; The Silent Sisters; The Big Bow Mystery; Merely Mary Ann; The Serio-Comic Governess
+
+
+Author: Israel Zangwill
+
+
+
+Release Date: August 1, 2005  [eBook #16408]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GREY WIG: STORIES AND
+NOVELETTES***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, M. M. Moffet, Mary Meehan, and the
+Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
+(https://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+THE GREY WIG
+
+Stories and Novelettes
+
+by
+
+I. Zangwill
+
+Author of "The Mantle of Elijah" "Children of the Ghetto" etc., etc.
+
+1923
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+  TO MY MOTHER AND SISTERS
+  THIS BOOK
+  Mainly a Study of Woman
+  IS LOVINGLY DEDICATED
+
+
+
+
+PREFATORY NOTE
+
+
+This Volume embraces my newest and oldest work, and includes--for the
+sake of uniformity of edition--a couple of shilling novelettes that are
+out of print.
+
+I.Z.
+
+Mentone,
+February, 1903.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+   THE GREY WIG
+   CHASSE-CROISE
+   THE WOMAN BEATER
+   THE ETERNAL FEMININE
+   THE SILENT SISTERS
+   THE BIG BOW MYSTERY
+   MERELY MARY ANN
+   THE SERIO-COMIC GOVERNESS
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE GREY WIG
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+They both styled themselves "Madame," but only the younger of the old
+ladies had been married. Madame Valiere was still a _demoiselle_, but
+as she drew towards sixty it had seemed more _convenable_ to possess
+a mature label. Certainly Madame Depine had no visible matrimonial
+advantages over her fellow-lodger at the Hotel des Tourterelles,
+though in the symmetrical cemetery of Montparnasse (Section 22)
+wreaths of glass beads testified to a copious domesticity in the far
+past, and a newspaper picture of a _chasseur d'Afrique_ pinned over
+her bed recalled--though only the uniform was the dead soldier's--the
+son she had contributed to France's colonial empire. Practically it
+was two old maids--or two lone widows--whose boots turned pointed toes
+towards each other in the dark cranny of the rambling, fusty corridor
+of the sky-floor. Madame Depine was round, and grew dumpier with age;
+"Madame" Valiere was long, and grew slimmer. Otherwise their lives ran
+parallel. For the true madame of the establishment you had to turn to
+Madame la Proprietaire, with her buxom bookkeeper of a daughter and
+her tame baggage-bearing husband. This full-blooded, jovial creature,
+with her swart moustache, represented the only Parisian success of
+three provincial lives, and, in her good-nature, had permitted her
+decayed townswomen--at as low a rent as was compatible with
+prudence--to shelter themselves under her roof and as near it as
+possible. Her house being a profitable warren of American
+art-students, tempered by native journalists and decadent poets, she
+could, moreover, afford to let the old ladies off coffee and candles.
+They were at liberty to prepare their own _dejeuner_ in winter or to
+buy it outside in summer; they could burn their own candles or sit in
+the dark, as the heart in them pleased; and thus they were as cheaply
+niched as any one in the gay city. _Rentieres_ after their meticulous
+fashion, they drew a ridiculous but regular amount from the mysterious
+coffers of the Credit Lyonnais.
+
+But though they met continuously in the musty corridor, and even
+dined--when they did dine--at the same _cremerie_, they never spoke to
+each other. Madame la Proprietaire was the channel through which they
+sucked each other's history, for though they had both known her in
+their girlish days at Tonnerre, in the department of Yonne, they had
+not known each other. Madame Valiere (Madame Depine learnt, and it
+seemed to explain the frigidity of her neighbour's manner) still
+trailed clouds of glory from the service of a Princess a quarter of a
+century before. Her refusal to wink at the Princess's goings-on, her
+austere, if provincial, regard for the convenances, had cost her
+the place, and from these purpureal heights she had fallen lower and
+lower, till she struck the attic of the Hotel des Tourterelles.
+
+But even a haloed past does not give one a licence to annoy one's
+neighbours. Madame Depine felt resentfully, and she hated Madame
+Valiere as a haughty minion of royalty, who kept a cough, which barked
+loudest in the silence of the night.
+
+"Why doesn't she go to the hospital, your Princess?" she complained to
+Madame la Proprietaire.
+
+"Since she is able to nurse herself at home," the opulent-bosomed
+hostess replied with a shrug.
+
+"At the expense of other people," Madame Depine retorted bitterly. "I
+shall die of her cough, I am sure of it."
+
+Madame showed her white teeth sweetly. "Then it is you who should go
+to the hospital."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Time wrote wrinkles enough on the brows of the two old ladies, but
+his frosty finger never touched their glossy brown hair, for both wore
+wigs of nearly the same shade. These wigs were almost symbolic of
+the evenness of their existence, which had got beyond the reach of
+happenings. The Church calendar, so richly dyed with figures of saints
+and martyrs, filled life with colour enough, and fast-days were almost
+as welcome as feast-days, for if the latter warmed the general air,
+the former cloaked economy with dignity. As for _Mardi Gras_, that
+shook you up for weeks, even though you did not venture out of your
+apartment; the gay serpentine streamers remained round one's soul as
+round the trees.
+
+At intervals, indeed, secular excitements broke the even tenor. A
+country cousin would call upon the important Parisian relative, and
+be received, not in the little bedroom, but in state in the mustily
+magnificent salon of the hotel--all gold mirrors and mouldiness--which
+the poor country mouse vaguely accepted as part of the glories of
+Paris and success. Madame Depine would don her ponderous gold brooch,
+sole salvage of her bourgeois prosperity; while, if the visitor were
+for Madame Valiere, that _grande dame_ would hang from her yellow,
+shrivelled neck the long gold chain and the old-fashioned watch, whose
+hands still seemed to point to regal hours.
+
+Another break in the monotony was the day on which the lottery was
+drawn--the day of the pagan god of Luck. What delicious hopes of
+wealth flamed in these withered breasts, only to turn grey and cold
+when the blank was theirs again, but not the less to soar up again,
+with each fresh investment, towards the heaven of the hundred thousand
+francs! But if ever Madame Depine stumbled on Madame Valiere buying a
+section of a _billet_ at the lottery agent's, she insisted on having
+her own slice cut from another number. Fortune itself would be robbed
+of its sweet if the "Princess" should share it. Even their common
+failure to win a sou did not draw them from their freezing depths
+of silence, from which every passing year made it more difficult to
+emerge. Some greater conjuncture was needed for that.
+
+It came when Madame la Proprietaire made her _debut_ one fine morning
+in a grey wig.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Hitherto that portly lady's hair had been black. But now, as suddenly
+as darkness vanishes in a tropic dawn, it was become light. No gradual
+approach of the grey, for the black had been equally artificial. The
+wig is the region without twilight. Only in the swart moustache
+had the grey crept on, so that perhaps the growing incongruity had
+necessitated the sudden surrender to age.
+
+To both Madame Depine and Madame Valiere the grey wig came like a blow
+on the heart.
+
+It was a grisly embodiment of their secret griefs, a tantalising
+vision of the unattainable. To glide reputably into a grey wig had
+been for years their dearest desire. As each saw herself getting older
+and older, saw her complexion fade and the crow's-feet gather, and her
+eyes grow hollow, and her teeth fall out and her cheeks fall in,
+so did the impropriety of her brown wig strike more and more
+humiliatingly to her soul. But how should a poor old woman ever
+accumulate enough for a new wig? One might as well cry for the
+moon--or a set of false teeth. Unless, indeed, the lottery--?
+
+And so, when Madame Depine received a sister-in-law from Tonnerre, or
+Madame Valiere's nephew came up by the excursion train from that same
+quiet and incongruously christened townlet, the Parisian personage
+would receive the visitor in the darkest corner of the salon, with her
+back to the light, and a big bonnet on her head--an imposing figure
+repeated duskily in the gold mirrors. These visits, instead of
+a relief, became a terror. Even a provincial knows it is not
+_convenable_ for an old woman to wear a brown wig. And Tonnerre kept
+strict record of birthdays.
+
+Tears of shame and misery had wetted the old ladies' hired pillows, as
+under the threat of a provincial visitation they had tossed sleepless
+in similar solicitude, and their wigs, had they not been wigs, would
+have turned grey of themselves. Their only consolation had been that
+neither outdid the other, and so long as each saw the other's brown
+wig, they had refrained from facing the dread possibility of having to
+sell off their jewellery in a desperate effort of emulation. Gradually
+Madame Depine had grown to wear her wig with vindictive endurance, and
+Madame Valiere to wear hers with gentle resignation. And now, here
+was Madame la Proprietaire, a woman five years younger and ten years
+better preserved, putting them both to the public blush, drawing the
+hotel's attention to what the hotel might have overlooked, in its long
+habituation to their surmounting brownness.
+
+More morbidly conscious than ever of a young head on old shoulders,
+the old ladies no longer paused at the bureau to exchange the news
+with Madame or even with her black-haired bookkeeping daughter. No
+more lounging against the newel under the carved torch-bearer, while
+the journalist of the fourth floor spat at the Dreyfusites, and the
+poet of the _entresol_ threw versified vitriol at perfidious Albion.
+For the first time, too--losing their channel of communication--they
+grew out of touch with each other's microscopic affairs, and their
+mutual detestation increased with their resentful ignorance. And so,
+shrinking and silent, and protected as far as possible by their big
+bonnets, the squat Madame Depine and the skinny Madame Valiere toiled
+up and down the dark, fusty stairs of the Hotel des Tourterelles,
+often brushing against each other, yet sundered by icy infinities. And
+the endurance on Madame Depine's round face became more vindictive,
+and gentler grew the resignation on the angular visage of Madame
+Valiere.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+"_Tiens!_ Madame Depine, one never sees you now." Madame la
+Proprietaire was blocking the threshold, preventing her exit. "I was
+almost thinking you had veritably died of Madame Valiere's cough."
+
+"One has received my rent, the Monday," the little old lady replied
+frigidly.
+
+"_Oh! la! la!_" Madame waved her plump hands. "And La Valiere, too,
+makes herself invisible. What has then happened to both of you? Is it
+that you are doing a penance together?"
+
+"Hist!" said Madame Depine, flushing.
+
+For at this moment Madame Valiere appeared on the pavement outside
+bearing a long French roll and a bag of figs, which made an excellent
+lunch at low water. Madame la Proprietaire, dominatingly bestriding
+her doorstep, was sandwiched between the two old ladies, her wig
+aggressively grey between the two browns. Madame Valiere halted
+awkwardly, a bronze blush mounting to match her wig. To be seen
+by Madame Depine carrying in her meagre provisions was humiliation
+enough; to be juxtaposited with a grey wig was unbearable.
+
+"_Maman, maman_, the English monsieur will not pay two francs for
+his dinner!" And the distressed bookkeeper, bill in hand, shattered
+the trio.
+
+"And why will he not pay?" Fire leapt into the black eyes.
+
+"He says you told him the night he came that by arrangement he could
+have his dinners for one franc fifty."
+
+Madame la Proprietaire made two strides towards the refractory English
+monsieur. "_I_ told you one franc fifty? For _dejeuner_, yes, as many
+luncheons as you can eat. But for dinner? You eat with us as one of
+the family, and _vin compris_ and _cafe_ likewise, and it should
+be all for one franc fifty! _Mon Dieu!_ it is to ruin oneself. Come
+here." And she seized the surprised Anglo-Saxon by the wrist and
+dragged him towards a painted tablet of prices that hung in a dark
+niche of the hall. "I have kept this hotel for twenty years, I have
+grown grey in the service of artists and students, and this is the
+first time one has demanded dinner for one franc fifty!"
+
+"_She_ has grown grey!" contemptuously muttered Madame Valiere.
+
+"Grey? She!" repeated Madame Depine, with no less bitterness. "It is
+only to give herself the air of a _grande dame_!"
+
+Then both started, and coloured to the roots of their wigs.
+Simultaneously they realised that they had spoken to each other.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+As they went up the stairs together--for Madame Depine had quite
+forgotten she was going out--an immense relief enlarged their souls.
+Merely to mention the grey wig had been a vent for all this morbid
+brooding; to abuse Madame la Proprietaire into the bargain was to pass
+from the long isolation into a subtle sympathy.
+
+"I wonder if she did say one franc fifty," observed Madame Valiere,
+reflectively.
+
+"Without doubt," Madame Depine replied viciously. "And fifty centimes
+a day soon mount up to a grey wig."
+
+"Not so soon," sighed Madame Valiere.
+
+"But then it is not only one client that she cheats."
+
+"Ah! at that rate wigs fall from the skies," admitted Madame Valiere.
+
+"Especially if one has not to give dowries to one's nieces," said
+Madame Depine, boldly.
+
+"And if one is mean on New Year's Day," returned Madame Valiere, with
+a shade less of mendacity.
+
+They inhaled the immemorial airlessness of the staircase as if they
+were breathing the free air of the forests depicted on its dirty-brown
+wall-paper. It was the new atmosphere of self-respect that they were
+really absorbing. Each had at last explained herself and her brown wig to
+the other. An immaculate honesty (that would scorn to overcharge fifty
+centimes even to _un Anglais_), complicated with unwedded nieces in
+one case, with a royal shower of New Year's gifts in the other, had
+kept them from selfish, if seemly, hoary-headedness.
+
+"Ah! here is my floor," panted Madame Valiere at length, with an air
+of indicating it to a thorough stranger. "Will you not come into my
+room and eat a fig? They are very healthy between meals."
+
+Madame Depine accepted the invitation, and entering her own corner
+of the corridor with a responsive air of foreign exploration, passed
+behind the door through whose keyhole she had so often peered. Ah! no
+wonder she had detected nothing abnormal. The room was a facsimile
+of her own--the same bed with the same quilt over it and the same
+crucifix above it, the same little table with the same books of
+devotion, the same washstand with the same tiny jug and basin, the
+same rusted, fireless grate. The wardrobe, like her own, was merely a
+pair of moth-eaten tartan curtains, concealing both pegs and garments
+from her curiosity. The only sense of difference came subtly from the
+folding windows, below whose railed balcony showed another view of the
+quarter, with steam-trams--diminished to toy trains--puffing past
+to the suburbs. But as Madame Depine's eyes roved from these to the
+mantel-piece, she caught sight of an oval miniature of an elegant young
+woman, who was jewelled in many places, and corresponded exactly with
+her idea of a Princess!
+
+To disguise her access of respect, she said abruptly, "It must be very
+noisy here from the steam-trams."
+
+"It is what I love, the bustle of life," replied Madame Valiere,
+simply.
+
+"Ah!" said Madame Depine, impressed beyond masking-point, "I suppose
+when one has had the habit of Courts--"
+
+Madame Valiere shuddered unexpectedly. "Let us not speak of it. Take a
+fig."
+
+But Madame Depine persisted--though she took the fig. "Ah! those were
+brave days when we had still an Emperor and an Empress to drive to the
+Bois with their equipages and outriders. Ah, how pretty it was!"
+
+"But the President has also"--a fit of coughing interrupted Madame
+Valiere--"has also outriders."
+
+"But he is so bourgeois--a mere man of the people," said Madame
+Depine.
+
+"They are the most decent sort of folk. But do you not feel cold? I
+will light a fire." She bent towards the wood-box.
+
+"No, no; do not trouble. I shall be going in a moment. I have a large
+fire blazing in my room."
+
+"Then suppose we go and sit there," said poor Madame Valiere.
+
+Poor Madame Depine was seized with a cough, more protracted than any
+of which she had complained.
+
+"Provided it has not gone out in my absence," she stammered at last.
+"I will go first and see if it is in good trim."
+
+"No, no; it is not worth the trouble of moving." And Madame Valiere
+drew her street-cloak closer round her slim form. "But I have lived so
+long in Russia, I forget people call this cold."
+
+"Ah! the Princess travelled far?" said Madame Depine, eagerly.
+
+"Too far," replied Madame Valiere, with a flash of Gallic wit. "But
+who has told you of the Princess?"
+
+"Madame la Proprietaire, naturally."
+
+"She talks too much--she and her wig!"
+
+"If only she didn't imagine herself a powdered marquise in it! To see
+her standing before the mirror in the salon!"
+
+"The beautiful spectacle!" assented Madame Valiere.
+
+"Ah! but I don't forget--if she does--that her mother wheeled a
+fruit-barrow through the streets of Tonnerre!"
+
+"Ah! yes, I knew you were from Tonnerre--dear Tonnerre!"
+
+"How did you know?"
+
+"Naturally, Madame la Proprietaire."
+
+"The old gossip!" cried Madame Depine--"though not so old as
+she feigns. But did she tell you of her mother, too, and the
+fruit-barrow?"
+
+"I knew her mother--_une brave femme_."
+
+"I do not say not," said Madame Depine, a whit disconcerted.
+"Nevertheless, when one's mother is a merchant of the four seasons--"
+
+"Provided she sold fruit as good as this! Take another fig, I beg of
+you."
+
+"Thank you. These are indeed excellent," said Madame Depine. "She owed
+all her good fortune to a _coup_ in the lottery."
+
+"Ah! the lottery!" Madame Valiere sighed. Before the eyes of both rose
+the vision of a lucky number and a grey wig.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+The acquaintanceship ripened. It was not only their common grievances
+against fate and Madame la Proprietaire: they were linked by the sheer
+physical fact that each was the only person to whom the other could
+talk without the morbid consciousness of an eye scrutinising the
+unseemly brown wig. It became quite natural, therefore, for Madame
+Depine to stroll into her "Princess's" room, and they soon slid into
+dividing the cost of the fire. That was more than an economy, for
+neither could afford a fire alone. It was an easy transition to the
+discovery that coffee could be made more cheaply for two, and that
+the same candle would light two persons, provided they sat in the same
+room. And if they did not fall out of the habit of companionship even
+at the _cremerie_, though "two portions for one" were not served,
+their union at least kept the sexagenarians in countenance. Two brown
+wigs give each other a moral support, are on the way to a fashion.
+
+But there was more than wigs and cheese-parings in their
+_camaraderie_. Madame Depine found a fathomless mine of edification
+in Madame Valiere's reminiscences, which she skilfully extracted from
+her, finding the average ore rich with noble streaks, though the old
+tirewoman had an obstinate way of harking back to her girlhood, which
+made some delvings result in mere earth.
+
+On the Day of the Dead Madame Depine emerged into importance, taking
+her friend with her to the Cemetery Montparnasse to see the glass
+flowers blooming immortally over the graves of her husband and
+children. Madame Depine paid the omnibus for both (inside places), and
+felt, for once, superior to the poor "Princess," who had never known
+the realities of love and death.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+Two months passed. Another of Madame Valiere's teeth fell out. Madame
+Depine's cheeks grew more pendulous. But their brown wigs remained as
+fadeless as the cemetery flowers.
+
+One day they passed the hairdresser's shop together. It was indeed
+next to the tobacconist's, so not easy to avoid, whenever one wanted
+a stamp or a postcard. In the window, amid pendent plaits of divers
+hues, bloomed two wax busts of females--the one young and coquettish
+and golden-haired, the other aristocratic in a distinguished grey wig.
+Both wore diamond rosettes in their hair and ropes of pearls round
+their necks. The old ladies' eyes met, then turned away.
+
+"If one demanded the price!" said Madame Depine (who had already done
+so twice).
+
+"It is an idea!" agreed Madame Valiere.
+
+"The day will come when one's nieces will be married."
+
+"But scarcely when New Year's Day shall cease to be," the "Princess"
+sighed.
+
+"Still, one might win in the lottery!"
+
+"Ah! true. Let us enter, then."
+
+"One will be enough. You go." Madame Depine rather dreaded the
+_coiffeur_, whom intercourse with jocose students had made severe.
+
+But Madame Valiere shrank back shyly. "No, let us both go." She added,
+with a smile to cover her timidity, "Two heads are better than one."
+
+"You are right. He will name a lower price in the hope of two orders."
+And, pushing the "Princess" before her like a turret of defence,
+Madame Depine wheeled her into the ladies' department.
+
+The _coiffeur_, who was washing the head of an American girl, looked
+up ungraciously. As he perceived the outer circumference of Madame
+Depine projecting on either side of her turret, he emitted a glacial
+"_Bon jour, mesdames._"
+
+"Those grey wigs--" faltered Madame Valiere
+
+"I have already told your friend." He rubbed the American head
+viciously.
+
+Madame Depine coloured. "But--but we are two. Is there no reduction on
+taking a quantity?"
+
+"And why then? A wig is a wig. Twice a hundred francs are two hundred
+francs."
+
+"One hundred francs for a wig!" said Madame Valiere, paling. "I did
+not pay that for the one I wear."
+
+"I well believe it, madame. A grey wig is not a brown wig."
+
+"But you just said a wig is a wig."
+
+The _coiffeur_ gave angry rubs at the head, in time with his explosive
+phrases. "You want real hair, I presume--and to your measure--and to
+look natural--and _convenable_!" (Both old ladies shuddered at the
+word.) "Of course, if you want it merely for private theatricals--"
+
+"Private theatricals!" repeated Madame Depine, aghast.
+
+"A _comedienne's_ wig I can sell you for a bagatelle. That passes at a
+distance."
+
+Madame Valiere ignored the suggestion. "But why should a grey wig cost
+more than any other?"
+
+The _coiffeur_ shrugged his shoulders. "Since there are less grey
+hairs in the world--"
+
+"_Comment!_" repeated Madame Valiere, in amazement.
+
+"It stands to reason," said the _coiffeur_. "Since most persons do
+not live to be old--or only live to be bald." He grew animated,
+professorial almost, seeing the weight his words carried to unthinking
+bosoms. "And since one must provide a fine hair-net for a groundwork,
+to imitate the flesh-tint of the scalp, and since each hair of the
+parting must be treated separately, and since the natural wave of the
+hair must be reproduced, and since you will also need a block for it
+to stand on at nights to guard its shape--"
+
+"But since one has already blocks," interposed Madame Depine.
+
+"But since a conscientious artist cannot trust another's block!
+Represent to yourself also that the shape of the head does not remain
+as fixed as the dome of the Invalides, and that--"
+
+"_Eh bien_, we will think," interrupted Madame Valiere, with dignity.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+They walked slowly towards the Hotel des Tourterelles.
+
+"If one could share a wig!" Madame Depine exclaimed suddenly.
+
+"It is an idea," replied Madame Valiere. And then each stared
+involuntarily at the other's head. They had shared so many things
+that this new possibility sounded like a discovery. Pleasing pictures
+flitted before their eyes--the country cousin received (on a Box
+and Cox basis) by a Parisian old gentlewoman _sans peur_ and _sans
+reproche_; a day of seclusion for each alternating with a day of
+ostentatious publicity.
+
+But the light died out of their eyes, as Madame Depine recognised
+that the "Princess's" skull was hopelessly long, and Madame Valiere
+recognised that Madame Depine's cranium was hopelessly round.
+Decidedly either head would be a bad block for the other's wig to
+repose on.
+
+"It would be more sensible to acquire a wig together, and draw lots
+for it," said Madame Depine.
+
+The "Princess's" eyes rekindled. "Yes, and then save up again to buy
+the loser a wig."
+
+"_Parfaitement_" said Madame Depine. They had slid out of pretending
+that they had large sums immediately available. Certain sums still
+existed in vague stockings for dowries or presents, but these, of
+course, could not be touched. For practical purposes it was understood
+that neither had the advantage of the other, and that the few francs
+a month by which Madame Depine's income exceeded Madame Valiere's were
+neutralised by the superior rent she paid for her comparative immunity
+from steam-trams. The accumulation of fifty francs apiece was thus a
+limitless perspective.
+
+They discussed their budget. It was really almost impossible to cut
+down anything. By incredible economies they saw their way to saving
+a franc a week each. But fifty weeks! A whole year, allowing for
+sickness and other breakdowns! Who can do penance for a whole year?
+They thought of moving to an even cheaper hotel; but then in the
+course of years Madame Valiere had fallen three weeks behind with the
+rent, and Madame Depine a fortnight, and these arrears would have to
+be paid up. The first council ended in despair. But in the silence of
+the night Madame Depine had another inspiration. If one suppressed the
+lottery for a season!
+
+On the average each speculated a full franc a week, with scarcely
+a gleam of encouragement. Two francs a week each--already the year
+becomes six months! For six months one can hold out. Hardships shared
+are halved, too. It will seem scarce three months. Ah, how good are
+the blessed saints!
+
+But over the morning coffee Madame Valiere objected that they might
+win the whole hundred francs in a week!
+
+It was true; it was heartbreaking.
+
+Madame Depine made a reckless reference to her brooch, but the
+Princess had a gesture of horror. "And wear your heart on your shawl
+when your friends come?" she exclaimed poetically. "Sooner my watch
+shall go, since that at least is hidden in my bosom!"
+
+"Heaven forbid!" ejaculated Madame Depine. "But if you sold the other
+things hidden in your bosom!"
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+"The Royal Secrets."
+
+The "Princess" blushed. "What are you thinking of?"
+
+"The journalist below us tells me that gossip about the great sells
+like Easter buns."
+
+"He is truly below us," said Madame Valiere, witheringly. "What! sell
+one's memories! No, no; it would not be _convenable_. There are even
+people living--"
+
+"But nobody would know," urged Madame Depine.
+
+"One must carry the head high, even if it is not grey."
+
+It was almost a quarrel. Far below the steam-tram was puffing past.
+At the window across the street a woman was beating her carpet with
+swift, spasmodic thwacks, as one who knew the legal time was nearly
+up. In the tragic silence which followed Madame Valiere's rebuke,
+these sounds acquired a curious intensity.
+
+"I prefer to sacrifice the lottery rather than honour," she added, in
+more conciliatory accents.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+The long quasi-Lenten weeks went by, and unflinchingly the two old
+ladies pursued their pious quest of the grey wig. Butter had vanished
+from their bread, and beans from their coffee. Their morning brew
+was confected of charred crusts, and as they sipped it solemnly they
+exchanged the reflection that it was quite equal to the coffee at the
+_cremerie_. Positively one was safer drinking one's own messes. Figs,
+no longer posing as a pastime of the palate, were accepted seriously
+as _pieces de resistance_. The Spring was still cold, yet fires could
+be left to die after breakfast. The chill had been taken off, and by
+mid-day the sun was in its full power. Each sustained the other by
+a desperate cheerfulness. When they took their morning walk in the
+Luxembourg Gardens--what time the blue-aproned Jacques was polishing
+their waxed floors with his legs for broom-handles--they went into
+ecstasies over everything, drawing each other's attention to the
+sky, the trees, the water. And, indeed, of a sunshiny morning it was
+heartening to sit by the pond and watch the wavering sheet of beaten
+gold water, reflecting all shades of green in a restless shimmer
+against the shadowed grass around. Madame Valiere always had a bit
+of dry bread to feed the pigeons withal--it gave a cheerful sense of
+superfluity, and her manner of sprinkling the crumbs revived Madame
+Depine's faded images of a Princess scattering New Year largess.
+
+But beneath all these pretences of content lay a hollow sense of
+desolation. It was not the want of butter nor the diminished meat; it
+was the total removal from life of that intangible splendour of hope
+produced by the lottery ticket. Ah! every day was drawn blank now.
+This gloom, this gnawing emptiness at the heart, was worse than either
+had foreseen or now confessed. Malicious Fate, too, they felt, would
+even crown with the _grand prix_ the number they would have chosen.
+But for the prospective draw for the Wig--which reintroduced the
+aleatory--life would scarcely have been bearable.
+
+Madame Depine's sister-in-law's visit by the June excursion train was
+a not unexpected catastrophe. It only lasted a day, but it put back
+the Grey Wig by a week, for Madame Choucrou had to be fed at Duval's,
+and Madame Valiere magnanimously insisted on being of the party:
+whether to run parallel with her friend, or to carry off the
+brown wig, she alone knew. Fortunately, Madame Choucrou was both
+short-sighted and colour-blind. On the other hand, she liked a _petit
+verre_ with her coffee, and both at a separate restaurant. But never
+had Madame Valiere appeared to Madame Depine's eyes more like the
+"Princess," more gay and polished and debonair, than at this little
+round table on the sunlit Boulevard. Little trills of laughter came
+from the half-toothless gums; long gloved fingers toyed with the
+liqueur glass or drew out the old-fashioned watch to see that Madame
+Choucrou did not miss her train; she spent her sou royally on a hawked
+journal. When they had seen Madame Choucrou off, she proposed to dock
+meat entirely for a fortnight so as to regain the week. Madame Depine
+accepted in the same heroic spirit, and even suggested the elimination
+of the figs: one could lunch quite well on bread and milk, now the
+sunshine was here. But Madame Valiere only agreed to a week's trial of
+this, for she had a sweet tooth among the few in her gums.
+
+The very next morning, as they walked in the Luxembourg Gardens,
+Madame Depine's foot kicked against something. She stooped and saw a
+shining glory--a five-franc piece!
+
+"What is it?" said Madame Valiere.
+
+"Nothing," said Madame Depine, covering the coin with her foot. "My
+bootlace." And she bent down--to pick up the coin, to fumble at her
+bootlace, and to cover her furious blush. It was not that she wished
+to keep the godsend to herself,--one saw on the instant that _le bon
+Dieu_ was paying for Madame Choucrou,--it was an instantaneous dread
+of the "Princess's" quixotic code of honour. La Valiere was capable of
+flying in the face of Providence, of taking the windfall to a _bureau
+de police_. As if the inspector wouldn't stick to it himself! A
+purse--yes. But a five-franc piece, one of a flock of sheep!
+
+The treasure-trove was added to the heap of which her stocking was
+guardian, and thus honestly divided. The trouble, however, was that,
+as she dared not inform the "Princess," she could not decently back
+out of the meatless fortnight. Providence, as it turned out, was
+making them gain a week. As to the figs, however, she confessed on the
+third day that she hungered sore for them, and Madame Valiere readily
+agreed to make this concession to her weakness.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+This little episode coloured for Madame Depine the whole dreary period
+that remained. Life was never again so depressingly definite; though
+curiously enough the "Princess" mistook for gloom her steady earthward
+glance, as they sauntered about the sweltering city. With anxious
+solicitude Madame Valiere would direct her attention to sunsets, to
+clouds, to the rising moon; but heaven had ceased to have attraction,
+except as a place from which five-francs fell, and as soon as the
+"Princess's" eye was off her, her own sought the ground again. But
+this imaginary need of cheering up Madame Depine kept Madame Valiere
+herself from collapsing. At last, when the first red leaves began
+to litter the Gardens and cover up possible coins, the francs in the
+stocking approached their century.
+
+What a happy time was that! The privations were become second nature;
+the weather was still fine. The morning Gardens were a glow of pink
+and purple and dripping diamonds, and on some of the trees was the
+delicate green of a second blossoming, like hope in the heart of age.
+They could scarcely refrain from betraying their exultation to
+the Hotel des Tourterelles, from which they had concealed their
+sufferings. But the polyglot population seething round its malodorous
+stairs and tortuous corridors remained ignorant that anything was
+passing in the life of these faded old creatures, and even on the
+day of drawing lots for the Wig the exuberant hotel retained its
+imperturbable activity.
+
+Not that they really drew lots. That was a figure of speech, difficult
+to translate into facts. They preferred to spin a coin. Madame Depine
+was to toss, the "Princess" to cry _pile ou face_. From the stocking
+Madame Depine drew, naturally enough, the solitary five-franc piece.
+It whirled in the air; the "Princess" cried _face_. The puff-puff of
+the steam-tram sounded like the panting of anxious Fate. The great
+coin fell, rolled, balanced itself between two destinies, then
+subsided, _pile_ upwards. The poor "Princess's" face grew even longer;
+but for the life of her Madame Depine could not make her own face
+other than a round red glow, like the sun in a fog. In fact, she
+looked so young at this supreme moment that the brown wig quite became
+her.
+
+"I congratulate you," said Madame Valiere, after the steam-tram had
+become a far-away rumble.
+
+"Before next summer we shall have yours too," the winner reminded her
+consolingly.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+They had not waited till the hundred francs were actually in the
+stocking. The last few would accumulate while the wig was making. As
+they sat at their joyous breakfast the next morning, ere starting for
+the hairdresser's, the casement open to the October sunshine, Jacques
+brought up a letter for Madame Valiere--an infrequent incident.
+Both old women paled with instinctive distrust of life. And as the
+"Princess" read her letter, all the sympathetic happiness died out of
+her face.
+
+"What is the matter, then?" breathed Madame Depine.
+
+The "Princess" recovered herself. "Nothing, nothing. Only my nephew
+who is marrying."
+
+"Soon?"
+
+"The middle of next month."
+
+"Then you will need to give presents!"
+
+"One gives a watch, a bagatelle, and then--there is time. It is
+nothing. How good the coffee is this morning!"
+
+They had not changed the name of the brew: it is not only in religious
+evolutions that old names are a comfort.
+
+They walked to the hairdresser's in silence. The triumphal procession
+had become almost a dead march. Only once was the silence broken.
+
+"I suppose they have invited you down for the wedding?" said Madame
+Depine.
+
+"Yes," said Madame Valiere.
+
+They walked on.
+
+The _coiffeur_ was at his door, sunning his aproned stomach, and
+twisting his moustache as if it were a customer's. Emotion overcame
+Madame Depine at the sight of him. She pushed Madame Valiere into the
+tobacconist's instead.
+
+"I have need of a stamp," she explained, and demanded one for five
+centimes. She leaned over the counter babbling aimlessly to the
+proprietor, postponing the great moment. Madame Valiere lost the clue
+to her movements, felt her suddenly as a stranger. But finally Madame
+Depine drew herself together and led the way into the _coiffeurs_. The
+proprietor, who had reentered his parlour, reemerged gloomily.
+
+Madame Valiere took the word. "We are thinking of ordering a wig."
+
+"Cash in advance, of course," said the _coiffeur_.
+
+"_Comment!_" cried Madame Valiere, indignantly. "You do not trust my
+friend!"
+
+"Madame Valiere has moved in the best society," added Madame Depine.
+
+"But you cannot expect me to do two hundred francs of work and then be
+left planted with the wigs!"
+
+"But who said two hundred francs?" cried Madame Depine. "It is only
+one wig that we demand--to-day at least."
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. "A hundred francs, then."
+
+"And why should we trust you with one hundred francs?" asked Madame
+Depine. "You might botch the work."
+
+"Or fly to Italy," added the "Princess."
+
+In the end it was agreed he should have fifty down and fifty on
+delivery.
+
+"Measure us, while we are here," said Madame Depine. "I will bring you
+the fifty francs immediately."
+
+"Very well," he murmured. "Which of you?"
+
+But Madame Valiere was already affectionately untying Madame Depine's
+bonnet-strings. "It is for my friend," she cried. "And let it be as
+_chic_ and _convenable_ as possible!"
+
+He bowed. "An artist remains always an artist."
+
+Madame Depine removed her wig and exposed her poor old scalp, with
+its thin, forlorn wisps and patches of grey hair, grotesque, almost
+indecent, in its nudity. But the _coiffeur_ measured it in sublime
+seriousness, putting his tape this way and that way, while Madame
+Valiere's eyes danced in sympathetic excitement.
+
+"You may as well measure my friend too," remarked Madame Depine, as
+she reassumed her glossy brown wig (which seemed propriety itself
+compared with the bald cranium).
+
+"What an idea!" ejaculated Madame Valiere. "To what end?"
+
+"Since you are here," returned Madame Depine, indifferently. "You may
+as well leave your measurements. Then when you decide yourself--Is it
+not so, monsieur?"
+
+The _coiffeur_, like a good man of business, eagerly endorsed the
+suggestion. "Perfectly, madame."
+
+"But if one's head should change!" said Madame Valiere, trembling with
+excitement at the vivid imminence of the visioned wig.
+
+"_Souvent femme varie_, madame," said the _coiffeur_. "But it is the
+inside, not the outside of the head."
+
+"But you said one is not the dome of the Invalides," Madame Valiere
+reminded him.
+
+"He spoke of our old blocks," Madame Depine intervened hastily. "At
+our age one changes no more."
+
+Thus persuaded, the "Princess" in her turn denuded herself of her
+wealth of wig, and Madame Depine watched with unsmiling satisfaction
+the stretchings of tape across the ungainly cranium.
+
+"_C'est bien_," she said. "I return with your fifty francs on the
+instant."
+
+And having seen her "Princess" safely ensconced in the attic, she
+rifled the stocking, and returned to the _coiffeur_.
+
+When she emerged from the shop, the vindictive endurance had vanished
+from her face, and in its place reigned an angelic exaltation.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+Eleven days later Madame Valiere and Madame Depine set out on
+the great expedition to the hairdresser's to try on the Wig. The
+"Princess's" excitement was no less tense than the fortunate winner's.
+Neither had slept a wink the night before, but the November morning
+was keen and bright, and supplied an excellent tonic. They conversed
+with animation on the English in Egypt, and Madame Depine recalled the
+gallant death of her son, the _chasseur_.
+
+The _coiffeur_ saluted them amiably. Yes, mesdames, it was a beautiful
+morning. The wig was quite ready. Behold it there--on its block.
+
+Madame Valiere's eyes turned thither, then grew clouded, and returned
+to Madame Depine's head and thence back to the Grey Wig.
+
+"It is not this one?" she said dubiously.
+
+"_Mais, oui_." Madame Depine was nodding, a great smile
+transfiguring the emaciated orb of her face. The artist's eyes
+twinkled.
+
+"But this will not fit you," Madame Valiere gasped.
+
+"It is a little error, I know," replied Madame Depine.
+
+"But it is a great error," cried Madame Valiere, aghast. And her angry
+gaze transfixed the _coiffeur_.
+
+"It is not his fault--I ought not to have let him measure you."
+
+"Ha! Did I not tell you so?" Triumph softened her anger. "He has mixed
+up the two measurements!"
+
+"Yes. I suspected as much when I went in to inquire the other day; but
+I was afraid to tell you, lest it shouldn't even fit _you_."
+
+"Fit _me_!" breathed Madame Valiere.
+
+"But whom else?" replied Madame Depine, impatiently, as she whipped
+off the "Princess's" wig. "If only it fits you, one can pardon him.
+Let us see. Stand still, _ma chere_," and with shaking hands she
+seized the grey wig.
+
+"But--but--" The "Princess" was gasping, coughing, her ridiculous
+scalp bare.
+
+"But stand still, then! What is the matter? Are you a little infant?
+Ah! that is better. Look at yourself, then, in the mirror. But it is
+perfect!" "A true Princess," she muttered beatifically to herself.
+"Ah, how she will show up the fruit-vendor's daughter!"
+
+As the "Princess" gazed at the majestic figure in the mirror, crowned
+with the dignity of age, two great tears trickled down her pendulous
+cheeks.
+
+"I shall be able to go to the wedding," she murmured chokingly.
+
+"The wedding!" Madame Depine opened her eyes. "What wedding?"
+
+"My nephew's, of course!"
+
+"Your nephew is marrying? I congratulate you. But why did you not tell
+me?"
+
+"I did mention it. That day I had a letter!"
+
+"Ah! I seem to remember. I had not thought of it." Then briskly:
+"Well, that makes all for the best again. Ah! I was right not to scold
+_monsieur le coiffeur_ too much, was I not?"
+
+"You are very good to be so patient," said Madame Valiere, with a sob
+in her voice.
+
+Madame Depine shot her a dignified glance. "We will discuss our
+affairs at home. Here it only remains to say whether you are satisfied
+with the fit."
+
+Madame Valiere patted the wig, as much in approbation as in
+adjustment. "But it fits me to a miracle!"
+
+"Then we will pay our friend, and wish him _le bon jour_." She
+produced the fifty francs--two gold pieces, well sounding, for which
+she had exchanged her silver and copper, and two five-franc pieces.
+"And _voila_," she added, putting down a franc for _pourboire_, "we
+are very content with the artist."
+
+The "Princess" stared at her, with a new admiration.
+
+"_Merci bien_," said the _coiffeur_, fervently, as he counted the
+cash. "Would that all customers' heads lent themselves so easily to
+artistic treatment!"
+
+"And when will my friend's wig be ready?" said the "Princess."
+
+"Madame Valiere! What are you saying there? Monsieur will set to work
+when I bring him the fifty francs."
+
+"_Mais non_, madame. I commence immediately. In a week it shall be
+ready, and you shall only pay on delivery."
+
+"You are very good. But I shall not need it yet--not till the
+winter--when the snows come," said Madame Depine, vaguely. "_Bon
+jour_, monsieur;" and, thrusting the old wig on the new block, and
+both under her shawl, she dragged the "Princess" out of the shop.
+Then, looking back through the door, "Do not lose the measurement,
+monsieur," she cried. "One of these days!"
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+The grey wig soon showed its dark side. Its possession, indeed,
+enabled Madame Valiere to loiter on the more lighted stairs, or dawdle
+in the hall with Madame la Proprietaire; but Madame Depine was not
+only debarred from these dignified domestic attitudes, but found a new
+awkwardness in bearing Madame Valiere company in their walks
+abroad. Instead of keeping each other in countenance--_duoe contra
+mundum_--they might now have served as an advertisement for the
+_coiffeur_ and the _convenable_. Before the grey wig--after the grey
+wig.
+
+Wherefore Madame Depine was not so very sorry when, after a few weeks
+of this discomforting contrast, the hour drew near of the "Princess's"
+departure for the family wedding; especially as she was only losing
+her for two days. She had insisted, of course, that the savings for
+the second wig were not to commence till the return, so that Madame
+Valiere might carry with her a present worthy of her position and her
+port. They had anxious consultations over this present. Madame Depine
+was for a cheap but showy article from the Bon Marche; but Madame
+Valiere reminded her that the price-lists of this enterprising firm
+knocked at the doors of Tonnerre. Something distinguished (in
+silver) was her own idea. Madame Depine frequently wept during these
+discussions, reminded of her own wedding. Oh, the roundabouts at
+Robinson, and that delicious wedding-lunch up the tree! One was gay
+then, my dear.
+
+At last they purchased a tiny metal Louis Quinze timepiece for eleven
+francs seventy-five centimes, congratulating themselves on the surplus
+of twenty-five centimes from their three weeks' savings. Madame
+Valiere packed it with her impedimenta into the carpet-bag lent her by
+Madame la Proprietaire. She was going by a night train from the Gare
+de Lyon, and sternly refused to let Madame Depine see her off.
+
+"And how would you go back--an old woman, alone in these dark November
+nights, with the papers all full of crimes of violence? It is not
+_convenable_, either."
+
+Madame Depine yielded to the latter consideration; but as Madame
+Valiere, carrying the bulging carpet-bag, was crying "_La porte, s'il
+vous plait_" to the _concierge_, she heard Madame Depine come tearing
+and puffing after her like the steam-tram, and, looking back, saw
+her breathlessly brandishing her gold brooch. "_Tiens!_" she panted,
+fastening the "Princess's" cloak with it. "That will give thee an
+air."
+
+"But--it is too valuable. Thou must not." They had never "thou'd" each
+other before, and this enhanced the tremulousness of the moment.
+
+"I do not give it thee," Madame Depine laughed through her tears. "_Au
+revoir, mon amie_."
+
+"_Adieu, ma cherie!_ I will tell my dear ones of my Paris comrade."
+And for the first time their lips met, and the brown wig brushed the
+grey.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+Madame Depine had two drearier days than she had foreseen. She kept
+to her own room, creeping out only at night, when, like all cats, all
+wigs are grey. After an eternity of loneliness the third day dawned,
+and she went by pre-arrangement to meet the morning train. Ah, how
+gaily gleamed the kiosks on the boulevards through the grey mist! What
+jolly red faces glowed under the cabmen's white hats! How blithely the
+birds sang in the bird-shops!
+
+The train was late. Her spirits fell as she stood impatiently at the
+barrier, shivering in her thin clothes, and morbidly conscious of all
+those eyes on her wig. At length the train glided in unconcernedly,
+and shot out a medley of passengers. Her poor old eyes strained
+towards them. They surged through the gate in animated masses, but
+Madame Valiere's form did not disentangle itself from them, though
+every instant she expected it to jump at her eyes. Her heart
+contracted painfully--there was no "Princess." She rushed round to
+another exit, then outside, to the gates at the end of the drive; she
+peered into every cab even, as it rumbled past. What had happened? She
+trudged home as hastily as her legs could bear her. No, Madame Valiere
+had not arrived.
+
+"They have persuaded her to stay another day," said Madame la
+Proprietaire. "She will come by the evening train, or she will write."
+
+Madame Depine passed the evening at the Gare de Lyon, and came home
+heavy of heart and weary of foot. The "Princess" might still arrive
+at midnight, though, and Madame Depine lay down dressed in her bed,
+waiting for the familiar step in the corridor. About three o'clock she
+fell into a heavy doze, and woke in broad day. She jumped to her feet,
+her overwrought brain still heavy with the vapours of sleep, and threw
+open her door.
+
+"Ah! she has already taken in her boots," she thought confusedly. "I
+shall be late for coffee." She gave her perfunctory knock, and turned
+the door-handle. But the door would not budge.
+
+"Jacques! Jacques!" she cried, with a clammy fear at her heart. The
+_garcon_, who was pottering about with pails, opened the door with his
+key. An emptiness struck cold from the neat bed, the bare walls, the
+parted wardrobe-curtains that revealed nothing. She fled down the
+stairs, into the bureau.
+
+"Madame Valiere is not returned?" she cried.
+
+Madame la Proprietaire shook her head.
+
+"And she has not written?"
+
+"No letter in her writing has come--for anybody."
+
+"_O mon Dieu!_ She has been murdered. She _would_ go alone by night."
+
+"She owes me three weeks' rent," grimly returned Madame la
+Proprietaire.
+
+"What do you insinuate?" Madame Depine's eyes flared.
+
+Madame la Proprietaire shrugged her shoulders. "I am not at my first
+communion. I have grown grey in the service of lodgers. And this is
+how they reward me." She called Jacques, who had followed uneasily in
+Madame Depine's wake. "Is there anything in the room?"
+
+"Empty as an egg-shell, madame."
+
+"Not even the miniature of her sister?"
+
+"Not even the miniature of her sister."
+
+"Of her sister?" repeated Madame Depine.
+
+"Yes; did I never tell you of her? A handsome creature, but she threw
+her bonnet over the mills."
+
+"But I thought that was the Princess."
+
+"The Princess, too. Her bonnet will also be found lying there."
+
+"No, no; I mean I thought the portrait was the Princess's."
+
+Madame la Proprietaire laughed. "She told you so?"
+
+"No, no; but--but I imagined so."
+
+"Without doubt, she gave you the idea. _Quelle farceuse!_ I don't
+believe there ever was a Princess. The family was always inflated."
+
+All Madame Depine's world seemed toppling. Somehow her own mistake
+added to her sense of having been exploited.
+
+"Still," said Madame la Proprietaire with a shrug, "it is only three
+weeks' rent."
+
+"If you lose it, I will pay!" Madame Depine had an heroic burst of
+faith.
+
+"As you please. But I ought to have been on my guard. Where did she
+take the funds for a grey wig?"
+
+"Ah, the brown wig!" cried Madame Depine, joyfully. "She must have
+left that behind, and any _coiffeur_ will give you three weeks' rent
+for that alone."
+
+"We shall see," replied Madame la Proprietaire, ambiguously.
+
+The trio mounted the stairs, and hunted high and low, disturbing the
+peaceful spider-webs. They peered under the very bed. Not even the
+old block was to be seen. As far as Madame Valiere's own chattels were
+concerned, the room was indeed "empty as an egg-shell."
+
+"She has carried it away with the three weeks' rent," sneered Madame
+la Proprietaire. "In my own carpet-bag," she added with a terrible
+recollection.
+
+"She wished to wear it at night against the hard back of the carriage,
+and guard the other all glossy for the wedding." Madame Depine
+quavered pleadingly, but she could not quite believe herself.
+
+"The wedding had no more existence than the Princess," returned Madame
+la Proprietaire, believing herself more and more.
+
+"Then she will have cheated me out of the grey wig from the first,"
+cried Madame Depine, involuntarily. "And I who sacrificed myself to
+her!"
+
+"_Comment!_ It was your wig?"
+
+"No, no." She flushed and stammered. "But _enfin_--and then, oh,
+heaven! my brooch!"
+
+"She has stolen your brooch?"
+
+Great tears rolled down the wrinkled, ashen cheeks. So this was
+her reward for secretly instructing the _coiffeur_ to make the
+"Princess's" wig first. The Princess, indeed! Ah, the adventuress! She
+felt choking; she shook her fist in the air. Not even the brooch to
+show when her family came up from Tonnerre, to say nothing of the wig.
+Was there a God in the world at all? Oh, holy Mother! No wonder the
+trickstress would not be escorted to the station--she never went to
+the station. No wonder she would not sell the royal secrets to the
+journalist--there were none to sell. Oh! it was all of a piece.
+
+"If I were you I should go to the bureau of police!" said Madame la
+Proprietaire.
+
+Yes, she would go; the wretch should be captured, should be haled to
+gaol. Even her half of the Louis Quinze timepiece recurred to poor
+Madame Depine's brain.
+
+"Add that she has stolen my carpet-bag."
+
+The local bureau telegraphed first to Tonnerre.
+
+There had been the wedding, but no Madame Valiere. She had accepted
+the invitation, had given notice of her arrival; one had awaited the
+midnight train. The family was still wondering why the rich aunt had
+turned sulky at the last hour. But she was always an eccentric; a
+capricious and haughty personage.
+
+Poor Madame Depine's recurrent "My wig! my brooch!" reduced the
+official mind to the same muddle as her own.
+
+"No doubt a sudden impulse of senescent kleptomania," said the
+superintendent, sagely, when he had noted down for transference to
+headquarters Madame Depine's verbose and vociferous description of
+the traits and garments of the runagate. "But we will do our best
+to recover your brooch and your wig." Then, with a spasm of supreme
+sagacity, "Without doubt they are in the carpet-bag."
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+Madame Depine left the bureau and wandered about in a daze. That
+monster of ingratitude! That arch-adventuress, more vicious even than
+her bejewelled sister! All the long months of more than Lenten
+rigour recurred to her self-pitiful mood, that futile half-year of
+semi-starvation. How Madame Valiere must have gorged on the sly, the
+rich eccentric! She crossed a bridge to the Ile de la Cite, and came
+to the gargoyled portals of Notre Dame, and let herself be drawn
+through the open door, and all the gloom and glory of the building
+fell around her like a soothing caress. She dropped before an altar
+and poured out her grief to the Mother of Sorrows. At last she arose,
+and tottered up the aisle, and the great rose-window glowed like
+the window of heaven. She imagined her husband and the dead children
+looking through it. Probably they wondered, as they gazed down, why
+her head remained so young.
+
+Ah! but she was old, so very old. Surely God would take her soon. How
+should she endure the long years of loneliness and social ignominy?
+
+As she stumbled out of the Cathedral, the cold, hard day smote her
+full in the face. People stared at her, and she knew it was at the
+brown wig. But could they expect her to starve herself for a whole
+year?
+
+"_Mon Dieu!_ Starve yourselves, my good friends. At my age, one needs
+fuel."
+
+She escaped from them, and ran, muttering, across the road, and almost
+into the low grey shed.
+
+Ah! the Morgue! Blessed idea! That should be the end of her. A
+moment's struggle, and then--the rose-window of heaven! Hell? No, no;
+the Madonna would plead for her; she who always looked so beautiful,
+so _convenable_.
+
+She would peep in. Let her see how she would look when they found her.
+Would they clap a grey wig upon her, or expose her humiliation even in
+death?
+
+"A-a-a-h!" A long scream tore her lips apart. There, behind the glass,
+in terrible waxen peace, a gash on her forehead, lay the "Princess,"
+so uncanny-looking without any wig at all, that she would not
+have recognised her but for that moment of measurement at the
+hairdresser's. She fell sobbing before the cold glass wall of the
+death-chamber. Ah, God! Her first fear had been right; her brooch had
+but added to the murderer's temptation. And she had just traduced this
+martyred saint to the police.
+
+"Forgive me, _ma cherie_, forgive me," she moaned, not even conscious
+that the attendant was lifting her to her feet with professional
+interest.
+
+For in that instant everything passed from her but the great yearning
+for love and reconciliation, and for the first time a grey wig seemed
+a petty and futile aspiration.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+CHASSE-CROISE
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+SET TO PARTNERS
+
+
+"Oh, look, dear, there's that poor Walter Bassett."
+
+Amber Roan looked down from the roof of the drag at the crossing
+restless shuttles, weaving with feminine woof and masculine warp
+the multi-coloured web of Society in London's cricket Coliseum.
+
+"Where?" she murmured, her eye wandering over the little tract of
+sunlit green between the coaches with their rival Eton and Harrow
+favours. Before Lady Chelmer had time to bend her pink parasol a
+little more definitely, a thunder of applause turned Amber Roan's
+face back towards the wickets, with a piqued expression.
+
+"It's real mean," she said. "What have I missed now?"
+
+"Only a good catch," said the Hon. Tolshunt Darcy, whose eyes had
+never faltered from her face.
+
+"My, that's just the one thing I've been dying for," she pouted
+self-mockingly.
+
+"Poor Walter Bassett," Lady Chelmer repeated. "I knew his mother."
+
+"Where?" Amber asked again.
+
+"In Huntingdonshire, before the property went to Algy--"
+
+"No, no, Lady Chelmer; I mean, where is poor Walter Whatsaname now?"
+
+"Why, right here," said Lady Chelmer, involuntarily borrowing from the
+vocabulary of her young American protegee.
+
+"Walter Bassett!" said the Hon. Tolshunt, languidly. "Isn't that the
+chap that's always getting chucked out of Parliament?"
+
+"But his name doesn't sound Irish?" queried Amber.
+
+"What are you talking about, Amber!" cried Lady Chelmer. "Why, he
+comes of a good old Huntingdon family. If he had been his own elder
+brother, he'd have got in long ago."
+
+"Oh, you mean he never gets _into_ Parliament," said Amber.
+
+"Serve him right. I believe he's one of those independent nuisances,"
+said the old Marquis of Woodham. "How is one ever to govern the
+country, if every man is a party unto himself?" He said "one," but
+only out of modesty; for having once accepted a minor post in a
+Ministry that the Premier _in posse_ had not succeeded in forming, he
+had retained a Cabinet air ever since.
+
+"Well, the beggar will scarcely come up at Highmead for a third
+licking," observed the Hon. Tolshunt.
+
+"No, poor Walter," said Lady Chelmer. "He thought he'd be sure to
+get in this time, but he's quite crushed now. Wasn't it actually two
+thousand votes less than last time?"
+
+"Two thousand and thirty-three," replied Lord Woodham, with
+punctilious inaccuracy.
+
+Involuntarily Amber's eyes turned in search of the crushed candidate
+whom she almost saw flattened beneath the 2033 votes, and whom it
+would scarcely have been a surprise to find asquat under a carriage,
+humbly assisting the footmen to pack the dirty plates. But before
+she had time to decide which of the unlively men, loitering round
+the carriages or helping stout old dowagers up slim iron ladders,
+was sufficiently lugubrious to be identified as the martyr of the
+ballot-box, she was absorbed by a tall, masterful figure, whose face
+had the radiance of easeful success, and whose hands were clapping at
+some nuance of style which had escaped the palms of the great circular
+mob.
+
+"I can't see any Walter Bassett," she murmured absently.
+
+"Why, you are staring straight at him," said Lady Chelmer.
+
+Miss Roan did not reply, but her face was eloquent of her astonishment,
+and when her face spoke, it was with that vivacity which is the American
+accent of beauty. What wonder if the Hon. Tolshunt Darcy paid heed to it,
+although he liked what it said less than the form of expression! As he
+used to put it in after days, "She gave one look, and threw herself away
+from the top of that drag." The more literal truth was that she drew
+Walter Bassett up to the top of that drag.
+
+Lady Chelmer protested in vain that she could not halloo to the man.
+
+"You knew his mother," Amber replied. "And he's got no seat."
+
+"Quite symbolical! He, he, he!" and the old Marquis chuckled and
+cackled in solitary amusement. "Let's offer him one," he went on, half
+to enjoy the joke a little longer, half to utilise the opportunity of
+bringing his Ministerial wisdom to bear upon this erratic young man.
+
+"I don't see where there's room," said the Hon. Tolshunt Darcy,
+sulkily.
+
+"There's room on the front bench," cackled the Marquis, shaking his
+sides.
+
+"Oh, I don't want you to roll off for him," said Miss Roan, who
+treated Ministerial Marquises with a contempt that bred in them a
+delightful sense of familiarity. "Tolshunt can sit opposite me--he's
+stared at the cricket long enough."
+
+Tolshunt blushed with apparent irrelevance. But even the prospect
+of staring at Amber more comfortably did not reconcile him to
+displacement. "It's so awkward meeting a fellow who's had a tumble,"
+he grumbled. "It's like having to condole with a man fresh from a
+funeral."
+
+"There doesn't seem much black about Walter Bassett," Amber laughed.
+And at this moment--the dull end of a "maiden over"--the radiant
+personage in question turned his head, and perceiving Lady Chelmer's
+massive smile, acknowledged her recognition with respectful superiority,
+whereupon her Ladyship beckoned him with her best parasol manner.
+
+"I want to introduce you to my friend, Miss Roan," she said, as he
+climbed to her side.
+
+"I've been reading so much about you," said that young lady, with
+a sweet smile. "But you shouldn't be so independent, you know, you
+really shouldn't."
+
+He smiled back. "I'm only independent till they come to my way of
+thinking."
+
+Lady Chelmer gasped. "Then you still have hopes of Highmead!"
+
+"I won a moral victory there each time, Lady Chelmer."
+
+"How so, sir?" put in the Marquis. "Your opponent increased the
+Government majority--"
+
+"And my reputation. A tiresome twaddler. Unfortunately," and he smiled
+again, "two moral victories are as bad as a defeat. On the other hand,
+a defeat at a bye-election equals a victory at a general. You play a
+solo--and on your own trumpet." A burst of cheering rounded off these
+remarks. This time Amber did not even inquire what it indicated--she
+was almost content to take it as an endorsement of Walter Bassett's
+epigrams. But Lord Woodham eagerly improved the situation. "A fine
+stroke that," he said, "but a batsman outside a team doesn't play the
+game."
+
+"It will be a good time for the country, Lord Woodham," Mr. Bassett
+returned quietly, "when people cease to regard the Parliamentary
+session as a cricket match, one side trying to bowl over or catch out
+the other. But then England always _has_ been a sporting nation."
+
+"Ah, you allow some good in the old country," said Lady Chelmer,
+pleased. "Look at the trouble we all take to come here to encourage
+the dear boys;" and the words ended with a tired sigh.
+
+"Yes, of course, that is the side on which they need encouragement,"
+he rejoined drily. "Majuba was lost on the playing-field of Lord's."
+
+There was a moment of shocked surprise. Lady Chelmer, herself a martyr
+to the religion of sport thus blasphemed--of which she understood
+as little as of any other religion--hastily tried to pour tea on the
+troubled waters. But they had been troubled too deeply. For full
+eight minutes the top of the drag became a political platform for
+Marquis-Ministerial denunciations of Mr. Gladstone, to a hail of
+repartee from the profane young man.
+
+At the end of those eight minutes--when Lady Chelmer was at last able
+to reinsinuate tea into the discussion--Miss Amber Roan realised with
+a sudden shock that she had not "chipped in" once, and that "poor
+Walter Bassett" had commanded her ear for all that time without
+pouring into it a single compliment, or, indeed, addressing to it
+any observation whatever. For the first time since her debut in the
+Milwaukee parlour at the age of five, this spoiled daughter of the
+dollar had lost sight of herself. As they walked towards the tea-tent,
+through the throng of clergymen and parasols and tanned men with
+field-glasses, and young bloods and pretty girls, she noted uneasily
+that his eyes wandered from her to these types of English beauty,
+these flower-faces under witching hats. Indeed, he had led her out of
+the way to plough past a row of open carriages. "The shortest cut," he
+said, "is past the prettiest woman."
+
+But he had to face her at the tea-table, where she blocked his view of
+the tables beyond and plied him with strawberries and smiles under the
+sullen glances of the Hon. Tolshunt Darcy and the timid cough of her
+chaperon.
+
+"I wonder you waste your time on the silly elections," she said. "We
+don't take much stock in Senators in America."
+
+"It's just because M.P.'s are at such a discount that I want to get
+in. In the realm of the blind the one-eyed is a king."
+
+"They must be blind not to let you in," she answered with equal
+frankness.
+
+"No, they see too well, if you mean the voters. They've got their eye
+on the price of their vote."
+
+"What!" she cried. "You can't buy votes in England!"
+
+"Oh, can't you--"
+
+"But I'm sure I read about it in the English histories--it was all
+abolished."
+
+"A good many things were abolished by the Decalogue even earlier,"
+he replied grimly. "Half an hour before the poll closed I could have
+bought a thousand votes at a shilling each."
+
+"Well, that seems reasonable enough," said Lady Chelmer.
+
+"It was beyond my pocket."
+
+"What! Fifty pounds?" cried Amber, incredulously.
+
+The blush that followed was hers, not his. "But what became of the
+thousand votes?" she asked hurriedly.
+
+He laughed. "Half an hour before the poll closed they had gone down to
+sixpence apiece--like fish that wouldn't keep."
+
+"My! And were they all wasted?"
+
+"No. My rival bought them up. _Vide_ the newspapers--'the polling was
+unusually heavy towards the close.'"
+
+"Really!" intervened Lady Chelmer. "Then at that rate you can unseat
+him for bribery."
+
+"At that rate--or higher," he replied drily. "To unseat another is
+even more expensive than to seat oneself."
+
+"Why, it seems all a question of money," said Miss Amber Roan,
+naively.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+CHASSE
+
+
+Lady Chelmer was glad when the season came to an end and the dancing
+mice had no longer to spin dizzyingly in their gilded cage. "The
+Prisoner of Pleasure" was Walter Bassett's phrase for her. Even now
+she was a convict on circuit. Some of the dungeons were in ancient
+castles, from which Bassett was barred, but all of which opened to
+Amber's golden keys, though only because Lady Chelmer knew how to turn
+them. He, however, penetrated the ducal doors through the letter-box.
+
+The Hon. Tolshunt and Lord Woodham, in their apprehension of the
+common foe, began to find each other endurable. If it was politics
+that attracted her, Tolshunt felt he too could stoop to a career. As
+for the Marquis, he began to meditate resuming office. Both had freely
+hinted to her Ladyship that to give a millionaire bride to a man who
+hadn't a penny savoured of Socialism.
+
+Galled by such terrible insinuations, Lady Chelmer had dared to sound
+the girl.
+
+"I love his letters," gushed Amber, bafflingly. "He writes such cute
+things."
+
+"He doesn't dress very well," said Lady Chelmer, feebly fighting.
+
+"Oh, of course, he doesn't bother as much as Tolly, who looks as if he
+had been poured into his clothes--"
+
+"Yes, the mould of fashion," quoted Lady Chelmer, vaguely.
+
+An eruption of Walter Bassett in the Press did not tend to allay her
+Ladyship's alarm, especially as Amber began to dally with the morning
+paper and the evening.
+
+Opening a new People's Library at Highmead--in the absence abroad
+of the successful candidate--he had contrived to set the newspapers
+sneering. He had told the People that although they might temporarily
+accept such gifts as "Capital's conscience-money," yet it was as much
+the duty of the parish to supply light as to supply street-lamps;
+which was considered both ungracious and unsound. The donor he
+described as "a millionaire of means," which was considered wilfully
+paradoxical by those who did not know how great capitals are locked up
+in industries. But what worked up the Press most was his denunciation
+of modern journalism, in malodorous comparison with the literature
+this Library would bring the People. "The journalist," he said
+tersely, "is Satan's secretary." No shorter cut to notoriety could
+have been devised, for it was the "Silly Season," and Satan found
+plenty of mischief for his idle hands to do.
+
+"Oh, you poor man!" Amber wrote Walter. "Why don't you say you were
+thinking of America--yellow journalism, and all that? The yellow
+is, of course, Satan's sulphur. You would hardly believe what his
+secretaries have written even of poor little me! And you should see
+the pictures of 'The Milwaukee Millionairess' in the Sunday numbers!"
+
+Walter Bassett did not reply regularly and punctually to Amber's
+letters, and it was a novel sensation to the jaded beauty who had
+often thrown aside masculine missives after a glance at the envelope,
+to find herself eagerly shuffling her morning correspondence in the
+hope of turning up a trump-card. A card, indeed, it often proved,
+though never a postcard, and Amber meekly repaid it fourfold. She
+found it delicious to pour herself out to him; it had the pleasure
+of abandonment without its humiliation. Verbally, this was the least
+flirtatious correspondence she had ever maintained with the opposite
+sex.
+
+So when at last, towards the end of the holiday season, the pair met
+in the flesh at a country house (Lady Chelmer still protests it was
+a coincidence), Walter Bassett had no apprehension of danger, and his
+expression of pleasure at the coincidence was unfeigned, for he felt
+his correspondence would be lightened. In nothing did he feel the want
+of pence more keenly than in his inability to keep a secretary for his
+public work. "Money is time," he used to complain; "the millionaire is
+your only Methuselah."
+
+The house had an old-world garden, and it was here they had their
+first duologue. Amber had quickly discovered that Walter was
+interested in the apiaries that lay at the foot of its slope, and so
+he found her standing in poetic grace among the tall sweet-peas, with
+their whites and pinks and faint purples, a basket of roses in one
+hand and a pair of scissors in the other.
+
+As he came to her under the quaint trellised arch, "I always feel like
+a croquet ball going through the hoop," he said.
+
+"But the ball is always driven," she said.
+
+"Oh, I dare say it has the illusion of freewill. Doubtless the pieces
+in that chess game, which Eastern monarchs are said to play with human
+figures, come to think they move of themselves. The knight chuckles as
+he makes his tortuous jump at the queen, and the bishop swoops down on
+the castle with holy joy."
+
+She came imperceptibly closer to him. "Then you don't think any of us
+move of ourselves?"
+
+"One or two of us in each generation. They make the puppets dance."
+
+"You admire Bismarck, I see."
+
+"Yes. A pity he didn't emigrate to your country, like so many Germans."
+
+"Do you think we need him? But he couldn't have been President. You
+must be born in America."
+
+"True. Then I shall remain on here."
+
+"You're terrible ambitious, Mr. Bassett."
+
+"Yes, terrible," he repeated mockingly.
+
+"Then come and help me pick blackberries," she said, and caught him by
+his own love of the unexpected. They left the formal garden, and came
+out into the rabbit-warren, and toiled up and down hillocks in search
+of ripe bushes, paying, as Walter said, "many pricks to the pint."
+And when Amber urged him to scramble to the back of tangled bushes,
+through coils of bristling briars, "You were right," he laughed; "this
+_is_ terrible ambitious." The best of the blackberries plucked, Amber
+began a new campaign against mushrooms, and had frequent opportunities
+to rebuke his clumsiness in crumbling the prizes he uprooted. She
+knelt at his side to teach him, and once laid her deft fingers
+instructively upon his.
+
+And just at that moment he irritatingly discovered a dead mole, and
+fell to philosophising upon it and its soft, velvet, dainty skin--as
+if a girl's fingers were not softer and daintier! "Look at its poor
+little pale-red mouth," he went on, "gaspingly open, as in surprise at
+the strange great forces that had made and killed it."
+
+"I dare say it had a good time," said Amber, pettishly.
+
+After the harvest had been carried indoors they scarcely exchanged a
+word till she found him watching the bees the next morning.
+
+"Are you interested in bees?" she inquired in tones of surprise.
+
+"Yes," he said. "They are the most striking example of Nature's
+Bismarckism--her habit of using her creatures to work her will through
+their own. _Sic vos non vobis._"
+
+"I learnt enough Latin at College to understand that," she said; "but
+I don't see how one finds out anything by just watching them hover
+over their hives. I've never even been able to find the queen bee.
+Won't you come and see what beautiful woods there are behind the
+house? Lady Chelmer is walking there, and I ought to be joining her."
+
+"You ought to be taking her an umbrella," he said coldly. Amber looked
+up at the sky. Had it been blue, she would have felt it grey. As it
+_was_ grey, she felt it black.
+
+"Oh, if you're afraid of a drop of rain--" And Amber walked on
+witheringly. It was a clever move.
+
+Walter followed in silence. Amber did not become aware of him till she
+was in the middle of an embryonic footpath through tall bracken that
+made way, courtseying, for the rare pedestrian.
+
+"Oh!" She gave a little scream. "I thought you were studying the
+bees--or the moles."
+
+"I have only been studying your graceful back."
+
+"How mean! Behind my back!" She laughed, pleased. "I hope you haven't
+discovered anything Bismarckian about my back."
+
+"Only in the sense that I followed it, and must follow--till the path
+widens."
+
+"Ah, how you must hate following--you, so terrible ambitious."
+
+"The path will widen," he said composedly.
+
+She planted her feet firm on Mother Earth--as though it were literally
+her own mother--and turned a mocking head over a tantalising shoulder.
+"I shall stay still right here."
+
+He smiled maliciously. "And I, too; I follow you no farther."
+
+"Oh, you are just too cute," she said with a laugh of vexation and
+pleasure. "You make me go on just to make you follow; but it is really
+you that make me lead. That's what you mean by Bismarckism, isn't it?"
+
+"You put it beautifully."
+
+She swung round to face him. "Is there nothing you admire but Force?"
+
+"Not Force--Power!"
+
+"What's the difference?"
+
+"Force is blind."
+
+"So is love," she said. "Do you scorn that?" And her smile was daring
+and dazzling.
+
+Ere he could reply Nature outdid her in dazzlement, and superadded a
+crash of thunder.
+
+"Yes," he said, as though there had been no interruption. "I scorn
+all that is blind--even this storm that may strike you and me. Ah! the
+rain," as the great drops began to fall. "Poor Lady Chelmer--without
+an umbrella."
+
+"We can shelter by these shrubs." In an instant she was crouching amid
+the ferns on a carpet of autumn leaves, making space for him beside
+her.
+
+"Thank you--I will stand," he said coldly. "But I don't know if you're
+aware these are oak-shrubs."
+
+"What of it?"
+
+"I was only thinking of the Swiss proverb about lightning, 'Vor den
+Eichen sollst du weichen.' We ought to make for the beeches."
+
+"I'm not going to leave my umbrella. I am sorry you won't accept a bit
+of it." And she bent the tall ferns invitingly towards him.
+
+"I don't like cowering even before the rain," he laughed. "How it
+brings out the beautiful earthy smell."
+
+"One enjoys the beautiful earthy smell the better for being nearer to
+the earth."
+
+He did not reply.
+
+"Oh, you dear fool," she thought. Hadn't she had heaps of Power from
+childhood--over her stern old father, over her weakling mother, over
+her governesses, and later over the whole tribe of "the boys," and now
+in Europe over Marquises and Honourables--and could it all compare in
+intensity to this delicious, poignant sense of being caught up into
+a masterful personality! No, not Power but Powerlessness was life's
+central reality; not to turn with iron hand the great wheels of Fate,
+but to faint at a dear touch, to be sucked up as a moth in the flame.
+And for him, too, it were surely as sweet to leave this strenuous
+quest for dominance, or to be content with dominating her alone. Oh,
+she would bring him to clear vision, to live for nothing but her, even
+as she asked for nothing but him.
+
+The harsh scream of a bluejay struck a discord through her reverie.
+She remembered that he had yet to be won.
+
+"But didn't you tell me people can't get power without money?" she
+said, forgetting the hiatus in the conversation.
+
+"Nor with it generally," he replied, without surprise. "Money is but
+a lever. You cannot move the earth unless you have force and fulcrum,
+too."
+
+"But I guess a man like you must get real mad to see so many levers
+lying about idle."
+
+"Oh, I shall get on without a lever, like primitive man. I have
+muscles."
+
+"But it seems too bad not to be able to afford machinery."
+
+"I shall be hand-made."
+
+"Yes, and by your own hand. But won't it be slow?"
+
+"It will be sure."
+
+Every one of his speeches rang like the stroke of a hammer. Yes,
+indeed he had muscles.
+
+"But how much surer _with_ money! You ought to turn your career into a
+company. Surely it would pay a dividend to its promoters."
+
+"The directors would interfere."
+
+"You could be chairman--with a veto."
+
+He shook his head. "The rain is dripping through your umbrella. Don't
+you think we might run to the house?"
+
+"It's only an old hat." It was fresh from Paris, broad-brimmed,
+beautiful, and bewitching. "Why don't you find"--she smiled
+nervously--"a millionaire of means?"
+
+"And what would be his reward?"
+
+"Just Virtue's. Won't you be a light to England? And isn't it the
+duty of parishes and millionaires to supply light?" She was plucking
+a fern-leaf to pieces.
+
+"Millionaires' minds don't run that way."
+
+"Not male millionaires, perhaps," she said, turning her face from him
+so jerkily that she shook the oak-shrub and it became a shower-bath.
+
+He looked at her, slightly startled. It was the first emotion she had
+ever provoked in him, and her heart beat faster.
+
+"I really do think it is giving over now," he said, gazing at her
+sopping hat.
+
+'Twas as if he had shaken the shrub again and drenched her with cold
+water. He was mocking her, her and her dollars and her love.
+
+"It is quite over," she said savagely, springing up, and growing
+even angrier when she found the rain had really stopped, so that her
+indignation sounded only like acquiescence. She strode ahead of him,
+silent, through the wet bracken, her frock growing a limp rag as it
+brushed aside the glistening ferns.
+
+As she struck the broader path to the house, the cackling laugh of a
+goat chained to a roadside log followed her cynically. Where had she
+heard this bleat before? Ah, yes, from the Marquis of Woodham.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+BALANCEZ
+
+
+Walter Bassett had spoken truly. He did not admire love--that blind
+force. Women seemed to him delightfully aesthetic objects--to be
+kept at a distance, however closely one embraced them. They were
+unreasoning beings at the best, even when unbiassed by that supreme
+prejudice--love.
+
+It was not his conception of the strong man that he must needs become
+as water at some woman's touch and go dancing and babbling like a
+sylvan brook. Women were the light of life--he was willing enough to
+admit it, but one must be able to switch the light on and off at will.
+All these were reasons for not falling in love--they were not reasons
+for not marrying. And so, Amber being determined to marry him, there
+was really less difficulty than if it had been necessary for him to
+fall in love with her.
+
+It took, however, many letters and interviews, full of the subtlest
+comedy, infinite advancing and retiring, and recrossing and bowing,
+and courtesying and facing and half-turning, before this leap-year
+dance could end in the solemn Wedding March.
+
+"You know," she said once, "how I should love the fun of seeing you
+plough your way through all the mediocrities."
+
+"That is the means, not the end," he reminded her, rebukingly. "One
+only wants the world to swallow one's pills for the world's sake."
+
+"I don't believe you," she said frankly. "Else you'd move mountains
+to get the money for the pills, not turn up your nose at the mountain
+when it comes to you."
+
+He laughed heartily. "What a delightful confusion of metaphors! I'm
+sure you've got Irish blood somewhere."
+
+"Of course I have. Did I never tell you I am descended from the kings
+of Ireland?"
+
+He took off his hat mockingly. "I salute Miss Brian Boru."
+
+"You're an awfully good fellow," he told her on a later occasion. "I
+almost believe I'd take your money if you were not a woman." "If I
+were not a woman I should not offer it to you--I should want a career
+of my own."
+
+"And my career would content you?" he asked, touched.
+
+"Absolutely," she lied. "The interest I should take in it--wouldn't
+that be sufficient interest on the loan?"
+
+"There is one thing you have taught me," he said slowly--"how
+conventional I am! But every prejudice in me shrinks from your
+proposition, much as I admire your manliness."
+
+"Perhaps it could be put on more conventional lines--superficially,"
+she suggested in a letter that harked back to this conversation. "One
+might go through conventional forms. That adorable Disraeli--I have
+just been reading his letters. How right he was not to marry for
+love!"
+
+The penultimate stage of the pre-nuptial comedy was reached in the
+lobby of the Opera, while Society was squeezing to its carriage. It
+was after the _Rheingold_, and poor Lady Chelmer could hardly keep
+her eyes open, and actually dozed off as she leaned against a wall, in
+patient martyrdom. Walter Bassett had been specially irritating, for
+he had not come up to the box once, and everybody knows (as the Hon.
+Tolshunt had said, with unwonted brilliance) the _Rheingold_ is in
+heavy bars.
+
+"I didn't know you admired Wagner so much," Amber said scathingly, as
+Walter pushed through the grooms. "Such a rapt devotee!"
+
+"Wagner is the greatest man of the century. He alone has been able to
+change London's dinner-hour."
+
+Amber could not help smiling. "Poor Lady Chelmer!" she said, nodding
+towards the drowsing dowager. "Since half-past six!"
+
+"Is that our carriage?" said the "Prisoner of Pleasure," opening her
+eyes.
+
+"No, dear--I guess we are some fifty behind. Tolly and the Marquis are
+watching from the pavement."
+
+The poor lady sighed and went to sleep again.
+
+"Behold the compensations of poverty," observed Walter Bassett.
+"The gallery-folk have to wait and squeeze before the opera; the
+carriage-folk after the opera."
+
+"You forget the places they occupy _during_ the opera. Poor Wagner!
+What a fight! I wish I could have helped his career." And Amber set a
+wistful smile in the becoming frame of her white hood.
+
+"The form of the career appears to be indifferent to you," he said,
+with a little laugh.
+
+"As indifferent as the man," she replied, meeting his eyes calmly.
+
+The faint scent of her hair mingled with his pleasurable sense of her
+frank originality. For the first time the bargain really appealed
+to him. He could not but see that she was easily the fairest of that
+crush of fair women, and to have her prostrated at the foot of his
+career was more subtly delicious than to have her surrender to his
+person. The ball was at his foot in surely the most tempting form that
+a ball could take. And the fact that he must leave her hurriedly to
+write the musical criticism that was the price of his stall, was not
+calculated to diminish his appreciation of all the kingdoms of the
+world which his temptress was showing him from her high mountain.
+
+"Alas! I must go and write a notice," he sighed.
+
+"Satan's Secretary?" she queried mischievously.
+
+He started. Had he not been just thinking of her as a Satan in skirts?
+
+"_En attendant_ that I become Satan's master," he replied ambiguously,
+as he raised his hat.
+
+"Oh, to drive off with him into the peace and solitude of Love--away
+from the grinding paths of ambition," thought Amber, when the horses
+pranced up.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+CROISE
+
+
+"Women, not measures," said the reigning wit anent the administration
+which Amber's Salon held together, and in which her husband occupied a
+position quite disproportionate to his nominal office, and still
+more so to the almost unparalleled brevity of his career as a private
+member.
+
+Few, indeed, were the recalcitrants who could resist Amber's smiles,
+or her still more seductive sulkiness. Walter Bassett's many enemies
+declared that the young Cabinet Minister owed his career entirely to
+his wife. His admirers indignantly pointed out that he had represented
+Highmead for two sessions before he met Miss Roan. The germ of truth
+in this was that he had stipulated to himself that he would not accept
+the contract unless Amber, too, must admit "Value received," and in
+contributing a career already self-launched, and a good old Huntingdon
+name, his pride was satisfied. This, however, had wasted a year or
+so, while the Government was getting itself turned out, and it never
+entered his brain that his crushing victory at the General
+Election could owe anything to a corner in votes--at five dollars a
+head--secretly made by a fair American financier.
+
+It was in the thick of the season, and Amber had just said good-bye
+to the Bishop, the last of her dinner-guests. "I always say grace when
+the church goes," she laughed, as she turned to her budget of unread
+correspondence and shuffled the letters, as in the old days, when she
+hoped to draw a letter of Walter's. But her method had become more
+scientific. Recognising the writers by their crests or mottoes, she
+would arrange the letters in order of precedence, alleging it was
+to keep her hand in, otherwise she would always be making the most
+horrible mistakes in "your Mediaeval British etiquette."
+
+"Who goes first to-night?" said her husband, watching her movements
+from a voluptuous arm-chair.
+
+"Only Lady Chelmer," Amber yawned, as she broke the seal.
+
+"Didn't I see the scrawl of the Honourable Tolly?"
+
+"Yes, poor dear. I do so want to know if he is happy in British
+Honduras. But he must take his turn."
+
+"If he had taken his turn," Walter laughed, "he never would have got
+the appointment there."
+
+"No, poor dear; it was very good of you."
+
+"Of me?" Walter's tone was even more amused. His eyes roved round the
+vast drawing-room, as if with the thought that he had as little to
+do with its dignified grandeur. Then his gaze rested once more on his
+wife; she seemed a delicious harmony of silks and flowers and creamy
+flesh-tones.
+
+"Mrs. Bassett," he said softly, lingering on the proprietorial term.
+
+"Yes, Walter," she said, not looking up from her letter.
+
+"Do you realise this is the first time we have been alone together
+this month?"
+
+"No? Really?" She glanced up absently.
+
+"Never mind that muddle-headed old Chelmer. I dare say she only wants
+another hundred or two." He came over, took the letter and her hand
+with it. "I have a great secret to tell you."
+
+Now he had captured her attention as well as her hand. Her eyes
+sparkled. "A Cabinet Secret?" she said.
+
+"Yes. At this moment every newspaper office is in a fever--to-morrow
+all England will be ringing with the news. It is a thunderbolt."
+
+She started up, snatching her hand away, every nerve a-quiver with
+excitement. "And you kept this from me all through dinner?"
+
+"I hadn't a chance, darling--I came straight from the scrimmage."
+
+"You won't gloss it over by calling me novel names. I hate stale
+thunderbolts. You might have breathed a word in my ear."
+
+"I shall make amends by beginning with the part that is only for your
+ear. Do you know what next Monday is?"
+
+"The day you address your constituents, of course. Oh, I see, this
+thunderbolt is going to change your speech."
+
+"Is going to change my speech altogether. Next Monday is the seventh
+anniversary of our wedding."
+
+"Is it? But what has that to do with your speech at Highmead?"
+
+"Everything." He smiled mysteriously, then went on softly, "Amber, do
+you remember our honeymoon?"
+
+She smiled faintly. "Oh, I haven't quite forgotten."
+
+"If you had quite forgotten the misery of it, I should be glad."
+
+"I have quite forgotten."
+
+"You are kinder than I deserve. But I was so startled to find my
+career was less to you than a kiss that I was more churlish than I
+need have been. I even wished that you might have a child, so that you
+might be taken up with it instead of with me."
+
+She blushed. "Yes, I dare say I showed my hand clumsily as soon as it
+held all the aces."
+
+"Ah, Amber, you were an angel and I was a beast. How gallantly you
+swallowed your disappointment in your bargain, how loyally you worked
+heart and soul that I might gain my one ideal--Power!"
+
+"It was a labour of love," she said deprecatingly.
+
+"My noble Amber. But did you think, selfishly engrossed though I have
+been with the Fight for Power, that this love-labour of yours was lost
+on me? No, 'terrible ambitious' as I was, I could still see I got the
+blackberries and you little more than the scratches, and the less you
+began to press your claim upon my heart, the more my heart was opening
+out with an answering passion. I began to watch the play of your eyes,
+the shimmer of light across your cheek, the roguish pout of your lips,
+the lock that strayed across your temple--as it is straying now."
+
+She pushed it back impatiently. "But what has all this to do with the
+Cabinet Secret?"
+
+"Patience, darling! How much nicer to listen to you than to the
+Opposition."
+
+"I shall be in the Opposition unless you get along faster."
+
+"That is what I want--your face opposite me always, instead of
+bald-headed babblers. Ah, if you knew how often, of late, it has
+floated before me in the House, reducing historic wrangles to
+the rocking of children's boats in stormy ponds, accentuating the
+ponderous futility." He took her hand again, and a great joy filled
+him as he felt its gentle responsive pressure.
+
+"Ponderous, perhaps," she said, smiling faintly; "but not futile,
+Walter."
+
+"Futile, so far as I am concerned, dearest. Ah, you are right. Love
+is the only reality--everything else a game played with counters. What
+are our winnings? A few cheers drowned in the roar that greets
+the winning jockey, a few leading articles, stale as yesterday's
+newspaper."
+
+"But the good to the masses--" she reminded him.
+
+"Don't mock me with my own phrases, darling. The masses have done me
+more good than I can ever do them. Next Monday, dear Amber Roan, we'll
+try our honeymoon over again." And his lips sought hers.
+
+She drew back. "Yes, yes, after the Speech. But now--the Secret!"
+
+"There will be no speech--that is the secret."
+
+She drew away from him altogether. "No speech!" she gasped.
+
+"None save to your adorable ear--and the moonlit waters. Woodham has
+lent us his yacht--"
+
+"In the middle of a Cabinet Crisis?"
+
+"Which concerns me less than anybody." And he beamed happily.
+
+"Less than anybody?" she repeated.
+
+"Yes--since it is my resignation that makes the crisis."
+
+She fell back into a chair, white and trembling. "You have resigned!"
+
+"For ever. And now, hey for the great round, wonderful world! Don't
+you hear our keel cutting the shimmering waters?"
+
+"No," she said savagely. "I hear only Woodham's mocking
+laughter!... And it sounds like a goat bleating."
+
+"Darling!" he cried in amaze.
+
+"I told you not to 'darling' me. How dared you change our lives
+without a word of consultation?"
+
+"Amber!" His voice was pained now. "I prepared a surprise for the
+anniversary of our wedding. One can't consult about surprises."
+
+"Keep your quibbles for the House! But perhaps there is no House,
+either."
+
+"Naturally. I have done with it all. I have written for the Chiltern
+Hundreds."
+
+"You are mad, Walter. You must take it all back."
+
+"I can't, Amber. I have quarrelled hopelessly with the Party. The
+Prime Minister will never forgive what I said at the Council to-day.
+The luxury of speaking one's mind is expensive. I ought never to have
+joined any Party. I am only fit to be Independent."
+
+"Independence leads nowhere." She rose angrily. "And this is to be the
+end of your Career! The Career you married me for!"
+
+"I did wrong, Amber. But before one finds the true God, one worships
+idols."
+
+"And what is the true God, pray?"
+
+"The one whose angel and minister you have always been, Amber"--he
+lowered his voice reverently--"Love."
+
+"Love!" Her voice was bitter. "Any bench in the Park, any alley in
+Highmead, swarms with Love." 'Twas as if Caesar had skipped from his
+imperial chariot to a sociable.
+
+All her childish passion for directing the life of the household,
+all her girlish relish in keeping lovers in leading strings, all
+that unconscious love of Power which--inversely--had attracted her
+to Walter Bassett, and which had found so delightful a scope in her
+political activities, leapt--now that her Salon was threatened with
+extinction--into agonised consciousness of itself.
+
+Through this brilliant husband of hers, she had touched the destinies
+of England, pulled the strings of Empire. Oh, the intoxication of the
+fight--the fight for which she had seconded and sponged him! Oh,
+the rapture of intriguing against his enemies--himself included--the
+feminine triumph of managing Goodman Waverer or Badman Badgerer!
+
+And now--oh, she could no longer control her sobs!
+
+He tried to soothe her, to caress her, but she repulsed him.
+
+"Go to your yacht--to your miserable shimmering waters. I shall spend
+my honeymoon here alone.... You discovered I was Irish."
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE WOMAN BEATER
+
+
+
+
+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. 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 broadcloth!
+
+
+
+
+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
+new-comers, 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
+new-comer, 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 _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.
+
+"Good-by," she said, rising in a flash. The words had the calm
+conventional cadence, and instantly extorted from him--amid all his
+dazedness--the corresponding "Good-by." 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 generalised 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 monopolised 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 recognise 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 generalisations. 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 to-day."
+
+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 realised 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 realise 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 to-morrow 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
+a 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 tantalising 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
+handbag 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 Elizabethbrunnen
+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
+sympathise 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 spiritualised, 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 had 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.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE ETERNAL FEMININE
+
+
+
+
+He wore a curious costume, representing the devil carrying off his
+corpse; but I recognised him at once as the lesser lion of a London
+evening party last season. Then he had just returned from a Polar
+expedition, and wore the glacier of civilisation on his breast.
+To-night he was among the maddest of the mad, dancing savagely with
+the Bacchantes of the Latin Quarter at the art students' ball, and
+some of his fellow-Americans told me that he was the best marine
+painter in the _atelier_ which he had joined. More they did not pause
+to tell me, for they were anxious to celebrate this night of nights,
+when, in that fine spirit of equality born of belonging to two
+Republics, the artist lowers himself to the level of his model.
+
+The young Arctic explorer, so entirely at home in this more tropical
+clime, had relapsed into respectability when I spoke to him. He was
+sitting at a supper-table smoking a cigarette, and gazing somewhat
+sadly--it seemed to me--at the pandemoniac phantasmagoria of screaming
+dancers, the glittering cosmopolitan chaos that multiplied itself
+riotously in the mirrored walls of the great flaring ball-room, where
+under-dressed women, waving many-coloured paper lanterns, rode on the
+shoulders of grotesquely clad men prancing to joyous music. For some
+time he had been trying hard to get some one to take the money for
+his supper; but the frenzied waiters suspected he was clamouring for
+something to eat, and would not be cajoled into attention.
+
+Moved by an impulse of mischief, I went up to him and clapped him on
+his corpse, which he wore behind.
+
+There was a death-mask of papier-mache on the back of his head with
+appropriate funereal drapings down the body.
+
+"I'll take your money," I said.
+
+He started, and turned his devil upon me. The face was made
+Mephistophelian, and the front half of him wore scarlet.
+
+"Thanks," he said, laughing roguishly, when he recognised me. "It's
+darned queer that Paris should be the place where they refuse to take
+the devil's money."
+
+I suggested smilingly that it was the corpse they fought shy of.
+
+"I guess not," he retorted. "It's dead men's money that keeps this
+place lively. I wish I'd had the chance of some anyhow; but a rolling
+stone gathers no moss, they say--not even from graveyards, I suppose."
+
+He spoke disconsolately, in a tone more befitting the back than the
+front of him, and quite out of accord with the reckless revelry around
+him.
+
+"Oh! you'll make lots of money with your pictures," I said heartily.
+
+He shook his head. "That's the chap who's going to scoop in the
+dollars," he said, indicating a brawny Frenchman attired in a blanket
+that girdled his loins, and black feathers that decorated his hair.
+"That fellow's got the touch of Velasquez. You should see the portrait
+he's doing for the Salon."
+
+"Well, I don't see much art in his costume, anyhow," I retorted.
+"Yours is an inspiration of genius."
+
+"Yes; so prophetic, don't you know," he replied modestly. "But you
+are not the only one who has complimented me. To it I owe the proudest
+moment of my life--when I shook hands with a European prince." And he
+laughed with returning merriment.
+
+"Indeed!" I exclaimed. "With which?"
+
+"Ah! I see your admiration for my rig is mounting. No; it wasn't with
+the Prince of Wales--confess your admiration is going down already.
+Come, you shall guess. _Je vous le donne en trois_."
+
+After teasing me a little he told me it was the Kronprinds of Denmark.
+"At the _Kunstner Karneval_ in Copenhagen," he explained briefly. His
+front face had grown sad again.
+
+"Did you study art in Copenhagen?" I inquired.
+
+"Yes, before I joined that expedition," he said. "It was from there I
+started."
+
+"Yes, of course," I replied. "I remember now. It was a Danish
+expedition. But what made you chuck up your studies so suddenly?"
+
+"Oh! I don't know. I guess I was just about sick of most things. My
+stars! Look at that little gypsy-girl dancing the can-can; isn't she
+fresh? Isn't she wonderful? How awful to think she'll be used up in a
+year or two!"
+
+"I suppose there was a woman--the eternal feminine," I said, sticking
+him to the point, for I was more interested in him than in the
+seething saturnalia, our common sobriety amid which seemed somehow
+to raise our casual acquaintanceship to the plane of confidential
+friendship.
+
+"Yes, I suppose there was a woman," he echoed in low tones. "The
+eternal feminine!" And a strange unfathomable light leapt into his
+eyes, which he raised slightly towards the gilded ceiling, where
+countless lustres glittered.
+
+"Deceived you, eh?" I said lightly.
+
+His expression changed. "Deceived me, as you say," he murmured, with
+a faint, sad smile, that made me conjure up a vision of a passionate
+lovely face with cruel eyes.
+
+"Won't you tell me about it?" I asked, as I tendered him a fresh
+cigarette, for while we spoke his half-smoked one had been snatched
+from his mouth by a beautiful Maenad, who whirled off puffing it.
+
+"I reckon you'll be making copy out of it," he said, his smile growing
+whimsical.
+
+"If it's good enough," I replied candidly. "That's why I am here."
+
+"What a lovely excuse! But there's nothing in my affair to make a
+story of."
+
+I smiled majestically.
+
+"You stick to your art--leave me to manage mine." And I put a light to
+his cigarette.
+
+"Ah, but you'll be disappointed this time, I warrant," he said
+laughingly, as the smoke circled round his diabolically handsome face.
+Then, becoming serious again, he went on: "It's so terribly plebeian,
+yet it all befell through that very _Kunstner Karneval_. I was telling
+you of when I first wore this composite costume which gained me the
+smile of royalty. It was a very swell affair, of course, not a bit
+like this, but it was given in hell."
+
+"In hell!" I cried, startled.
+
+"Yes. _Underverden_ they call it in their lingo. The ball-room
+of the palace (the _Palaeet_, an old disused mansion) was got up to
+represent the infernal regions--you tumble?--and everybody had to
+dress appropriately. That was what gave me the idea of this costume.
+The staircase up which you entered was made the mouth of a great
+dragon, and as you trod on the first step his eye gleamed blazes and
+brimstone. There were great monsters all about, and dark grottoes
+radiating around; and when you took your dame into one of them, your
+tread flooded them with light. If, however, the cavalier modestly
+conducted his mistress into one of the lighted caves, virtue was
+rewarded by instantaneous darkness."
+
+"That was really artistic," I said, laughing.
+
+"You bet! The artists spent any amount of money over the affair. The
+whole of Hades bristled with ingenious devices in every corner. I had
+got a couple of tickets, and had designed the dress of my best girl,
+as well as my own, and the morning before (there being little work
+done in the studios that day, as you may well imagine) I called upon
+her to see her try it on. To my chagrin I found she was down with
+influenza, or something of that sort appropriate to the bitter winter
+we were having. And it did freeze that year, by Jove!--so hard that
+Denmark and Sweden were united--to their mutual disgust, I fancy--by
+a broad causeway of ice. I remember, as I walked back from the girl's
+house towards the town along the Langelinie, my mortification was
+somewhat allayed by the picturesque appearance of the Sound, in whose
+white expanse boats of every species and colour were embedded, looking
+like trapped creatures unable to stir oar or sail. But as I left the
+Promenade and came into the narrow old streets of the town, with their
+cobblestones and their quaint, many-windowed houses, my ill-humour
+returned. I had had some trouble in getting the second ticket, and now
+it looked as if I should get left. I went over in my mind the girls I
+could ask, and what with not caring more for one than for another, and
+not knowing which were booked already, and what with the imminence of
+the ball, I felt the little brains I had getting addled in my head.
+At last, in sheer despair, I had what is called a happy thought. I
+resolved to ask the first girl of my acquaintance I met in my walk.
+Instantly my spirits rose like a thermometer in a Turkish bath. The
+clouds of irresolution rolled away, and the touch of adventure made my
+walk joyous again. I peered eagerly into every female face I met, but
+it was not till I approached the market-place that I knew my fate.
+Then, turning a corner, I came suddenly and violently face to face
+with Froeken Jensen."
+
+He paused and relit his cigarette, and the maddening music of brass
+instruments and brazen creatures, which his story had shut out,
+crashed again upon my ears. "I reckon if you were telling this, you'd
+stop here," he said, "and put down 'to be continued in our next.'"
+There seemed a trace of huskiness in his flippant tones, as if he were
+trying to keep under some genuine emotion.
+
+"Never you mind," I returned, smiling. "You're not a writer, anyhow,
+so just keep straight on."
+
+"Well, Froeken Jensen was absolutely the ugliest girl I have seen in
+all my globe-trottings.... On second thoughts, that is the place to
+stop, isn't it?"
+
+"Not at all; it's only in long novels one stops for refreshment. So
+go ahead, and--I say--do cut your interruptions _a la_ Fielding and
+Thackeray. _C'est vieux jeu_."
+
+"All right, don't get mad. Froeken Jensen had the most irregular
+and ungainly features that ever crippled a woman's career; her nose
+was--But no! I won't describe her, poor girl. She was about twenty-six
+years old, but one of those girls whose years no one counts, who are
+old maids at seventeen. Well, you can fancy what a fix I was in. It
+was no good pretending to myself that I hadn't seen her, for we nearly
+bowled each other over--she was coming along quick trot with a basket
+on her arm--and it seemed kind of shuffling to back out of my promise
+to her, though she didn't know anything about it. It was like betting
+with yourself and wanting to cheat yourself when you lost. I felt I
+should never trust myself again, if I turned welsher--that's the word,
+isn't it?"
+
+"It's like Jephtha," I said. "He swore, you know, he would sacrifice
+the first creature that he saw on his triumphant return from the wars,
+and his daughter came out and had to be sacrificed."
+
+"Thank you for the compliment," he said, with a grimace. "But I'm not
+up in the classics, so the comparison didn't strike me. But what did
+strike me, after the first moment of annoyance, was the humour of the
+situation. I turned and walked beside her--under cover of an elaborate
+apology for my dashing behaviour. She seemed quite concerned at my
+regret, and insisted that it was she that had dashed--it was
+her marketing-day, and she was late. You must know she kept a
+boarding-house for art and university students, and it was there that
+I had made her acquaintance, when I went to dine once or twice with
+a studio chum who was quartered there. I had never exchanged two
+sentences with her before, as you can well imagine. She was not
+inviting to the artistic eye; indeed, I rather wondered how my friend
+could tolerate her at the head of the table, till he jestingly told
+me it was reckoned off the bill. The place was indeed suited to
+the student's pocket. But this morning I was surprised at the
+sprightliness of her share in the dialogue of mutual apologies. Her
+mind seemed as alert as her step, her voice was pleasing and gentle,
+and there was a refreshing gaiety in her attitude towards the situation.
+
+"'But I am quite sure it was _my_ fault,' I wound up rather lamely
+at last, 'and, if you will allow me to make you amends, I shall be
+pleased to send you a ticket for the ball to-morrow night.'
+
+"She stood still. 'For the _Kunstner Karneval_!' she cried eagerly,
+while her poor absurd face lit up.
+
+"'Yes, Froeken; and I shall be happy to escort you there if you will
+give me the pleasure.'
+
+"She looked at me with sudden suspicion--the idea that I was chaffing
+her must have crossed her mind. I felt myself flushing furiously,
+feeling somehow half-guilty by my secret thoughts of her a few moments
+ago. We had arrived at the _Amagertorv_--the market-place--and I
+recollect getting a sudden impression of the quaint stalls and
+the picturesque _Amager_-women--one with a preternaturally hideous
+face--and the frozen canal in the middle, with the ice-bound
+fruit-boats from the islands, and the red sails of the Norwegian
+boats, and the Egyptian architecture of Thorwaldsen's Museum in the
+background, making up my mind to paint it all, in the brief instant
+before I added in my most convincing tones, 'The Kronprinds will be
+there.'
+
+"Her incredulous expression became tempered by wistfulness, and with
+an inspiration I drew out the ticket and thrust it into her hand. I
+saw her eyes fill with tears as she turned her head away and examined
+some vegetables.
+
+"'You will excuse me,' she said presently, holding the ticket limply
+in her hand, 'but I fear it is impossible for me to accept your kind
+invitation. You see I have so much to do, and my children will be so
+uncomfortable without me.'
+
+"'Your children will be at the ball to a man,' I retorted.
+
+"'But I haven't any fancy costume,' she pleaded, and tendered me the
+ticket back. It struck me--almost with a pang--that her hand was bare
+of glove, and the work-a-day costume she was wearing was ill adapted to
+the rigour of the weather.
+
+"'Oh! Come anyhow,' I said. 'Ordinary evening dress. Of course, you
+will need a mask.'
+
+"I saw her lip twitch at this unfortunate way of putting it, and
+hastened to affect unconsciousness of my blunder.
+
+"'_She_ wouldn't,' I added with feigned jocularity, nodding towards
+the preternaturally hideous _Amager_-woman.
+
+"'Poor old thing,' she said gently. 'I shall be sorry when she dies.'
+
+"'Why?' I murmured.
+
+"'Because then I shall be the ugliest woman in Copenhagen,' she
+answered gaily.
+
+"Something in that remark sent a thrill down my backbone--there seemed
+an infinite pathos and lovableness in her courageous recognition of
+facts. It dispensed me from the painful necessity of pretending to be
+unaware of her ugliness--nay, gave it almost a _cachet_--made it as
+possible a topic of light conversation as beauty itself. I pressed her
+more fervently to come, and at last she consented, stipulating only
+that I should call for her rather late, after she had quite finished
+her household duties and the other boarders had gone off to the ball.
+
+"Well, I took her to the ball (it was as brilliant and gay as this
+without being riotous), and--will you believe it?--she made quite a
+little sensation. With a black domino covering her impossible face,
+and a simple evening dress, she looked as _distinguee_ as my best girl
+would have done. Her skin was good, and her figure, freed from the
+distracting companionship of her face, was rather elegant, while the
+lively humour of her conversation had now fair play. She danced well,
+too, with a natural grace. I believe she enjoyed her incog. almost as
+much as the ball, and I began to feel quite like a fairy godmother who
+was giving poor little Cinderella an outing, and to regret that I had
+not the power to make her beautiful for ever, or at least to make life
+one eternal fancy ball, at which silk masks might veil the horrors of
+reality. I dare say, too, she got a certain kudos through dancing
+so much with me, for, as I have told you _ad nauseam_, this lovely
+costume of mine was the hit of the evening, and the Kronprinds asked
+for the honour of an introduction to me. It was rather funny--the
+circuitous etiquette. I had to be first introduced to his
+_aide-de-camp_. This was done through an actress of the Kongelige
+Theatre, with whom I had been polking (he knew all the soubrettes,
+that _aide-de-camp_!). Then he introduced me to the Kronprinds, and
+I held out my hand and shook his royal paw heartily. He was very
+gracious to me, learning I was an American, and complimented me on
+my dress and my dancing, and I answered him affably; and the natives,
+gathered round at a respectful distance, eyed me with reverent
+curiosity. But at last, when the music struck up again, I said,
+'Excuse me, I am engaged for this waltz!' and hurried off to dance
+with my Cinderella, much to the amazement of the Danes, who wondered
+audibly what mighty foreign potentate His Royal Highness had been
+making himself agreeable to."
+
+"It was plain enough," I broke in. "His Satanic Majesty, of course."
+
+"I am glad you interrupted me," he said, "for you give me an opening
+to state that the Kronprinds has nothing to do with the story. You, of
+course, would have left him out; but I am only an amateur, and I get
+my threads mixed."
+
+"Shut up!" I cried. "I mean--go on."
+
+"Oh, well, perhaps, he _has_ got a little to do with the story, after
+all; for after that, Froeken Jensen became more important--sharing in
+my reflected glory--or, perhaps, now I come to think of it, it was
+only then that she became important. Anyway, important she was;
+and, among others, Axel Larson--who was got up as an ancient Gallic
+warrior, to show off his fine figure--came up and asked me to
+introduce him. I don't think I should have done so ordinarily, for he
+was the filthiest-mouthed fellow in the _atelier_--a great swaggering
+Don Juan Baron Munchausen sort of chap, handsome enough in his raffish
+way--a tall, stalwart Swede, blue-eyed and yellow-haired. But the
+fun of the position was that Axel Larson was one of my Cinderella's
+'children,' so I could not resist introducing him formally to 'Froeken
+Jensen.' His happy air of expectation was replaced by a scowl of
+surprise and disgust.
+
+"'What, thou, Ingeborg!' he cried.
+
+"I could have knocked the man down. The familiar _tutoiement_, the
+Christian name--these, perhaps, he had a right to use; but nothing
+could justify the contempt of his tone. It reminded me disagreeably
+of the ugliness I had nigh forgotten. I felt Ingeborg's arm tremble in
+mine.
+
+"'Yes, it is I, Herr Larson,' she said, with her wonted gentleness,
+and almost apologetically. 'This gentleman was good enough to bring
+me.' She spoke as if her presence needed explanation--with the
+timidity of one shut out from the pleasures of life. I could feel
+her poor little heart fluttering wildly, and knew that her face was
+alternating from red to white beneath the mask.
+
+"Axel Larson shot a swift glance of surprise at me, which was followed
+by a more malicious bolt. 'I congratulate you, Ingeborg,' he said,
+'on the property you seem to have come into.' It was a clever _double
+entente_--the man was witty after his coarse fashion--but the sarcasm
+scarcely stung either of us. I, of course, had none of the motives
+the cad imagined; and as for Ingeborg, I fancy she thought he alluded
+merely to the conquest of myself, and was only pained by the fear I
+might resent so ludicrous a suggestion. Having thrown the shadow
+of his cynicism over our innocent relation, Axel turned away highly
+pleased with himself, rudely neglecting to ask Ingeborg for a dance. I
+felt like giving him 'Hail Columbia,' but I restrained myself.
+
+"Some days after this--in response to Ingeborg's grateful anxiety to
+return my hospitality--I went to dine with her 'children.' I found
+Axel occupying the seat of honour, and grumbling at the soup and the
+sauces like a sort of autocrat of the dinner-table, and generally
+making things unpleasant. I had to cling to my knife and fork so as
+not to throw the water-bottle at his head. Ingeborg presided meekly
+over the dishes, her ugliness more rampant than ever after the
+illusion of the mask. I remembered now he had been disagreeable when I
+had dined there before, though, not being interested in Ingeborg then,
+I had not resented his ill-humour, contenting myself with remarking to
+my friend that I understood now why the Danes disliked the Swedes so
+much--a generalisation that was probably as unjust as most of one's
+judgments of other peoples. After dinner I asked her why she tolerated
+the fellow. She flushed painfully and murmured that times were hard.
+I protested that she could easily get another boarder to replace him,
+but she said Axel Larson had been there so long--nearly two years--and
+was comfortable, and knew the ways of the house, and it would be very
+discourteous to ask him to go. I insisted that rather than see
+her suffer I would move into Larson's room myself, but she urged
+tremulously that she didn't suffer at all from his rudeness, it was
+only his surface-manner; it deceived strangers, but there was a good
+heart underneath, as who could know better than she? Besides, he was
+a genius with the brush, and everybody knew well that geniuses were
+bears. And, finally, she could not afford to lose boarders--there were
+already two vacancies.
+
+"It ended--as I dare say you have guessed--by my filling up one of
+those two vacancies, partly to help her pecuniarily, partly to act
+as a buffer between her and the swaggering Swede. He was quite
+flabbergasted by my installation in the house, and took me aside in
+the _atelier_ and asked me if Ingeborg had really come into any money.
+I was boiling over, but I kept the lid on by main force, and answered
+curtly that Ingeborg had a heart of gold. He laughed boisterously,
+and said one could not raise anything on that; adding, with an air of
+authority, that he believed I spoke the truth, for it was not likely
+the hag would have kept anything from her oldest boarder. 'I dare say
+the real truth is,' he wound up, 'that you are hard up, like me, and
+want to do the thing cheap.'
+
+"'I wasn't aware you were hard up,' I said, for I had seen him often
+enough flaunting it in the theatres and restaurants.
+
+"'Not for luxuries,' he retorted with a guffaw, 'but for
+necessities--yes. And there comes in the value of our domestic
+eyesore. Why, I haven't paid her a _skilling_ for six months!'
+
+"I thought of poor Ingeborg's thin winter attire, and would have liked
+to reply with my fist, only the reply didn't seem quite logical. It
+was not my business, after all; but I thought I understood now why
+Ingeborg was so reluctant to part with him--it is the immemorial
+fallacy of economical souls to throw good money after bad; though when
+I saw the patience with which she bore his querulous complaints and
+the solicitude with which she attended to his wants, I sometimes
+imagined he had some secret hold over her. Often I saw her cower
+and flush piteously, as with terror, before his insolent gaze. But I
+decided finally his was merely the ascendency of the strong over
+the weak--of the bully over his victims, who serve him more loyally
+because he kicks them. The bad-tempered have the best of it in this
+vile world. I cannot tell you how I grew to pity that poor girl.
+Living in her daily presence, I marked the thousand and one trials
+of which her life was made up, all borne with the same sweetness and
+good-humour. I discovered that she had a bed-ridden mother, whom she
+kept in the attic, and whom she stole up to attend to fifty times a
+day, sitting with her when her work was done and the moonlight on the
+Sound tempted one to be out enjoying one's youth. Alone she managed
+and financed the entire establishment, aided only by a little
+maid-of-all-work, just squeezing out a scanty living for herself
+and her mother. If ever there was an angel on earth it was Ingeborg
+Jensen. I tell you, when I see the angels of the Italian masters I
+feel they are all wrong: I don't want flaxen-haired cherubs to give
+me an idea of heaven in this hell of a world. I just want to see good
+honest faces, full of suffering and sacrifice, and if ever I paint an
+angel its phiz shall have the unflinching ugliness of Ingeborg Jensen,
+God bless her! To be near her was to live in an atmosphere of purity
+and pity and tenderness, and everything that is sweet and sacred."
+
+As he spoke I became suddenly aware that the gas-lights were paling,
+and glancing towards the window on my left I saw the splendour of the
+sunrise breaking fresh and clear over the city of diabolical night,
+where in the sombre eastern sky--
+
+"God made himself an awful rose of dawn."
+
+A breath of coolness and purity seemed to waft into the feverish
+ball-room; a ray of fresh morning sunlight. I looked curiously at the
+young artist. He seemed transfigured. I could scarcely realise that
+an hour ago he had been among the rowdiest of the _Comus_ crew, whose
+shrieks and laughter still rang all around us. Even his duplex costume
+seemed to have grown subtly symbolical, the diabolical part typical
+of all that is bestial and selfish in man, the death-mask speaking
+silently of renunciation and the peace of the tomb. He went on, after
+a moment of emotion: "They say that pity is akin to love, but I am not
+sure that I ever loved her, for I suppose that love involves passion,
+and I never arrived at that. I only came to feel that I wanted to be
+with her always, to guard her, to protect her, to work for her, to
+suffer for her if need be, to give her life something of the joy and
+sweetness that God owed her. I felt I wasn't much use in the world,
+and that would be something to do. And so one day--though not without
+much mental tossing, for we are curiously, complexly built, and I
+dreaded ridicule and the long years of comment from unsympathetic
+strangers--I asked her to be my wife. Her surprise, her agitation, was
+painful to witness. But she was not incredulous, as before; she had
+learned to know that I respected her.
+
+"Nevertheless, her immediate impulse was one of refusal.
+
+"'It cannot be,' she said, and her bosom heaved spasmodically.
+
+"I protested that it could and would be, but she shook her head.
+
+"'You are very kind to me! God bless you!' she said. 'You have always
+been kind to me. But you do not love me.'
+
+"I assured her I did, and in that moment I dare say I spoke the truth.
+For in that moment of her reluctance and diffidence to snatch at
+proffered joy, when the suggestion of rejection made her appear doubly
+precious, she seemed to me the most adorable creature in the world.
+
+"But still she shook her head. 'No one can love me,' she said sadly.
+
+"I took her hand in mute protestation, but she withdrew it gently.
+
+"'I cannot be your wife,' she persisted.
+
+"'Why not, Ingeborg?' I asked passionately.
+
+"She hesitated, panting and colouring painfully, then--the words are
+echoing in my brain--she answered softly, '_Jeg kan ikke elske Dem_'
+(I cannot love you).
+
+"It was like a shaft of lightning piercing me, rending and
+illuminating. In my blind conceit the obverse side of the question had
+never presented itself to me. I had taken it for granted I had only to
+ask to be jumped at. But now, in one great flash of insight, I seemed
+to see everything plain.
+
+"'You love Axel Larson!' I cried chokingly, as I thought of all the
+insults he had heaped upon her in her presence, all the sneers and
+vile jocosities of which she had been the butt behind her back,
+in return for the care she had lavished upon his comfort, for her
+pinching to make both ends meet without the money he should have
+contributed.
+
+"She did not reply. The tears came into her eyes, she let her head
+droop on her heaving breast. As in those visions that are said to
+come to the dying, I saw Axel Larson feeding day by day at her board,
+brutally conscious of her passion, yet not deigning even to sacrifice
+her to it; I saw him ultimately leave the schools and the town to
+carry his clever brush to the welcome of a wider world, without a word
+or a thought of thanks for the creature who had worshipped and waited
+upon him hand and foot; and then I saw her life from day to day unroll
+its long monotonous folds, all in the same pattern, all drab duty and
+joyless sacrifice, and hopeless undying love.
+
+"I took her hand again in a passion of pity. She understood my
+sympathy, and the hot tears started from her eyes and rolled down her
+poor wan cheeks. And in that holy moment I saw into the inner heaven
+of woman's love, which purifies and atones for the world. The eternal
+feminine!"
+
+The sentimental young artist ceased, and buried his devil's face in
+his hands. I looked around and started. We were alone in the abandoned
+supper-room. The gorgeously grotesque company was seated in a gigantic
+circle upon the ball-room floor furiously applauding the efforts of
+two sweetly pretty girls who were performing the celebrated _danse du
+ventre_.
+
+"The eternal feminine!" I echoed pensively.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE SILENT SISTERS
+
+
+
+
+They had quarrelled in girlhood, and mutually declared their
+intention never to speak to each other again, wetting and drying their
+forefingers to the accompaniment of an ancient childish incantation,
+and while they lived on the paternal farm they kept their foolish oath
+with the stubbornness of a slow country stock, despite the alternate
+coaxing and chastisement of their parents, notwithstanding the
+perpetual everyday contact of their lives, through every vicissitude
+of season and weather, of sowing and reaping, of sun and shade, of joy
+and sorrow.
+
+Death and misfortune did not reconcile them, and when their father
+died and the old farm was sold up, they travelled to London in the
+same silence, by the same train, in search of similar situations.
+Service separated them for years, though there was only a stone's
+throw between them. They often stared at each other in the streets.
+
+Honor, the elder, married a local artisan, and two and a half years
+later, Mercy, the younger, married a fellow-workman of Honor's
+husband. The two husbands were friends, and often visited each other's
+houses, which were on opposite sides of the same sordid street, and
+the wives made them welcome. Neither Honor nor Mercy suffered an
+allusion to their breach; it was understood that their silence must be
+received in silence. Each of the children had a quiverful of children
+who played and quarrelled together in the streets and in one another's
+houses, but not even the street affrays and mutual grievances of the
+children could provoke the mothers to words. They stood at their doors
+in impotent fury, almost bursting with the torture of keeping their
+mouths shut against the effervescence of angry speech. When either
+lost a child the other watched the funeral from her window, dumb as
+the mutes.
+
+The years rolled on, and still the river of silence flowed between their
+lives. Their good looks faded, the burden of life and child-bearing was
+heavy upon them. Grey hairs streaked their brown tresses, then brown
+hairs streaked their grey tresses. The puckers of age replaced the
+dimples of youth. The years rolled on, and Death grew busy among the
+families. Honor's husband died, and Mercy lost a son, who died a week
+after his wife. Cholera took several of the younger children. But the
+sisters themselves lived on, bent and shrivelled by toil and sorrow, even
+more than by the slow frost of the years.
+
+Then one day Mercy took to her death-bed. An internal disease, too
+long neglected, would carry her off within a week. So the doctor told
+Jim, Mercy's husband.
+
+Through him, the news travelled to Honor's eldest son, who still lived
+with her. By the evening it reached Honor.
+
+She went upstairs abruptly when her son told her, leaving him
+wondering at her stony aspect. When she came down she was bonneted and
+shawled. He was filled with joyous amaze to see her hobble across the
+street and for the first time in her life pass over her sister Mercy's
+threshold.
+
+As Honor entered the sick-room, with pursed lips, a light leapt into
+the wasted, wrinkled countenance of the dying creature. She raised
+herself slightly in bed, her lips parted, then shut tightly, and her
+face darkened.
+
+Honor turned angrily to Mercy's husband, who hung about impotently.
+"Why did you let her run down so low?" she said.
+
+"I didn't know," the old man stammered, taken aback by her presence
+even more than by her question. "She was always a woman to say nothin'."
+
+Honor put him impatiently aside and examined the medicine bottle on
+the bedside table.
+
+"Isn't it time she took her dose?"
+
+"I dessay."
+
+Honor snorted wrathfully. "What's the use of a man?" she inquired, as
+she carefully measured out the fluid and put it to her sister's lips,
+which opened to receive it, and then closed tightly again.
+
+"How is your wife feeling now?" Honor asked after a pause.
+
+"How are you, now, Mercy?" asked the old man awkwardly.
+
+The old woman shook her head. "I'm a-goin' fast, Jim," she grumbled
+weakly, and a tear of self-pity trickled down her parchment cheek.
+
+"What rubbidge she do talk!" cried Honor, sharply. "Why d'ye stand
+there like a tailor's dummy? Why don't you tell her to cheer up?"
+
+"Cheer up, Mercy," quavered the old man, hoarsely.
+
+But Mercy groaned instead, and turned fretfully on her other side,
+with her face to the wall.
+
+"I'm too old, I'm too old," she moaned, "this is the end o' me."
+
+"Did you ever hear the like?" Honor asked Jim, angrily, as she
+smoothed his wife's pillow. "She was always conceited about her age,
+settin' herself up as the equals of her elders, and here am I, her
+elder sister, as carried her in my arms when I was five and she was
+two, still hale and strong, and with no mind for underground for many
+a day. Nigh three times her age I was once, mind you, and now she has
+the imperence to talk of dyin' before me."
+
+She took off her bonnet and shawl. "Send one o' the kids to tell my
+boy I'm stayin' here," she said, "and then just you get 'em all to
+bed--there's too much noise about the house."
+
+The children, who were orphaned grandchildren of the dying woman, were
+sent to bed, and then Jim himself was packed off to refresh himself
+for the next day's labours, for the poor old fellow still doddered
+about the workshop.
+
+The silence of the sick-room spread over the whole house. About ten
+o'clock the doctor came again and instructed Honor how to alleviate
+the patient's last hours. All night long she sat watching her dying
+sister, hand and eye alert to anticipate every wish. No word broke the
+awful stillness.
+
+The first thing in the morning, Mercy's married daughter, the only
+child of hers living in London, arrived to nurse her mother. But Honor
+indignantly refused to be dispossessed.
+
+"A nice daughter you are," she said, "to leave your mother lay a day
+and a night without a sight o' your ugly face."
+
+"I had to look after the good man, and the little 'uns," the daughter
+pleaded.
+
+"Then what do you mean by desertin' them now?" the irate old woman
+retorted. "First you deserts your mother, and then your husband and
+children. You must go back to them as needs your care. I carried your
+mother in my arms before you was born, and if she wants anybody else
+now to look after her, let her just tell me so, and I'll be off in a
+brace o' shakes."
+
+She looked defiantly at the yellow, dried-up creature in the bed.
+Mercy's withered lips twitched, but no sound came from them. Jim,
+strung up by the situation, took the word. "You can't do no good up
+here, the doctor says. You might look after the kids downstairs a bit,
+when you can spare an hour, and I've got to go to the shop. I'll send
+you a telegraph if there's a change," he whispered to the daughter,
+and she, not wholly discontented to return to her living interests,
+kissed her mother, lingered a little, and then stole quietly away.
+
+All that day the old women remained together in solemn silence, broken
+only by the doctor's visit. He reported that Mercy might last a couple
+of days more. In the evening Jim replaced his sister-in-law, who slept
+perforce. At midnight she reappeared and sent him to bed. The sufferer
+tossed about restlessly. At half-past two she awoke, and Honor fed her
+with some broth, as she would have fed a baby. Mercy, indeed, looked
+scarcely bigger than an infant, and Honor only had the advantage of
+her by being puffed out with clothes. A church clock in the distance
+struck three. Then the silence fell deeper. The watcher drowsed, the
+lamp flickered, tossing her shadow about the walls as if she, too,
+were turning feverishly from side to side. A strange ticking made
+itself heard in the wainscoting. Mercy sat up with a scream of terror.
+"Jim!" she shrieked, "Jim!"
+
+Honor started up, opened her mouth to cry "Hush!" then checked
+herself, suddenly frozen.
+
+"Jim," cried the dying woman, "listen! Is that the death spider?"
+
+Honor listened, her blood curdling. Then she went towards the door
+and opened it. "Jim," she said, in low tones, speaking towards the
+landing, "tell her it's nothing, it's only a mouse. She was always a
+nervous little thing." And she closed the door softly, and pressing
+her trembling sister tenderly back on the pillow, tucked her up snugly
+in the blanket.
+
+Next morning, when Jim was really present, the patient begged
+pathetically to have a grandchild with her in the room, day and night.
+"Don't leave me alone again," she quavered, "don't leave me alone with
+not a soul to talk to." Honor winced, but said nothing.
+
+The youngest child, who did not have to go to school, was brought--a
+pretty little boy with brown curls, which the sun, streaming through
+the panes, turned to gold. The morning passed slowly. About noon Mercy
+took the child's hand, and smoothed his curls.
+
+"My sister Honor had golden curls like that," she whispered.
+
+"They were in the family, Bobby," Honor answered. "Your granny had
+them, too, when she was a girl."
+
+There was a long pause. Mercy's eyes were half-glazed. But her vision
+was inward now.
+
+"The mignonette will be growin' in the gardens, Bobby," she murmured.
+
+"Yes, Bobby, and the heart's-ease," said Honor, softly. "We lived in
+the country, you know, Bobby."
+
+"There is flowers in the country," Bobby declared gravely.
+
+"Yes, and trees," said Honor. "I wonder if your granny remembers when
+we were larruped for stealin' apples."
+
+"Ay, that I do, Bobby, he, he," croaked the dying creature, with a
+burst of enthusiasm. "We was a pair o' tomboys. The farmer he ran
+after us cryin' 'Ye! ye!' but we wouldn't take no gar. He, he, he!"
+
+Honor wept at the laughter. The native idiom, unheard for half a
+century, made her face shine under the tears. "Don't let your granny
+excite herself, Bobby. Let me give her her drink." She moved the boy
+aside, and Mercy's lips automatically opened to the draught.
+
+"Tom was wi' us, Bobby," she gurgled, still vibrating with amusement,
+"and he tumbled over on the heather. He, he!"
+
+"Tom is dead this forty year, Bobby," whispered Honor.
+
+Mercy's head fell back, and an expression of supreme exhaustion came
+over the face. Half an hour passed. Bobby was called down to dinner.
+The doctor had been sent for. The silent sisters were alone. Suddenly
+Mercy sat up with a jerk.
+
+"It be growin' dark, Tom," she said hoarsely, "'haint it time to call
+the cattle home from the ma'shes?"
+
+"She's talkin' rubbidge again," said Honor, chokingly. "Tell her she's
+in London, Bobby."
+
+A wave of intelligence traversed the sallow face. Still sitting up,
+Mercy bent towards the side of the bed. "Ah, is Honor still there?
+Kiss me--Bobby." Her hands groped blindly. Honor bent down and the old
+women's withered lips met.
+
+And in that kiss Mercy passed away into the greater Silence.
+
+
+
+
+        *        *        *        *        *
+
+
+
+
+THE BIG BOW MYSTERY
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+On a memorable morning of early December, London opened its eyes on a
+frigid grey mist. There are mornings when King Fog masses his molecules
+of carbon in serried squadrons in the city, while he scatters them
+tenuously in the suburbs; so that your morning train may bear you from
+twilight to darkness. But to-day the enemy's manoeuvring was more
+monotonous. From Bow even unto Hammersmith there draggled a dull,
+wretched vapour, like the wraith of an impecunious suicide come into a
+fortune immediately after the fatal deed. The barometers and thermometers
+had sympathetically shared its depression, and their spirits (when they
+had any) were low. The cold cut like a many-bladed knife.
+
+Mrs. Drabdump, of 11 Glover Street, Bow, was one of the few persons in
+London whom fog did not depress. She went about her work quite as
+cheerlessly as usual. She had been among the earliest to be aware of the
+enemy's advent, picking out the strands of fog from the coils of darkness
+the moment she rolled up her bedroom blind and unveiled the sombre
+picture of the winter morning. She knew that the fog had come to stay for
+the day at least, and that the gas-bill for the quarter was going to beat
+the record in high-jumping. She also knew that this was because she had
+allowed her new gentleman lodger, Mr. Arthur Constant, to pay a fixed sum
+of a shilling a week for gas, instead of charging him a proportion of the
+actual account for the whole house. The meteorologists might have saved
+the credit of their science if they had reckoned with Mrs. Drabdump's
+next gas-bill when they predicted the weather and made "Snow" the
+favourite, and said that "Fog" would be nowhere. Fog was everywhere, yet
+Mrs. Drabdump took no credit to herself for her prescience. Mrs. Drabdump
+indeed took no credit for anything, paying her way along doggedly, and
+struggling through life like a wearied swimmer trying to touch the
+horizon. That things always went as badly as she had foreseen did not
+exhilarate her in the least.
+
+Mrs. Drabdump was a widow. Widows are not born but made, else you might
+have fancied Mrs. Drabdump had always been a widow. Nature had given her
+that tall, spare form, and that pale, thin-lipped, elongated, hard-eyed
+visage, and that painfully precise hair, which are always associated with
+widowhood in low life. It is only in higher circles that women can lose
+their husbands and yet remain bewitching. The late Mr. Drabdump had
+scratched the base of his thumb with a rusty nail, and Mrs. Drabdump's
+foreboding that he would die of lockjaw had not prevented her wrestling
+day and night with the shadow of Death, as she had wrestled with it
+vainly twice before, when Katie died of diphtheria and little Johnny of
+scarlet fever. Perhaps it is from overwork among the poor that Death has
+been reduced to a shadow.
+
+Mrs. Drabdump was lighting the kitchen fire. She did it very
+scientifically, as knowing the contrariety of coal and the anxiety of
+flaming sticks to end in smoke unless rigidly kept up to the mark.
+Science was a success as usual; and Mrs. Drabdump rose from her knees
+content, like a Parsee priestess who had duly paid her morning devotions
+to her deity. Then she started violently, and nearly lost her balance.
+Her eye had caught the hands of the clock on the mantel. They pointed to
+fifteen minutes to seven. Mrs. Drabdump's devotion to the kitchen fire
+invariably terminated at fifteen minutes past six. What was the matter
+with the clock?
+
+Mrs. Drabdump had an immediate vision of Snoppet, the neighbouring
+horologist, keeping the clock in hand for weeks and then returning it
+only superficially repaired and secretly injured more vitally "for the
+good of the trade." The evil vision vanished as quickly as it came,
+exorcised by the deep boom of St. Dunstan's bells chiming the
+three-quarters. In its place a great horror surged. Instinct had failed;
+Mrs. Drabdump had risen at half-past six instead of six. Now she
+understood why she had been feeling so dazed and strange and sleepy.
+She had overslept herself.
+
+Chagrined and puzzled, she hastily set the kettle over the crackling
+coal, discovering a second later that she had overslept herself because
+Mr. Constant wished to be woke three-quarters of an hour earlier than
+usual, and to have his breakfast at seven, having to speak at an early
+meeting of discontented tram-men. She ran at once, candle in hand, to his
+bedroom. It was upstairs. All "upstairs" was Arthur Constant's domain,
+for it consisted of but two mutually independent rooms. Mrs. Drabdump
+knocked viciously at the door of the one he used for a bedroom, crying,
+"Seven o'clock, sir. You'll be late, sir. You must get up at once." The
+usual slumbrous "All right" was not forthcoming; but, as she herself had
+varied her morning salute, her ear was less expectant of the echo. She
+went downstairs, with no foreboding save that the kettle would come off
+second best in the race between its boiling and her lodger's dressing.
+
+For she knew there was no fear of Arthur Constant's lying deaf to
+the call of Duty--temporarily represented by Mrs. Drabdump. He was
+a light sleeper, and the tram-conductors' bells were probably ringing
+in his ears, summoning him to the meeting. Why Arthur Constant,
+B.A.--white-handed and white-shirted, and gentleman to the very purse of
+him--should concern himself with tram-men, when fortune had confined his
+necessary relations with drivers to cabmen at the least, Mrs. Drabdump
+could not quite make out. He probably aspired to represent Bow in
+Parliament; but then it would surely have been wiser to lodge with a
+landlady who possessed a vote by having a husband alive. Nor was there
+much practical wisdom in his wish to black his own boots (an occupation
+in which he shone but little), and to live in every way like a Bow
+working man. Bow working men were not so lavish in their patronage of
+water, whether existing in drinking-glasses, morning tubs, or laundress's
+establishments. Nor did they eat the delicacies with which Mrs. Drabdump
+supplied him, with the assurance that they were the artisan's appanage.
+She could not bear to see him eat things unbefitting his station. Arthur
+Constant opened his mouth and ate what his landlady gave him, not first
+deliberately shutting his eyes according to the formula, the rather
+pluming himself on keeping them very wide open. But it is difficult for
+saints to see through their own halos; and in practice an aureola about
+the head is often indistinguishable from a mist.
+
+The tea to be scalded in Mr. Constant's pot, when that cantankerous
+kettle should boil, was not the coarse mixture of black and green sacred
+to herself and Mr. Mortlake, of whom the thoughts of breakfast now
+reminded her. Poor Mr. Mortlake, gone off without any to Devonport,
+somewhere about four in the fog-thickened darkness of a winter night!
+Well, she hoped his journey would be duly rewarded, that his perks would
+be heavy, and that he would make as good a thing out of the "travelling
+expenses" as rival labour leaders roundly accused him of to other
+people's faces. She did not grudge him his gains, nor was it her business
+if, as they alleged, in introducing Mr. Constant to her vacant rooms, his
+idea was not merely to benefit his landlady. He had done her an uncommon
+good turn, queer as was the lodger thus introduced. His own apostleship
+to the sons of toil gave Mrs. Drabdump no twinges of perplexity. Tom
+Mortlake had been a compositor; and apostleship was obviously a
+profession better paid and of a higher social status. Tom Mortlake--the
+hero of a hundred strikes--set up in print on a poster, was unmistakably
+superior to Tom Mortlake setting up other men's names at a case. Still,
+the work was not all beer and skittles, and Mrs. Drabdump felt that Tom's
+latest job was not enviable.
+
+She shook his door as she passed it on her way back to the kitchen, but
+there was no response. The street door was only a few feet off down the
+passage, and a glance at it dispelled the last hope that Tom had
+abandoned the journey. The door was unbolted and unchained, and the only
+security was the latch-key lock. Mrs. Drabdump felt a whit uneasy,
+though, to give her her due, she never suffered as much as most good
+housewives do from criminals who never come. Not quite opposite, but
+still only a few doors off, on the other side of the street, lived the
+celebrated ex-detective Grodman, and, illogically enough, his presence in
+the street gave Mrs. Drabdump a curious sense of security, as of a
+believer living under the shadow of the fane. That any human being of ill
+odour should consciously come within a mile of the scent of so famous a
+sleuth-hound seemed to her highly improbable. Grodman had retired (with a
+competence) and was only a sleeping dog now; still, even criminals would
+have sense enough to let him lie.
+
+So Mrs. Drabdump did not really feel that there had been any danger,
+especially as a second glance at the street door showed that Mortlake had
+been thoughtful enough to slip the loop that held back the bolt of the
+big lock. She allowed herself another throb of sympathy for the labour
+leader whirling on his dreary way towards Devonport Dockyard. Not that he
+had told her anything of his journey, beyond the town; but she knew
+Devonport had a Dockyard because Jessie Dymond--Tom's sweetheart--once
+mentioned that her aunt lived near there, and it lay on the surface that
+Tom had gone to help the dockers, who were imitating their London
+brethren. Mrs. Drabdump did not need to be told things to be aware of
+them. She went back to prepare Mr. Constant's superfine tea, vaguely
+wondering why people were so discontented nowadays. But when she brought
+up the tea and the toast and the eggs to Mr. Constant's sitting-room
+(which adjoined his bedroom, though without communicating with it), Mr.
+Constant was not sitting in it. She lit the gas, and laid the cloth; then
+she returned to the landing and beat at the bedroom door with an
+imperative palm. Silence alone answered her. She called him by name and
+told him the hour, but hers was the only voice she heard, and it sounded
+strangely to her in the shadows of the staircase. Then, muttering, "Poor
+gentleman, he had the toothache last night; and p'r'aps he's only just
+got a wink o' sleep. Pity to disturb him for the sake of them grizzling
+conductors. I'll let him sleep his usual time," she bore the tea-pot
+downstairs with a mournful, almost poetic, consciousness that soft-boiled
+eggs (like love) must grow cold.
+
+Half-past seven came--and she knocked again. But Constant slept on.
+
+His letters, always a strange assortment, arrived at eight, and a
+telegram came soon after. Mrs. Drabdump rattled his door, shouted, and at
+last put the wire under it. Her heart was beating fast enough now, though
+there seemed to be a cold, clammy snake curling round it. She went
+downstairs again and turned the handle of Mortlake's room, and went in
+without knowing why. The coverlet of the bed showed that the occupant had
+only lain down in his clothes, as if fearing to miss the early train. She
+had not for a moment expected to find him in the room; yet somehow the
+consciousness that she was alone in the house with the sleeping Constant
+seemed to flash for the first time upon her, and the clammy snake
+tightened its folds round her heart.
+
+She opened the street door, and her eye wandered nervously up and down.
+It was half-past eight. The little street stretched cold and still in the
+grey mist, blinking bleary eyes at either end, where the street lamps
+smouldered on. No one was visible for the moment, though smoke was rising
+from many of the chimneys to greet its sister mist. At the house of the
+detective across the way the blinds were still down and the shutters up.
+Yet the familiar, prosaic aspect of the street calmed her. The bleak air
+set her coughing; she slammed the door to, and returned to the kitchen to
+make fresh tea for Constant, who could only be in a deep sleep. But the
+canister trembled in her grasp. She did not know whether she dropped it
+or threw it down, but there was nothing in the hand that battered again
+a moment later at the bedroom door. No sound within answered the clamour
+without. She rained blow upon blow in a sort of spasm of frenzy, scarce
+remembering that her object was merely to wake her lodger, and almost
+staving in the lower panels with her kicks. Then she turned the handle
+and tried to open the door, but it was locked. The resistance recalled
+her to herself--she had a moment of shocked decency at the thought that
+she had been about to enter Constant's bedroom. Then the terror came over
+her afresh. She felt that she was alone in the house with a corpse. She
+sank to the floor, cowering; with difficulty stifling a desire to scream.
+Then she rose with a jerk and raced down the stairs without looking
+behind her, and threw open the door and ran out into the street, only
+pulling up with her hand violently agitating Grodman's door-knocker. In a
+moment the first-floor window was raised--the little house was of the
+same pattern as her own--and Grodman's full fleshy face loomed through
+the fog in sleepy irritation from under a nightcap. Despite its scowl the
+ex-detective's face dawned upon her like the sun upon an occupant of the
+haunted chamber.
+
+"What in the devil's the matter?" he growled. Grodman was not an early
+bird, now that he had no worms to catch. He could afford to despise
+proverbs now, for the house in which he lived was his, and he lived in it
+because several other houses in the street were also his, and it is well
+for the landlord to be about his own estate in Bow, where poachers often
+shoot the moon. Perhaps the desire to enjoy his greatness among his early
+cronies counted for something, too, for he had been born and bred at Bow,
+receiving when a youth his first engagement from the local police
+quarters, whence he had drawn a few shillings a week as an amateur
+detective in his leisure hours.
+
+Grodman was still a bachelor. In the celestial matrimonial bureau a
+partner might have been selected for him, but he had never been able
+to discover her. It was his one failure as a detective. He was a
+self-sufficing person, who preferred a gas stove to a domestic; but in
+deference to Glover Street opinion he admitted a female factotum between
+ten A.M. and ten P.M., and, equally in deference to Glover Street
+opinion, excluded her between ten P.M. and ten A.M.
+
+"I want you to come across at once," Mrs. Drabdump gasped. "Something has
+happened to Mr. Constant."
+
+"What! Not bludgeoned by the police at the meeting this morning, I hope?"
+
+"No, no! He didn't go. He is dead."
+
+"Dead?" Grodman's face grew very serious now.
+
+"Yes. Murdered!"
+
+"What?" almost shouted the ex-detective. "How? When? Where? Who?"
+
+"I don't know. I can't get to him. I have beaten at his door. He does not
+answer."
+
+Grodman's face lit up with relief.
+
+"You silly woman! Is that all? I shall have a cold in my head. Bitter
+weather. He's dog-tired after yesterday--processions, three speeches,
+kindergarten, lecture on 'the moon,' article on cooperation. That's his
+style." It was also Grodman's style. He never wasted words.
+
+"No," Mrs. Drabdump breathed up at him solemnly, "he's dead."
+
+"All right; go back. Don't alarm the neighbourhood unnecessarily. Wait
+for me. Down in five minutes." Grodman did not take this Cassandra of the
+kitchen too seriously. Probably he knew his woman. His small, bead-like
+eyes glittered with an almost amused smile as he withdrew them from
+Mrs. Drabdump's ken, and shut down the sash with a bang. The poor woman
+ran back across the road and through her door, which she would not
+close behind her. It seemed to shut her in with the dead. She waited in
+the passage. After an age--seven minutes by any honest clock--Grodman
+made his appearance, looking as dressed as usual, but with unkempt
+hair and with disconsolate side-whisker. He was not quite used to that
+side-whisker yet, for it had only recently come within the margin of
+cultivation. In active service Grodman had been clean-shaven, like all
+members of _the_ profession--for surely your detective is the most
+versatile of actors. Mrs. Drabdump closed the street door quietly, and
+pointed to the stairs, fear operating like a polite desire to give him
+precedence. Grodman ascended, amusement still glimmering in his eyes.
+Arrived on the landing he knocked peremptorily at the door, crying, "Nine
+o'clock, Mr. Constant; nine o'clock!" When he ceased there was no other
+sound or movement. His face grew more serious. He waited, then knocked,
+and cried louder. He turned the handle but the door was fast. He tried to
+peer through the keyhole, but it was blocked. He shook the upper panels,
+but the door seemed bolted as well as locked. He stood still, his face
+set and rigid, for he liked and esteemed the man.
+
+"Ay, knock your loudest," whispered the pale-faced woman. "You'll not
+wake him now."
+
+The grey mist had followed them through the street door, and hovered
+about the staircase, charging the air with a moist sepulchral odour.
+
+"Locked and bolted," muttered Grodman, shaking the door afresh.
+
+"Burst it open," breathed the woman, trembling violently all over, and
+holding her hands before her as if to ward off the dreadful vision.
+Without another word, Grodman applied his shoulder to the door, and made
+a violent muscular effort. He had been an athlete in his time, and the
+sap was yet in him. The door creaked, little by little it began to
+give, the woodwork enclosing the bolt of the lock splintered, the panels
+bent inwards, the large upper bolt tore off its iron staple; the door
+flew back with a crash. Grodman rushed in.
+
+"My God!" he cried. The woman shrieked. The sight was too terrible.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Within a few hours the jubilant newsboys were shrieking "Horrible Suicide
+in Bow," and _The Moon_ poster added, for the satisfaction of those too
+poor to purchase, "A Philanthropist Cuts His Throat."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+But the newspapers were premature. Scotland Yard refused to prejudice the
+case despite the penny-a-liners. Several arrests were made, so that the
+later editions were compelled to soften "Suicide" into "Mystery." The
+people arrested were a nondescript collection of tramps. Most of them had
+committed other offences for which the police had not arrested them. One
+bewildered-looking gentleman gave himself up (as if he were a riddle),
+but the police would have none of him, and restored him forthwith to his
+friends and keepers. The number of candidates for each new opening in
+Newgate is astonishing.
+
+The full significance of this tragedy of a noble young life cut short
+had hardly time to filter into the public mind, when a fresh sensation
+absorbed it. Tom Mortlake had been arrested the same day at Liverpool on
+suspicion of being concerned in the death of his fellow-lodger. The news
+fell like a bombshell upon a land in which Tom Mortlake's name was a
+household word. That the gifted artisan orator, who had never shrunk upon
+occasion from launching red rhetoric at society, should actually have
+shed blood seemed too startling, especially as the blood shed was not
+blue, but the property of a lovable young middle-class idealist, who had
+now literally given his life to the Cause. But this supplementary
+sensation did not grow to a head, and everybody (save a few labour
+leaders) was relieved to hear that Tom had been released almost
+immediately, being merely subpoenaed to appear at the inquest. In an
+interview which he accorded to the representative of a Liverpool paper
+the same afternoon, he stated that he put his arrest down entirely to the
+enmity and rancour entertained towards him by the police throughout the
+country. He had come to Liverpool to trace the movements of a friend
+about whom he was very uneasy, and he was making anxious inquiries at the
+docks to discover at what times steamers left for America, when the
+detectives stationed there had, in accordance with instructions from
+headquarters, arrested him as a suspicious-looking character. "Though,"
+said Tom, "they must very well have known my phiz, as I have been
+sketched and caricatured all over the shop. When I told them who I was
+they had the decency to let me go. They thought they'd scored off me
+enough, I reckon. Yes, it certainly _is_ a strange coincidence that I
+might actually have had something to do with the poor fellow's death,
+which has cut me up as much as anybody; though if they had known I had
+just come from the 'scene of the crime,' and actually lived in the house,
+they would probably have--let me alone." He laughed sarcastically. "They
+are a queer lot of muddle-heads, are the police. Their motto is, 'First
+catch your man, then cook the evidence.' If you're on the spot you're
+guilty because you're there, and if you're elsewhere you're guilty
+because you have gone away. Oh, I know them! If they could have seen
+their way to clap me in quod, they'd ha' done it. Luckily I know the
+number of the cabman who took me to Euston before five this morning."
+
+"If they clapped you in quod," the interviewer reported himself as
+facetiously observing, "the prisoners would be on strike in a week."
+
+"Yes, but there would be so many blacklegs ready to take their places,"
+Mortlake flashed back, "that I'm afraid it 'ould be no go. But do excuse
+me. I am so upset about my friend. I'm afraid he has left England, and I
+have to make inquiries; and now there's poor Constant gone--horrible!
+horrible! and I'm due in London at the inquest. I must really run away.
+Good-by. Tell your readers it's all a police grudge."
+
+"One last word, Mr. Mortlake, if you please. Is it true that you were
+billed to preside at a great meeting of clerks at St. James's Hall
+between one and two to-day to protest against the German invasion?"
+
+"Whew! so I was. But the beggars arrested me just before one, when I was
+going to wire, and then the news of poor Constant's end drove it out of
+my head. What a nuisance! Lord, how troubles do come together! Well,
+good-by, send me a copy of the paper."
+
+Tom Mortlake's evidence at the inquest added little beyond this to the
+public knowledge of his movements on the morning of the Mystery. The
+cabman who drove him to Euston had written indignantly to the papers to
+say that he picked up his celebrated fare at Bow Railway Station at about
+half-past four A.M., and the arrest was a deliberate insult to democracy,
+and he offered to make an affidavit to that effect, leaving it dubious to
+which effect. But Scotland Yard betrayed no itch for the affidavit in
+question, and No. 2138 subsided again into the obscurity of his rank.
+Mortlake--whose face was very pale below the black mane brushed back from
+his fine forehead--gave his evidence in low, sympathetic tones. He had
+known the deceased for over a year, coming constantly across him in their
+common political and social work, and had found the furnished rooms for
+him in Glover Street at his own request, they just being to let when
+Constant resolved to leave his rooms at Oxford House in Bethnal Green,
+and to share the actual life of the people. The locality suited the
+deceased, as being near the People's Palace. He respected and admired
+the deceased, whose genuine goodness had won all hearts. The deceased
+was an untiring worker; never grumbled, was always in fair spirits,
+regarded his life and wealth as a sacred trust to be used for the benefit
+of humanity. He had last seen him at a quarter past nine P.M. on the
+day preceding his death. He (witness) had received a letter by the last
+post which made him uneasy about a friend. He went up to consult deceased
+about it. Deceased was evidently suffering from toothache, and was fixing
+a piece of cotton-wool in a hollow tooth, but he did not complain.
+Deceased seemed rather upset by the news he brought, and they both
+discussed it rather excitedly.
+
+By a JURYMAN: Did the news concern him?
+
+MORTLAKE: Only impersonally. He knew my friend, and was keenly
+sympathetic when one was in trouble.
+
+CORONER: Could you show the jury the letter you received?
+
+MORTLAKE: I have mislaid it, and cannot make out where it has got to. If
+you, sir, think it relevant or essential, I will state what the trouble
+was.
+
+CORONER: Was the toothache very violent?
+
+MORTLAKE: I cannot tell. I think not, though he told me it had disturbed
+his rest the night before.
+
+CORONER: What time did you leave him?
+
+MORTLAKE: About twenty to ten.
+
+CORONER: And what did you do then?
+
+MORTLAKE: I went out for an hour or so to make some inquiries. Then I
+returned, and told my landlady I should be leaving by an early train
+for--for the country.
+
+CORONER: And that was the last you saw of the deceased?
+
+MORTLAKE (with emotion): The last.
+
+CORONER: How was he when you left him?
+
+MORTLAKE: Mainly concerned about my trouble.
+
+CORONER: Otherwise you saw nothing unusual about him?
+
+MORTLAKE: Nothing.
+
+CORONER: What time did you leave the house on Tuesday morning?
+
+MORTLAKE: At about five-and-twenty minutes past four.
+
+CORONER: Are you sure that you shut the street door?
+
+MORTLAKE: Quite sure. Knowing my landlady was rather a timid person, I
+even slipped the bolt of the big lock, which was usually tied back. It
+was impossible for any one to get in, even with a latch-key.
+
+Mrs. Drabdump's evidence (which, of course, preceded his) was more
+important, and occupied a considerable time, unduly eked out by
+Drabdumpian padding. Thus she not only deposed that Mr. Constant had the
+toothache, but that it was going to last about a week; in tragi-comic
+indifference to the radical cure that had been effected. Her account of
+the last hours of the deceased tallied with Mortlake's, only that she
+feared Mortlake was quarrelling with him over something in the letter
+that came by the nine o'clock post. Deceased had left the house a little
+after Mortlake, but had returned before him, and had gone straight to
+his bedroom. She had not actually seen him come in, having been in the
+kitchen, but she heard his latch-key, followed by his light step up the
+stairs.
+
+A JURYMAN: How do you know it was not somebody else? (_Sensation, of
+which the juryman tries to look unconscious_.)
+
+WITNESS: He called down to me over the banisters, and says in his
+sweetish voice, "Be hextra sure to wake me at a quarter to seven, Mrs.
+Drabdump, or else I shan't get to my tram meeting." (_Juryman
+collapses_.)
+
+CORONER: And did you wake him?
+
+MRS. DRABDUMP (breaking down): Oh, my lud, how can you ask?
+
+CORONER: There, there, compose yourself. I mean did you try to wake him?
+
+MRS. DRABDUMP: I have taken in and done for lodgers this seventeen years,
+my lud, and have always gave satisfaction; and Mr. Mortlake, he wouldn't
+ha' recommended me otherwise, though I wish to Heaven the poor gentleman
+had never--
+
+CORONER: Yes, yes, of course. You tried to rouse him?
+
+But it was some time before Mrs. Drabdump was sufficiently calm to
+explain that, though she had overslept herself, and though it would have
+been all the same anyhow, she _had_ come up to time. Bit by bit the
+tragic story was forced from her lips--a tragedy that even her telling
+could not make tawdry. She told with superfluous detail how--when Mr.
+Grodman broke in the door--she saw her unhappy gentleman-lodger lying on
+his back in bed, stone dead, with a gaping red wound in his throat; how
+her stronger-minded companion calmed her a little by spreading a
+handkerchief over the distorted face; how they then looked vainly about
+and under the bed for any instrument by which the deed could have been
+done, the veteran detective carefully making a rapid inventory of the
+contents of the room, and taking notes of the precise position and
+condition of the body before anything was disturbed by the arrival of
+gapers or bunglers; how she had pointed out to him that both the windows
+were firmly bolted to keep out the cold night air; how, having noted this
+down with a puzzled, pitying shake of the head, he had opened the window
+to summon the police, and espied in the fog one Denzil Cantercot, whom he
+called, and told to run to the nearest police-station and ask them to
+send on an inspector and a surgeon; how they both remained in the room
+till the police arrived, Grodman pondering deeply the while and making
+notes every now and again, as fresh points occurred to him, and asking
+her questions about the poor, weak-headed young man. Pressed as to what
+she meant by calling the deceased "weak-headed," she replied that some of
+her neighbours wrote him begging letters, though, Heaven knew, they were
+better off than herself, who had to scrape her fingers to the bone for
+every penny she earned. Under further pressure from Mr. Talbot, who was
+watching the inquiry on behalf of Arthur Constant's family, Mrs. Drabdump
+admitted that the deceased had behaved like a human being, nor was there
+anything externally eccentric or queer in his conduct. He was always
+cheerful and pleasant spoken, though certainly soft--God rest his soul.
+No; he never shaved, but wore all the hair that Heaven had given him.
+
+By a JURYMAN: She thought deceased was in the habit of locking his door
+when he went to bed. Of course, she couldn't say for certain. (Laughter.)
+There was no need to bolt the door as well. The bolt slid upwards, and
+was at the top of the door. When she first let lodgings, her reasons for
+which she seemed anxious to publish, there had only been a bolt, but a
+suspicious lodger, she would not call him a gentleman, had complained
+that he could not fasten his door behind him, and so she had been put to
+the expense of having a lock made. The complaining lodger went off soon
+after without paying his rent. (Laughter.) She had always known he would.
+
+The CORONER: Was deceased at all nervous?
+
+WITNESS: No, he was a very nice gentleman. (A laugh.)
+
+CORONER: I mean did he seem afraid of being robbed?
+
+WITNESS: No, he was always goin' to demonstrations. (Laughter.) I told
+him to be careful. I told him I lost a purse with 3s. 2d. myself on
+Jubilee Day.
+
+Mrs. Drabdump resumed her seat, weeping vaguely.
+
+The CORONER: Gentlemen, we shall have an opportunity of viewing the room
+shortly.
+
+The story of the discovery of the body was retold, though more
+scientifically, by Mr. George Grodman, whose unexpected resurgence into
+the realm of his early exploits excited as keen a curiosity as the
+reappearance "for this occasion only" of a retired prima donna. His
+book, _Criminals I have Caught_, passed from the twenty-third to the
+twenty-fourth edition merely on the strength of it. Mr. Grodman stated
+that the body was still warm when he found it. He thought that death was
+quite recent. The door he had had to burst was bolted as well as locked.
+He confirmed Mrs. Drabdump's statement about the windows; the chimney
+was very narrow. The cut looked as if done by a razor. There was no
+instrument lying about the room. He had known the deceased about a month.
+He seemed a very earnest, simple-minded young fellow, who spoke a great
+deal about the brotherhood of man. (The hardened old man-hunter's voice
+was not free from a tremor as he spoke jerkily of the dead man's
+enthusiasms.) He should have thought the deceased the last man in the
+world to commit suicide.
+
+Mr. DENZIL CANTERCOT was next called: He was a poet. (Laughter.) He was
+on his way to Mr. Grodman's house to tell him he had been unable to do
+some writing for him because he was suffering from writer's cramp, when
+Mr. Grodman called to him from the window of No. 11 and asked him to run
+for the police. No, he did not run; he was a philosopher. (Laughter.) He
+returned with them to the door, but did not go up. He had no stomach for
+crude sensations. (Laughter.) The grey fog was sufficiently unbeautiful
+for him for one morning. (Laughter.)
+
+Inspector HOWLETT said: About 9.45 on the morning of Tuesday, 4th
+December, from information received, he went with Sergeant Runnymede
+and Dr. Robinson to 11 Glover Street, Bow, and there found the dead body
+of a young man, lying on his back with his throat cut. The door of the
+room had been smashed in, and the lock and the bolt evidently forced. The
+room was tidy. There were no marks of blood on the floor. A purse full of
+gold was on the dressing-table beside a big book. A hip-bath, with cold
+water, stood beside the bed, over which was a hanging bookcase. There was
+a large wardrobe against the wall next to the door. The chimney was very
+narrow. There were two windows, one bolted. It was about eighteen feet to
+the pavement. There was no way of climbing up. No one could possibly have
+got out of the room, and then bolted the doors and windows behind him;
+and he had searched all parts of the room in which any one might have
+been concealed. He had been unable to find any instrument in the room in
+spite of exhaustive search, there being not even a penknife in the
+pockets of the clothes of the deceased, which lay on a chair. The house
+and the back yard, and the adjacent pavement, had also been fruitlessly
+searched.
+
+Sergeant RUNNYMEDE made an identical statement, saving only that _he_ had
+gone with Dr. Robinson and Inspector Howlett.
+
+Dr. ROBINSON, divisional surgeon, said: "The deceased was lying on his
+back, with his throat cut. The body was not yet cold, the abdominal
+region being quite warm. Rigor mortis had set in in the lower jaw, neck,
+and upper extremities. The muscles contracted when beaten. I inferred
+that life had been extinct some two or three hours, probably not longer,
+it might have been less. The bed-clothes would keep the lower part warm
+for some time. The wound, which was a deep one, was five and a half
+inches from right to left across the throat to a point under the left
+ear. The upper portion of the windpipe was severed, and likewise the
+jugular vein. The muscular coating of the carotid artery was divided.
+There was a slight cut, as if in continuation of the wound, on the thumb
+of the left hand. The hands were clasped underneath the head. There was
+no blood on the right hand. The wound could not have been self-inflicted.
+A sharp instrument had been used, such as a razor. The cut might have
+been made by a left-handed person. No doubt death was practically
+instantaneous. I saw no signs of a struggle about the body or the room.
+I noticed a purse on the dressing-table, lying next to Madame Blavatsky's
+big book on Theosophy. Sergeant Runnymede drew my attention to the fact
+that the door had evidently been locked and bolted from within."
+
+By a JURYMAN: I do not say the cuts could not have been made by a
+right-handed person. I can offer no suggestion as to how the inflictor
+of the wound got in or out. Extremely improbable that the cut was
+self-inflicted. There was little trace of the outside fog in the room.
+
+Police constable Williams said he was on duty in the early hours of the
+morning of the 4th inst. Glover Street lay within his beat. He saw or
+heard nothing suspicious. The fog was never very dense, though nasty to
+the throat. He had passed through Glover Street about half-past four. He
+had not seen Mr. Mortlake or anybody else leave the house.
+
+The Court here adjourned, the coroner and the jury repairing in a body to
+11 Glover Street, to view the house and the bedroom of the deceased. And
+the evening posters announced "The Bow Mystery Thickens."
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Before the inquiry was resumed, all the poor wretches in custody had been
+released on suspicion that they were innocent; there was not a single
+case even for a magistrate. Clues, which at such seasons are gathered by
+the police like blackberries off the hedges, were scanty and unripe.
+Inferior specimens were offered them by bushels, but there was not a
+good one among the lot. The police could not even manufacture a clue.
+
+Arthur Constant's death was already the theme of every hearth,
+railway-carriage, and public-house. The dead idealist had points
+of contact with so many spheres. The East-end and the West-end alike
+were moved and excited, the Democratic Leagues and the Churches, the
+Doss-houses and the Universities. The pity of it! And then the
+impenetrable mystery of it!
+
+The evidence given in the concluding portion of the investigation was
+necessarily less sensational. There were no more witnesses to bring the
+scent of blood over the coroner's table; those who had yet to be heard
+were merely relatives and friends of the deceased, who spoke of him as he
+had been in life. His parents were dead, perhaps happily for them; his
+relatives had seen little of him, and had scarce heard as much about him
+as the outside world. No man is a prophet in his own country, and, even
+if he migrates, it is advisable for him to leave his family at home. His
+friends were a motley crew; friends of the same friend are not
+necessarily friends of one another. But their diversity only made the
+congruity of the tale they had to tell more striking. It was the tale of
+a man who had never made an enemy even by benefiting him, nor lost a
+friend even by refusing his favours; the tale of a man whose heart
+overflowed with peace and goodwill to all men all the year round; of a
+man to whom Christmas came not once, but three hundred and sixty-five
+times a year; it was the tale of a brilliant intellect, who gave up to
+mankind what was meant for himself, and worked as a labourer in the
+vineyard of humanity, never crying that the grapes were sour; of a man
+uniformly cheerful and of good courage, living in that forgetfulness of
+self which is the truest antidote to despair. And yet there was not quite
+wanting the note of pain to jar the harmony and make it human. Richard
+Elton, his chum from boyhood, and vicar of Somerton, in Midlandshire,
+handed to the coroner a letter received from the deceased about ten
+days before his death, containing some passages which the coroner read
+aloud:--"Do you know anything of Schopenhauer? I mean anything beyond the
+current misconceptions? I have been making his acquaintance lately. He is
+an agreeable rattle of a pessimist; his essay on 'The Misery of Mankind'
+is quite lively reading. At first his assimilation of Christianity and
+Pessimism (it occurs in his essay on 'Suicide') dazzled me as an
+audacious paradox. But there is truth in it. Verily the whole creation
+groaneth and travaileth, and man is a degraded monster, and sin is over
+all. Ah, my friend, I have shed many of my illusions since I came to this
+seething hive of misery and wrongdoing. What shall one man's life--a
+million men's lives--avail against the corruption, the vulgarity, and the
+squalor of civilisation? Sometimes I feel like a farthing rushlight in
+the Hall of Eblis. Selfishness is so long and life so short. And the
+worst of it is that everybody is so beastly contented. The poor no more
+desire comfort than the rich culture. The woman, to whom a penny school
+fee for her child represents an appreciable slice of her income, is
+satisfied that the rich we shall always have with us.
+
+"The real old Tories are the paupers in the Workhouse. The radical
+working men are jealous of their own leaders, and the leaders are jealous
+of one another. Schopenhauer must have organised a Labour Party in his
+salad days. And yet one can't help feeling that he committed suicide as a
+philosopher by not committing it as a man. He claims kinship with Buddha,
+too; though Esoteric Buddhism at least seems spheres removed from the
+philosophy of 'the Will and the Idea.' What a wonderful woman Madame
+Blavatsky must be! I can't say I follow her, for she is up in the clouds
+nearly all the time, and I haven't as yet developed an astral body. Shall
+I send you on her book? It is fascinating.... I am becoming quite a
+fluent orator. One soon gets into the way of it. The horrible thing is
+that you catch yourself saying things to lead up to 'Cheers' instead of
+sticking to the plain realities of the business. Lucy is still doing the
+galleries in Italy. It used to pain me sometimes to think of my darling's
+happiness when I came across a flat-chested factory-girl. Now I feel her
+happiness is as important as a factory-girl's."
+
+Lucy, the witness explained, was Lucy Brent, the betrothed of the
+deceased. The poor girl had been telegraphed for, and had started for
+England. The witness stated that the outburst of despondency in this
+letter was almost a solitary one, most of the letters in his possession
+being bright, buoyant, and hopeful. Even this letter ended with a
+humorous statement of the writer's manifold plans and projects for the
+New Year. The deceased was a good Churchman.
+
+CORONER: Was there any private trouble in his own life to account for the
+temporary despondency?
+
+WITNESS: Not so far as I am aware. His financial position was
+exceptionally favourable.
+
+CORONER: There had been no quarrel with Miss Brent?
+
+WITNESS: I have the best authority for saying that no shadow of
+difference had ever come between them.
+
+CORONER: Was the deceased left-handed?
+
+WITNESS: Certainly not. He was not even ambidexter.
+
+A JURYMAN: Isn't Shoppinhour one of the infidel writers, published by the
+Freethought Publication Society?
+
+WITNESS: I do not know who publishes his books.
+
+The JURYMAN (a small grocer and big raw-boned Scotchman, rejoicing in the
+name of Sandy Sanderson and the dignities of deaconry and membership of
+the committee of the Bow Conservative Association): No equeevocation,
+sir. Is he not a secularist, who has lectured at the Hall of Science?
+
+WITNESS: No, he is a foreign writer--(Mr. Sanderson was heard to thank
+heaven for this small mercy)--who believes that life is not worth living.
+
+The JURYMAN: Were you not shocked to find the friend of a meenister
+reading such impure leeterature?
+
+WITNESS: The deceased read everything. Schopenhauer is the author of a
+system of philosophy, and not what you seem to imagine. Perhaps you
+would like to inspect the book? (Laughter.)
+
+The JURYMAN: I would na' touch it with a pitchfork. Such books should be
+burnt. And this Madame Blavatsky's book--what is that? Is that also
+pheelosophy?
+
+WITNESS: No. It is Theosophy. (Laughter.)
+
+Mr. Allan Smith, secretary of the Tram-men's Union, stated that he had
+had an interview with the deceased on the day before his death, when he
+(the deceased) spoke hopefully of the prospects of the movement, and
+wrote him out a check for ten guineas for his Union. Deceased promised to
+speak at a meeting called for a quarter past seven A.M. the next day.
+
+Mr. Edward Wimp, of the Scotland Yard Detective Department, said that the
+letters and papers of the deceased threw no light upon the manner of his
+death, and they would be handed back to the family. His Department had
+not formed any theory on the subject.
+
+The coroner proceeded to sum up the evidence. "We have to deal,
+gentlemen," he said, "with a most incomprehensible and mysterious case,
+the details of which are yet astonishingly simple. On the morning of
+Tuesday, the 4th inst., Mrs. Drabdump, a worthy hard-working widow, who
+lets lodgings at 11 Glover Street, Bow, was unable to arouse the
+deceased, who occupied the entire upper floor of the house. Becoming
+alarmed, she went across to fetch Mr. George Grodman, a gentleman known
+to us all by reputation, and to whose clear and scientific evidence we
+are much indebted, and got him to batter in the door. They found the
+deceased lying back in bed with a deep wound in his throat. Life had only
+recently become extinct. There was no trace of any instrument by which
+the cut could have been effected: there was no trace of any person who
+could have effected the cut. No person could apparently have got in or
+out. The medical evidence goes to show that the deceased could not have
+inflicted the wound himself. And yet, gentlemen, there are, in the nature
+of things, two--and only two--alternative explanations of his death.
+Either the wound was inflicted by his own hand, or it was inflicted by
+another's. I shall take each of these possibilities separately. First,
+did the deceased commit suicide? The medical evidence says deceased was
+lying with his hands clasped behind his head. Now the wound was made from
+right to left, and terminated by a cut on the left thumb. If the deceased
+had made it he would have had to do it with his right hand, while his
+left hand remained under his head--a most peculiar and unnatural position
+to assume. Moreover, in making a cut with the right hand, one would
+naturally move the hand from left to right. It is unlikely that the
+deceased would move his right hand so awkwardly and unnaturally, unless,
+of course, his object was to baffle suspicion. Another point is that on
+this hypothesis, the deceased would have had to replace his right hand
+beneath his head. But Dr. Robinson believes that death was instantaneous.
+If so, deceased could have had no time to pose so neatly. It is just
+possible the cut was made with the left hand, but then the deceased was
+right-handed. The absence of any signs of a possible weapon undoubtedly
+goes to corroborate the medical evidence. The police have made an
+exhaustive search in all places where the razor or other weapon or
+instrument might by any possibility have been concealed, including the
+bed-clothes, the mattress, the pillow, and the street into which it might
+have been dropped. But all theories involving the wilful concealment of
+the fatal instrument have to reckon with the fact or probability that
+death was instantaneous, also with the fact that there was no blood about
+the floor. Finally, the instrument used was in all likelihood a razor,
+and the deceased did not shave, and was never known to be in possession
+of any such instrument. If, then, we were to confine ourselves to the
+medical and police evidence, there would, I think, be little hesitation
+in dismissing the idea of suicide. Nevertheless, it is well to forget the
+physical aspect of the case for a moment and to apply our minds to an
+unprejudiced inquiry into the mental aspect of it. Was there any reason
+why the deceased should wish to take his own life? He was young, wealthy,
+and popular, loving and loved; life stretched fair before him. He had no
+vices. Plain living, high thinking, and noble doing were the three
+guiding stars of his life. If he had had ambition, an illustrious public
+career was within his reach. He was an orator of no mean power, a
+brilliant and industrious man. His outlook was always on the future--he
+was always sketching out ways in which he could be useful to his
+fellow-men. His purse and his time were ever at the command of whosoever
+could show fair claim upon them. If such a man were likely to end his own
+life, the science of human nature would be at an end. Still, some of the
+shadows of the picture have been presented to us. The man had his moments
+of despondency--as which of us has not? But they seem to have been few
+and passing. Anyhow, he was cheerful enough on the day before his death.
+He was suffering, too, from toothache. But it does not seem to have been
+violent, nor did he complain. Possibly, of course, the pain became very
+acute in the night. Nor must we forget that he may have overworked
+himself, and got his nerves into a morbid state. He worked very hard,
+never rising later than half-past seven, and doing far more than the
+professional 'labour leader.' He taught, and wrote, as well as spoke and
+organised. But on the other hand all witnesses agreed that he was looking
+forward eagerly to the meeting of tram-men on the morning of the 4th
+inst. His whole heart was in the movement. Is it likely that this was the
+night he would choose for quitting the scene of his usefulness? Is it
+likely that if he had chosen it, he would not have left letters and a
+statement behind, or made a last will and testament? Mr. Wimp has found
+no possible clue to such conduct in his papers. Or is it likely he would
+have concealed the instrument? The only positive sign of intention is the
+bolting of his door in addition to the usual locking of it, but one
+cannot lay much stress on that. Regarding the mental aspects alone, the
+balance is largely against suicide; looking at the physical aspects,
+suicide is well-nigh impossible. Putting the two together, the case
+against suicide is all but mathematically complete. The answer, then, to
+our first question, Did the deceased commit suicide? is, that he did
+not."
+
+The coroner paused, and everybody drew a long breath. The lucid
+exposition had been followed with admiration. If the coroner had stopped
+now, the jury would have unhesitatingly returned a verdict of "murder."
+But the coroner swallowed a mouthful of water and went on:--
+
+"We now come to the second alternative--was the deceased the victim of
+homicide? In order to answer that question in the affirmative it is
+essential that we should be able to form some conception of the modus
+operandi. It is all very well for Dr. Robinson to say the cut was made by
+another hand; but in the absence of any theory as to how the cut could
+possibly have been made by that other hand, we should be driven back to
+the theory of self-infliction, however improbable it may seem to medical
+gentlemen. Now, what are the facts? When Mrs. Drabdump and Mr. Grodman
+found the body it was yet warm, and Mr. Grodman, a witness fortunately
+qualified by special experience, states that death had been quite recent.
+This tallies closely enough with the view of Dr. Robinson, who, examining
+the body about an hour later, put the time of death at two or three hours
+before, say seven o'clock. Mrs. Drabdump had attempted to wake the
+deceased at a quarter to seven, which would put back the act to a little
+earlier. As I understand from Dr. Robinson, that it is impossible to fix
+the time very precisely, death may have very well taken place several
+hours before Mrs. Drabdump's first attempt to wake deceased. Of course,
+it may have taken place between the first and second calls, as he may
+merely have been sound asleep at first; it may also not impossibly have
+taken place considerably earlier than the first call, for all the
+physical data seem to prove. Nevertheless, on the whole, I think we shall
+be least likely to err if we assume the time of death to be half-past
+six. Gentlemen, let us picture to ourselves No. 11 Glover Street, at
+half-past six. We have seen the house; we know exactly how it is
+constructed. On the ground floor a front room tenanted by Mr. Mortlake,
+with two windows giving on the street, both securely bolted; a back room
+occupied by the landlady; and a kitchen. Mrs. Drabdump did not leave her
+bedroom till half-past six, so that we may be sure all the various doors
+and windows have not yet been unfastened; while the season of the year is
+a guarantee that nothing had been left open. The front door, through
+which Mr. Mortlake has gone out before half-past four, is guarded by the
+latch-key lock and the big lock. On the upper floor are two rooms--a
+front room used by deceased for a bedroom, and a back room which he used
+as a sitting-room. The back room has been left open, with the key inside,
+but the window is fastened. The door of the front room is not only locked
+but bolted. We have seen the splintered mortice and the staple of the
+upper bolt violently forced from the woodwork and resting on the pin. The
+windows are bolted, the fasteners being firmly fixed in the catches. The
+chimney is too narrow to admit of the passage of even a child. This room,
+in fact, is as firmly barred in as if besieged. It has no communication
+with any other part of the house. It is as absolutely self-centred and
+isolated as if it were a fort in the sea or a log-hut in the forest. Even
+if any strange person is in the house, nay, in the very sitting-room of
+the deceased, he cannot get into the bedroom, for the house is one built
+for the poor, with no communication between the different rooms, so that
+separate families, if need be, may inhabit each. Now, however, let us
+grant that some person has achieved the miracle of getting into the front
+room, first floor, 18 feet from the ground. At half-past six, or
+thereabouts, he cuts the throat of the sleeping occupant. How is he then
+to get out without attracting the attention of the now roused landlady?
+But let us concede him that miracle, too. How is he to go away and yet
+leave the doors and windows locked and bolted from within? This is a
+degree of miracle at which my credulity must draw the line. No, the room
+had been closed all night--there is scarce a trace of fog in it. No one
+could get in or out. Finally, murders do not take place without motive.
+Robbery and revenge are the only conceivable motives. The deceased had
+not an enemy in the world; his money and valuables were left untouched.
+Everything was in order. There were no signs of a struggle. The answer,
+then, to our second inquiry, Was the deceased killed by another person?
+is, that he was not.
+
+"Gentlemen, I am aware that this sounds impossible and contradictory.
+But it is the facts that contradict themselves. It seems clear that the
+deceased did not commit suicide. It seems equally clear that the deceased
+was not murdered. There is nothing for it, therefore, gentlemen, but to
+return a verdict tantamount to an acknowledgment of our incompetence to
+come to any adequately grounded conviction whatever as to the means or
+the manner by which the deceased met his death. It is the most
+inexplicable mystery in all my experience." (Sensation.)
+
+The FOREMAN (after a colloquy with Mr. Sandy Sanderson): We are not
+agreed, sir. One of the jurors insists on a verdict of "Death from
+visitation by the act of God."
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+But Sandy Sanderson's burning solicitude to fix the crime flickered
+out in the face of opposition, and in the end he bowed his head to the
+inevitable "open verdict." Then the floodgates of inkland were opened,
+and the deluge pattered for nine days on the deaf coffin where the poor
+idealist mouldered. The tongues of the Press were loosened, and the
+leader-writers revelled in recapitulating the circumstances of "The
+Big Bow Mystery," though they could contribute nothing but adjectives
+to the solution. The papers teemed with letters--it was a kind of Indian
+summer of the silly season. But the editors could not keep them out, nor
+cared to. The mystery was the one topic of conversation everywhere--it
+was on the carpet and the bare boards alike, in the kitchen and the
+drawing-room. It was discussed with science or stupidity, with aspirates
+or without. It came up for breakfast with the rolls, and was swept off
+the supper-table with the last crumbs.
+
+No. 11 Glover Street, Bow, remained for days a shrine of pilgrimage. The
+once sleepy little street buzzed from morning till night. From all parts
+of the town people came to stare up at the bedroom window and wonder with
+a foolish face of horror. The pavement was often blocked for hours
+together, and itinerant vendors of refreshment made it a new market
+centre, while vocalists hastened thither to sing the delectable ditty of
+the deed without having any voice in the matter. It was a pity the
+Government did not erect a toll-gate at either end of the street. But
+Chancellors of the Exchequer rarely avail themselves of the more obvious
+expedients for paying off the National Debt.
+
+Finally, familiarity bred contempt, and the wits grew facetious at the
+expense of the Mystery. Jokes on the subject appeared even in the comic
+papers.
+
+To the proverb, "You must not say Bo to a goose," one added, "or else she
+will explain you the Mystery." The name of the gentleman who asked
+whether the Bow Mystery was not 'arrowing shall not be divulged. There
+was more point in "Dagonet's" remark that, if he had been one of the
+unhappy jurymen, he should have been driven to "suicide." A professional
+paradox-monger pointed triumphantly to the somewhat similar situation in
+"the murder in the Rue Morgue," and said that Nature had been
+plagiarising again--like the monkey she was--and he recommended Poe's
+publishers to apply for an injunction. More seriously, Poe's solution
+was re-suggested by "Constant Reader" as an original idea. He thought
+that a small organ-grinder's monkey might have got down the chimney with
+its master's razor, and, after attempting to shave the occupant of the
+bed, have returned the way it came. This idea created considerable
+sensation, but a correspondent with a long train of letters draggling
+after his name pointed out that a monkey small enough to get down so
+narrow a flue would not be strong enough to inflict so deep a wound. This
+was disputed by a third writer, and the contest raged so keenly about the
+power of monkeys' muscles that it was almost taken for granted that a
+monkey was the guilty party. The bubble was pricked by the pen of "Common
+Sense," who laconically remarked that no traces of soot or blood had been
+discovered on the floor, or on the nightshirt, or the counterpane. The
+_Lancet's_ leader on the Mystery was awaited with interest. It said: "We
+cannot join in the praises that have been showered upon the coroner's
+summing up. It shows again the evils resulting from having coroners who
+are not medical men. He seems to have appreciated but inadequately the
+significance of the medical evidence. He should certainly have directed
+the jury to return a verdict of murder on that. What was it to do with
+him that he could see no way by which the wound could have been inflicted
+by an outside agency? It was for the police to find how that was done.
+Enough that it was impossible for the unhappy young man to have inflicted
+such a wound, and then to have strength and will power enough to hide the
+instrument and to remove perfectly every trace of his having left the bed
+for the purpose." It is impossible to enumerate all the theories
+propounded by the amateur detectives, while Scotland Yard religiously
+held its tongue. Ultimately the interest on the subject became confined
+to a few papers which had received the best letters. Those papers that
+couldn't get interesting letters stopped the correspondence and sneered
+at the "sensationalism" of those that could. Among the mass of fantasy
+there were not a few notable solutions, which failed brilliantly, like
+rockets posing as fixed stars. One was that in the obscurity of the fog
+the murderer had ascended to the window of the bedroom by means of a
+ladder from the pavement. He had then with a diamond cut one of the panes
+away, and effected an entry through the aperture. On leaving he fixed in
+the pane of glass again (or another which he had brought with him) and
+thus the room remained with its bolts and locks untouched. On its being
+pointed out that the panes were too small, a third correspondent showed
+that that didn't matter, as it was only necessary to insert the hand and
+undo the fastening, when the entire window could be opened, the process
+being reversed by the murderer on leaving. This pretty edifice of glass
+was smashed by a glazier, who wrote to say that a pane could hardly be
+fixed in from only one side of a window frame, that it would fall out
+when touched, and that in any case the wet putty could not have escaped
+detection. A door panel sliced out and replaced was also put forward, and
+as many trap-doors and secret passages were ascribed to No. 11 Glover
+Street, as if it were a mediaeval castle. Another of these clever theories
+was that the murderer was in the room the whole time the police were
+there--hidden in the wardrobe. Or he had got behind the door when Grodman
+broke it open, so that he was not noticed in the excitement of the
+discovery, and escaped with his weapon at the moment when Grodman and
+Mrs. Drabdump were examining the window fastenings.
+
+Scientific explanations also were to hand to explain how the assassin
+locked and bolted the door behind him. Powerful magnets outside the door
+had been used to turn the key and push the bolt within. Murderers armed
+with magnets loomed on the popular imagination like a new microbe. There
+was only one defect in this ingenious theory--the thing could not be
+done. A physiologist recalled the conjurers who swallow swords--by an
+anatomical peculiarity of the throat--and said that the deceased might
+have swallowed the weapon after cutting his own throat. This was too much
+for the public to swallow. As for the idea that the suicide had been
+effected with a penknife or its blade, or a bit of steel, which had then
+got buried in the wound, not even the quotation of Shelley's line:--
+
+  "Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it,"
+
+could secure it a moment's acceptance. The same reception was accorded
+to the idea that the cut had been made with a candle-stick (or other
+harmless necessary bedroom article) constructed like a sword stick.
+Theories of this sort caused a humorist to explain that the deceased had
+hidden the razor in his hollow tooth! Some kind friend of Messrs.
+Maskelyne and Cook suggested that they were the only persons who could
+have done the deed, as no one else could get out of a locked cabinet. But
+perhaps the most brilliant of these flashes of false fire was the
+facetious, yet probably half-seriously meant letter that appeared in the
+_Pell Mell Press_ under the heading of
+
+  "THE BIG BOW MYSTERY SOLVED
+
+  "Sir,--You will remember that when the Whitechapel murders were
+  agitating the universe, I suggested that the district coroner was the
+  assassin. My suggestion has been disregarded. The coroner is still at
+  large. So is the Whitechapel murderer. Perhaps this suggestive
+  coincidence will incline the authorities to pay more attention to me
+  this time. The problem seems to be this. The deceased could not have
+  cut his own throat. The deceased could not have had his throat cut for
+  him. As one of the two must have happened, this is obvious nonsense. As
+  this is obvious nonsense I am justified in disbelieving it. As this
+  obvious nonsense was primarily put in circulation by Mrs. Drabdump and
+  Mr. Grodman, I am justified in disbelieving _them_. In short, sir, what
+  guarantee have we that the whole tale is not a cock-and-bull story,
+  invented by the two persons who first found the body? What proof is
+  there that the deed was not done by these persons themselves, who then
+  went to work to smash the door and break the locks and the bolts, and
+  fasten up all the windows before they called the police in?--I enclose
+  my card, and am, sir, yours truly,
+
+  "ONE WHO LOOKS THROUGH HIS OWN SPECTACLES."
+
+"[Our correspondent's theory is not so audaciously original as he seems
+to imagine. Has he not looked through the spectacles of the people who
+persistently suggested that the Whitechapel murderer was invariably
+the policeman who found the body? _Somebody_ must find the body, if it is
+to be found at all.--Ed. P.M.P.]"
+
+The editor had reason to be pleased that he inserted this letter, for it
+drew the following interesting communication from the great detective
+himself:--
+
+  "THE BIG BOW MYSTERY SOLVED
+
+  "Sir,--I do not agree with you that your correspondent's theory lacks
+  originality. On the contrary, I think it is delightfully original. In
+  fact it has given me an idea. What that idea is I do not yet propose to
+  say, but if 'One who looks through his own spectacles' will favour me
+  with his name and address I shall be happy to inform him a little
+  before the rest of the world whether his germ has borne any fruit.
+  I feel he is a kindred spirit, and take this opportunity of saying
+  publicly that I was extremely disappointed at the unsatisfactory
+  verdict. The thing was a palpable assassination; an open verdict has a
+  tendency to relax the exertions of Scotland Yard. I hope I shall not be
+  accused of immodesty, or of making personal reflections, when I say
+  that the Department has had several notorious failures of late. It is
+  not what it used to be. Crime is becoming impertinent. It no longer
+  knows its place, so to speak. It throws down the gauntlet where once it
+  used to cower in its fastnesses. I repeat, I make these remarks solely
+  in the interest of law and order. I do not for one moment believe that
+  Arthur Constant killed himself, and if Scotland Yard satisfies itself
+  with that explanation, and turns on its other side and goes to sleep
+  again, then, sir, one of the foulest and most horrible crimes of the
+  century will for ever go unpunished. My acquaintance with the unhappy
+  victim was but recent; still, I saw and knew enough of the man to be
+  certain (and I hope I have seen and known enough of other men to judge)
+  that he was a man constitutionally incapable of committing an act of
+  violence, whether against himself or anybody else. He would not hurt a
+  fly, as the saying goes. And a man of that gentle stamp always lacks
+  the active energy to lay hands on himself. He was a man to be esteemed
+  in no common degree, and I feel proud to be able to say that he
+  considered me a friend. I am hardly at the time of life at which a man
+  cares to put on his harness again; but, sir, it is impossible that I
+  should ever know a day's rest till the perpetrator of this foul deed is
+  discovered. I have already put myself in communication with the family
+  of the victim, who, I am pleased to say, have every confidence in me,
+  and look to me to clear the name of their unhappy relative from the
+  semi-imputation of suicide. I shall be pleased if any one who shares my
+  distrust of the authorities, and who has any clue whatever to this
+  terrible mystery or any plausible suggestion to offer, if, in brief,
+  any 'One who looks through his own spectacles' will communicate with
+  me. If I were asked to indicate the direction in which new clues might
+  be most usefully sought, I should say, in the first instance, anything
+  is valuable that helps us to piece together a complete picture of the
+  manifold activities of the man in the East-end. He entered one way or
+  another into the lives of a good many people; is it true that he
+  nowhere made enemies? With the best intentions a man may wound or
+  offend; his interference may be resented; he may even excite jealousy.
+  A young man like the late Mr. Constant could not have had as much
+  practical sagacity as he had goodness. Whose corns did he tread on? The
+  more we know of the last few months of his life the more we shall know
+  of the manner of his death. Thanking you by anticipation for the
+  insertion of this letter in your valuable columns, I am, sir, yours
+  truly,
+
+  "George Grodman.
+
+  "46 Glover Street, Bow.
+
+  "P. S.--Since writing the above lines, I have, by the kindness of Miss
+  Brent, been placed in possession of a most valuable letter, probably
+  the last letter written by the unhappy gentleman. It is dated Monday,
+  3 December, the very eve of the murder, and was addressed to her at
+  Florence, and has now, after some delay, followed her back to London
+  where the sad news unexpectedly brought her. It is a letter couched,
+  on the whole, in the most hopeful spirit, and speaks in detail of his
+  schemes. Of course there are things in it not meant for the ears of
+  the public, but there can be no harm in transcribing an important
+  passage:--
+
+  "'You seem to have imbibed the idea that the East-end is a kind of
+  Golgotha, and this despite that the books out of which you probably got
+  it are carefully labelled "Fiction." Lamb says somewhere that we think
+  of the "Dark Ages" as literally without sunlight, and so I fancy people
+  like you, dear, think of the "East-end" as a mixture of mire, misery,
+  and murder. How's that for alliteration? Why, within five minutes' walk
+  of me there are the loveliest houses, with gardens back and front,
+  inhabited by very fine people and furniture. Many of my university
+  friends' mouths would water if they knew the income of some of the
+  shopkeepers in the High Road.
+
+  "'The rich people about here may not be so fashionable as those in
+  Kensington and Bayswater, but they are every bit as stupid and
+  materialistic. I don't deny, Lucy, I _do_ have my black moments, and
+  I do sometimes pine to get away from all this to the lands of sun and
+  lotus-eating. But, on the whole, I am too busy even to dream of
+  dreaming. My real black moments are when I doubt if I am really doing
+  any good. But yet on the whole my conscience or my self-conceit tells
+  me that I am. If one cannot do much with the mass, there is at least
+  the consolation of doing good to the individual. And, after all, is it
+  not enough to have been an influence for good over one or two human
+  souls? There are quite fine characters hereabout--especially in the
+  women--natures capable not only of self-sacrifice, but of delicacy of
+  sentiment. To have learnt to know of such, to have been of service to
+  one or two of such--is not this ample return? I could not get to St.
+  James's Hall to hear your friend's symphony at the Henschel concert.
+  I have been reading Mme. Blavatsky's latest book, and getting quite
+  interested in occult philosophy. Unfortunately I have to do all my
+  reading in bed, and I don't find the book as soothing a soporific as
+  most new books. For keeping one awake I find Theosophy as bad as
+  toothache....'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+  "The Big Bow Mystery Solved
+
+  "Sir,--I wonder if any one besides myself has been struck by the
+  incredible bad taste of Mr. Grodman's letter in your last issue. That
+  he, a former servant of the Department, should publicly insult and run
+  it down can only be charitably explained by the supposition that his
+  judgment is failing him in his old age. In view of this letter, are the
+  relatives of the deceased justified in entrusting him with any private
+  documents? It is, no doubt, very good of him to undertake to avenge one
+  whom he seems snobbishly anxious to claim as a friend; but, all things
+  considered, should not his letter have been headed 'The Big Bow Mystery
+  Shelved'? I enclose my card, and am, sir,
+
+  "Your obedient servant,
+
+  "Scotland Yard."
+
+George Grodman read this letter with annoyance, and crumpling up the
+paper, murmured scornfully, "Edward Wimp!"
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+"Yes, but what will become of the Beautiful?" said Denzil Cantercot.
+
+"Hang the Beautiful!" said Peter Crowl, as if he were on the committee of
+the Academy. "Give me the True."
+
+Denzil did nothing of the sort. He didn't happen to have it about him.
+
+Denzil Cantercot stood smoking a cigarette in his landlord's shop, and
+imparting an air of distinction and an agreeable aroma to the close
+leathery atmosphere. Crowl cobbled away, talking to his tenant without
+raising his eyes. He was a small, big-headed, sallow, sad-eyed man, with
+a greasy apron. Denzil was wearing a heavy overcoat with a fur collar.
+He was never seen without it in public during the winter. In private he
+removed it and sat in his shirt sleeves. Crowl was a thinker, or thought
+he was--which seems to involve original thinking anyway. His hair was
+thinning rapidly at the top, as if his brain was struggling to get as
+near as possible to the realities of things. He prided himself on having
+no fads. Few men are without some foible or hobby; Crowl felt almost
+lonely at times in his superiority. He was a Vegetarian, a Secularist, a
+Blue Ribbonite, a Republican, and an Anti-tobacconist. Meat was a fad.
+Drink was a fad. Religion was a fad. Monarchy was a fad. Tobacco was a
+fad. "A plain man like me," Crowl used to say, "can live without fads."
+"A plain man" was Crowl's catchword. When of a Sunday morning he stood
+on Mile-end Waste, which was opposite his shop--and held forth to the
+crowd on the evils of kings, priests, and mutton chops, the "plain man"
+turned up at intervals like the "theme" of a symphonic movement. "I am
+only a plain man and I want to know." It was a phrase that sabred the
+spider-webs of logical refinement, and held them up scornfully on the
+point. When Crowl went for a little recreation in Victoria Park on Sunday
+afternoons, it was with this phrase that he invariably routed the
+supernaturalists. Crowl knew his Bible better than most ministers, and
+always carried a minutely printed copy in his pocket, dog's-eared to mark
+contradictions in the text. The second chapter of Jeremiah says one
+thing; the first chapter of Corinthians says another. Two contradictory
+statements _may_ both be true, but "I am only a plain man, and I want to
+know." Crowl spent a large part of his time in setting "the word against
+the word." Cock-fighting affords its votaries no acuter pleasure than
+Crowl derived from setting two texts by the ears. Crowl had a
+metaphysical genius which sent his Sunday morning disciples frantic
+with admiration, and struck the enemy dumb with dismay. He had
+discovered, for instance, that the Deity could not move, owing to already
+filling all space. He was also the first to invent, for the confusion of
+the clerical, the crucial case of a saint dying at the Antipodes
+contemporaneously with another in London. Both went skyward to heaven,
+yet the two travelled in directly opposite directions. In all eternity
+they would never meet. Which, then, got to heaven? Or was there no such
+place? "I am only a plain man, and I want to know."
+
+Preserve us our open spaces; they exist to testify to the incurable
+interest of humanity in the Unknown and the Misunderstood. Even 'Arry is
+capable of five minutes' attention to speculative theology, if 'Arriet
+isn't in a 'urry.
+
+Peter Crowl was not sorry to have a lodger like Denzil Cantercot, who,
+though a man of parts and thus worth powder and shot, was so hopelessly
+wrong on all subjects under the sun. In only one point did Peter Crowl
+agree with Denzil Cantercot--he admired Denzil Cantercot secretly. When
+he asked him for the True--which was about twice a day on the average--he
+didn't really expect to get it from him. He knew that Denzil was a poet.
+
+"The Beautiful," he went on, "is a thing that only appeals to men like
+you. The True is for all men. The majority have the first claim. Till
+then you poets must stand aside. The True and the Useful--that's what we
+want. The Good of Society is the only test of things. Everything stands
+or falls by the Good of Society."
+
+"The Good of Society!" echoed Denzil, scornfully. "What's the good of
+Society? The Individual is before all. The mass must be sacrificed to the
+Great Man. Otherwise the Great Man will be sacrificed to the mass.
+Without great men there would be no art. Without art life would be a
+blank."
+
+"Ah, but we should fill it up with bread and butter," said Peter Crowl.
+
+"Yes, it is bread and butter that kills the Beautiful," said Denzil
+Cantercot, bitterly. "Many of us start by following the butterfly through
+the verdant meadows, but we turn aside--"
+
+"To get the grub," chuckled Peter, cobbling away.
+
+"Peter, if you make a jest of everything, I'll not waste my time on you."
+
+Denzil's wild eyes flashed angrily. He shook his long hair. Life was very
+serious to him. He never wrote comic verse intentionally.
+
+There are three reasons why men of genius have long hair. One is, that
+they forget it is growing. The second is, that they like it. The third
+is, that it comes cheaper; they wear it long for the same reason that
+they wear their hats long.
+
+Owing to this peculiarity of genius, you may get quite a reputation for
+lack of twopence. The economic reason did not apply to Denzil, who could
+always get credit with the profession on the strength of his appearance.
+Therefore, when street arabs vocally commanded him to get his hair cut,
+they were doing no service to barbers. Why does all the world watch over
+barbers and conspire to promote their interests? Denzil would have told
+you it was not to serve the barbers, but to gratify the crowd's
+instinctive resentment of originality. In his palmy days Denzil had been
+an editor, but he no more thought of turning his scissors against himself
+than of swallowing his paste. The efficacy of hair has changed since the
+days of Samson, otherwise Denzil would have been a Hercules instead of a
+long, thin, nervous man, looking too brittle and delicate to be used even
+for a pipe-cleaner. The narrow oval of his face sloped to a pointed,
+untrimmed beard. His linen was reproachable, his dingy boots were down at
+heel, and his cocked hat was drab with dust. Such are the effects of a
+love for the Beautiful.
+
+Peter Crowl was impressed with Denzil's condemnation of flippancy, and he
+hastened to turn off the joke.
+
+"I'm quite serious," he said. "Butterflies are no good to nothing or
+nobody; caterpillars at least save the birds from starving."
+
+"Just like your view of things, Peter," said Denzil. "Good morning,
+madam." This to Mrs. Crowl, to whom he removed his hat with elaborate
+courtesy.
+
+Mrs. Crowl grunted and looked at her husband with a note of interrogation
+in each eye. For some seconds Crowl stuck to his last, endeavouring not
+to see the question. He shifted uneasily on his stool. His wife coughed
+grimly. He looked up, saw her towering over him, and helplessly shook his
+head in a horizontal direction. It was wonderful how Mrs. Crowl towered
+over Mr. Crowl, even when he stood up in his shoes. She measured half an
+inch less. It was quite an optical illusion.
+
+"Mr. Crowl," said Mrs. Crowl, "then I'll tell him."
+
+"No, no, my dear, not yet," faltered Peter, helplessly; "leave it to me."
+
+"I've left it to you long enough. You'll never do nothing. If it was a
+question of provin' to a lot of chuckleheads that Jollygee and Genesis,
+or some other dead and gone Scripture folk that don't consarn no mortal
+soul, used to contradict each other, your tongue'ud run thirteen to the
+dozen. But when it's a matter of takin' the bread out o' the mouths o'
+your own children, you ain't got no more to say for yourself than a
+lamp-post. Here's a man stayin' with you for weeks and weeks--eatin' and
+drinkin' the flesh off your bones--without payin' a far--"
+
+"Hush, hush, mother; it's all right," said poor Crowl, red as fire.
+
+Denzil looked at her dreamily. "Is it possible you are alluding to me,
+Mrs. Crowl?" he said.
+
+"Who then should I be alludin' to, Mr. Cantercot? Here's seven weeks come
+and gone, and not a blessed 'aypenny have I--"
+
+"My dear Mrs. Crowl," said Denzil, removing his cigarette from his mouth
+with a pained air, "why reproach _me_ for _your_ neglect?"
+
+"_My_ neglect! I like that!"
+
+"I don't," said Denzil more sharply. "If you had sent me in the bill you
+would have had the money long ago. How do you expect me to think of these
+details?"
+
+"We ain't so grand down here. People pays their way--they don't get no
+_bills_" said Mrs. Crowl, accentuating the word with infinite scorn.
+
+Peter hammered away at a nail, as though to drown his spouse's voice.
+
+"It's three pounds fourteen and eightpence, if you're so anxious to
+know," Mrs. Crowl resumed. "And there ain't a woman in the Mile End Road
+as 'ud a-done it cheaper, with bread at fourpence threefarden a quartern
+and landlords clamburin' for rent every Monday morning almost afore the
+sun's up and folks draggin' and slidderin' on till their shoes is only
+fit to throw after brides and Christmas comin' and sevenpence a week for
+schoolin'!"
+
+Peter winced under the last item. He had felt it coming--like Christmas.
+His wife and he parted company on the question of Free Education. Peter
+felt that, having brought nine children into the world, it was only fair
+he should pay a penny a week for each of those old enough to bear
+educating. His better half argued that, having so many children, they
+ought in reason to be exempted. Only people who had few children could
+spare the penny. But the one point on which the cobbler-sceptic of the
+Mile End Road got his way was this of the fees. It was a question of
+conscience, and Mrs. Crowl had never made application for their
+remission, though she often slapped her children in vexation instead.
+They were used to slapping, and when nobody else slapped them they
+slapped one another. They were bright, ill-mannered brats, who pestered
+their parents and worried their teachers, and were as happy as the Road
+was long.
+
+"Bother the school fees!" Peter retorted, vexed. "Mr. Cantercot's not
+responsible for your children."
+
+"I should hope not, indeed, Mr. Crowl," Mrs. Crowl said sternly. "I'm
+ashamed of you." And with that she flounced out of the shop into the
+back parlour.
+
+"It's all right," Peter called after her soothingly. "The money'll be all
+right, mother."
+
+In lower circles it is customary to call your wife your mother; in
+somewhat superior circles it is the fashion to speak of her as "the
+wife," as you speak of "the Stock Exchange," or "the Thames," without
+claiming any peculiar property. Instinctively men are ashamed of being
+moral and domesticated.
+
+Denzil puffed his cigarette, unembarrassed. Peter bent attentively over
+his work, making nervous stabs with his awl. There was a long silence. An
+organ-grinder played a waltz outside, unregarded; and, failing to annoy
+anybody, moved on. Denzil lit another cigarette. The dirty-faced clock on
+the wall chimed twelve.
+
+"What do you think," said Crowl, "of Republics?"
+
+"They are low," Denzil replied. "Without a Monarch there is no visible
+incarnation of Authority."
+
+"What! do you call Queen Victoria visible?"
+
+"Peter, do you want to drive me from the house? Leave frivolousness to
+women, whose minds are only large enough for domestic difficulties.
+Republics are low. Plato mercifully kept the poets out of his. Republics
+are not congenial soil for poetry."
+
+"What nonsense! If England dropped its fad of Monarchy and became a
+Republic to-morrow, do you mean to say that--?"
+
+"I mean to say there would be no Poet Laureate to begin with."
+
+"Who's fribbling now, you or me, Cantercot? But I don't care a
+button-hook about poets, present company always excepted. I'm only a
+plain man, and I want to know where's the sense of givin' any one person
+authority over everybody else?"
+
+"Ah, that's what Tom Mortlake used to say. Wait till you're in power,
+Peter, with trade-union money to control, and working men bursting to
+give you flying angels and to carry you aloft, like a banner, huzzahing."
+
+"Ah, that's because he's head and shoulders above 'em already," said
+Crowl, with a flash in his sad grey eyes. "Still, it don't prove that I'd
+talk any different. And I think you're quite wrong about his being
+spoilt. Tom's a fine fellow--a man every inch of him, and that's a good
+many. I don't deny he has his weaknesses, and there was a time when he
+stood in this very shop and denounced that poor dead Constant. 'Crowl,'
+said he, 'that man'll do mischief. I don't like these kid-glove
+philanthropists mixing themselves up in practical labour disputes they
+don't understand.'"
+
+Denzil whistled involuntarily. It was a piece of news.
+
+"I dare say," continued Crowl, "he's a bit jealous of anybody's
+interference with his influence. But in this case the jealousy did wear
+off, you see, for the poor fellow and he got quite pals, as everybody
+knows. Tom's not the man to hug a prejudice. However, all that don't
+prove nothing against Republics. Look at the Czar and the Jews. I'm only
+a plain man, but I wouldn't live in Russia not for--not for all the
+leather in it! An Englishman, taxed as he is to keep up his Fad of
+Monarchy, is at least king in his own castle, whoever bosses it at
+Windsor. Excuse me a minute, the missus is callin'."
+
+"Excuse _me_ a minute. I'm going, and I want to say before I go--I feel
+it only right you should know at once--that after what has passed to-day
+I can never be on the same footing here as in the--shall I say
+pleasant?--days of yore."
+
+"Oh, no, Cantercot. Don't say that; don't say that!" pleaded the little
+cobbler.
+
+"Well, shall I say unpleasant, then?"
+
+"No, no, Cantercot. Don't misunderstand me. Mother has been very much put
+to it lately to rub along. You see she has such a growing family. It
+grows--daily. But never mind her. You pay whenever you've got the money."
+
+Denzil shook his head. "It cannot be. You know when I came here first I
+rented your top room and boarded myself. Then I learnt to know you. We
+talked together. Of the Beautiful. And the Useful. I found you had no
+soul. But you were honest, and I liked you. I went so far as to take my
+meals with your family. I made myself at home in your back parlour. But
+the vase has been shattered (I do not refer to that on the mantel-piece),
+and though the scent of the roses may cling to it still, it can be pieced
+together--nevermore." He shook his hair sadly and shambled out of the
+shop. Crowl would have gone after him, but Mrs. Crowl was still calling,
+and ladies must have the precedence in all polite societies.
+
+Cantercot went straight--or as straight as his loose gait permitted--to
+46 Glover Street, and knocked at the door. Grodman's factotum opened it.
+She was a pock-marked person, with a brickdust complexion and a
+coquettish manner.
+
+"Oh! Here we are again!" she said vivaciously.
+
+"Don't talk like a clown," Cantercot snapped. "Is Mr. Grodman in?"
+
+"No, you've put him out," growled the gentleman himself, suddenly
+appearing in his slippers. "Come in. What the devil have you been doing
+with yourself since the inquest? Drinking again?"
+
+"I've sworn off. Haven't touched a drop since--"
+
+"The murder?"
+
+"Eh?" said Denzil Cantercot, startled. "What do you mean?"
+
+"What I say. Since December 4. I reckon everything from that murder, now,
+as they reckon longitude from Greenwich."
+
+"Oh," said Denzil Cantercot.
+
+"Let me see. Nearly a fortnight. What a long time to keep away from
+Drink--and Me."
+
+"I don't know which is worse," said Denzil, irritated. "You both steal
+away my brains."
+
+"Indeed?" said Grodman, with an amused smile. "Well, it's only petty
+pilfering, after all. What's put salt on your wounds?"
+
+"The twenty-fourth edition of my book."
+
+"_Whose_ book?"
+
+"Well, _your_ book. You must be making piles of money out of _Criminals I
+have Caught_."
+
+"'Criminals _I_ have Caught,'" corrected Grodman. "My dear Denzil, how
+often am I to point out that _I_ went through the experiences that make
+the backbone of my book, not _you_? In each case _I_ cooked the
+criminal's goose. Any journalist could have supplied the dressing."
+
+"The contrary. The journeymen of journalism would have left the truth
+naked. You yourself could have done that--for there is no man to beat
+you at cold, lucid, scientific statement. But I idealised the bare
+facts and lifted them into the realm of poetry and literature. The
+twenty-fourth edition of the book attests my success."
+
+"Rot! The twenty-fourth edition was all owing to the murder. Did you do
+that?"
+
+"You take one up so sharply, Mr. Grodman," said Denzil, changing his
+tone.
+
+"No--I've retired," laughed Grodman.
+
+Denzil did not reprove the ex-detective's flippancy. He even laughed a
+little.
+
+"Well, give me another fiver, and I'll cry 'quits.' I'm in debt."
+
+"Not a penny. Why haven't you been to see me since the murder? I had to
+write that letter to the _Pell Mell Press_ myself. You might have earned
+a crown."
+
+"I've had writer's cramp, and couldn't do your last job. I was coming to
+tell you so on the morning of the--"
+
+"Murder. So you said at the inquest."
+
+"It's true."
+
+"Of course. Weren't you on your oath? It was very zealous of you to get
+up so early to tell me. In which hand did you have this cramp?"
+
+"Why, in the right of course."
+
+"And you couldn't write with your left?"
+
+"I don't think I could even hold a pen."
+
+"Or any other instrument, mayhap. What had you been doing to bring it
+on?"
+
+"Writing too much. That is the only possible cause."
+
+"Oh! I didn't know. Writing what?"
+
+Denzil hesitated. "An epic poem."
+
+"No wonder you're in debt. Will a sovereign get you out of it?"
+
+"No; it wouldn't be the least use to me."
+
+"Here it is, then."
+
+Denzil took the coin and his hat.
+
+"Aren't you going to earn it, you beggar? Sit down and write something
+for me."
+
+Denzil got pen and paper, and took his place.
+
+"What do you want me to write?"
+
+"Your Epic Poem."
+
+Denzil started and flushed. But he set to work. Grodman leaned back in
+his arm-chair and laughed, studying the poet's grave face.
+
+Denzil wrote three lines and paused.
+
+"Can't remember any more? Well, read me the start."
+
+Denzil read:--
+
+  "Of man's first disobedience and the fruit
+   Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
+   Brought death into the world--"
+
+"Hold on!" cried Grodman. "What morbid subjects you choose, to be sure!"
+
+"Morbid! Why, Milton chose the same subject!"
+
+"Blow Milton. Take yourself off--you and your Epics."
+
+Denzil went. The pock-marked person opened the street door for him.
+
+"When am I to have that new dress, dear?" she whispered coquettishly.
+
+"I have no money, Jane," he said shortly.
+
+"You have a sovereign."
+
+Denzil gave her the sovereign, and slammed the door viciously. Grodman
+overheard their whispers, and laughed silently. His hearing was acute.
+Jane had first introduced Denzil to his acquaintance about two years ago,
+when he spoke of getting an amanuensis, and the poet had been doing odd
+jobs for him ever since. Grodman argued that Jane had her reasons.
+Without knowing them, he got a hold over both. There was no one, he felt,
+he could not get a hold over. All men--and women--have something to
+conceal, and you have only to pretend to know what it is. Thus Grodman,
+who was nothing if not scientific.
+
+Denzil Cantercot shambled home thoughtfully, and abstractedly took his
+place at the Crowl dinner-table.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+Mrs. Crowl surveyed Denzil Cantercot so stonily and cut him his beef so
+savagely that he said grace when the dinner was over. Peter fed his
+metaphysical genius on tomatoes. He was tolerant enough to allow his
+family to follow their Fads; but no savoury smells ever tempted him to be
+false to his vegetable loves. Besides, meat might have reminded him too
+much of his work. There is nothing like leather, but Bow beefsteaks
+occasionally come very near it.
+
+After dinner Denzil usually indulged in poetic reverie. But to-day he did
+not take his nap. He went out at once to "raise the wind." But there
+was a dead calm everywhere. In vain he asked for an advance at the office
+of the _Mile End Mirror_, to which he contributed scathing leaderettes
+about vestrymen. In vain he trudged to the City and offered to write the
+_Ham and Eggs Gazette_ an essay on the modern methods of bacon-curing.
+Denzil knew a great deal about the breeding and slaughtering of pigs,
+smoke-lofts and drying processes, having for years dictated the policy of
+the _New Pork Herald_ in these momentous matters. Denzil also knew a
+great deal about many other esoteric matters, including weaving machines,
+the manufacture of cabbage leaves and snuff, and the inner economy of
+drain-pipes. He had written for the trade papers since boyhood. But there
+is great competition on these papers. So many men of literary gifts know
+all about the intricate technicalities of manufactures and markets, and
+are eager to set the trade right. Grodman perhaps hardly allowed
+sufficiently for the step backwards that Denzil made when he devoted his
+whole time for months to _Criminals I have Caught_. It was as damaging as
+a debauch. For when your rivals are pushing forwards, to stand still is
+to go back.
+
+In despair Denzil shambled toilsomely to Bethnal Green. He paused before
+the window of a little tobacconist's shop, wherein was displayed a
+placard announcing
+
+  "PLOTS FOR SALE."
+
+The announcement went on to state that a large stock of plots was to be
+obtained on the premises--embracing sensational plots, humorous plots,
+love plots, religious plots, and poetic plots; also complete manuscripts,
+original novels, poems, and tales. Apply within.
+
+It was a very dirty-looking shop, with begrimed bricks and blackened
+woodwork. The window contained some musty old books, an assortment of
+pipes and tobacco, and a large number of the vilest daubs unhung, painted
+in oil on Academy boards, and unframed. These were intended for
+landscapes, as you could tell from the titles. The most expensive was
+"Chingford Church," and it was marked IS. 9d. The others ran from 6d. to
+IS. 3d., and were mostly representations of Scottish scenery--a loch with
+mountains in the background, with solid reflections in the water and a
+tree in the foreground. Sometimes the tree would be in the background.
+Then the loch would be in the foreground. Sky and water were intensely
+blue in all. The name of the collection was "Original oil-paintings done
+by hand." Dust lay thick upon everything, as if carefully shovelled on;
+and the proprietor looked as if he slept in his shop-window at night
+without taking his clothes off. He was a gaunt man with a red nose, long
+but scanty black locks covered by a smoking-cap, and a luxuriant black
+moustache. He smoked a long clay pipe, and had the air of a broken-down
+operatic villain.
+
+"Ah, good afternoon, Mr. Cantercot," he said, rubbing his hands, half
+from cold, half from usage; "what have you brought me?"
+
+"Nothing," said Denzil, "but if you will lend me a sovereign I'll do you
+a stunner."
+
+The operatic villain shook his locks, his eyes full of pawky cunning. "If
+you did it after that, it _would_ be a stunner."
+
+What the operatic villain did with these plots, and who bought them,
+Cantercot never knew nor cared to know. Brains are cheap to-day, and
+Denzil was glad enough to find a customer.
+
+"Surely you've known me long enough to trust me," he cried.
+
+"Trust is dead," said the operatic villain, puffing away.
+
+"So is Queen Anne," cried the irritated poet. His eyes took a dangerous
+hunted look. Money he must have. But the operatic villain was inflexible.
+No plot, no supper.
+
+Poor Denzil went out flaming. He knew not where to turn. Temporarily he
+turned on his heel again and stared despairingly at the shop-window.
+Again he read the legend
+
+  "PLOTS FOR SALE."
+
+He stared so long at this that it lost its meaning. When the sense of the
+words suddenly flashed upon him again, they bore a new significance. He
+went in meekly, and borrowed fourpence of the operatic villain. Then he
+took the 'bus for Scotland Yard. There was a not ill-looking servant girl
+in the 'bus. The rhythm of the vehicle shaped itself into rhymes in his
+brain. He forgot all about his situation and his object. He had never
+really written an epic--except "Paradise Lost"--but he composed lyrics
+about wine and women and often wept to think how miserable he was. But
+nobody ever bought anything of him, except articles on bacon-curing or
+attacks on vestrymen. He was a strange, wild creature, and the wench felt
+quite pretty under his ardent gaze. It almost hypnotised her, though, and
+she looked down at her new French kid boots to escape it.
+
+At Scotland Yard Denzil asked for Edward Wimp. Edward Wimp was
+not on view. Like kings and editors, detectives are difficult of
+approach--unless you are a criminal, when you cannot see anything
+of them at all. Denzil knew of Edward Wimp, principally because of
+Grodman's contempt for his successor. Wimp was a man of taste and
+culture. Grodman's interests were entirely concentrated on the problems
+of logic and evidence. Books about these formed his sole reading; for
+_belles lettres_ he cared not a straw. Wimp, with his flexible intellect,
+had a great contempt for Grodman and his slow, laborious, ponderous,
+almost Teutonic methods. Worse, he almost threatened to eclipse the
+radiant tradition of Grodman by some wonderfully ingenious bits of
+workmanship. Wimp was at his greatest in collecting circumstantial
+evidence; in putting two and two together to make five. He would collect
+together a number of dark and disconnected data and flash across them the
+electric light of some unifying hypothesis in a way which would have
+done credit to a Darwin or a Faraday. An intellect which might have
+served to unveil the secret workings of nature was subverted to the
+protection of a capitalistic civilisation.
+
+By the assistance of a friendly policeman, whom the poet magnetised into
+the belief that his business was a matter of life and death, Denzil
+obtained the great detective's private address. It was near King's Cross.
+By a miracle Wimp was at home in the afternoon. He was writing when
+Denzil was ushered up three pairs of stairs into his presence, but he got
+up and flashed the bull's-eye of his glance upon the visitor.
+
+"Mr. Denzil Cantercot, I believe," said Wimp.
+
+Denzil started. He had not sent up his name, merely describing himself as
+a gentleman.
+
+"That is my name," he murmured.
+
+"You were one of the witnesses at the inquest on the body of the late
+Arthur Constant. I have your evidence there." He pointed to a file. "Why
+have you come to give fresh evidence?"
+
+Again Denzil started, flushing in addition this time. "I want money," he
+said, almost involuntarily.
+
+"Sit down." Denzil sat. Wimp stood.
+
+Wimp was young and fresh-coloured. He had a Roman nose, and was smartly
+dressed. He had beaten Grodman by discovering the wife Heaven meant for
+him. He had a bouncing boy, who stole jam out of the pantry without any
+one being the wiser. Wimp did what work he could do at home in a secluded
+study at the top of the house. Outside his chamber of horrors he was the
+ordinary husband of commerce. He adored his wife, who thought poorly of
+his intellect but highly of his heart. In domestic difficulties Wimp was
+helpless. He could not tell even whether the servant's "character" was
+forged or genuine. Probably he could not level himself to such petty
+problems. He was like the senior wrangler who has forgotten how to do
+quadratics, and has to solve equations of the second degree by the
+calculus.
+
+"How much money do you want?" he asked.
+
+"I do not make bargains," Denzil replied, his calm come back by this
+time. "I came here to tender you a suggestion. It struck me that you
+might offer me a fiver for my trouble. Should you do so, I shall not
+refuse it."
+
+"You shall not refuse it--if you deserve it."
+
+"Good. I will come to the point at once. My suggestion concerns--Tom
+Mortlake."
+
+Denzil threw out the name as if it were a torpedo. Wimp did not move.
+
+"Tom Mortlake," went on Denzil, looking disappointed, "had a sweetheart."
+He paused impressively.
+
+Wimp said, "Yes?"
+
+"Where is that sweetheart now?"
+
+"Where, indeed?"
+
+"You know about her disappearance?"
+
+"You have just informed me of it."
+
+"Yes, she is gone--without a trace. She went about a fortnight before Mr.
+Constant's murder."
+
+"Murder? How do you know it was murder?"
+
+"Mr. Grodman says so," said Denzil, startled again.
+
+"H'm! Isn't that rather a proof that it was suicide? Well, go on."
+
+"About a fortnight before the suicide, Jessie Dymond disappeared. So they
+tell me in Stepney Green, where she lodged and worked."
+
+"What was she?"
+
+"She was a dressmaker. She had a wonderful talent. Quite fashionable
+ladies got to know of it. One of her dresses was presented at Court. I
+think the lady forgot to pay for it; so Jessie's landlady said."
+
+"Did she live alone?"
+
+"She had no parents, but the house was respectable."
+
+"Good-looking, I suppose?"
+
+"As a poet's dream."
+
+"As yours, for instance?"
+
+"I am a poet; I dream."
+
+"You dream you are a poet. Well, well! She was engaged to Mortlake?"
+
+"Oh, yes! They made no secret of it. The engagement was an old one. When
+he was earning 36s. a week as a compositor, they were saving up to buy a
+home. He worked at Railton and Hockes who print the _New Pork Herald_. I
+used to take my 'copy' into the comps' room, and one day the Father of
+the Chapel told me all about 'Mortlake and his young woman.' Ye gods! How
+times are changed! Two years ago Mortlake had to struggle with my
+calligraphy--now he is in with all the nobs, and goes to the 'At Homes'
+of the aristocracy."
+
+"Radical M.P.'s," murmured Wimp, smiling.
+
+"While I am still barred from the dazzling drawing-rooms, where beauty
+and intellect foregather. A mere artisan! A manual labourer!" Denzil's
+eyes flashed angrily. He rose with excitement. "They say he always _was_
+a jabberer in the composing-room, and he has jabbered himself right out
+of it and into a pretty good thing. He didn't have much to say about the
+crimes of capital when he was set up to second the toast of 'Railton and
+Hockes' at the beanfeast."
+
+"Toast and butter, toast and butter," said Wimp, genially. "I shouldn't
+blame a man for serving the two together, Mr. Cantercot."
+
+Denzil forced a laugh. "Yes; but consistency's _my_ motto. I like to see
+the royal soul immaculate, unchanging, immovable by fortune. Anyhow, when
+better times came for Mortlake the engagement still dragged on. He did
+not visit her so much. This last autumn he saw very little of her."
+
+"How do you know?"
+
+"I--I was often in Stepney Green. My business took me past the house of
+an evening. Sometimes there was no light in her room. That meant she was
+downstairs gossiping with the landlady."
+
+"She might have been out with Tom?"
+
+"No, sir; I knew Tom was on the platform somewhere or other. He was
+working up to all hours organising the eight hours' working movement."
+
+"A very good reason for relaxing his sweethearting."
+
+"It was. He never went to Stepney Green on a week night."
+
+"But you always did."
+
+"No--not every night."
+
+"You didn't go in?"
+
+"Never. She wouldn't permit my visits. She was a girl of strong
+character. She always reminded me of Flora Macdonald."
+
+"Another lady of your acquaintance?"
+
+"A lady I know better than the shadows who surround me, who is more real
+to me than the women who pester me for the price of apartments. Jessie
+Dymond, too, was of the race of heroines. Her eyes were clear blue, two
+wells with Truth at the bottom of each. When I looked into those eyes my
+own were dazzled. They were the only eyes I could never make dreamy." He
+waved his hand as if making a pass with it. "It was she who had the
+influence over me."
+
+"You knew her, then?"
+
+"Oh, yes. I knew Tom from the old _New Pork Herald_ days, and when I
+first met him with Jessie hanging on his arm he was quite proud to
+introduce her to a poet. When he got on he tried to shake me off."
+
+"You should have repaid him what you borrowed."
+
+"It--it--was only a trifle," stammered Denzil.
+
+"Yes, but the world turns on trifles," said the wise Wimp.
+
+"The world is itself a trifle," said the pensive poet. "The Beautiful
+alone is deserving of our regard."
+
+"And when the Beautiful was not gossiping with her landlady, did she
+gossip with you as you passed the door?"
+
+"Alas, no! She sat in her room reading, and cast a shadow--"
+
+"On your life?"
+
+"No; on the blind."
+
+"Always one shadow?"
+
+"No, sir. Once or twice, two."
+
+"Ah, you had been drinking."
+
+"On my life, not. I have sworn off the treacherous wine-cup."
+
+"That's right. Beer is bad for poets. It makes their feet shaky. Whose
+was the second shadow?"
+
+"A man's."
+
+"Naturally. Mortlake's, perhaps."
+
+"Impossible. He was still striking eight hours."
+
+"You found out whose shadow? You didn't leave a shadow of doubt?"
+
+"No; I waited till the substance came out."
+
+"It was Arthur Constant."
+
+"You are a magician! You--you terrify me. Yes, it was he."
+
+"Only once or twice, you say?"
+
+"I didn't keep watch over them."
+
+"No, no, of course not. You only passed casually. I understand you
+thoroughly."
+
+Denzil did not feel comfortable at the assertion.
+
+"What did he go there for?" Wimp went on.
+
+"I don't know. I'd stake my soul on Jessie's honour."
+
+"You might double your stake without risk."
+
+"Yes, I might! I would! You see her with my eyes."
+
+"For the moment they are the only ones available. When was the last time
+you saw the two together?"
+
+"About the middle of November."
+
+"Mortlake knew nothing of the meetings?"
+
+"I don't know. Perhaps he did. Mr. Constant had probably enlisted her in
+his social mission work. I knew she was one of the attendants at the big
+children's tea in the Great Assembly Hall early in November. He treated
+her quite like a lady. She was the only attendant who worked with her
+hands."
+
+"The others carried the cups on their feet, I suppose."
+
+"No; how could that be? My meaning is that all the other attendants were
+real ladies, and Jessie was only an amateur, so to speak. There was no
+novelty for her in handing kids cups of tea. I dare say she had helped
+her landlady often enough at that--there's quite a bushel of brats below
+stairs. It's almost as bad as at friend Crowl's. Jessie was a real brick.
+But perhaps Tom didn't know her value. Perhaps he didn't like Constant to
+call on her, and it led to a quarrel. Anyhow, she's disappeared, like the
+snowfall on the river. There's not a trace. The landlady, who was such a
+friend of hers that Jessie used to make up her stuff into dresses for
+nothing, tells me that she's dreadfully annoyed at not having been left
+the slightest clue to her late tenant's whereabouts."
+
+"You have been making inquiries on your own account apparently?"
+
+"Only of the landlady. Jessie never even gave her the week's notice, but
+paid her in lieu of it, and left immediately. The landlady told me I
+could have knocked her down with a feather. Unfortunately, I wasn't there
+to do it, or I should certainly have knocked her down for not keeping her
+eyes open better. She says if she had only had the least suspicion
+beforehand that the minx (she dared to call Jessie a minx) was going,
+she'd have known where, or her name would have been somebody else's. And
+yet she admits that Jessie was looking ill and worried. Stupid old hag!"
+
+"A woman of character," murmured the detective.
+
+"Didn't I tell you so?" cried Denzil, eagerly. "Another girl would have
+let out that she was going. But no, not a word. She plumped down the
+money and walked out. The landlady ran upstairs. None of Jessie's things
+were there. She must have quietly sold them off, or transferred them to
+the new place. I never in my life met a girl who so thoroughly knew her
+own mind or had a mind so worth knowing. She always reminded me of the
+Maid of Saragossa."
+
+"Indeed! And when did she leave?"
+
+"On the l9th of November."
+
+"Mortlake of course knows where she is?"
+
+"I can't say. Last time I was at the house to inquire--it was at the end
+of November--he hadn't been seen there for six weeks. He wrote to her, of
+course, sometimes--the landlady knew his writing."
+
+Wimp looked Denzil straight in the eyes, and said, "You mean, of course,
+to accuse Mortlake of the murder of Mr. Constant?"
+
+"N-n-no, not at all," stammered Denzil, "only you know what Mr. Grodman
+wrote to the _Pell Mell_. The more we know about Mr. Constant's life the
+more we shall know about the manner of his death. I thought my
+information would be valuable to you, and I brought it."
+
+"And why didn't you take it to Mr. Grodman?"
+
+"Because I thought it wouldn't be valuable to _me_."
+
+"You wrote _Criminals I have Caught_?"
+
+"How--how do you know that?" Wimp was startling him to-day with a
+vengeance.
+
+"Your style, my dear Mr. Cantercot. The unique, noble style."
+
+"Yes, I was afraid it would betray me," said Denzil. "And since you know,
+I may tell you that Grodman's a mean curmudgeon. What does he want with
+all that money and those houses--a man with no sense of the Beautiful?
+He'd have taken my information, and given me more kicks than ha'pence for
+it, so to speak."
+
+"Yes, he is a shrewd man after all. I don't see anything valuable in your
+evidence against Mortlake."
+
+"No!" said Denzil in a disappointed tone, and fearing he was going to be
+robbed. "Not when Mortlake was already jealous of Mr. Constant, who was a
+sort of rival organiser, unpaid! A kind of blackleg doing the work
+cheaper--nay, for nothing."
+
+"Did Mortlake tell you he was jealous?" said Wimp, a shade of sarcastic
+contempt piercing through his tones.
+
+"Oh, yes! He said to me, 'That man will work mischief. I don't like your
+kid-glove philanthropists meddling in matters they don't understand.'"
+
+"Those were his very words?"
+
+"His _ipsissima verba_."
+
+"Very well. I have your address in my files. Here is a sovereign for
+you."
+
+"Only one sovereign! It's not the least use to me."
+
+"Very well. It's of great use to me. I have a wife to keep."
+
+"I haven't," said Denzil, with a sickly smile, "so perhaps I can manage
+on it after all." He took his hat and the sovereign.
+
+Outside the door he met a rather pretty servant just bringing in some tea
+to her master. He nearly upset her tray at sight of her. She seemed more
+amused at the _rencontre_ than he.
+
+"Good afternoon, dear," she said coquettishly. "You might let me have
+that sovereign. I do so want a new Sunday bonnet."
+
+Denzil gave her the sovereign, and slammed the hall-door viciously when
+he got to the bottom of the stairs. He seemed to be walking arm-in-arm
+with the long arm of coincidence. Wimp did not hear the duologue. He was
+already busy on his evening's report to headquarters. The next day Denzil
+had a body-guard wherever he went. It might have gratified his vanity had
+he known it. But to-night he was yet unattended, so no one noted that he
+went to 46 Glover Street, after the early Crowl supper. He could not help
+going. He wanted to get another sovereign. He also itched to taunt
+Grodman. Not succeeding in the former object, he felt the road open for
+the second.
+
+"Do you still hope to discover the Bow murderer?" he asked the old
+bloodhound.
+
+"I can lay my hand on him now," Grodman announced curtly.
+
+Denzil hitched his chair back involuntarily. He found conversation with
+detectives as lively as playing at skittles with bombshells. They got on
+his nerves terribly, these undemonstrative gentlemen with no sense of the
+Beautiful.
+
+"But why don't you give him up to justice?" he murmured.
+
+"Ah--it has to be proved yet. But it is only a matter of time."
+
+"Oh!" said Denzil, "and shall I write the story for you?"
+
+"No. You will not live long enough."
+
+Denzil turned white. "Nonsense! I am years younger than you," he gasped.
+
+"Yes," said Grodman, "but you drink so much."
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+When Wimp invited Grodman to eat his Christmas plum-pudding at King's
+Cross, Grodman was only a little surprised. The two men were always
+overwhelmingly cordial when they met, in order to disguise their mutual
+detestation. When people really like each other, they make no concealment
+of their mutual contempt. In his letter to Grodman, Wimp said that he
+thought it might be nicer for him to keep Christmas in company than in
+solitary state. There seems to be a general prejudice in favour of
+Christmas numbers, and Grodman yielded to it. Besides, he thought that a
+peep at the Wimp domestic interior would be as good as a pantomime. He
+quite enjoyed the fun that was coming, for he knew that Wimp had not
+invited him out of mere "peace and goodwill."
+
+There was only one other guest at the festive board. This was Wimp's
+wife's mother's mother, a lady of sweet seventy. Only a minority of
+mankind can obtain a grandmother-in-law by marrying, but Wimp was not
+unduly conceited. The old lady suffered from delusions. One of them was
+that she was a centenarian. She dressed for the part. It is extraordinary
+what pains ladies will take to conceal their age. Another of Wimp's
+grandmother-in-law's delusions was that Wimp had married to get her into
+the family. Not to frustrate his design, she always gave him her company
+on high-days and holidays. Wilfred Wimp--the little boy who stole the
+jam--was in great form at the Christmas dinner. The only drawback to his
+enjoyment was that its sweets needed no stealing. His mother presided
+over the platters, and thought how much cleverer Grodman was than her
+husband. When the pretty servant who waited on them was momentarily out
+of the room, Grodman had remarked that she seemed very inquisitive. This
+coincided with Mrs. Wimp's own convictions, though Mr. Wimp could never
+be brought to see anything unsatisfactory or suspicious about the girl,
+not even though there were faults in spelling in the "character" with
+which her last mistress had supplied her.
+
+It was true that the puss had pricked up her ears when Denzil Cantercot's
+name was mentioned. Grodman saw it, and watched her, and fooled Wimp to
+the top of his bent. It was, of course, Wimp who introduced the poet's
+name, and he did it so casually that Grodman perceived at once that he
+wished to pump him. The idea that the rival bloodhound should come to him
+for confirmation of suspicions against his own pet jackal was too funny.
+It was almost as funny to Grodman that evidence of some sort should be
+obviously lying to hand in the bosom of Wimp's hand-maiden; so obviously
+that Wimp could not see it. Grodman enjoyed his Christmas dinner, secure
+that he had not found a successor after all. Wimp, for his part,
+contemptuously wondered at the way Grodman's thought hovered about Denzil
+without grazing the truth. A man constantly about him, too!
+
+"Denzil is a man of genius," said Grodman. "And as such comes under the
+heading of Suspicious Characters. He has written an Epic Poem and read it
+to me. It is morbid from start to finish. There is 'death' in the third
+line. I dare say you know he polished up my book?" Grodman's artlessness
+was perfect.
+
+"No. You surprise me," Wimp replied. "I'm sure he couldn't have done much
+to it. Look at your letter in the Pell Mell. Who wants more polish and
+refinement than that showed?"
+
+"Ah, I didn't know you did me the honour of reading that."
+
+"Oh, yes; we both read it," put in Mrs. Wimp. "I told Mr. Wimp it was
+very clever and cogent. After that quotation from the letter to the poor
+fellow's _fiancee_ there could be no more doubt but that it was murder.
+Mr. Wimp was convinced by it too, weren't you, Edward?"
+
+Edward coughed uneasily. It was a true statement, and therefore an
+indiscreet. Grodman would plume himself terribly. At this moment Wimp
+felt that Grodman had been right in remaining a bachelor. Grodman
+perceived the humour of the situation, and wore a curious, sub-mocking
+smile.
+
+"On the day I was born," said Wimp's grand-mother-in-law, "over a hundred
+years ago, there was a babe murdered."--Wimp found himself wishing it had
+been she. He was anxious to get back to Cantercot. "Don't let us talk
+shop on Christmas Day," he said, smiling at Grodman. "Besides, murder
+isn't a very appropriate subject."
+
+"No, it ain't," said Grodman. "How did we get on to it? Oh, yes--Denzil
+Cantercot. Ha! ha! ha! That's curious, for since Denzil revised
+_Criminals I have Caught_, his mind's running on nothing but murders.
+A poet's brain is easily turned."
+
+Wimp's eye glittered with excitement and contempt for Grodman's
+blindness. In Grodman's eye there danced an amused scorn of Wimp; to the
+outsider his amusement appeared at the expense of the poet.
+
+Having wrought his rival up to the highest pitch, Grodman slyly and
+suddenly unstrung him.
+
+"How lucky for Denzil!" he said, still in the same naive, facetious
+Christmasy tone, "that he can prove an alibi in this Constant affair."
+
+"An alibi!" gasped Wimp. "Really?"
+
+"Oh, yes. He was with his wife, you know. She's my woman of all work,
+Jane. She happened to mention his being with her."
+
+Jane had done nothing of the kind. After the colloquy he had overheard,
+Grodman had set himself to find out the relation between his two
+employees. By casually referring to Denzil as "your husband," he so
+startled the poor woman that she did not attempt to deny the bond. Only
+once did he use the two words, but he was satisfied. As to the alibi, he
+had not yet troubled her; but to take its existence for granted would
+upset and discomfort Wimp. For the moment that was triumph enough for
+Wimp's guest.
+
+"Par," said Wilfred Wimp, "what's a alleybi? A marble?"
+
+"No, my lad," said Grodman, "it means being somewhere else when you're
+supposed to be somewhere."
+
+"Ah, playing truant," said Wilfred, self-consciously; his schoolmaster
+had often proved an alibi against him. "Then Denzil will be hanged."
+
+Was it a prophecy? Wimp accepted it as such; as an oracle from the gods
+bidding him mistrust Grodman. Out of the mouths of little children
+issueth wisdom; sometimes even when they are not saying their lessons.
+
+"When I was in my cradle, a century ago," said Wimp's grandmother-in-law,
+"men were hanged for stealing horses."
+
+They silenced her with snapdragon performances.
+
+Wimp was busy thinking how to get at Grodman's factotum.
+
+Grodman was busy thinking how to get at Wimp's domestic.
+
+Neither received any of the usual messages from the Christmas Bells.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next day was sloppy and uncertain. A thin rain drizzled languidly.
+One can stand that sort of thing on a summer Bank Holiday; one expects
+it. But to have a bad December Bank Holiday is too much of a bad thing.
+Some steps should surely be taken to confuse the weather clerk's
+chronology. Once let him know that Bank Holiday is coming, and he writes
+to the company for more water. To-day his stock seemed low, and he was
+dribbling it out; at times the wintry sun would shine in a feeble,
+diluted way, and though the holiday-makers would have preferred to take
+their sunshine neat, they swarmed forth in their myriads whenever there
+was a ray of hope. But it was only dodging the raindrops; up went the
+umbrellas again, and the streets became meadows of ambulating mushrooms.
+
+Denzil Cantercot sat in his fur overcoat at the open window, looking at
+the landscape in watercolours. He smoked an after-dinner cigarette, and
+spoke of the Beautiful. Crowl was with him. They were in the first floor
+front, Crowl's bedroom, which, from its view of the Mile End Road, was
+livelier than the parlour with its outlook on the backyard. Mrs. Crowl
+was an anti-tobacconist as regards the best bedroom; but Peter did not
+like to put the poet or his cigarette out. He felt there was something in
+common between smoke and poetry, over and above their being both Fads.
+Besides, Mrs. Crowl was sulking in the kitchen. She had been arranging
+for an excursion with Peter and the children to Victoria Park. (She had
+dreamed of the Crystal Palace, but Santa Claus had put no gifts in the
+cobbler's shoes.) Now she could not risk spoiling the feather in her
+bonnet. The nine brats expressed their disappointment by slapping one
+another on the staircases. Peter felt that Mrs. Crowl connected him in
+some way with the rainfall, and was unhappy. Was it not enough that he
+had been deprived of the pleasure of pointing out to a superstitious
+majority the mutual contradictions of Leviticus and the Song of Solomon?
+It was not often that Crowl could count on such an audience.
+
+"And you still call Nature Beautiful?" he said to Denzil, pointing to the
+ragged sky and the dripping eaves. "Ugly old scare-crow!"
+
+"Ugly she seems to-day," admitted Denzil. "But what is Ugliness but a
+higher form of Beauty? You have to look deeper into it to see it; such
+vision is the priceless gift of the few. To me this wan desolation of
+sighing rain is lovely as the sea-washed ruins of cities."
+
+"Ah, but you wouldn't like to go out into it," said Peter Crowl. As he
+spoke the drizzle suddenly thickened into a torrent.
+
+"We do not always kiss the woman we love."
+
+"Speak for yourself, Denzil. I'm only a plain man, and I want to know if
+Nature isn't a Fad. Hallo, there goes Mortlake! Lord, a minute of this
+will soak him to the skin."
+
+The labour leader was walking along with bowed head. He did not seem to
+mind the shower. It was some seconds before he even heard Crowl's
+invitation to him to take shelter. When he did hear it he shook his head.
+
+"I know I can't offer you a drawing-room with duchesses stuck about it,"
+said Peter, vexed.
+
+Tom turned the handle of the shop door and went in. There was nothing
+in the world which now galled him more than the suspicion that he was
+stuck-up and wished to cut old friends. He picked his way through the
+nine brats who clung affectionately to his wet knees, dispersing them
+finally by a jet of coppers to scramble for. Peter met him on the stairs
+and shook his hand lovingly and admiringly, and took him into Mrs.
+Crowl's bedroom.
+
+"Don't mind what I say, Tom. I'm only a plain man, and my tongue will say
+what comes uppermost! But it ain't from the soul, Tom, it ain't from the
+soul," said Peter, punning feebly, and letting a mirthless smile play
+over his sallow features. "You know Mr. Cantercot, I suppose? The Poet."
+
+"Oh, yes; how do you do, Tom?" cried the Poet. "Seen the _New Pork
+Herald_ lately? Not bad, those old times, eh?"
+
+"No," said Tom, "I wish I was back in them."
+
+"Nonsense, nonsense," said Peter, in much concern. "Look at the good you
+are doing to the working man. Look how you are sweeping away the Fads.
+Ah, it's a grand thing to be gifted, Tom. The idea of your chuckin'
+yourself away on a composin'-room! Manual labour is all very well for
+plain men like me, with no gift but just enough brains to see into the
+realities of things--to understand that we've got no soul and no
+immortality, and all that--and too selfish to look after anybody's
+comfort but my own and mother's and the kids'. But men like you and
+Cantercot--it ain't right that you should be peggin' away at low material
+things. Not that I think Cantercot's gospel any value to the masses. The
+Beautiful is all very well for folks who've got nothing else to think of,
+but give me the True. You're the man for my money, Mortlake. No reference
+to the funds, Tom, to which I contribute little enough, Heaven knows;
+though how a _place_ can know anything, Heaven alone knows. _You_ give us
+the Useful, Tom; that's what the world wants more than the Beautiful."
+
+"Socrates said that the Useful _is_ the Beautiful," said Denzil.
+
+"That may be," said Peter, "but the Beautiful ain't the Useful."
+
+"Nonsense!" said Denzil. "What about Jessie--I mean Miss Dymond? There's
+a combination for you. She always reminds me of Grace Darling. How _is_
+she, Tom?"
+
+"She's dead!" snapped Tom.
+
+"What?" Denzil turned as white as a Christmas ghost.
+
+"It was in the papers," said Tom; "all about her and the lifeboat."
+
+"Oh, you mean Grace Darling," said Denzil, visibly relieved. "I meant
+Miss Dymond."
+
+"You needn't be so interested in her," said Tom surlily. "She don't
+appreciate it. Ah, the shower is over. I must be going."
+
+"No, stay a little longer, Tom," pleaded Peter.
+
+"I see a lot about you in the papers, but very little of your dear old
+phiz now. I can't spare the time to go and hear you. But I really must
+give myself a treat. When's your next show?"
+
+"Oh, I am always giving shows," said Tom, smiling a little. "But my next
+big performance is on the twenty-first of January, when that picture of
+poor Mr. Constant is to be unveiled at the Bow Break o' Day Club. They
+have written to Gladstone and other big pots to come down. I do hope the
+old man accepts. A non-political gathering like this is the only occasion
+we could both speak at, and I have never been on the same platform with
+Gladstone."
+
+He forgot his depression and ill-temper in the prospect, and spoke with
+more animation.
+
+"No, I should hope not, Tom," said Peter. "What with his Fads about the
+Bible being a Rock, and Monarchy being the right thing, he is a most
+dangerous man to lead the Radicals. He never lays his axe to the root of
+anything--except oak trees."
+
+"Mr. Cantycot!" It was Mrs. Crowl's voice that broke in upon the tirade.
+"There's a _gentleman_ to see you." The astonishment Mrs. Crowl put into
+the "gentleman" was delightful. It was almost as good as a week's rent to
+her to give vent to her feelings. The controversial couple had moved away
+from the window when Tom entered, and had not noticed the immediate
+advent of another visitor who had spent his time profitably in listening
+to Mrs. Crowl before asking to see the presumable object of his visit.
+
+"Ask him up if it's a friend of yours, Cantercot," said Peter. It was
+Wimp. Denzil was rather dubious as to the friendship, but he preferred to
+take Wimp diluted. "Mortlake's upstairs," he said; "will you come up and
+see him?"
+
+Wimp had intended a duologue, but he made no objection, so he, too,
+stumbled through the nine brats to Mrs. Crowl's bedroom. It was a queer
+quartette. Wimp had hardly expected to find anybody at the house on
+Boxing Day, but he did not care to waste a day. Was not Grodman, too, on
+the track? How lucky it was that Denzil had made the first overtures,
+so that he could approach him without exciting suspicion.
+
+Mortlake scowled when he saw the detective. He objected to the police--on
+principle. But Crowl had no idea who the visitor was, even when told his
+name. He was rather pleased to meet one of Denzil's high-class friends,
+and welcomed him warmly. Probably he was some famous editor, which would
+account for his name stirring vague recollections. He summoned the eldest
+brat and sent him for beer (people would have their Fads), and not
+without trepidation called down to "Mother" for glasses. "Mother"
+observed at night (in the same apartment) that the beer money might have
+paid the week's school fees for half the family.
+
+"We were just talking of poor Mr. Constant's portrait, Mr. Wimp," said
+the unconscious Crowl; "they're going to unveil it, Mortlake tells me, on
+the twenty-first of next month at the Bow Break o' Day Club."
+
+"Ah," said Wimp, elate at being spared the trouble of manoeuvring the
+conversation; "mysterious affair that, Mr. Crowl."
+
+"No; it's the right thing," said Peter. "There ought to be some memorial
+of the man in the district where he worked and where he died, poor chap."
+The cobbler brushed away a tear.
+
+"Yes, it's only right," echoed Mortlake, a whit eagerly. "He was a noble
+fellow, a true philanthropist--the only thoroughly unselfish worker I've
+ever met."
+
+"He was that," said Peter; "and it's a rare pattern is unselfishness.
+Poor fellow, poor fellow. He preached the Useful, too. I've never met his
+like. Ah, I wish there was a heaven for him to go to!" He blew his nose
+violently with a red pocket-handkerchief.
+
+"Well, he's there, if there _is_," said Tom.
+
+"I hope he is," added Wimp, fervently; "but I shouldn't like to go there
+the way he did."
+
+"You were the last person to see him, Tom, weren't you?" said Denzil.
+
+"Oh, no," answered Tom, quickly. "You remember he went out after me; at
+least, so Mrs. Drabdump said at the inquest."
+
+"That last conversation he had with you, Tom," said Denzil. "He didn't
+say anything to you that would lead you to suppose--"
+
+"No, of course not!" interrupted Mortlake, impatiently.
+
+"Do you really think he was murdered, Tom?" said Denzil.
+
+"Mr. Wimp's opinion on that point is more valuable than mine,"
+replied Tom, testily. "It may have been suicide. Men often get sick
+of life--especially if they are bored," he added meaningly.
+
+"Ah, but you were the last person known to be with him," said Denzil.
+
+Crowl laughed. "Had you there, Tom."
+
+But they did not have Tom there much longer, for he departed, looking
+even worse-tempered than when he came. Wimp went soon after, and Crowl
+and Denzil were left to their interminable argumentation concerning the
+Useful and the Beautiful.
+
+Wimp went West. He had several strings (or cords) to his bow, and he
+ultimately found himself at Kensal Green Cemetery. Being there, he went
+down the avenues of the dead to a grave to note down the exact date of a
+death. It was a day on which the dead seemed enviable. The dull, sodden
+sky, the dripping, leafless trees, the wet, spongy soil, the reeking
+grass--everything combined to make one long to be in a warm, comfortable
+grave away from the leaden _ennuis_ of life. Suddenly the detective's
+keen eye caught sight of a figure that made his heart throb with sudden
+excitement. It was that of a woman in a grey shawl and a brown bonnet,
+standing before a railed-in grave. She had no umbrella. The rain plashed
+mournfully upon her, but left no trace on her soaking garments. Wimp
+crept up behind her, but she paid no heed to him. Her eyes were lowered
+to the grave, which seemed to be drawing them towards it by some strange
+morbid fascination. His eyes followed hers. The simple headstone bore the
+name, "Arthur Constant."
+
+Wimp tapped her suddenly on the shoulder.
+
+"How do you do, Mrs. Drabdump?"
+
+Mrs. Drabdump went deadly white. She turned round, staring at Wimp
+without any recognition.
+
+"You remember me, surely," he said; "I've been down once or twice to your
+place about that poor gentleman's papers." His eye indicated the grave.
+
+"Lor! I remember you now," said Mrs. Drabdump.
+
+"Won't you come under my umbrella? You must be drenched to the skin."
+
+"It don't matter, sir. I can't take no hurt. I've had the rheumatics this
+twenty year."
+
+Mrs. Drabdump shrank from accepting Wimp's attentions, not so much
+perhaps because he was a man as because he was a gentleman. Mrs. Drabdump
+liked to see the fine folks keep their place, and not contaminate their
+skirts by contact with the lower castes. "It's set wet, it'll rain right
+into the new year," she announced. "And they say a bad beginnin' makes a
+worse endin'." Mrs. Drabdump was one of those persons who give you the
+idea that they just missed being born barometers.
+
+"But what are you doing in this miserable spot, so far from home?"
+queried the detective.
+
+"It's Bank Holiday," Mrs. Drabdump reminded him in tones of acute
+surprise. "I always make a hexcursion on Bank Holiday."
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+The New Year drew Mrs. Drabdump a new lodger. He was an old gentleman
+with a long grey beard. He rented the rooms of the late Mr. Constant, and
+lived a very retired life. Haunted rooms--or rooms that ought to be
+haunted if the ghosts of those murdered in them had any self-respect--are
+supposed to fetch a lower rent in the market. The whole Irish problem
+might be solved if the spirits of "Mr. Balfour's victims" would only
+depreciate the value of property to a point consistent with the support
+of an agricultural population. But Mrs. Drabdump's new lodger paid so
+much for his rooms that he laid himself open to a suspicion of a special
+interest in ghosts. Perhaps he was a member of the Psychical Society.
+The neighbourhood imagined him another mad philanthropist, but as he did
+not appear to be doing any good to anybody it relented and conceded his
+sanity. Mortlake, who occasionally stumbled across him in the passage,
+did not trouble himself to think about him at all. He was too full
+of other troubles and cares. Though he worked harder than ever, the
+spirit seemed to have gone out of him. Sometimes he forgot himself in
+a fine rapture of eloquence--lashing himself up into a divine resentment
+of injustice or a passion of sympathy with the sufferings of his
+brethren--but mostly he plodded on in dull, mechanical fashion. He still
+made brief provincial tours, starring a day here and a day there, and
+everywhere his admirers remarked how jaded and overworked he looked.
+There was talk of starting a subscription to give him a holiday on the
+Continent--a luxury obviously unobtainable on the few pounds allowed
+him per week. The new lodger would doubtless have been pleased to
+subscribe, for he seemed quite to like occupying Mortlake's chamber the
+nights he was absent, though he was thoughtful enough not to disturb the
+hard-worked landlady in the adjoining room by unseemly noise. Wimp was
+always a quiet man.
+
+Meantime the twenty-first of the month approached, and the East-end was
+in excitement. Mr. Gladstone had consented to be present at the ceremony
+of unveiling the portrait of Arthur Constant, presented by an unknown
+donor to the Bow Break o' Day Club, and it was to be a great function.
+The whole affair was outside the lines of party politics, so that even
+Conservatives and Socialists considered themselves justified in pestering
+the committee for tickets. To say nothing of ladies! As the committee
+desired to be present themselves, nine-tenths of the applications for
+admission had to be refused, as is usual on these occasions. The
+committee agreed among themselves to exclude the fair sex altogether as
+the only way of disposing of their womankind, who were making speeches
+as long as Mr. Gladstone's. Each committeeman told his sisters, female
+cousins, and aunts, that the other committeemen had insisted on divesting
+the function of all grace; and what could a man do when he was in a
+minority of one?
+
+Crowl, who was not a member of the Break o' Day Club, was particularly
+anxious to hear the great orator whom he despised; fortunately Mortlake
+remembered the cobbler's anxiety to hear himself, and on the eve of the
+ceremony sent him a ticket. Crowl was in the first flush of possession
+when Denzil Cantercot returned, after a sudden and unannounced absence
+of three days. His clothes were muddy and tattered, his cocked hat was
+deformed, his cavalier beard was matted, and his eyes were bloodshot.
+The cobbler nearly dropped the ticket at the sight of him. "Hallo,
+Cantercot!" he gasped. "Why, where have you been all these days?"
+
+"Terribly busy!" said Denzil. "Here, give me a glass of water. I'm dry as
+the Sahara."
+
+Crowl ran inside and got the water, trying hard not to inform Mrs. Crowl
+of their lodger's return. "Mother" had expressed herself freely on the
+subject of the poet during his absence, and not in terms which would have
+commended themselves to the poet's fastidious literary sense. Indeed, she
+did not hesitate to call him a sponger and a low swindler, who had run
+away to avoid paying the piper. Her fool of a husband might be quite sure
+he would never set eyes on the scoundrel again. However, Mrs. Crowl was
+wrong. Here was Denzil back again. And yet Mr. Crowl felt no sense of
+victory. He had no desire to crow over his partner and to utter that
+"See! didn't I tell you so?" which is a greater consolation than religion
+in most of the misfortunes of life. Unfortunately, to get the water,
+Crowl had to go to the kitchen; and as he was usually such a temperate
+man, this desire for drink in the middle of the day attracted the
+attention of the lady in possession. Crowl had to explain the situation.
+Mrs. Crowl ran into the shop to improve it. Mr. Crowl followed in dismay,
+leaving a trail of spilt water in his wake.
+
+"You good-for-nothing, disreputable scare-crow, where have--"
+
+"Hush, mother. Let him drink. Mr. Cantercot is thirsty."
+
+"Does he care if my children are hungry?"
+
+Denzil tossed the water greedily down his throat almost at a gulp, as if
+it were brandy.
+
+"Madam," he said, smacking his lips, "I do care. I care intensely. Few
+things in life would grieve me more deeply than to hear that a child, a
+dear little child--the Beautiful in a nutshell--had suffered hunger. You
+wrong me." His voice was tremulous with the sense of injury. Tears stood
+in his eyes.
+
+"Wrong you? I've no wish to _wrong_ you," said Mrs. Crowl. "I should like
+to _hang_ you."
+
+"Don't talk of such ugly things," said Denzil, touching his throat
+nervously.
+
+"Well, what have you been doin' all this time?"
+
+"Why, what should I be doing?"
+
+"How should I know what became of you? I thought it was another murder."
+
+"What!" Denzil's glass dashed to fragments on the floor. "What do you
+mean?"
+
+But Mrs. Crowl was glaring too viciously at Mr. Crowl to reply. He
+understood the message as if it were printed. It ran: "You have broken
+one of my best glasses. You have annihilated threepence, or a week's
+school fees for half the family." Peter wished she would turn the
+lightning upon Denzil, a conductor down whom it would run innocuously.
+He stooped down and picked up the pieces as carefully as if they were
+cuttings from the Koh-i-noor. Thus the lightning passed harmlessly over
+his head and flew towards Cantercot.
+
+"What do I mean?" Mrs. Crowl echoed, as if there had been no interval. "I
+mean that it would be a good thing if you _had_ been murdered."
+
+"What unbeautiful ideas you have to be sure!" murmured Denzil.
+
+"Yes; but they'd be useful," said Mrs. Crowl, who had not lived with
+Peter all these years for nothing. "And if you haven't been murdered,
+what _have_ you been doing?"
+
+"My dear, my dear," put in Crowl, deprecatingly, looking up from his
+quadrupedal position like a sad dog, "you are not Cantercot's keeper."
+
+"Oh, ain't I?" flashed his spouse. "Who else keeps him, I should like to
+know?"
+
+Peter went on picking up the pieces of the Koh-i-noor.
+
+"I have no secrets from Mrs. Crowl," Denzil explained courteously. "I
+have been working day and night bringing out a new paper. Haven't had a
+wink of sleep for three nights."
+
+Peter looked up at his bloodshot eyes with respectful interest.
+
+"The capitalist met me in the street--an old friend of mine--I was
+overjoyed at the _rencontre_ and told him the idea I'd been brooding over
+for months, and he promised to stand all the racket."
+
+"What sort of a paper?" said Peter.
+
+"Can you ask? To what do you think I've been devoting my days and nights
+but to the cultivation of the Beautiful?"
+
+"Is that what the paper will be devoted to?"
+
+"Yes. To the Beautiful."
+
+"I know," snorted Mrs. Crowl, "with portraits of actresses."
+
+"Portraits? Oh, no!" said Denzil. "That would be the True, not the
+Beautiful."
+
+"And what's the name of the paper?" asked Crowl.
+
+"Ah, that's a secret, Peter. Like Scott, I prefer to remain anonymous."
+
+"Just like your Fads. I'm only a plain man, and I want to know where the
+fun of anonymity comes in. If I had any gifts, I should like to get the
+credit. It's a right and natural feeling to my thinking."
+
+"Unnatural, Peter; unnatural. We're all born anonymous, and I'm for
+sticking close to Nature. Enough for me that I disseminate the Beautiful.
+Any letters come during my absence, Mrs. Crowl?"
+
+"No," she snapped. "But a gent named Grodman called. He said you hadn't
+been to see him for some time, and looked annoyed to hear you'd
+disappeared. How much have you let _him_ in for?"
+
+"The man's in _my_ debt," said Denzil, annoyed. "I wrote a book for him
+and he's taken all the credit for it, the rogue! My name doesn't appear
+even in the Preface. What's that ticket you're looking so lovingly at,
+Peter?"
+
+"That's for to-night--the unveiling of Constant's portrait. Gladstone
+speaks. Awful demand for places."
+
+"Gladstone!" sneered Denzil. "Who wants to hear Gladstone? A man who's
+devoted his life to pulling down the pillars of Church and State."
+
+"A man who's devoted his whole life to propping up the crumbling Fads of
+Religion and Monarchy. But, for all that, the man has his gifts, and I'm
+burnin' to hear him."
+
+"I wouldn't go out of my way an inch to hear him," said Denzil; and went
+up to his room, and when Mrs. Crowl sent him up a cup of nice strong tea
+at tea-time, the brat who bore it found him lying dressed on the bed,
+snoring unbeautifully.
+
+The evening wore on. It was fine frosty weather. The Whitechapel Road
+swarmed with noisy life, as though it were a Saturday night. The stars
+flared in the sky like the lights of celestial costermongers. Everybody
+was on the alert for the advent of Mr. Gladstone. He must surely come
+through the Road on his journey from the West Bow-wards. But nobody saw
+him or his carriage, except those about the Hall. Probably he went by
+tram most of the way. He would have caught cold in an open carriage, or
+bobbing his head out of the window of a closed.
+
+"If he had only been a German prince, or a cannibal king," said Crowl,
+bitterly, as he plodded towards the Club, "we should have disguised Mile
+End in bunting and blue fire. But perhaps it's a compliment. He knows his
+London, and it's no use trying to hide the facts from him. They must have
+queer notions of cities, those monarchs. They must fancy everybody lives
+in a flutter of flags and walks about under triumphal arches, like as if
+I were to stitch shoes in my Sunday clothes." By a defiance of chronology
+Crowl had them on to-day, and they seemed to accentuate the simile.
+
+"And why shouldn't life be fuller of the Beautiful?" said Denzil. The
+poet had brushed the reluctant mud off his garments to the extent it was
+willing to go, and had washed his face, but his eyes were still bloodshot
+from the cultivation of the Beautiful. Denzil was accompanying Crowl to
+the door of the Club out of good fellowship. Denzil was himself
+accompanied by Grodman, though less obtrusively. Least obtrusively was he
+accompanied by his usual Scotland Yard shadows, Wimp's agents. There was
+a surging nondescript crowd about the Club, so that the police, and the
+doorkeeper, and the stewards could with difficulty keep out the tide of
+the ticketless, through which the current of the privileged had equal
+difficulty in permeating. The streets all around were thronged with
+people longing for a glimpse of Gladstone. Mortlake drove up in a hansom
+(his head a self-conscious pendulum of popularity, swaying and bowing to
+right and left) and received all the pent-up enthusiasm.
+
+"Well, good-by, Cantercot," said Crowl.
+
+"No, I'll see you to the door, Peter."
+
+They fought their way shoulder to shoulder.
+
+Now that Grodman had found Denzil he was not going to lose him again. He
+had only found him by accident, for he was himself bound to the unveiling
+ceremony, to which he had been invited in view of his known devotion to
+the task of unveiling the Mystery. He spoke to one of the policemen
+about, who said, "Ay, ay, sir," and he was prepared to follow Denzil, if
+necessary, and to give up the pleasure of hearing Gladstone for an acuter
+thrill. The arrest must be delayed no longer.
+
+But Denzil seemed as if he were going in on the heels of Crowl. This
+would suit Grodman better. He could then have the two pleasures. But
+Denzil was stopped halfway through the door.
+
+"Ticket, sir!"
+
+Denzil drew himself up to his full height.
+
+"Press," he said majestically. All the glories and grandeurs of the
+Fourth Estate were concentrated in that haughty monosyllable. Heaven
+itself is full of journalists who have overawed St. Peter. But the
+doorkeeper was a veritable dragon.
+
+"What paper, sir?"
+
+"_New York Herald_" said Denzil, sharply. He did not relish his word
+being distrusted.
+
+"_New York Herald_" said one of the bystanding stewards, scarce catching
+the sounds. "Pass him in."
+
+And in the twinkling of an eye Denzil had eagerly slipped inside.
+
+But during the brief altercation Wimp had come up. Even he could not make
+his face quite impassive, and there was a suppressed intensity in the
+eyes and a quiver about the mouth. He went in on Denzil's heels, blocking
+up the doorway with Grodman. The two men were so full of their coming
+_coups_ that they struggled for some seconds, side by side, before they
+recognised each other. Then they shook hands heartily.
+
+"That was Cantercot just went in, wasn't it, Grodman?" said Wimp.
+
+"I didn't notice," said Grodman, in tones of utter indifference.
+
+At bottom Wimp was terribly excited. He felt that his _coup_ was going
+to be executed under very sensational circumstances. Everything would
+combine to turn the eyes of the country upon him--nay, of the world, for
+had not the Big Bow Mystery been discussed in every language under the
+sun? In these electric times the criminal receives a cosmopolitan
+reputation. It is a privilege he shares with few other artists. This time
+Wimp would be one of them. And he felt deservedly so. If the criminal had
+been cunning to the point of genius in planning the murder, he had been
+acute to the point of divination in detecting it. Never before had he
+pieced together so broken a chain. He could not resist the unique
+opportunity of setting a sensational scheme in a sensational framework.
+The dramatic instinct was strong in him; he felt like a playwright who
+has constructed a strong melodramatic plot, and has the Drury Lane stage
+suddenly offered him to present it on. It would be folly to deny himself
+the luxury, though the presence of Mr. Gladstone and the nature of the
+ceremony should perhaps have given him pause. Yet, on the other hand,
+these were the very factors of the temptation. Wimp went in and took a
+seat behind Denzil. All the seats were numbered, so that everybody might
+have the satisfaction of occupying somebody else's. Denzil was in the
+special reserved places in the front row just by the central gangway;
+Crowl was squeezed into a corner behind a pillar near the back of the
+hall. Grodman had been honoured with a seat on the platform, which was
+accessible by steps on the right and left, but he kept his eye on Denzil.
+The picture of the poor idealist hung on the wall behind Grodman's head,
+covered by its curtain of brown holland. There was a subdued buzz of
+excitement about the hall, which swelled into cheers every now and again
+as some gentleman known to fame or Bow took his place upon the platform.
+It was occupied by several local M.P.'s of varying politics, a number of
+other Parliamentary satellites of the great man, three or four labour
+leaders, a peer or two of philanthropic pretensions, a sprinkling of
+Toynbee and Oxford Hall men, the president and other honorary officials,
+some of the family and friends of the deceased, together with the
+inevitable percentage of persons who had no claim to be there save cheek.
+Gladstone was late--later than Mortlake, who was cheered to the echo when
+he arrived, some one starting "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow," as if it
+were a political meeting. Gladstone came in just in time to acknowledge
+the compliment. The noise of the song, trolled out from iron lungs, had
+drowned the huzzahs heralding the old man's advent. The convivial chorus
+went to Mortlake's head, as if champagne had really preceded it. His eyes
+grew moist and dim. He saw himself swimming to the Millennium on waves of
+enthusiasm. Ah, how his brother toilers should be rewarded for their
+trust in him!
+
+With his usual courtesy and consideration, Mr. Gladstone had refused to
+perform the actual unveiling of Arthur Constant's portrait. "That," he
+said in his postcard, "will fall most appropriately to Mr. Mortlake, a
+gentleman who has, I am given to understand, enjoyed the personal
+friendship of the late Mr. Constant, and has cooperated with him in
+various schemes for the organisation of skilled and unskilled classes
+of labour, as well as for the diffusion of better ideals--ideals of
+self-culture and self-restraint--among the working men of Bow, who have
+been fortunate, so far as I can perceive, in the possession (if in one
+case unhappily only temporary possession) of two such men of undoubted
+ability and honesty to direct their divided counsels and to lead them
+along a road, which, though I cannot pledge myself to approve of it in
+all its turnings and windings, is yet not unfitted to bring them somewhat
+nearer to goals to which there are few of us but would extend some
+measure of hope that the working classes of this great Empire may in due
+course, yet with no unnecessary delay, be enabled to arrive."
+
+Mr. Gladstone's speech was an expansion of his postcard, punctuated by
+cheers. The only new thing in it was the graceful and touching way in
+which he revealed what had been a secret up till then--that the portrait
+had been painted and presented to the Bow Break o' Day Club, by Lucy
+Brent, who in the fulness of time would have been Arthur Constant's wife.
+It was a painting for which he had sat to her while alive, and she had
+stifled yet pampered her grief by working hard at it since his death. The
+fact added the last touch of pathos to the occasion. Crowl's face was
+hidden behind his red handkerchief; even the fire of excitement in Wimp's
+eye was quenched for a moment by a teardrop, as he thought of Mrs. Wimp
+and Wilfred. As for Grodman, there was almost a lump in his throat.
+Denzil Cantercot was the only unmoved man in the room. He thought the
+episode quite too Beautiful, and was already weaving it into rhyme.
+
+At the conclusion of his speech Mr. Gladstone called upon Tom Mortlake
+to unveil the portrait. Tom rose, pale and excited. He faltered as he
+touched the cord. He seemed overcome with emotion. Was it the mention of
+Lucy Brent that had moved him to his depths?
+
+The brown holland fell away--the dead stood revealed as he had been in
+life. Every feature, painted by the hand of Love, was instinct with
+vitality: the fine, earnest face, the sad kindly eyes, the noble brow,
+seeming still a-throb with the thought of Humanity. A thrill ran through
+the room--there was a low, undefinable murmur. Oh, the pathos and the
+tragedy of it! Every eye was fixed, misty with emotion, upon the dead man
+in the picture, and the living man who stood, pale and agitated, and
+visibly unable to commence his speech, at the side of the canvas.
+Suddenly a hand was laid upon the labour leader's shoulder, and there
+rang through the hall in Wimp's clear, decisive tones the words--"Tom
+Mortlake, I arrest you for the murder of Arthur Constant!"
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+For a moment there was an acute, terrible silence. Mortlake's face was
+that of a corpse; the face of the dead man at his side was flushed with
+the hues of life. To the overstrung nerves of the onlookers, the brooding
+eyes of the picture seemed sad and stern with menace, and charged with
+the lightnings of doom.
+
+It was a horrible contrast. For Wimp, alone, the painted face had fuller,
+more tragical meanings. The audience seemed turned to stone. They sat or
+stood--in every variety of attitude--frozen, rigid. Arthur Constant's
+picture dominated the scene, the only living thing in a hall of the dead.
+
+But only for a moment. Mortlake shook off the detective's hand.
+
+"Boys!" he cried, in accents of infinite indignation, "this is a police
+conspiracy."
+
+His words relaxed the tension. The stony figures were agitated. A dull
+excited hubbub answered him. The little cobbler darted from behind his
+pillar, and leapt upon a bench. The cords of his brow were swollen with
+excitement. He seemed a giant overshadowing the hall.
+
+"Boys!" he roared, in his best Victoria Park voice, "listen to me. This
+charge is a foul and damnable lie."
+
+"Bravo!" "Hear, hear!" "Hooray!" "It is!" was roared back at him from all
+parts of the room. Everybody rose and stood in tentative attitudes,
+excited to the last degree.
+
+"Boys!" Peter roared on, "you all know me. I'm a plain man, and I want to
+know if it's likely a man would murder his best friend."
+
+"No!" in a mighty volume of sound.
+
+Wimp had scarcely calculated upon Mortlake's popularity. He stood on the
+platform, pale and anxious as his prisoner.
+
+"And if he did, why didn't they prove it the first time?"
+
+"Hear, Hear!"
+
+"And if they want to arrest him, why couldn't they leave it till the
+ceremony was over? Tom Mortlake's not the man to run away."
+
+"Tom Mortlake! Tom Mortlake! Three cheers for Tom Mortlake!" "Hip, hip,
+hip, hooray!"
+
+"Three groans for the police!" "Hoo! Oo! Oo!"
+
+Wimp's melodrama was not going well. He felt like the author to whose
+ears is borne the ominous sibilance of the pit. He almost wished he
+had not followed the curtain-raiser with his own stronger drama.
+Unconsciously the police, scattered about the hall, drew together. The
+people on the platform knew not what to do. They had all risen and stood
+in a densely packed mass. Even Mr. Gladstone's speech failed him in
+circumstances so novel. The groans died away; the cheers for Mortlake
+rose and swelled and fell and rose again. Sticks and umbrellas were
+banged and rattled, handkerchiefs were waved, the thunder deepened. The
+motley crowd still surging about the hall took up the cheers, and for
+hundreds of yards around people were going black in the face out of mere
+irresponsible enthusiasm. At last Tom waved his hand--the thunder
+dwindled, died. The prisoner was master of the situation.
+
+Grodman stood on the platform, grasping the back of his chair, a curious
+mocking Mephistophelian glitter about his eyes, his lips wreathed into a
+half smile. There was no hurry for him to get Denzil Cantercot arrested
+now. Wimp had made an egregious, a colossal blunder. In Grodman's heart
+there was a great, glad calm as of a man who has strained his sinews to
+win in a famous match, and has heard the judge's word. He felt almost
+kindly to Denzil now.
+
+Tom Mortlake spoke. His face was set and stony. His tall figure was drawn
+up haughtily to its full height. He pushed the black mane back from his
+forehead with a characteristic gesture. The fevered audience hung upon
+his lips--the men at the back leaned eagerly forward--the reporters were
+breathless with fear lest they should miss a word. What would the great
+labour leader have to say at this supreme moment?
+
+"Mr. Chairman and gentlemen. It is to me a melancholy pleasure to have
+been honoured with the task of unveiling to-night this portrait of a
+great benefactor to Bow and a true friend to the labouring classes.
+Except that he honoured me with his friendship while living, and that the
+aspirations of my life have, in my small and restricted way, been
+identical with his, there is little reason why this honourable duty
+should have fallen upon me. Gentlemen, I trust that we shall all find an
+inspiring influence in the daily vision of the dead, who yet liveth in
+our hearts and in this noble work of art--wrought, as Mr. Gladstone has
+told us, by the hand of one who loved him." The speaker paused a moment,
+his low vibrant tones faltering into silence. "If we humble working men
+of Bow can never hope to exert individually a tithe of the beneficial
+influence wielded by Arthur Constant, it is yet possible for each of us
+to walk in the light he has kindled in our midst--a perpetual lamp of
+self-sacrifice and brotherhood."
+
+That was all. The room rang with cheers. Tom Mortlake resumed his seat.
+To Wimp the man's audacity verged on the Sublime; to Denzil on the
+Beautiful. Again there was a breathless hush. Mr. Gladstone's mobile face
+was working with excitement. No such extraordinary scene had occurred in
+the whole of his extraordinary experience. He seemed about to rise. The
+cheering subsided to a painful stillness. Wimp cut the situation by
+laying his hand again upon Tom's shoulder.
+
+"Come quietly with me," he said. The words were almost a whisper, but in
+the supreme silence they travelled to the ends of the hall.
+
+"Don't you go, Tom!" The trumpet tones were Peter's. The call thrilled an
+answering chord of defiance in every breast, and a low ominous murmur
+swept through the hall.
+
+Tom rose, and there was silence again. "Boys," he said, "let me go. Don't
+make any noise about it. I shall be with you again to-morrow."
+
+But the blood of the Break o' Day boys was at fever heat. A hurtling mass
+of men struggled confusedly from their seats. In a moment all was chaos.
+Tom did not move. Half-a-dozen men headed by Peter scaled the platform.
+Wimp was thrown to one side, and the invaders formed a ring round Tom's
+chair. The platform people scampered like mice from the centre. Some
+huddled together in the corners, others slipped out at the rear. The
+committee congratulated themselves on having had the self-denial to
+exclude ladies. Mr. Gladstone's satellites hurried the old man off and
+into his carriage, though the fight promised to become Homeric. Grodman
+stood at the side of the platform secretly more amused than ever,
+concerning himself no more with Denzil Cantercot, who was already
+strengthening his nerves at the bar upstairs. The police about the hall
+blew their whistles, and policemen came rushing in from outside and the
+neighbourhood. An Irish M.P. on the platform was waving his gingham like
+a shillelagh in sheer excitement, forgetting his new-found respectability
+and dreaming himself back at Donnybrook Fair. Him a conscientious
+constable floored with a truncheon. But a shower of fists fell on the
+zealot's face, and he tottered back bleeding. Then the storm broke in all
+its fury. The upper air was black with staves, sticks, and umbrellas,
+mingled with the pallid hailstones of knobby fists. Yells, and groans,
+and hoots, and battle-cries blent in grotesque chorus, like one of
+Dvorak's weird diabolical movements. Mortlake stood impassive, with arms
+folded, making no further effort, and the battle raged round him as the
+water swirls round some steadfast rock. A posse of police from the back
+fought their way steadily towards him, and charged up the heights of the
+platform steps, only to be sent tumbling backwards, as their leader was
+hurled at them like a battering-ram. Upon the top of the heap he fell,
+surmounting the strata of policemen. But others clambered upon them,
+escalading the platform. A moment more and Mortlake would have been
+taken. Then the miracle happened.
+
+As when of old a reputable goddess _ex machina_ saw her favourite hero in
+dire peril, straightway she drew down a cloud from the celestial stores
+of Jupiter and enveloped her fondling in kindly night, so that his
+adversary strove with the darkness, so did Crowl, the cunning cobbler,
+the much-daring, essay to ensure his friend's safety. He turned off the
+gas at the meter.
+
+An Arctic night--unpreceded by twilight--fell, and there dawned the
+sabbath of the witches. The darkness could be felt--and it left blood and
+bruises behind it. When the lights were turned on again, Mortlake was
+gone. But several of the rioters were arrested, triumphantly.
+
+And through all, and over all, the face of the dead man, who had sought
+to bring peace on earth, brooded.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Crowl sat meekly eating his supper of bread and cheese, with his head
+bandaged, while Denzil Cantercot told him the story of how he had rescued
+Tom Mortlake. He had been among the first to scale the height, and had
+never budged from Tom's side or from the forefront of the battle till he
+had seen him safely outside and into a by-street.
+
+"I am so glad you saw that he got away safely," said Crowl, "I wasn't
+quite sure he would."
+
+"Yes; but I wish some cowardly fool hadn't turned off the gas. I like men
+to _see_ that they are beaten."
+
+"But it seemed--easier," faltered Crowl.
+
+"Easier!" echoed Denzil, taking a deep draught of bitter. "Really, Peter,
+I'm sorry to find you always will take such low views. It may be easier,
+but it's shabby. It shocks one's sense of the Beautiful."
+
+Crowl ate his bread and cheese shamefacedly.
+
+"But what was the use of breaking your head to save him?" said Mrs.
+Crowl, with an unconscious pun. "He must be caught."
+
+"Ah, I don't see how the Useful _does_ come in, now," said Peter,
+thoughtfully. "But I didn't think of that at the time."
+
+He swallowed his water quickly, and it went the wrong way and added to
+his confusion. It also began to dawn upon him that he might be called to
+account. Let it be said at once that he wasn't. He had taken too
+prominent a part.
+
+Meantime, Mrs. Wimp was bathing Mr. Wimp's eye, and rubbing him generally
+with arnica. Wimp's melodrama had been, indeed, a sight for the gods.
+Only virtue was vanquished and vice triumphant. The villain had escaped,
+and without striking a blow.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+There was matter and to spare for the papers the next day. The striking
+ceremony--Mr. Gladstone's speech--the sensational arrest--these would of
+themselves have made excellent themes for reports and leaders. But the
+personality of the man arrested, and the Big Bow Mystery Battle--as it
+came to be called--gave additional piquancy to the paragraphs and the
+posters. The behaviour of Mortlake put the last touch to the
+picturesqueness of the position. He left the hall when the lights went
+out, and walked unnoticed and unmolested through pleiads of policemen
+to the nearest police station, where the superintendent was almost too
+excited to take any notice of his demand to be arrested. But to do him
+justice, the official yielded as soon as he understood the situation.
+It seems inconceivable that he did not violate some red-tape regulation
+in so doing. To some this self-surrender was limpid proof of innocence;
+to others it was the damning token of despairing guilt.
+
+The morning papers were pleasant reading for Grodman, who chuckled as
+continuously over his morning egg, as if he had laid it. Jane was alarmed
+for the sanity of her saturnine master. As her husband would have said,
+Grodman's grins were not Beautiful. But he made no effort to suppress
+them. Not only had Wimp perpetrated a grotesque blunder, but the
+journalists to a man were down on his great sensation tableau, though
+their denunciations did not appear in the dramatic columns. The Liberal
+papers said that he had endangered Mr. Gladstone's life; the Conservative
+that he had unloosed the raging elements of Bow blackguardism, and set in
+motion forces which might have easily swelled to a riot, involving severe
+destruction of property. But "Tom Mortlake" was, after all, the thought
+swamping every other. It was, in a sense, a triumph for the man.
+
+But Wimp's turn came when Mortlake, who reserved his defence, was brought
+up before a magistrate, and by force of the new evidence, fully committed
+for trial on the charge of murdering Arthur Constant. Then men's thoughts
+centred again on the Mystery, and the solution of the inexplicable
+problem agitated mankind from China to Peru.
+
+In the middle of February, the great trial befell. It was another of the
+opportunities which the Chancellor of the Exchequer neglects. So stirring
+a drama might have easily cleared its expenses--despite the length of the
+cast, the salaries of the stars, and the rent of the house--in mere
+advance booking. For it was a drama which (by the rights of Magna Charta)
+could never be repeated; a drama which ladies of fashion would have given
+their earrings to witness, even with the central figure not a woman. And
+there _was_ a woman in it anyhow, to judge by the little that had
+transpired at the magisterial examination, and the fact that the country
+was placarded with bills offering a reward for information concerning a
+Miss Jessie Dymond. Mortlake was defended by Sir Charles Brown-Harland,
+Q.C., retained at the expense of the Mortlake Defence Fund (subscriptions
+to which came also from Australia and the Continent), and set on his
+mettle by the fact that he was the accepted labour candidate for an
+East-end constituency. Their Majesties, Victoria and the Law, were
+represented by Mr. Robert Spigot, Q.C.
+
+Mr. SPIGOT, Q.C, in presenting his case, said: "I propose to show that
+the prisoner murdered his friend and fellow-lodger, Mr. Arthur Constant,
+in cold blood, and with the most careful premeditation; premeditation
+so studied, as to leave the circumstances of the death an impenetrable
+mystery for weeks to all the world, though, fortunately, without
+altogether baffling the almost superhuman ingenuity of Mr. Edward Wimp,
+of the Scotland Yard Detective Department. I propose to show that the
+motives of the prisoner were jealousy and revenge; jealousy, not only of
+his friend's superior influence over the working men he himself aspired
+to lead, but the more commonplace animosity engendered by the disturbing
+element of a woman having relations to both. If, before my case is
+complete, it will be my painful duty to show that the murdered man was
+not the saint the world has agreed to paint him, I shall not shrink from
+unveiling the truer picture, in the interests of justice, which cannot
+say _nil nisi bonum_ even of the dead. I propose to show that the murder
+was committed by the prisoner shortly before half-past six on the morning
+of December 4th, and that the prisoner having, with the remarkable
+ingenuity which he has shown throughout, attempted to prepare an alibi
+by feigning to leave London by the _first_ train to Liverpool, returned
+home, got in with his latch-key through the street door, which he had
+left on the latch, unlocked his victim's bedroom with a key which he
+possessed, cut the sleeping man's throat, pocketed his razor, locked the
+door again, and gave it the appearance of being bolted, went downstairs,
+unslipped the bolt of the big lock, closed the door behind him, and got
+to Euston in time for the _second_ train to Liverpool. The fog helped
+his proceedings throughout." Such was in sum the theory of the
+prosecution. The pale, defiant figure in the dock winced perceptibly
+under parts of it.
+
+Mrs. Drabdump was the first witness called for the prosecution. She was
+quite used to legal inquisitiveness by this time, but did not appear in
+good spirits.
+
+"On the night of December 3rd, you gave the prisoner a letter?"
+
+"Yes, your ludship."
+
+"How did he behave when he read it?"
+
+"He turned very pale and excited. He went up to the poor gentleman's
+room, and I'm afraid he quarrelled with him. He might have left his last
+hours peaceful." (Amusement.)
+
+"What happened then?"
+
+"Mr. Mortlake went out in a passion, and came in again in about an hour."
+
+"He told you he was going away to Liverpool very early the next morning?"
+
+"No, your ludship, he said he was going to Devonport." (Sensation.)
+
+"What time did you get up the next morning?"
+
+"Half-past six."
+
+"That is not your usual time?"
+
+"No, I always get up at six."
+
+"How do you account for the extra sleepiness?"
+
+"Misfortunes will happen."
+
+"It wasn't the dull, foggy weather?"
+
+"No, my lud, else I should never get up early." (Laughter.)
+
+"You drink something before going to bed?"
+
+"I like my cup o' tea. I take it strong, without sugar. It always
+steadies my nerves."
+
+"Quite so. Where were you when the prisoner told you he was going to
+Devonport?"
+
+"Drinkin' my tea in the kitchen."
+
+"What should you say if prisoner dropped something in it to make you
+sleep late?"
+
+WITNESS (startled): "He ought to be shot."
+
+"He might have done it without your noticing it, I suppose?"
+
+"If he was clever enough to murder the poor gentleman, he was clever
+enough to try and poison me."
+
+The JUDGE: "The witness in her replies must confine herself to the
+evidence."
+
+Mr. SPIGOT, Q.C.: "I must submit to your lordship that it is a very
+logical answer, and exactly illustrates the interdependence of the
+probabilities. Now, Mrs. Drabdump, let us know what happened when you
+awoke at half-past six the next morning." Thereupon Mrs. Drabdump
+recapitulated the evidence (with new redundancies, but slight variations)
+given by her at the inquest. How she became alarmed--how she found the
+street door locked by the big lock--how she roused Grodman, and got him
+to burst open the door--how they found the body--all this with which the
+public was already familiar _ad nauseam_ was extorted from her afresh.
+
+"Look at this key (key passed to witness). Do you recognise it?"
+
+"Yes; how did you get it? It's the key of my first-floor front. I am sure
+I left it sticking in the door."
+
+"Did you know a Miss Dymond?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Mortlake's sweetheart. But I knew he would never marry her,
+poor thing." (Sensation.)
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"He was getting too grand for her." (Amusement.)
+
+"You don't mean anything more than that?"
+
+"I don't know; she only came to my place once or twice. The last time I
+set eyes on her must have been in October."
+
+"How did she appear?"
+
+"She was very miserable, but she wouldn't let you see it." (Laughter.)
+
+"How has the prisoner behaved since the murder?"
+
+"He always seemed very glum and sorry for it."
+
+Cross-examined: "Did not the prisoner once occupy the bedroom of Mr.
+Constant, and give it up to him, so that Mr. Constant might have the two
+rooms on the same floor?"
+
+"Yes, but he didn't pay as much."
+
+"And, while occupying this front bedroom, did not the prisoner once lose
+his key and have another made?"
+
+"He did; he was very careless."
+
+"Do you know what the prisoner and Mr. Constant spoke about on the night
+of December 3rd?"
+
+"No; I couldn't hear."
+
+"Then how did you know they were quarrelling?"
+
+"They were talkin' so loud."
+
+Sir CHARLES BROWN-HARLAND, Q.C. (sharply): "But I'm talking loudly to you
+now. Should you say I was quarrelling?"
+
+"It takes two to make a quarrel." (Laughter.)
+
+"Was prisoner the sort of man who, in your opinion, would commit a
+murder?"
+
+"No, I never should ha' guessed it was him."
+
+"He always struck you as a thorough gentleman?"
+
+"No, my lud. I knew he was only a comp."
+
+"You say the prisoner has seemed depressed since the murder. Might not
+that have been due to the disappearance of his sweetheart?"
+
+"No, he'd more likely be glad to get rid of her."
+
+"Then he wouldn't be jealous if Mr. Constant took her off his hands?"
+(Sensation.)
+
+"Men are dog-in-the-mangers."
+
+"Never mind about men, Mrs. Drabdump. Had the prisoner ceased to care for
+Miss Dymond?"
+
+"He didn't seem to think of her, my lud. When he got a letter in her
+handwriting among his heap he used to throw it aside till he'd torn open
+the others."
+
+BROWN-HARLAND, Q.C. (with a triumphant ring in his voice): "Thank you,
+Mrs. Drabdump. You may sit down."
+
+SPIGOT, Q.C.: "One moment, Mrs. Drabdump. You say the prisoner had ceased
+to care for Miss Dymond. Might not this have been in consequence of his
+suspecting for some time that she had relations with Mr. Constant?"
+
+The JUDGE: "That is not a fair question."
+
+SPIGOT, Q.C.: "That will do, thank you, Mrs. Drabdump."
+
+BROWN-HARLAND, Q.C.: "No; one question more, Mrs. Drabdump. Did you ever
+see anything--say, when Miss Dymond came to your house--to make you
+suspect anything between Mr. Constant and the prisoner's sweetheart?"
+
+"She did meet him once when Mr. Mortlake was out." (Sensation.)
+
+"Where did she meet him?"
+
+"In the passage. He was going out when she knocked and he opened the
+door." (Amusement.)
+
+"You didn't hear what they said?"
+
+"I ain't a eavesdropper. They spoke friendly and went away together."
+
+Mr. GEORGE GRODMAN was called, and repeated his evidence at the inquest.
+Cross-examined, he testified to the warm friendship between Mr. Constant
+and the prisoner. He knew very little about Miss Dymond, having scarcely
+seen her. Prisoner had never spoken to him much about her. He should not
+think she was much in prisoner's thoughts. Naturally the prisoner had
+been depressed by the death of his friend. Besides, he was overworked.
+Witness thought highly of Mortlake's character. It was incredible that
+Constant had had improper relations of any kind with his friend's
+promised wife. Grodman's evidence made a very favourable impression on
+the jury; the prisoner looked his gratitude; and the prosecution felt
+sorry it had been necessary to call this witness.
+
+Inspector HOWLETT and Sergeant RUNNYMEDE had also to repeat their
+evidence. Dr. ROBINSON, police surgeon, likewise retendered his evidence
+as to the nature of the wound, and the approximate hour of death. But
+this time he was much more severely examined. He would not bind himself
+down to state the time within an hour or two. He thought life had been
+extinct two or three hours when he arrived, so that the deed had been
+committed between seven and eight. Under gentle pressure from the
+prosecuting counsel, he admitted that it might possibly have been between
+six and seven. Cross-examined, he reiterated his impression in favour of
+the later hour.
+
+Supplementary evidence from medical experts proved as dubious and
+uncertain as if the court had confined itself to the original witness. It
+seemed to be generally agreed that the data for determining the time of
+death of any body were too complex and variable to admit of very precise
+inference; rigor mortis and other symptoms setting in within very wide
+limits and differing largely in different persons. All agreed that death
+from such a cut must have been practically instantaneous, and the theory
+of suicide was rejected by all. As a whole the medical evidence tended to
+fix the time of death, with a high degree of probability, between the
+hours of six and half-past eight. The efforts of the prosecution were
+bent upon throwing back the time of death to as early as possible after
+about half-past five. The defence spent all its strength upon pinning the
+experts to the conclusion that death could not have been earlier than
+seven. Evidently the prosecution was going to fight hard for the
+hypothesis that Mortlake had committed the crime in the interval between
+the first and second trains for Liverpool; while the defence was
+concentrating itself on an alibi, showing that the prisoner had travelled
+by the second train which left Euston Station at a quarter-past seven, so
+that there could have been no possible time for the passage between Bow
+and Euston. It was an exciting struggle. As yet the contending forces
+seemed equally matched. The evidence had gone as much for as against the
+prisoner. But everybody knew that worse lay behind.
+
+"Call Edward Wimp."
+
+The story EDWARD WIMP had to tell began tamely enough with
+thrice-threshed-out facts. But at last the new facts came.
+
+"In consequence of suspicions that had formed in your mind you took up
+your quarters, disguised, in the late Mr. Constant's rooms?"
+
+"I did; at the commencement of the year. My suspicions had gradually
+gathered against the occupants of No. 11 Glover Street, and I resolved to
+quash or confirm these suspicions once for all."
+
+"Will you tell the jury what followed?"
+
+"Whenever the prisoner was away for the night I searched his room. I
+found the key of Mr. Constant's bedroom buried deeply in the side of
+prisoner's leather sofa. I found what I imagine to be the letter he
+received on December 3rd, in the pages of a 'Bradshaw' lying under the
+same sofa. There were two razors about."
+
+Mr. SPIGOT, Q.C., said: "The key has already been identified by Mrs.
+Drabdump. The letter I now propose to read."
+
+It was undated, and ran as follows:--
+
+  "Dear Tom,--This is to bid you farewell. It is best for us all. I am
+  going a long way, dearest. Do not seek to find me, for it will be
+  useless. Think of me as one swallowed up by the waters, and be assured
+  that it is only to spare you shame and humiliation in the future that I
+  tear myself from you and all the sweetness of life. Darling, there is
+  no other way. I feel you could never marry me now. I have felt it for
+  months. Dear Tom, you will understand what I mean. We must look facts
+  in the face. I hope you will always be friends with Mr. Constant.
+  Good-by, dear. God bless you! May you always be happy, and find a
+  worthier wife than I. Perhaps when you are great, and rich, and famous,
+  as you deserve, you will sometimes think not unkindly of one who,
+  however faulty and unworthy of you, will at least love you till the
+  end.--Yours, till death,
+
+  "JESSIE."
+
+By the time this letter was finished numerous old gentlemen, with wigs
+or without, were observed to be polishing their glasses. Mr. Wimp's
+examination was resumed.
+
+"After making these discoveries what did you do?"
+
+"I made inquiries about Miss Dymond, and found Mr. Constant had visited
+her once or twice in the evening. I imagined there would be some traces
+of a pecuniary connection. I was allowed by the family to inspect Mr.
+Constant's cheque-book, and found a paid cheque made out for L25 in the
+name of Miss Dymond. By inquiry at the Bank, I found it had been cashed
+on November l2th of last year. I then applied for a warrant against the
+prisoner."
+
+Cross-examined: "Do you suggest that the prisoner opened Mr. Constant's
+bedroom with the key you found?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+BROWN-HARLAND, Q.C. (sarcastically): "And locked the door from within
+with it on leaving?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Will you have the goodness to explain how the trick was done?"
+
+"It wasn't done. (Laughter.) The prisoner probably locked the door from
+the outside. Those who broke it open naturally imagined it had been
+locked from the inside when they found the key inside. The key would, on
+this theory, be on the floor as the outside locking could not have been
+effected if it had been in the lock. The first persons to enter the room
+would naturally believe it had been thrown down in the bursting of the
+door. Or it might have been left sticking very loosely inside the lock so
+as not to interfere with the turning of the outside key, in which case it
+would also probably have been thrown to the ground."
+
+"Indeed. Very ingenious. And can you also explain how the prisoner could
+have bolted the door within from the outside?"
+
+"I can. (Renewed sensation.) There is only one way in which it was
+possible--and that was, of course, a mere conjurer's illusion. To cause a
+locked door to appear bolted in addition, it would only be necessary for
+the person on the inside of the door to wrest the staple containing the
+bolt from the woodwork. The bolt in Mr. Constant's bedroom worked
+perpendicularly. When the staple was torn off, it would simply remain at
+rest on the pin of the bolt instead of supporting it or keeping it fixed.
+A person bursting open the door and finding the staple resting on the pin
+and torn away from the lintel of the door, would, of course, imagine he
+had torn it away, never dreaming the wresting off had been done
+beforehand." (Applause in court, which was instantly checked by the
+ushers.) The counsel for the defence felt he had been entrapped in
+attempting to be sarcastic with the redoubtable detective. Grodman seemed
+green with envy. It was the one thing he had not thought of.
+
+Mrs. Drabdump, Grodman, Inspector Howlett, and Sergeant Runnymede were
+recalled and reexammed by the embarrassed Sir Charles Brown-Harland as
+to the exact condition of the lock and the bolt and the position of the
+key. It turned out as Wimp had suggested; so prepossessed were the
+witnesses with the conviction that the door was locked and bolted from
+the inside when it was burst open that they were a little hazy about the
+exact details. The damage had been repaired, so that it was all a
+question of precise past observation. The inspector and the sergeant
+testified that the key was in the lock when they saw it, though both the
+mortice and the bolt were broken. They were not prepared to say that
+Wimp's theory was impossible; they would even admit it was quite possible
+that the staple of the bolt had been torn off beforehand. Mrs. Drabdump
+could give no clear account of such petty facts in view of her immediate
+engrossing interest in the horrible sight of the corpse. Grodman alone
+was positive that the key was in the door when he burst it open. No, he
+did not remember picking it up from the floor and putting it in. And
+he was certain that the staple of the bolt was _not_ broken, from the
+resistance he experienced in trying to shake the upper panels of the
+door.
+
+By the Prosecution: "Don't you think, from the comparative ease with
+which the door yielded to your onslaught, that it is highly probable that
+the pin of the bolt was not in a firmly fixed staple, but in one already
+detached from the woodwork of the lintel?"
+
+"The door did not yield so easily."
+
+"But you must be a Hercules."
+
+"Not quite; the bolt was old, and the woodwork crumbling; the lock was
+new and shoddy. But I have always been a strong man."
+
+"Very well, Mr. Grodman. I hope you will never appear at the
+music-halls." (Laughter.)
+
+Jessie Dymond's landlady was the next witness for the prosecution. She
+corroborated Wimp's statements as to Constant's occasional visits, and
+narrated how the girl had been enlisted by the dead philanthropist as a
+collaborator in some of his enterprises. But the most telling portion of
+her evidence was the story of how, late at night, on December 3rd, the
+prisoner called upon her and inquired wildly about the whereabouts of his
+sweetheart. He said he had just received a mysterious letter from Miss
+Dymond saying she was gone. She (the landlady) replied that she could
+have told him that weeks ago, as her ungrateful lodger was gone now some
+three weeks without leaving a hint behind her. In answer to his most
+ungentlemanly raging and raving, she told him it served him right, as he
+should have looked after her better, and not kept away for so long. She
+reminded him that there were as good fish in the sea as ever came out,
+and a girl of Jessie's attractions need not pine away (as she had seemed
+to be pining away) for lack of appreciation. He then called her a liar
+and left her, and she hoped never to see his face again, though she was
+not surprised to see it in the dock.
+
+Mr. FITZJAMES MONTGOMERY, a bank clerk, remembered cashing the cheque
+produced. He particularly remembered it, because he paid the money to a
+very pretty girl. She took the entire amount in gold. At this point the
+case was adjourned.
+
+DENZIL CANTERCOT was the first witness called for the prosecution on the
+resumption of the trial. Pressed as to whether he had not told Mr. Wimp
+that he had overheard the prisoner denouncing Mr. Constant, he could not
+say. He had not actually heard the prisoner's denunciations; he might
+have given Mr. Wimp a false impression, but then Mr. Wimp was so
+prosaically literal. (Laughter.) Mr. Crowl had told him something of the
+kind. Cross-examined, he said Jessie Dymond was a rare spirit and she
+always reminded him of Joan of Arc.
+
+Mr. CROWL, being called, was extremely agitated. He refused to take the
+oath, and informed the court that the Bible was a Fad. He could not swear
+by anything so self-contradictory. He would affirm. He could not
+deny--though he looked like wishing to--that the prisoner had at first
+been rather mistrustful of Mr. Constant, but he was certain that the
+feeling had quickly worn off. Yes, he was a great friend of the prisoner,
+but he didn't see why that should invalidate his testimony, especially as
+he had not taken an oath. Certainly the prisoner seemed rather depressed
+when he saw him on Bank Holiday, but it was overwork on behalf of the
+people and for the demolition of the Fads.
+
+Several other familiars of the prisoner gave more or less reluctant
+testimony as to his sometime prejudice against the amateur rival labour
+leader. His expressions of dislike had been strong and bitter. The
+prosecution also produced a poster announcing that the prisoner would
+preside at a great meeting of clerks on December 4th. He had not turned
+up at this meeting nor sent any explanation. Finally, there was the
+evidence of the detectives who originally arrested him at Liverpool Docks
+in view of his suspicious demeanour. This completed the case for the
+prosecution.
+
+Sir CHARLES BROWN-HARLAND, Q.C., rose with a swagger and a rustle of his
+silk gown, and proceeded to set forth the theory of the defence. He said
+he did not purpose to call many witnesses. The hypothesis of the
+prosecution was so inherently childish and inconsequential, and so
+dependent upon a bundle of interdependent probabilities that it crumbled
+away at the merest touch. The prisoner's character was of unblemished
+integrity, his last public appearance had been made on the same platform
+with Mr. Gladstone, and his honesty and highmindedness had been vouched
+for by statesmen of the highest standing. His movements could be
+accounted for from hour to hour--and those with which the prosecution
+credited him rested on no tangible evidence whatever. He was also
+credited with superhuman ingenuity and diabolical cunning of which he had
+shown no previous symptom. Hypothesis was piled on hypothesis, as in the
+old Oriental legend, where the world rested on the elephant and the
+elephant on the tortoise. It might be worth while, however, to point out
+that it was at least quite likely that the death of Mr. Constant had not
+taken place before seven, and as the prisoner left Euston Station at 7.15
+A.M. for Liverpool, he could certainly not have got there from Bow in the
+time; also that it was hardly possible for the prisoner, who could prove
+being at Euston Station at 5.25 A.M., to travel backwards and forwards to
+Glover Street and commit the crime all within less than two hours. "The
+real facts," said Sir Charles, impressively, "are most simple. The
+prisoner, partly from pressure of work, partly (he had no wish to
+conceal) from worldly ambition, had begun to neglect Miss Dymond, to whom
+he was engaged to be married. The man was but human, and his head was a
+little turned by his growing importance. Nevertheless, at heart he was
+still deeply attached to Miss Dymond. She, however, appears to have
+jumped to the conclusion that he had ceased to love her, that she was
+unworthy of him, unfitted by education to take her place side by side
+with him in the new spheres to which he was mounting--that, in short, she
+was a drag on his career. Being, by all accounts, a girl of remarkable
+force of character, she resolved to cut the Gordian knot by leaving
+London, and, fearing lest her affianced husband's conscientiousness
+should induce him to sacrifice himself to her; dreading also, perhaps,
+her own weakness, she made the parting absolute, and the place of her
+refuge a mystery. A theory has been suggested which drags an honoured
+name in the mire--a theory so superflous that I shall only allude to it.
+That Arthur Constant could have seduced, or had any improper relations
+with his friend's betrothed is a hypothesis to which the lives of both
+give the lie. Before leaving London--or England--Miss Dymond wrote to her
+aunt in Devonport--her only living relative in this country--asking her
+as a great favour to forward an addressed letter to the prisoner, a
+fortnight after receipt. The aunt obeyed implicitly. This was the letter
+which fell like a thunderbolt on the prisoner on the night of December
+3rd. All his old love returned--he was full of self-reproach and pity for
+the poor girl. The letter read ominously. Perhaps she was going to put an
+end to herself. His first thought was to rush up to his friend, Constant,
+to seek his advice. Perhaps Constant knew something of the affair. The
+prisoner knew the two were in not infrequent communication. It is
+possible--my lord and gentlemen of the jury, I do not wish to follow the
+methods of the prosecution and confuse theory with fact, so I say it is
+possible--that Mr. Constant had supplied her with the L25 to leave the
+country. He was like a brother to her, perhaps even acted imprudently in
+calling upon her, though neither dreamed of evil. It is possible that he
+may have encouraged her in her abnegation and in her altruistic
+aspirations, perhaps even without knowing their exact drift, for does he
+not speak in his very last letter of the fine female characters he was
+meeting, and the influence for good he had over individual human souls?
+Still, this we can now never know, unless the dead speak or the absent
+return. It is also not impossible that Miss Dymond was entrusted with
+the L25 for charitable purposes. But to come back to certainties. The
+prisoner consulted Mr. Constant about the letter. He then ran to Miss
+Dymond's lodgings in Stepney Green, knowing beforehand his trouble would
+be futile. The letter bore the postmark of Devonport. He knew the girl
+had an aunt there; possibly she might have gone to her. He could not
+telegraph, for he was ignorant of the address. He consulted his
+'Bradshaw,' and resolved to leave by the 5.30 A.M. from Paddington,
+and told his landlady so. He left the letter in the 'Bradshaw,' which
+ultimately got thrust among a pile of papers under the sofa, so that he
+had to get another. He was careless and disorderly, and the key found by
+Mr. Wimp in his sofa, which he was absurdly supposed to have hidden there
+after the murder, must have lain there for some years, having been lost
+there in the days when he occupied the bedroom afterwards rented by Mr.
+Constant. For it was his own sofa, removed from that room, and the
+suction of sofas was well known. Afraid to miss his train, he did not
+undress on that distressful night. Meantime the thought occurred to him
+that Jessie was too clever a girl to leave so easy a trail, and he jumped
+to the conclusion that she would be going to her married brother in
+America, and had gone to Devonport merely to bid her aunt farewell. He
+determined therefore to get to Liverpool, without wasting time at
+Devonport, to institute inquiries. Not suspecting the delay in the
+transit of the letter, he thought he might yet stop her, even at the
+landing-stage or on the tender. Unfortunately his cab went slowly in the
+fog, he missed the first train, and wandered about brooding
+disconsolately in the mist till the second. At Liverpool his suspicious,
+excited demeanour procured his momentary arrest. Since then the thought
+of the lost girl has haunted and broken him. That is the whole, the
+plain, and the sufficing story."
+
+The effective witnesses for the defence were, indeed, few. It is so hard
+to prove a negative. There was Jessie's aunt, who bore out the statement
+of the counsel for the defence. There were the porters who saw him leave
+Euston by the 7.15 train for Liverpool, and arrive just too late for the
+5.15; there was the cabman (2138), who drove him to Euston just in time,
+he (witness) thought, to catch the 5.15 A.M. Under cross-examination, the
+cabman got a little confused; he was asked whether, if he really picked
+up the prisoner at Bow Railway Station at about 4.30, he ought not to
+have caught the first train at Euston. He said the fog made him drive
+rather slowly, but admitted the mist was transparent enough to warrant
+full speed. He also admitted being a strong trade unionist, SPIGOT,
+Q.C., artfully extorting the admission as if it were of the utmost
+significance. Finally, there were numerous witnesses--of all sorts and
+conditions--to the prisoner's high character, as well as to Arthur
+Constant's blameless and moral life.
+
+In his closing speech on the third day of the trial, Sir CHARLES pointed
+out with great exhaustiveness and cogency the flimsiness of the case for
+the prosecution, the number of hypotheses it involved, and their mutual
+interdependence. Mrs. Drabdump was a witness whose evidence must be
+accepted with extreme caution. The jury must remember that she was unable
+to dissociate her observations from her inferences, and thought that the
+prisoner and Mr. Constant were quarrelling merely because they were
+agitated. He dissected her evidence, and showed that it entirely bore out
+the story of the defence. He asked the jury to bear in mind that no
+positive evidence (whether of cabmen or others) had been given of the
+various and complicated movements attributed to the prisoner on the
+morning of December 4th, between the hours of 5.25 and 7.15 A.M., and
+that the most important witness on the theory of the prosecution--he
+meant, of course, Miss Dymond--had not been produced. Even if she were
+dead, and her body were found, no countenance would be given to the
+theory of the prosecution, for the mere conviction that her lover had
+deserted her would be a sufficient explanation of her suicide. Beyond the
+ambiguous letter, no tittle of evidence of her dishonour--on which the
+bulk of the case against the prisoner rested--had been adduced. As for
+the motive of political jealousy that had been a mere passing cloud. The
+two men had become fast friends. As to the circumstances of the alleged
+crime, the medical evidence was on the whole in favour of the time of
+death being late; and the prisoner had left London at a quarter-past
+seven. The drugging theory was absurd, and as for the too clever bolt
+and lock theories, Mr. Grodman, a trained scientific observer, had
+pooh-poohed them. He would solemnly exhort the jury to remember that if
+they condemned the prisoner they would not only send an innocent man to
+an ignominious death on the flimsiest circumstantial evidence, but they
+would deprive the working men of this country of one of their truest
+friends and their ablest leader.
+
+The conclusion of Sir Charles's vigorous speech was greeted with
+irrepressible applause.
+
+Mr. SPIGOT, Q.C., in closing the case for the prosecution, asked the
+jury to return a verdict against the prisoner for as malicious and
+premeditated a crime as ever disgraced the annals of any civilised
+country. His cleverness and education had only been utilised for the
+devil's ends, while his reputation had been used as a cloak. Everything
+pointed strongly to the prisoner's guilt. On receiving Miss Dymond's
+letter announcing her shame, and (probably) her intention to commit
+suicide, he had hastened upstairs to denounce Constant. He had then
+rushed to the girl's lodgings, and, finding his worst fears confirmed,
+planned at once his diabolically ingenious scheme of revenge. He told his
+landlady he was going to Devonport, so that if he bungled, the police
+would be put temporarily off his track. His real destination was
+Liverpool, for he intended to leave the country. Lest, however, his plan
+should break down here, too, he arranged an ingenious alibi by being
+driven to Euston for the 5.15 train to Liverpool. The cabman would not
+know he did not intend to go by it, but meant to return to 11 Glover
+Street, there to perpetrate this foul crime, interruption to which he had
+possibly barred by drugging his landlady. His presence at Liverpool
+(whither he really went by the second train) would corroborate the
+cabman's story. That night he had not undressed nor gone to bed; he had
+plotted out his devilish scheme till it was perfect; the fog came as an
+unexpected ally to cover his movements. Jealousy, outraged affection, the
+desire for revenge, the lust for political power--these were human. They
+might pity the criminal, they could not find him innocent of the crime.
+
+Mr. Justice CROGIE, summing up, began dead against the prisoner.
+Reviewing the evidence, he pointed out that plausible hypotheses neatly
+dove-tailed did not necessarily weaken one another, the fitting so well
+together of the whole rather making for the truth of the parts. Besides,
+the case for the prosecution was as far from being all hypothesis as the
+case for the defence was from excluding hypotheses. The key, the letter,
+the reluctance to produce the letter, the heated interview with Constant,
+the misstatement about the prisoner's destination, the flight to
+Liverpool, the false tale about searching for a "him," the denunciations
+of Constant, all these were facts. On the other hand, there were various
+lacunae and hypotheses in the case for the defence. Even conceding the
+somewhat dubious alibi afforded by the prisoner's presence at Euston at
+5.25 A.M., there was no attempt to account for his movements between that
+and 7.15 A.M. It was as possible that he returned to Bow as that he
+lingered about Euston. There was nothing in the medical evidence to make
+his guilt impossible. Nor was there anything inherently impossible in
+Constant's yielding to the sudden temptation of a beautiful girl, nor in
+a working girl deeming herself deserted, temporarily succumbing to the
+fascinations of a gentleman and regretting it bitterly afterwards. What
+had become of the girl was a mystery. Hers might have been one of those
+nameless corpses which the tide swirls up on slimy river banks. The jury
+must remember, too, that the relation might not have actually passed into
+dishonour, it might have been just grave enough to smite the girl's
+conscience, and to induce her to behave as she had done. It was enough
+that her letter should have excited the jealousy of the prisoner. There
+was one other point which he would like to impress on the jury, and which
+the counsel for the prosecution had not sufficiently insisted upon. This
+was that the prisoner's guiltiness was the only plausible solution that
+had ever been advanced of the Bow Mystery. The medical evidence agreed
+that Mr. Constant did not die by his own hand. Some one must therefore
+have murdered him. The number of people who could have had any possible
+reason or opportunity to murder him was extremely small. The prisoner had
+both reason and opportunity. By what logicians called the method of
+exclusion, suspicion would attach to him on even slight evidence. The
+actual evidence was strong and plausible, and now that Mr. Wimp's
+ingenious theory had enabled them to understand how the door could have
+been apparently locked and bolted from within, the last difficulty and
+the last argument for suicide had been removed. The prisoner's guilt was
+as clear as circumstantial evidence could make it. If they let him go
+free, the Bow Mystery might henceforward be placed among the archives of
+unavenged assassinations. Having thus well-nigh hung the prisoner, the
+judge wound up by insisting on the high probability of the story for the
+defence, though that, too, was dependent in important details upon the
+prisoner's mere private statements to his counsel. The jury, being by
+this time sufficiently muddled by his impartiality, were dismissed, with
+the exhortation to allow due weight to every fact and probability in
+determining their righteous verdict.
+
+The minutes ran into hours, but the jury did not return. The shadows of
+night fell across the reeking, fevered court before they announced their
+verdict--
+
+"Guilty!"
+
+The judge put on his black cap.
+
+The great reception arranged outside was a fiasco; the evening banquet
+was indefinitely postponed. Wimp had won; Grodman felt like a whipped
+cur.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+"So you were right," Denzil could not help saying as he greeted Grodman a
+week afterwards. "I shall _not_ live to tell the story of how you
+discovered the Bow murderer."
+
+"Sit down," growled Grodman; "perhaps you will after all." There was a
+dangerous gleam in his eyes. Denzil was sorry he had spoken.
+
+"I sent for you," Grodman said, "to tell you that on the night Wimp
+arrested Mortlake I had made preparations for your arrest."
+
+Denzil gasped, "What for?"
+
+"My dear Denzil, there is a little law in this country invented for the
+confusion of the poetic. The greatest exponent of the Beautiful is only
+allowed the same number of wives as the greengrocer. I do not blame
+you for not being satisfied with Jane--she is a good servant but a bad
+mistress--but it was cruel to Kitty not to inform her that Jane had a
+prior right in you, and unjust to Jane not to let her know of the
+contract with Kitty."
+
+"They both know it now well enough, curse 'em," said the poet.
+
+"Yes; your secrets are like your situations--you can't keep 'em long. My
+poor poet, I pity you--betwixt the devil and the deep sea."
+
+"They're a pair of harpies, each holding over me the Damocles sword of an
+arrest for bigamy. Neither loves me."
+
+"I should think they would come in very useful to you. You plant one in
+my house to tell my secrets to Wimp, and you plant one in Wimp's house to
+tell Wimp's secrets to me, I suppose. Out with some, then."
+
+"Upon my honour, you wrong me. Jane brought _me_ here, not I Jane. As for
+Kitty, I never had such a shock in my life as at finding her installed in
+Wimp's house."
+
+"She thought it safer to have the law handy for your arrest. Besides, she
+probably desired to occupy a parallel position to Jane's. She must do
+something for a living; _you_ wouldn't do anything for hers. And so you
+couldn't go anywhere without meeting a wife! Ha! ha! ha! Serve you right,
+my polygamous poet."
+
+"But why should _you_ arrest me?"
+
+"Revenge, Denzil. I have been the best friend you ever had in this cold,
+prosaic world. You have eaten my bread, drunk my claret, written my book,
+smoked my cigars, and pocketed my money. And yet, when you have an
+important piece of information bearing on a mystery about which I am
+thinking day and night, you calmly go and sell it to Wimp."
+
+"I did-didn't," stammered Denzil.
+
+"Liar! Do you think Kitty has any secrets from me? As soon as I
+discovered your two marriages I determined to have you arrested for--your
+treachery. But when I found you had, as I thought, put Wimp on the wrong
+scent, when I felt sure that by arresting Mortlake he was going to make a
+greater ass of himself than even nature had been able to do, then I
+forgave you. I let you walk about the earth--and drink--freely. Now it is
+Wimp who crows--everybody pats him on the back--they call him the mystery
+man of the Scotland Yard tribe. Poor Tom Mortlake will be hanged, and all
+through your telling Wimp about Jessie Dymond!"
+
+"It was you yourself," said Denzil, sullenly. "Everybody was giving it
+up. But you said 'Let us find out all that Arthur Constant did in the
+last few months of his life.' Wimp couldn't miss stumbling on Jessie
+sooner or later. I'd have throttled Constant, if I had known he'd touched
+her," he wound up with irrelevant indignation.
+
+Grodman winced at the idea that he himself had worked _ad majorem
+gloriam_ of Wimp. And yet, had not Mrs. Wimp let out as much at the
+Christmas dinner?
+
+"What's past is past," he said gruffly. "But if Tom Mortlake hangs, you
+go to Portland."
+
+"How can I help Tom hanging?"
+
+"Help the agitation as much as you can. Write letters under all sorts of
+names to all the papers. Get everybody you know to sign the great
+petition. Find out where Jessie Dymond is--the girl who holds the proof
+of Mortlake's innocence."
+
+"You really believe him innocent?"
+
+"Don't be satirical, Denzil. Haven't I taken the chair at all the
+meetings? Am I not the most copious correspondent of the Press?"
+
+"I thought it was only to spite Wimp."
+
+"Rubbish. It's to save poor Tom. He no more murdered Arthur Constant
+than--you did!" He laughed an unpleasant laugh.
+
+Denzil bade him farewell, frigid with fear.
+
+Grodman was up to his ears in letters and telegrams. Somehow he had
+become the leader of the rescue party--suggestions, subscriptions
+came from all sides. The suggestions were burnt, the subscriptions
+acknowledged in the papers and used for hunting up the missing girl. Lucy
+Brent headed the list with a hundred pounds. It was a fine testimony
+to her faith in her dead lover's honour.
+
+The release of the Jury had unloosed "The Greater Jury," which always
+now sits upon the smaller. Every means was taken to nullify the value
+of the "palladium of British liberty." The foreman and the jurors were
+interviewed, the judge was judged, and by those who were no judges. The
+Home Secretary (who had done nothing beyond accepting office under the
+Crown) was vituperated, and sundry provincial persons wrote
+confidentially to the Queen. Arthur Constant's backsliding cheered
+many by convincing them that others were as bad as themselves; and
+well-to-do tradesmen saw in Mortlake's wickedness the pernicious effects
+of Socialism. A dozen new theories were afloat. Constant had committed
+suicide by Esoteric Buddhism, as witness his devotion to Mme. Blavatsky,
+or he had been murdered by his Mahatma or victimised by Hypnotism,
+Mesmerism, Somnambulism, and other weird abstractions. Grodman's great
+point was--Jessie Dymond must be produced, dead or alive. The electric
+current scoured the civilised world in search of her. What wonder if the
+shrewder sort divined that the indomitable detective had fixed his last
+hope on the girl's guilt? If Jessie had wrongs why should she not have
+avenged them herself? Did she not always remind the poet of Joan of Arc?
+
+Another week passed; the shadow of the gallows crept over the days; on,
+on, remorselessly drawing nearer, as the last ray of hope sank below the
+horizon. The Home Secretary remained inflexible; the great petitions
+discharged their signatures at him in vain. He was a Conservative,
+sternly conscientious; and the mere insinuation that his obstinacy was
+due to the politics of the condemned only hardened him against the
+temptation of a cheap reputation for magnanimity. He would not even grant
+a respite, to increase the chances of the discovery of Jessie Dymond. In
+the last of the three weeks there was a final monster meeting of protest.
+Grodman again took the chair, and several distinguished faddists were
+present, as well as numerous respectable members of society. The Home
+Secretary acknowledged the receipt of their resolutions. The Trade Unions
+were divided in their allegiance; some whispered of faith and hope,
+others of financial defalcations. The former essayed to organise a
+procession and an indignation meeting on the Sunday preceding the Tuesday
+fixed for the execution, but it fell through on a rumour of confession.
+The Monday papers contained a last masterly letter from Grodman exposing
+the weakness of the evidence, but they knew nothing of a confession. The
+prisoner was mute and disdainful, professing little regard for a life
+empty of love and burdened with self-reproach. He refused to see
+clergymen. He was accorded an interview with Miss Brent in the presence
+of a gaoler, and solemnly asseverated his respect for her dead lover's
+memory. Monday buzzed with rumours; the evening papers chronicled them
+hour by hour. A poignant anxiety was abroad. The girl would be found.
+Some miracle would happen. A reprieve would arrive. The sentence would be
+commuted. But the short day darkened into night even as Mortlake's short
+day was darkening. And the shadow of the gallows crept on and on, and
+seemed to mingle with the twilight.
+
+Crowl stood at the door of his shop, unable to work. His big grey eyes
+were heavy with unshed tears. The dingy wintry road seemed one vast
+cemetery; the street lamps twinkled like corpse-lights. The confused
+sounds of the street life reached his ear as from another world. He did
+not see the people who flitted to and fro amid the gathering shadows of
+the cold, dreary night. One ghastly vision flashed and faded and flashed
+upon the background of the duskiness.
+
+Denzil stood beside him, smoking in silence. A cold fear was at his
+heart. That terrible Grodman! As the hangman's cord was tightening round
+Mortlake, he felt the convict's chains tightening round himself. And yet
+there was one gleam of hope, feeble as the yellow flicker of the gas-lamp
+across the way. Grodman had obtained an interview with the condemned late
+that afternoon, and the parting had been painful, but the evening paper,
+that in its turn had obtained an interview with the ex-detective,
+announced on its placard
+
+  "GRODMAN STILL CONFIDENT"
+
+and the thousands who yet pinned their faith on this extraordinary man
+refused to extinguish the last sparks of hope. Denzil had bought the
+paper and scanned it eagerly, but there was nothing save the vague
+assurance that the indefatigable Grodman was still almost pathetically
+expectant of the miracle. Denzil did not share the expectation; he
+meditated flight.
+
+"Peter," he said at last, "I'm afraid it's all over."
+
+Crowl nodded, heart-broken. "All over!" he repeated, "and to think that
+he dies--and it is--all over!"
+
+He looked despairingly at the blank winter sky, where leaden clouds shut
+out the stars. "Poor, poor young fellow! To-night alive and thinking.
+To-morrow night a clod, with no more sense or motion than a bit of
+leather! No compensation nowhere for being cut off innocent in the pride
+of youth and strength! A man who has always preached the Useful day and
+night, and toiled and suffered for his fellows. Where's the justice of
+it, where's the justice of it?" he demanded fiercely. Again his wet eyes
+wandered upwards towards heaven, that heaven away from which the soul of
+a dead saint at the Antipodes was speeding into infinite space.
+
+"Well, where was the justice for Arthur Constant if he, too, was
+innocent?" said Denzil. "Really, Peter, I don't see why you should take
+it for granted that Tom is so dreadfully injured. Your horny-handed
+labour leaders are, after all, men of no aesthetic refinement, with no
+sense of the Beautiful; you cannot expect them to be exempt from the
+coarser forms of crime. Humanity must look to far other leaders--to the
+seers and the poets!"
+
+"Cantercot, if you say Tom's guilty I'll knock you down." The little
+cobbler turned upon his tall friend like a roused lion. Then he added,
+"I beg your pardon, Cantercot, I don't mean that. After all, I've no
+grounds. The judge is an honest man, and with gifts I can't lay claim to.
+But I believe in Tom with all my heart. And if Tom is guilty I believe in
+the Cause of the People with all my heart all the same. The Fads are
+doomed to death, they may be reprieved, but they must die at last."
+
+He drew a deep sigh, and looked along the dreary Road. It was quite dark
+now, but by the light of the lamps and the gas in the shop windows the
+dull, monotonous Road lay revealed in all its sordid, familiar outlines;
+with its long stretches of chill pavement, its unlovely architecture, and
+its endless stream of prosaic pedestrians.
+
+A sudden consciousness of the futility of his existence pierced the
+little cobbler like an icy wind. He saw his own life, and a hundred
+million lives like his, swelling and breaking like bubbles on a dark
+ocean, unheeded, uncared for.
+
+A newsboy passed along, clamouring "The Bow murderer, preparaitions for
+the hexecution!"
+
+A terrible shudder shook the cobbler's frame. His eyes ranged sightlessly
+after the boy; the merciful tears filled them at last.
+
+"The Cause of the People," he murmured brokenly, "I believe in the Cause
+of the People. There is nothing else."
+
+"Peter, come in to tea, you'll catch cold," said Mrs. Crowl.
+
+Denzil went in to tea and Peter followed.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Meantime, round the house of the Home Secretary, who was in town, an
+ever-augmenting crowd was gathered, eager to catch the first whisper of a
+reprieve.
+
+The house was guarded by a cordon of police, for there was no
+inconsiderable danger of a popular riot. At times a section of the crowd
+groaned and hooted. Once a volley of stones was discharged at the
+windows. The newsboys were busy vending their special editions, and the
+reporters struggled through the crowd, clutching descriptive pencils, and
+ready to rush off to telegraph offices should anything "extra special"
+occur. Telegraph boys were coming up every now and again with threats,
+messages, petitions, and exhortations from all parts of the country to
+the unfortunate Home Secretary, who was striving to keep his aching head
+cool as he went through the voluminous evidence for the last time and
+pondered over the more important letters which "The Greater Jury" had
+contributed to the obscuration of the problem. Grodman's letter in that
+morning's paper shook him most; under his scientific analysis the
+circumstantial chain seemed forged of painted cardboard. Then the poor
+man read the judge's summing up, and the chain became tempered steel. The
+noise of the crowd outside broke upon his ear in his study like the roar
+of a distant ocean. The more the rabble hooted him, the more he essayed
+to hold scrupulously the scales of life and death. And the crowd grew
+and grew, as men came away from their work. There were many that loved
+the man who lay in the jaws of death, and a spirit of mad revolt surged
+in their breasts. And the sky was grey, and the bleak night deepened, and
+the shadow of the gallows crept on.
+
+Suddenly a strange inarticulate murmur spread through the crowd, a vague
+whisper of no one knew what. Something had happened. Somebody was
+coming. A second later and one of the outskirts of the throng was
+agitated, and a convulsive cheer went up from it, and was taken up
+infectiously all along the street. The crowd parted--a hansom dashed
+through the centre. "Grodman! Grodman!" shouted those who recognised the
+occupant. "Grodman! Hurrah!" Grodman was outwardly calm and pale,
+but his eyes glittered; he waved his hand encouragingly as the hansom
+dashed up to the door, cleaving the turbulent crowd as a canoe cleaves
+the waters. Grodman sprang out, the constables at the portal made way for
+him respectfully. He knocked imperatively, the door was opened
+cautiously; a boy rushed up and delivered a telegram; Grodman forced his
+way in, gave his name, and insisted on seeing the Home Secretary on a
+matter of life and death. Those near the door heard his words and
+cheered, and the crowd divined the good omen, and the air throbbed with
+cannonades of joyous sound. The cheers rang in Grodman's ears as the door
+slammed behind him. The reporters struggled to the front. An excited knot
+of working men pressed round the arrested hansom; they took the horse
+out. A dozen enthusiasts struggled for the honour of placing themselves
+between the shafts. And the crowd awaited Grodman.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+Grodman was ushered into the conscientious Minister's study. The doughty
+chief of the agitation was, perhaps, the one man who could not be denied.
+As he entered, the Home Secretary's face seemed lit up with relief. At a
+sign from his master, the amanuensis who had brought in the last telegram
+took it back with him into the outer room where he worked. Needless to
+say not a tithe of the Minister's correspondence ever came under his own
+eyes.
+
+"You have a valid reason for troubling me, I suppose, Mr. Grodman?" said
+the Home Secretary, almost cheerfully. "Of course it is about Mortlake?"
+
+"It is; and I have the best of all reasons."
+
+"Take a seat. Proceed."
+
+"Pray do not consider me impertinent, but have you ever given any
+attention to the science of evidence?"
+
+"How do you mean?" asked the Home Secretary, rather puzzled, adding, with
+a melancholy smile, "I have had to lately. Of course, I've never been a
+criminal lawyer, like some of my predecessors. But I should hardly speak
+of it as a science; I look upon it as a question of common-sense."
+
+"Pardon me, sir. It is the most subtle and difficult of all the sciences.
+It is, indeed, rather the science of the sciences. What is the whole of
+Inductive Logic, as laid down, say, by Bacon and Mill, but an attempt
+to appraise the value of evidence, the said evidence being the trails
+left by the Creator, so to speak? The Creator has--I say it in all
+reverence--drawn a myriad red herrings across the track, but the true
+scientist refuses to be baffled by superficial appearances in detecting
+the secrets of Nature. The vulgar herd catches at the gross apparent
+fact, but the man of insight knows that what lies on the surface does
+lie."
+
+"Very interesting, Mr. Grodman, but really--"
+
+"Bear with me, sir. The science of evidence being thus so extremely
+subtle, and demanding the most acute and trained observation of facts,
+the most comprehensive understanding of human psychology, is naturally
+given over to professors who have not the remotest idea that 'things are
+not what they seem,' and that everything is other than it appears; to
+professors, most of whom by their year-long devotion to the shop-counter
+or the desk, have acquired an intimate acquaintance with all the infinite
+shades and complexities of things and human nature. When twelve of these
+professors are put in a box, it is called a jury. When one of these
+professors is put in a box by himself, he is called a witness. The
+retailing of evidence--the observation of the facts--is given over to
+people who go through their lives without eyes; the appreciation of
+evidence--the judging of these facts--is surrendered to people who may
+possibly be adepts in weighing out pounds of sugar. Apart from their
+sheer inability to fulfil either function--to observe, or to judge--their
+observation and their judgment alike are vitiated by all sorts of
+irrelevant prejudices."
+
+"You are attacking trial by jury."
+
+"Not necessarily. I am prepared to accept that scientifically, on the
+ground that, as there are, as a rule, only two alternatives, the balance
+of probability is slightly in favour of the true decision being come to.
+Then, in cases where experts like myself have got up the evidence, the
+jury can be made to see through trained eyes."
+
+The Home Secretary tapped impatiently with his foot.
+
+"I can't listen to abstract theorising," he said. "Have you any fresh
+concrete evidence?"
+
+"Sir, everything depends on our getting down to the root of the matter.
+What percentage of average evidence should you think is thorough, plain,
+simple, unvarnished fact, 'the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
+the truth'?"
+
+"Fifty?" said the Minister, humouring him a little.
+
+"Not five. I say nothing of lapses of memory, of inborn defects of
+observational power--though the suspiciously precise recollection of
+dates and events possessed by ordinary witnesses in important trials
+taking place years after the occurrences involved, is one of the most
+amazing things in the curiosities of modern jurisprudence. I defy you,
+sir, to tell me what you had for dinner last Monday, or what exactly you
+were saying and doing at five o'clock last Tuesday afternoon. Nobody
+whose life does not run in mechanical grooves can do anything of the
+sort; unless, of course, the facts have been very impressive. But this by
+the way. The great obstacle to veracious observation is the element of
+prepossession in all vision. Has it ever struck you, sir, that we never
+_see_ any one more than once, if that? The first time we meet a man we
+may possibly see him as he is; the second time our vision is coloured and
+modified by the memory of the first. Do our friends appear to us as they
+appear to strangers? Do our rooms, our furniture, our pipes strike our
+eye as they would strike the eye of an outsider, looking on them for the
+first time? Can a mother see her babe's ugliness, or a lover his
+mistress's shortcomings, though they stare everybody else in the face?
+Can we see ourselves as others see us? No; habit, prepossession changes
+all. The mind is a large factor of every so-called external fact. The eye
+sees, sometimes, what it wishes to see, more often what it expects to
+see. You follow me, sir?"
+
+The Home Secretary nodded his head less impatiently. He was beginning to
+be interested. The hubbub from without broke faintly upon their ears.
+
+"To give you a definite example. Mr. Wimp says that when I burst open the
+door of Mr. Constant's room on the morning of December 4th, and saw that
+the staple of the bolt had been wrested by the pin from the lintel, I
+jumped at once to the conclusion that I had broken the bolt. Now I admit
+that this was so, only in things like this you do not seem to _conclude_,
+you jump so fast that you _see_, or seem to. On the other hand, when you
+_see_ a _standing_ ring of fire produced by whirling a burning stick, you
+do _not_ believe in its continuous existence. It is the same when
+witnessing a legerdemain performance. Seeing is not always believing,
+despite the proverb; but believing is often seeing. It is not to the
+point that in that little matter of the door Wimp was as hopelessly and
+incurably wrong as he has been in everything all along. The door _was_
+securely bolted. Still I confess that I should have seen that I had
+broken the bolt in forcing the door, even if it had been broken
+beforehand. Never once since December 4th did this possibility occur
+to me, till Wimp with perverted ingenuity suggested it. If this is the
+case with a trained observer, one moreover fully conscious of this
+ineradicable tendency of the human mind, how must it be with an untrained
+observer?"
+
+"Come to the point, come to the point," said the Home Secretary, putting
+out his hand as if it itched to touch the bell on the writing-table.
+
+"Such as," went on Grodman, imperturbably, "such as--Mrs. Drabdump. That
+worthy person is unable, by repeated violent knocking, to arouse her
+lodger who yet desires to be aroused; she becomes alarmed, she rushes
+across to get my assistance; I burst open the door--what do you think the
+good lady expected to see?"
+
+"Mr. Constant murdered, I suppose," murmured the Home Secretary,
+wonderingly.
+
+"Exactly. And so she saw it. And what should you think was the condition
+of Arthur Constant when the door yielded to my violent exertions and flew
+open?"
+
+"Why, was he not dead?" gasped the Home Secretary, his heart fluttering
+violently.
+
+"Dead? A young, healthy fellow like that! When the door flew open, Arthur
+Constant was sleeping the sleep of the just. It was a deep, a very deep
+sleep, of course, else the blows at his door would long since have
+awakened him. But all the while Mrs. Drabdump's fancy was picturing her
+lodger cold and stark, the poor young fellow was lying in bed in a nice
+warm sleep."
+
+"You mean to say you found Arthur Constant alive?"
+
+"As you were last night."
+
+The Minister was silent, striving confusedly to take in the situation.
+Outside the crowd was cheering again. It was probably to pass the time.
+
+"Then, when was he murdered?"
+
+"Immediately afterwards."
+
+"By whom?"
+
+"Well, that is, if you will pardon me, not a very intelligent question.
+Science and common-sense are in accord for once. Try the method of
+exhaustion. It must have been either by Mrs. Drabdump or myself."
+
+"You mean to say that Mrs. Drabdump--!"
+
+"Poor dear Mrs. Drabdump, you don't deserve this of your Home Secretary!
+The idea of that good lady!"
+
+"It was _you_!"
+
+"Calm yourself, my dear Home Secretary. There is nothing to be alarmed
+at. It was a solitary experiment, and I intend it to remain so." The
+noise without grew louder. "Three cheers for Grodman! Hip, hip, hip,
+hooray," fell faintly on their ears.
+
+But the Minister, pallid and deeply moved, touched the bell. The Home
+Secretary's home secretary appeared. He looked at the great man's
+agitated face with suppressed surprise.
+
+"Thank you for calling in your amanuensis," said Grodman. "I intended to
+ask you to lend me his services. I suppose he can write shorthand."
+
+The Minister nodded, speechless.
+
+"That is well. I intend this statement to form the basis of an appendix
+to the twenty-fifth edition--sort of silver wedding--of my book,
+_Criminals I have Caught_. Mr. Denzil Cantercot, who, by the will I have
+made to-day, is appointed my literary executor, will have the task of
+working it up with literary and dramatic touches after the model of the
+other chapters of my book. I have every confidence he will be able to do
+me as much justice, from a literary point of view, as you, sir, no doubt
+will from a legal. I feel certain he will succeed in catching the style
+of the other chapters to perfection."
+
+"Templeton," whispered the Home Secretary, "this man may be a lunatic.
+The effort to solve the Big Bow Mystery may have addled his brain.
+Still," he added aloud, "it will be as well for you to take down his
+statement in shorthand."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Grodman, heartily. "Ready, Mr. Templeton? Here
+goes. My career till I left the Scotland Yard Detective Department is
+known to all the world. Is that too fast for you, Mr. Templeton? A
+little? Well, I'll go slower; but pull me up if I forget to keep the
+brake on. When I retired, I discovered that I was a bachelor. But it was
+too late to marry. Time hung heavy on my hands. The preparation of my
+book, _Criminals I have Caught_, kept me occupied for some months. When
+it was published, I had nothing more to do but think. I had plenty of
+money, and it was safely invested; there was no call for speculation. The
+future was meaningless to me; I regretted I had not elected to die in
+harness. As idle old men must, I lived in the past. I went over and over
+again my ancient exploits; I re-read my book. And as I thought and
+thought, away from the excitement of the actual hunt, and seeing the
+facts in a truer perspective, so it grew daily clearer to me that
+criminals were more fools than rogues. Every crime I had traced,
+however cleverly perpetrated, was from the point of view of penetrability
+a weak failure. Traces and trails were left on all sides--ragged edges,
+rough-hewn corners; in short, the job was botched, artistic completeness
+unattained. To the vulgar, my feats might seem marvellous--the average
+man is mystified to grasp how you detect the letter 'e' in a simple
+cryptogram--to myself they were as commonplace as the crimes they
+unveiled. To me now, with my lifelong study of the science of evidence,
+it seemed possible to commit not merely one but a thousand crimes that
+should be absolutely undiscoverable. And yet criminals would go on
+sinning, and giving themselves away, in the same old grooves--no
+originality, no dash, no individual insight, no fresh conception! One
+would imagine there were an Academy of crime with forty thousand
+armchairs. And gradually, as I pondered and brooded over the thought,
+there came upon me the desire to commit a crime that should baffle
+detection. I could invent hundreds of such crimes, and please myself by
+imagining them done; but would they really work out in practice?
+Evidently the sole performer of my experiment must be myself; the
+subject--whom or what? Accident should determine. I itched to commence
+with murder--to tackle the stiffest problems first, and I burned to
+startle and baffle the world--especially the world of which I had ceased
+to be. Outwardly I was calm, and spoke to the people about me as usual.
+Inwardly I was on fire with a consuming scientific passion. I sported
+with my pet theories, and fitted them mentally on every one I met. Every
+friend or acquaintance I sat and gossiped with, I was plotting how to
+murder without leaving a clue. There is not one of my friends or
+acquaintances I have not done away with in thought. There is no public
+man--have no fear, my dear Home Secretary--I have not planned to
+assassinate secretly, mysteriously, unintelligibly, undiscoverably.
+Ah, how I could give the stock criminals points--with their second-hand
+motives, their conventional conceptions, their commonplace details, their
+lack of artistic feeling and restraint."
+
+The crowd had again started cheering. Impatient as the watchers were,
+they felt that no news was good news. The longer the interview accorded
+by the Home Secretary to the chairman of the Defence Committee, the
+greater the hope his obduracy was melting. The idol of the people would
+be saved, and "Grodman" and "Tom Mortlake" were mingled in the exultant
+plaudits.
+
+"The late Arthur Constant," continued the great criminologist, "came to
+live nearly opposite me. I cultivated his acquaintance--he was a lovable
+young fellow, an excellent subject for experiment. I do not know when I
+have ever taken to a man more. From the moment I first set eyes on him,
+there was a peculiar sympathy between us. We were drawn to each other. I
+felt instinctively he would be the man. I loved to hear him speak
+enthusiastically of the Brotherhood of Man--I, who knew the brotherhood
+of man was to the ape, the serpent, and the tiger--and he seemed to find
+a pleasure in stealing a moment's chat with me from his engrossing
+self-appointed duties. It is a pity humanity should have been robbed of
+so valuable a life. But it had to be. At a quarter to ten on the night of
+December 3rd he came to me. Naturally I said nothing about this visit
+at the inquest or the trial. His object was to consult me mysteriously
+about some girl. He said he had privately lent her money--which she was
+to repay at her convenience. What the money was for he did not know,
+except that it was somehow connected with an act of abnegation in which
+he had vaguely encouraged her. The girl had since disappeared, and he
+was in distress about her. He would not tell me who it was--of course
+now, sir, you know as well as I it was Jessie Dymond--but asked for
+advice as to how to set about finding her. He mentioned that Mortlake
+was leaving for Devonport by the first train on the next day. Of old I
+should have connected these two facts and sought the thread; now, as he
+spoke, all my thoughts were dyed red. He was suffering perceptibly from
+toothache, and in answer to my sympathetic inquiries told me it had been
+allowing him very little sleep. Everything combined to invite the trial
+of one of my favourite theories. I spoke to him in a fatherly way, and
+when I had tendered some vague advice about the girl, I made him promise
+to secure a night's rest (before he faced the arduous tram-men's meeting
+in the morning) by taking a sleeping draught. I gave him a quantity of
+sulfonal in a phial. It is a new drug, which produces protracted sleep
+without disturbing digestion, and which I use myself. He promised
+faithfully to take the draught; and I also exhorted him earnestly to bolt
+and bar and lock himself in so as to stop up every chink or aperture by
+which the cold air of the winter's night might creep into the room. I
+remonstrated with him on the careless manner he treated his body, and he
+laughed in his good-humoured, gentle way, and promised to obey me in all
+things. And he did. That Mrs. Drabdump, failing to rouse him, would cry
+'Murder!' I took for certain. She is built that way. As even Sir Charles
+Brown-Harland remarked, she habitually takes her prepossessions for
+facts, her inferences for observations. She forecasts the future in grey.
+Most women of Mrs. Drabdump's class would have behaved as she did. She
+happened to be a peculiarly favourable specimen for working on by
+'suggestion,' but I would have undertaken to produce the same effect on
+almost any woman. The key to the Big Bow Mystery is feminine psychology.
+The only uncertain link in the chain was, Would Mrs. Drabdump rush across
+to get _me_ to break open the door? Women always rush for a man. I was
+well-nigh the nearest, and certainly the most authoritative man in the
+street, and I took it for granted she would."
+
+"But suppose she hadn't?" the Home Secretary could not help asking.
+
+"Then the murder wouldn't have happened, that's all. In due course Arthur
+Constant would have awoke, or somebody else breaking open the door would
+have found him sleeping; no harm done, nobody any the wiser. I could
+hardly sleep myself that night. The thought of the extraordinary crime
+I was about to commit--a burning curiosity to know whether Wimp would
+detect _the modus operandi_--the prospect of sharing the feelings of
+murderers with whom I had been in contact all my life without being in
+touch with the terrible joys of their inner life--the fear lest I should
+be too fast asleep to hear Mrs. Drabdump's knock--these things agitated
+me and disturbed my rest. I lay tossing on my bed, planning every detail
+of poor Constant's end. The hours dragged slowly and wretchedly on
+towards the misty dawn. I was racked with suspense. Was I to be
+disappointed after all? At last the welcome sound came--the rat-tat-tat
+of murder. The echoes of that knock are yet in my ear. 'Come over and
+kill him!' I put my night-capped head out of the window and told her to
+wait for me. I dressed hurriedly, took my razor, and went across to 11
+Glover Street. As I broke open the door of the bedroom in which Arthur
+Constant lay sleeping, his head resting on his hands, I cried, 'My God!'
+as if I saw some awful vision. A mist as of blood swam before Mrs.
+Drabdump's eyes. She cowered back, for an instant (I divined rather than
+saw the action) she shut off the dreaded sight with her hands. In that
+instant I had made my cut--precisely, scientifically--made so deep a cut
+and drawn out the weapon so sharply that there was scarce a drop of blood
+on it; then there came from the throat a jet of blood which Mrs.
+Drabdump, conscious only of the horrid gash, saw but vaguely. I covered
+up the face quickly with a handkerchief to hide any convulsive
+distortion. But as the medical evidence (in this detail accurate)
+testified, death was instantaneous. I pocketed the razor and the empty
+sulfonal phial. With a woman like Mrs. Drabdump to watch me, I could do
+anything I pleased. I got her to draw my attention to the fact that both
+the windows were fastened. Some fool, by the by, thought there was a
+discrepancy in the evidence because the police found only one window
+fastened, forgetting that, in my innocence I took care not to refasten
+the window I had opened to call for aid. Naturally I did not call for aid
+before a considerable time had elapsed. There was Mrs. Drabdump to quiet,
+and the excuse of making notes--as an old hand. My object was to gain
+time. I wanted the body to be fairly cold and stiff before being
+discovered, though there was not much danger here; for, as you saw by the
+medical evidence, there is no telling the time of death to an hour or
+two. The frank way in which I said the death was very recent disarmed all
+suspicion, and even Dr. Robinson was unconsciously worked upon, in
+adjudging the time of death, by the knowledge (query here, Mr. Templeton)
+that it had preceded my advent on the scene.
+
+"Before leaving Mrs. Drabdump, there is just one point I should like to
+say a word about. You have listened so patiently, sir, to my lectures on
+the science of sciences that you will not refuse to hear the last. A good
+deal of importance has been attached to Mrs. Drabdump's oversleeping
+herself by half an hour. It happens that this (like the innocent fog
+which has also been made responsible for much) is a purely accidental
+and irrelevant circumstance. In all works on inductive logic it is
+thoroughly recognised that only some of the circumstances of a phenomenon
+are of its essence and casually interconnected; there is always a certain
+proportion of heterogeneous accompaniments which have no intimate
+relation whatever with the phenomenon. Yet, so crude is as yet the
+comprehension of the science of evidence, that _every_ feature of the
+phenomenon under investigation is made equally important, and sought to
+be linked with the chain of evidence. To attempt to explain everything is
+always the mark of the tyro. The fog and Mrs. Drabdump's oversleeping
+herself were mere accidents. There are always these irrelevant
+accompaniments, and the true scientist allows for this element of (so to
+speak) chemically unrelated detail. Even I never counted on the
+unfortunate series of accidental phenomena which have led to Mortlake's
+implication in a network of suspicion. On the other hand, the fact that
+my servant, Jane, who usually goes about ten, left a few minutes earlier
+on the night of December 3rd, so that she didn't know of Constant's
+visit, was a relevant accident. In fact, just as the art of the artist or
+the editor consists largely in knowing what to leave out, so does the art
+of the scientific detector of crime consist in knowing what details to
+ignore. In short, to explain everything is to explain too much. And too
+much is worse than too little.
+
+"To return to my experiment. My success exceeded my wildest dreams. None
+had an inkling of the truth. The insolubility of the Big Bow Mystery
+teased the acutest minds in Europe and the civilised world. That a man
+could have been murdered in a thoroughly inaccessible room savoured of
+the ages of magic. The redoubtable Wimp, who had been blazoned as my
+successor, fell back on the theory of suicide. The mystery would have
+slept till my death, but--I fear--for my own ingenuity. I tried to stand
+outside myself, and to look at the crime with the eyes of another, or of
+my old self. I found the work of art so perfect as to leave only one
+sublimely simple solution. The very terms of the problem were so
+inconceivable that, had I not been the murderer, I should have suspected
+myself, in conjunction, of course, with Mrs. Drabdump. The first persons
+to enter the room would have seemed to me guilty. I wrote at once (in a
+disguised hand and over the signature of 'One who looks through his own
+spectacles') to the _Pell Mell Press_ to suggest this. By associating
+myself thus with Mrs. Drabdump I made it difficult for people to
+dissociate the two who entered the room together. To dash a half-truth in
+the world's eyes is the surest way of blinding it altogether. This
+pseudonymous letter of mine I contradicted (in my own name) the next day,
+and in the course of the long letter which I was tempted to write, I
+adduced fresh evidence against the theory of suicide. I was disgusted
+with the open verdict, and wanted men to be up and doing and trying to
+find me out. I enjoyed the hunt more.
+
+"Unfortunately, Wimp, set on the chase again by my own letter, by dint of
+persistent blundering, blundered into a track which--by a devilish tissue
+of coincidences I had neither foreseen nor dreamt of--seemed to the world
+the true. Mortlake was arrested and condemned. Wimp had apparently
+crowned his reputation. This was too much. I had taken all this trouble
+merely to put a feather in Wimp's cap, whereas I had expected to shake
+his reputation by it. It was bad enough that an innocent man should
+suffer; but that Wimp should achieve a reputation he did not deserve, and
+over-shadow all his predecessors by dint of a colossal mistake, this
+seemed to me intolerable. I have moved heaven and earth to get the
+verdict set aside, and to save the prisoner; I have exposed the weakness
+of the evidence; I have had the world searched for the missing girl; I
+have petitioned and agitated. In vain. I have failed. Now I play my last
+card. As the overweening Wimp could not be allowed to go down to
+posterity as the solver of this terrible mystery, I decided that the
+condemned man might just as well profit by his exposure. That is the
+reason I make the exposure to-night, before it is too late to save
+Mortlake."
+
+"So that is the reason?" said the Home Secretary, with a suspicion of
+mockery in his tones.
+
+"The sole reason."
+
+Even as he spoke, a deeper roar than ever penetrated the study.
+
+"A Reprieve! Hooray! Hooray!" The whole street seemed to rock with
+earthquake and the names of Grodman and Mortlake to be thrown up in a
+fiery jet. "A Reprieve! A Reprieve!" And then the very windows rattled
+with cheers for the Minister. And even above that roar rose the shrill
+voices of the newsboys, "Reprieve of Mortlake! Mortlake Reprieved!"
+Grodman looked wonderingly towards the street. "How do they know?" he
+murmured.
+
+"Those evening papers are amazing," said the Minister, drily. "But I
+suppose they had everything ready in type for the contingency." He turned
+to his secretary.
+
+"Templeton, have you got down every word of Mr. Grodman's confession?"
+
+"Every word, sir."
+
+"Then bring in the cable you received just as Mr. Grodman entered the
+house."
+
+Templeton went back into the outer room and brought back the cablegram
+that had been lying on the Minister's writing-table when Grodman came in.
+The Home Secretary silently handed it to his visitor. It was from the
+Chief of Police of Melbourne, announcing that Jessie Dymond had just
+arrived in that city in a sailing vessel, ignorant of all that had
+occurred, and had been immediately despatched back to England, having
+made a statement entirely corroborating the theory of the defence.
+
+"Pending further inquiries into this," said the Home Secretary, not
+without appreciation of the grim humour of the situation as he glanced at
+Grodman's ashen cheeks, "I have reprieved the prisoner. Mr. Templeton was
+about to despatch the messenger to the governor of Newgate as you entered
+this room. Mr. Wimp's card-castle would have tumbled to pieces without
+your assistance. Your still undiscoverable crime would have shaken his
+reputation as you intended."
+
+A sudden explosion shook the room and blent with the cheers of the
+populace. Grodman had shot himself--very scientifically--in the heart. He
+fell at the Home Secretary's feet, stone dead.
+
+Some of the working men who had been standing waiting by the shafts of
+the hansom helped to bear the stretcher.
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+MERELY MARY ANN
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+Sometimes Lancelot's bell rang up Mrs. Leadbatter herself, but far more
+often merely Mary Ann.
+
+The first time Lancelot saw Mary Ann she was cleaning the steps. He
+avoided treading upon her, being kind to animals. For the moment she was
+merely a quadruped, whose head was never lifted to the stars. Her faded
+print dress showed like the quivering hide of some crouching animal.
+There were strange irregular splashes of pink in the hide, standing out
+in bright contrast with the neutral background. These were scraps of the
+original material neatly patched in.
+
+The cold, damp steps gave Lancelot a shudder, for the air was raw. He
+passed by the prostrate figure as quickly as he could, and hastened to
+throw himself into the easy chair before the red fire.
+
+There was a lamp-post before the door, so he knew the house from its
+neighbours. Baker's Terrace as a whole was a defeated aspiration after
+gentility. The more auspicious houses were marked by white stones, the
+steps being scrubbed and hearth-stoned almost daily; the gloomier
+doorsteps were black, except on Sundays. Thus variety was achieved by
+houses otherwise as monotonous and prosaic as a batch of fourpenny
+loaves. This was not the reason why the little South London side-street
+was called Baker's Terrace, though it might well seem so; for Baker
+was the name of the builder, a worthy gentleman whose years and virtues
+may still be deciphered on a doddering, round-shouldered stone in a
+deceased cemetery not far from the scene of his triumphs.
+
+The second time Lancelot saw Mary Ann he did not remember having seen her
+before. This time she was a biped, and wore a white cap. Besides, he
+hardly glanced at her. He was in a bad temper, and Beethoven was barking
+terribly at the intruder who stood quaking in the doorway, so that the
+crockery clattered on the tea-tray she bore. With a smothered oath
+Lancelot caught up the fiery little spaniel and rammed him into the
+pocket of his dressing-gown, where he quivered into silence like a struck
+gong. While the girl was laying his breakfast, Lancelot, who was looking
+moodily at the pattern of the carpet as if anxious to improve upon it,
+was vaguely conscious of relief in being spared his landlady's
+conversation. For Mrs. Leadbatter was a garrulous body, who suffered
+from the delusion that small-talk is a form of politeness, and that her
+conversation was part of the "all inclusive" her lodgers stipulated for.
+The disease was hereditary, her father having been a barber, and
+remarkable for the coolness with which, even as a small boy whose
+function was lathering and nothing more, he exchanged views about the
+weather with his victims.
+
+The third time Lancelot saw Mary Ann he noticed that she was rather
+pretty. She had a slight, well-built figure, not far from tall, small
+shapely features, and something of a complexion. This did not displease
+him: she was a little aesthetic touch amid the depressing furniture.
+
+"Don't be afraid, Polly," he said more kindly. "The little devil won't
+bite. He's all bark. Call him Beethoven and throw him a bit of sugar."
+
+The girl threw Beethoven the piece of sugar, but did not venture on the
+name. It seemed to her a long name for such a little dog. As she timidly
+took the sugar from the basin by the aid of the tongs, Lancelot saw how
+coarse and red her hand was. It gave him the same sense of repugnance and
+refrigescence as the cold, damp steps. Something he was about to say
+froze on his lips. He did not look at Mary Ann for some days; by which
+time Beethoven had conquered his distrust of her, though she was still
+distrustful of Beethoven, drawing her skirts tightly about her as if he
+were a rat. What forced Mary Ann again upon Lancelot's morose
+consciousness was a glint of winter sunshine that settled on her light
+brown hair. He said, "By the way, Susan, tell your mistress--or is it
+your mother?"
+
+Mary Ann shook her head but did not speak.
+
+"Oh, you are not Miss Leadbatter?"
+
+"No; Mary Ann."
+
+She spoke humbly; her eyes were shy and would not meet his. He winced as
+he heard the name, though her voice was not unmusical.
+
+"Ah, Mary Ann! and I've been calling you Jane all along, Mary Ann what?"
+
+She seemed confused and flushed a little.
+
+"Mary Ann!" she murmured.
+
+"Merely Mary Ann?"
+
+"Yessir."
+
+He smiled. "Seems a sort of white Topsy," he was thinking.
+
+She stood still, holding in her hand the table-cloth she had just folded.
+Her eyes were downcast, and the glint of sunshine had leapt upon the long
+lashes.
+
+"Well, Mary Ann, tell your mistress there is a piano coming. It will
+stand over there--you'll have to move the sideboard somewhere else."
+
+"A piano!" Mary Ann opened her eyes, and Lancelot saw that they were
+large and pathetic. He could not see the colour for the glint of sunshine
+that touched them with false fire.
+
+"Yes; I suppose it will have to come up through the window, these
+staircases are so beastly narrow. Do you never have a stout person in the
+house, I wonder?"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir. We had a lodger here last year as was quite a fat man."
+
+"And did he come up through the window by a pulley?"
+
+He smiled at the image, and expected to see Mary Ann smile in response.
+He was disappointed when she did not; it was not only that her stolidity
+made his humour seem feeble--he half wanted to see how she looked when
+she smiled.
+
+"Oh, dear, no," said Mary Ann; "he lived on the ground floor!"
+
+"Oh!" murmured Lancelot, feeling the last sparkle taken from his humour.
+He was damped to the skin by Mary Ann's platitudinarian style of
+conversation. Despite its prettiness, her face was dulness incarnate.
+
+"Anyhow, remember to take in the piano if I'm out," he said tartly. "I
+suppose you've _seen_ a piano--you'll know it from a kangaroo?"
+
+"Yessir," breathed Mary Ann.
+
+"Oh, come, that's something. There is some civilisation in Baker's
+Terrace after all. But are you quite sure?" he went on, the teasing
+instinct getting the better of him. "Because, you know, you've never seen
+a kangaroo."
+
+Mary Ann's face lit up a little. "Oh, yes, I have, sir; it came to the
+village fair when I was a girl."
+
+"Oh, indeed!" said Lancelot, a little staggered; "what did it come there
+for--to buy a new pouch?"
+
+"No, sir; in a circus."
+
+"Ah, in a circus. Then, perhaps, you can _play_ the piano, too."
+
+Mary Ann got very red. "No, sir; missus never showed me how to do that."
+
+Lancelot surrendered himself to a roar of laughter. "This is a real
+original," he said to himself, just a touch of pity blending with his
+amusement.
+
+"I suppose, though, you'd be willing to lend a hand occasionally?" he
+could not resist saying.
+
+"Missus says I must do anything I'm asked," she said, in distress, the
+tears welling to her eyes. And a merciless bell mercifully sounding from
+an upper room, she hurried out.
+
+How much Mary Ann did, Lancelot never rightly knew, any more than he knew
+the number of lodgers in the house, or who cooked his chops in the
+mysterious regions below stairs. Sometimes he trod on the toes of boots
+outside doors and vaguely connected them with human beings, peremptory
+and exacting as himself. To Mary Ann each of those pairs of boots was a
+personality, with individual hours of rising and retiring, breakfasting
+and supping, going out and coming in, and special idiosyncrasies of diet
+and disposition. The population of 5 Baker's Terrace was nine, mostly
+bell-ringers. Life was one ceaseless round of multifarious duties; with
+six hours of blessed unconsciousness, if sleep were punctual. All the
+week long Mary Ann was toiling up and down the stairs or sweeping them,
+making beds or puddings, polishing boots or fire-irons. Holidays were not
+in Mary Ann's calendar; and if Sunday ever found her on her knees, it was
+only when she was scrubbing out the kitchen. All work and no play makes
+Jack a dull boy; it had not, apparently, made Mary Ann a bright girl.
+
+The piano duly came in through the window like a burglar. It was a good
+instrument, but hired. Under Lancelot's fingers it sang like a bird and
+growled like a beast. When the piano was done growling Lancelot usually
+started. He paced up and down the room, swearing audibly. Then he would
+sit down at the table and cover ruled paper with hieroglyphics for hours
+together. His movements were erratic to the verge of mystery. He had no
+fixed hours for anything; to Mary Ann he was hopeless. At any given
+moment he might be playing on the piano, or writing on the curiously
+ruled paper, or stamping about the room, or sitting limp with despair in
+the one easy chair, or drinking whisky and water, or smoking a black
+meerschaum, or reading a book, or lying in bed, or driving away in a
+hansom, or walking about Heaven alone knew where or why. Even Mrs.
+Leadbatter, whose experience of life was wider than Mary Ann's,
+considered his vagaries almost unchristian, though to the highest degree
+gentlemanly. Sometimes, too, he sported the swallow-tail and the starched
+breast-plate, which was a wonder to Mary Ann, who knew that waiters were
+connected only with the most stylish establishments. Baker's Terrace did
+not wear evening dress.
+
+Mary Ann liked him best in black and white. She thought he looked like
+the pictures in the young ladies' novelettes, which sometimes caught her
+eye as she passed newsvendors' shops on errands. Not that she was read in
+this literature--she had no time for reading. But, even when clothed in
+rough tweeds, Lancelot had for Mary Ann an aristocratic halo; in his
+dressing-gown he savoured of the grand Turk. His hands were masterful:
+the fingers tapering, the nails pedantically polished. He had fair hair,
+with moustache to match; his brow was high and white, and his grey eyes
+could flash fire. When he drew himself up to his full height, he
+threatened the gas globes. Never had No. 5 Baker's Terrace boasted of
+such a tenant. Altogether, Lancelot loomed large to Mary Ann; she dazzled
+him with his own boots in humble response, and went about sad after a
+reprimand for putting his papers in order. Her whole theory of life
+oscillated in the presence of a being whose views could so run counter to
+her strongest instincts. And yet, though the universe seemed tumbling
+about her ears when he told her she must not move a scrap of manuscript,
+howsoever wildly it lay about the floor or under the bed, she did not for
+a moment question his sanity. She obeyed him like a dog; uncomprehending,
+but trustful. But, after all, this was only of a piece with the rest of
+her life. There was nothing she questioned. Life stood at her bedside
+every morning in the cold dawn, bearing a day heaped high with duties;
+and she jumped cheerfully out of her warm bed and took them up one by
+one, without question or murmur. They were life. Life had no other
+meaning any more than it has for the omnibus hack, which cannot conceive
+existence outside shafts, and devoid of the intermittent flick of a whip
+point. The comparison is somewhat unjust; for Mary Ann did not fare
+nearly so well as the omnibus hack, having to make her meals off such
+scraps as even the lodgers sent back. Mrs. Leadbatter was extremely
+economical, as much so with the provisions in her charge as with those
+she bought for herself. She sedulously sent up remainders till they were
+expressly countermanded. Less economical by nature, and hungrier by
+habit, Mary Ann had much trouble in restraining herself from
+surreptitious pickings. Her conscience was rarely worsted; still there
+was a taint of dishonesty in her soul, else had the stairs been less of
+an ethical battle-ground for her. Lancelot's advent only made her
+hungrier; somehow the thought of nibbling at his provisions was too
+sacrilegious to be entertained. And yet--so queerly are we and life
+compounded--she was probably less unhappy at this period than Lancelot,
+who would come home in the vilest of tempers, and tramp the room with
+thunder on his white brow. Sometimes he and the piano and Beethoven would
+all be growling together, at other times they would all three be mute;
+Lancelot crouching in the twilight with his head in his hands, and
+Beethoven moping in the corner, and the closed piano looming in the
+background like a coffin of dead music.
+
+One February evening--an evening of sleet and mist--Lancelot, who had
+gone out in evening dress, returned unexpectedly, bringing with him for
+the first time a visitor. He was so perturbed that he forgot to use his
+latch-key, and Mary Ann, who opened the door, heard him say angrily,
+"Well, I can't slam the door in your face, but I will tell you in your
+face I don't think it at all gentlemanly of you to force yourself upon me
+like this."
+
+"My dear Lancelot, when did I ever set up to be a gentleman? You know
+that was always your part of the contract." And a swarthy, thick-set
+young man with a big nose lowered the dripping umbrella he had been
+holding over Lancelot, and stepped from the gloom of the street into the
+fuscous cheerfulness of the ill-lit passage.
+
+By this time Beethoven, who had been left at home, was in full ebullition
+upstairs, and darted at the intruder the moment his calves appeared.
+Beethoven barked with short sharp snaps, as became a bilious
+liver-coloured Blenheim spaniel.
+
+"Like master like dog," said the swarthy young man, defending himself at
+the point of the umbrella. "Really your animal is more intelligent than
+the over-rated common or garden dog, which makes no distinction between
+people calling in the small hours and people calling in broad daylight
+under the obvious patronage of its own master. This beast of yours is
+evidently more in sympathy with its liege lord. Down, Fido, down! I
+wonder they allow you to keep such noisy creatures--but stay! I was
+forgetting you keep a piano. After that, I suppose, nothing matters."
+
+Lancelot made no reply, but surprised Beethoven into silence by kicking
+him out of the way. He lit the gas with a neatly written sheet of music
+which he rammed into the fire Mary Ann had been keeping up, then as
+silently he indicated the easy chair.
+
+"Thank you," said the swarthy young man, taking it. "I would rather see
+you in it, but as there's only one I know you wouldn't be feeling a
+gentleman; and that would make us both uncomfortable."
+
+"'Pon my word, Peter," Lancelot burst forth, "you're enough to provoke a
+saint."
+
+"'Pon my word, Lancelot," replied Peter, imperturbably, "you're more than
+enough to provoke a sinner. Why, what have you to be ashamed of? You've
+got one of the cosiest dens in London and one of the comfortablest
+chairs. Why, it's twice as jolly as the garret we shared at Leipsic--up
+the ninety stairs."
+
+"We're not in Germany now. I don't want to receive visitors," answered
+Lancelot, sulkily.
+
+"A visitor! you call me a visitor! Lancelot, it's plain you were not
+telling the truth when you said just now you had forgiven me."
+
+"I had forgiven--and forgotten you."
+
+"Come, that's unkind. It's scarcely three years since I threw up my
+career as a genius, and you know why I left you, old man. When the first
+fever of youthful revolt was over, I woke to see things in their true
+light. I saw how mean it was of me to help to eat up your wretched
+thousand pounds. Neither of us saw the situation nakedly at first--it was
+sicklied o'er with Quixotic foolishness. You see, you had the advantage
+of me. Your governor was a gentleman. He says: 'Very well, if you won't
+go to Cambridge, if you refuse to enter the Church as the younger son of
+a blue-blooded but impecunious baronet should, and to step into the
+living which is fattening for you, then I must refuse to take any further
+responsibility for your future. Here is a thousand pounds; it is the
+money I had set aside for your college course. Use it for your musical
+tomfoolery if you insist, and then--get what living you can.' Which was
+severe but dignified, unpaternal yet patrician. But what does _my_
+governor do? That cantankerous, pig-headed old Philistine--God bless
+him!--he's got no sense of the respect a father owes to his offspring.
+Not an atom. You're simply a branch to be run on the lines of the old
+business or be shut up altogether. And, by the way, Lancelot, he hasn't
+altered a jot since those days when--as you remember--the City or
+starvation was his pleasant alternative. Of course I preferred
+starvation--one usually does at nineteen; especially if one knows there's
+a scion of aristocracy waiting outside to elope with him to Leipsic."
+
+"But you told me you were going back to your dad, because you found you
+had mistaken your vocation."
+
+"Gospel truth also! My Heavens, shall I ever forget the blank horror that
+grew upon me when I came to understand that music was a science more
+barbarous than the mathematics that floored me at school, that the life
+of a musical student, instead of being a delicious whirl of waltz tunes,
+was 'one dem'd grind,' that seemed to grind out all the soul of the
+divine art and leave nothing but horrid technicalities about consecutive
+fifths and suspensions on the dominant? I dare say most people still
+think of the musician as a being who lives in an enchanted world of
+sound, rather than as a person greatly occupied with tedious feats of
+penmanship; just as I myself still think of a _prima ballerina_ not as a
+hard-working gymnast but as a fairy, whose existence is all bouquets and
+lime-light."
+
+"But you had a pretty talent for the piano," said Lancelot, in milder
+accents. "No one forced you to learn composition. You could have learnt
+anything for the paltry fifteen pounds exacted by the Conservatoire--from
+the German flute to the grand organ; from singing to scoring band parts."
+
+"No, thank you. _Aut Caesar aut nihil_. You remember what I always used to
+say, 'Either Beethoven--' (The spaniel pricked up his ears)--'or bust.'
+If I could not be a great musician it was hardly worth while enduring the
+privations of one, especially at another man's expense. So I did the
+Prodigal Son dodge, as you know, and out of the proceeds sent you my
+year's exes in that cheque you with your damnable pride sent me back
+again. And now, old fellow, that I have you face to face at last, can you
+offer the faintest scintilla of a shadow of a reason for refusing to take
+that cheque? No, you can't! Nothing but simple beastly stuckuppishness.
+I saw through you at once; all your heroics were a fraud. I was not your
+friend, but your protege--something to practise your chivalry on. You
+dropped your cloak, and I saw your feet of clay. Well, I tell you
+straight, I made up my mind at once to be bad friends with you for life;
+only when I saw your fiery old phiz at Brahmson's I felt a sort of
+something tugging inside my greatcoat like a thief after my pocket-book,
+and I kinder knew, as the Americans say, that in half an hour I should be
+sitting beneath your hospitable roof."
+
+"I beg your pardon--you will have some whisky?" He rang the bell
+violently.
+
+"Don't be a fool--you know I didn't mean that. Well, don't let us
+quarrel. I have forgiven you for your youthful bounty, and you have
+forgiven me for chucking it up; and now we are going to drink to the
+Vaterland," he added, as Mary Ann appeared with suspicious alacrity.
+
+"Do you know," he went on, when they had taken the first sip of renewed
+amity dissolved in whisky, "I think I showed more musical soul than you
+in refusing to trammel my inspiration with the dull rules invented by
+fools. I suppose you have mastered them all, eh?" He picked up some
+sheets of manuscript. "Great Scot! How you must have schooled yourself to
+scribble all this--you, with your restless nature--full scores, too! I
+hope you don't offer this sort of thing to Brahmson."
+
+"I certainly went there with that intention," admitted Lancelot. "I
+thought I'd catch Brahmson himself in the evening--he's never in when I
+call in the morning."
+
+Peter groaned.
+
+"Quixotic as ever! You can't have been long in London then?"
+
+"A year."
+
+"I suppose you'd jump down my throat if I were to ask you how much is
+left of that--" he hesitated, then turned the sentence facetiously--"of
+those twenty thousand shillings you were cut off with?"
+
+"Let this vile den answer."
+
+"Don't disparage the den; it's not so bad."
+
+"You are right--I may come to worse. I've been an awful ass. You know how
+lucky I was while at the Conservatoire--no, you don't. How should you?
+Well, I carried off some distinctions and a lot of conceit, and came over
+here thinking Europe would be at my feet in a month. I was only sorry my
+father died before I could twit him with my triumph. That's candid, isn't
+it?"
+
+"Yes; you're not such a prig after all," mused Peter. "I saw the old
+man's death in the paper--your brother Lionel became the bart."
+
+"Yes, poor beggar, I don't hate him half so much as I did. He reminds me
+of a man invited to dinner which is nothing but flowers and serviettes
+and silver plate."
+
+"I'd pawn the plate, anyhow," said Peter, with a little laugh.
+
+"He can't touch anything, I tell you; everything's tied up."
+
+"Ah, well, he'll get tied up, too. He'll marry an American heiress."
+
+"Confound him! I'd rather see the house extinct first."
+
+"Hoity, toity! She'll be quite as good as any of you."
+
+"I can't discuss this with you, Peter," said Lancelot, gently but firmly.
+"If there is a word I hate more than the word heiress, it is the word
+American."
+
+"But why? They're both very good words and better things."
+
+"They both smack of the most vulgar thing in the world--money," said
+Lancelot, walking hotly about the room. "In America there's no other
+standard. To make your pile, to strike ile--oh, how I shudder to hear
+these idioms! And can any one hear the word heiress without immediately
+thinking of matrimony? Phaugh! It's a prostitution."
+
+"What is? You're not very coherent, my friend."
+
+"Very well, I am incoherent. If a great old family can only bolster up
+its greatness by alliances with the daughters of oil-strikers, then let
+the family perish with honour."
+
+"But the daughters of oil-strikers are sometimes very charming creatures.
+They are polished with their fathers' oil."
+
+"You are right. They reek of it. Pah! I pray to Heaven Lionel will either
+wed a lady or die a bachelor."
+
+"Yes; but what do you call a lady?" persisted Peter.
+
+Lancelot uttered an impatient snarl, and rang the bell violently. Peter
+stared in silence. Mary Ann appeared.
+
+"How often am I to tell you to leave my matches on the mantel-shelf?"
+snapped Lancelot. "You seem to delight to hide them away, as if I had
+time to play parlour games with you."
+
+Mary Ann silently went to the mantel-piece, handed him the matches, and
+left the room without a word.
+
+"I say, Lancelot, adversity doesn't seem to have agreed with you," said
+Peter, severely. "That poor girl's eyes were quite wet when she went out.
+Why didn't you speak? I could have given you heaps of lights, and you
+might even have sacrificed another scrap of that precious manuscript."
+
+"Well, she has got a knack of hiding my matches all the same," said
+Lancelot, somewhat shamefacedly. "Besides, I hate her for being called
+Mary Ann. It's the last terror of cheap apartments. If she only had
+another name like a human being, I'd gladly call her Miss something. I
+went so far as to ask her, and she stared at me in a dazed, stupid, silly
+way, as if I'd asked her to marry me. I suppose the fact is she's been
+called Mary Ann so long and so often that she's forgotten her father's
+name--if she ever had any. I must do her the justice, though, to say she
+answers to the name of Mary Ann in every sense of the phrase."
+
+"She didn't seem at all bad-looking, anyway," said Peter.
+
+"Every man to his taste!" growled Lancelot. "She's as _platt_ and
+uninteresting as a wooden sabot."
+
+"There's many a pretty foot in a sabot," retorted Peter, with an air of
+philosophy.
+
+"You think that's clever, but it's simply silly. How does that fact
+affect this particular sabot?"
+
+"I've put my foot in it," groaned Peter, comically.
+
+"Besides, she might be a houri from heaven," said Lancelot; "but a houri
+in a patched print frock--" He shuddered and struck a match.
+
+"I don't know exactly what houris from heaven are, but I have a kind of
+feeling any sort of frock would be out of harmony--!"
+
+Lancelot lit his pipe.
+
+"If you begin to say that sort of thing we must smoke," he said, laughing
+between the puffs. "I can offer you lots of tobacco--I'm sorry I've got
+no cigars. Wait till you see Mrs. Leadbatter--my landlady--then you'll
+talk about houris. Poverty may not be a crime, but it seems to make
+people awful bores. Wonder if it'll have that effect on me? _Ach Himmel!_
+how that woman bores me. No, there's no denying it--there's my pouch, old
+man--I hate the poor; their virtues are only a shade more vulgar than
+their vices. This Leadbatter creature is honest after her lights--she
+sends me up the most ridiculous leavings--and I only hate her the more
+for it."
+
+"I suppose she works Mary Ann's fingers to the bone from the same
+mistaken sense of duty," said Peter, acutely. "Thanks; think I'll try one
+of my cigars. I filled my case, I fancy, before I came out. Yes, here it
+is; won't _you_ try one?"
+
+"No, thanks, I prefer my pipe."
+
+"It's the same old meerschaum, I see," said Peter.
+
+"The same old meerschaum," repeated Lancelot, with a little sigh.
+
+Peter lit a cigar, and they sat and puffed in silence.
+
+"Dear me!" said Peter, suddenly; "I can almost fancy we're back in our
+German garret, up the ninety stairs, can't you?"
+
+"No," said Lancelot, sadly, looking round as if in search of something;
+"I miss the dreams."
+
+"And I," said Peter, striving to speak cheerfully, "I see a dog too
+much."
+
+"Yes," said Lancelot, with a melancholy laugh. "When you funked becoming
+a Beethoven, I got a dog and called him after you."
+
+"What? you called him Peter?"
+
+"No, Beethoven!"
+
+"Beethoven! Really?"
+
+"Really. Here, Beethoven!"
+
+The spaniel shook himself, and perked his wee nose up wistfully towards
+Lancelot's face.
+
+Peter laughed, with a little catch in his voice. He didn't know whether
+he was pleased, or touched, or angry.
+
+"You started to tell me about those twenty thousand shillings," he said.
+
+"Didn't I tell you? On the expectations of my triumph, I lived
+extravagantly, like a fool, joined a club, and took up my quarters there.
+When I began to realise the struggle that lay before me, I took chambers;
+then I took rooms; now I'm in lodgings. The more I realised it, the less
+rent I paid. I only go to the club for my letters now. I won't have them
+come here. I'm living incognito."
+
+"That's taking fame by the forelock, indeed! Then by what name must I ask
+for you next time? For I'm not to be shaken off."
+
+"Lancelot."
+
+"Lancelot what?"
+
+"Only Lancelot! Mr. Lancelot."
+
+"Why, that's like your Mary Ann!"
+
+"So it is!" he laughed, more bitterly than cordially; "it never struck me
+before. Yes, we are a pair."
+
+"How did you stumble on this place?"
+
+"I didn't stumble. Deliberate, intelligent selection. You see, it's the
+next best thing to Piccadilly. You just cross Waterloo Bridge, and there
+you are at the centre, five minutes from all the clubs. The natives have
+not yet risen to the idea."
+
+"You mean the rent," laughed Peter. "You're as canny and careful as a
+Scotch professor. I think it's simply grand the way you've beaten out
+those shillings, in defiance of your natural instincts. I should have
+melted them years ago. I believe you _have_ got some musical genius after
+all."
+
+"You over-rate my abilities," said Lancelot, with the whimsical
+expression that sometimes flashed across his face even in his most
+unamiable moments. "You must deduct the thalers I made in exhibitions.
+As for living in cheap lodgings, I am not at all certain it's an economy,
+for every now and again it occurs to you that you are saving an awful
+lot, and you take a hansom on the strength of it."
+
+"Well, I haven't torn up that cheque yet--"
+
+"Peter!" said Lancelot, his flash of gaiety dying away, "I tell you these
+things as a friend, not as a beggar. If you look upon me as the second, I
+cease to be the first."
+
+"But, man, I owe you the money; and if it will enable you to hold out a
+little longer--why, in Heaven's name, shouldn't you--?"
+
+"You don't owe me the money at all; I made no bargain with you; I am not
+a moneylender."
+
+"_Pack dick sum Henker!_" growled Peter, with a comical grimace. "_Was
+fuer_ a casuist! What a swindler you'd make! I wonder you have the face
+to deny the debt. Well, and how did you leave Frau Sauer-Kraut?" he said,
+deeming it prudent to sheer off the subject.
+
+"Fat as a Christmas turkey."
+
+"Or a German sausage. The extraordinary things that woman stuffed herself
+with!--chunks of fat, stewed apples, Kartoffel salad--all mixed up in one
+plate, as in a dustbin."
+
+"Don't! You make my gorge rise. _Ach Himmel!_ to think that this nation
+should be musical! O Music, heavenly maid, how much garlic I have endured
+for thy sake!"
+
+"Ha! ha! ha!" laughed Peter, putting down his whisky that he might throw
+himself freely back in the easy chair and roar.
+
+"O that garlic!" he said, panting. "No wonder they smoked so much in
+Leipsic. Even so they couldn't keep the reek out of the staircases.
+Still, it's a great country is Germany. Our house does a tremendous
+business in German patents."
+
+"A great country? A land of barbarians rather. How can a people be
+civilised that eats jam with its meat?"
+
+"Bravo, Lancelot! You're in lovely form to-night. You seem to go a
+hundred miles out of your way to come the truly British. First it was
+oil--now it's jam. There was that aristocratic flash in your eye, too,
+that look of supreme disdain which brings on riots in Trafalgar Square.
+Behind the patriotic, the national note, 'How can a people be civilised
+that eats jam with its meat?' I heard the deeper, the oligarchic accent,
+'How can a people be enfranchised that eats meat with its fingers?' Ah,
+you are right! How you do hate the poor! What bores they are! You
+aristocrats--the products of centuries of culture, comfort, and
+cocksureness--will never rid yourselves of your conviction that you are
+the backbone of England--no, not though that backbone were picked clean
+of every scrap of flesh by the rats of Radicalism."
+
+"What in the devil are you talking about now?" demanded Lancelot. "You
+seem to me to go a hundred miles out of _your_ way to twit me with my
+poverty and my breeding. One would almost think you were anxious to
+convince me of the poverty of _your_ breeding."
+
+"Oh, a thousand pardons!" ejaculated Peter, blushing violently. "But good
+heavens, old chap! There's your hot temper again. You surely wouldn't
+suspect _me_, of all people in the world, of meaning anything personal?
+I'm talking of you as a class. Contempt is in your blood--and quite
+right! We're such snobs, we deserve it. Why d'ye think I ever took to you
+as a boy at school? Was it because you scribbled inaccurate sonatas and I
+had myself a talent for knocking tunes off the piano? Not a bit of it. I
+thought it was, perhaps, but that was only one of my many youthful
+errors. No, I liked you because your father was an old English baronet,
+and mine was a merchant who trafficked mainly in things Teutonic. And
+that's why I like you still. 'Pon my soul it is. You gratify my historic
+sense--like an old building. You are picturesque. You stand to me for all
+the good old ideals--including the pride which we are beginning to see is
+deuced unchristian. Mind you, it's a curious kind of pride when one looks
+into it. Apparently it's based on the fact that your family has lived on
+the nation for generations. And yet you won't take my cheque--which is
+your own. Now don't swear--I know one mustn't analyse things, or the
+world would come to pieces, so I always vote Tory."
+
+"Then I shall have to turn Radical," grumbled Lancelot.
+
+"Certainly you will, when you have had a little more experience of
+poverty," retorted Peter. "There, there, old man! forgive me. I only do
+it to annoy you. Fact is, your outbursts of temper attract me. They are
+pleasant to look back upon when the storm is over. Yes, my dear Lancelot,
+you are like the king you look--you can do no wrong. You are picturesque.
+Pass the whisky."
+
+Lancelot smiled, his handsome brow serene once more. He murmured, "Don't
+talk rot," but inwardly he was not displeased at Peter's allegiance, half
+mocking though he knew it.
+
+"Therefore, my dear chap," resumed Peter, sipping his whisky and water,
+"to return to our lambs, I bow to your patrician prejudices in favour of
+forks. But your patriotic prejudices are on a different level. There, I
+am on the same ground as you, and I vow I see nothing inherently superior
+in the British combination of beef and beetroot, to the German amalgam
+of lamb and jam."
+
+"Damn lamb and jam!" burst forth Lancelot, adding, with his whimsical
+look: "There's rhyme, as well as reason. How on earth did we get on this
+tack?"
+
+"I don't know," said Peter, smiling. "We were talking about Frau
+Sauer-Kraut, I think. And did you board with her all the time?"
+
+"Yes, and I was always hungry. Till the last, I never learnt to stomach
+her mixtures. But it was really too much trouble to go down the ninety
+stairs to a restaurant. It was much easier to be hungry."
+
+"And did you ever get a reform in the hours of washing the floor?"
+
+"Ha! ha! ha! No, they always waited till I was going to bed. I suppose
+they thought I liked damp. They never got over my morning tub, you know.
+And that, too, sprang a leak after you left, and helped spontaneously to
+wash the floor."
+
+"Shows the fallacy of cleanliness," said Peter, "and the inferiority of
+British ideals. They never bathed in their lives, yet they looked the
+pink of health."
+
+"Yes,--their complexion was high,--like the fish."
+
+"Ha! ha! Yes, the fish! That was a great luxury, I remember. About once a
+month."
+
+"Of course, the town is so inland," said Lancelot.
+
+"I see--it took such a long time coming. Ha! ha! ha! And the Herr
+Professor--is he still a bachelor?"
+
+As the Herr Professor was a septuagenarian and a misogamist, even in
+Peter's time, his question tickled Lancelot. Altogether the two young men
+grew quite jolly, recalling a hundred oddities, and reknitting their
+friendship at the expense of the Fatherland.
+
+"But was there ever a more madcap expedition than ours?" exclaimed Peter.
+"Most boys start out to be pirates--"
+
+"And some do become music-publishers," Lancelot finished grimly, suddenly
+reminded of a grievance.
+
+"Ha! ha! ha! Poor fellow!" laughed Peter. "Then you _have_ found them out
+already."
+
+"Does any one ever find them in?" flashed Lancelot. "I suppose they do
+exist and are occasionally seen of mortal eyes. I suppose wives and
+friends and mothers gaze on them with no sense of special privilege,
+unconscious of their invisibility to the profane eyes of mere musicians."
+
+"My dear fellow, the mere musicians are as plentiful as niggers on the
+sea-shore. A publisher might spend his whole day receiving regiments of
+unappreciated geniuses. Bond Street would be impassable. You look at the
+publisher too much from your own standpoint."
+
+"I tell you I don't look at him from any standpoint. That's what I
+complain of. He's encircled with a prickly hedge of clerks. 'You will
+hear from us.' 'It shall have our best consideration. We have no
+knowledge of the Ms. in question.' Yes, Peter, two valuable quartets have
+I lost, messing about with these villains."
+
+"I tell you what. I'll give you an introduction to Brahmson. I know
+him--privately."
+
+"No, thank you, Peter."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because you know him."
+
+"I couldn't give you an introduction if I didn't. This is silly of you,
+Lancelot."
+
+"If Brahmson can't see any merits in my music, I don't want you to open
+his eyes. I'll stand on my own bottom. And what's more, Peter, I tell you
+once for all"--his voice was low and menacing--"if you try any anonymous
+_deus ex machina_ tricks on me in some sly, roundabout fashion, don't you
+flatter yourself I shan't recognise your hand. I shall, and, by God, it
+shall never grasp mine again."
+
+"I suppose you think that's very noble and sublime," said Peter, coolly.
+"You don't suppose if I could do you a turn I'd hesitate for fear of
+excommunication? I know you're like Beethoven there--your bark is worse
+than your bite."
+
+"Very well; try. You'll find my teeth nastier than you bargain for."
+
+"I'm not going to try. If you want to go to the dogs--go. Why should I
+put out a hand to stop you?"
+
+These amenities having reestablished them in their mutual esteem, they
+chatted lazily and spasmodically till past midnight, with more smoke than
+fire in the conversation.
+
+At last Peter began to go, and in course of time actually did take up his
+umbrella. Not long after, Lancelot conducted him softly down the dark,
+silent stairs, holding his bedroom candle-stick in his hand, for Mrs.
+Leadbatter always turned out the hall lamp on her way to bed. The old
+phrases came to the young men's lips as their hands met in a last hearty
+grip.
+
+"_Lebt wohl!_" said Lancelot.
+
+"_Auf Wiedersehen!_" replied Peter, threateningly.
+
+Lancelot stood at the hall door looking for a moment after his
+friend--the friend he had tried to cast out of his heart as a recreant.
+The mist had cleared--the stars glittered countless in the frosty heaven;
+a golden crescent-moon hung low; the lights and shadows lay almost
+poetically upon the little street. A rush of tender thoughts whelmed the
+musician's soul. He saw again the dear old garret, up the ninety stairs,
+in the Hotel Cologne, where he had lived with his dreams; he heard the
+pianos and violins going in every room in happy incongruity, publishing
+to all the prowess of the players; dirty, picturesque old Leipsic rose
+before him; he was walking again in the _Hainstrasse_, in the shadow of
+the quaint, tall houses. Yes, life was sweet after all; he was a coward
+to lose heart so soon; fame would yet be his; fame and love--the love of
+a noble woman that fame earns; some gracious creature, breathing sweet
+refinements, cradled in an ancient home, such as he had left for ever.
+
+The sentimentality of the Fatherland seemed to have crept into his soul;
+a divinely sweet, sad melody was throbbing in his brain. How glad he was
+he had met Peter again!
+
+From a neighbouring steeple came a harsh, resonant clang, "One."
+
+It roused him from his dream. He shivered a little, closed the door,
+bolted it and put up the chain, and turned, half sighing, to take up
+his bedroom candle again. Then his heart stood still for a moment. A
+figure--a girl's figure--was coming towards him from the kitchen stairs.
+As she came into the dim light he saw that it was merely Mary Ann.
+
+She looked half drowsed. Her cap was off, her hair tangled loosely over
+her forehead. In her disarray she looked prettier than he had ever
+remembered her. There was something provoking about the large, dreamy
+eyes, the red lips that parted at the unexpected sight of him.
+
+"Good heavens!" he cried. "Not gone to bed yet?"
+
+"No, sir. I had to stay up to wash up a lot of crockery. The second floor
+front had some friends to supper late. Missus says she won't stand it
+again."
+
+"Poor thing!" He patted her soft cheek--it grew hot and rosy under his
+fingers, but was not withdrawn. Mary Ann made no sign of resentment. In
+his mood of tenderness to all creation his rough words to her recurred to
+him.
+
+"You mustn't mind what I said about the matches," he murmured. "When I am
+in a bad temper I say anything. Remember now for the future, will you?"
+
+"Yessir."
+
+Her face--its blushes flickered over strangely by the
+candle-light--seemed to look up at him invitingly.
+
+"That's a good girl." And bending down he kissed her on the lips.
+
+"Good night," he murmured.
+
+Mary Ann made some startled, gurgling sound in reply.
+
+Five minutes afterwards Lancelot was in bed, denouncing himself as a
+vulgar beast.
+
+"I must have drunk too much whisky," he said to himself, angrily. "Good
+heavens! Fancy sinking to Mary Ann. If Peter had only seen--There was
+infinitely more poetry in that red-cheeked _Maedchen_, and yet I never--It
+is true-there is something sordid about the atmosphere that subtly
+permeates you, that drags you down to it. Mary Ann! A transpontine
+drudge! whose lips are fresh from the coalman's and the butcher's.
+Phaugh!"
+
+The fancy seized hold of his imagination. He could not shake it off,
+he could not sleep till he had got out of bed and sponged his lips
+vigorously.
+
+Meanwhile Mary Ann was lying on her bed, dressed, doing her best to keep
+her meaningless, half-hysterical sobs from her mistress's keen ear.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+It was a long time before Mary Ann came so prominently into the centre of
+Lancelot's consciousness again. She remained somewhere in the outer
+periphery of his thought--nowhere near the bull's-eye, so to speak--as a
+vague automaton that worked when he pulled a bell-rope. Infinitely more
+important things were troubling him; the visit of Peter had somehow put a
+keener edge on his blunted self-confidence; he had started a grand opera,
+and worked at it furiously in all the intervals left him by his
+engrossing pursuit after a publisher. Sometimes he would look up from his
+hieroglyphics and see Mary Ann at his side surveying him curiously, and
+then he would start, and remember he had rung her up, and try to remember
+what for. And Mary Ann would turn red, as if the fault was hers.
+
+But the publisher was the one thing that was never out of Lancelot's
+mind, though he drove Lancelot himself nearly out of it. He was like an
+arrow stuck in the aforesaid bull's-eye, and, the target being conscious,
+he rankled sorely. Lancelot discovered that the publisher kept a "musical
+adviser," whose advice appeared to consist of the famous monosyllable,
+"Don't." The publisher generally published all the musical adviser's own
+works, his advice having apparently been neglected when it was most worth
+taking; at least so Lancelot thought, when he had skimmed through a set
+of Lancers by one of these worthies.
+
+"I shall give up being a musician," he said to himself, grimly. "I shall
+become a musical adviser."
+
+Once, half by accident, he actually saw a publisher. "My dear sir," said
+the great man, "what is the use of bringing quartets and full scores to
+me? You should have taken them to Brahmson; he's the very man you want.
+You know his address, of course--just down the street."
+
+Lancelot did not like to say that it was Brahmson's clerks that had
+recommended him here; so he replied, "But you publish operas, oratorios,
+cantatas!"
+
+"Ah, yes!--h'm--things that have been played at the big
+Festivals--composers of prestige--quite a different thing, sir, quite
+a different thing. There's no sale for these things--none at all,
+sir--public never heard of you. Now, if you were to write some
+songs--nice catchy tunes--high class, you know, with pretty words--"
+
+Now Lancelot by this time was aware of the publisher's wily ways; he
+could almost have constructed an Ollendorffian dialogue, entitled
+"Between a Music Publisher and a Composer." So he opened his portfolio
+again and said, "I have brought some."
+
+"Well, send--send them in," stammered the publisher, almost disconcerted.
+"They shall have our best consideration."
+
+"Oh, but you might just as well look over them at once," said Lancelot,
+firmly, uncoiling them. "It won't take you five minutes--just let me play
+one to you. The tunes are rather more original than the average, I can
+promise you; and yet I think they have a lilt that--"
+
+"I really can't spare the time now. If you leave them, we will do our
+best."
+
+"Listen to this bit!" said Lancelot, desperately. And dashing at a piano
+that stood handy, he played a couple of bars. "That's quite a new
+modulation."
+
+"That's all very well," said the publisher; "but how do you suppose I'm
+going to sell a thing with an accompaniment like that? Look here, and
+here! Why, it's all accidentals."
+
+"That's the best part of the song," explained Lancelot; "a sort of
+undercurrent of emotion that brings out the full pathos of the words.
+Note the elegant and novel harmonies." He played another bar or two,
+singing the words softly.
+
+"Yes; but if you think you'll get young ladies to play that, you've got a
+good deal to learn," said the publisher, gruffly. "This is the sort of
+accompaniment that goes down," and seating himself at the piano for a
+moment (somewhat to Lancelot's astonishment, for he had gradually formed
+a theory that music publishers did not really know the staff from a
+five-barred gate), he rattled off the melody with his right hand,
+pounding away monotonously with his left at a few elementary chords.
+
+Lancelot looked dismayed.
+
+"That's the kind of thing you'll have to produce, young man," said the
+publisher, feeling that he had at last resumed his natural supremacy, "if
+you want to get your songs published. Elegant harmonies are all very
+well, but who's to play them?"
+
+"And do you mean to say that a musician in this God-forsaken country must
+have no chords but tonics and dominants?" ejaculated Lancelot, hotly.
+
+"The less he has of any other the better," said the great man, drily. "I
+haven't said a word about the melody itself, which is quite out of the
+ordinary compass, and makes demands upon the singer's vocalisation which
+are not likely to make a demand for the song. What you have to remember,
+my dear sir, if you wish to achieve success, is that music, if it is to
+sell, must appeal to the average amateur young person. The average
+amateur young person is the main prop of music in this country."
+
+Lancelot snatched up his song and tied the strings of his portfolio very
+tightly, as if he were clenching his lips.
+
+"If I stay here any longer I shall swear," he said. "Good afternoon."
+
+He went out with a fire at his heart that made him insensitive to the
+frost without. He walked a mile out of his way mechanically, then,
+perceiving his stupidity, avenged it by jumping into a hansom. He dared
+not think how low his funds were running. When he got home he forgot to
+have his tea, crouching in dumb misery in his easy chair, while the coals
+in the grate faded like the sunset from red to grey, and the dusk of
+twilight deepened into the gloom of night, relieved only by a gleam
+from the street lamp.
+
+The noise of the door opening made him look up.
+
+"Beg pardon, sir. I didn't yer ye come in."
+
+It was Mary Ann's timid accents. Lancelot's head drooped again on his
+breast. He did not answer.
+
+"You've bin and let your fire go out, sir."
+
+"Don't bother!" he grumbled. He felt a morbid satisfaction in this
+aggravation of discomfort, almost symbolic as it was of his sunk
+fortunes.
+
+"Oh, but it'll freeze 'ard to-night, sir. Let me make it up." Taking his
+sullen silence for consent she ran downstairs and reappeared with some
+sticks. Soon there were signs of life, which Mary Ann assiduously
+encouraged by blowing at the embers with her mouth. Lancelot looked on in
+dull apathy, but as the fire rekindled and the little flames leapt up and
+made Mary Ann's flushed face the one spot of colour and warmth in the
+cold dark room, Lancelot's torpidity vanished suddenly. The sensuous
+fascination seized him afresh, and ere he was aware of it he was lifting
+the pretty face by the chin.
+
+"I'm so sorry to be so troublesome, Mary Ann. There, you shall give me a
+kiss to show you bear no malice."
+
+The warm lips obediently met his, and for a moment Lancelot forgot his
+worries while he held her soft cheek against his.
+
+This time the shock of returning recollection was not so violent as
+before. He sat up in his chair, but his right arm still twined
+negligently round her neck, the fingers patting the warm face. "A fellow
+must have something to divert his mind," he thought, "or he'd go mad. And
+there's no harm done--the poor thing takes it as a kindness, I'm sure. I
+suppose _her_ life's dull enough. We're a pair." He felt her shoulders
+heaving a little, as if she were gulping down something. At last she
+said: "You ain't troublesome. I ought to ha' yerd ye come in."
+
+He released her suddenly. Her words broke the spell. The vulgar accent
+gave him a shudder.
+
+"Don't you _hear_ a bell ringing?" he said with dual significance.
+
+"Nosir," said Mary Ann, ingenuously. "I'd yer it in a moment if there
+was. I yer it in my dreams, I'm so used to it. One night I dreamt the
+missus was boxin' my yers and askin' me if I was deaf and I said to
+'er--"
+
+"Can't you say 'her'?" cried Lancelot, cutting her short impatiently.
+
+"Her," said Mary Ann.
+
+"Then why do you say ''er'?"
+
+"Missus told me to. She said my own way was all wrong."
+
+"Oh, indeed!" said Lancelot. "It's missus that has corrupted you, is it?
+And pray what used you to say?"
+
+"She," said Mary Ann.
+
+Lancelot was taken aback. "She!" he repeated.
+
+"Yessir," said Mary Ann, with a dawning suspicion that her own vocabulary
+was going to be vindicated; "whenever I said 'she' she made me say ''er,'
+and whenever I said 'her' she made me say 'she.' When I said 'her and me'
+she made me say 'me and she,' and when I said 'I got it from she,' she
+made me say 'I got it from ''er.'"
+
+"Bravo! A very lucid exposition," said Lancelot, laughing. "Did she set
+you right in any other particulars?"
+
+"Eessir--I mean yessir," replied Mary Ann, the forbidden words flying to
+her lips like prisoned skylarks suddenly set free. "I used to say, 'Gie I
+thek there broom, oo't?' 'Arten thee goin' to?' 'Her did say to I.' 'I be
+goin' on to bed.' 'Look at--'"
+
+"Enough! Enough! What a memory you've got! Now I understand. You're a
+country girl."
+
+"Eessir," said Mary Ann, her face lighting up. "I mean yessir."
+
+"Well, that redeems you a little," thought Lancelot, with his whimsical
+look. "So it's missus, is it, who's taught you Cockneyese? My instinct
+was not so unsound, after all. I dare say you'll turn out something
+nobler than a Cockney drudge." He finished aloud, "I hope you went
+a-milking."
+
+"Eessir, sometimes; and I drove back the milk-trunk in the cart, and I
+rode down on a pony to the second pasture to count the sheep and the
+heifers."
+
+"Then you are a farmer's daughter?"
+
+"Eessir. But my feyther--I mean my father--had only two little fields
+when he was alive, but we had a nice garden, with plum trees, and rose
+bushes, and gillyflowers--"
+
+"Better and better," murmured Lancelot, smiling. And, indeed, the image
+of Mary Ann skimming the meads on a pony in the sunshine, was more
+pleasant to contemplate than that of Mary Ann whitening the wintry steps.
+"What a complexion you must have had to start with!" he cried aloud,
+surveying the not unenviable remains of it. "Well, and what else did you
+do?"
+
+Mary Ann opened her lips. It was delightful to see how the dull veil, as
+of London fog, had been lifted from her face; her eyes sparkled.
+
+Then, "Oh, there's the ground-floor bell," she cried, moving
+instinctively toward the door.
+
+"Nonsense; I hear no bell," said Lancelot.
+
+"I told you I always _hear_ it," said Mary Ann, hesitating and blushing
+delicately before the critical word.
+
+"Oh, well, run along then. Stop a moment--I must give you another kiss
+for talking so nicely. There! And--stop a moment--bring me up some
+coffee, please, when the ground floor is satisfied."
+
+"Eessir--I mean yessir. What must I say?" she added, pausing troubled on
+the threshold.
+
+"Say, 'Yes, Lancelot,'" he answered recklessly.
+
+"Yessir," and Mary Ann disappeared.
+
+It was ten endless minutes before she reappeared with the coffee. The
+whole of the second five minutes Lancelot paced his room feverishly,
+cursing the ground floor, and stamping as if to bring down its ceiling.
+He was curious to know more of Mary Ann's history.
+
+But it proved meagre enough. Her mother died when Mary Ann was a child;
+her father when she was still a mere girl. His affairs were found in
+hopeless confusion, and Mary Ann was considered lucky to be taken into
+the house of the well-to-do Mrs. Leadbatter, of London, the elder sister
+of a young woman who had nursed the vicar's wife. Mrs. Leadbatter had
+promised the vicar to train up the girl in the way a domestic should go.
+
+"And when I am old enough she is going to pay me wages as well,"
+concluded Mary Ann, with an air of importance.
+
+"Indeed--how old were you when you left the village?"
+
+"Fourteen."
+
+"And how old are you now?"
+
+Mary Ann looked confused. "I don't quite know," she murmured.
+
+"Oh, come," said Lancelot laughingly; "is this your country simplicity?
+You're quite young enough to tell how old you are."
+
+The tears came into Mary Ann's eyes.
+
+"I can't, Mr. Lancelot," she protested earnestly; "I forgot to
+count--I'll ask missus."
+
+"And whatever she tells you, you'll be," he said, amused at her
+unshakable loyalty.
+
+"Yessir," said Mary Ann.
+
+"And so you are quite alone in the world?"
+
+"Yessir--but I've got my canary. They sold everything when my father
+died, but the vicar's wife she bought my canary back for me because I
+cried so. And I brought it to London and it hangs in my bedroom. And the
+vicar, he was so kind to me, he did give me a lot of advice, and Mrs.
+Amersham, who kept the chandler's shop, she did give me ninepence, all in
+threepenny bits."
+
+"And you never had any brothers or sisters?"
+
+"There was our Sally, but she died before mother."
+
+"Nobody else?"
+
+"There's my big brother Tom--but I mustn't tell you about him."
+
+"Mustn't tell me about him? Why not?"
+
+"He's so wicked."
+
+The answer was so unexpected that Lancelot could not help laughing, and
+Mary Ann flushed to the roots of her hair.
+
+"Why, what has he done?" said Lancelot, composing his mouth to gravity.
+
+"I don't know; I was only six. Father told me it was something very
+dreadful, and Tom had to run away to America, and I mustn't mention him
+any more. And mother was crying, and I cried because Tom used to give me
+tickey-backs and go black-berrying with me and our little Sally; and
+everybody else in the village they seemed glad, because they had said so
+all along, because Tom would never go to church, even when a little boy."
+
+"I suppose then _you_ went to church regularly?"
+
+"Yessir. When I was at home, I mean."
+
+"Every Sunday?"
+
+Mary Ann hung her head. "Once I went meechin'," she said in low tones.
+"Some boys and girls they wanted me to go nutting, and I wanted to go
+too, but I didn't know how to get away, and they told me to cough very
+loud when the sermon began, so I did, and coughed on and on till at last
+the vicar glowed at father, and father had to send me out of church."
+
+Lancelot laughed heartily. "Then you didn't like the sermon."
+
+"It wasn't that, sir. The sun was shining that beautiful outside, and I
+never minded the sermon, only I did get tired of sitting still. But I
+never done it again--our little Sally, she died soon after."
+
+Lancelot checked his laughter. "Poor little fool!" he thought. Then to
+brighten her up again he asked cheerily, "And what else did you do on the
+farm?"
+
+"Oh, please sir, missus will be wanting me now."
+
+"Bother missus. I want some more milk," he said, emptying the milk-jug
+into the slop-basin. "Run down and get some."
+
+Mary Ann was startled by the splendour of the deed. She took the jug
+silently and disappeared.
+
+When she returned he said: "Well, you haven't told me half yet. I suppose
+you kept bees?"
+
+"Oh, yes, and I fed the pigs."
+
+"Hang the pigs! Let's hear something more romantic."
+
+"There was the calves to suckle sometimes, when the mother died or was
+sold."
+
+"Calves! H'm! H'm! Well, but how could you do that?"
+
+"Dipped my fingers in milk, and let the calves suck 'em. The silly
+creatures thought it was their mother's teats. Like this."
+
+With a happy inspiration she put her fingers into the slop-basin, and
+held them up dripping.
+
+Lancelot groaned. It was not only that his improved Mary Ann was again
+sinking to earth, unable to soar in the romantic aether where he would
+fain have seen her volant; it was not only that the coarseness of her
+nature had power to drag her down, it was the coarseness of her red,
+chapped hands that was thrust once again and violently upon his reluctant
+consciousness.
+
+Then, like Mary Ann, he had an inspiration.
+
+"How would you like a pair of gloves, Mary Ann?"
+
+He had struck the latent feminine. Her eyes gleamed. "Oh, sir!" was all
+she could say. Then a swift shade of disappointment darkened the eager
+little face.
+
+"But I never goes out," she cried.
+
+"I never _go_ out," he corrected, shuddering.
+
+"I never _go_ out," said Mary Ann, her lip twitching.
+
+"That doesn't matter. I want you to wear them indoors."
+
+"But there's nobody to see 'em indoors!"
+
+"I shall see them," he reminded her.
+
+"But they'll get dirty."
+
+"No they won't. You shall only wear them when you come to me. If I buy
+you a nice pair of gloves, will you promise to put them on every time I
+ring for you?"
+
+"But what'll missus say?"
+
+"Missus won't see them. The moment you come in, you'll put them on, and
+just before going out--you'll take them off! See!"
+
+"Yessir. Then nobody'll see me looking so grand but you."
+
+"That's it. And wouldn't you rather look grand for me than for anybody
+else?"
+
+"Of course I would, sir," said Mary Ann, earnestly, with a grateful
+little sigh.
+
+So Lancelot measured her wrist, feeling her pulse beat madly. She really
+had a very little hand, though to his sensitive vision the roughness of
+the skin seemed to swell it to a size demanding a boxing glove. He bought
+her six pairs of tan kid, in a beautiful cardboard box. He could ill
+afford the gift, and made one of his whimsical grimaces when he got the
+bill. The young lady who served him looked infinitely more genteel than
+Mary Ann. He wondered what she would think if she knew for whom he was
+buying these dainty articles. Perhaps her feelings would be so outraged
+she would refuse to participate in the transaction. But the young lady
+was happily unconscious; she had her best smile for the handsome,
+aristocratic young gentleman, and mentioned his moustache later to her
+bosom-friend in the next department.
+
+And thus Mary Ann and Lancelot became the joint owners of a secret, and
+coplayers in a little comedy. When Mary Ann came into the room, she would
+put whatever she was carrying on a chair, gravely extract her gloves from
+her pocket, and draw them on, Lancelot pretending not to know she was in
+the room, though he had just said, "Come in." After allowing her a minute
+he would look up. In the course of a week this became mechanical, so that
+he lost the semi-ludicrous sense of secrecy which he felt at first, as
+well as the little pathetic emotion inspired by her absolute
+unconsciousness that the performance was not intended for her own
+gratification. Nevertheless, though he could now endure to see Mary Ann
+handling the sugar tongs, he remained cold to her for some weeks. He had
+kissed her again in the flush of her joy at the sight of the gloves, but
+after that there was a reaction. He rarely went to the club now (there
+was no one with whom he was in correspondence except music publishers,
+and they didn't reply), but he dropped in there once soon after the glove
+episode, looked over the papers in the smoking-room, and chatted with a
+popular composer and one or two men he knew. It was while the waiter was
+holding out the coffee-tray to him that Mary Ann flashed upon his
+consciousness. The thought of her seemed so incongruous with the sober
+magnificence, the massive respectability that surrounded him, the
+cheerful, marble hearth reddened with leaping flame, the luxurious
+lounges, the well-groomed old gentlemen smoking eighteenpenny cheroots,
+the suave, noiseless satellites, that Lancelot felt a sudden pang of
+bewildered shame. Why, the very waiter who stood bent before him would
+disdain her. He took his coffee hastily, with a sense of personal
+unworthiness. This feeling soon evaporated, but it left less of
+resentment against Mary Ann which made him inexplicable to her.
+Fortunately, her habit of acceptance saved her some tears, though she
+shed others. And there remained always the gloves. When she was putting
+them on she always felt she was slipping her hands in his.
+
+And then there was yet a further consolation.
+
+For the gloves had also a subtle effect on Lancelot. They gave him a
+sense of responsibility. Vaguely resentful as he felt against Mary Ann
+(in the intervals of his more definite resentment against publishers),
+he also felt that he could not stop at the gloves. He had started
+refining her, and he must go on till she was, so to speak, all gloves. He
+must cover up her coarse speech, as he had covered up her coarse hands.
+He owed that to the gloves; it was the least he could do for them. So,
+whenever Mary Ann made a mistake, Lancelot corrected her. He found these
+grammatical dialogues not uninteresting, and a vent for his ill-humour
+against publishers to boot. Very often his verbal corrections sounded
+astonishingly like reprimands. Here, again, Mary Ann was forearmed by her
+feeling that she deserved them. She would have been proud had she known
+how much Mr. Lancelot was satisfied with her aspirates, which came quite
+natural. She had only dropped her "h's" temporarily, as one drops country
+friends in coming to London. Curiously enough, Mary Ann did not regard
+the new locutions and pronunciations as superseding the old. They were a
+new language; she knew two others, her mother-tongue and her missus's
+tongue. She would as little have thought of using her new linguistic
+acquirements in the kitchen as of wearing her gloves there. They were for
+Lancelot's ears only, as her gloves were for his eyes.
+
+All this time Lancelot was displaying prodigious musical activity, so
+much so that the cost of ruled paper became a consideration. There was no
+form of composition he did not essay, none by which he made a shilling.
+Once he felt himself the prey of a splendid inspiration, and sat up all
+night writing at fever pitch, surrounded with celestial harmonies,
+audible to him alone; the little room resounded with the thunder of a
+mighty orchestra, in which every instrument sang to him individually--the
+piccolo, the flute, the oboes, the clarionets, filling the air with a
+silver spray of notes; the drums throbbing, the trumpets shrilling, the
+four horns pealing with long stately notes, the trombones and bassoons
+vibrating, the violins and violas sobbing in linked sweetness, the 'cello
+and the contra-bass moaning their under-chant. And then, in the morning,
+when the first rough sketch was written, the glory faded. He threw down
+his pen, and called himself an ass for wasting his time on what nobody
+would ever look at. Then he laid his head on the table, overwrought, full
+of an infinite pity for himself. A sudden longing seized him for some one
+to love him, to caress his hair, to smooth his hot forehead. This mood
+passed too; he smoothed the slumbering Beethoven instead. After a while
+he went into his bedroom, and sluiced his face and hands in ice-cold
+water, and rang the bell for breakfast.
+
+There was a knock at the door in response.
+
+"Come in!" he said gently--his emotions had left him tired to the point
+of tenderness. And then he waited a minute while Mary Ann was drawing on
+her gloves.
+
+"Did you ring, sir?" said a wheezy voice, at last. Mrs. Leadbatter had
+got tired of waiting.
+
+Lancelot started violently--Mrs. Leadbatter had latterly left him
+entirely to Mary Ann. "It's my hastmer," she had explained to him
+apologetically, meeting him casually in the passage. "I can't trollop up
+and down stairs as I used to when I fust took this house five-an'-twenty
+year ago, and pore Mr. Leadbatter--" and here followed reminiscences
+long since in their hundredth edition.
+
+"Yes; let me have some coffee--very hot--please," said Lancelot, less
+gently. The woman's voice jarred upon him; and her features were not
+redeeming.
+
+"Lawd, sir, I 'ope that gas 'asn't been burnin' all night, sir," she
+said, as she was going out.
+
+"It has," he said shortly.
+
+"You'll hexcoose me, sir, but I didn't bargen for that. I'm only a
+pore, honest, 'ard-workin' widder, and I noticed the last gas bill was
+'eavier then hever since that black winter that took pore Mr. Leadbatter
+to 'is grave. Fair is fair, and I shall 'ave to reckon it a hextry, with
+the rate gone up sevenpence a thousand and my Rosie leavin' a fine
+nurse-maid's place in Bayswater at the end of the month to come 'ome and
+'elp 'er mother, 'cos my hastmer--"
+
+"Will you please shut the door after you?" interrupted Lancelot, biting
+his lip with irritation. And Mrs. Leadbatter, who was standing in the
+aperture with no immediate intention of departing, could find no repartee
+beyond slamming the door as hard as she could.
+
+This little passage of arms strangely softened Lancelot to Mary Ann. It
+made him realise faintly what her life must be.
+
+"I should go mad and smash all the crockery!" he cried aloud. He felt
+quite tender again towards the uncomplaining girl.
+
+Presently there was another knock. Lancelot growled, half prepared to
+renew the battle, and to give Mrs. Leadbatter a piece of his mind on the
+subject. But it was merely Mary Ann.
+
+Shaken in his routine, he looked on steadily while Mary Ann drew on her
+gloves; and this in turn confused Mary Ann. Her hand trembled.
+
+"Let me help you," he said.
+
+And there was Lancelot buttoning Mary Ann's glove just as if her name
+were Guinevere! And neither saw the absurdity of wasting time upon an
+operation which would have to be undone in two minutes. Then Mary Ann,
+her eyes full of soft light, went to the sideboard and took out the
+prosaic elements of breakfast.
+
+When she returned, to put them back, Lancelot was astonished to see her
+carrying a cage--a plain square cage, made of white tin wire.
+
+"What's that?" he gasped.
+
+"Please, Mr. Lancelot, I want to ask you to do me a favour." She dropped
+her eyelashes timidly.
+
+"Yes, Mary Ann," he said briskly. "But what have you got there?"
+
+"It's only my canary, sir. Would you--please, sir, would you mind?"--then
+desperately, "I want to hang it up here, sir!"
+
+"Here?" he repeated in frank astonishment. "Why?"
+
+"Please, sir, I--I--it's sunnier here, sir, and I--I think it must be
+pining away. It hardly ever sings in my bedroom."
+
+"Well, but," he began--then seeing the tears gathering on her eyelids, he
+finished with laughing good-nature--"as long as Mrs. Leadbatter doesn't
+reckon it an extra."
+
+"Oh, no, sir," said Mary Ann, seriously. "I'll tell her. Besides, she
+will be glad, because she don't like the canary--she says its singing
+disturbs her. Her room is next to mine, you know, Mr. Lancelot."
+
+"But you said it doesn't sing much."
+
+"Please, sir, I--I mean in summer," explained Mary Ann, in rosy
+confusion; "and--and--it'll soon be summer, sir."
+
+"Sw--e-e-t!" burst forth the canary, suddenly, as if encouraged by Mary
+Ann's opinion.
+
+It was a pretty little bird--one golden yellow from beak to tail, as
+though it had been dipped in sunshine.
+
+"You see, sir," she cried eagerly, "it's beginning already."
+
+"Yes," said Lancelot, grimly; "but so is Beethoven."
+
+"I'll hang it high up--in the window," said Mary Ann, "where the dog
+can't get at it."
+
+"Well, I won't take any responsibilities," murmured Lancelot, resignedly.
+
+"No, sir, I'll attend to that," said Mary Ann, vaguely.
+
+After the installation of the canary Lancelot found himself slipping more
+and more into a continuous matter-of-course flirtation; more and more
+forgetting the slavey in the candid young creature who had, at moments,
+strange dancing lights in her awakened eyes, strange flashes of witchery
+in her ingenuous expression. And yet he made a desultory struggle against
+what a secret voice was always whispering was a degradation. He knew she
+had no real place in his life; he scarce thought of her save when she
+came bodily before his eyes with her pretty face and her trustful glance.
+
+He felt no temptation to write sonatas on her eyebrow--to borrow Peter's
+variation, for the use of musicians, of Shakespeare's "write sonnets on
+his mistress's eyebrow"--and, indeed, he knew she could be no fit
+mistress for him--this starveling drudge, with passive passions, meek,
+accepting, with well-nigh every spark of spontaneity choked out of her.
+The women of his dreams were quite other--beautiful, voluptuous, full of
+the joy of life, tremulous with poetry and lofty thought, with dark
+amorous orbs that flashed responsive to his magic melodies. They hovered
+about him as he wrote and played--Venuses rising from the seas of his
+music. And then--with his eyes full of the divine tears of youth, with
+his brain a hive of winged dreams--he would turn and kiss merely Mary
+Ann! Such is the pitiful breed of mortals.
+
+And after every such fall, he thought more contemptuously of Mary
+Ann. Idealise her as he might, see all that was best in her as he
+tried to, she remained common and commonplace enough. Her ingenuousness,
+while from one point of view it was charming, from another was but a
+pleasant synonym for silliness. And it might not be ingenuousness--or
+silliness--after all! For, was Mary Ann as innocent as she looked? The
+guilelessness of the dove might very well cover the wisdom of the
+serpent. The instinct--the repugnance that made him sponge off her first
+kiss from his lips--was probably a true instinct. How was it possible a
+girl of that class should escape the sordid attentions of street swains?
+Even when she was in the country she was well-nigh of wooable age, the
+likely cynosure of neighbouring ploughboys' eyes. And what of the other
+lodgers!
+
+A finer instinct--that of a gentleman--kept him from putting any
+questions to Mary Ann. Indeed, his own delicacy repudiated the images
+that strove to find entry in his brain, even as his fastidiousness shrank
+from realising the unlovely details of Mary Ann's daily duties--these
+things disgusted him more with himself than with her. And yet he found
+himself acquiring a new and illogical interest in the boots he met
+outside doors. Early one morning he went halfway up the second flight of
+stairs--a strange region where his own boots had never before trod--but
+came down ashamed and with fluttering heart as if he had gone up to steal
+boots instead of to survey them. He might have asked Mary Ann or her
+"missus" who the other tenants were, but he shrank from the topic. Their
+hours were not his, and he only once chanced on a fellow-man in the
+passage, and then he was not sure it was not the tax-collector. Besides,
+he was not really interested--it was only a flicker of idle curiosity as
+to the actual psychology of Mary Ann. That he did not really care he
+proved to himself by kissing her next time. He accepted her as she
+was--because she was there. She brightened his troubled life a little,
+and he was quite sure he brightened hers. So he drifted on, not worrying
+himself to mean any definite harm to her. He had quite enough worry with
+those music publishers.
+
+The financial outlook was, indeed, becoming terrifying. He was glad there
+was nobody to question him, for he did not care to face the facts.
+Peter's threat of becoming a regular visitor had been nullified by his
+father despatching him to Germany to buy up some more Teutonic patents.
+"Wonderful are the ways of Providence!" he had written to Lancelot. "If I
+had not flown in the old man's face and picked up a little German here
+years ago, I should not be half so useful to him now.... I shall pay a
+flying visit to Leipsic--not on business."
+
+But at last Peter returned, Mrs. Leadbatter panting to the door to let
+him in one afternoon without troubling to ask Lancelot if he was "at
+home." He burst upon the musician, and found him in the most
+undisguisable dumps.
+
+"Why didn't you answer my letter, you impolite old bear?" Peter asked,
+warding off Beethoven with his umbrella.
+
+"I was busy," Lancelot replied pettishly.
+
+"Busy writing rubbish. Haven't you got 'Ops.' enough? I bet you haven't
+had anything published yet."
+
+"I am working at a grand opera," he said in dry, mechanical tones. "I
+have hopes of getting it put on. Gasco, the _impresario_, is a member of
+my club, and he thinks of running a season in the autumn. I had a talk
+with him yesterday."
+
+"I hope I shall live to see it," said Peter, sceptically.
+
+"I hope you will," said Lancelot, sharply.
+
+"None of my family ever lived beyond ninety," said Peter, shaking his
+head dolefully; "and then, my heart is not so good as it might be."
+
+"It certainly isn't!" cried poor Lancelot. "But everybody hits a chap
+when he's down."
+
+He turned his head away, striving to swallow the lump that would rise to
+his throat. He had a sense of infinite wretchedness and loneliness.
+
+"Oh, poor old chap; is it so bad as all that?" Peter's somewhat strident
+voice had grown tender as a woman's. He laid his hand affectionately on
+Lancelot's tumbled hair. "You know I believe in you with all my soul. I
+never doubted your genius for a moment. Don't I know too well that's what
+keeps you back? Come, come, old fellow. Can't I persuade you to write
+rot? One must keep the pot boiling, you know. You turn out a dozen
+popular ballads, and the coin'll follow your music as the rats did the
+pied piper's. Then, if you have any ambition left, you kick away the
+ladder by which you mounted, and stand on the heights of art."
+
+"Never!" cried Lancelot. "It would degrade me in my own eyes. I'd rather
+starve; and you can't shake them off--the first impression is everything;
+they would always be remembered against me," he added after a pause.
+
+"Motives mixed," reflected Peter. "That's a good sign." Aloud he said,
+"Well, you think it over. This is a practical world, old man; it wasn't
+made for dreamers. And one of the first dreams that you've got to wake
+from is the dream that anybody connected with the stage can be relied on
+from one day to the next. They gas for the sake of gassing, or they tell
+you pleasant lies out of mere goodwill, just as they call for your
+drinks. Their promises are beautiful bubbles, on a basis of soft soap,
+and made to 'bust.'"
+
+"You grow quite eloquent," said Lancelot, with a wan smile.
+
+"Eloquent! There's more in me than you've yet found out. Now then! Give
+us your hand that you'll chuck art, and we'll drink to your popular
+ballad--hundredth thousand edition, no drawing-room should be without
+it."
+
+Lancelot flushed. "I was just going to have some tea. I think it's five
+o'clock," he murmured.
+
+"The very thing I'm dying for," cried Peter, energetically; "I'm as
+parched as a pea." Inwardly he was shocked to find the stream of whisky
+run dry.
+
+So Lancelot rang the bell, and Mary Ann came up with the tea-tray in the
+twilight.
+
+"We'll have a light," cried Peter, and struck one of his own with a
+shadowy underthought of saving Mary Ann from a possible scolding, in case
+Lancelot's matches should be again unapparent. Then he uttered a comic
+exclamation of astonishment. Mary Ann was putting on a pair of gloves! In
+his surprise he dropped the match.
+
+Mary Ann was equally startled by the unexpected sight of a stranger, but
+when he struck his second match her hands were bare and red.
+
+"What in Heaven's name were you putting on gloves for, my girl?" said
+Peter, amused.
+
+Lancelot stared fixedly at the fire, trying to keep the blood from
+flooding his cheeks. He wondered that the ridiculousness of the whole
+thing had never struck him in its full force before. Was it possible
+he could have made such an ass of himself?
+
+"Please, sir, I've got to go out, and I'm in a hurry," said Mary Ann.
+
+Lancelot felt intense relief. An instant after his brow wrinkled itself.
+"Oho!" he thought. "So this is Miss Simpleton, is it?"
+
+"Then why did you take them off again?" retorted Peter.
+
+Mary Ann's repartee was to burst into tears and leave the room.
+
+"Now I've offended her," said Peter. "Did you see how she tossed her
+pretty head?"
+
+"Ingenious minx," thought Lancelot.
+
+"She's left the tray on a chair by the, door," went on Peter. "What an
+odd girl! Does she always carry on like this?"
+
+"She's got such a lot to do. I suppose she sometimes gets a bit queer in
+her head," said Lancelot, conceiving he was somehow safeguarding Mary
+Ann's honour by the explanation.
+
+"I don't think that," answered Peter. "She did seem dull and stupid when
+I was here last. But I had a good stare at her just now, and she seems
+rather bright. Why, her accent is quite refined--she must have picked it
+up from you."
+
+"Nonsense, nonsense," exclaimed Lancelot, testily.
+
+The little danger--or rather the great danger of being made to appear
+ridiculous--which he had just passed through, contributed to rouse him
+from his torpor. He exerted himself to turn the conversation, and was
+quite lively over tea.
+
+"Sw--eet! Sw--w--w--w--eet!" suddenly broke into the conversation.
+
+"More mysteries!" cried Peter. "What's that?"
+
+"Only a canary."
+
+"What, another musical instrument! Isn't Beethoven jealous? I wonder he
+doesn't consume his rival in his wrath. But I never knew you liked
+birds."
+
+"I don't particularly. It isn't mine."
+
+"Whose is it?"
+
+Lancelot answered briskly: "Mary Ann's. She asked to be allowed to keep
+it here. It seems it won't sing in her attic; it pines away."
+
+"And do you believe that?"
+
+"Why not? It doesn't sing much even here."
+
+"Let me look at it--ah, it's a plain Norwich yellow. If you wanted a
+singing canary you should have come to me; I'd have given you one 'made
+in Germany'--one of our patents--they train them to sing tunes and that
+puts up the price."
+
+"Thank you, but this one disturbs me sufficiently."
+
+"Then why do you put up with it?"
+
+"Why do I put up with that Christmas number supplement over the
+mantel-piece? It's part of the furniture. I was asked to let it be here
+and I couldn't be rude."
+
+"No, it's not in your nature. What a bore it must be to feed it! Let me
+see, I suppose you give it canary seed biscuits--I hope you don't give
+it butter."
+
+"Don't be an ass!" roared Lancelot. "You don't imagine I bother my head
+whether it eats butter or--or marmalade."
+
+"Who feeds it then?"
+
+"Mary Ann, of course."
+
+"She comes in and feeds it?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Several times a day?"
+
+"I suppose so."
+
+"Lancelot," said Peter, solemnly. "Mary Ann's mashed on you."
+
+Lancelot shrank before Peter's remark as a burglar from a policeman's
+bull's-eye. The bull's-eye seemed to cast a new light on Mary Ann, too,
+but he felt too unpleasantly dazzled to consider that for the moment; his
+whole thought was to get out of the line of light.
+
+"Nonsense!" he answered; "why, I'm hardly ever in when she feeds it, and
+I believe it eats all day long--gets supplied in the morning like a
+coal-scuttle. Besides, she comes in to dust and all that when she
+pleases. And I do wish you wouldn't use that word 'mashed.' I loathe it."
+
+Indeed, he writhed under the thought of being coupled with Mary Ann. The
+thing sounded so ugly--so squalid. In the actual, it was not so
+unpleasant, but looked at from the outside--unsympathetically--it
+was hopelessly vulgar, incurably plebeian. He shuddered.
+
+"I don't know," said Peter. "It's a very expressive word, is 'mashed.'
+But I will make allowance for your poetical feelings and give up the
+word--except in its literal sense, of course. I'm sure you wouldn't
+object to mashing a music publisher!"
+
+Lancelot laughed with false heartiness. "Oh, but if I'm to write those
+popular ballads, you say he'll become my best friend."
+
+"Of course he will," cried Peter, eagerly sniffing at the red herring
+Lancelot had thrown across the track. "You stand out for a royalty on
+every copy, so that if you strike ile--oh, I beg your pardon, that's
+another of the phrases you object to, isn't it?"
+
+"Don't be a fool," said Lancelot, laughing on. "You know I only object to
+that in connection with English peers marrying the daughters of men who
+have done it."
+
+"Oh, is that it? I wish you'd publish an expurgated dictionary with most
+of the words left out, and exact definitions of the conditions under
+which one may use the remainder. But I've got on a siding. What was I
+talking about?"
+
+"Royalty," muttered Lancelot, languidly.
+
+"Royalty? No. You mentioned the aristocracy, I think." Then he burst into
+a hearty laugh. "Oh, yes--on that ballad. Now, look here! I've brought
+a ballad with me, just to show you--a thing that is going like wildfire."
+
+"Not _Good-night and Good-by_, I hope," laughed Lancelot.
+
+"Yes--the very one!" cried Peter, astonished.
+
+"_Himmel!_" groaned Lancelot, in comic despair.
+
+"You know it already?" inquired Peter, eagerly.
+
+"No; only I can't open a paper without seeing the advertisement and the
+sickly sentimental refrain."
+
+"You see how famous it is, anyway," said Peter. "And if you want to
+strike--er--to make a hit you'll just take that song and do a deliberate
+imitation of it."
+
+"Wha-a-a-t!" gasped Lancelot.
+
+"My dear chap, they all do it. When the public cotton to a thing, they
+can't have enough of it."
+
+"But I can write my own rot, surely."
+
+"In the face of all this litter of 'Ops.' I daren't dispute that for a
+moment. But it isn't enough to write rot--the public want a particular
+kind of rot. Now just play that over--oblige me." He laid both hands on
+Lancelot's shoulders in amicable appeal.
+
+Lancelot shrugged them, but seated himself at the piano, played the
+introductory chords, and commenced singing the words in his pleasant
+baritone.
+
+Suddenly Beethoven ran towards the door, howling.
+
+Lancelot ceased playing and looked approvingly at the animal.
+
+"By Jove! he wants to go out. What an ear for music that animal's got."
+
+Peter smiled grimly. "It's long enough. I suppose that's why you call him
+Beethoven."
+
+"Not at all. Beethoven had no ear--at least not in his latest period--he
+was deaf. Lucky devil! That is, if this sort of thing was brought round
+on barrel-organs."
+
+"Never mind, old man! Finish the thing."
+
+"But consider Beethoven's feelings!"
+
+"Hang Beethoven!"
+
+"Poor Beethoven. Come here, my poor maligned musical critic! Would they
+give you a bad name and hang you? Now you must be very quiet. Put your
+paws into those lovely long ears of yours, if it gets too horrible. You
+have been used to high-class music, I know, but this is the sort of thing
+that England expects every man to do, so the sooner you get used to it,
+the better." He ran his fingers along the keys. "There, Peter, he's
+growling already. I'm sure he'll start again, the moment I strike the
+theme."
+
+"Let him! We'll take it as a spaniel obligato."
+
+"Oh, but his accompaniments are too staccato. He has no sense of time."
+
+"Why don't you teach him, then, to wag his tail like the pendulum of a
+metronome? He'd be more use to you that way than setting up to be a
+musician, which Nature never meant him for--his hair's not long enough.
+But go ahead, old man, Beethoven's behaving himself now."
+
+Indeed, as if he were satisfied with his protest, the little beast
+remained quiet, while his lord and master went through the piece. He did
+not even interrupt at the refrain:--
+
+  "Kiss me, good-night, dear love,
+     Dream of the old delight;
+   My spirit is summoned above,
+     Kiss me, dear love, good-night."
+
+"I must say it's not so awful as I expected," said Lancelot, candidly;
+"it's not at all bad--for a waltz."
+
+"There, you see!" cried Peter, eagerly; "the public are not such fools
+after all."
+
+"Still, the words are the most maudlin twaddle!" said Lancelot, as if he
+found some consolation in the fact.
+
+"Yes, but I didn't write _them_!" replied Peter, quickly. Then he grew
+red and laughed an embarrassed laugh. "I didn't mean to tell you, old
+man. But there--the cat's out. That's what took me to Brahmson's that
+afternoon we met! And I harmonised it myself, mind you, every crotchet. I
+picked up enough at the Conservatoire for that. You know lots of fellows
+only do the tune--they give out all the other work."
+
+"So you are the great Keeley Lesterre, eh?" said Lancelot, in amused
+astonishment.
+
+"Yes; I have to do it under another name. I don't want to grieve the old
+man. You see, I promised him to reform, when he took me back to his
+heart and business."
+
+"Is that strictly honourable, Peter?" said Lancelot, shaking his head.
+
+"Oh, well! I couldn't give it up altogether, but I do practically stick
+to the contract--it's all overtime, you know. It doesn't interfere a bit
+with business. Besides, as you'd say, it isn't music," he said slyly.
+"And just because I don't want it I make a heap of coin out of it--that's
+why I'm so vexed at your keeping me still in your debt."
+
+Lancelot frowned. "Then you had no difficulty in getting published?" he
+asked.
+
+"I don't say that. It was bribery and corruption so far as my first song
+was concerned. I tipped a professional to go down and tell Brahmson he
+was going to take it up. You know, of course, well-known singers get
+half-a-guinea from the publisher every time they sing a song."
+
+"No; do they?" said Lancelot. "How mean of them!"
+
+"Business, my boy. It pays the publisher to give it them. Look at the
+advertisement!"
+
+"But suppose a really fine song was published, and the publisher refused
+to pay this blood-money?"
+
+"Then I suppose they'd sing some other song, and let that moulder on the
+foolish publisher's shelves."
+
+"Great Heavens!" said Lancelot, jumping up from the piano in wild
+excitement. "Then a musician's reputation is really at the mercy of a
+mercenary crew of singers, who respect neither art nor themselves. Oh,
+yes, we are indeed a musical people!"
+
+"Easy there! Several of 'em are pals of mine, and I'll get them to take
+up those ballads of yours as soon as you write 'em."
+
+"Let them go to the devil with their ballads!" roared Lancelot, and with
+a sweep of his arm whirled _Good-night_ and _Good-by_ into the air. Peter
+picked it up and wrote something on it with a stylographic pen which he
+produced from his waistcoat pocket.
+
+"There!" he said, "that'll make you remember it's your own property--and
+mine--that you are treating so disrespectfully."
+
+"I beg your pardon, old chap," said Lancelot, rebuked and remorseful.
+
+"Don't mention it," replied Peter. "And whenever you decide to become
+rich and famous--there's your model."
+
+"Never! Never! Never!" cried Lancelot, when Peter went at ten. "My poor
+Beethoven! What you must have suffered! Never mind, I'll play you your
+moonlight sonata."
+
+He touched the keys gently and his sorrows and his temptations faded from
+him. He glided into Bach, and then into Chopin and Mendelssohn, and at
+last drifted into dreamy improvisation, his fingers moving almost of
+themselves, his eyes half closed, seeing only inward visions.
+
+And then, all at once, he awoke with a start, for Beethoven was barking
+towards the door, with pricked-up ears and rigid tail.
+
+"Sh! You little beggar," he murmured, becoming conscious that the hour
+was late, and that he himself had been noisy at unbeseeming hours.
+"What's the matter with you?" And, with a sudden thought, he threw open
+the door.
+
+It was merely Mary Ann.
+
+Her face--flashed so unexpectedly upon him--had the piquancy of a vision,
+but its expression was one of confusion and guilt; there were tears on
+her cheeks; in her hand was a bedroom candle-stick.
+
+She turned quickly, and began to mount the stairs. Lancelot put his hand
+on her shoulder, and turned her face towards him and said in an imperious
+whisper:--
+
+"Now then, what's up? What are you crying about?"
+
+"I ain't--I mean I'm _not_ crying," said Mary Ann, with a sob in her
+breath.
+
+"Come, come, don't fib. What's the matter?"
+
+"I'm not crying, it's only the music," she murmured.
+
+"The music," he echoed, bewildered.
+
+"Yessir. The music always makes me cry--but you can't call it crying--it
+feels so nice."
+
+"Oh, then you've been listening!"
+
+"Yessir." Her eyes drooped in humiliation.
+
+"But you ought to have been in bed," he said. "You get little enough
+sleep as it is."
+
+"It's better than sleep," she answered.
+
+The simple phrase vibrated through him, like a beautiful minor chord. He
+smoothed her hair tenderly.
+
+"Poor child!" he said.
+
+There was an instant's silence. It was past midnight, and the house was
+painfully still. They stood upon the dusky landing, across which a bar of
+light streamed from his half-open door, and only Beethoven's eyes were
+upon them. But Lancelot felt no impulse to fondle her, only just to lay
+his hand on her hair, as in benediction and pity.
+
+"So you liked what I was playing," he said, not without a pang of
+personal pleasure.
+
+"Yessir; I never heard you play that before."
+
+"So you often listen!"
+
+"I can hear you, even in the kitchen. Oh, it's just lovely! I don't care
+what I have to do then, if it's grates or plates or steps. The music goes
+and goes, and I feel back in the country again, and standing, as I used
+to love to stand of an evening, by the stile, under the big elm, and
+watch how the sunset did redden the white birches, and fade in the water.
+Oh, it was so nice in the springtime, with the hawthorn that grew on the
+other bank, and the bluebells--"
+
+The pretty face was full of dreamy tenderness, the eyes lit up
+witchingly. She pulled herself up suddenly, and stole a shy glance at
+her auditor.
+
+"Yes, yes, go on," he said; "tell me all you feel about the music."
+
+"And there's one song you sometimes play that makes me feel floating on
+and on like a great white swan."
+
+She hummed a few bars of the _Gondel-Lied_--flawlessly.
+
+"Dear me! you have an ear!" he said, pinching it. "And how did you like
+what I was playing just now?" he went on, growing curious to know how his
+own improvisations struck her.
+
+"Oh, I liked it so much," she whispered back, enthusiastically;
+"because it reminded me of my favourite one--every moment I did think--I
+thought--you were going to come into that."
+
+The whimsical sparkle leapt into his eyes. "And I thought I was so
+original," he murmured.
+
+"But what I liked best," she began, then checked herself, as if suddenly
+remembering she had never made a spontaneous remark before, and lacking
+courage to establish a precedent.
+
+"Yes--what you liked best?" he said encouragingly.
+
+"That song you sang this afternoon," she said shyly.
+
+"What song? I sang no song," he said, puzzled for a moment.
+
+"Oh, yes! That one about--
+
+  "'Kiss me, dear love, good-night.'
+
+"I was going upstairs but it made me stop just here--and cry."
+
+He made his comic grimace.
+
+"So it was you Beethoven was barking at! And I thought he had an ear! And
+I thought you had an ear! But no! You're both Philistines after all.
+Heigho!"
+
+She looked sad. "Oughtn't I to ha' liked it?" she asked anxiously.
+
+"Oh, yes," he said reassuringly; "it's very popular. No drawing-room is
+without it."
+
+She detected the ironic ring in his voice. "It wasn't so much the music,"
+she began apologetically.
+
+"Now--now you're going to spoil yourself," he said. "Be natural."
+
+"But it wasn't," she protested. "It was the words--"
+
+"That's worse," he murmured below his breath.
+
+"They reminded me of my mother as she laid dying."
+
+"Ah!" said Lancelot.
+
+"Yes, sir, mother was a long time dying--it was when I was a little girl
+and I used to nurse her--I fancy it was our little Sally's death that
+killed her, she took to her bed after the funeral and never left it till
+she went to her own," said Mary Ann, with unconscious flippancy. "She
+used to look up to the ceiling and say that she was going to little
+Sallie, and I remember I was such a silly then, I brought mother flowers
+and apples and bits of cake to take to Sally with my love. I put them on
+her pillow, but the flowers faded and the cake got mouldy--mother was
+such a long time dying--and at last I ate the apples myself, I was so
+tired of waiting. Wasn't I silly?" And Mary Ann laughed a little laugh
+with tears in it. Then growing grave again, she added: "And at last, when
+mother was really on the point of death, she forgot all about little
+Sally and said she was going to meet Tom. And I remember thinking she was
+going to America--I didn't know people talk nonsense before they die."
+
+"They do--a great deal of it, unfortunately," said Lancelot, lightly,
+trying to disguise from himself that his eyes were moist. He seemed to
+realise now what she was--a child; a child who, simpler than most
+children to start with, had grown only in body, whose soul had been
+stunted by uncounted years of dull and monotonous drudgery. The blood
+burnt in his veins as he thought of the cruelty of circumstance and the
+heartless honesty of her mistress. He made up his mind for the second
+time to give Mrs. Leadbatter a piece of his mind in the morning.
+
+"Well, go to bed now, my poor child," he said, "or you'll get no rest at
+all."
+
+"Yessir."
+
+She went obediently up a couple of stairs, then turned her head
+appealingly towards him. The tears still glimmered on her eyelashes. For
+an instant he thought she was expecting her kiss, but she only wanted to
+explain anxiously once again, "That was why I liked that song, 'Kiss me,
+good-night, dear love.' It was what my mother--"
+
+"Yes, yes, I understand," he broke in, half amused, though somehow the
+words did not seem so full of maudlin pathos to him now. "And there--" he
+drew her head towards him--"Kiss _me_, good-night--"
+
+He did not complete the quotation; indeed, her lips were already drawn
+too close to his. But, ere he released her, the long-repressed thought
+had found expression.
+
+"You don't kiss anybody but me?" he said half playfully.
+
+"Oh, no, sir," said Mary Ann, earnestly.
+
+"What!" more lightly still. "Haven't you got half a dozen young men?"
+
+Mary Ann shook her head, more regretfully than resentfully. "I told you I
+never go out--except for little errands."
+
+She had told him, but his attention had been so concentrated on the
+ungrammatical form in which she had conveyed the information, that the
+fact itself had made no impression. Now his anger against Mrs. Leadbatter
+dwindled. After all, she was wise in not giving Mary Ann the run of the
+London streets.
+
+"But"--he hesitated. "How about the--the milkman--and the--the other
+gentlemen?"
+
+"Please, sir," said Mary Ann, "I don't like them."
+
+After that no man could help expressing his sense of her good taste.
+
+"Then you won't kiss anybody but me," he said, as he let her go for the
+last time. He had a Quixotic sub-consciousness that he was saving her
+from his kind by making her promise formally.
+
+"How could I, Mr. Lancelot?" And the brimming eyes shone with soft light.
+"I never shall--never."
+
+It sounded like a troth.
+
+He went back to the room and shut the door, but could not shut out her
+image. The picture she had unwittingly supplied of herself took
+possession of his imagination: he saw her almost as a dream-figure--the
+virginal figure he knew--standing by the stream in the sunset, amid the
+elms and silver birches, with daisies in her hands and bluebells at her
+feet, inhaling the delicate scent that wafted from the white hawthorn
+bushes, and watching the water glide along till it seemed gradually to
+wash away the fading colours of the sunset that glorified it. And as he
+dwelt on the vision he felt harmonies and phrases stirring and singing in
+his brain, like a choir of awakened birds. Quickly he seized paper and
+wrote down the theme that flowed out at the point of his pen--a reverie
+full of the haunting magic of quiet waters and woodland sunsets and the
+gracious innocence of maidenhood. When it was done he felt he must give
+it a distinctive name. He cast about for one, pondering and rejecting
+titles innumerable. Countless lines of poetry ran through his head, from
+which he sought to pick a word or two as one plucks a violet from a posy.
+At last a half-tender, half-whimsical look came into his face, and
+picking his pen out of his hair, he wrote merely--"Marianne."
+
+It was only natural that Mary Ann should be unable to maintain
+herself--or be maintained--at this idyllic level. But her fall was
+aggravated by two circumstances, neither of which had any particular
+business to occur. The first was an intimation from the misogamist German
+Professor that he had persuaded another of his old pupils to include a
+prize-symphony by Lancelot in the programme of a Crystal Palace Concert.
+This was of itself sufficient to turn Lancelot's head away from all but
+thoughts of Fame, even if Mary Ann had not been luckless enough to be
+again discovered cleaning the steps--and without gloves. Against such a
+spectacle the veriest idealist is powerless. If Mary Ann did not
+immediately revert to the category of quadrupeds in which she had
+started, it was only because of Lancelot's supplementary knowledge of the
+creature. But as he passed her by, solicitous as before not to tread upon
+her, he felt as if all the cold water in her pail were pouring down the
+back of his neck.
+
+Nevertheless, the effect of both of these turns of fortune was transient.
+The symphony was duly performed, and dismissed in the papers as
+promising, if over-ambitious; the only tangible result was a suggestion
+from the popular composer, who was a member of his club, that Lancelot
+should collaborate with him in a comic opera, for the production of which
+he had facilities. The composer confessed he had a fluent gift of tune,
+but had no liking for the drudgery of orchestration, and, as Lancelot was
+well up in these tedious technicalities, the two might strike a
+partnership to mutual advantage.
+
+Lancelot felt insulted, but retained enough mastery of himself to reply
+that he would think it over. As he gave no signs of life or thought, the
+popular composer then wrote to him at length on the subject, offering him
+fifty pounds for the job, half of it on account. Lancelot was in sore
+straits when he got the letter, for his stock of money was dwindling to
+vanishing point, and he dallied with the temptation sufficiently to take
+the letter home with him. But his spirit was not yet broken, and the
+letter, crumpled like a rag, was picked up by Mary Ann and straightened
+out, and carefully placed upon the mantel-shelf.
+
+Time did something of a similar service for Mary Ann herself, picking
+her up from the crumpled attitude in which Lancelot had detected her on
+the doorstep, straightening her out again, and replacing her upon her
+semi-poetic pedestal. But, as with the cream-laid note-paper, the
+wrinklings could not be effaced entirely; which was more serious for Mary
+Ann.
+
+Not that Mary Ann was conscious of these diverse humours in Lancelot.
+Unconscious of changes in herself she could not conceive herself related
+to his variations of mood; still less did she realise the inward
+struggle, of which she was the cause. She was vaguely aware that he had
+external worries, for all his grandeur, and if he was by turns brusque,
+affectionate, indifferent, playful, brutal, charming, callous,
+demonstrative, she no more connected herself with these vicissitudes than
+with the caprices of the weather. If her sun smiled once a day it was
+enough. How should she know that his indifference was often a victory
+over himself, as his amativeness was a defeat?
+
+If any excuse could be found for Lancelot, it would be that which he
+administered to his conscience morning and evening like a soothing syrup.
+His position was grown so desperate that Mary Ann almost stood between
+him and suicide. Continued disappointment made his soul sick; his proud
+heart fed on itself. He would bite his lips till the blood came, vowing
+never to give in. And not only would he not move an inch from his ideal,
+he would rather die than gratify Peter by falling back on him; he would
+never even accept that cheque which was virtually his own.
+
+It was wonderful how, in his stoniest moments, the sight of Mary Ann's
+candid face, eloquent with dumb devotion, softened and melted him. He
+would take her gloved hand and press it silently. And Mary Ann never knew
+one iota of his inmost thought! He could not bring himself to that;
+indeed, she never for a moment appeared to him in the light of an
+intelligent being; at her best she was a sweet, simple, loving child. And
+he scarce spoke to her at all now--theirs was a silent communion--he had
+no heart to converse with her as he had done. The piano too was almost
+silent; the canary sang less and less, though spring was coming, and
+glints of sunshine stole between the wires of its cage; even Beethoven
+sometimes failed to bark when there was a knock at the street door.
+
+And at last there came a day when--for the first time in his
+life--Lancelot inspected his wardrobe, and hunted together his odds and
+ends of jewelry. From this significant task he was aroused by hearing
+Mrs. Leadbatter coughing in his sitting-room.
+
+He went in with an interrogative look.
+
+"Oh, my chest!" said Mrs. Leadbatter, patting it. "It's no use my denyin'
+of it, sir, I'm done up. It's as much as I can do to crawl up to the top
+to bed. I'm thinkin' I shall have to make up a bed in the kitchen. It
+only shows 'ow right I was to send for my Rosie, though quite the lady,
+and where will you find a nattier nursemaid in all Bayswater?"
+
+"Nowhere," assented Lancelot, automatically.
+
+"Oh, I didn't know you'd noticed her running in to see 'er pore old
+mother of a Sunday arternoon," said Mrs. Leadbatter, highly gratified.
+"Well, sir, I won't say anything about the hextry gas, though a poor
+widder and sevenpence hextry on the thousand, but I'm thinkin' if you
+would give my Rosie a lesson once a week on that there pianner, it would
+be a kind of set-off, for you know, sir, the policeman tells me your
+winder is a landmark to 'im on the foggiest nights."
+
+Lancelot flushed, then wrinkled his brows. This was a new idea
+altogether. Mrs. Leadbatter stood waiting for his reply, with a
+deferential smile tempered by asthmatic contortions.
+
+"But have you got a piano of your own?"
+
+"Oh, no, sir," cried Mrs. Leadbatter, almost reproachfully.
+
+"Well; but how is your Rosie to practise? One lesson a week is of very
+little use anyway, but unless she practises a good deal it'll only be a
+waste of time."
+
+"Ah, you don't know my Rosie," said Mrs. Leadbatter, shaking her head
+with sceptical pride. "You mustn't judge by other gels--the way that gel
+picks up things is--well, I'll just tell you what 'er school-teacher,
+Miss Whiteman said. She says--"
+
+"My good lady," interrupted Lancelot, "I practised six hours a day
+myself."
+
+"Yes, but it don't come so natural to a man," said Mrs. Leadbatter,
+unshaken. "And it don't look natural neither to see a man playin' the
+pianner--it's like seein' him knittin'."
+
+But Lancelot was knitting his brows in a way that was exceedingly
+natural. "I may as well tell you at once that what you propose is
+impossible. First of all, because I am doubtful whether I shall remain
+in these rooms; and secondly, because I am giving up the piano
+immediately. I only have it on hire, and I--I--" He felt himself
+blushing.
+
+"Oh, what a pity!" interrupted Mrs. Leadbatter. "You might as well let me
+go on payin' the hinstalments, instead of lettin' all you've paid go for
+nothing. Rosie ain't got much time, but I could allow 'er a 'our a day if
+it was my own pianner."
+
+Lancelot explained "hire" did not mean the "hire system." But the idea of
+acquiring the piano, having once fired Mrs. Leadbatter's brain, could not
+be extinguished. The unexpected conclusion arrived at was that she was to
+purchase the piano on the hire system, allowing it to stand in Lancelot's
+room, and that five shillings a week should be taken off his rent in
+return for six lessons of an hour each, one of the hours counterbalancing
+the gas grievance. Reviewing the bargain, when Mrs. Leadbatter was gone,
+Lancelot did not think it at all bad for him.
+
+"Use of the piano. Gas," he murmured, with a pathetic smile, recalling
+the advertisements he had read before lighting on Mrs. Leadbatter's. "And
+five shillings a week--it's a considerable relief! There's no loss of
+dignity either--for nobody will know. But I wonder what the governor
+would have said!"
+
+The thought shook him with silent laughter; a spectator might have
+fancied he was sobbing.
+
+But, after the lessons began, it might almost be said it was only when a
+spectator was present that he was not sobbing. For Rosie, who was an
+awkward, ungraceful young person, proved to be the dullest and most
+butter-fingered pupil ever invented for the torture of teachers; at
+least, so Lancelot thought, but then he had never had any other pupils,
+and was not patient. It must be admitted, though, that Rosie giggled
+perpetually, apparently finding endless humour in her own mistakes. But
+the climax of the horror was the attendance of Mrs. Leadbatter at the
+lessons, for, to Lancelot's consternation, she took it for granted that
+her presence was part of the contract. She marched into the room in her
+best cap, and sat, smiling, in the easy chair, wheezing complacently and
+beating time with her foot. Occasionally she would supplement Lancelot's
+critical observations.
+
+"It ain't as I fears to trust 'er with you, sir," she also remarked about
+three times a week, "for I knows, sir, you're a gentleman. But it's the
+neighbours; they never can mind their own business. I told 'em you was
+going to give my Rosie lessons, and you know, sir, that they _will_ talk
+of what don't concern 'em. And, after all, sir, it's an hour, and an
+hour is sixty minutes, ain't it, sir?"
+
+And Lancelot, groaning inwardly, and unable to deny this chronometry,
+felt that an ironic Providence was punishing him for his attentions to
+Mary Ann.
+
+And yet he only felt more tenderly towards Mary Ann. Contrasted with
+these two vulgar females, whom he came to conceive as her oppressors,
+sitting in gauds and finery, and taking lessons which had better befitted
+their Cinderella--the figure of Mary Ann definitely reassumed some of its
+antediluvian poetry, if we may apply the adjective to that catastrophic
+washing of the steps. And Mary Ann herself had grown gloomier--once or
+twice he thought she had been crying, though he was too numbed and
+apathetic to ask, and was incapable of suspecting that Rosie had anything
+to do with her tears. He hardly noticed that Rosie had taken to feeding
+the canary; the question of how he should feed himself was becoming every
+day more and more menacing. He saw starvation slowly closing in upon him
+like the walls of a torture-chamber. He had grown quite familiar with the
+pawn-shop now, though he still slipped in as though his goods were
+stolen.
+
+And at last there came a moment when Lancelot felt he could bear it no
+longer. And then he suddenly saw daylight. Why should he teach only
+Rosie? Nay, why should he teach Rosie at all? If he _was_ reduced to
+giving lessons--and after all it was no degradation to do so, no
+abandonment of his artistic ideal, rather a solution of the difficulty so
+simple that he wondered it had not occurred to him before--why should he
+give them at so wretched a price? He would get another pupil, other
+pupils, who would enable him to dispense with the few shillings he made
+by Rosie. He would not ask anybody to recommend him pupils--there was no
+need for his acquaintances to know, and if he asked Peter, Peter would
+probably play him some philanthropic trick. No, he would advertise.
+
+After he had spent his last gold breast-pin in advertisements, he
+realised that to get pianoforte pupils in London was as easy as to get
+songs published. By the time he quite realised it, it was May, and then
+he sat down to realise his future.
+
+The future was sublimely simple--as simple as his wardrobe had grown.
+All his clothes were on his back. In a week or two he would be on the
+streets; for a poor widow could not be expected to lodge, partially board
+(with use of the piano, gas), an absolutely penniless young gentleman,
+though he combined the blood of twenty county families with the genius of
+a pleiad of tone poets.
+
+There was only one bright spot in the prospect. Rosie's lessons would
+come to an end.
+
+What he would do when he got on the streets was not so clear as the
+rest of this prophetic vision. He might take to a barrel-organ--but that
+would be a cruel waste of his artistic touch. Perhaps he would die on a
+doorstep, like the professor of many languages, whose starvation was
+recorded in that very morning's paper.
+
+Thus, driven by the saturnine necessity that sneers at our puny
+resolutions, Lancelot began to meditate surrender. For surrender of some
+sort must be--either of life or ideal. After so steadfast and protracted
+a struggle--oh, it was cruel, it was terrible; how noble, how high-minded
+he had been; and this was how the fates dealt with him--but at that
+moment--
+
+"Sw--eet," went the canary, and filled the room with its rapturous
+demi-semi-quavers, its throat swelling, its little body throbbing with
+joy of the sunshine. And then Lancelot remembered--not the joy of the
+sunshine, not the joy of life--no, merely Mary Ann.
+
+Noble! high-minded! No, let Peter think that, let posterity think that.
+But he could not cozen himself thus! He had fallen--horribly, vulgarly.
+How absurd of him to set himself up as a saint, a martyr, an idealist! He
+could not divide himself into two compartments like that and pretend that
+only one counted in his character. Who was he to talk of dying for art?
+No, he was but an everyday man. He wanted Mary Ann--yes, he might as well
+admit that to himself now. It was no use humbugging himself any longer.
+Why should he give her up? She was his discovery, his treasure-trove,
+his property.
+
+And if he could stoop to her, why should he not stoop to popular work, to
+devilling, to anything that would rid him of these sordid cares? Bah!
+away with all pretences!
+
+Was not this shamefaced pawning as vulgar, as wounding to the artist's
+soul as the turning out of tawdry melodies?
+
+Yes, he would escape from Mrs. Leadbatter and her Rosie; he would write
+to that popular composer--he had noticed his letter lying on the
+mantel-piece the other day--and accept the fifty pounds, and whatever he
+did he could do anonymously, so that Peter wouldn't know, after all; he
+would escape from this wretched den and take a flat far away, somewhere
+where nobody knew him, and there he would sit and work, with Mary Ann for
+his housekeeper. Poor Mary Ann! How glad she would be when he told her!
+The tears came into his eyes as he thought of her naive delight. He would
+rescue her from this horrid, monotonous slavery, and--happy thought--he
+would have her to give lessons to instead of Rosie.
+
+Yes, he would refine her; prune away all that reminded him of her wild
+growth, so that it might no longer humiliate him to think to what a
+companion he had sunk. How happy they would be! Of course the world would
+censure him if it knew, but the world was stupid and prosaic, and
+measured all things by its coarse rule of thumb. It was the best thing
+that could happen to Mary Ann--the best thing in the world. And then the
+world _wouldn't_ know.
+
+"Sw--eet," went the canary. "Sw--eet."
+
+This time the joy of the bird penetrated to his own soul--the joy of
+life, the joy of the sunshine. He rang the bell violently, as though he
+were sounding a clarion of defiance, the trumpet of youth.
+
+Mary Ann knocked at the door, came in, and began to draw on her gloves.
+
+He was in a mad mood--the incongruity struck him so that he burst into a
+roar of laughter.
+
+Mary Ann paused, flushed, and bit her lip. The touch of resentment he had
+never noted before gave her a novel charm, spicing her simplicity.
+
+He came over to her and took her half-bare hands. No, they were not so
+terrible, after all. Perhaps she had awakened to her iniquities, and had
+been trying to wash them white. His last hesitation as to her worthiness
+to live with him vanished.
+
+"Mary Ann," he said, "I'm going to leave these rooms."
+
+The flush deepened, but the anger faded. She was a child again--her big
+eyes full of tears. He felt her hands tremble in his.
+
+"Mary Ann," he went on, "how would you like me to take you with me?"
+
+"Do you mean it, sir?" she asked eagerly.
+
+"Yes, dear." It was the first time he had used the word. The blood
+throbbed madly in her ears. "If you will come with me--and be my
+little housekeeper--we will go away to some nice spot, and be quite
+alone together--in the country if you like, amid the foxglove and
+the meadowsweet, or by the green waters, where you shall stand in the
+sunset and dream; and I will teach you music and the piano"--her eyes
+dilated--"and you shall not do any of this wretched nasty work any more.
+What do you say?"
+
+"Sw--eet, sw--eet," said the canary, in thrilling jubilation.
+
+Her happiness was choking her--she could not speak.
+
+"And we will take the canary, too--unless I say good-by to you as well."
+
+"Oh, no, you mustn't leave us here!"
+
+"And then," he said slowly, "it will not be good-by--nor good-night. Do
+you understand?"
+
+"Yes, yes," she breathed, and her face shone.
+
+"But think, think, Mary Ann," he said, a sudden pang of compunction
+shooting through his breast. He released her hands. "_Do_ you
+understand?"
+
+"I understand--I shall be with you, always."
+
+He replied uneasily, "I shall look after you--always."
+
+"Yes, yes," she breathed. Her bosom heaved. "Always."
+
+Then his very first impression of her as "a sort of white Topsy" recurred
+to him suddenly and flashed into speech.
+
+"Mary Ann, I don't believe you know how you came into the world. I dare
+say you 'specs you growed."
+
+"No, sir," said Mary Ann, gravely; "God made me."
+
+That shook him strangely for a moment. But the canary sang on:--
+
+"Sw-eet. Sw-w-w-w-w-eet."
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+And so it was settled. He wrote the long-delayed answer to the popular
+composer, found him still willing to give out his orchestration, and they
+met by appointment at the club.
+
+"I've got hold of a splendid book," said the popular composer. "Awfully
+clever; jolly original. Bound to go--from the French, you know. Haven't
+had time to set to work on it--old engagement to run over to Monte Carlo
+for a few days--but I'll leave you the book; you might care to look over
+it. And--I say--if any catchy tunes suggest themselves as you go along,
+you might just jot them down, you know. Not worth while losing an idea;
+eh, my boy! Ha! ha! ha! Well, good-by. See you again when I come back;
+don't suppose I shall be away more than a month. Good-by!" And, having
+shaken his hand with tremendous cordiality, the popular composer rushed
+downstairs and into a hansom.
+
+Lancelot walked home with the libretto and the five five-pound notes. He
+asked for Mrs. Leadbatter, and gave her a week's notice. He wanted to
+drop Rosie immediately, on the plea of pressure of work, but her mother
+received the suggestion with ill grace, and said that Rosie should come
+up and practise on her own piano all the same, so he yielded to the
+complexities of the situation, and found hope a wonderful sweetener of
+suffering. Despite Rosie and her giggling, and Mrs. Leadbatter and her
+best cap and her asthma, the week went by almost cheerfully. He worked
+regularly at the comic opera, nearly as happy as the canary which sang
+all day long, and, though scarcely a word more passed between him and
+Mary Ann, their eyes met ever and anon in the consciousness of a sweet
+secret.
+
+It was already Friday afternoon. He gathered together his few personal
+belongings--his books, his manuscripts, _opera_ innumerable. There was
+room in his portmanteau for everything--now he had no clothes. On the
+Monday the long nightmare would be over. He would go down to some obscure
+seaside nook and live very quietly for a few weeks, and gain strength and
+calm in the soft spring airs, and watch hand-in-hand with Mary Ann the
+rippling scarlet trail of the setting sun fade across the green waters.
+Life, no doubt, would be hard enough still. Struggles and trials enough
+were yet before him, but he would not think of that now--enough that for
+a month or two there would be bread and cheese and kisses. And then, in
+the midst of a tender reverie, with his hand on the lid of his
+portmanteau, he was awakened by ominous sounds of objurgation from the
+kitchen.
+
+His heart stood still. He went down a few stairs and listened.
+
+"Not another stroke of work do you do in my house, Mary Ann!" Then there
+was silence, save for the thumping of his own heart. What had happened?
+
+He heard Mrs. Leadbatter mounting the kitchen stairs, wheezing and
+grumbling, "Well, of all the sly little things!"
+
+Mary Ann had been discovered. His blood ran cold at the thought. The
+silly creature had been unable to keep the secret.
+
+"Not a word about 'im all this time. Oh, the sly little thing! Who would
+hever a-believed it?"
+
+And then, in the intervals of Mrs. Leadbatter's groanings, there came to
+him the unmistakable sound of Mary Ann sobbing--violently, hysterically.
+He turned from cold to hot in a fever of shame and humiliation. How had
+it all come about? Oh, yes, he could guess. The gloves! What a fool he
+had been! Mrs. Leadbatter had unearthed the box. Why did he give her more
+than the pair that could always be kept hidden in her pocket? Yes, it was
+the gloves. And then there was the canary. Mrs. Leadbatter had suspected
+he was leaving her for a reason. She had put two and two together, she
+had questioned Mary Ann, and the ingenuous little idiot had naively told
+her he was going to take her with him. It didn't really matter, of
+course; he didn't suppose Mrs. Leadbatter could exercise any control over
+Mary Ann, but it was horrible to be discussed by her and Rosie; and then
+there was that meddlesome vicar, who might step in and make things nasty.
+
+Mrs. Leadbatter's steps and wheezes and grumblings had arrived in the
+passage, and Lancelot hastily stole back into his room, his heart
+continuing to flutter painfully.
+
+He heard the complex noises reach his landing, pass by, and move up
+higher. She wasn't coming in to him then; he could endure the suspense no
+longer. He threw open his door and said, "Is there anything the matter?"
+
+Mrs. Leadbatter paused and turned her head.
+
+"His there anything the matter!" she echoed, looking down upon him. "A
+nice thing when a woman's troubled with hastmer and brought 'ome 'er
+daughter to take 'er place, that she should 'ave to start 'untin'
+afresh!"
+
+"Why, is Rosie going away?" he said, immeasurably relieved.
+
+"My Rosie! She's the best girl breathing. It's that there Mary Ann!"
+
+"Wh-a-t!" he stammered. "Mary Ann leaving you?"
+
+"Well, you don't suppose," replied Mrs. Leadbatter, angrily, "as
+I can keep a gel in my kitchen as is a-goin' to 'ave 'er own
+nors-end-kerridge!"
+
+"Her own horse and carriage!" repeated Lancelot, utterly dazed. "Whatever
+are you talking about?"
+
+"Well--there's the letter!" exclaimed Mrs. Leadbatter, indignantly.
+"See for yourself if you don't believe me. I don't know how much
+two and a 'arf million dollars is--but it sounds unkimmonly like a
+nors-end-kerridge--and never said a word about 'im the whole time, the
+sly little thing!"
+
+The universe seemed oscillating so that he grasped at the letter like a
+drunken man. It was from the vicar. He wrote:--
+
+"I have much pleasure in informing you that our dear Mary Ann is the
+fortunate inheritress of two and a half million dollars by the death of
+her brother Tom, who, as I learn from the lawyers who have applied to me
+for news of the family, has just died in America, leaving his money to
+his surviving relatives. He was rather a wild young man, but it seems he
+became the lucky possessor of some petroleum wells which made him wealthy
+in a few months. I pray God Mary Ann may make a better use of the money
+than he would have done. I want you to break the news to her, please, and
+to prepare her for my visit. As I have to preach on Sunday, I cannot come
+to town before, but on Monday (D.V.) I shall run up and shall probably
+take her back with me, as I desire to help her through the difficulties
+that will attend her entry into the new life. How pleased you will be to
+think of the care you took of the dear child during these last five
+years. I hope she is well and happy; I think you omitted to write to me
+last Christmas on the subject. Please give her my kindest regards and
+best wishes and say I shall be with her (D.V.) on Monday."
+
+The words swam uncertainly before Lancelot's eyes, but he got through
+them all at last. He felt chilled and numbed. He averted his face as he
+handed the letter back to Mary Ann's "missus."
+
+"What a fortunate girl!" he said in a low, stony voice.
+
+"Fortunate ain't the word for it! The mean, sly little cat! Fancy never
+telling _me_ a word about 'er brother all these years--me as 'as fed her,
+and clothed her, and lodged her, and kepper out of all mischief, as if
+she'd bin my own daughter; never let her go out Bankhollidayin' in loose
+company--as you can bear witness yourself, sir--and eddicated 'er out of
+'er country talk and rough ways, and made 'er the smart young woman she
+is, fit to wait on the most troublesome of gentlemen. And now she'll go
+away and say I used 'er 'arsh, and overworked 'er, and Lord knows what,
+don't tell me! Oh, my poor chest!"
+
+"I think you may make your mind quite easy," said Lancelot, grimly. "I'm
+sure Mary Ann is perfectly satisfied with your treatment."
+
+"But she ain't--there, listen! don't you hear her going on?" Poor Mary
+Ann's sobs were still audible, though exhaustion was making them momently
+weaker. "She's been going on like that ever since I broke the news to 'er
+and gave her a piece of my mind--the sly little cat! She wanted to go on
+scrubbing the kitchen, and I had to take the brush away by main force. A
+nice thing, indeed! A gel as can keep a nors-end-kerridge down on the
+cold kitchen stones! 'Twasn't likely I could allow that. 'No, Mary Ann,'
+says I, firmly, 'you're a lady, and if you don't know what's proper for a
+lady, you'd best listen to them as does. You go and buy yourself a dress
+and a jacket to be ready for that vicar who's been a real good kind
+friend to you; he's coming to take you away on Monday, he is, and how
+will you look in that dirty print? Here's a suvrin,' says I, 'out of my
+'ard-earned savin's--and get a pair o' boots, too: you can git a sweet
+pair for 2s. 11d. at Rackstraw's afore the sale closes,' and with that I
+shoves the suvrin into 'er hand instead o' the scrubbin' brush, and what
+does she do? Why, busts out a-cryin' and sits on the damp stones, and
+sobs, and sulks, and stares at the suvrin in her hand as if I'd told her
+of a funeral instead of a fortune!" concluded Mrs. Leadbatter,
+alliteratively.
+
+"But you did--her brother's death," said Lancelot. "That's what she's
+crying about."
+
+Mrs. Leadbatter was taken aback by this obverse view of the situation;
+but recovering herself, she shook her head. "_I_ wouldn't cry for no
+brother that lef me to starve when he was rollin' in two and a 'arf
+million dollars," she said sceptically. "And I'm sure my Rosie wouldn't.
+But she never 'ad nobody to leave her money, poor dear child, except me,
+please Gaud. It's only the fools as 'as the luck in _this_ world." And
+having thus relieved her bosom, she resumed her panting progress upwards.
+
+The last words rang on in Lancelot's ears long after he had returned to
+his room. In the utter breakdown and confusion of his plans and his
+ideas, it was the one definite thought he clung to, as a swimmer in a
+whirlpool clings to a rock. His brain refused to concentrate itself on
+any other aspect of the situation--he could not, would not, dared not,
+think of anything else. He knew vaguely he ought to rejoice with her over
+her wonderful stroke of luck, that savoured of the fairy-story, but
+everything was swamped by that one almost resentful reflection. Oh, the
+irony of fate! Blind fate showering torrents of gold upon this foolish,
+babyish household drudge; who was all emotion and animal devotion,
+without the intellectual outlook of a Hottentot, and leaving men of
+genius to starve, or sell their souls for a handful of it! How was the
+wisdom of the ages justified! Verily did fortune favour fools. And
+Tom--the wicked--he had flourished as the wicked always do, like the
+green bay tree, as the Psalmist discovered ever so many centuries ago.
+
+But gradually the wave of bitterness waned. He found himself listening
+placidly and attentively to the joyous trills and roulades of the canary,
+till the light faded and the grey dusk crept into the room and stilled
+the tiny winged lover of the sunshine. Then Beethoven came and rubbed
+himself against his master's leg, and Lancelot got up, as one wakes from
+a dream, and stretched his cramped limbs dazedly, and rang the bell
+mechanically for tea. He was groping on the mantel-piece for the matches
+when the knock at the door came, and he did not turn round till he had
+found them. He struck a light, expecting to see Mrs. Leadbatter or Rosie.
+He started to find it was merely Mary Ann.
+
+But she was no longer merely Mary Ann, he remembered with another shock.
+She loomed large to him in the match-light--he seemed to see her through
+a golden haze. Tumultuous images of her glorified gilded future rose and
+mingled dizzily in his brain.
+
+And yet, was he dreaming? Surely it was the same Mary Ann, with the same
+winsome face and the same large pathetic eyes, ringed though they were
+with the shadow of tears. Mary Ann, in her neat white cap--yes--and in
+her tan kid gloves. He rubbed his eyes. Was he really awake? Or--a
+thought still more dizzying--_had_ he been dreaming? He had fallen asleep
+and reinless fancy had played him the fantastic trick, from which,
+cramped and dazed, he had just awakened to the old sweet reality.
+
+"Mary Ann!" he cried wildly. The lighted match fell from his fingers and
+burnt itself out unheeded on the carpet.
+
+"Yessir."
+
+"Is it true"--his emotion choked him--"is it true you've come into two
+and a half million dollars?"
+
+"Yessir, and I've brought you some tea."
+
+The room was dark, but darkness seemed to fall on it as she spoke.
+
+"But why are you waiting on me, then?" he said slowly. "Don't you know
+that you--that you--"
+
+"Please, Mr. Lancelot, I wanted to come in and see you."
+
+He felt himself trembling.
+
+"But Mrs. Leadbatter told me she wouldn't let you do any more work."
+
+"I told missus that I must; I told her she couldn't get another girl
+before Monday, if then, and if she didn't let me I wouldn't buy a new
+dress and a pair of boots with her sovereign--it isn't suvrin, is it,
+sir?"
+
+"No," murmured Lancelot, smiling in spite of himself.
+
+"With her sovereign. And I said I would be all dirty on Monday."
+
+"But what can you get for a sovereign?" he asked irrelevantly. He felt
+his mind wandering away from him.
+
+"Oh, ever such a pretty dress!"
+
+The picture of Mary Ann in a pretty dress painted itself upon the
+darkness. How lovely the child would look in some creamy white evening
+dress with a rose in her hair. He wondered that in all his thoughts of
+their future he had never dressed her up thus in fancy, to feast his eyes
+on the vision.
+
+"And so the vicar will find you in a pretty dress," he said at last.
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"But you promised Mrs. Leadbatter to--"
+
+"I promised to buy a dress with her sovereign. But I shan't be here when
+the vicar comes. He can't come till the afternoon."
+
+"Why, where will you be?" he said, his heart beginning to beat fast.
+
+"With you," she replied, with a faint accent of surprise.
+
+He steadied himself against the mantel-piece.
+
+"But--" he began, and ended, "is that honest?"
+
+He dimly descried her lips pouting. "We can always send her another when
+we have one," she said.
+
+He stood there, dumb, glad of the darkness.
+
+"I must go down now," she said. "I mustn't stay long."
+
+"Why?" he articulated.
+
+"Rosie," she replied briefly.
+
+"What about Rosie?"
+
+"She watches me--ever since she came. Don't you understand?"
+
+This time he was the dullard. He felt an extra quiver of repugnance for
+Rosie, but said nothing, while Mary Ann briskly lit the gas, and threw
+some coals on the decaying fire. He was pleased she was going down; he
+was suffocating; he did not know what to say to her. And yet, as she was
+disappearing through the doorway, he had a sudden feeling things couldn't
+be allowed to remain an instant in this impossible position.
+
+"Mary Ann!" he cried.
+
+"Yessir."
+
+She turned back--her face wore merely the expectant expression of a
+summoned servant. The childishness of her behaviour confused him,
+irritated him.
+
+"Are you foolish?" he cried suddenly; half regretting the phrase the
+instant he had uttered it.
+
+Her lip twitched.
+
+"No, Mr. Lancelot!" she faltered.
+
+"But you talk as if you were," he said less roughly. "You mustn't run
+away from the vicar just when he is going to take you to the lawyer's to
+certify who you are, and see that you get your money."
+
+"But I don't want to go with the vicar--I want to go with you. You said
+you would take me with you." She was almost in tears now.
+
+"Yes--but don't you--don't you understand that--that," he stammered;
+then, temporising, "but I can wait."
+
+"Can't the vicar wait?" said Mary Ann. He had never known her show such
+initiative.
+
+He saw that it was hopeless--that the money had made no more dint upon
+her consciousness than some vague dream, that her whole being was set
+towards the new life with him, and shrank in horror from the menace of
+the vicar's withdrawal of her in the opposite direction. If joy and
+redemption had not already lain in the one quarter, the advantages of
+the other might have been more palpably alluring. As it was, her
+consciousness was "full up" in the matter, so to speak. He saw that he
+must tell her plain and plump, startle her out of her simple confidence.
+
+"Listen to me, Mary Ann."
+
+"Yessir."
+
+"You are a young woman--not a baby. Strive to grasp what I am going to
+tell you."
+
+"Yessir," in a half sob, that vibrated with the obstinate resentment
+of a child that knows it is to be argued out of its instincts by adult
+sophistry. What had become of her passive personality?
+
+"You are now the owner of two and a half million dollars--that is about
+five hundred thousand pounds. Five--hundred thousand--pounds. Think of
+ten sovereigns--ten golden sovereigns like that Mrs. Leadbatter gave you.
+Then ten times as much as that, and ten times as much as all that"--he
+spread his arms wider and wider--"and ten times as much as all that, and
+then"--here his arms were prematurely horizontal, so he concluded hastily
+but impressively,--"and then FIFTY times as much as all that. Do you
+understand how rich you are?"
+
+"Yessir." She was fumbling nervously at her gloves, half drawing them
+off.
+
+"Now all this money will last forever. For you invest it--if only at
+three per cent.--never mind what that is--and then you get fifteen
+thousand a year--fifteen thousand golden sovereigns to spend every--"
+
+"Please, sir, I must go now. Rosie!"
+
+"Oh, but you can't go yet. I have lots more to tell you."
+
+"Yessir; but can't you ring for me again?"
+
+In the gravity of the crisis, the remark tickled him; he laughed with a
+strange ring in his laughter.
+
+"All right; run away, you sly little puss."
+
+He smiled on as he poured out his tea; finding a relief in prolonging his
+sense of the humour of the suggestion, but his heart was heavy, and his
+brain a-whirl. He did not ring again till he had finished tea.
+
+She came in, and took her gloves out of her pocket.
+
+"No! no!" he cried, strangely exasperated. "An end to this farce! Put
+them away. You don't need gloves any more."
+
+She squeezed them into her pocket nervously, and began to clear away the
+things, with abrupt movements, looking askance every now and then at the
+overcast handsome face.
+
+At last he nerved himself to the task and said: "Well, as I was saying,
+Mary Ann, the first thing for you to think of is to make sure of all
+this money--this fifteen thousand pounds a year. You see you will be
+able to live in a fine manor house--such as the squire lived in in your
+village--surrounded by a lovely park with a lake in it for swans and
+boats--"
+
+Mary Ann had paused in her work, slop-basin in hand. The concrete details
+were beginning to take hold of her imagination.
+
+"Oh, but I should like a farm better," she said. "A large farm with great
+pastures and ever so many cows and pigs and outhouses, and a--oh, just
+like Atkinson's farm. And meat every day, with pudding on Sundays! Oh, if
+father was alive, wouldn't he be glad!"
+
+"Yes, you can have a farm--anything you like."
+
+"Oh, how lovely! A piano?"
+
+"Yes--six pianos."
+
+"And you will learn me?"
+
+He shuddered and hesitated.
+
+"Well--I can't say, Mary Ann."
+
+"Why not? Why won't you? You said you would! You learn Rosie."
+
+"I may not be there, you see," he said, trying to put a spice of
+playfulness into his tones.
+
+"Oh, but you will," she said feverishly. "You will take me there. We will
+go there instead of where you said--instead of the green waters." Her
+eyes were wild and witching.
+
+He groaned inwardly.
+
+"I cannot promise you now," he said slowly. "Don't you see that
+everything is altered?"
+
+"What's altered? You are here and here am I." Her apprehension made her
+almost epigrammatic.
+
+"Ah, but you are quite different now, Mary Ann."
+
+"I'm not--I want to be with you just the same."
+
+He shook his head. "I can't take you with me," he said decisively.
+
+"Why not?" She caught hold of his arm entreatingly.
+
+"You are not the same Mary Ann--to other people. You are a somebody.
+Before, you were a nobody. Nobody cared or bothered about you--you
+were no more than a dead leaf whirling in the street."
+
+"Yes, you cared and bothered about me," she cried, clinging to him.
+
+Her gratitude cut him like a knife. "The eyes of the world are on you
+now," he said. "People will talk about you if you go away with me now."
+
+"Why will they talk about me? What harm shall I do them?"
+
+Her phrases puzzled him.
+
+"I don't know that you will harm them," he said slowly, "but you will
+harm yourself."
+
+"How will I harm myself?" she persisted.
+
+"Well, one day, you will want a--a husband. With all that money it is
+only right and proper you should marry--"
+
+"No, Mr. Lancelot, I don't want a husband. I don't want to marry. I
+should never want to go away from you."
+
+There was another painful silence. He sought refuge in a brusque
+playfulness.
+
+"I see you understand _I'm_ not going to marry you."
+
+"Yessir."
+
+He felt a slight relief.
+
+"Well, then," he said, more playfully still. "Suppose I wanted to go away
+from _you_, Mary Ann?"
+
+"But you love me," she said, unaffrighted.
+
+He started back perceptibly.
+
+After a moment, he replied, still playfully, "I never said so."
+
+"No, sir; but--but--" she lowered her eyes; a coquette could not have
+done it more artlessly--"but I--know it."
+
+The accusation of loving her set all his suppressed repugnances and
+prejudices bristling in contradiction. He cursed the weakness that had
+got him into this soul-racking situation. The silence clamoured for
+him to speak--to do something.
+
+"What--what were you crying about before?" he said abruptly.
+
+"I--I don't know, sir," she faltered.
+
+"Was it Tom's death?"
+
+"No, sir, not much. I did think of him black-berrying with me and our
+little Sally--but then he was so wicked! It must have been what missus
+said; and I was frightened because the vicar was coming to take me
+away--away from you; and then--oh, I don't know--I felt--I couldn't tell
+you--I felt I must cry and cry, like that night when--" she paused
+suddenly and looked away.
+
+"When," he said encouragingly.
+
+"I must go--Rosie," she murmured, and took up the tea-tray.
+
+"That night when--" he repeated tenaciously.
+
+"When you first kissed me," she said.
+
+He blushed. "That--that made you cry!" he stammered. "Why?"
+
+"Please, sir, I don't know."
+
+"Mary Ann," he said gravely, "don't you see that when I did that I
+was--like your brother Tom?"
+
+"No, sir. Tom didn't kiss me like that."
+
+"I don't mean that, Mary Ann; I mean I was wicked."
+
+Mary Ann stared at him.
+
+"Don't you think so, Mary Ann?"
+
+"Oh, no, sir. You were very good."
+
+"No, no, Mary Ann. Don't say good."
+
+"Ever since then I have been so happy," she persisted.
+
+"Oh, that was because you were wicked too," he explained grimly. "We have
+both been very wicked, Mary Ann; and so we had better part now, before
+we get more wicked."
+
+She stared at him plaintively, suspecting a lurking irony, but not sure.
+
+"But you didn't mind being wicked before!" she protested.
+
+"I'm not so sure I mind now. It's for your sake, Mary Ann, believe me, my
+dear." He took her bare hand kindly and felt it burning. "You're a very
+simple, foolish little thing, yes, you are. Don't cry. There's no harm in
+being simple. Why, you told me yourself how silly you were once when you
+brought your dying mother cakes and flowers to take to your dead little
+sister. Well, you're just as foolish and childish now, Mary Ann, though
+you don't know it any more than you did then. After all you're only
+nineteen--I found it out from the vicar's letter. But a time will
+come--yes, I'll warrant in only a few months' time you'll see how wise I
+am and how sensible you have been to be guided by me. I never wished you
+any harm, Mary Ann, believe me, my dear, I never did. And I hope, I do
+hope so much that this money will make you happy. So you see you mustn't
+go away with me now--you don't want everybody to talk of you as they did
+of your brother Tom, do you, dear? Think what the vicar would say."
+
+But Mary Ann had broken down under the touch of his hand and the
+gentleness of his tones.
+
+"I was a dead leaf so long, I don't care!" she sobbed passionately.
+"Nobody never bothered to call me wicked then. Why should I bother now?"
+
+Beneath the mingled emotions her words caused him was a sense of surprise
+at her recollection of his metaphor.
+
+"Hush! You're a silly little child," he repeated sternly. "Hush! or Mrs.
+Leadbatter will hear you." He went to the door and closed it tightly.
+"Listen, Mary Ann! Let me tell you once for all that even if you were
+fool enough to be willing to go with me, I wouldn't take you with me. It
+would be doing you a terrible wrong."
+
+She interrupted him quietly.
+
+"Why more now than before?"
+
+He dropped her hand as if stung, and turned away. He knew he could not
+answer that to his own satisfaction, much less to hers.
+
+"You're a silly little baby," he repeated resentfully. "I think you had
+better go down now. Missus will be wondering."
+
+Mary Ann's sobs grew more spasmodic. "You are going away without me," she
+cried hysterically.
+
+He went to the door again, as if apprehensive of an eavesdropper. The
+scene was becoming terrible. The passive personality had developed with a
+vengeance.
+
+"Hush, hush!" he cried imperatively.
+
+"You are going away without me. I shall never see you again."
+
+"Be sensible, Mary Ann. You will be--"
+
+"You won't take me with you."
+
+"How can I take you with me?" he cried brutally, losing every vestige of
+tenderness for this distressful vixen. "Don't you understand that it's
+impossible--unless I marry you," he concluded contemptuously.
+
+Mary Ann's sobs ceased for a moment.
+
+"Can't you marry me, then?" she said plaintively.
+
+"You know it is impossible," he replied curtly.
+
+"Why is it impossible?" she breathed.
+
+"Because--" He saw her sobs were on the point of breaking out, and had
+not the courage to hear them afresh. He dared not wound her further by
+telling her straight out that, with all her money, she was ridiculously
+unfit to bear his name--that it was already a condescension for him to
+have offered her his companionship on any terms.
+
+He resolved to temporise again.
+
+"Go downstairs now, there's a good girl; and I'll tell you in the
+morning. I'll think it over. Go to bed early and have a long, nice
+sleep--missus will let you--now. It isn't Monday yet; we have plenty
+of time to talk it over."
+
+She looked up at him with large appealing eyes, uncertain, but calming
+down.
+
+"Do, now, there's a dear." He stroked her wet cheek soothingly.
+
+"Yessir," and almost instinctively she put up her lips for a good-night
+kiss. He brushed them hastily with his. She went out softly, drying her
+eyes. His own grew moist--he was touched by the pathos of her implicit
+trust. The soft warmth of her lips still thrilled him. How sweet and
+loving she was! The little dialogue rang in his brain.
+
+"Can't you marry me, then?"
+
+"You know it is impossible."
+
+"Why is it impossible?"
+
+"Because--"
+
+"Because what?" an audacious voice whispered. Why should he not? He
+stilled the voice but it refused to be silent--was obdurate, insistent,
+like Mary Ann herself. "Because--oh, because of a hundred things," he
+told it. "Because she is no fit mate for me--because she would degrade
+me, make me ridiculous--an unfortunate fortune-hunter, the butt of the
+witlings. How could I take her about as my wife? How could she receive
+my friends? For a housekeeper--a good, loving housekeeper--she is
+perfection, but for a wife--_my_ wife--the companion of my
+soul--impossible!"
+
+"Why is it impossible?" repeated the voice, catching up the cue. And
+then, from that point, the dialogue began afresh.
+
+"Because this, and because that, and because the other--in short, because
+I am Lancelot and she is merely Mary Ann."
+
+"But she is not merely Mary Ann any longer," urged the voice.
+
+"Yes, for all her money, she is merely Mary Ann. And am I to sell myself
+for her money--I who have stood out so nobly, so high-mindedly, through
+all these years of privation and struggle? And her money is all in
+dollars. Pah! I smell the oil. Struck ile! Of all things in the world,
+her brother should just go and strike ile!" A great shudder traversed his
+form. "Everything seems to have been arranged out of pure cussedness,
+just to spite me. She would have been happier without the money, poor
+child--without the money, but with me. What will she do with all her
+riches? She will only be wretched--like me."
+
+"Then why not be happy together?"
+
+"Impossible."
+
+"Why is it impossible?"
+
+"Because her dollars would stick in my throat--the oil would make me
+sick. And what would Peter say, and my brother (not that I care what _he_
+says), and my acquaintances?"
+
+"What does that matter to you? While you were a dead leaf nobody bothered
+to talk about you; they let you starve--you, with your genius--now you
+can let them talk--you, with your heiress. Five hundred thousand pounds.
+More than you will make with all your operas if you live a century.
+Fifteen thousand a year. Why, you could have all your works performed at
+your own expense, and for your own sole pleasure if you chose, as the
+King of Bavaria listened to Wagner's operas. You could devote your life
+to the highest art--nay, is it not a duty you owe to the world? Would it
+not be a crime against the future to draggle your wings with sordid
+cares, to sink to lower aims by refusing this Heaven-sent boon?"
+
+The thought clung to him. He rose and laid out heaps of muddled
+manuscript--_opera disjecta_--and turned their pages.
+
+"Yes--yes--give us life!" they seemed to cry to him. "We are dead drops
+of ink, wake us to life and beauty. How much longer are we to lie here,
+dusty in death? We have waited so patiently--have pity on us, raise us up
+from our silent tomb, and we will fly abroad through the whole earth,
+chanting your glory; yea, the world shall be filled to eternity with the
+echoes of our music and the splendour of your name."
+
+But he shook his head and sighed, and put them back in their niches, and
+placed the comic opera he had begun in the centre of the table.
+
+"There lie the only dollars that will ever come my way," he said aloud.
+And, humming the opening bars of a lively polka from the manuscript, he
+took up his pen and added a few notes. Then he paused; the polka would
+not come--the other voice was louder.
+
+"It would be a degradation," he repeated, to silence it. "It would be
+merely for her money. I don't love her."
+
+"Are you so sure of that?"
+
+"If I really loved her I shouldn't refuse to marry her."
+
+"Are you so sure of that?"
+
+"What's the use of all this wire-drawing?--the whole thing is
+impossible."
+
+"Why is it impossible?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders impatiently, refusing to be drawn back into the
+eddy, and completed the bar of the polka.
+
+Then he threw down his pen, rose and paced the room in desperation.
+
+"Was ever any man in such a dilemma?" he cried aloud.
+
+"Did ever any man get such a chance?" retorted his silent tormentor.
+
+"Yes, but I mustn't seize the chance--it would be mean."
+
+"It would be meaner not to. You're not thinking of that poor girl--only
+of yourself. To leave her now would be more cowardly than to have left
+her when she was merely Mary Ann. She needs you even more now that she
+will be surrounded by sharks and adventurers. Poor, poor Mary Ann! It is
+you who have the right to protect her now; you were kind to her when the
+world forgot her. You owe it to yourself to continue to be good to her."
+
+"No, no, I won't humbug myself. If I married her it would only be for her
+money."
+
+"No, no, don't humbug yourself. You like her. You care for her very much.
+You are thrilling at this very moment with the remembrance of her lips
+to-night. Think of what life will be with her--life full of all that is
+sweet and fair--love and riches, and leisure for the highest art, and
+fame and the promise of immortality. You are irritable, sensitive,
+delicately organised; these sordid, carking cares, these wretched
+struggles, these perpetual abasements of your highest self--a few more
+years of them--they will wreck and ruin you, body and soul. How many men
+of genius have married their housekeepers even--good, clumsy, homely
+bodies, who have kept their husband's brain calm and his pillow smooth.
+And again, a man of genius is the one man who can marry anybody. The
+world expects him to be eccentric. And Mary Ann is no coarse city weed,
+but a sweet country bud. How splendid will be her blossoming under the
+sun! Do not fear that she will ever shame you; she will look beautiful,
+and men will not ask her to talk. Nor will you want her to talk. She will
+sit silent in the cosy room where you are working, and every now and
+again you will glance up from your work at her and draw inspiration from
+her sweet presence. So pull yourself together, man; your troubles are
+over, and life henceforth one long blissful dream. Come, burn me that
+tinkling, inglorious comic opera, and let the whole sordid past mingle
+with its ashes."
+
+So strong was the impulse--so alluring the picture--that he took up the
+comic opera and walked towards the fire, his finger itching to throw it
+in. But he sat down again after a moment and went on with his work. It
+was imperative he should make progress with it; he could not afford to
+waste his time--which was money--because another person--Mary Ann to
+wit--had come into a superfluity of both. In spite of which the comic
+opera refused to advance; somehow he did not feel in the mood for gaiety;
+he threw down his pen in despair and disgust. But the idea of not being
+able to work rankled in him. Every hour seemed suddenly precious--now
+that he had resolved to make money in earnest--now that for a year or
+two he could have no other aim or interest in life. Perhaps it was that
+he wished to overpower the din of contending thoughts. Then a happy
+thought came to him. He rummaged out Peter's ballad. He would write a
+song on the model of that, as Peter had recommended--something tawdry and
+sentimental, with a cheap accompaniment. He placed the ballad on the rest
+and started going through it to get himself in the vein. But to-night the
+air seemed to breathe an ineffable melancholy, the words--no longer
+mawkish--had grown infinitely pathetic:--
+
+  "Kiss me, good-night, dear love,
+     Dream of the old delight;
+   My spirit is summoned above,
+     Kiss me, dear love, good-night!"
+
+The hot tears ran down his cheeks, as he touched the keys softly and
+lingeringly. He could go no farther than the refrain; he leant his elbows
+on the keyboard, and dropped his head upon his arms. The clashing notes
+jarred like a hoarse cry, then vibrated slowly away into a silence that
+was broken only by his sobs.
+
+He rose late the next day, after a sleep that was one prolonged
+nightmare, full of agonised, abortive striving after something that
+always eluded him, he knew not what. And when he woke--after a momentary
+breath of relief at the thought of the unreality of these vague
+horrors--he woke to the heavier nightmare of reality. Oh, those terrible
+dollars!
+
+He drew the blind, and saw with a dull acquiescence that the brightness
+of May had fled. The wind was high--he heard it fly past, moaning. In the
+watery sky, the round sun loomed silver-pale and blurred. To his fevered
+eye it looked like a worn dollar.
+
+He turned away, shivering, and began to dress. He opened the door a
+little, and pulled in his lace-up boots, which were polished in the
+highest style of art. But when he tried to put one on, his toes stuck
+fast in the opening, and refused to advance. Annoyed, he put his hand in,
+and drew out a pair of tan gloves, perfectly new. Astonished, he inserted
+his hand again and drew out another pair, then another. Reddening
+uncomfortably, for he divined something of the meaning, he examined the
+left boot, and drew out three more pairs of gloves, two new and one
+slightly soiled.
+
+He sank down, half dressed, on the bed with his head on his breast,
+leaving his boots and Mary Ann's gloves scattered about the floor. He was
+angry, humiliated; he felt like laughing, and he felt like sobbing.
+
+At last he roused himself, finished dressing, and rang for breakfast.
+Rosie brought it up.
+
+"Hullo! Where's Mary Ann?" he said lightly.
+
+"She's above work now," said Rosie, with an unamiable laugh. "You know
+about her fortune."
+
+"Yes; but your mother told me she insisted on going about her work till
+Monday."
+
+"So she said yesterday--silly little thing! But to-day she says she'll
+only help mother in the kitchen--and do all the boots of a morning. She
+won't do any more waiting."
+
+"Ah!" said Lancelot, crumbling his toast.
+
+"I don't believe she knows what she wants," concluded Rosie, turning to
+go.
+
+"Then I suppose she's in the kitchen now?" he said, pouring out his
+coffee down the side of his cup.
+
+"No, she's gone out now, sir."
+
+"Gone out!" He put down the coffee-pot--his saucer was full. "Gone out
+where?"
+
+"Only to buy things. You know her vicar is coming to take her away the
+day after to-morrow, and mother wanted her to look tidy enough to travel
+with the vicar; so she gave her a sovereign."
+
+"Ah, yes; your mother said something about it."
+
+"And yet she won't answer the bells," said Rosie, "and mother's asthma is
+worse, so I don't know whether I shall be able to take my lesson to-day,
+Mr. Lancelot. I'm so sorry, because it's the last."
+
+Rosie probably did not intend the ambiguity of the phrase. There was real
+regret in her voice.
+
+"Do you like learning, then?" said Lancelot, softened, for the first
+time, towards his pupil. His nerves seemed strangely flaccid to-day. He
+did not at all feel the relief he should have felt at forgoing his daily
+infliction.
+
+"Ever so much, sir. I know I laugh too much, sometimes; but I don't mean
+it, sir. I suppose I couldn't go on with the lessons after you leave
+here?" She looked at him wistfully.
+
+"Well"--he had crumbled the toast all to little pieces now--"I don't
+quite know. Perhaps I shan't go away after all."
+
+Rosie's face lit up. "Oh, I'll tell mother," she exclaimed joyously.
+
+"No, don't tell her yet; I haven't quite settled. But if I stay--of
+course the lessons can go on as before."
+
+"Oh, I _do_ hope you'll stay," said Rosie, and went out of the room with
+airy steps, evidently bent on disregarding his prohibition, if, indeed,
+it had penetrated to her consciousness.
+
+Lancelot made no pretence of eating breakfast; he had it removed, and
+then fished out his comic opera. But nothing would flow from his pen; he
+went over to the window, and stood thoughtfully drumming on the panes
+with it, and gazing at the little drab-coloured street, with its high
+roof of mist; along which the faded dollar continued to spin
+imperceptibly. Suddenly he saw Mary Ann turn the corner, and come along
+towards the house, carrying a big parcel and a paper bag in her ungloved
+hands. How buoyantly she walked! He had never before seen her move in
+free space, nor realised how much of the grace of a sylvan childhood
+remained with her still. What a pretty colour there was on her cheeks,
+too!
+
+He ran down to the street door and opened it before she could knock. The
+colour on her cheeks deepened at the sight of him, but now that she was
+near he saw her eyes were swollen with crying.
+
+"Why do you go out without gloves, Mary Ann?" he inquired sternly.
+"Remember you're a lady now."
+
+She started and looked down at his boots, then up at his face.
+
+"Oh, yes, I found them, Mary Ann. A nice graceful way of returning me my
+presents, Mary Ann. You might at least have waited till Christmas. Then
+I should have thought Santa Claus sent them."
+
+"Please, sir, I thought it was the surest way for me to send them back."
+
+"But what made you send them back at all?"
+
+Mary Ann's lip quivered, her eyes were cast down. "Oh--Mr. Lancelot--you
+know," she faltered.
+
+"But I don't know," he said sharply.
+
+"Please let me go downstairs, Mr. Lancelot. Missus must have heard me
+come in."
+
+"You shan't go downstairs till you've told me what's come over you. Come
+upstairs to my room."
+
+"Yessir."
+
+She followed him obediently. He turned round brusquely, "Here, give me
+your parcels." And almost snatching them from her, he carried them
+upstairs and deposited them on his table on top of the comic opera.
+
+"Now, then, sit down. You can take off your hat and jacket."
+
+"Yessir."
+
+He helped her to do so.
+
+"Now, Mary Ann, why did you return me those gloves?"
+
+"Please, sir, I remember in our village when--when"--she felt a
+diffidence in putting the situation into words and wound up quickly,
+"something told me I ought to."
+
+"I don't understand you," he grumbled, comprehending only too well. "But
+why couldn't you come in and give them to me instead of behaving in that
+ridiculous way?"
+
+"I didn't want to see you again," she faltered.
+
+He saw her eyes were welling over with tears.
+
+"You were crying again last night," he said sharply.
+
+"Yessir."
+
+"But what did you have to cry about now? Aren't you the luckiest girl in
+the world?"
+
+"Yessir."
+
+As she spoke a flood of sunlight poured suddenly into the room; the sun
+had broken through the clouds, the worn dollar had become a dazzling
+gold-piece. The canary stirred in its cage.
+
+"Then what were you crying about?"
+
+"I didn't want to be lucky."
+
+"You silly girl--I have no patience with you. And why didn't you want to
+see me again?"
+
+"Please, Mr. Lancelot, I knew you wouldn't like it."
+
+"Whatever put that into your head?"
+
+"I knew it, sir," said Mary Ann, firmly. "It came to me when I was
+crying. I was thinking of all sorts of things--of my mother and our
+Sally, and the old pig that used to get so savage, and about the way the
+organ used to play in church, and then all at once somehow I knew it
+would be best for me to do what you told me--to buy my dress and go back
+with the vicar, and be a good girl, and not bother you, because you were
+so good to me, and it was wrong for me to worry you and make you
+miserable."
+
+"Tw-oo! Tw-oo!" It was the canary starting on a preliminary carol.
+
+"So I thought it best," she concluded tremulously, "not to see you again.
+It would only be two days, and after that it would be easier. I could
+always be thinking of you just the same, Mr. Lancelot, always. That
+wouldn't annoy you, sir, would it? Because you know, sir, you wouldn't
+know it."
+
+Lancelot was struggling to find a voice. "But didn't you forget something
+you had to do, Mary Ann?" he said in hoarse accents.
+
+She raised her eyes swiftly a moment, then lowered them again.
+
+"I don't know; I didn't mean to," she said apologetically.
+
+"Didn't you forget that I told you to come to me and get my answer to
+your question?"
+
+"No, sir, I didn't forget. That was what I was thinking of all night."
+
+"About your asking me to marry you?"
+
+"Yessir."
+
+"And my saying it was impossible?"
+
+"Yessir, and I said, 'Why is it impossible?' and you said, 'Because--'
+and then you left off; but please, Mr. Lancelot, I didn't want to know
+the answer this morning."
+
+"But I want to tell you. Why don't you want to know?"
+
+"Because I found out for myself, Mr. Lancelot. That's what I found out
+when I was crying--but there was nothing to find out, sir. I knew it all
+along. It was silly of me to ask you--but you know I am silly sometimes,
+sir, like I was when my mother was dying. And that was why I made up my
+mind not to bother you any more, Mr. Lancelot, I knew you wouldn't like
+to tell me straight out."
+
+"And what was the answer you found out? Ah, you won't speak. It looks as
+if _you_ don't like to tell me straight out. Come, come, Mary Ann, tell
+me why--why--it is impossible."
+
+She looked up at last and said slowly and simply, "Because I am not good
+enough for you, Mr. Lancelot."
+
+He put his hands suddenly to his eyes. He did not see the flood of
+sunlight--he did not hear the mad jubilance of the canary.
+
+"No, Mary Ann," his voice was low and trembling. "I will tell you
+why it is impossible, I didn't know last night, but I know now. It is
+impossible, because--you are right, I don't like to tell you straight
+out."
+
+She opened her eyes wide, and stared at him in puzzled expectation.
+
+"Mary Ann," he bent his head, "it is impossible--because I am not good
+enough for you."
+
+Mary Ann grew scarlet. Then she broke into a little nervous laugh. "Oh,
+Mr. Lancelot, don't make fun of me."
+
+"Believe me, my dear," he said tenderly, raising his head; "I wouldn't
+make fun of you for two million million dollars. It is the truth--the
+bare, miserable, wretched truth. I am not worthy of you, Mary Ann."
+
+"I don't understand you, sir," she faltered.
+
+"Thank Heaven for that!" he said with the old whimsical look. "If you did
+you would think meanly of me ever after. Yes, that is why, Mary Ann. I
+am a selfish brute--selfish to the last beat of my heart, to the inmost
+essence of my every thought. Beethoven is worth two of me, aren't you,
+Beethoven?" The spaniel, thinking himself called, trotted over. "He never
+calculates--he just comes and licks my hand--don't look at me as if I
+were mad, Mary Ann. You don't understand me--thank Heaven again. Come
+now! Does it never strike you that if I were to marry you now, it would
+be only for your two and a half million dollars?"
+
+"No, sir," faltered Mary Ann.
+
+"I thought not," he said triumphantly. "No, you will always remain a
+fool, I am afraid, Mary Ann."
+
+She met his contempt with an audacious glance.
+
+"But I know it wouldn't be for that, Mr. Lancelot."
+
+"No, no, of course it wouldn't be, not now. But it ought to strike you
+just the same. It doesn't make you less a fool, Mary Ann. There! There!
+I don't mean to be unkind, and, as I think I told you once before, it's
+not so very dreadful to be a fool. A rogue is a worse thing, Mary Ann.
+All I want to do is to open your eyes. Two and a half million dollars are
+an awful lot of money--a terrible lot of money. Do you know how long it
+will be before I make two million dollars, Mary Ann?"
+
+"No, sir." She looked at him wonderingly.
+
+"Two million years. Yes, my child, I can tell you now. You thought I was
+rich and grand, I know, but all the while I was nearly a beggar. Perhaps
+you thought I was playing the piano--yes, and teaching Rosie--for my
+amusement; perhaps you thought I sat up writing half the night out
+of--sleeplessness," he smiled at the phrase, "or a wanton desire to burn
+Mrs. Leadbatter's gas. No, Mary Ann, I have to get my own living by hard
+work--by good work if I can, by bad work if I must--but always by hard
+work. While you will have fifteen thousand pounds a year, I shall be
+glad, overjoyed, to get fifteen hundred. And while I shall be grinding
+away body and soul for my fifteen hundred, your fifteen thousand will
+drop into your pockets, even if you keep your hands there all day. Don't
+look so sad, Mary Ann. I'm not blaming you. It's not your fault in the
+least. It's only one of the many jokes of existence. The only reason I
+want to drive this into your head is to put you on your guard. Though I
+don't think myself good enough to marry you, there are lots of men who
+will think they are ... though they don't know you. It is you, not me,
+who are grand and rich, Mary Ann ... beware of men like me--poor and
+selfish. And when you do marry--"
+
+"Oh, Mr. Lancelot!" cried Mary Ann, bursting into tears at last, "why do
+you talk like that? You know I shall never marry anybody else."
+
+"Hush, hush! Mary Ann! I thought you were going to be a good girl and
+never cry again. Dry your eyes now, will you?"
+
+"Yessir."
+
+"Here, take my handkerchief."
+
+"Yessir ... but I won't marry anybody else."
+
+"You make me smile, Mary Ann. When you brought your mother that cake for
+Sally you didn't know a time would come when--"
+
+"Oh, please, sir, I know that. But you said yesterday I was a young woman
+now. And this is all different to that."
+
+"No, it isn't, Mary Ann. When they've put you to school, and made you a
+Ward in Chancery, or something, and taught you airs, and graces, and
+dressed you up"--a pang traversed his heart, as the picture of her in the
+future flashed for a moment upon his inner eye--"why, by that time,
+you'll be a different Mary Ann, outside and inside. Don't shake your
+head; I know better than you. We grow and become different. Life is full
+of chances, and human beings are full of changes, and nothing remains
+fixed."
+
+"Then, perhaps"--she flushed up, her eyes sparkled--"perhaps"--she grew
+dumb and sad again.
+
+"Perhaps what?"
+
+He waited for her thought. The rapturous trills of the canary alone
+possessed the silence.
+
+"Perhaps you'll change, too." She flashed a quick deprecatory glance at
+him--her eyes were full of soft light.
+
+This time he was dumb.
+
+"Sw--eet!" trilled the canary, "sw--eet!" though Lancelot felt the
+throbbings of his heart must be drowning its song.
+
+"Acutely answered," he said at last. "You're not such a fool after all,
+Mary Ann. But I'm afraid it will never be, dear. Perhaps if I also made
+two million dollars, and if I felt I had grown worthy of you, I might
+come to you and say--two and two are four--let us go into partnership.
+But then, you see," he went on briskly, "the odds are I may never even
+have two thousand. Perhaps I'm as much a duffer in music as in other
+things. Perhaps you'll be the only person in the world who has ever
+heard my music, for no one will print it, Mary Ann. Perhaps I shall be
+that very common thing--a complete failure--and be worse off than even
+you ever were, Mary Ann."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Lancelot, I'm so sorry." And her eyes filled again with tears.
+
+"Oh, don't be sorry for me. I'm a man. I dare say I shall pull through.
+Just put me out of your mind, dear. Let all that happened at Baker's
+Terrace be only a bad dream--a very bad dream, I am afraid I must call
+it. Forget me, Mary Ann. Everything will help you to forget me, thank
+Heaven, it'll be the best thing for you. Promise me now."
+
+"Yessir ... if you will promise me."
+
+"Promise you what?"
+
+"To do me a favour."
+
+"Certainly, dear, if I can."
+
+"You have the money, Mr. Lancelot, instead of me--I don't want it, and
+then you could--"
+
+"Now, now, Mary Ann," he interrupted, laughing nervously, "you're getting
+foolish again, after talking so sensibly."
+
+"Oh, but why not?" she said plaintively.
+
+"It is impossible," he said curtly.
+
+"Why is it impossible?" she persisted.
+
+"Because--," he began, and then he realised with a start that they had
+come back again to that same old mechanical series of questions--if only
+in form.
+
+"Because there is only one thing I could ever bring myself to ask you for
+in this world," he said slowly.
+
+"Yes; what is that?" she said flutteringly.
+
+He laid his hand tenderly on her hair.
+
+"Merely Mary Ann."
+
+She leapt up: "Oh, Mr. Lancelot, take me, take me! You do love me! You do
+love me!"
+
+He bit his lip. "I am a fool," he said roughly. "Forget me. I ought not
+to have said anything. I spoke only of what might be--in the dim
+future--if the--chances and changes of life bring us together again--as
+they never do. No! You were right, Mary Ann. It is best we should not
+meet again. Remember your resolution last night."
+
+"Yessir." Her submissive formula had a smack of sullenness, but she
+regained her calm, swallowing the lump in her throat that made her
+breathing difficult.
+
+"Good-by, then, Mary Ann," he said, taking her hard red hands in his.
+
+"Good-by, Mr. Lancelot." The tears she would not shed were in her voice.
+"Please, sir--could you--couldn't you do me a favour?--Nothing about
+money, sir."
+
+"Well, if I can," he said kindly.
+
+"Couldn't you just play Good-night and Good-by, for the last time? You
+needn't sing it--only play it."
+
+"Why, what an odd girl you are!" he said with a strange, spasmodic laugh.
+"Why, certainly! I'll do both, if it will give you any pleasure."
+
+And, releasing her hands, he sat down to the piano, and played the
+introduction softly. He felt a nervous thrill going down his spine as he
+plunged into the mawkish words. And when he came to the refrain, he had
+an uneasy sense that Mary Ann was crying--he dared not look at her. He
+sang on bravely:--
+
+  "Kiss me, good-night, dear love,
+     Dream of the old delight;
+   My spirit is summoned above,
+     Kiss me, dear love, good-night."
+
+He couldn't go through another verse--he felt himself all a-quiver, every
+nerve shattered. He jumped up. Yes, his conjecture had been right. Mary
+Ann was crying. He laughed spasmodically again. The thought had occurred
+to him how vain Peter would be if he could know the effect of his
+commonplace ballad.
+
+"There, I'll kiss you too, dear!" he said huskily, still smiling.
+"That'll be for the last time."
+
+Their lips met, and then Mary Ann seemed to fade out of the room in a
+blur of mist.
+
+An instant after there was a knock at the door.
+
+"Forgot her parcels after a last good-by," thought Lancelot, and
+continued to smile at the comicality of the new episode.
+
+He cleared his throat.
+
+"Come in," he cried, and then he saw that the parcels were gone, too, and
+it must be Rosie.
+
+But it was merely Mary Ann.
+
+"I forgot to tell you, Mr. Lancelot," she said--her accents were almost
+cheerful--"that I'm going to church to-morrow morning."
+
+"To church!" he echoed.
+
+"Yes, I haven't been since I left the village, but missus says I ought to
+go in case the vicar asks me what church I've been going to."
+
+"I see," he said, smiling on.
+
+She was closing the door when it opened again, just revealing Mary Ann's
+face.
+
+"Well?" he said, amused.
+
+"But I'll do your boots all the same, Mr. Lancelot." And the door closed
+with a bang.
+
+They did not meet again. On the Monday afternoon the vicar duly came and
+took Mary Ann away. All Baker's Terrace was on the watch, for her story
+had now had time to spread. The weather remained bright. It was cold but
+the sky was blue. Mary Ann had borne up wonderfully, but she burst into
+tears as she got into the cab.
+
+"Sweet, sensitive little thing!" said Baker's Terrace.
+
+"What a good woman you must be, Mrs. Leadbatter," said the vicar, wiping
+his spectacles.
+
+As part of Baker's Terrace, Lancelot witnessed the departure from his
+window, for he had not left after all.
+
+Beethoven was barking his short snappy bark the whole time at the
+unwonted noises and the unfamiliar footsteps; he almost extinguished the
+canary, though that was clamorous enough.
+
+"Shut up, you noisy little devils!" growled Lancelot. And taking the
+comic opera he threw it on the dull fire. The thick sheets grew slowly
+blacker and blacker, as if with rage; while Lancelot thrust the five
+five-pound notes into an envelope addressed to the popular composer, and
+scribbled a tiny note:--
+
+  "Dear Peter,--If you have not torn up that cheque I shall be glad of it
+  by return. Yours,
+
+  "LANCELOT.
+
+  "P.S.--I send by this post a Reverie, called _Marianne_, which is the
+  best thing I have done, and should be glad if you could induce Brahmson
+  to look at it."
+
+A big, sudden blaze, like a jubilant bonfire, shot up in the grate and
+startled Beethoven into silence.
+
+But the canary took it for an extra flood of sunshine, and trilled and
+demi-semi-quavered like mad.
+
+"Sw--eet! Sweet!"
+
+"By Jove!" said Lancelot, starting up, "Mary Ann's left her canary
+behind!"
+
+Then the old whimsical look came over his face.
+
+"I must keep it for her," he murmured. "What a responsibility! I suppose
+I oughtn't to let Rosie look after it any more. Let me see, what did
+Peter say? Canary seed, biscuits ... yes, I must be careful not to give
+it butter.... Curious I didn't think of her canary when I sent back all
+those gloves ... but I doubt if I could have squeezed it in--my boots are
+only sevens after all--to say nothing of the cage."
+
+
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+THE SERIO-COMIC GOVERNESS
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+Nelly O'Neill had her day in those earlier and quieter reaches of the
+Victorian era when the privilege of microscopic biography was reserved
+for the great and the criminal classes, and when the Bohemian celebrity
+(who is perhaps a cross between the two) was permitted to pass--like a
+magic-lantern slide--from obscurity to oblivion through an illuminated
+moment.
+
+Thus even her real name has not hitherto leaked out, and to this day the
+O'Keeffes are unaware of their relative's reputation and believe their
+one connection with the stage to be a dubious and undesirable
+consanguinity with O'Keeffe, the actor and fertile farce-writer whose
+_Wild Oats_ made a sensation at Covent Garden at the end of the
+eighteenth century. To her many brothers and sisters, Eileen was just the
+baby, and always remained so, even in the eyes of the eminent civil
+engineer who was only her senior by a year. Among the peasantry--subtly
+prescient of her freakish destinies--she was dubbed "a fairy child":
+which was by no means a compliment. A bad uncanny creature for all the
+colleen's winsome looks. The later London whispers of a royal origin had
+a travestied germ of truth in her father's legendary descent from Brian
+Boru. He himself seemed scarcely less legendary, this highly coloured
+squire of the old Irish school, surviving into the Victorian era, like a
+Georgian caricature; still inhabiting a turreted castle romantically out
+of repair, infested with ragged parasites: still believing in high living
+and deep drinking: still receiving the reverence if not the rent of a
+feudal tenantry, and the affection of a horsey and bibulous countryside.
+When in liquor there was nothing the O'Keeffe might not do except pay off
+his mortgages. "He looked like an elephant when he put his trousers on
+wrong--you know elephants have their knees the wrong way," Eileen once
+told the public in a patter-song. She did not tell the public it was her
+father, but like a true artist she learned in suffering what she taught
+in song. One of her childish memories was to be stood in a row of
+brothers and sisters against a background of antlers, fishing-rods, and
+racing prints, and solemnly sworn at for innumerability by a ruddy-faced
+giant in a slovenly surtout. "Bad luck to ye, ye gomerals, make up your
+minds whether ye're nine or eleven," he would say. "A man ought to know
+the size of his family: Mother in heaven, I never thought mine was half
+so large!" These attempts to take a census of his children generally
+occurred after a peasant had brought him up the drive--"hat in one hand,
+and Squire in the other," as the patter-song had it. At the moment of
+assisted entry his paternal dignity was always at its stateliest, and it
+was not till he had gravely hung his cocked hat upon an imaginary
+door-peg in the middle of the hall and seen it flop floorward that he
+lost his calm. "Blood and 'ouns, ye've the door taken away again."
+
+Sometimes--though this was scarcely a relief--another befuddled gentleman
+would be left at the uninhabited lodge in his stead. That was chiefly
+after hunt dinners or card and claret parties, when a new coachman would
+take a quartet of gentry home, all clouded as to their identities. "Arrah
+now! they've got thimselves mixed! let thim sort thimselves." And the
+coachman would grab at the nearest limb, extricate it and its belongings
+from the tangle, and prop the total mass against the first gate he
+passed. And so with the rest.
+
+Eileen's mother, who was as remarkable for her microscopic piety as for
+the beauty untarnished by a copious maternity, figured in the child's
+memories as a stout saint who moved with a rustle of silken skirts and
+heaved an opulent black silk bosom relieved by a silver cross.
+
+"Who are you?" her spouse would inquire with an oath.
+
+"It's your wife I am, Bagenal dear," she would reply cheerfully. For she
+had grown up in the four-bottle tradition, and intoxication appeared as
+natural for the superior sex as sleep. Both were temporary phases, and
+did not prevent men from being the best of husbands and creatures when
+clear. And when the marketwomen or the beggarwomen respectfully inquired
+of her, "How is your good provider?" she made her reply with no sense of
+irony, though she had been long paying the piper herself. And the piper
+figured literally in the household accounts, as well as the fiddler, for
+the O'Keeffe was what the mud cabins called a "ginthleman to the
+backbone."
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+Family tradition necessitated that Eileen should at least complete her
+education at a convent in the outskirts of Paris, and her first communion
+was delayed till she should "make" it in that more pious atmosphere. The
+O'Keeffe convoyed her across the two Channels, and took the opportunity
+of visiting a "variety" theatre in Montmartre, where he was delighted
+to find John Bull and his inelegant womenkind so faithfully delineated.
+So exhilarated was he by this excellent take-off and a few _bocks_ on the
+Boulevard, that he refused to get down from the omnibus at its terminus.
+
+"_Jamais je ne descendrai, jamais_," he vociferated. Eileen was, however,
+spared the sight of this miniature French revolution. She was lying
+sleepless in the strange new dormitory, watching the nun walking up and
+down in the dim weird room reading her breviary, now lost in deep shadow
+with the remoter beds, now lucidly outlined in purple dress with creamy
+cross as she came under the central night-light. Eileen wondered how she
+could see to read, and if she were not just posing picturesquely, but
+from the fervency with which she occasionally kissed the crucifix
+hanging to the rosary at her side Eileen concluded she must know the
+office by heart. Her own Irish home seemed on another planet, and her
+turret-bedroom was already far more shadowy than this: presently both
+were swallowed up into nothingness.
+
+She commenced her convent career characteristically enough by making a
+sensation. For on rising in the morning she felt ineffably feeble and
+forlorn; she seemed to have scarcely closed her eyes, when she must be up
+and doing. The tiny hand-basin scarcely held enough water to cool her
+brow, still giddy from the sea-passage; to do her hair she had to borrow
+a minute hand-glass from her neighbour, and when after early mass in the
+chapel she found other prayers postponing breakfast, she fainted most
+alarmingly and dramatically. She was restored and refreshed with
+balm-mint water, but it took some days to reconcile her to the rigid
+life. To some aspects of it, indeed, she was never reconciled. The
+atmosphere of suspicious supervision was asphyxiating, after the
+disorderliness and warm humanity of her Irish home, after the run of the
+stables and the kennels, and the freedom of the village, after the chats
+with the pedlars and the beggars, and the borrowing and blowing of the
+postman's bugle, after the queenship of a host of barefooted gossoons,
+her loyal messenger-boys. Now her mere direct glance under reproof
+was considered "_hardi_." "Droop your eyes, you bold child," said the
+shocked Madame Agathe. A fancy she took to a French girl was checked.
+"_On defend les amities particulieres_," she was told to her
+astonishment. But on this one point Eileen was recalcitrant. She would
+even walk with her arm in Marcelle's, and somehow her will prevailed.
+Perhaps Eileen was trusted as a foreigner: perhaps Marcelle, being a
+day-boarder, weighed less upon the convent's conscience. There came a
+time when even their desks adjoined and were not put asunder. For by this
+time _Madame La Superieure_ herself, at the monthly reading of the marks,
+had often beamed upon Eileen. The _maitresse de classe_ had permitted
+her to kiss her crucifix, and the music-mistress was enchanted with her
+skill upon the piano and her rich contralto voice, such a godsend for the
+choir. In her very first term she was allowed to run up to the dormitory
+for something, unescorted by an _Enfant de Marie_. "Ascend, my child,"
+said Madame Agathe, smiling sweetly, for Eileen had outstripped all her
+classmates that morning in geography, and Eileen, with a prim "_Oui, ma
+mere_," rose and sailed with drooping eyelashes to the other end of the
+schoolroom, and courtesied herself out of the door, knowing herself the
+focus of envy and humorously conscious of her goodness. She had learned
+to love this soothing sensation of goodness, as she sat in her blue
+pelerine on a hard tabouret before her desk, her hands folded in front of
+her, her little feet demurely crossed. The sweeping courtesy of entrance
+and exit dramatised this pleasant sense of virtue. Later her aspirant's
+ribbon painted it in purple.
+
+She worked hard for her examinations. "_Elle est si sage, cet enfant_,"
+she heard Madame Ursule say to Madame Hortense, and she had a delicious
+sense of overwork. But she was not always _sage_. Once when her school
+desk was ransacked in her absence--one of the many forms of
+espionage--she refused to rearrange its tumbled contents, and when she
+was given a bad mark for disorder, she cried defiantly, "It is Madame
+Rosaline who deserves that bad mark." And the pleasure of seeing herself
+as rebel and phrasemaker was no less keen than the pleasure of goodness.
+
+One other institution found her regularly rebellious, and that was the
+pious reading which came punctually at half-past eight every morning. She
+was bored by all the holy heroines who seemed to have taken vows of
+celibacy at the age of four. "Devil take them all," she thought
+whimsically one morning. "But I dare say these good little people have no
+more reality than our 'little good people' who dance reels with the dead
+on November Eve. I wish Dan O'Leary had taught them all to shake their
+feet," and at the picture of jiggling little saints Eileen nearly gave
+herself away by a peal of laughter. For she had learned to conceal her
+unshared contempt for the holy heroines, and found a compensating
+pleasure in the sense of amused superiority, and the secret duality which
+it gave to her consciousness. She even went so far as to ransack the
+library for these beatific biographies, and when she found herself
+rewarded for "diligent reading" her amusement was at its apogee. And
+thus, when the first awe and interest of the strange life receded, Eileen
+was left standing apart as on a little rock, criticising, satirising, and
+even circulating verses among the few cronies who were not sneaks. The
+dowerless "sisters" who scrubbed the floors, the portioned _Mesdames_,
+with their more dignified humility, the Refectory readers, the Father
+Confessors, the little _Enfants de Jesus_, the big _Enfants de Marie_,
+who sometimes owed their blue ribbon to their birth or their money rather
+than to their exemplary behaviour, all had their humours, and all figured
+in Eileen's French couplets. The difficulty of passing these from hand to
+hand only made the reading--and the writing--the spicier. Literature did
+not interfere with lessons, for Eileen composed not during "preparation,"
+but while she sat embroidering handkerchiefs, as demure as a sleeping
+kitten.
+
+When the kitten was not thus occupied, she was playing with skeins of
+logic and getting herself terribly tangled.
+
+She put her difficulties to her favourite nun as they walked in the
+quaint arcades of the lovely old garden, and their talk was punctuated
+by the flippant click of croquet-balls in the courtyard beyond.
+
+"Madame Agathe is pleased with me to-day," said Eileen. "To-morrow she
+will be displeased. But how can I help the colour of my soul any more
+than the colour of my hair?"
+
+"Hush, my child; if you talk like that you will lose your faith. Nobody
+is pleased or vexed with anybody for the colour of their hair."
+
+"Yes, where I come from a peasant girl suffers a little for having red
+hair. Also a man with a hump, he cannot marry unless he owns many pigs."
+
+"Eileen! Who has put such dreadful thoughts into your head?"
+
+"That is what I ask myself, _ma mere_. Many things are done to me and I
+sit in the centre looking on, like the weathercock on our castle at home,
+who sees himself turning this way and that way and can only creak."
+
+"A weathercock is dead--you are alive."
+
+"Not at night, _ma mere_. At home in my bedroom I used to put out my
+candle every night by clapping the extinguisher upon it. Who is it puts
+the extinguisher upon me?"
+
+The good sister almost wished it could be she.
+
+But she replied gently, "It is God who gives us sleep--we can't be always
+awake."
+
+"Then I am not responsible for my dreams anyhow?"
+
+"I hope you don't have bad dreams," said the nun, affrighted.
+
+"Oh, I dream--what do I not dream? Sometimes I fly--oh, so high, and all
+the people look up at me, they marvel. But I laugh and kiss my hand to
+them down there."
+
+"Well, there's no harm in flying," said the nun. "The angels fly."
+
+"Oh, but I am not always an angel in my dreams. Is it God who sends these
+bad dreams, too?"
+
+"No--that is the devil."
+
+"Then it is sometimes he who puts the extinguisher on?"
+
+"That is when you have not said your prayers properly."
+
+Eileen opened wide eyes of protest. "Oh, but, dear mother, I always say
+my prayers properly."
+
+"You think so? That is already a sin in you--the sin of spiritual pride."
+
+"But, _ma mere_, devil-dreams or angel-dreams--it is always the same in
+the morning. Every morning one finds oneself ready on the pillow, like a
+clock that has been wound up. One did not make the works."
+
+"But one can keep them clean."
+
+Eileen burst into a peal of laughter.
+
+"_Qu'avez-vous donc?_" said the good creature in vexation.
+
+"I thought of a clock washing its face with its hands."
+
+"You are a naughty child--one cannot talk seriously to you."
+
+"Oh, dear mother, I am just as serious when I am laughing as when I am
+crying."
+
+"My child, we must never cultivate the mocking spirit. Leave me. I am
+vexed with you."
+
+As her first communion approached, however, all these simmerings of
+scepticism and revolt died down into the recommended _recueillement_. Her
+days of retreat, passed in holy exercises, were an ecstasy of absorption
+into the divine, and the pious readings began to assume a truer
+complexion as the experiences of sister-souls, deep crying unto deep. Oh,
+how she yearned to take the vows, to leave the trivial distracting life
+of the outer world for the peace of self-sacrificial love!
+
+As she sat in the chapel, all white muslin and white veil, her hair
+braided under a little cap, the new rosary of amethyst--a gift from
+home--at her side, her hands clasped, exalted by incense and flowers and
+the sweet voices of the choir, chanting Gounod's Canticle, "_Le Ciel a
+visite la terre_," she felt that never more would she let this celestial
+visitant go. When after the communion she pulled the last piece of
+veiling over her face, she felt that it was for ever between her and the
+crude world of sense; the "Hymn of Thanksgiving" was the apt expression
+of her emotions.
+
+But next time she came under these aesthetic, devotional influences--even
+as her own voice was soaring heavenward in the choir--she thought to
+herself, "How delicious to have an emotion which you feel will last for
+ever and which you know won't!" And a gleam of amusement flitted over her
+rapt features.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+When Eileen returned to the Convent after her first summer vacation in
+Ireland she was richer by a surreptitious correspondent. He wrote to her,
+care of Marcelle, who had a careless mother. He was a young officer from
+the neighbouring barracks who, invited to make merry with the hospitable
+O'Keeffe, had fallen a victim to Eileen's girlish charms and mature
+appearance, for Eileen carried herself as if her years were three more
+and her inches six higher. Her face had the winsome Irish sweetness; it,
+too, looked lovelier than a scientific survey would have determined. Her
+nose was straightish, her mouth small, her lashes were long and dark and
+conspired with her dark hair to trick a casual observer into thinking her
+eyes dark, but they were grey with little flecks of golden light if you
+looked closelier than you should. Her hands were large but finely shaped,
+with long fingers somewhat turned back at the tips, and pretty pink
+nails--the hands were especially noticeable, because even when Eileen was
+not playing the pianoforte, she was prone to extend her thumb as though
+stretching an octave and to flick it as though striking a note.
+
+It was not love-letters, though, that Lieutenant Doherty sent Eileen,
+for the schoolgirl had always taken him in a motherly way, and indeed
+signed herself "Your Mother-Confessor." But the mystery and difficulty
+of smuggling the letters to and fro lent colour to the drab Convent
+days, far vivider colour than the whilom passing of verses. So long
+as Marcelle's desk remained next to Eileen's it was comparatively
+easy--though still risky--while one's head was studiously buried in
+"Greek roots," for one's automatic hand to pass or receive the letter
+beneath the desks through the dangerous space of daylight between the
+two. "Let not your right hand know what your left hand doeth," Eileen
+once quoted when Marcelle's conscience pricked. For Marcelle imagined
+an amour of the darkest dye, and could not understand Eileen's calmness
+any more than Eileen could understand Marcelle's romantic palpitations
+alternating with suggestive sniggerings.
+
+But when Marcelle was at length separated from Eileen by a suspicious
+management, a much more breathless plan was necessary. For Marcelle would
+deposit the Doherty letter in Eileen's compartment in the curtained row
+of little niches--where one kept one's work-bag, atlas, and other
+educational reserves--or Eileen would slip the reply into Marcelle's, and
+there it would lie, exposed to inspectorial ransacking, till such times
+as Eileen or Marcelle could transfer it to her bosom. Poor Marcelle lived
+with her heart in her mouth, trembling, at every rustle of the curtain,
+for her purple ribbon. However, luck favoured the bold, while the only
+bad moment in which Eileen was on the verge of detection she surmounted
+by a stroke of genius.
+
+"What are you hiding there?" said the music-mistress, more sharply than
+she was wont to address her pet pupil. Eileen put her hand to her bosom.
+'Twas as if she were protecting the young lieutenant from pursuing foes,
+and he became romantically dear to her in that perilous moment, pregnant
+with swift invention.
+
+She looked round with dramatic mysteriousness. "Hush, _ma mere_," she
+breathed; "the Mother Superior might hear."
+
+"Ah, it concerns the Reverend Mother's fete," cried the music-mistress,
+falling into the trap and even saving Eileen from the lie direct. "Good,
+my child," and she smiled tenderly upon her. For the birthday of the Lady
+Superior which was imminent was heralded by infinite mysteriousness. The
+Reverend Mother was taken by surprise, regularly and punctually. The
+girls all subscribed, their parents were invited to send plants and
+flowers. The air vibrated with sublime secrecy, amid which the Reverend
+Mother walked guilelessly. And when the great day came and the fete was
+duly sprung upon her, and the pupils all dressed in white overwhelmed her
+with bouquets and courtesies, how exquisite was her pleased astonishment!
+That night talking was allowed in the Refectory, and how the girls
+jabbered! It was like the rolling of ceaseless thunder--one would have
+thought they had never talked before and never would talk again, and that
+they were anxious to unload themselves once for all.
+
+"How the ordinary becomes the extraordinary by being forbidden,"
+philosophised Eileen. "At the Castle I can do a hundred things, which
+here become enormous privileges, even if I am allowed to do them at all.
+Is it so with everything they say is wrong? Is all sin artificial, and do
+people sin so zestfully only because they are cramped? Or is there a
+residue of real wickedness?" Thus she thought, struggling against the
+obsession of an inquisitorial system which merely clouded her perceptions
+of real right and wrong. And alone she ate silently, a saintly figure
+amid the laughing, chattering crew.
+
+She wrote her maternal admonitions to young Doherty during the
+preparation-time, and far keener than her sense of the lively,
+good-looking young officer was her sense of the double life she led
+through him in this otherwise monotonous Convent. When she achieved the
+blue ribbon of the _Enfants de Marie_, for which she had worked with true
+devotion, it added poignancy to her pious pleasure to think that one
+false step in her secret life would have marred her overt life.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+As the end of her conventual period drew nigh Eileen resolved never to
+go back to the spotted world, but to ask her father to pay her dowry as
+Bride to the Church, and she had just placed in Marcelle's niche the
+letter informing Lieutenant Doherty of her call to the higher life (and
+pointing out how apter than ever his confessions would now be) when
+Marcelle's signal warned her to look in her own niche. There she found a
+letter which she could not read till bread-and-chocolate time, but which
+then took the flavour out of these refreshments. Her lover--he leaped to
+that verbal position in her thought in this moment of crisis--was ordered
+off in haste to Afghanistan. The geographical proficiency which had won
+her so many marks served her only too well, but she hastened to extract
+her atlas from the fatal niche, and to pore over her geographical misery.
+She felt she ought to withdraw her own letter for revision, but she could
+not get at Marcelle or even make her understand. In her perturbation she
+gave Cabul and Candahar as Kings of Navarre, and Marcelle, implacable as
+a pillar-box, went away in the evening like a mail-cart.
+
+But the very same night the Superior handed Eileen an opened cablegram
+which banished Lieutenant Doherty much farther than Afghanistan. Her
+father was very ill, and called her to his bedside. Things had a way of
+happening simultaneously to Eileen, these coincidences dogged her life,
+so that she came to think of them as the rival threads of her life
+getting tangled at certain points and then going off separately again.
+After all, if you have several strings to your life, she told herself,
+it would be more improbable that they should always remain separate than
+that they should sometimes intertwine.
+
+Eileen reached the Castle through a tossing avenue of villagers, weeping
+and blessing, and divined from their torment of sympathy that "his
+honour" was already in his grave. Poor feckless father, how she had loved
+him spite all his rollicking ways, or perhaps because of them. Through
+her tears she saw him counting--on his entry into Paradise--the children
+who had preceded him, and more than ever fuzzled by the flapping of their
+wings. Oh, poor dearest, how unhomely it would all be to him, this other
+world where his jovial laugh would shock the nun-like spirits, where
+there was no more claret, cold, mulled, or buttered, and no sound of horn
+or tally-ho.
+
+Perhaps it was as well that so many of his brood had gone before him, for
+with his departure the Castle fell metaphorically about the ears of the
+survivors. Creditors gave quarter no longer, and Mrs. O'Keeffe found
+herself reduced to a modest red-gabled farmhouse, with nothing saved from
+the crash save that part of her dowry which was invested in trustees for
+the education of her boys. There was no question of Eileen returning to
+the Convent as a pupil: her desire to take the veil failed at the thought
+that now she could only be a dowerless working-sister, not a teacher. And
+for teaching, especially music-teaching, she felt she had a real gift. By
+a natural transition arose the idea of becoming a music-teacher or a
+governess outside a Convent, and since her stay at home only helped to
+diminish her mother's resources, she resolved to augment them by leaving
+her. Family pride forbade the neighbourhood witnessing a deeper decline.
+The O'Keeffes were still "the Quality"; it would be better to seek her
+fortunes outside Ireland and retain her prestige at home. The dual
+existence would give relish and variety.
+
+Eileen's mind worked so quickly that she communicated these ideas to her
+mother, ere that patient lady had quite realised that never more would
+she say, "It's your wife I am, Bagenal dear."
+
+"No, no, you are not to be going away," cried Mrs. O'Keeffe, in alarm.
+
+"Why wouldn't I?" asked Eileen.
+
+Mrs. O'Keeffe could not tell, but looked mysterious meanings. This
+excited Eileen, so that the poor woman had no rest till she answered
+plainly, "Because, mavourneen, it's married you are going to be,
+please the saints."
+
+"Married! Me!"
+
+"It was your father's dying wish, God keep his soul."
+
+"But to whom?"
+
+"You should be asking the priest how good he is. Didn't you notice that
+the chapel is being white-washed afresh and how clear the Angelus bell
+rings? Not that it matters much to him, for he has lashings of money as
+well as a heart of gold."
+
+"Hasn't he a name, too?"
+
+"Don't jump down my throat, Eileen darling. I shouldn't be thinking of
+O'Flanagan if your father--"
+
+"O'Flanagan! Do you mean the man that bought our Castle at the auction?"
+
+"And isn't it beautifully repaired he's having it for you? He saw you
+when you were home for the holidays, and he asked us for your hand, all
+so humble, but your father told him he must wait till you came home for
+good."
+
+"O'Flanagan!" Eileen flicked him away with her thumb. "A half-mounted
+gentleman like that."
+
+"Eileen aroon, beggars can't be choosers."
+
+Eileen flushed all over her body. "No more can beggars on horseback."
+
+"Your father will be sorry you take it like that, mavourneen." And the
+stout saint burst into tears.
+
+Eileen winced. She could almost have flung her arms round her mother and
+promised to think of it. Suddenly she remembered Lieutenant Doherty. How
+dared they tear her away from the man she loved! They had not even
+consulted her. She flicked her thumb agitatedly on the back of her
+mother's chair. Let her weep! Did they want to sell her, to exchange her
+for a castle, as if she were a chess-piece? The thought made her smile
+again.
+
+Her mother said no more, but she could not have employed a more
+convincing eloquence. The reticence wrought upon Eileen's nerves. After a
+couple of months of maternal meekness and family poverty, the suggested
+sacrifice began to appeal to her. A letter from Doherty on his steamer
+(forwarded to her from Paris by Marcelle), passionately protesting
+against her intention to take the vows, came to remind her that sacrifice
+was what she yearned for. The coming of the letter was providential, she
+told herself: if Marcelle had not posted hers against her will, she might
+not have had this monition. To return to the Castle as a bride, martyred
+for the family redemption, was really only a way of returning to the
+Convent. It meant a life of penance for the good of others. To think
+of her mother sunning herself again upon the battlemented terrace, or
+sleeping--if only as guest--in the great panelled bedroom, brought a lump
+to her throat; her poor tenantry, too, should bless her name; she would
+glide among them like a spirit, very sad, yet with such healing in her
+smile and in her touch. "Sure the misthress is the swatest angel God iver
+sint, so she is." At home she would sit and spin in the old tapestried
+room, her own life as faded, and sometimes she would dream in the hall,
+among the antlers and beast-skins, and watch the great burning logs, so
+much more poetic than this peat smoke which hurt one's eyes. Ah, but then
+there was O'Flanagan. Well, he would not be much in the way. He liked
+riding over his new estate in his buckskin breeches, cracking his great
+loaded whip. She had met him herself once or twice, and the great shy
+creature had blushed furiously and ridden off down the first bridle-path.
+"I turn his horse's head as well as his," she had thought with a smile.
+Yes, she must sacrifice herself. How strange that the nuns should
+imagine you only renounced by giving up earthly life. Why, earthly life
+might be the most celestial renunciation of all. But Lieutenant Doherty,
+what of him? Had she the right to sacrifice him, too? But then she had
+never given him any claim upon her--she had been merely his little
+mother-confessor. If he had dared to love her--as his passionate protest
+against the veil seemed to suggest--it was at his own risk. Poor Doherty,
+how grieved he would be in far Afghanistan. He would probably rush upon
+the assegais and die, murmuring her name. Her eyes filled with delicious
+tears. She sat down and scribbled him a letter hastily, announcing her
+impending marriage, and posted it at once, so as to put herself beyond
+temptation to draw back. Then she dashed to her mother's room and sobbed
+out, "Dear heart, I consent to be martyred."
+
+"What?" said Mrs. O'Keeffe, opening her eyes.
+
+"I consent to be married," Eileen corrected hastily.
+
+"Do you mean to Mr. O'Flanagan?" Mrs. O'Keeffe's face became red as the
+sun in mist. The cross heaved convulsively on her black silk bosom.
+
+"To whom else? You haven't forgotten he wanted to marry me."
+
+"No, but _he_ has, I am fearing."
+
+"What?" It was now Eileen's turn to open her eyes, and the tears dried on
+her lashes as she listened. Mrs. O'Keeffe explained, amid the ebb and
+flow of burning blood, that she had waited in vain for Mr. O'Flanagan to
+renew his proposal. At first she thought he was waiting for a decent
+interval to elapse, or for the Castle to be ready for his bride, but
+gradually she had become convinced by his silence and by the way he
+avoided her eye when they met and turned his horse down the nearest
+boreen, that Eileen had been right in calling him half-mounted. He had
+proposed when he imagined the Squire's fortunes were as of yore, but now
+he feared he would have to support the ruined family. Well, he needn't
+fear. The family wouldn't touch him with a forty-foot pole.
+
+"If only your poor father had been alive," wound up Mrs. O'Keeffe, "the
+dirty upstart would never have dared to put such an insult on his
+orphaned daughter, that he wouldn't, and if Dan O'Leary should hear of
+it--which the saints forbid--it's not the jig that his foot would be
+teaching Mr. O' Flanagan."
+
+The bathos of this anti-climax to martyrdom was too grotesque. Eileen
+burst into a peal of laughter, which was taken by her mother as a tribute
+to her lively vituperation. Decidedly, life was deliciously odd. Suddenly
+she remembered her posted letter to Doherty, and she laughed louder.
+
+Should she send another on its heels? No, it would be rather difficult to
+explain. Besides, it would be so interesting to see how he replied.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+Holly Hall--Eileen's first place--was in the English midlands, towards
+the North: a sombre stone house looking down on a small manufacturing
+town, whose very grass seemed dingied with coal-dust. "A dromedary town,"
+Eileen dubbed it; for it consisted of a long level with two humps,
+standing in a bleak desert. On one of the humps she found herself
+perched. Below--between the humps--lay the town proper, with its savour
+of grime and gain. The Black Hole was Eileen's name for this quarter;
+and indeed you might leave your hump, bathed in sunlight, dusty but still
+sunlight, and as you came down the old wagon-road you would plunge deeper
+and deeper into the yellowish fog which the poor townspeople mistook for
+daylight. The streets of the Black Hole bristled with public-houses,
+banks, factories, and dissenting chapels. The population was given over
+to dogs and football, and medical men abounded. Arches, blank walls, and
+hoardings were flamboyant with ugly stage-beauties, melodramatic
+tableaux, and the advertisements of tailors. After the Irish glens and
+the Convent garden the Black Hole was not exhilarating.
+
+Mr. Maper, the proprietor of Holly Hall, was a mill-owner, a big-boned,
+kindly man, who derived his Catholicism from an Irish mother, and had
+therefore been pleased to find an Irish girl among the candidates for the
+post of companion to his wife.
+
+As he drove her from the station up the steep old wagon-road he explained
+the situation, in more than one sense. Eileen's girlish intuition helped
+his lame sentences over the stiles. Briefly, she was to polish the
+quondam mill-hand, whom he had married when he, too, was a factory
+operative, but who had not been able to rise with him. He was an alderman
+and a J.P. That made things difficult enough. But how if he became Mayor?
+An alderman has no necessary feminine, not even alderwoman, but Mayor
+makes Mayoress. And a Mayoress is not safe from the visits of royalty
+itself. Of course the Mayoress was not to suspect she was being refined;
+"made a Lady Mayoress," as Eileen put it to herself.
+
+She entered with a light heart upon a task she soon found heavy. For
+the mistress of Holly Hall had no sense of imperfections. She was a
+tall and still good-looking person, and this added to her fatal
+complacency. Eileen saw that she imagined God made the woman and money
+the lady, and that between a female in a Paris bonnet and a female in a
+head-shawl there was a natural gap as between a crested cockatoo and a
+hedge-sparrow. Mrs. Maper indeed suffered badly from swelled self, for it
+had subconsciously expanded with its surroundings. The wide rooms of the
+Hall were her spacious skirts, bedecked with the long glitter of the
+glass-houses; her head reached the roof and wore the weathercock as a
+feather in her bonnet. All those whirring engines in the misty valley
+below were her demon-slaves, and the chimneys puffed up incense at her.
+When she drove out, her life-blood coursed pleasurably through the
+ramping, glossy horses.
+
+Mrs. Maper, in short, saw herself an empress. It was simply impossible
+for her to realise that there were eyes which could still see the
+head-shawl, not the crown. Her one touch of dignity was grotesque--it
+consisted of extending her arm like a stiff sceptre, in moments of
+emphasis, and literally pointing her remarks with her forefinger.
+Sometimes she pointed to the ceiling, sometimes to the carpet, sometimes
+to the walls. This digital punctuation appeared to be not only
+superfluous but irrelevant, for Heaven might be invoked from the floor.
+
+With this bejewelled lady Eileen passed her days either on the Hump, or
+in the Black Hole, or in the environs, and but for her sense of humour
+and her power of leading a second life above or below her first, her
+tenure of the post would have been short. The most delicate repetitions
+of mispronounced words, the subtlest substitution of society phrases for
+factory idioms, fell blunted against an impenetrable ignorance and
+self-sufficiency. Short of dropping the pose of companion and boldly
+rapping a pupil on the knuckles, there seemed to her no way of modifying
+her mistress. "Who can refine what Fortune has gilded?" she asked herself
+in humorous despair. The appearance of Mr. Maper at dinner brought little
+relief. It was a strange meal in the lordly dining room--three covers
+laid at one end of the long mahogany table, under the painted stare of
+somebody else's ancestors. Eileen's girlish enjoyment of the prodigal
+fare was spoiled by her furtive watch on the hostess's fork. Nor did the
+alderman contribute ease, for he was on pins lest the governess should
+reveal her true mission, and on needles lest his wife should reveal her
+true depths. Likewise he worried Eileen to drink his choicest wines.
+Vintages that she felt her father would have poised on his tongue in
+mystic clucking ecstasy stood untasted in a regiment of little glasses
+at her elbow.
+
+She repaid them, however, by adroit educational remarks.
+
+"How stupid of me again!" she said once. "I held out my hock glass for
+the champagne! Do tell me again which is which, dear Mrs. Maper."
+
+"I suppose you never had a drink of champagne in your life afore you come
+here," said Mrs. Maper, beamingly. And she indicated the port glass.
+
+"No, no, Lucy, don't play pranks on a stranger," her husband put in
+tactfully. "It's this glass, Miss O'Keeffe."
+
+"Oh, thank you!" Eileen gushed. "And this is what? Sherry?"
+
+"No, port," replied Mr. Maper, scarcely able to repress a wink.
+
+"You'll have to tell me again to-morrow night," said Eileen, enjoying her
+own comedy powers. "My poor father tried to teach me the difference
+between bird's-eye and shag, but I could never remember."
+
+"Ah, Bob's the boy for teaching you that," guffawed the mill owner. "I
+stick to half-crown cigars myself." His wife shot him a dignified rebuke,
+as though he were forgetting his station in undue familiarity.
+
+Afterwards Eileen wondered who Bob was, but at the moment she could think
+of nothing but the farcical complications arising from the idea of Mrs.
+Maper's providing Mr. Maper with a male companion secretly to improve
+_his_ manners. Of course the _two_ companions would fall in love with
+each other.
+
+After dinner things usually woke up a little, for Eileen was made to play
+and even sing from the scores of "Madame Angot" and other recent comic
+operas--a form of music that had not hitherto come her way, though it was
+the only form the music-racks held to feed the grand piano with. Not till
+the worthy couple had retired, could she permit herself her old Irish
+airs, or the sonatas and sacred pieces of the Convent.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+Accident--the key to all great inventions--supplied Eileen with a new way
+of educating her mistress. The cook had been impertinent, Mrs. Maper
+complained. "Why don't you hunt her?" Eileen replied. Mrs. Maper
+corrected the Irishism by saying, "Do you mean dismiss?" Eileen hastened
+to accuse herself of Irish imperfections, and henceforward begged to
+learn the correct phrases or pronunciations. Sometimes she ventured
+apologetically to wonder if the Irish way was not more approved of the
+dictionary. Then they would wander into the library in the apparently
+unoccupied wing, and consult dictionary after dictionary till Eileen
+hoped Mrs. Maper's brain had received an indelible impression.
+
+One Sunday afternoon a friendly orthoepical difference of this nature
+arose even as Mrs. Maper sat in her palatial drawing room waiting for
+callers, and they repaired to the library, Mrs. Maper arguing the point
+with loud good humour. A glass door giving by corkscrew iron steps on the
+garden, banged hurriedly as they made their chattering entry. The rows of
+books--that had gone with the Hall like the family portraits--stretched
+silently away, but amid the smell of leather and learning, Eileen's
+lively nostrils detected the whiff of the weed, and sure enough on the
+top of a stepladder reposed a plain briar pipe beside an unclosed Greek
+folio.
+
+"The scent is hot," she thought, touching the still warm bowl. "Bob seems
+as scared as a rabbit and as learned as an owl." Suddenly she had
+difficulty in repressing a laugh. What if Bob _were_ the corresponding
+male companion!
+
+"I see Mr. Robert has forgotten his pipe," she said audaciously.
+
+Mrs. Maper was taken aback. "The--the boy is shy," she stammered.
+
+What! Was there a son lying _perdu_ in the house all this while? What
+fun! A son who did not even go to church or to his mother's receptions.
+But how had he managed to escape her? And why did nobody speak of him?
+Ah, of course, he was a cripple, or facially disfigured, morbidly
+dreading society, living among his books. She had read of such things.
+Poor young man!
+
+After dinner she found herself examining the family album inquisitively,
+but beyond a big-browed and quite undistorted baby nursing a kitten,
+there did not seem anything remotely potential, and she smiled at herself
+as she thought of the difficulty of evolving bibs into briar pipes and
+developing Greek folios out of kittens.
+
+From Mrs. Maper's keenness about the University Boat Race as it drew
+near, and from her wearing on the day itself a dark blue gown trimmed
+profusely with ribbons of the same hue, Eileen divined that Bob was an
+Oxford man. This gave the invisible deformed a new touch of interest, but
+long ere this Eileen had found a much larger interest--the theatre.
+
+She had never been to the play, and the Theatre Royal of the Black Hole
+was the scene of her induction into this enchantment. In those days the
+touring company system had not developed to its present complexity, and
+the theatre had been closed during the first month or so of Eileen's
+residence in Dromedary Town. But at length, to Mrs. Maper's delight, a
+company arrived with a melodrama, and as part of her duties, Eileen, no
+less excited over the new experience (which her Confessor had permitted
+her), drove with her mistress behind a pair of spanking steeds to the
+Wednesday _matinee_. Mrs. Maper alleged her inability to leave her
+homekeeping husband as the cause of her daylight playgoing, but Eileen
+maliciously ascribed it to the pomp of the open carriage.
+
+They occupied a box and Eileen was glad they did. For instead of
+undergoing the illusion of the drama, she found it killingly comic as
+soon as she understood that it was serious. It was all she could do to
+hide her amusement from her entranced companion, and somehow this box at
+the theatre reminded her of the Convent room in which she used to sit
+listening to the pious readings anent infant prodigies. One afternoon it
+came upon her that here Mrs. Maper had learned her strange pump handle
+gestures. Here it was that ladies worked arms up and down and pointed
+denunciatory forefingers, albeit the direction had more reference to the
+sentiment.
+
+It was not till a comic opera came along that Eileen was able to take the
+theatre seriously. Then she found some of the melodies of the drawing
+room scores wedded to life and diverting action, sometimes even to poetic
+dancing; the first gleam of poetry the stage gave her. When these airs
+were lively, Mrs. Maper's feet beat time and Eileen lived in the fear
+that she would arise and prance in her box. It was an effervescence of
+joyous life--the factory girl recrudescent--and Eileen's hand would lie
+lightly on Mrs. Maper's shoulder, feeling like a lid over a kettle about
+to boil.
+
+When they came home Eileen would gratify her mistress by imitations of
+comedians. Presently she ventured on the tragedians, without being seen
+through. She even raised her arm towards the ceiling or shot it towards
+the centre of the carpet pattern, and Mrs. Maper followed it spellbound.
+
+But from all these monkey tricks she found relief in her real music. When
+she crooned the old Irish songs, the Black Hole was washed away as by the
+soft Irish rain, and the bogs stretched golden with furze-blossom and
+silver with fluffy fairy cotton, and at the doors of the straggling
+cabins overhung by the cloud-shadowed mountains, blue-cloaked women
+sat spinning, and her eyes filled with tears as though the peat smoke
+had got into them.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+In such a mood she was playing one Saturday evening in the interval
+before dinner, when she became aware that somebody was listening, and
+turning her head, she saw through the Irish mist a man's figure standing
+in the conservatory. The figure was vanishing when she cried out a whit
+huskily, "Oh, pray, don't let me drive you away."
+
+He stood still. "If I am not interrupting your music," he murmured.
+
+"Not at all," she said, breaking it off altogether.
+
+As the mist cleared she had a vivid impression of a tall, fair young
+man against a background of palms. "Eyes burning under a white marble
+mantel-piece," she summed up his face. Could this uncrippled, rather
+good-looking person be Bob?
+
+"Won't you come in, Mr. Robert?" she said riskily.
+
+"I only wished to thank you," he said, sliding a step or two into the
+room.
+
+"There is nothing to thank me for," she said, whirling her stool to face
+him. "It's my way of amusing myself." She was glad she was in her evening
+frock.
+
+"Amusing yourself!" He looked aghast.
+
+"What else? I am alone--I have nothing better in the world to do."
+
+"Does it amuse you?" He was flushed now, even the marble mantel-piece
+ruddied by the flame. "I wish it amused me."
+
+Now it was Eileen's turn to gasp. "Then why do you listen?"
+
+"I don't listen--I bury myself as far away as I can."
+
+"So I have understood. Then what are you thanking me for?"
+
+"For what you are doing for--." his hesitation was barely
+perceptible--"my mother."
+
+"Oh!" Eileen looked blank. "I thought you meant for my music."
+
+His face showed vast relief. "Oh, you were talking of your music! Of
+course, of course, how stupid of me! That is what has drawn me from my
+hole, like a rat to the Pied Piper, and I do thank you most sincerely.
+But being drawn, what I most wished to thank the Piper for was--"
+
+"Your mother pays the Piper for that," she broke in.
+
+He smiled but tossed his head. "Money! what is that?"
+
+"It is more than I deserve for mere companionship--pleasant drives and
+theatres."
+
+He did not accept her delicate reticence.
+
+"But you have altered her wonderfully!" he cried.
+
+"Oh, I have not," she cried, doubly startled. "It's just nothing that I
+have done--nothing." Then she felt her modesty had put her foot in a
+bog-hole. Unseeingly he helped her out.
+
+"It is most kind of you to put it like that. But I see it in every
+movement, every word. She imitates you unconsciously--I became curious to
+see so excellent a model, though I had resolved not to meet you. No, no,
+please, don't misunderstand."
+
+"I don't," she said mischievously. "You have now given me three reasons
+for seeing me. You need give me none for not seeing me."
+
+"But you must understand," he said, colouring again, "how painful all
+this has been for me--"
+
+"Not seeing me?" she interpolated innocently.
+
+"The--the whole thing," he stammered.
+
+"Yes, parents are tiresome," she said sympathetically.
+
+He came nearer the music-stool.
+
+"Are they not? They came down every year for the Eights."
+
+"Is that at Oxford?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+She was silent; her thumb flicked at a note on the keyboard behind her.
+
+"But that's not what I mind in them most--"
+
+She wondered at the rapidity with which his shyness was passing into
+effusiveness. But then was she not the "Mother-Confessor"? Had not even
+her favourite nuns told her things about their early lives, even when
+there was no moral to be pointed? "They're very good-hearted," she
+murmured apologetically. "I'm often companion--in charity expeditions."
+
+"It's easy to be good-hearted when you don't know what to do with your
+money. This place is full of such people. But I look in vain for the
+diviner impulse."
+
+Eileen wondered if he were a Dissenter. But then "the place was full of
+such people."
+
+"You don't think there's enough religion?" she murmured.
+
+"There's certainly plenty of churches and chapels. But I find myself
+isolated here. You see, I'm a Socialist."
+
+Eileen crossed herself instinctively.
+
+"You don't believe in God!" she cried in horror. For the good nuns had
+taught her that "_les socialistes_" were synonymous with "_les athees_."
+
+He laughed. "Not, if by God you mean Mammon. I don't believe in
+Property--we up here in the sun and the others down there in the soot."
+
+"But you _are_ up here," said Eileen, naively.
+
+"I can't help it. My mother would raise Cain." He smiled wistfully. "She
+couldn't bear to see a stranger helping father in the factory
+management."
+
+"Then you _are_ down there."
+
+"Quite so. I work as hard as any one even if my labour isn't manual. I
+dress like an ordinary hand, too, though my mother doesn't know that, for
+I change at the office."
+
+"But what good does that do?"
+
+"It satisfies my conscience."
+
+"And I suppose the men like it?"
+
+"No, that's the strange part. They don't. And father only laughs. But one
+must persist. At Oxford I worked under Ruskin."
+
+"Oh, you're an artist!"
+
+"No, I didn't mean that part of Ruskin's work. His gospel of labour--we
+had a patch for digging."
+
+"What--real spades!"
+
+"Did you imagine we called a spoon a spade?" he said, a whit resentfully.
+
+Eileen smiled. "No, but I can't imagine you using a common or garden
+spade."
+
+"You are thinking of my hands." He looked at them, not without
+complacency, Eileen thought, as she herself wondered where he had got his
+long white fingers from. "But it is a couple of years ago," he explained.
+"It was hard work, I assure you."
+
+"Did your mother know?" Eileen asked with a little whimsical look.
+
+"Of course not. She would have been horrified."
+
+"Well, but most people would be surprised."
+
+"Yes. Put your muscle into an oar or a cricket bat and you are a hero;
+put your muscle into a spade and you are a madman."
+
+"You think it's _vice versa_?" queried Eileen, ingenuously.
+
+"Much more. At least," he stammered and coloured again, "I don't pose as
+a hero but simply--"
+
+"As what?" Eileen still looked innocent.
+
+"I simply think work is the noblest function of man," he burst forth.
+"Don't you?"
+
+"I do not," answered Eileen. "Work is a curse. If the serpent had not
+tempted Eve to break God's commandment, we should still be basking in
+Paradise."
+
+He looked at her curiously. "You believe that?"
+
+"Isn't it in the Bible?" she answered, seriously astonished.
+
+"Whatever the primitive Semitic allegorist may have thought, work is a
+blessing, not a curse."
+
+"Then you _are_ an atheist!" Eileen recoiled from this strange young man.
+
+"Ah, you shrink back!" he said in tones of bitter pleasure. "I told you I
+lived in isolation."
+
+Eileen's humour shot forth candidly. "You'll not be isolated when you
+die."
+
+His bitterness passed into genial superiority. "You mean I'll go to hell.
+How can you believe anything so horrible?"
+
+"Why is that horrible for me to believe? For you--" And she filled up the
+sentence with a smile.
+
+"I don't believe you do believe it."
+
+"There's nothing you seem to believe. I do honestly think that you can't
+be saved if you don't believe."
+
+"I accept that. The question, however, is what kind of belief and what
+kind of saving. Do you suppose Plato is in hell?"
+
+"I don't know. He invented Platonic love, didn't he? So that might save
+him." She looked at him with her great grey eyes--he couldn't tell
+whether she was quizzing him or not.
+
+"Is that all you know of Plato?"
+
+"I know he was a Greek philosopher. But I only learned Greek roots at the
+Convent. So Plato is Greek to me."
+
+"He has been beautifully Englished by the Master of my College. I wish
+you'd read him."
+
+"Is the translation in the library?"
+
+"Of course--with lots of other interesting books, and such queer folios
+and quartos and first editions. The collector was a man of taste. Why do
+you never come and let me show them you?"
+
+"You'd run away."
+
+"No, I wouldn't," he smiled encouragingly.
+
+"Yes, you would. And leave your pipe on Plato!"
+
+He laughed. "Was I rude? But I didn't know you then. Come to-morrow
+afternoon and show you've forgiven me."
+
+The new interest was sufficiently tempting. But her maidenliness held
+back. "I'll come with your mother."
+
+Disgust lent him wit. "You're her companion--not she yours."
+
+"True. Nor I yours."
+
+"Then I'll come here."
+
+"Bringing the Plato and the folios--?"
+
+"Why not? You can't forbid me my own drawing-room."
+
+"I can run away and leave my crochet-hook behind."
+
+"You'll find me hooked on whenever you return."
+
+"Well, if you're determined--by hook or by crook! But you're not going to
+convert me to Socialism?"
+
+"I won't promise."
+
+"You must. I don't mind reading Plato."
+
+"He's worse. He isn't a Christian at all."
+
+"I don't mind that. He's B.C. He couldn't help it. But you Socialists
+came after Christ."
+
+"How do you know Socialism isn't a return to Him?"
+
+"Is it?"
+
+"Aha! You are getting interested.... But I hear my mother coming down to
+dinner. To be continued in our next. _A demain_, is it not?"
+
+He held out his shapely white hand, and hastened through the conservatory
+into the garden.
+
+"Going to dig?" Eileen called after him maliciously.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+Eileen became interested in Robert Maper, for the old books he opened
+up to her were quite new and enlarging. She had imagined the Church
+replacing Paganism as light replaced darkness. Now she felt that it was
+only as gas replaced candle-light. The darkness was less Egyptian than
+the nuns insinuated. Plato in particular was a veritable chandelier. It
+occurred to her suddenly that he might be on the black list. But she was
+afraid to ask her Confessor for fear of hearing her doubt confirmed. To
+tell the good father of the semi-secret meetings in the library would
+have been superfluous, since there was nothing to conceal even from Mrs.
+Maper, though that lady did not happen to know of them. Eileen did not
+even use the garden door. Besides, there was never a formal appointment,
+not infrequently, indeed, a disappointment, when the library held nothing
+but books. Robert Maper merely provided that possibility of an innocent
+double life, without which existence would have been too savourless for
+Eileen. Even a single line of railway always appeared dismal to her; she
+liked the great junctions with their bewildering intertanglements, their
+possibilities of collision. And now that Lieutenant Doherty had faded
+away into Afghanistan and silence--he did not even acknowledge the letter
+announcing her approaching marriage--Robert Maper proved a useful
+substitute.
+
+One day Mr. Maper senior invited her to drive down with him and go over
+the factory, and as Mrs. Maper was not averse from impressing her
+employee by the sight of the other employes, she was permitted to go.
+Nothing, however, would induce Mrs. Maper to adventure herself in these
+scenes of her early life, touching which she professed a sovereign
+ignorance. "Machines are so clattery," she said. "My head wouldn't stand
+them. I once went to that exhibition in London and I said to myself,
+never no more for this gal."
+
+"And you never did go _any_ more since you were a _girl_?" asked the
+companion, with professional pointedness.
+
+"No, never no more," replied Mrs. Maper, serenely, "once is too often, as
+the gal said when the black man kissed her."
+
+Eileen laughed dutifully at this quotation from the latest comic opera,
+and went off, delighted to companion the husband by way of change. He
+proved quite a new man, too, in his own element, bringing the most
+complicated machinery to the level of her understanding. Room after room
+they passed through, department after department full of tireless
+machinery, and tired men and women, who seemed slaves to the whims of
+fantastic iron monsters, all legs and arms and wheels. It took a morning
+to see everything, down to the pasting and drying and packing rooms, and
+as a last treat Mr. Maper took her to the engine-room, whence he said
+came the power that turned those myriad wheels, moved those myriad
+levers, in whatever department they might be and whatever their function.
+Eileen gazed long at the mighty engine, rapt in reverie. She could
+scarcely tear herself away, and when at last Mr. Maper brought her into
+the counting-house, she had forgotten that she must meet his son there.
+The white-browed clerk in corduroys did not, however, raise his eyes from
+his ledger, and Eileen was grateful to him for preserving the piquancy of
+their relation.
+
+She did not find it so piquant, though, in the library next Sunday
+afternoon when he was clutching at her hand and asking her to be his
+wife. She awoke as from a dream to the perception of a solemn and
+grotesque fact.
+
+"Oh, please!" and she tried to tear her hand away.
+
+He clung on desperately. "Eileen--don't say you don't care at all."
+
+"I'm not Eileen, and I particularly dislike you at this moment. Let me
+have my hand, please."
+
+He dropped it like a stinging nettle. "I was hoping you'd let me keep
+it," he murmured.
+
+"Why?" She was simple and pitiless. "Because we read Plato together? That
+was platonic enough, wasn't it?"
+
+"You can jest about what breaks my heart?"
+
+"I am very sorry. I like you."
+
+His breathing changed, "like a fish thrown back into the water," Eileen
+thought. She hastened to add, "But it's not what a wife should feel."
+
+"How do you know what a wife should feel?"
+
+Eileen screwed up her forehead. "If I felt it, I should know, I suppose."
+
+"No, you mightn't. You've liked to come here and talk to me."
+
+"Because I like books. And you talk like a book."
+
+"That was before I fell in love. I didn't talk like a book just now."
+
+"When you took my hand! More like a book than ever. I've read it
+all--lots of times."
+
+"Oh, Eil--Miss O'Keeffe--you are very cruel."
+
+Eileen smiled. "I am not--I'm very kind--I threw you back into the
+water."
+
+He gasped, as though out of it again. "Do you mean I am not grown
+enough?"
+
+She flushed and improvised on his theme. "Not quite that. You hooked
+yourself, as you threatened to do. But suppose I had landed you. You know
+the next step--hot water. What a lot you would have got into, too!"
+
+"You are thinking of my mother?"
+
+"Yes, raising Cain, I think you said once. Oh, dear, swim about and be
+thankful." And a vision of Mrs. Maper's amazement twitched the corners of
+her lips and made them more enchanting.
+
+"I'm not so cold-blooded as all that. But if you do throw me back, let it
+be with the promise to take me again, when I _am_ grown. I don't say it
+to tempt you, but you know I shall be very rich."
+
+"Indigestible, do you mean?"
+
+"Oh, please let us drop that metaphor! Metaphors can never go on all
+fours."
+
+"Certainly not when they have fins."
+
+"Don't jest, Eil--Miss O'Keeffe! Let me redeem you from your sordid
+life."
+
+"Why is it sordid? You said work was divine."
+
+"You can work in a higher sphere."
+
+"And this is the Socialist! I really thought you'd want me to turn
+factory lass."
+
+"You are laughing at me."
+
+"I am perfectly serious. I won't drag you down from Socialism, and a
+head-shawl wouldn't become me."
+
+"Why, you'd look sweet in it. Dear, dear, Miss O'Keeffe--"
+
+"Good-by."
+
+"No, you shan't go." He barred her way. Her airiness had given him new
+hope.
+
+"If you don't behave sensibly, I'll go altogether--give notice."
+
+"Then I'll follow you to your next place."
+
+"No followers allowed. Seriously, I'll leave if you are foolish."
+
+"Very well," he said abruptly. "Let's go on reading Plato," and he turned
+to the book.
+
+"No, no more Dialogues, in or out of Plato."
+
+She was smiling but stern. He opened the library door and bowed as she
+passed out.
+
+"Remember," he said. "I will remain foolish for ever."
+
+"You have too long an opinion of yourself," was Eileen's parting flash.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+The next evening she sat in the drawing-room before dinner, softly
+playing an accompaniment to her thoughts. Why didn't she feel anything
+about Robert Maper except a mild irritation at the destruction of so
+truly platonic a converse? In a book, of which his proposal savoured, she
+would have found him quite a romantic person. In the actuality she felt
+as frigid as if his marble forehead was chilling her, and what she
+remembered most acutely was his fishlike gasping. Then, too, the
+contradictoriness of his social attitude, his desire to make her a rich
+drone, his shame at his mother, his reclusive shyness--all the weaknesses
+of the man--came to obscure her sense of his literary idealism, if not,
+indeed, to reveal it as a mere coquetry with fine ideas and coarse
+clothes. And then for a moment the humour of being Mrs. Maper's
+daughter-in-law appealed to her, and she laughed to herself in soft
+duet with the music.
+
+And in the middle of the duet Mrs. Maper herself burst in, with her
+bodice half hooked and her hair half done.
+
+"What's this I hear, Miss Hirish Himpudence, of your goings-on with my
+son?"
+
+Eileen swung round on her stool. "I beg your pardon," she said.
+
+"Oh, you can't get out of it by beggin' my pardon, creepin' into the
+library like a mouse--and it's a nice sly mouse you are, too, but there's
+never a mouse without its cat--"
+
+"She'd have done better to do your hair and mind her business," said
+Eileen, calmly.
+
+Mrs. Maper's forefinger shot heavenwards. "It was you as ought to have
+minded your business. I didn't pay you like a lady and feed you like a
+duchess to set your cap at your betters. But I told Mr. Maper what 'ud
+come of it if we let you heat with us, though I didn't dream what a sly
+little mouse--"
+
+The torrent went on and on. Eileen as in a daze watched the theatric
+forefinger--now pointed at the floor as if to the mouse-hole, now leaping
+ceilingwards like the cat,--and her main feeling was professional. She
+was watching her pupil, storing up in her memory the mispronunciations
+and vulgarisms for later insinuative improvement. Only a tithe of her was
+aware of the impertinence. But suddenly she heard herself interrupting
+quietly.
+
+"I shall not sleep under your roof another night." Mrs. Maper paused so
+abruptly that her forefinger fell limp. She was not sure she meant to
+give her companion notice, and have the trouble of training another, and
+she certainly did not wish to be dismissed instead of dismissing.
+
+"Silly chit!" she said in more conciliatory tones. "And where will you
+sleep?"
+
+But Eileen now felt she must obey her own voice--the voice of her
+outraged pride, perhaps even of Brian Boru himself. "Good-by. I'll take
+some things in a handbag and send for my box in the morning."
+
+Mrs. Maper's hand pointed to the ceiling. "And is that the way you treat
+a lady--you're no lady, I tell you that. I demand a month's notice or I
+shall summons you."
+
+At this juncture it occurred to Eileen that this might have been her
+mother-in-law, and a smile danced into her eyes.
+
+"Himpudent Hirish hussy! Oh, but I'll have the lore of you. Don't forget
+I'm the wife of a Justice of the Peace."
+
+"Very well; you get Justice, I want Peace." And Eileen fled to her room.
+
+She had hardly begun packing her handbag when she heard the door locked
+from the outside with a savage snap and a cry of, "I'll learn you who's
+mistress here, my lady."
+
+Eileen smiled. She was only on the second floor, and captivity revived
+all her girlish prankishness. She now began to enjoy the whole episode.
+That she was out of place, out of character, out of lodging even, was
+nothing beside the humour of this incursion into real life of the
+melodrama she had mocked at. Was she not the innocent heroine entrapped
+by the villain? Fortunately, she would not need the hero to rescue her.
+She went on packing. When her handbag was ready she looked about for
+means to escape. She opened her windows and studied the drop and the odd
+bits of helpful rainpipe. Descent was not so easy as she had imagined.
+Short of tearing the sheets into strips (and that might really bring her
+within the J.P.'s purview) or of picking the lock (which seemed even more
+burglarious, not to mention more difficult) she might really remain
+trapped. However, there would be time to think properly when she had
+packed her big box. Half an hour passed cheerfully in the folding of
+dresses to an underplay of planned escapes, and she had just locked the
+box, when Mrs. Maper's voice pierced the door panel.
+
+"Well, are you ready to come to supper?"
+
+The governess's instinct corrected "dinner." Mrs. Maper when excited was
+always tripping into this betrayal of auld lang syne, but she preserved a
+disdainful silence.
+
+"Eileen, why don't you hanser?"
+
+Still silence. The key grated in the lock.
+
+Eileen looked round desperately. The thought of meeting Mrs. Maper again
+was intolerable. The mirrored door of the rifled wardrobe stood ajar,
+revealing an enticing emptiness. Snatching up her handbag and her hat,
+she crept inside and closed the door noiselessly upon herself. "The
+wardrobe mouse," she thought, smiling.
+
+"Well, my lady!" Mrs. Maper dashed through the door, in her dinner-gown
+and diamonds, her forefinger hovering, balanced, between earth and
+heaven. She saw nothing but an answering figure ribboned and jewelled,
+that dashed at her and pointed its forefinger menacingly.
+
+The appearance of this figure as from behind the glass shut out from
+her mind the idea of another figure behind it. The packed box, neat and
+new-labelled, the absence of the handbag and of any sign of occupancy,
+the open windows, the silence, all told their lying tale.
+
+"The Hirish witch!" she screamed.
+
+She ran from one window to the other seeking for a sign of the escaped or
+the escapade. She was relieved to find no batter of brains and blood
+spoiling the green lawn. How had the trick been done? It did not even
+occur to her to look under the bed, so hypnotised was she by the sense of
+a flown bird. Eileen almost betrayed herself by giggling, as at the real
+stage melodrama.
+
+When Mrs. Maper ran downstairs to interrogate the servants--eruption into
+the kitchen was one of her incurable habits--Eileen slipped through the
+wide-flung door, down the staircase, and then, seeing the butler ahead,
+turned sharp off to the little-used part of the corridor and so into the
+library. She made straight for the iron staircase to the grounds, and
+came face to face with Robert Maper.
+
+Twilight was not his hour for the library--she saw even through her
+perturbation that he was pacing it in fond memory. His face lighted up
+with amazement, as though the dead had come up through a tombstone.
+
+"Good-by!" she said, shifting her handbag to her left hand and holding
+out her right. Her self-possession pleased her.
+
+"What!" he cried. And again he had the gasp of a fish out of water.
+
+"Yes, I came to say good-by."
+
+"You are leaving us?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Oh, and it is I that have driven you away!"
+
+"No, no, don't reproach yourself, please don't. Good-by."
+
+He gasped in silence. She gave a little laugh. "Now that I offer you my
+hand, it is you who won't take it."
+
+He seized it. "Oh, Eil--Miss O'Keeffe--let me keep it."
+
+"Please! we settled that."
+
+"It will never be settled till you are my wife."
+
+"Listen!" said Eileen, dramatically. "In a few minutes your mother and
+father will be seated at dinner. Your mother will have told your father
+I've left the house in disgrace. Don't interrupt. Would you be prepared
+to walk in upon them with me on your arm and to say, 'Mother, father,
+Miss O'Keeffe has done me the honour of consenting to be my wife'?"
+
+With her warm hand still in his, how could he hesitate? "Oh, Eileen, if
+you'd only let me!"
+
+The imagination of the tableau was only less tempting to Eileen. It was
+procurable--she had only to move her little finger, or rather not to move
+it. But the very facility of production lessened the tableau's
+temptingness. The triumph was complete without the vulgar actuality.
+
+"I can't," she said, withdrawing her hand. "But you are a good fellow.
+Good-by." She moved towards the garden steps. He was incredulous of the
+utter end. "I shall write to you," he said.
+
+"This is a short cut," she murmured, descending. As her feet touched the
+grass she smiled. How they had both tried to stop her, mother and son!
+She hurried through the shrubbery, and by a side gate was out on the old
+wagon road. More slowly, but still at a good pace, she descended towards
+the Black Hole, now beginning to twinkle and glimmer with lights, and far
+less grimy and prosaic than in the crude day.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+While packing her big box, she had decided to try to lodge that night
+with a programme-girl she had got to know at the Theatre Royal, and the
+motive that set her pace was the desire to find her before she had
+started for the theatre.
+
+The girl usually hovered about Mrs. Maper's box. Once Eileen had asked
+her why she wasn't in evidence the week before. "Lord, miss," she said,
+"didn't you recognise me on the stage?"
+
+Eileen thus discovered that the girl sometimes figured as a super, when
+travelling companies came with sensational pieces, relying upon local
+talent, hastily drilled, for the crowds. Mary became a Greek slave, or a
+Billingsgate fishwife, with amusing unexpectedness.
+
+Eileen's next discovery about the girl was that she supported a paralysed
+mother, though the bed-ridden creature on inspection proved to be more
+cheerful than the visitors she depressed. Mr. Maper had sent her grapes
+from his hothouse only a few days before, and in taking them to the
+little house Eileen had noticed a "Bedroom to Let."
+
+To her relief, when she reached the bleak street, she could see that
+though the blind was down, the bill was still in the window. Her spirits
+bubbled up again. Ere she could knock at the door, the programme-girl
+bounced through it, hatted and cloaked for the theatre.
+
+"Miss O'Keeffe!" She almost staggered backward. Eileen's face worked
+tragically in the gloom.
+
+"There are villains after me!" Eileen gasped. "Take this bag, it contains
+the family jewels. That bedroom of yours, it is still to let?"
+
+"Yes, miss."
+
+"I take it for to-night, perhaps for ever. The avenger is on my
+footsteps. The law may follow me, but I shall defy its myrmidons in my
+trackless eyrie."
+
+"Oh, Miss O'Keeffe! You frighten me. I shouldn't like to have all these
+jewels in my house, and with my mother tied to her bed."
+
+Eileen burst into a laugh. "Oh, miss!" she said, mimicking the
+programme-girl. "Didn't you recognise me on the stage?"
+
+"Mary Murchison!" gasped the programme-girl. "Oh, Miss O'Keeffe, how
+wonderful! You nearly made my heart stop--"
+
+"I am sorry, but I do want to take your bedroom. I've left Mrs. Maper,
+and you are not to ask any questions."
+
+"I haven't time, I'm late already. Fortunately, I only come on in the
+second act."
+
+"That's nice; put my bag in and I'll come to the theatre with you." The
+thought was impromptu, an evening with a bed-ridden woman was not
+exhilarating at such a crisis.
+
+"You ought to be an actress yourself," the programme-girl remarked
+admiringly on the way.
+
+Eileen shuddered. "No, thank you. Scream the same thing night after
+night--like a parrot with not even one's own words--I should die of
+monotony."
+
+"Oh, it isn't at all monotonous. It's a different audience every night,
+and even the laughs come in different places. My parts have mostly been
+thinking parts--to-night I'm a prince without a word--but still it's
+fun."
+
+"But how can you bear strange men staring at you?"
+
+"One gets used to it. The first time they put me in tights I blushed all
+through the piece, but they had painted me so thick it wasn't visible."
+
+"In short, you blushed unseen."
+
+Eileen wished to go to the pit, but her new friend would not hear of her
+not occupying her habitual box, since she knew that the management would
+be glad to have it occupied if it were empty. This proved to be the case,
+and put the seal upon Eileen's enjoyment of the situation. To spend her
+evening in Mrs. Maper's box was indeed a climax.
+
+She borrowed theatre-paper and scribbled a note to her ex-employer,
+giving the address for her trunk. An orange and some biscuits sufficed
+for her dinner.
+
+Not till she was in her little bedroom, surrounded by pious texts, did
+she break down in tears.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+The next morning, as she sat answering advertisements, the programme-girl
+knocked at the door of the bedroom and announced that Mr. Maper had
+called.
+
+Eileen turned red. It was too disconcerting. Would he never take "no" for
+an answer? "I won't see him. I can't see him," she cried.
+
+The girl departed and returned. "Oh, Miss O'Keeffe, he begs so for only
+one word."
+
+"The word is 'no.'"
+
+"After he's been so kind as to bring your box down!"
+
+"Oh, has he? Then the word is 'thanks.'"
+
+"Please, miss, would you mind giving it to him yourself?"
+
+"Who's Irish, you or I? I won't speak to him at all, I tell you."
+
+"But I don't like to send him away like that, when he's been so kind
+to mother."
+
+"When has he been kind to your mother?"
+
+"Those grapes you brought--"
+
+"That was old Mr. Maper."
+
+"So is this."
+
+"Oh!" Eileen was quite taken aback, for once. "All right, I'll go into
+the parlour."
+
+He was infinitely courteous and apologetic. He had been very anxious
+about her. Why had she been so unkind as to leave, and without ever
+a good-by to him?
+
+"Oh, hasn't your wife told you, then?"
+
+"She has told me you were rude, and that you left without notice, and
+she wants me to prosecute you. I suppose you lost your temper. You
+found her rather difficult."
+
+"I found her impossible," said Eileen, frigidly.
+
+"Yes, yes, I understand." He was flushed and unhappy. "You found her
+impossible to live with?"
+
+Eileen nodded; she would have added "or to make a lady of," but he
+looked so purple and agitated that she charitably forbore. She was
+wondering whether Mrs. Maper could really have been so mean as to omit
+her share in the quarrel, but he went on eagerly:--
+
+"Quite so, quite so. And what do you think it has been for me?"
+
+She murmured inarticulate sympathy.
+
+"Ah, if you only knew! Oh, my dear Miss O'Keeffe, while you've been in
+the house, it's been like heaven."
+
+"I'm glad I've given satisfaction," she said drily.
+
+"Then what do you give by going? I assure you the day you came to the
+works it was like heaven there too."
+
+"You forget the temperature," Eileen smiled. "However, it was a very
+nice day, and I thank you. But I can't come back after--"
+
+"Who asks you to come back?" he broke in. "No, I should be sorry to see
+you again in a menial position, you with your divine gifts of beauty and
+song. The idea of your getting a new place," he added with a fall into
+prose, "makes me feel sick."
+
+"I value your sympathy, but it is misplaced," she replied freezingly.
+
+"Sympathy! It isn't sympathy! It's jealousy. Oh, my dear Miss O'Keeffe!"
+He seized her limp hand. "Eileen! Let me help you--"
+
+As the true significance of his visit, and of the purple agitation,
+dawned upon her, the grim humour of the position overbore every other
+feeling. Her hand still in his, she began to laugh, and no biting of her
+lips could do more than change the laugh into an undignified snigger.
+Instead of profiting by his grip of her, he dropped her hand suddenly as
+if a hose had been turned on his passion, and this surrender of her hand
+reduced Eileen to a passable gravity.
+
+"I'm very sorry, Mr. Maper. But really, life is too horribly amusing."
+
+"I'm very sorry it's me that affords you amusement," he said stiffly.
+
+"No, it isn't you at all, it's just the whole thing. You've been most
+kind all along. And I dare say you mean to be kind now. But I don't
+really need any help. Your wife's threats of prosecution are ridiculous,
+she made my longer stay impossible. I could more justly claim a month's
+notice from her."
+
+"That's what I thought. I've brought you a month's salary." He fumbled in
+his pocket-book.
+
+"Don't trouble. I shall not accept it."
+
+"You shall," he said sternly. "Or I'll prosecute you."
+
+Eileen's laugh rang out clear. This time he laughed too.
+
+"Now, don't you call life amusing?" she said. "Here am I to take a cheque
+under penalty of having to pay it."
+
+"Well, which shall it be?"
+
+"Such a cheque is charming." And she held out her hand. He put the cheque
+in it and shook both warmly. They parted, the best of friends.
+
+"Come to me for a character, of course," he said.
+
+"Don't you come to me," replied Eileen, with a roguish smile.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+Eileen's next place was--as if by contrast--with a much more genteel
+family, and a much poorer, though it flew higher socially. It lived in a
+house, half in a fashionable London terrace, half in a shabby side
+street, and its abode was typical of its ambitions and its means. Mrs.
+Lee Carter drew the line clearly between herself and her governess, which
+was a blessing, for it meant Eileen's total exclusion from her social
+life, and Eileen's consequent enjoyment of her own evenings at home or
+abroad, as she wished. This unusual freedom compensated for the hard
+work of teaching children in various stages of growth and ignorance how
+to talk French and play the piano. Her salary was small, for Mrs. Lee
+Carter's ambition to live beyond her neighbours' means was only achieved
+by pinching whomever she could. She was not bad-hearted; she simply could
+not afford anything but luxuries. Eileen wondered at not being asked
+sometimes to perform at her parties, till she found that only celebrities
+ever did anything in that house.
+
+This was a period of much mental activity in Eileen's life. The tossing
+ocean of London life, the theatres that played Shakespeare, the world of
+new books and new thought, her recent perusal of Plato and of man, all
+produced fermentation. But every night she knelt by her bedside and said
+her "Ave Maria" with a voluptuous sense of spiritual peace, and every
+morning she woke with a certain joy in existence and a certain surprise
+to find herself again existing. Her old convent-thought recurred. "We
+are worked from without--marionettes who can watch their own performance.
+And it is very amusing." Once she read of a British action in Afghanistan
+against border-tribes, and she wondered if Lieutenant Doherty was in the
+fighting. Since she had ceased to be his mother-confessor he had become
+very shadowy; his image now rose substantial from the newspaper lines,
+and she was surprised to find in herself a little palpitation at his
+probable perils. "One's heartstrings, too, are pulled," she thought.
+"I don't like it. Marionettes should move, not feel." These reflections,
+however, came to her more often anent her family, and the struggles of
+her kin for a livelihood touched her more deeply than any love. "We are
+like bits of the same shattered body," she thought. "In these cold
+English families everybody is another body." She sent most of her salary
+to Ireland, and her pocket-money came from singing in the choir on
+Sunday.
+
+The bass chorister was a very amusing man. His voice was sepulchral but
+his conversation skittish. Eileen's repartees smote him to almost the
+only serious respect of his life, and one day he said: "Why, there's
+a future in you. Why don't you go on the stage?"
+
+"What nonsense!" But the blood was secretly stirred in her veins. She saw
+herself walking along the Black Hole with the programme-girl, but her
+point of view had been modified since she had received a similar
+suggestion with a shudder. If she could play Rosalind to a great London
+audience, the staring men-folk would matter little.
+
+"Why not?" went on the bass tempter. "A humour like yours with such a
+voice and such a face!"
+
+"The stage is full of better voices and better faces."
+
+"No, indeed. Why, there isn't a girl at the Half-and-Half--" He stopped
+and almost blushed.
+
+She smiled. "Oh, I don't mind your going to such places. What is the
+Half-and-Half, a place where they drink beer?"
+
+"Oh, it's just our slang name for a little music-hall that's just between
+the East End and the West End, with a corresponding programme."
+
+"Our slang name?"
+
+"Well--" he paused. "If you'll keep it very dark--but of course you
+will--I appear there myself."
+
+"You! What do you do?"
+
+"I sing patriotic songs and drinking-songs--"
+
+"Aren't they the same thing in England?"
+
+"Don't say that on the stage or they'll throw pewter pots. They're very
+patriotic."
+
+"That's just what I said. What's your name--I suppose you change it?"
+
+"Yes--as I hope you will yours--some day."
+
+"I shan't take yours."
+
+"Nobody arxed you, miss," he said. "And, besides, mine is
+copyright--Jolly Jack Jenkins. I make a fiver a week by it."
+
+"A fiver!" The bass chorister suddenly took on an air of Arabian nights.
+At this rate she could buy back the family castle. Her struggling
+brothers--how they would bless their magician sister--Mick should have
+a London practice, Miles a partnership in an engineering firm.
+
+"You come with me and see Fossy," continued Jolly Jack Jenkins.
+
+Eileen declined with thanks. It took a week of Sundays to argue away her
+objections--religious, moral, and social. To play Rosalind to fashionable
+London was one thing: to appear at a variety theatre or low-class
+music-hall, which nobody in her world or Mrs. Lee Carter's had ever heard
+of, was another pair of shoes. Yet strange to say, it was the last
+consideration that decided her to try. Even if admitted to the boards,
+she could make her failure in secure obscurity. It would simply be
+another girlish escapade, and she was ripe for mischief after her
+long sobriety.
+
+"But even your Mr. Fossy mustn't know my real name or address," she
+stipulated.
+
+"Who shall I say you are?"
+
+"Nelly O'Neill."
+
+"Ripping. Flows from the tongue like music."
+
+"Then it's rippling you mean."
+
+"What a tongue! Wait till Fossy sees you."
+
+"Will he ask me to stick it out?"
+
+"Oh, Lord, I wish I had your repartee. But I'm thinking--Nelly
+O'Neill--doesn't it give you away a bit?"
+
+"Keeps me a bit, too. I shouldn't like to lose myself altogether--gain
+reputation for another woman."
+
+Fossy proved to be a gentleman named Josephs, who in a tiny triangular
+room near the stage of the Half-and-Half listened critically to her comic
+singing, shook his head and said he would let her know. Eileen left the
+room with leaden heart and feet.
+
+"Wait for me a moment, please," Jolly Jack Jenkins called after her,
+and she hung about timidly, jostled by dirty attendants and painted
+performers. She was reading a warning to artistes that any improper
+songs or lines would lead to their instant dismissal, and regretting more
+than ever her incompetence for this innocent profession, when she heard
+the bass chorister's big breathing behind her.
+
+"Bravo! You knocked him all of a heap."
+
+"Rubbish! Don't try to cheer me."
+
+"You!" Jolly Jack Jenkins opened his eyes. "You taken in by Fossy! He'll
+suggest your doing a trial turn next Saturday night when the public are
+least critical, you'll make a furore, and he'll offer you two guineas a
+week."
+
+"A pleasing picture, but quite visionary. Why, he didn't even ask for an
+address to write to!"
+
+"Oh, I dare say he thought care of me would find you. No, don't glower at
+me--I don't mean anything wrong."
+
+"I hope you didn't let him misunderstand--"
+
+"You asked me not to let him know too much. Fossy has to do so much with
+queer folk--"
+
+"Yes, I saw he had to warn them against improper songs."
+
+Jolly Jack Jenkins exploded in a guffaw.
+
+"I'm sorry I came," said Eileen, in vague distress.
+
+"Fossy isn't," he retorted. "He was clean bowled over. In that Irish
+fox-hunting song all the gallery will be shouting 'Tally-ho!' Where did
+you pick it up?"
+
+"I didn't _pick_ it up, I _made_ it up for the occasion."
+
+"By Jove! I have to pay a guinea to a bloodsucking composer when _I_ want
+a song. Oh, Fossy's spotted a winner this time."
+
+"Why is he called Fossy?"
+
+"I don't know. Nobody knows. I found the name, I pass it on."
+
+"Perhaps it's a corruption of Foxy."
+
+"There! I never thought of that! You _are_ a--!"
+
+The jolly chorister's mouth remained open. But the prophecy that had
+already issued from it came true in every detail.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+Despite her private stage-fright, Nelly O'Neill, the new serio-comic,
+made a big hit. Her innocent roguery was captivating; her virginal
+freshness floated over the footlights, like a spring breeze through the
+smoky Hall.
+
+"Well, you _are_ an all-round success," cried Jolly Jack Jenkins, pumping
+her hand off at the wings, amid a thunder of applause, encores, and
+whistles.
+
+"You mean a Half-and-Half!" laughed Nelly through Eileen's tears. She had
+given herself to the audience, but how it had given itself in return,
+flashing back to her in electric waves its monstrous vitality, its
+apparently single life.
+
+The Half-and-Half was one of those early Victorian halls of the people,
+with fixed stars and only a few meteors. The popular favourites changed
+their songs and their clothes at periodic intervals, but they would
+have lost favour if they had not remained the same throughout everything.
+A chairman with a hammer announced the turns, and condescendingly
+took champagne with anybody who paid for it. Eileen soon became an
+indispensable part of this smoky world. She signed an agreement at three
+guineas a week for three years, to perform only at the Half-and-Half.
+Fossy saw far. Eileen did not. She jumped for joy when she got beyond
+eyeshot. She felt herself jumping out of the governess-life. Second
+thoughts and soberer footsteps brought doubt. She had intended telling
+Mrs. Lee Carter as soon as the trial-performance was over, but now she
+hesitated and was lost. Half the charm lay in the secret adventure, the
+dare-devilry. Besides, as a governess she had a comfortable home and a
+respectable status, and she had already seen and divined enough of the
+world behind the footlights to shrink from being absorbed into it. What
+fun in the double life! She had never found a single life worth living.
+She would belong to two worlds--be literally Half-and-Half. Nelly O'Neill
+must only be born at twilight. But she felt she could not be out
+uniformly every evening without some explanation.
+
+"Mrs. Lee Carter," she said, "I have to tell you of a peculiar chance of
+augmenting my income that has come to me."
+
+Mrs. Lee Carter, wearing plumes and train for a court reception, paled.
+"You are not going to leave me!"
+
+The naive exclamation strengthened Eileen's hand.
+
+"I don't quite see how to do otherwise," she said boldly.
+
+"Oh, dear, I wish I could afford more. I know you're worth it."
+
+Eileen thought, "If you'd only give your guests good claret instead of
+bad champagne!" But she said, "You are very kind--you have always been
+most considerate."
+
+The plumes wagged.
+
+"I try to please all parties."
+
+Nelly O'Neill thought, "And to give too many." Eileen said, "Yes, you've
+given me my evenings to myself as it is, and considering the new work is
+only in the evenings, I did think of running the two, but I'm afraid--"
+
+"If we lightened your work a little--" interrupted Mrs. Lee Carter,
+eagerly.
+
+"I shouldn't so much ask that as to have perfect freedom like a young
+man--a latch-key even." Never had Eileen looked more demure and Puritan.
+
+"Oh, I hope you won't be working too late--"
+
+"The people who go there are engaged in the daytime. I'd better be frank
+with you; it's an extremely unfashionable place towards the East End, and
+I quite understand you may not like me to take it. At the same time I
+shall never meet anybody who knows me. In fact, it's a dancing and
+singing place."
+
+"Oh!" said Mrs. Lee Carter, blankly. "I didn't know you could teach
+dancing, too."
+
+"You never asked me.... Of course, if you prefer it, I could come here as
+a day governess and leave after tea.... You see it's a longish journey
+home: I'm bound to be late...."
+
+"What's the difference? Come and go as you please.... Of course, you
+won't mind using the back door when there's a party ... the
+servants...."
+
+For the deception Eileen at first salved her conscience Irish-wise by
+sending every farthing to her mother under the deceiving pretext of rich
+private pupils. She would not even deduct for cabs. Sometimes she could
+not get an omnibus, but she almost preferred to walk till she was
+footsore, for both riding and walking were forms of penance. The stuffy
+omnibus interior after the smoky Hall was nauseating, and in those days
+no lady thought of climbing the steep ladder to the slanting roof. But it
+sometimes happened that a crawling cabman coming westward would invite
+her to a free ride, and Eileen would accept gratefully, and, moreover,
+gain from conversations with her drivers new material for her songs.
+
+This period of her life was almost as amusing as she had anticipated; her
+only depressions came from the children of the footlights, and the
+necessity of adjusting herself superficially to her environment, under
+pain of unpopularity. Her isolation and the privacy of her home-life
+already made sufficiently for that. And to be disliked even by those she
+disliked Eileen disliked. Her nature needed to wallow in warm admiration.
+She got plenty.
+
+When, fifteen months later, she agreed to pay Fossy a hundred pounds
+for modifying her contract so as to enable her to appear at other Halls,
+she said with a smile, "You deserve it. You are the only man at the
+Half-and-Half who hasn't made love to me."
+
+Fossy grinned. "If I had known that, I should have demanded a larger
+compensation."
+
+Even the bass chorister had not been able to resist proposing, though his
+grief at being refused was short-lived, for he died soon after by a fall
+from one of those giant wheels that were the saurians of the modern
+cycle. Eileen shed many a tear over Jolly Jack Jenkins.
+
+With the growth of her popularity before and behind the footlights came
+heavier calls upon her geniality, and, like a hostess who tries to pay
+off her debts in one social lump sum, Eileen got "a Sunday out," and
+Nelly gave a lunch at a riverside hotel to a motley company of popular
+favourites. It was expensive; for the profession, even in those days,
+expected champagne. It was appallingly protracted; for the party, having
+no work to do that evening, showed no disposition to break up, and
+brandies-and-sodas succeeded one another in an aroma of masculine cigars
+and feminine cigarettes. It was noisy and hilarious, and gradually it
+became rowdy. The Singing Sisters sang, but not in duet. The Lion
+Comique, whose loyal melodies were on every barrel-organ, argued
+Republicanism and flourished that day's copy of Reynolds's Newspaper, The
+Beauteous Bessie Bilhook--"the Queen of Serio-Comics" was scandalously
+autobiographic, and the old plantation songster--looking unreal with his
+washed face--was with difficulty dissuaded from displaying his ability to
+dance on the table without smashing anything. The climax was reserved for
+the demure one-legged gymnast, who suddenly produced a pistol and
+discharged it in the air. When the panic subsided, he explained to the
+landlord and the company that he was "paying his shot."
+
+"That's a hint for me to discharge the bill," said Nelly, adroitly, and,
+thanking everybody effusively for the happiness afforded her, she hurried
+home to Oxbridge Terrace, to wash it all away in nursery tea. The young
+Lee Carters made a restful spectacle with their shining innocent faces,
+and she almost wished they would never grow up.
+
+As her success grew, offers from the pantomimes and even the legitimate
+stage began to reach her. But now she would not make the step. At the
+Halls she was her own mistress, able to arrange at her own convenience
+with orchestras. Even Rosalind would have meant long rehearsals and a
+complex interference with her governess-life.
+
+At the theatres, too, to judge by all she heard, a sordid side of the
+profession was accentuated. The players played for their own hands, and
+even the greatest did not disdain to "queer" the effects of their
+subordinates, whenever such effects did not heighten their own. Hamlet
+had been known to be jealous of the ghost, and the success of his
+sepulchral bass. It was in fact a world of jostling jealousies, as hidden
+from the public as the prompter. In the Halls she was her own company and
+her own playwright and her own composer. She had her elbows free.
+
+And even here Bessie Bilhook, whose vanity was a byword in Lower Bohemia,
+and who had arrogantly assumed the sovereignty of the Serio-Comics,
+refused to appear on the same programmes unless her name was printed
+twice as large as Nelly O'Neill's, and was further displayed on a board
+outside, alone in its nine-inch glory. Again, actresses were recognised
+by the newspapers; the Halls had as yet no status. Their performers were
+not so photographed; indeed, Eileen refused to sit. She desired this
+obscurer form of celebrity. If her fame should ever reach Mrs. Lee
+Carter, the game would be nearly up. Her poor mother might even suffer
+the shock of it; perhaps the professional future of her brothers would be
+injured. Her sedate life had grown as dear as her noisy life, she loved
+the transition to the innocent home circle.
+
+Yet in this very domesticity lay a danger. It provoked her to an
+ever broader humour on the stage. She let herself go, like a swimmer
+emboldened by a boat behind. Eileen O'Keeffe she felt would rescue Nelly
+O'Neill if licence carried her too near the falls. It was so irresistibly
+seductive, this swift response of the audience to the wink of suggestion.
+Like a vast lyre, the Hall vibrated to the faintest breath of
+roguishness. Almost in contemptuous mockery one was tempted to
+experiment....
+
+One day, in a sudden horror of herself, she pleaded illness and hurried
+back to her mother for a holiday.
+
+
+
+
+XIV
+
+
+The straggling village looked much the same, the same pigs and turkeys
+rooted and strutted, the same stinging turf-smoke came from the doors and
+windows (save from one or two cabins unroofed by the Castle tyrant), the
+same weeds grew in the potato-patches, the same old men in patched
+brogues pulled their caubeens from their heads and their dudeens from
+their mouths, as she went past, half-consciously studying the humours for
+stage reproduction. It was hard for her to remember she wasn't "the
+Quality" in London, or that the Half-and-Half existed simultaneously with
+these beloved woods and waters. In only one particular was the village
+changed. Golf links had been discovered near it, a club-house had sprung
+up and the peasants found themselves enriched by the employment of their
+gossoons as caddies. The O'Keeffes were prospering equally--thanks to her
+subsidies--although she hadn't yet bought them back their castle. "All's
+for the best in the greenest of isles," she told herself, as she sat
+basking in family affection.
+
+And yet the wave of melancholia refused to ebb. Indeed, it swelled and
+grew blacker. The remedy seemed to intensify the disease; a holiday but
+gave her time to possess her soul, and brood upon its stains, her
+childhood's scene but enabled her to measure the realities of her
+achievement against the visions of girlhood. Life seemed too hopeless,
+too absurd. To amuse the gross adult, to instruct the innocent
+child--what did it all mean to her own life? She was tired of doing,
+she wanted to _be_ something; something for herself. She was always
+observing, imitating, caricaturing, but what was _she_? A nothing, a
+phantasm, an emptiness.
+
+"Eileen avourneen," said her mother, suddenly. "I wish you were married."
+
+Eileen opened her eyes. "Dear heart, is this another offer from the
+castle?" And she laughed gently.
+
+Mrs. O'Keeffe's fingers played uneasily with her bosom's cross. "No, but
+I should feel happier about you. It--it settles people."
+
+"It certainly does," Eileen laughed, and her celebrated ditty, "The
+Marriage Settlement," flashed upon her. "Oh, dear," and her laugh changed
+to a sigh. "The marriages I see around me!"
+
+"What! Isn't Mrs. Lee Carter happy?"
+
+Eileen flushed. "I shouldn't like to be in her shoes," she said
+evasively.
+
+"Officers seem to make the best husbands," said Mrs. O'Keeffe.
+
+"Because they are so much away?" queried Eileen, with a vague memory of
+her Lieutenant Doherty.
+
+That night the melancholia was heavy as a nightmare, without the partial
+unconsciousness of sleep. This blackness must be "the horrors" she had
+heard women of her stage-world speak of. She wanted to spring out of bed,
+to run to her mother's room. But that would have meant hysteric
+confession, so she bit her lips and stuck her nails into the sheet.
+Perhaps suicide would be simplest. She was nothing; it would not even be
+blowing out a light. No, she _was_ something, she was a retailer of gross
+humours, a vile sinner; it might be kindling more than a light, an
+eternal flame. "Child of Mary," indeed! She deserved to be strangled with
+her white ribbon. And she exaggerated everything with that morbid
+mendacity of the confessional.
+
+Two days later she went for a walk along the springy turf of the valley.
+The sun shone overhead, but from her spirit the mist had not quite
+lifted. Suddenly a small white ball came scudding towards her feet. She
+looked round and saw herself amid little flags sticking in the ground.
+Distant voices came to her ear.
+
+"This must be the new game that's creeping in from Scotland," she
+thought. "Perhaps I ought to have a song ready if ever it catches on. Ah,
+here comes one of the young fools--I'll watch him--"
+
+He came, clothed as in a grey skin that showed the beautiful modelling
+of his limbs. His face glowed.
+
+"Ouida's Apollo," she thought, but in the very mockery she trembled,
+struck as by a lightning shaft. The blackness was sucked up into fire
+and light. "Am I in the way?" she said with her most bewitching smile.
+
+He raised his hat. "I was afraid you might have been struck."
+
+"Perhaps I was," she could not help saying.
+
+"Oh, gracious, are you hurt?" His voice was instantly caressing.
+
+"Do I look an object for ambulances?"
+
+He smiled dazzlingly. "You look awfully jolly." Later Eileen
+remembered how she had taken this reply for a line of poetry.
+
+A week later the Hon. Reginald Winsor, younger brother of an English
+Earl, was teaching Eileen golf.
+
+It had been a week of ecstasy.
+
+She thought of Reginald the last thing at night and the first thing in
+the morning and dreamed of him all night.
+
+Now she knew what her life had lacked--to be caught up into another's
+personality, to lose one's petty individuality in--in what? Surely not
+in a larger; she couldn't be so blind as that. In what then? Ah, yes, in
+Nature. He was gloriously elemental. He wasn't himself. He was the
+masculine. Yes, that was the correlative element her being needed. The
+mere manliness of his pipe made its aroma in his clothes adorable. Or was
+it his big simplicity, in which she could bury all her torturing
+complexity? Oh, to nestle in it and be at rest. Yet she held him at arm's
+length. When they shook hands her nerves thrilled, but she was the colder
+outwardly for very fear of herself.
+
+On the ninth day he proposed.
+
+Eileen knew it would be that day. Lying in bed that morning, she found
+herself caught by her old impersonal whimsy. "I'm a fever, and on the
+ninth day of me the man comes out in a rash proposal." Ah, but this
+time she was in a tertian, too. What a difference from those other
+proposals--proper or improper. Her mind ran over half a dozen, with a
+touch of pity she had not felt at the time. Poor Bob Maper, poor Jolly
+Jack Jenkins, if it was like this they felt! But was it her fault? No man
+could say she had led him on--except, perhaps, the Hon. Reginald, and
+towards him her intentions were honourable, she told herself smiling. But
+the jest carried itself farther and more stingingly. Could he make an
+"honourable" she told herself her? Ah, God, was she worthy of him, of his
+simple manhood? And would he continue proposing, if she told him she was
+Nelly O'Neill? And what of his noble relatives? No, no, she must not run
+risks. She was only Eileen O'Keeffe, she had never left Ireland save for
+the Convent. The rest was a nightmare. How glad she was that nobody knew!
+
+The proposal duly took place in a bunker, while Eileen was whimsically
+vituperating her ball. The fascination of her virginal _diablerie_ was
+like a force compelling the victim to seize her in his arms after the
+fashion of the primitive bridegroom. However the poor Honourable
+refrained, said boldly, "Try it with this," and under pretence of
+changing her golfsticks possessed himself of her hand. For the first time
+his touch left her apathetic.
+
+"Now it is coming," she thought, and suddenly froze to a spectator of
+the marionette show. As the Hon. Reginald went through his performance,
+she felt with a shudder of horror over what brink she had nearly stepped.
+The man was merely a magnificent animal! She, with her heart, her soul,
+her brain, mated to that! Like a convict chained to a log. Not worthy of
+him forsooth! "There's a gulf between us," she thought, "and I nearly
+fell down it." And the Half-and-Half rose before her, clamouring,
+pungent, deliciously seductive.
+
+"Dear Mr. Winsor," she listened with no less interest to her own part
+in the marionette performance, "it's really too bad of you. Just as I
+was getting on so nicely, too!"
+
+"Is that all you feel about--about our friendship?"
+
+"All? Didn't you undertake to teach me golf? I haven't the faintest
+desire not to go on ... as soon as we have escaped from this wretched
+bunker. Come! Did you say the niblick?"
+
+Reginald's manners were too good to permit him to swear, even at golf.
+
+"One's body is like an Irish mud-cabin," Eileen reflected. "It shelters
+both a soul and a pig."
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+
+Nelly O'Neill threw herself into her work with greater ardour than
+ever. But her triumphs were shadowed by worries. She was nervous lest
+the Hon. Reginald should turn up at one of her Halls--she had three now;
+she was afraid her voice was spoiling in the smoky atmosphere; sometimes
+the image of the Hon. Reginald came back reproachfully, sometimes
+tantalisingly. Oh, why was he so stupid? Or was it she who had been
+stupid?
+
+Then there was the apprehension of the end of her career at the Lee
+Carters'. The young generation was nearly grown up. The eldest boy she
+even suspected of music-halls. He might stumble upon her.
+
+Her popularity, too, was beginning to frighten her. Adventurous young
+gentlemen followed her in cabs--cabs were now a necessity of her triple
+appearance--and she never dared drive quite to her door or even the
+street. Bracelets she always returned, if the address was given; flowers
+she sent to hospitals, anonymous gifts to her family. Nobody ever saw her
+wearing his badge.
+
+A sketch of her even found its way to one of Mrs. Lee Carter's journals.
+
+"Why, she looks something like me!" Eileen said boldly.
+
+"You flatter yourself," said Mrs. Lee Carter. "You're both Irish, that's
+all. But I don't see why these music-hall minxes should be pictured in
+respectable household papers."
+
+"Some people say that the only real talent is now to be found in the
+Halls," said Eileen.
+
+"Well, I hope it'll stay there," rejoined her mistress, tartly. Eileen
+recalled this conversation a few nights later, when she met Master
+Harold Lee Carter outside the door at midnight with a rival latch-key.
+
+"Been to a theatre, Miss O'Keeffe?" asked her whilom pupil.
+
+"No; have you?"
+
+"Well, not exactly a theatre!"
+
+"Why, what do you mean?"
+
+"Sort of half-and-half place, you know."
+
+By the icy chill at her heart at his innocent phrase, she knew how she
+dreaded discovery and clung to her social status.
+
+"What is a half-and-half place?" she asked smiling.
+
+"Oh, comic songs and tumblers and you can smoke."
+
+"No? You're not really allowed to smoke in a theatre?"
+
+"Yes, we are. They call it a music-hall--it's great fun. But don't tell
+the mater."
+
+"You naughty boy!"
+
+"I don't see it. All the chaps go."
+
+She shook her head. "Not the nicest."
+
+"Oh, that's tommyrot," he said disrespectfully. "Their women folk don't
+know--that's all."
+
+Eileen now began to feel like a criminal round whom the toils thicken.
+In the most fashionable of her three Halls, she sang a little French
+song. And she had taught Master Harold his French.
+
+Of course, even if Nelly were seen by Eileen's friends or acquaintances,
+detection was not sure. Eileen was always in such sedate gowns, never
+low-cut, her manners were so suppressed, her hair done so differently,
+and what a difference hair made! In fact, it was in her private life that
+she felt herself more truly the actress. On the boards her real secret
+self seemed to flash forth, full of verve, dash, roguery, devilry. Should
+she take to a wig, or to character songs in appropriate costumes? No, she
+would run the risk. It gave more spice to life. Every evening now was an
+adventure, nay three adventures, and when she snuggled herself up at
+midnight in her demure white bed, overlooked by the crucifix, she felt
+like the hunted were-wolf, safely back in human shape. And she became
+more audacious, letting herself go, so as to widen the chasm between
+Nelly and Eileen, and make anybody who should suspect her be sure he was
+wrong. And occasionally she paid for all this fever and gaiety by fits of
+the blackest melancholy.
+
+She had gradually dropped her habit of prayer, but in one of her dark
+moods she found herself slipping to her knees and crying: "Oh, Holy
+Mother, look down on Thy distressed daughter, and deliver her from the
+body of this death. So many wooers and no spark of love in herself; a
+woman who sings love-songs with lips no man has touched, a lone-of-soul
+who can live neither with the respectable nor with the Bohemians, who
+loves you, _sanctissima Maria_, without being sure you exist. Oh, Holy
+Mother of God, advocate of sinners, pray for me. If I had only something
+solid to cling to--a babe to suckle with its red grotesque little face.
+You will say cling to the cross, but is not my whole life also a
+crucifixion? I am rent in twain that a thousand fools may laugh nightly.
+Oh, Holy Mother, make me at one with myself; it is the atonement I
+need. Send me the child's heart, and I will light a hundred candles to
+you.... Or do you now prefer electricity? Oh, Maria mavourneen, I cannot
+pray to you, for there is a mocking devil within me, and you will not
+cast her out." And she burst into hysteric tears.
+
+
+
+
+XVI
+
+
+As she was about to start one evening for her round, Mrs. Lee Carter's
+maid brought up a bombshell. Superficially it looked like a letter with
+foreign stamps, marked "Private" and readdressed with an English stamp
+from Ireland. But that one line of unerased writing, her name, threw her
+into heats and colds, for she remembered the long-forgotten hand of
+Lieutenant Doherty. She had to sit down on her bed and finish trembling
+before she broke the seal and set free this voice from the past.
+
+  "DEAR MOTHER-CONFESSOR,--You will be wondering why I have been silent
+  all these years and why I write now. Well, I will tell you the truth.
+  It wasn't that I believed you had really gone into the Convent you
+  wrote me you were joining, it was the new and exciting life and
+  duties that opened up before me when I got to Afghanistan, far from
+  post-offices. Afterwards I was drafted to India and had a lot of
+  skirmishing and tiger-shooting, and your image--forgive me!--became
+  faint, and I excused myself for not writing by making myself believe
+  you were buried in the Convent. ["So, after all, he never got the
+  letter telling him I was going to marry back the Castle!" Eileen mused
+  joyfully through her agitation.] But now that I am at last coming home
+  in a few months, no longer a minor, but nearer a major (that's like one
+  of your old jokes)--somehow your face seems to be the only thing I am
+  coming back   for. It's no use trying to explain it all, or even
+  apologising. It's just like that. I've _confessed_, you see, though it
+  is hopeless to get straight with my arrears, so I won't attempt it. And
+  when I found out how I felt, of course came the horrible thought that
+  you might be in the Convent after all, or, worse still, married and
+  done for, so what do you think I did? I just sent this cable to your
+  mother: 'Is Eileen free? Reply paid. Colonel Doherty.' Wasn't it clever
+  and economical of me to think of the word 'free,' meaning such a
+  lot--not married, not a nun, not even engaged to another fellow?
+  Imagine my joy when I got back the monosyllable, meaning all that lot.
+  I instantly cabled back 'Thanks, don't tell her of this.' ["So that's
+  what mother was hinting at," thought Eileen, with a smile.] It was all
+  I could do not to cable to you: 'Will you marry me? Reply paid.' ["What
+  a good idea for a song!" murmured Nelly.] Put me out of my agony as
+  soon as you can, won't you, dearest Eileen? Your face is floating
+  before me as I write, with its black Irish eyes and its roguish
+  dimples...."
+
+She could read no more. She sat long on her bed, dazed by the rush
+of bitter-sweet memories. The Convent, her father, her early years,
+this dear boy ... all was washed together in tears. There was something
+so bizarre, unexpected and ingenuous about it all; it touched the
+elemental in her. If he had excused himself even, she would have
+tossed him off impatiently. But his frank exposure of his own
+self-contradictoriness appealed subtly to her. Was this the want in her
+life, was it for him she had been yearning, below the surface of her
+consciousness, even as she had remained below the surface of his? Here,
+indeed, was salvation--providential salvation. A hand was stretched to
+save her--snatch her from spiritual destruction. The dear brown manly
+hand that had potted tigers while she had been gesticulating on
+platforms--a performing lioness. Distance, imagination, early memories,
+united to weave a glamour round him. It was many minutes before she
+could read the postscript: "I think it right to say that my complexion is
+not yellow nor my liver destroyed. I know this is how we are represented
+on your stage. I have sat for a photograph, especially to send you."
+
+The stage! Why should he just stumble upon the word, to chill her with
+the awful question whether she would have to tell him. She was late at
+her engagements, her performance was perfunctory--she was no longer with
+"the boys," but seated in a howdah on an elephant's back, side by side
+with a mighty hunter, or walking with a tall flaxen-haired lieutenant
+between the honeysuckled hedges of an Irish boreen. It struck her as
+almost miraculous--though it was probably only because her attention
+was now drawn to the name--that she read of Colonel Doherty in the
+evening paper the gasman tendered her that very evening, as she waited at
+the wing. It was a little biography full of deeds of derringdo. "My
+Bayard!" she murmured, and her eyes filled with tears.
+
+She wrote and tore up many replies. The first commenced: "What a strange
+way of proposing! You begin by giving me two black eyes to prove you've
+forgotten me. I am so different in other people's eyes as well as in my
+own it would be unfair to accept you. You are in love with a shadow."
+The word-play about her eyes seemed to savour of the "Half-and-Half."
+She struck it out. But "you are in love with a shadow," remained the
+_Leit-motif_ of all the letters. And if he was grasping at a shadow it
+would be unfair for her to grasp at the substance.
+
+The correspondence continued by every Indian mail after his receipt of
+her guarded refusal; he Quixotic, devoted, no matter how she had changed.
+He loved the mere scent of her letter paper. Was she only a governess?
+Had she been a charwoman, he would have kissed her cheeks white. The
+boyish extravagance of his passion worked upon her, troubling her to her
+sincerest core. She would hide nothing from him. She wrote a full account
+of her stage career, morbidly exaggerating the vulgarity of her
+performance and the degradation of her character. She was blacker than
+any charwoman, she said with grim humour. The moment she dropped the
+letter into the box, a trembling seized on all her limbs. She spent three
+days of torture; her fear of losing him seeming to have heightened her
+love for him.
+
+Then Mrs. Lee Carter handed her a cable.
+
+"Sailing unexpectedly S.S. _Colombo_ to-morrow--Doherty." She nearly fell
+fainting in dual joy. He was coming home, and he would cross her letter.
+Before it could return they would be safely married. It should be
+destroyed unread.
+
+"Is anything wrong?" said her mistress.
+
+"No, quite the contrary."
+
+"I am glad, because I had rather unpleasant news to tell you. But you
+must have seen that when Kenneth goes to Winchester, there will
+practically be nothing for you to do."
+
+"How lucky! For I am going to be married."
+
+"Oh, my dear, I am so glad," gushed Mrs. Lee Carter.
+
+Afterwards Eileen marvelled at the obvious finger of Providence
+unravelling her problems. She had never relished the idea of finding
+another place, not easily would she find one so dovetailing into her
+second life; she might have been tempted to burn her boats.
+
+She prepared now to burn her ships instead. Her contracts with the Halls
+were now only monthly; Nelly O'Neill could easily slip out of existence.
+She would not say she was going to be married--that would concentrate
+attention on herself. Illness seemed the best excuse. For the one week
+after the _Colombo's_ arrival she could send conscience money. The
+Saturday it was due found her still starred; she did not believe his ship
+would get in till late, and managers would particularly dislike being
+done out of her Saturday night turn. Perhaps she ought to have left the
+previous week, she thought. It was foolish to rush things so close. But
+it was not so easy to give up the habits of years, and activity allayed
+the fever of waiting. She had sent an ardent letter to meet the ship at
+Southampton, saying he was to call at the Lee Carters' in Oxbridge
+Terrace on Sunday afternoon, which she had to herself. Being only a poor
+governess, she would be unable to meet him at the station or receive him
+at the house on Saturday night, even if he got in so early. He must be
+resigned to her situation, she added jestingly. On the Saturday afternoon
+she received a wire full of their own hieroglyphic love-words, grumbling
+but obeying. How could he live till Sunday afternoon? Why hadn't she
+resigned her situation?
+
+As she was starting for the Halls for the last time, in the dusk of a
+Spring day, a special messenger put into her hand a letter he had
+scribbled in the train. He was in London then. Her heart thumped with
+a medley of emotions as she tore open the letter:
+
+"Oh, my darling, I shall see you at last face to face--" But she had no
+time to spend under the hall-light reading it. In her cab she struck a
+match and read another scrap. "But, oh, cruel one, not to let me come
+to-night!" She winced. That gave her a pause. If she had let him come--to
+the Half-and-Half! He would turn from her, shuddering. And was it not
+precisely to the Half-and-Half that honour should have invited him? The
+Half-and-Half arrived at the cab window ere she had finished pondering.
+She thrust the letter into her pocket.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+
+Would she ever get through her three Halls? It did not seem as if she had
+strength for the Half-and-Half itself. She nerved herself to the task,
+and knew, not merely from the shrieks of delight, that she had surpassed
+herself. Happy and flushed she flung herself into her waiting cab.
+
+She had the 9.45 turn at her second and most fashionable Hall--a Hall
+where the chairman had been replaced by programme numbers--and then would
+come her third and last appearance at 10.35. It was strange to think that
+in another hour Nelly O'Neill's career would be over. It seemed like
+murdering her. Yes, Eileen O'Keeffe would be her murderess. Well, why not
+murder what lay between one and happiness? As she waited at the wings,
+just before going on, while the orchestra played her opening bars, she
+glanced diagonally at the packed stalls, and her heart stood still.
+There in the second row sat Colonel Doherty, smoking a big cheroot.
+Instinctively she made the sign of the cross; then swayed back and was
+caught by the man who changed the programme-numbers.
+
+"Is No. 9 come?" she gasped.
+
+"I think so; aren't you well, Miss O'Neill?"
+
+"For God's sake, give me breathing space," she said, with a last wild
+peep at the Colonel. Yes, there was no mistaking him after the three new
+portraits he had sent her. He was in cheerful conversation with a stout,
+sallow gentleman of the Anglo-Indian stage-type. Both were in immaculate
+evening-dress and wore white orchids. How fortunate she had refused to
+send any photograph in return, pleading ugliness but really afraid of
+theatrical sketches that might find their way to the officers' mess!
+
+The band stopped, changed its tune, No. 9 appeared on the board; there
+was a murmur of confusion.
+
+"No, by Heaven, I'll face the music," she said with grim humour. She
+almost hustled the hastening juggler out of the way. She was in a
+whirlwind of excitement. So he was there--well, so much the better. He
+had saved her from lying. He had given her an easy way of confessing.
+Words were so inadequate, he should see the reality: the stage to-night
+would be her confessional. She would extenuate nothing. She would throw
+herself furiously into the fun and racket; go to her broadest limits,
+else the confession would be inadequate. Then ... if he survived the
+shock ... why then, perhaps, she'd insist on going on with this double
+life...! He had risen in his seat. No, no, he must not go away, she could
+not risk the juggler boring him.
+
+"I'm better; I mustn't be late at my next shop," she murmured
+apologetically as the number and the music were changed back.
+
+"Ah, she's come--she was late," came the murmurs of the audience as it
+stirred in excited expectation.
+
+She flung on roguish, feverish, diabolical, seductive in low-cut bodice
+pranked with flowers. It was a frenzy of impromptu extravagance, dazzling
+even the orchestra; each line accentuated by new gesture, the verses
+supplemented by new monologue; a miracle of chic and improvisation, and
+the house rose at it. Out of the mist before her eyes thunder seemed to
+come in great roars and crashes. She almost groped her way to the wing.
+
+She was recalled. The mist cleared. She bowed direct at him, smiling
+defiance from her sparkling eyes. He was applauding with his hands, his
+stick, his lungs! Was it possible?--yes, he had not recognised her!
+
+Now came a new revulsion. Again she felt herself saved. She sang her
+other songs straight at him, and exaggerated them equally, half to tempt
+Providence, half as a bold way of keeping Eileen still concealed. She
+heard his companion chuckling, "By Jove, Willie, she's mashed on you,"
+as she threw a farewell kiss towards him. Then she hurried to her
+dressing-room and took out his letter. She had transferred it to the
+pocket of her theatrical gown, but had not as yet found time to finish
+it. Even before she re-perused it, another emotion had begun to possess
+her, a rush of resentment. So this was how he amused himself while
+waiting to clasp her in his arms! How would he ever live through the
+hours till Sunday afternoon, forsooth! She was jealous of the applause he
+lavished on Nelly O'Neill, incensed at his levity, at his immaculate
+evening-dress, at his white orchid. How dare he be so gay and debonair?
+Her anger rose as she read his protestations, his romantic professions.
+"O my darling, I shall sit up all night, thinking of you, re-reading all
+your dear letters, recalling our past, picturing our future. In short, as
+old Landor puts it:--
+
+  "'A night of memories and of sighs
+    I consecrate to thee.'"
+
+She crumpled the paper in her hand. There was a knock at the door; Fossy
+poked his head in. He had risen in the world of Halls, even as Nelly
+O'Neill.
+
+"Might I present two friends of mine? They want so much to know you."
+
+"You know I never see anybody, and that I have to hurry off."
+
+"Then, I was to give you this bouquet."
+
+He handed in a costly floral mass. Amid it lay a card, "Colonel Doherty."
+She crumpled his letter more viciously.
+
+"Tell them I can give them ten minutes only. Oh, Fossy, it's an amusing
+Show, isn't it?"
+
+"It was a rattling good show," said Fossy, half puzzled. "Come in, boys."
+
+Entered the Anglo-Indian twain with shining faces and shirt-fronts,
+cheroots politely lowered.
+
+"Oh, smoke away, gentlemen," cried Nelly O'Neill, facing them in all
+the dazzle of her flesh and the crudity of her stage-paint, and her
+over-lustrous eyes, "don't mind me. Which of you is the Colonel?"
+
+The stout, sallow gentleman jocosely pushed his tall flaxen-haired
+companion forward. "Oh, I knew the Major was out of it," he grinned.
+
+"Not at all, Major," said Nelly. "I only wanted to know which I had to
+thank for these lovely flowers."
+
+"You have yourself to thank," said the Colonel, smartly. "By Jove! You
+gave us a treat. London was worth coming back to."
+
+"Ah, you've been away from London?"
+
+"Just back this very day from India--"
+
+"And of course the first thing after a good dinner is the good old
+Friv--" put in the Major.
+
+"Thank you, Major," said Fossy. "That's handsome of you. And now I'll
+leave you to Miss O'Neill."
+
+"That's handsomer still," said the Colonel. And the three men guffawed.
+Eileen felt sick.
+
+The Major began to talk of the music-halls of India; the Colonel chimed
+in. They treated her as a comrade, told her anecdotes of the _coulisses_
+of Calcutta. The Colonel retailed a jest of the bazaars.
+
+"I permit smoke, not smoking-room stories," she said severely. At which
+the twain poked each other shriekingly in the ribs. After that Eileen let
+the Colonel have rope enough to hang himself with, though she felt it
+cutting cruelly into her own flesh. It was an orgie of the eternal
+masculine, spiced with the aroma of costly cigars.
+
+"I'm so sorry," she said, when she had let them have a quarter of an
+hour's run. "I really must fly." And she seized the bouquet, and
+carefully adjusted his card in the glowing mass. "Won't you come
+and have tea with me to-morrow? About four."
+
+The Colonel winced. "I fear I have another appointment."
+
+"Oh, rot! I'll bring him," said the Major. "Where do you hang out?"
+
+"22 Oxbridge,"--her hesitation was barely perceptible--"Crescent."
+
+The Colonel started. "Do you know it, Colonel?" She looked at him
+ingenuously.
+
+"No, but how odd! My other appointment is at 22 Oxbridge Terrace."
+
+"How funny!" laughed Eileen. "Just round the corner. Then you'll be
+able to kill two ladies with one cab." And she fled from the Major's
+cachinnation.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+
+She had missed her turn at the third Hall, but she did not care. She went
+on and gave a spiritless performance. It fell dead, but she cared less.
+Her head throbbed with a dozen possibilities. She was still undiscovered.
+As she sat resting on her couch ere resuming her work-a-day gown, her
+nerves stretched to snapping point, and old Irish songs crooning
+themselves irrelevantly in her brain, a telegram was handed her.
+
+"He has found out," she thought, going hot and cold. She tore open the
+pink envelope... and burst into a shriek of laughter. The dresser rushed
+in, wondering. Nelly O'Neill merely held her sides, jollity embodied.
+"Oh, the Show, the Show!" she gasped, the tears streaking her painted
+cheeks.
+
+The telegram that hung between her fingers in two sheets ran: "Reply
+prepaid. I don't know the ways of the stage so I send you this as a sure
+way of reaching you to ask when and where I may have the pleasure of
+calling upon your friend, Miss O'Keeffe, and renewing the study of
+Plato.--Robert Maper, Hotel Belgravia."
+
+"Any answer, miss?" said the imperturbable doorkeeper.
+
+The answer flashed irresistibly into her mind as he spoke. Oh, she would
+play up to Bob Maper. Doubtless he imagined her fallen to the level of
+her _metier_, though he wasn't insulting. She scribbled hastily: "Robert
+Maper, Hotel Belgravia. I am waiting at the Hall for you. Come and take
+me to supper.--EILEEN O'NEILL." She gave instructions he was to be
+admitted. Then she relapsed into her hysteric amusement. "Oh, the merry
+master of marionettes, the night my love comes from beyond the seas, you
+send me to supper with Robert Maper." She waited with impatience. Now
+that the long-dreaded discovery had come, she was consumed with curiosity
+as to its effect upon the discoverer. At last she remembered to wash off
+the rouge and the messes necessary for stage-perspective. Her winsome
+face came back to her in the mirror, angelic by contrast, and while she
+was looking wonderingly at this mystic flashing mask of hers, there was a
+knock, and in another instant she was looking into the eyes burning
+unchanged under the white marble mantel-piece.
+
+"Ah, there you are!" she said gaily, and shook his hand as though they
+had met the evening before. "Where shall we go?"
+
+He accepted the situation. "I don't know--I thought you would know."
+
+"I don't--I never supped with a man in my life."
+
+He flushed with complex pleasure and surprise. "Really! Oh, Eileen!"
+
+"Hush! Call me Nelly, if you must be Christian. I suppose you think you
+may, now."
+
+"I--I beg your pardon," he stammered, disconcerted.
+
+"Don't look so gaspy--poor little thing! It shall be thrown back into the
+water. Will you carry my bouquet?"
+
+"With pleasure." He grasped it eagerly, and carried it towards the stage
+door and a hansom.
+
+"It wanted only that," she said. "Oh, the Show, the Show!"
+
+"I don't understand you."
+
+"Do I understand myself?" They got into the hansom. "Where shall we go?"
+she repeated.
+
+"Places all close at twelve on Saturday night."
+
+"Ah, do they? Your hotel also?"
+
+"No, of course one may eat at one's own hotel. If you don't mind going
+there--"
+
+"If _you_ don't mind, rather."
+
+"I? Who is my censor?"
+
+"Ah, the word admits I'm discreditable. Never mind, Bob. See how
+Christian I am."
+
+"No, no, I've felt it was all my doing. Indirectly I drove you to
+it--oh, how you have weighed on me!"
+
+"Really, I'd quite forgotten you."
+
+He winced and gasped. "Hotel Belgravia," he called up through the
+trap-door.
+
+"Very strange you should find me," she said, as they glided through the
+flashing London night.
+
+"Not in the least. I knew you blindfold, so to speak. You forget how I
+used to stand outside the drawing-room, listening to your singing."
+
+"Eavesdropper!" she murmured. But he struck a tender chord--all the
+tender chords of her twilight playing that now rose up softly and floated
+around her.
+
+"Eavesdropper if you like, who heard nothing that was not beautiful. And
+so I hadn't to _look_ for you. As a matter of fact, I wasn't looking but
+consulting my programme to know who number eleven was, when you began to
+sing."
+
+"If you _had_ looked you wouldn't have recognised me," she said, smiling.
+
+"Probably not. The stage get-up would have blurred my memories."
+
+She began to like him again: the oddness of it all was appealing.
+"Nevertheless," she said, "it is strange you should just find me
+to-night, for I--"
+
+"No, it isn't," he interrupted eagerly. "I've been every night this
+week."
+
+"Ah, eavesdropping again," she said, touched.
+
+"I wanted to be absolutely sure--and then I couldn't pluck up courage to
+write to you."
+
+"But you did to-night?"
+
+"You looked so tired--I felt I wanted to protect you."
+
+A sob came into her throat, but she managed to say coldly, "Was I very
+bad?"
+
+"To one who had seen you the other nights," he said with complimentary
+candour.
+
+She laughed. "How is your mother?"
+
+"Oh, she's very well, thank you. She lives in London now."
+
+"Then your father has retired from--"
+
+"He is dead,--didn't you hear?"
+
+"No." Eileen sat in shocked silence. "I am sorry," she murmured at
+length. But underneath this mild shock she was conscious--as they rolled
+on without speaking--of a new ease that had come into her life: some
+immense relaxation of tension. "A hunted criminal must breathe more
+calmly when he is caught," she thought.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+
+"Lucky I'm in evening dress," she said, loosening her cloak as they went
+through a corridor, shimmering with dresses and diamonds, to a crowded
+supper-room.
+
+"But you're always in evening dress, surely."
+
+"I might have been in tights." And she had a malicious self-wounding
+pleasure in watching him gasp. She hurried into a revelation of her exact
+position, as soon as they had secured a just-vacated little table in a
+window niche. She omitted only Colonel Doherty.
+
+He listened breathlessly. "And nobody knows you are Eileen O'Keeffe, I
+mean Nelly O'Neill?"
+
+She laughed. "You see _you_ don't know which I am."
+
+"It's incredible."
+
+"So much the worse for your theories of credibility. The longer I live,
+the less the Show surprises me."
+
+"What show?"
+
+"Oh, it's too long to explain. Say Vanity Fair." Her thumb fell into its
+old habit of flicking the table. There was a silence.
+
+"I am sorry you told me," he said slowly.
+
+"Why?"
+
+A waiter loomed over them.
+
+"Supper, Sir Robert?"
+
+She glanced quickly at her companion.
+
+"Yes," he said. "_Ma buonissima!_ I leave it to you. And champagne."
+
+"_Prestissimo_, Sir Robert." He smirked himself off.
+
+"Why does he call you that?" she asked.
+
+"Oh, didn't you know my poor father was made a Baronet, after we
+entertained Royalty?"
+
+"No; how strange your lives should have been going on all the time!" The
+pop of a cork at her elbow startled her. Then she lifted her frothing
+glass. "Sir--to you!"
+
+He clinked his against it. "To the lady of my dreams."
+
+"Still?" She sipped the wine: her eyes sparkled.
+
+"Yes; I've still a long opinion of myself."
+
+She put out her hand quickly and pressed his an instant.
+
+"Thank you!" he said huskily. "That was why I said I was sorry to know
+that to the world you were still a governess. Of course I was glad,
+too."
+
+"I don't understand. I always said you were more Irish than I."
+
+"I was glad you had kept yourself unspotted from the stage-world."
+
+"Good God! You call that unspotted! What are men made of?"
+
+"You were in a bad atmosphere. Your lips caught phrases."
+
+"Nonsense. I'm a crow, not a parrot; a thoroughly sooty bird."
+
+"It was your whiteness that attracted--your morning freshness. You don't
+know what vulgarity is."
+
+"You don't know what _I_ am."
+
+"I know you to your delicious finger-tips. And that's why I am sorry you
+told me so much. I wanted to ask Nelly O'Neill to marry me. Now she'll
+think I'm only asking Eileen O'Keeffe, the daughter of the Irish
+gentleman."
+
+Her eyes filled with tears. "No, they both believe you capable of any
+folly. Besides, somebody would find out Nelly all the same." And a smile
+made a rainbow across her tears.
+
+The arrival of the soup relaxed the tension of emotion. In mid-plate she
+suddenly put down her spoon and laughed softly.
+
+"What is it?" he said, not without alarm at her transitions.
+
+"Why, it would be one of those stock theatrical marriages, into which we
+entrap titles! Fascinated by a Serio-Comic, poor silly young man. She
+played her cards well, that Nelly. Ha! ha! ha! Who would dream of Plato's
+dialogues? And you talk of incredible!"
+
+"I am content to be called silly." He tried to take her hand.
+
+"Well, don't be it in public. You will rank with Lord Tippleton who
+married Bessie Bilhook, and made a Lady of her--the only ladyhood she's
+ever known."
+
+"No, I can't rank with him," he smiled back. "I'm only a Baronet."
+
+"It sounds the same. Lady Maper!" she murmured. "But, oh, how funny!
+There'd be two Lady Mapers."
+
+"My mother would be the Dowager Lady--"
+
+"That's funnier still."
+
+He ate in silence. Eileen mused on the picture of the Dowager, her
+forefinger to heaven.
+
+"The Royalty--how did that go off?" she said, as he carved the chicken.
+
+"With fireworks. For the reception father built a new house and furnished
+it with old furniture. Royalty stopped an hour and a quarter. Oh, she was
+wonderful. I mean my mother. Copied your phrases--see what an impression
+you made."
+
+"And what have you been doing since you came into the title?"
+
+"Looking for you."
+
+"Nonsense!" She dropped her fork. "But you knew I had people in Ireland."
+
+"I never knew exactly where."
+
+"But what put you on the track of the music-halls?"
+
+"Nothing. I never dreamed of looking for you there. I just went." Master
+Harold Lee Carter's phrase flashed back to her memory, "All the chaps
+go."
+
+"But what about the Black Hole--I mean the works?"
+
+"They go on," he said. "I just get the profits."
+
+"And how about your Socialism?"
+
+"You taught me the fallacy of it."
+
+"I? Well, that's the cream of the joke."
+
+"Yes. Don't laugh at me, please. When you came into my life, or rather
+when you went out of it--yes, I am Irish--I saw that money and station
+are the mere veneer of life: the central reality is--Love."
+
+Again her eyes filled with tears, but she remained silent.
+
+"And I saw that I, the master, was really poorer than the majority of my
+serfs, with their wives and bairns."
+
+"You are a good fellow," she murmured. "I--I meant to say," she corrected
+herself, "what have you done with your clothes?"
+
+"My clothes!" he echoed vaguely, looking down at his spotless
+shirt-front.
+
+"Your factory clothes! Wouldn't it be fun to wear them at supper here? Do
+you think they could turn you out? I don't see how, legally. Do test the
+question. Yes, do. Please do." And she laid her hand on his black sleeve.
+"I won't marry you if you don't."
+
+"I did think you were serious to-night, Eileen," he said, disappointed.
+
+"How could you think that, if you read the programme, as you say? 'Nelly
+O'Neill, Serio-Comic.' _Allons, ne faites cette tete mine de hibou_.
+Admit the world is entirely ridiculous and give me some more champagne."
+Her eyes glittered strangely.
+
+A clock struck twelve.
+
+"What, midnight!" she cried, starting up. "I must go."
+
+"No, no;" he took her hand.
+
+"Yes, yes; don't you know, at the stroke of midnight I change back to a
+governess."
+
+"Well, the magic didn't work, for that clock's very slow. Sit down,
+please."
+
+"You have spoken the omen. I remain Nelly O'Neill and drop Eileen for
+ever. _Vogue la galere._"
+
+"Absit omen!" He shuddered.
+
+"Why not? What do you offer me? The love of one man. But my public loves
+me as one man--with a much more voluminous love--I love it in return. Why
+should I change?"
+
+"Shall we say merely because the public changes? I am constant."
+
+"Yes, you are very wonderful.... And if it's to-morrow already, my fate
+will be settled to-day. Drink to my destiny."
+
+"I drink to our destiny," he said, raising his glass.
+
+"No. Only to mine. It will be decided this afternoon."
+
+"You will give me your answer this afternoon?" he cried joyfully.
+
+"I don't say that. It's my answer I shall know this afternoon. Yours you
+shall have to-morrow afternoon. You don't mind giving me one day's option
+of your hand?"
+
+"One day's! When you have had--"
+
+She interrupted impatiently. "Let bygones be bygones. You shall have a
+letter by Monday afternoon. But, oh, Heavens! how could we marry? You
+believe in nothing!"
+
+"There's the Registrar."
+
+She pouted: "Dry legality. No flowers, no organ, no feeling sweet and
+virginal in a long veil. Oh, dear! Besides, there's mother--"
+
+"I don't object to the church ceremony."
+
+"I'm glad. The law may end marriage. Marriage shouldn't begin with law.
+It ought to look beautiful at the start, at least, though one may know
+it's a shaky scraw."
+
+"A shaky what?"
+
+"Oh, it's an Irish term for a bit of black bog that looks like lovely
+green meadow. You step out so gaily on the glittering grass, and then
+squish! squash! down you go to choke in the ooze."
+
+"Don't be so pessimistic. It would be much more sensible to think of
+marriage as solid meadow-land after your present scramble over a shaky
+what-d'ye-call it."
+
+"True for you! I give you the stage as the shakiest of all scraws. But
+where _is_ solid footing to be found? The world itself is only a vast bog
+that sucks in the generations."
+
+"I am sorry I asked you to be serious," he said glumly. "You're such a
+quick-change artiste."
+
+"I must quickly assume the governess or I'll lose my character," she
+said, rising resolutely.
+
+He put her cloak tenderly round her.
+
+"You know I'll take you without a character," he said lightly.
+
+"If I had no character I might be tempted to take you," she retorted
+dispiritingly. "Thank you so much for my first supper."
+
+
+
+
+XX
+
+
+Eileen slept little. The dramatic possibilities of the interview with
+Colonel Doherty were too agitating and too numerous. This time the
+marionette-play needed writing. Who should receive him when he called?
+Eileen O'Keeffe or Nelly O'Neill?
+
+Either possibility offered exquisite comedy.
+
+Eileen--as plain as possible--with a high, black dress, drooped lids,
+stiffly brushed hair, even eyeglasses perhaps, with a deportment redolent
+of bread-and-butter and five-finger exercises, could perhaps disenchant
+him sufficiently to make him moderate his matrimonial ardour, even to
+hurry off apologetically to his serio-comic Circe round the corner. What
+a triumph of acting if she could drive him to her rival! Then as he went
+through the door--to loosen her hair, throw off her glasses and whistle
+him back to Nelly O'Neill!
+
+The part was tempting; it bristled with opportunities. But it was also
+too trying. He might begin by taking lover's liberties, and the strain of
+repulsing him would be too great. Besides, she wasn't clear how to play
+the opening of the scene. But then there was another star part open to
+her.
+
+Nelly O'Neill's _role_ was much easier: it played itself. She had only
+to go on with the episode. And the way the episode went on would also
+serve to determine finally her attitude when the moment came to throw off
+the mask and turn to governess. The only difficult moment would be the
+first--to obfuscate him immediately with the notion that he had mixed up
+the two addresses. Even if she failed and he realised his ghastlier
+blunder, it would only precipitate the dramatic duel which she must face
+sooner or later. All these high-strung possibilities deadened the
+horrible pain she knew her soul held for her, as soldiers carry wounds to
+be felt when the charge is over. She fell asleep near morning, her battle
+planned, and slept late, a sleep full of strange dreams, in one of which
+her drunken father counted her, and couldn't decide how many she was.
+"It's two I am, father asthore, only two, Eileen and Nelly," she kept
+crying. But he counted on.
+
+Towards four in the afternoon she posted herself at the window. It was
+absolutely necessary to the comedy that she should open the door to him
+herself. At last a cab containing him halted at the door. She
+flew down, just supplanting the butler.
+
+"How good of you, Colonel!" she cried. "But where is the Major?"
+
+It was exquisitely calculated. She had pulled the string and the
+marionette moved with precision. A daze, a flash, a stammer--all the
+embarrassment of a man who believes that in a day-dream he has given
+a second address first.
+
+"Miss--Miss O'Neill," he stuttered, mechanically removing his hat.
+
+"Nelly to my friends," she smiled fascinatingly. "Come in!" Christopher
+Sly was not more bewildered when he opened his eyes on the glories of his
+Court.
+
+"What--what is this address?" he blurted, as she prisoned him by closing
+the door.
+
+"Why?... Oh, I know. Ha! ha! ha! You've come to the Crescent instead of
+the Terrace."
+
+"That confounded cabman! I'm sure I told him the Terrace."
+
+"Don't swear. He's more accustomed to the Crescent. So many pros coming
+home late, and all that!"
+
+He hesitated at the foot of the stairs. "I really think I ought to call
+there first...."
+
+Now all the coquette in Nelly O'Neill rose to detain him, subtly tangled
+with the actress. She pouted adorably. "Oh, now you're here, can't you
+put her second for once?"
+
+"I didn't say it was a _her_."
+
+"A she," corrected the governess, instinctively. Nelly hastened to add,
+"No man leaves a woman for a man."
+
+"This is such an old appointment," he pleaded in distress.
+
+"I see. You want to be off with the old love before you are on with the
+new."
+
+"Nothing of the kind, I assure you."
+
+"What! Not even the new?"
+
+"Oh, that part!" He smiled and followed her up. "You won't mind my going
+soon?"
+
+"The sooner the better if you talk like that!" She threw open the door of
+her little sitting-room. How well the Show was going!
+
+"A soda and whisky, Colonel? I suppose that's your idea of tea." She
+had the scene ready. She had got it all up like a little play, writing
+down the articles on a sheet of paper headed "Property List": "Cigars,
+cigarettes, syphons, spirits, sporting-papers," all borrowed from Master
+Harold Lee Carter to entertain a visitor.
+
+But at the height of the play's prosperity, while the Colonel clinked
+tumblers with Nelly, came a _contretemps_, and all the farce darkened
+swiftly to drama as the gay landscape is overgloomed by a thundercloud.
+
+It all came from Mrs. Lee Carter's benevolent fussiness, her interest in
+the man who had come to marry her governess. A servant knocked at the
+door, stuck her head in, and said, "Mrs. Lee Carter's compliments, and
+would you like some tea?"
+
+"No, thank you," said Eileen, hurriedly.
+
+But as the door closed, the Colonel's glass fell to the ground, and he
+rose to his feet. His bronzed face was working wildly.
+
+"Mrs. Lee Carter!" he gasped. "You--you are Eileen!"
+
+"Here's a mess," she said coolly, stooping to wipe up the carpet.
+
+"Eileen! Explain!" he said piteously.
+
+"It's you that ought to be explaining. I've all I can do to pick up the
+nasty little bits of glass."
+
+"My brain reels. Who _are_ you? What _are_ you? For God's sake."
+
+"Hush! Who are _you_? What are _you_?"
+
+"I know what I was--your lover."
+
+"Whose? Mine or Nelly's?"
+
+"Good God, Eileen! You saw how anxious I was to get to you. That I was
+subtly drawn to Nelly is only a proof of how you were in my blood. But
+you're not really Nelly O'Neill. This is some stupid practical joke.
+Don't torture me longer."
+
+"It tortures you that I should be Nelly O' Neill!" All the confessed
+sweetness of her position came up into clear consciousness: the lights,
+the laughter, the very smell of the smoke endeared by a thousand
+triumphs. How dared he speak of Nelly O'Neill as though she couldn't be
+touched with a pitchfork! Yes, and Bob Maper, too--her anger ricocheted
+to him--with his priggish notions of saving her from black bogs! And
+who was it that now stood over her like a fuddled accusing angel? She
+pulled out his letter and read viciously:--
+
+  "'A night of memories and of sighs
+    I consecrate to thee.'"
+
+"I was dying to rush to you--you wouldn't see me. And the Major dragged
+me--"
+
+"Through all that mud? All those Indian escapades?"
+
+He groaned, "And you listened--!"
+
+"Am I not your mother-confessor?"
+
+He seized her by the wrists. "Don't madden me! You're not really on
+the Halls? You _are_ living here as governess. It is some prank, some
+masquerade! Say it is!" He shook her. She tried to wrest her hands away.
+
+"Not till you tell me the truth! You haven't been lying to me all these
+months?"
+
+A sudden remembrance came to give her strength and scorn. "I _have_ told
+you the truth, only my letter crossed you on the ocean. When it returns
+to England, you will see."
+
+His grip relaxed, he staggered back. "Come," she said, pursuing her
+unforeseen advantage. "We will talk this thing over quietly. I always
+said you were in love with a shadow. But I find it was I who imagined a
+Bayard."
+
+"And what have I done and said worse than other men?" Again Master Harold
+Lee Carter's complacent sentiment came to her. Men were all alike, only
+their women folk didn't know.
+
+"Worse than other men!" She laughed bitterly. "I wanted you better--all
+the seven heavens better--saint as well as hero, with no thought but for
+me, and no one before me or after me. Oh, yes, it sounds a large order,
+but that's what we women want. Don't speak! I know what you're going to
+say. Skip me. Talk of yourself."
+
+"You get what you want. The other's only make-believe. It passes like
+water from a duck's back. You women don't understand. The white fire of
+your purity cleanses us, and that is why we will have nothing less--"
+
+"Ah, now you have skipped _to_ me. I'm not pretending there isn't an evil
+spirit in me to match yours. It split away from me and became Nelly
+O'Neill. You asked which I was? I am both. Here, I am a respectable
+governess. Let me ring for Mrs. Lee Carter. She'll give you my character.
+The white fire and all that." She pressed the bell.
+
+"Don't be so absurd. Give me time to collect my senses."
+
+"All right, pick up the pieces, while I collect these." She stooped over
+the bits of glass.
+
+"But for Heaven's sake don't bring that woman into it--"
+
+The door opened. "Yes, miss?"
+
+"Another glass, please." The servant disappeared.
+
+"I do hope you won't break this one. In what country is it that the
+bridegroom breaks a glass in the marriage ceremonial? Oh, yes, I
+remember. Fossy told me. Among the Jews. There's a lot in the profession.
+Not that it's such a marrying profession. And to think I might have been
+a regular bride! But I've lost you, my dear boy, hero of a hundred
+hill-fights, I _know_ it--and the moment you've picked your little
+bits of senses together, you'll know it, too. Alas, we shall never go
+tiger-hunting together.
+
+  "'A night of memories and of sighs
+    I consecrate to thee.'"
+
+"I don't say I won't keep my promise," he said sulkily.
+
+"Your promise! Hoity toity! Upon my word! I'm no breach-of-promise
+lady--Chops and tomato sauce indeed! I recognise that we could never
+marry. There would always be that between us!"
+
+Her fascination gripped him in proportion as she let him go.
+
+"I don't know that I should mind if nobody really knows," he began.
+
+"You! It's I that would mind. And I really know. Could I marry a man who
+had told me smoking-room stories? No, Eileen is done with you. Good-by!"
+
+"Good-by? No, I can't go. I can't face the emptiness. You've filled me
+and fooled me with love all these weeks. Good God! Do you owe me
+nothing?"
+
+"I leave you something--Nelly O'Neill! Go and see her. Now you're off
+with the old love. You mark what a prophetess I was. Nelly'll receive you
+very differently. No cant of superiority. You'll be just a pair of jolly
+good fellows. You'll sit up drinking whisky together and yarning
+anecdotes. No uncomfortable pretences; no black bog posing as white
+fire; no driven snow business, London snow nicely trodden, in. And
+the tales of the world you tell me--how useful they'll come in for
+stage-patter! Oh, we shall be happy enough! We can still pick up the
+pieces!"
+
+"Eileen! Eileen! you will drive me mad. What do you mean? You know I
+could never have a wife on the Halls. It would ruin me in the clubs, it
+would--"
+
+"In the clubs! Ha! ha! ha! Every member of which would be delighted to
+have tea with me! But who's proposing to you a wife on the Halls? You
+said I owed you myself, and it's true, but you don't suppose I could
+_marry_ a man I didn't respect? I told you we're not a marrying
+profession. Come, let's kiss and be friends."
+
+He drew back as in horror. "No, no, Eileen, I respect you too much for
+that."
+
+She looked at him long and curiously. "Yes, the sexes don't understand
+each other. Well, good-by. I almost could marry you, after all. But I'm
+too wise. Please go. I have a headache and it is quite possible I shall
+scream. Good-by, dear. I was never more than a phantom to you--a boyish
+memory, and a bad one at that. Don't you know you gave me a pair of black
+eyes? Good-by: you'll marry a dear, sweet girl in white muslin who'll
+never know. God bless you."
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+
+Sir Robert Maper simply could not get up on the Monday morning. The agony
+of suspense was too keen, and he lay with closed eyes, trying to drowse
+his consciousness, and exchanging it in his fitful snatches of sleep for
+oppressive dreams, in one of which Eileen figured as a Lorelei, combing
+her locks on a rock as she sang her siren song.
+
+But she did not prolong his agony beyond mid-day.
+
+  "MY DEAR SIR ROBERT,--Both of us are dead and gone, so, alas! neither
+  can marry you. Don't be alarmed, we are only dead to the world, and
+  gone to the Continent. 'Get thee to a nunnery.' Hamlet knew best. If I
+  could have married any man it would have been you. You are the only
+  gentleman I have ever known. But I don't love you. It's a miserable
+  pity. I wish I did. I wonder why 'love' is an active verb in all
+  languages. It ought to have a passive form, like 'loquor' (though that
+  passive should be reserved for parrots). Forgive the governess! I seem
+  to have undergone 'love' for two men, but one was a fool and the other
+  not quite a rogue, and I dare say I never really loved anybody but
+  myself (and there the verb is very active)! I love to coquet, but the
+  moment a man comes too close, I feel hunted. I dare say I was secretly
+  pleased to find my hero tripping, so as to send him packing. Was ever
+  hero in such a comic plight? Poor, unlucky hero! But this will be Greek
+  to you--the kind you can't read. Oh, the men I could have married! It
+  is curious, when you think of it, the men one little woman might marry
+  and be dutifully absorbed in. I could have been a bass chorister's wife
+  or a Baronet's wife, the wife of an Honourable dolt, and the wife of a
+  dishonourable dramatist. _J'en passe et des meilleurs._ I could have
+  lived in Calcutta or in Clerkenwell, been received in Belgravia or in
+  Boulogne. Good Lord! the parts one woman is supposed to be fit for,
+  while the man remains his stolid, stupid self. Talk of the variety
+  stage! Or is it that they all want the same thing of her?
+
+  "Talking of the variety stage, there would have been the danger, too,
+  of my thirsting for it, even with a Dowager Lady for a stepmother. The
+  nostalgia of the boards is a disease your love might not have warded
+  off. You are well rid of both of us.
+
+  "You said--at my first and last supper--that money and station are the
+  mere veneer of life, the central reality is love. That is true, if by
+  love you read the love of God, of Christ. Do you remember my going one
+  day over the works with your poor father? Well, after I had been
+  through rooms and rooms of whirring machinery infinitely ingenious and
+  diversified--that made my head ache--they took me to a shed where stood
+  in a sort of giant peace the great engine that moved it all. 'God!' was
+  my instant thought, and somehow my headache fled. And ever since then,
+  when I have been oppressed by the complex clatter of life, my thought
+  has gone back to that power-room, to the great simple force behind it
+  all. I rested in the thought as a swimmer on a placid ocean. But the
+  ocean is cold and infinite, and of late I have longed for a more human
+  God that loved and forgave, and so I come back to the Christ. You see
+  Plato never satisfied me. Your explanation of the B.C. glories was sown
+  on barren soil. I grant you a nobility in your Plato as of Greek
+  pillars, soaring in the sunlight, but somehow I want the Gothic--I long
+  for 'dim religious light' and windows stained with saints. Oh, to find
+  my soul again! If I could tell you how the Convent rises before me as a
+  vision of blessedness--after life's 'shaky scraw'--the cool cloisters,
+  the rows of innocent beds, the delicious old garden. There are tears at
+  my heart, as I think of it. What flowers I will bring to my favourite
+  nun.... God grant she is still alive! What altar-cloths I will weave
+  with my silver and gold! Yes, the wages of sin shall not be death, I
+  will pay them to the life eternal; my dowry as the bride of Christ. I,
+  too, shall be laid on the altar, my complex corrupt soul shall be
+  simplified and purified, and the Holy Mother will lead me by the hand
+  like a little child. But all this will be caviare to you. Adieu. I will
+  pray for you.
+
+  "Eileen.
+
+  "P.S.--It is a convent that trains the young, so I shall still be a
+  Governess."
+
+"And perhaps still a Serio-Comic," thought the Baronet, bitterly.
+
+
+
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