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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green, by
+Jerome K. Jerome
+
+
+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: Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green
+
+
+Author: Jerome K. Jerome
+
+
+
+Release Date: May 7, 2007  [eBook #2234]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SKETCHES IN LAVENDER, BLUE AND
+GREEN***
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1920 J. W. Arrowsmith edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Sketches in Lavender
+Blue and Green
+
+
+BY
+JEROME K. JEROME
+AUTHOR OF "THREE MEN IN A BOAT"
+"THREE MEN ON THE BUMMEL," "NOVEL NOTES"
+"THE IDLE THOUGHTS OF AN IDLE FELLOW," ETC.
+
+BRISTOL
+J. W. ARROWSMITH LTD., QUAY STREET
+LONDON
+SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT & CO. LIMITED
+1920
+
+Contents:
+
+Reginald Blake, Financier and Cad
+An item of Fashionable Intelligence
+Blase Billy
+The Choice of Cyril Harjohn
+The Materialisation of Charles and Mivanway
+Portrait of a Lady
+The Man Who Would Manage
+The Man Who Lived For Others
+A Man of Habit
+The Absent-minded Man
+A Charming Woman
+Whibley's Spirit
+The Man Who Went Wrong
+The Hobby Rider
+The Man Who Did Not Believe In Luck
+Dick Dunkerman's Cat
+The Minor Poet's Story
+The Degeneration of Thomas Henry
+The City of The Sea
+Driftwood
+
+   La-ven-der's blue, did-dle, did-dle!
+      La-ven-der's green;
+   When I am king, did-dle, did-dle!
+      You shall be queen.
+
+   Call up your men, did-dle, did-dle!
+      Set them to work;
+   Some to the plough, did-dle, did-dle!
+      Some to the cart.
+
+   Some to make hay, did-dle, did-dle!
+      Some to cut corn;
+   While you and I, did-dle, did-dle!
+      Keep ourselves warm.
+
+
+
+
+REGINALD BLAKE, FINANCIER AND CAD
+
+
+The advantage of literature over life is that its characters are clearly
+defined, and act consistently.  Nature, always inartistic, takes pleasure
+in creating the impossible.  Reginald Blake was as typical a specimen of
+the well-bred cad as one could hope to find between Piccadilly Circus and
+Hyde Park Corner.  Vicious without passion, and possessing brain without
+mind, existence presented to him no difficulties, while his pleasures
+brought him no pains.  His morality was bounded by the doctor on the one
+side, and the magistrate on the other.  Careful never to outrage the
+decrees of either, he was at forty-five still healthy, though stout; and
+had achieved the not too easy task of amassing a fortune while avoiding
+all risk of Holloway.  He and his wife, Edith (_nee_ Eppington), were as
+ill-matched a couple as could be conceived by any dramatist seeking
+material for a problem play.  As they stood before the altar on their
+wedding morn, they might have been taken as symbolising satyr and saint.
+More than twenty years his junior, beautiful with the beauty of a
+Raphael's Madonna, his every touch of her seemed a sacrilege.  Yet once
+in his life Mr. Blake played the part of a great gentleman; Mrs. Blake,
+on the same occasion, contenting herself with a singularly mean
+_role_--mean even for a woman in love.
+
+The affair, of course, had been a marriage of convenience.  Blake, to do
+him justice, had made no pretence to anything beyond admiration and
+regard.  Few things grow monotonous sooner than irregularity.  He would
+tickle his jaded palate with respectability, and try for a change the
+companionship of a good woman.  The girl's face drew him, as the
+moonlight holds a man who, bored by the noise, turns from a heated room
+to press his forehead to the window-pane.  Accustomed to bid for what he
+wanted, he offered his price.  The Eppington family was poor and
+numerous.  The girl, bred up to the false notions of duty inculcated by a
+narrow conventionality, and, feminine like, half in love with martyrdom
+for its own sake, let her father bargain for a higher price, and then
+sold herself.
+
+To a drama of this description, a lover is necessary, if the
+complications are to be of interest to the outside world.  Harry Sennett,
+a pleasant-looking enough young fellow, in spite of his receding chin,
+was possessed, perhaps, of more good intention than sense.  Under the
+influence of Edith's stronger character he was soon persuaded to
+acquiesce meekly in the proposed arrangement.  Both succeeded in
+convincing themselves that they were acting nobly.  The tone of the
+farewell interview, arranged for the eve of the wedding, would have been
+fit and proper to the occasion had Edith been a modern Joan of Arc about
+to sacrifice her own happiness on the altar of a great cause; as the girl
+was merely selling herself into ease and luxury, for no higher motive
+than the desire to enable a certain number of more or less worthy
+relatives to continue living beyond their legitimate means, the sentiment
+was perhaps exaggerated.  Many tears were shed, and many everlasting good-
+byes spoken, though, seeing that Edith's new home would be only a few
+streets off, and that of necessity their social set would continue to be
+the same, more experienced persons might have counselled hope.  Three
+months after the marriage they found themselves side by side at the same
+dinner-table; and after a little melodramatic fencing with what they were
+pleased to regard as fate, they accommodated themselves to the customary
+positions.
+
+Blake was quite aware that Sennett had been Edith's lover.  So had half a
+dozen other men, some younger, some older than himself.  He felt no more
+embarrassment at meeting them than, standing on the pavement outside the
+Stock Exchange, he would have experienced greeting his brother jobbers
+after a settling day that had transferred a fortune from their hands into
+his.  Sennett, in particular, he liked and encouraged.  Our whole social
+system, always a mystery to the philosopher, owes its existence to the
+fact that few men and women possess sufficient intelligence to be
+interesting to themselves.  Blake liked company, but not much company
+liked Blake.  Young Sennett, however, could always be relied upon to
+break the tediousness of the domestic dialogue.  A common love of sport
+drew the two men together.  Most of us improve upon closer knowledge, and
+so they came to find good in one another.
+
+"That is the man you ought to have married," said Blake one night to his
+wife, half laughingly, half seriously, as they sat alone, listening to
+Sennett's departing footsteps echoing upon the deserted pavement.  "He's
+a good fellow--not a mere money-grubbing machine like me."
+
+And a week later Sennett, sitting alone with Edith, suddenly broke out
+with:
+
+"He's a better man than I am, with all my high-falutin' talk, and, upon
+my soul, he loves you.  Shall I go abroad?"
+
+"If you like," was the answer.
+
+"What would you do?"
+
+"Kill myself," replied the other, with a laugh, "or run away with the
+first man that asked me."
+
+So Sennett stayed on.
+
+Blake himself had made the path easy to them.  There was little need for
+either fear or caution.  Indeed, their safest course lay in recklessness,
+and they took it.  To Sennett the house was always open.  It was Blake
+himself who, when unable to accompany his wife, would suggest Sennett as
+a substitute.  Club friends shrugged their shoulders.  Was the man
+completely under his wife's thumb; or, tired of her, was he playing some
+devil's game of his own?  To most of his acquaintances the latter
+explanation seemed the more plausible.
+
+The gossip, in due course, reached the parental home.  Mrs. Eppington
+shook the vials of her wrath over the head of her son-in-law.  The
+father, always a cautious man, felt inclined to blame his child for her
+want of prudence.
+
+"She'll ruin everything," he said.  "Why the devil can't she be careful?"
+
+"I believe the man is deliberately plotting to get rid of her," said Mrs.
+Eppington.  "I shall tell him plainly what I think."
+
+"You're a fool, Hannah," replied her husband, allowing himself the
+licence of the domestic hearth.  "If you are right, you will only
+precipitate matters; if you are wrong, you will tell him what there is no
+need for him to know.  Leave the matter to me.  I can sound him without
+giving anything away, and meanwhile you talk to Edith."
+
+So matters were arranged, but the interview between mother and daughter
+hardly improved the position.  Mrs. Eppington was conventionally moral;
+Edith had been thinking for herself, and thinking in a bad atmosphere.
+Mrs. Eppington, grew angry at the girl's callousness.
+
+"Have you no sense of shame?" she cried.
+
+"I had once," was Edith's reply, "before I came to live here.  Do you
+know what this house is for me, with its gilded mirrors, its couches, its
+soft carpets?  Do you know what I am, and have been for two years?"
+
+The elder woman rose, with a frightened pleading look upon her face, and
+the other stopped and turned away towards the window.
+
+"We all thought it for the best," continued Mrs. Eppington meekly.
+
+The girl spoke wearily without looking round.
+
+"Oh! every silly thing that was ever done, was done for the best.  _I_
+thought it would be for the best, myself.  Everything would be so simple
+if only we were not alive.  Don't let's talk any more.  All you can say
+is quite right."
+
+The silence continued for a while, the Dresden-china clock on the
+mantelpiece ticking louder and louder as if to say, "I, Time, am here.  Do
+not make your plans forgetting me, little mortals; I change your thoughts
+and wills.  You are but my puppets."
+
+"Then what do you intend to do?" demanded Mrs. Eppington at length.
+
+"Intend!  Oh, the right thing of course.  We all intend that.  I shall
+send Harry away with a few well-chosen words of farewell, learn to love
+my husband and settle down to a life of quiet domestic bliss.  Oh, it's
+easy enough to intend!"
+
+The girl's face wrinkled with a laugh that aged her.  In that moment it
+was a hard, evil face, and with a pang the elder woman thought of that
+other face, so like, yet so unlike--the sweet pure face of a girl that
+had given to a sordid home its one touch of nobility.  As under the
+lightning's flash we see the whole arc of the horizon, so Mrs. Eppington
+looked and saw her child's life.  The gilded, over-furnished room
+vanished.  She and a big-eyed, fair-haired child, the only one of her
+children she had ever understood, were playing wonderful games in the
+twilight among the shadows of a tiny attic.  Now she was the wolf,
+devouring Edith, who was Red Riding Hood, with kisses.  Now Cinderella's
+prince, now both her wicked sisters.  But in the favourite game of all,
+Mrs. Eppington was a beautiful princess, bewitched by a wicked dragon, so
+that she seemed to be an old, worn woman.  But curly-headed Edith fought
+the dragon, represented by the three-legged rocking-horse, and slew him
+with much shouting and the toasting-fork.  Then Mrs. Eppington became
+again a beautiful princess, and went away with Edith back to her own
+people.
+
+In this twilight hour the misbehaviour of the "General," the importunity
+of the family butcher, and the airs assumed by cousin Jane, who kept two
+servants, were forgotten.
+
+The games ended.  The little curly head would be laid against her breast
+"for five minutes' love," while the restless little brain framed the
+endless question that children are for ever asking in all its thousand
+forms, "What is life, mother?  I am very little, and I think, and think,
+until I grow frightened.  Oh, mother, tell me, what is life?"
+
+Had she dealt with these questions wisely?  Might it not have been better
+to have treated them more seriously?  Could life after all be ruled by
+maxims learned from copy-books?  She had answered as she had been
+answered in her own far-back days of questioning.  Might it not have been
+better had she thought for herself?
+
+Suddenly Edith was kneeling on the floor beside her.
+
+"I will try to be good, mother."
+
+It was the old baby cry, the cry of us all, children that we are, till
+mother Nature kisses us and bids us go to sleep.
+
+Their arms were round each other now, and so they sat, mother and child
+once more.  And the twilight of the old attic, creeping westward from the
+east, found them again.
+
+The masculine duet had more result, but was not conducted with the
+_finesse_ that Mr. Eppington, who prided himself on his diplomacy, had
+intended.  Indeed, so evidently ill at ease was that gentleman, when the
+moment came for talk, and so palpably were his pointless remarks mere
+efforts to delay an unpleasant subject, that Blake, always direct bluntly
+though not ill-naturedly asked him, "How much?"
+
+Mr. Eppington was disconcerted.
+
+"It's not that--at least that's not what I have come about," he answered
+confusedly.
+
+"What have you come about?"
+
+Inwardly Mr. Eppington cursed himself for a fool, for the which he was
+perhaps not altogether without excuse.  He had meant to act the part of a
+clever counsel, acquiring information while giving none; by a blunder, he
+found himself in the witness-box.
+
+"Oh, nothing, nothing," was the feeble response, "merely looked in to see
+how Edith was."
+
+"Much the same as at dinner last night, when you were here," answered
+Blake.  "Come, out with it."
+
+It seemed the best course now, and Mr. Eppington took the plunge.
+
+"Don't you think," he said, unconsciously glancing round the room to be
+sure they were alone, "that young Sennett is a little too much about the
+house?"
+
+Blake stared at him.
+
+"Of course, we know it is all right--as nice a young fellow as ever
+lived--and Edith--and all that.  Of course, it's absurd, but--"
+
+"But what?"
+
+"Well, people will talk."
+
+"What do they say?"
+
+The other shrugged his shoulders.
+
+Blake rose.  He had an ugly look when angry, and his language was apt to
+be coarse.
+
+"Tell them to mind their own business, and leave me and my wife alone."
+That was the sense of what he said; he expressed himself at greater
+length, and in stronger language.
+
+"But, my dear Blake," urged Mr. Eppington, "for your own sake, is it
+wise?  There was a sort of boy and girl attachment between them--nothing
+of any moment, but all that gives colour to gossip.  Forgive me, but I am
+her father; I do not like to hear my child talked about."
+
+"Then don't open your ears to the chatter of a pack of fools," replied
+his son-in-law roughly.  But the next instant a softer expression passed
+over his face, and he laid his hand on the older man's arm.
+
+"Perhaps there are many more, but there's one good woman in the world,"
+he said, "and that's your daughter.  Come and tell me that the Bank of
+England is getting shaky on its legs, and I'll listen to you."
+
+But the stronger the faith, the deeper strike the roots of suspicion.
+Blake said no further word on the subject, and Sennett was as welcome as
+before.  But Edith, looking up suddenly, would sometimes find her
+husband's eyes fixed on her with a troubled look as of some dumb creature
+trying to understand; and often he would slip out of the house of an
+evening by himself, returning home hours afterwards, tired and
+mud-stained.
+
+He made attempts to show his affection.  This was the most fatal thing he
+could have done.  Ill-temper, ill-treatment even, she might have borne.
+His clumsy caresses, his foolish, halting words of tenderness became a
+horror to her.  She wondered whether to laugh or to strike at his
+upturned face.  His tactless devotion filled her life as with some sickly
+perfume, stifling her.  If only she could be by herself for a little
+while to think!  But he was with her night and day.  There were times
+when, as he would cross the room towards her, he grew monstrous until he
+towered above her, a formless thing such as children dream of.  And she
+would sit with her lips tight pressed, clutching the chair lest she
+should start up screaming.
+
+Her only thought was to escape from him.  One day she hastily packed a
+few necessaries in a small hand-bag and crept unperceived from the house.
+She drove to Charing Cross, but the Continental Express did not leave for
+an hour, and she had time to think.
+
+Of what use was it?  Her slender stock of money would soon be gone; how
+could she live?  He would find her and follow her.  It was all so
+hopeless!
+
+Suddenly a fierce desire of life seized hold of her, the angry answer of
+her young blood to despair.  Why should she die, never having known what
+it was to live?  Why should she prostrate herself before this juggernaut
+of other people's respectability?  Joy called to her; only her own
+cowardice stayed her from stretching forth her hand and gathering it.  She
+returned home a different woman, for hope had come to her.
+
+A week later the butler entered the dining room, and handed Blake a
+letter addressed to him in his wife's handwriting.  He took it without a
+word, as though he had been expecting it.  It simply told him that she
+had left him for ever.
+
+* * * * *
+
+The world is small, and money commands many services.  Sennett had gone
+out for a stroll; Edith was left in the tiny _salon_ of their
+_appartement_ at Fecamp.  It was the third day of their arrival in the
+town.  The door was opened and closed, and Blake stood before her.
+
+She rose frightened, but by a motion he reassured her.  There was a quiet
+dignity about the man that was strange to her.
+
+"Why have you followed me?" she asked.
+
+"I want you to return home."
+
+"Home!" she cried.  "You must be mad.  Do you not know--"
+
+He interrupted her vehemently.  "I know nothing.  I wish to know nothing.
+Go back to London at once.  I have made everything right; no one
+suspects.  I shall not be there; you will never see me again, and you
+will have an opportunity of undoing your mistake--our mistake."
+
+She listened.  Hers was not a great nature, and the desire to obtain
+happiness without paying the price was strong upon her.  As for his good
+name, what could that matter? he urged.  People would only say that he
+had gone back to the evil from which he had emerged, and few would be
+surprised.  His life would go on much as it had done, and she would only
+be pitied.
+
+She quite understood his plan; it seemed mean of her to accept his
+proposal, and she argued feebly against it.  But he overcame all her
+objections.  For his own sake, he told her, he would prefer the scandal
+to be connected with his name rather than with that of his wife.  As he
+unfolded his scheme, she began to feel that in acquiescing she was
+conferring a favour.  It was not the first deception he had arranged for
+the public, and he appeared to be half in love with his own cleverness.
+She even found herself laughing at his mimicry of what this acquaintance
+and that would say.  Her spirits rose; the play that might have been a
+painful drama seemed turning out an amusing farce.
+
+The thing settled, he rose to go, and held out his hand.  As she looked
+up into his face, something about the line of his lips smote upon her.
+
+"You will be well rid of me," she said.  "I have brought you nothing but
+trouble."
+
+"Oh, trouble," he answered.  "If that were all!  A man can bear trouble."
+
+"What else?" she asked.
+
+His eyes travelled aimlessly about the room.  "They taught me a lot of
+things when I was a boy," he said, "my mother and others--they meant
+well--which as I grew older I discovered to be lies; and so I came to
+think that nothing good was true, and that everything and everybody was
+evil.  And then--"
+
+His wandering eyes came round to her and he broke off abruptly.  "Good-
+bye," he said, and the next moment he was gone.
+
+She sat wondering for a while what he had meant.  Then Sennett returned,
+and the words went out of her head.
+
+* * * * *
+
+A good deal of sympathy was felt for Mrs. Blake.  The man had a charming
+wife; he might have kept straight; but as his friends added, "Blake
+always was a cad."
+
+
+
+
+AN ITEM OF FASHIONABLE INTELLIGENCE
+
+
+Speaking personally, I do not like the Countess of ---.  She is not the
+type of woman I could love.  I hesitate the less giving expression to
+this sentiment by reason of the conviction that the Countess of --- would
+not be unduly depressed even were the fact to reach her ears.  I cannot
+conceive the Countess of ---'s being troubled by the opinion concerning
+her of any being, human or divine, other than the Countess of ---.
+
+But to be honest, I must admit that for the Earl of --- she makes an
+ideal wife.  She rules him as she rules all others, relations and
+retainers, from the curate to the dowager, but the rod, though firmly
+held, is wielded with justice and kindly intent.  Nor is it possible to
+imagine the Earl of ---'s living as contentedly as he does with any
+partner of a less dominating turn of mind.  He is one of those
+weak-headed, strong-limbed, good-natured, childish men, born to be guided
+in all matters, from the tying of a neck-cloth to the choice of a
+political party, by their women folk.  Such men are in clover when their
+proprietor happens to be a good and sensible woman, but are to be pitied
+when they get into the hands of the selfish or the foolish.  As very
+young men, they too often fall victims to bad-tempered chorus girls or to
+middle-aged matrons of the class from which Pope judged all womankind.
+They make capital husbands when well managed; treated badly, they say
+little, but set to work, after the manner of a dissatisfied cat, to find
+a kinder mistress, generally succeeding.  The Earl of --- adored his
+wife, deeming himself the most fortunate of husbands, and better
+testimonial than such no wife should hope for.  Till the day she snatched
+him away from all other competitors, and claimed him for her own, he had
+obeyed his mother with a dutifulness bordering on folly.  Were the
+countess to die to-morrow, he would be unable to tell you his mind on any
+single subject until his eldest daughter and his still unmarried sister,
+ladies both of strong character, attracted towards one another by a
+mutual antagonism, had settled between themselves which was to be
+mistress of him and of his house.
+
+However, there is little fear (bar accidents) but that my friend the
+countess will continue to direct the hereditary vote of the Earl of ---
+towards the goal of common sense and public good, guide his social policy
+with judgment and kindness, and manage his estates with prudence and
+economy for many years to come.  She is a hearty, vigorous lady, of
+generous proportions, with the blood of sturdy forebears in her veins,
+and one who takes the same excellent good care of herself that she
+bestows on all others dependent upon her guidance.
+
+"I remember," said the doctor--we were dining with the doctor in homely
+fashion, and our wives had adjourned to the drawing-room to discuss
+servants and husbands and other domestic matters with greater freedom,
+leaving us to the claret and the twilight--"I remember when we had the
+cholera in the village--it must be twenty years ago now--that woman gave
+up the London season to stay down here and take the whole burden of the
+trouble upon her own shoulders.  I do not feel any call to praise her;
+she liked the work, and she was in her element, but it was good work for
+all that.  She had no fear.  She would carry the children in her arms if
+time pressed and the little ambulance was not at hand.  I have known her
+sit all night in a room not twelve feet square, between a dying man and
+his dying wife.  But the thing never touched her.  Six years ago we had
+the small-pox, and she went all through that in just the same way.  I
+don't believe she has ever had a day's illness in her life.  She will be
+physicking this parish when my bones are rattling in my coffin, and she
+will be laying down the laws of literature long after your statue has
+become a familiar ornament of Westminster Abbey.  She's a wonderful
+woman, but a trifle masterful."
+
+He laughed, but I detected a touch of irritation in his voice.  My host
+looked a man wishful to be masterful himself.  I do not think he quite
+relished the calm way in which this grand dame took possession of all
+things around her, himself and his work included.
+
+"Did you ever hear the story of the marriage?" he asked.
+
+"No," I replied, "whose marriage?  The earl's?"
+
+"I should call it the countess's," he answered.  "It was the gossip of
+the county when I first came here, but other curious things have happened
+among us to push it gradually out of memory.  Most people, I really
+believe, have quite forgotten that the Countess of --- once served behind
+a baker's counter."
+
+"You don't say so," I exclaimed.  The remark, I admit, sounds weak when
+written down; the most natural remarks always do.
+
+"It's a fact," said the doctor, "though she does not suggest the shop-
+girl, does she?  But then I have known countesses, descended in a direct
+line from William the Conqueror, who did, so things balance one another.
+Mary, Countess of ---, was, thirty years ago, Mary Sewell, daughter of a
+Taunton linen-draper.  The business, profitable enough as country
+businesses go, was inadequate for the needs of the Sewell family,
+consisting, as I believe it did, of seven boys and eight girls.  Mary,
+the youngest, as soon as her brief schooling was over, had to shift for
+herself.  She seems to have tried her hand at one or two things, finally
+taking service with a cousin, a baker and confectioner, who was doing
+well in Oxford Street.  She must have been a remarkably attractive girl;
+she's a handsome woman now.  I can picture that soft creamy skin when it
+was fresh and smooth, and the West of England girls run naturally to
+dimples and eyes that glisten as though they had been just washed in
+morning dew.  The shop did a good trade in ladies' lunches--it was the
+glass of sherry and sweet biscuit period.  I expect they dressed her in
+some neat-fitting grey or black dress, with short sleeves, showing her
+plump arms, and that she flitted around the marble-topped tables,
+smiling, and looking cool and sweet.  There the present Earl of ---, then
+young Lord C---, fresh from Oxford, and new to the dangers of London
+bachelordom, first saw her.  He had accompanied some female relatives to
+the photographer's, and, hotels and restaurants being deemed impossible
+in those days for ladies, had taken them to Sewell's to lunch.  Mary
+Sewell waited upon the party; and now as many of that party as are above
+ground wait upon Mary Sewell."
+
+"He showed good sense in marrying her," I said, "I admire him for it."
+The doctor's sixty-four Lafitte was excellent.  I felt charitably
+inclined towards all men and women, even towards earls and countesses.
+
+"I don't think he had much to do with it," laughed the doctor, "beyond
+being, like Barkis, 'willing.'  It's a queer story; some people profess
+not to believe it, but those who know her ladyship best think it is just
+the story that must be true, because it is so characteristic of her.  And
+besides, I happen to know that it is true."
+
+"I should like to hear it," I said.
+
+"I am going to tell it you," said the doctor, lighting a fresh cigar, and
+pushing the box towards me.
+
+* * * * *
+
+I will leave you to imagine the lad's suddenly developed appetite for
+decantered sherry at sixpence a glass, and the familiar currant bun of
+our youth.  He lunched at Sewell's shop, he tea'd at Sewell's,
+occasionally he dined at Sewell's, off cutlets, followed by assorted
+pastry.  Possibly, merely from fear lest the affair should reach his
+mother's ears, for he was neither worldly-wise nor vicious, he made love
+to Mary under an assumed name; and to do the girl justice, it must be
+remembered that she fell in love with and agreed to marry plain Mr. John
+Robinson, son of a colonial merchant, a gentleman, as she must have seen,
+and a young man of easy means, but of a position not so very much
+superior to her own.  The first intimation she received that her lover
+was none other than Lord C---, the future Earl of ---, was vouchsafed her
+during a painful interview with his lordship's mother.
+
+"I never knew it, madam," asserted Mary, standing by the window of the
+drawing-room above the shop, "upon my word of honour, I never knew it."
+
+"Perhaps not," answered her ladyship coldly.  "Would you have refused him
+if you had?"
+
+"I cannot tell," was the girl's answer; "it would have been different
+from the beginning.  He courted me and asked me to be his wife."
+
+"We won't go into all that," interrupted the other; "I am not here to
+defend him.  I do not say he acted well.  The question is, how much will
+compensate you for your natural disappointment?"
+
+Her ladyship prided herself upon her bluntness and practicability.  As
+she spoke she took her cheque-book out of her reticule, and, opening it,
+dipped her pen into the ink.  I am inclined to think that the flutter of
+that cheque-book was her ladyship's mistake.  The girl had common sense,
+and must have seen the difficulties in the way of a marriage between the
+heir to an earldom and a linen-draper's daughter; and had the old lady
+been a person of discernment, the interview might have ended more to her
+satisfaction.  She made the error of judging the world by one standard,
+forgetting there are individualities.  Mary Sewell came from a West of
+England stock that, in the days of Drake and Frobisher, had given more
+than one able-bodied pirate to the service of the country, and that
+insult of the cheque-book put the fight into her.  Her lips closed with a
+little snap, and the fear fell from her.
+
+"I am sorry I don't see my way to obliging your ladyship," she said.
+
+"What do you mean, girl?" asked the elder woman.
+
+"I don't mean to be disappointed," answered the girl, but she spoke
+quietly and respectfully.  "We have pledged our word to one another.  If
+he is a gentleman, as I know he is, he will keep his, and I shall keep
+mine."
+
+Then her ladyship began to talk reason, as people do when it is too late.
+She pointed out to the girl the difference of social position, and
+explained to her the miseries that come from marrying out of one's
+station.  But the girl by this time had got over her surprise, and
+perhaps had begun to reflect that, in any case, a countess-ship was worth
+fighting for.  The best of women are influenced by such considerations.
+
+* * * * *
+
+"I am not a lady, I know," she replied quietly, "but my people have
+always been honest folk, well known, and I shall try to learn.  I am not
+wishing to speak disrespectfully of my betters, but I was in service
+before I came here, ma'am, as lady's maid, in a place where I saw much of
+what is called Society.  I think I can be as good a lady as some I know,
+if not better."
+
+The countess began to grow angry again.  "And who do you think will
+receive you?" she cried, "a girl who has served in a pastry-cook's shop!"
+
+"Lady L--- came from behind the bar," Mary answered, "and that's not much
+better.  And the Duchess of C---, I have heard, was a ballet girl, but
+nobody seems to remember it.  I don't think the people whose opinion is
+worth having will object to me for very long."  The girl was beginning
+rather to enjoy the contest.
+
+"You profess to love my son," cried the countess fiercely, "and you are
+going to ruin his life.  You will drag him down to your own level."
+
+The girl must have looked rather fine at that moment, I should dearly
+love to have been present.
+
+"There will be no dragging down, my lady," she replied, "on either side.
+I do love your son very dearly.  He is one of the kindest and best of
+gentlemen.  But I am not blind, and whatever amount of cleverness there
+may be between us belongs chiefly to me.  I shall make it my duty to fit
+myself for the position of his wife, and to help him in his work.  You
+need not fear, my lady, I shall be a good wife to him, and he shall never
+regret it.  You might find him a richer wife, a better educated wife, but
+you will never find him a wife who will be more devoted to him and to his
+interests."
+
+That practically brought the scene to a close.  The countess had sense
+enough to see that she was only losing ground by argument.  She rose and
+replaced her cheque-book in her bag.
+
+"I think, my good girl, you must be mad," she said; "if you will not
+allow me to do anything for you, there's an end to the matter.  I did not
+come here to quarrel with you.  My son knows his duty to me and to his
+family.  You must take your own course, and I must take mine."
+
+"Very well, my lady," said Mary Sewell, holding the door open for her
+ladyship to pass out, "we shall see who wins."
+
+But however brave a front Mary Sewell may have maintained before the
+enemy, I expect she felt pretty limp when thinking matters calmly over
+after her ladyship's departure.  She knew her lover well enough to guess
+that he would be as wax in the firm hands of his mother, while she
+herself would not have a chance of opposing her influence against those
+seeking to draw him away from her.  Once again she read through the few
+schoolboy letters he had written her, and then looked up at the framed
+photograph that hung above the mantelpiece of her little bedroom.  The
+face was that of a frank, pleasant-looking young fellow, lightened by
+eyes somewhat large for a man, but spoiled by a painfully weak mouth.  The
+more Mary Sewell thought, the more sure she felt in her own mind that he
+loved her, and had meant honestly by her.  Did the matter rest with him,
+she might reckon on being the future Countess of ---, but, unfortunately
+for her, the person to be considered was not Lord C---, but the present
+Countess of ---.  From childhood, through boyhood, into manhood it had
+never once occurred to Lord C--- to dispute a single command of his
+mother's, and his was not the type of brain to readily receive new ideas.
+If she was to win in the unequal contest it would have to be by art, not
+by strength.  She sat down and wrote a letter which under all the
+circumstances was a model of diplomacy.  She knew that it would be read
+by the countess, and, writing it, she kept both mother and son in mind.
+She made no reproaches, and indulged in but little sentiment.  It was the
+letter of a woman who could claim rights, but who asked only for
+courtesy.  It stated her wish to see him alone and obtain from his own
+lips the assurance that he wished their engagement to cease.  "Do not
+fear," Mary Sewell wrote, "that I shall be any annoyance to you.  My own
+pride would not let me urge you to marry me against your desire, and I
+care for you too much to cause you any pain.  Assure me with your own
+lips that you wish our engagement to be at an end, and I shall release
+you without another word."
+
+The family were in town, and Mary sent her letter by a trusty hand.  The
+countess read it with huge satisfaction, and, re-sealing it, gave it
+herself into her son's hands.  It promised a happy solution of the
+problem.  In imagination, she had all the night been listening to a
+vulgar breach of promise case.  She herself had been submitted to a most
+annoying cross-examination by a pert barrister.  Her son's assumption of
+the name of Robinson had been misunderstood and severely commented upon
+by the judge.  A sympathetic jury had awarded thumping damages, and for
+the next six months the family title would be a peg on which music-hall
+singers and comic journalists would hang their ribald jokes.  Lord C---
+read the letter, flushed, and dutifully handed it back to his mother.  She
+made pretence to read it as for the first time, and counselled him to
+accord the interview.
+
+"I am so glad," she said, "that the girl is taking the matter sensibly.
+We must really do something for her in the future, when everything is
+settled.  Let her ask for me, and then the servants will fancy she's a
+lady's maid or something of that sort, come after a place, and won't
+talk."
+
+So that evening Mary Sewell, addressed by the butler as "young woman,"
+was ushered into the small drawing-room that connects the library of No.
+--- Grosvenor Square with the other reception rooms.  The countess, now
+all amiability, rose to meet her.
+
+"My son will be here in a moment," she explained, "he has informed me of
+the purport of your letter.  Believe me, my dear Miss Sewell, no one can
+regret his thoughtless conduct more than I do.  But young men will be
+young men, and they do not stop to reflect that what may be a joke to
+them may be taken quite seriously by others."
+
+"I don't regard the matter as a joke, my lady," replied Mary somewhat
+curtly.
+
+"Of course not, my dear," added the countess, "that's what I'm saying.  It
+was very wrong of him altogether.  But with your pretty face, you will
+not, I am sure, have long to wait for a husband; we must see what we can
+do for you."
+
+The countess certainly lacked tact; it must have handicapped her
+exceedingly.
+
+"Thank you," answered the girl, "but I prefer to choose my own."
+
+Fortunately--or the interview might have ended in another quarrel--the
+cause of all the trouble at this moment entered the room, and the
+countess, whispering a few final words of instruction to him as she
+passed out, left them together.
+
+Mary took a chair in the centre of the room, at equal distance from both
+doors.  Lord C---, finding any sort of a seat uncomfortable under the
+circumstances, preferred to stand with his back to the mantelpiece.  Dead
+silence was maintained for a few seconds, and then Mary, drawing the
+daintiest of handkerchiefs from her pocket, began to cry.  The countess
+must have been a poor diplomatist, or she might have thought of this; or
+she may have remembered her own appearance on the rare occasions when she
+herself, a big, raw-boned girl, had attempted the softening influence of
+tears, and have attached little importance to the possibility.  But when
+these soft, dimpled women cry, and cry quietly, it is another matter.
+Their eyes grow brighter, and the tears, few and far between, lie like
+dewdrops on a rose leaf.
+
+Lord C--- was as tender-hearted a lout as ever lived.  In a moment he was
+on his knees with his arm round the girl's waist, pouring out such
+halting words of love and devotion as came to his unready brain, cursing
+his fate, his earldom, and his mother, and assuring Mary that his only
+chance of happiness lay in his making her his countess.  Had Mary liked
+to say the word at that moment, he would have caught her to his arms, and
+defied the whole world--for the time being.  But Mary was a very
+practical young woman, and there are difficulties in the way of handling
+a lover, who, however ready he may be to do your bidding so long as your
+eyes are upon him, is liable to be turned from his purpose so soon as
+another influence is substituted for your own.  His lordship suggested an
+immediate secret marriage.  But you cannot run out into the street, knock
+up a clergyman, and get married on the spot, and Mary knew that the
+moment she was gone his lordship's will would revert to his mother's
+keeping.  Then his lordship suggested flight, but flight requires money,
+and the countess knew enough to keep his lordship's purse in her own
+hands.  Despair seized upon his lordship.
+
+"It's no use," he cried, "it will end in my marrying her."
+
+"Who's she?" exclaimed Mary somewhat quickly.
+
+His lordship explained the position.  The family estates were heavily
+encumbered.  It was deemed advisable that his lordship should marry
+Money, and Money, in the person of the only daughter of rich and
+ambitious parvenus, had offered itself--or, to speak more correctly, had
+been offered.
+
+"What's she like?" asked Mary.
+
+"Oh, she's nice enough," was the reply, "only I don't care for her and
+she doesn't care for me.  It won't be much fun for either of us," and his
+lordship laughed dismally.
+
+"How do you know she doesn't care for you?" asked Mary.  A woman may be
+critical of her lover's shortcomings, but at the very least he is good
+enough for every other woman.
+
+"Well, she happens to care for somebody else," answered his lordship,
+"she told me so herself."
+
+That would account for it.
+
+"And is she willing to marry you?" inquired Mary.
+
+His lordship shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"Oh, well, you know, her people want it," he replied.
+
+In spite of her trouble, the girl could not help a laugh.  These young
+swells seemed to have but small wills of their own.  Her ladyship, on the
+other side of the door, grew nervous.  It was the only sound she had been
+able to hear.
+
+"It's deuced awkward," explained his lordship, "when you're--well, when
+you are anybody, you know.  You can't do as you like.  Things are
+expected of you, and there's such a lot to be considered."
+
+Mary rose and clasped her pretty dimpled hands, from which she had drawn
+her gloves, behind his neck.
+
+"You do love me, Jack?" she said, looking up into his face.
+
+For answer the lad hugged her to him very tightly, and there were tears
+in his eyes.
+
+"Look here, Mary," he cried, "if I could only get rid of my position, and
+settle down with you as a country gentleman, I'd do it to-morrow.  Damn
+the title, it's going to be the curse of my life."
+
+Perhaps in that moment Mary also wished that the title were at the bottom
+of the sea, and that her lover were only the plain Mr. John Robinson she
+had thought him.  These big, stupid men are often very loveable in spite
+of, or because of their weakness.  They appeal to the mother side of a
+woman's heart, and that is the biggest side in all good women.
+
+Suddenly however, the door opened.  The countess appeared, and sentiment
+flew out.  Lord C---, releasing Mary, sprang back, looking like a guilty
+school-boy.
+
+"I thought I heard Miss Sewell go out," said her ladyship in the icy
+tones that had never lost their power of making her son's heart freeze
+within him.  "I want to see you when you are free."
+
+"I shan't be long," stammered his lordship.  "Mary--Miss Sewell is just
+going."
+
+Mary waited without moving until the countess had left and closed the
+door behind her.  Then she turned to her lover and spoke in quick, low
+tones.
+
+"Give me her address--the girl they want you to marry!"
+
+"What are you going to do?" asked his lordship.
+
+"I don't know," answered the girl, "but I'm going to see her."
+
+She scribbled the name down, and then said, looking the boy squarely in
+the face:
+
+"Tell me frankly, Jack, do you want to marry me, or do you not?"
+
+"You know I do, Mary," he answered, and his eyes spoke stronger than his
+words.  "If I weren't a silly ass, there would be none of this trouble.
+But I don't know how it is; I say to myself I'll do, a thing, but the
+mater talks and talks and--"
+
+"I know," interrupted Mary with a smile.  "Don't argue with her, fall in
+with all her views, and pretend to agree with her."
+
+"If you could only think of some plan," said his lordship, catching at
+the hope of her words, "you are so clever."
+
+"I am going to try," answered Mary, "and if I fail, you must run off with
+me, even if you have to do it right before your mother's eyes."
+
+What she meant was, "I shall have to run off with you," but she thought
+it better to put it the other way about.
+
+Mary found her involuntary rival a meek, gentle little lady, as much
+under the influence of her blustering father as was Lord C--- under that
+of his mother.  What took place at the interview one can only surmise;
+but certain it is that the two girls, each for her own ends, undertook to
+aid and abet one another.
+
+Much to the surprised delight of their respective parents, there came
+about a change in the attitude hitherto assumed towards one another by
+Miss Clementina Hodskiss and Lord C---.  All objections to his lordship's
+unwilling attentions were suddenly withdrawn by the lady.  Indeed, so
+swift to come and go are the whims of women, his calls were actually
+encouraged, especially when, as generally happened, they coincided with
+the absence from home of Mr. and Mrs. Hodskiss.  Quite as remarkable was
+the new-born desire of Lord C--- towards Miss Clementina Hodskiss.  Mary's
+name was never mentioned, and the suggestion of immediate marriage was
+listened to without remonstrance.  Wiser folk would have puzzled their
+brains, but both her ladyship and ex-Contractor Hodskiss were accustomed
+to find all things yield to their wishes.  The countess saw visions of a
+rehabilitated estate, and Clementina's father dreamed of a peerage,
+secured by the influence of aristocratic connections.  All that the young
+folks stipulated for (and on that point their firmness was supernatural)
+was that the marriage should be quiet, almost to the verge of secrecy.
+
+"No beastly fuss," his lordship demanded.  "Let it be somewhere in the
+country, and no mob!" and his mother, thinking she understood his reason,
+patted his cheek affectionately.
+
+"I should like to go down to Aunt Jane's and be married quietly from
+there," explained Miss Hodskiss to her father.
+
+Aunt Jane resided on the outskirts of a small Hampshire village, and "sat
+under" a clergyman famous throughout the neighbourhood for having lost
+the roof to his mouth.
+
+"You can't be married by that old fool," thundered her father--Mr.
+Hodskiss always thundered; he thundered even his prayers.
+
+"He christened me," urged Miss Clementina.
+
+"And Lord knows what he called you.  Nobody can understand a word he
+says."
+
+"I'd like him to marry me," reiterated Miss Clementina.
+
+Neither her ladyship nor the contractor liked the idea.  The latter in
+particular had looked forward to a big function, chronicled at length in
+all the newspapers.  But after all, the marriage was the essential thing,
+and perhaps, having regard to some foolish love passages that had
+happened between Clementina and a certain penniless naval lieutenant,
+ostentation might be out of place.
+
+So in due course Clementina departed for Aunt Jane's, accompanied only by
+her maid.
+
+Quite a treasure was Miss Hodskiss's new maid.
+
+"A clean, wholesome girl," said of her Contractor Hodskiss, who
+cultivated affability towards the lower orders; "knows her place, and
+talks sense.  You keep that girl, Clemmy."
+
+"Do you think she knows enough?" hazarded the maternal Hodskiss.
+
+"Quite sufficient for any decent woman," retorted the contractor.  "When
+Clemmy wants painting and stuffing, it will be time enough for her to
+think about getting one of your '_Ach Himmels_' or '_Mon Dieus_'."
+
+"I like the girl myself immensely," agreed Clementina's mother.  "You can
+trust her, and she doesn't give herself airs."
+
+Her praises reached even the countess, suffering severely at the moment
+from the tyranny of an elderly Fraulein.
+
+"I must see this treasure," thought the countess to herself.  "I am tired
+of these foreign minxes."
+
+But no matter at what cunning hour her ladyship might call, the
+"treasure" always happened for some reason or other to be abroad.
+
+"Your girl is always out when I come," laughed the countess.  "One would
+fancy there was some reason for it."
+
+"It does seem odd," agreed Clementina, with a slight flush.
+
+Miss Hodskiss herself showed rather than spoke her appreciation of the
+girl.  She seemed unable to move or think without her.  Not even from the
+interviews with Lord C--- was the maid always absent.
+
+The marriage, it was settled, should be by licence.  Mrs. Hodskiss made
+up her mind at first to run down and see to the preliminaries, but really
+when the time arrived it hardly seemed necessary to take that trouble.
+The ordering of the whole affair was so very simple, and the "treasure"
+appeared to understand the business most thoroughly, and to be willing to
+take the whole burden upon her own shoulders.  It was not, therefore,
+until the evening before the wedding that the Hodskiss family arrived in
+force, filling Aunt Jane's small dwelling to its utmost capacity.  The
+swelling figure of the contractor, standing beside the tiny porch,
+compelled the passer-by to think of the doll's house in which the dwarf
+resides during fair-time, ringing his own bell out of his own first-floor
+window.  The countess and Lord C--- were staying with her ladyship's
+sister, the Hon. Mrs. J---, at G--- Hall, some ten miles distant, and
+were to drive over in the morning.  The then Earl of --- was in Norway,
+salmon fishing.  Domestic events did not interest him.
+
+Clementina complained of a headache after dinner, and went to bed early.
+The "treasure" also was indisposed.  She seemed worried and excited.
+
+"That girl is as eager about the thing," remarked Mrs. Hodskiss, "as
+though it was her own marriage."
+
+In the morning Clementina was still suffering from her headache, but
+asserted her ability to go through the ceremony, provided everybody would
+keep away, and not worry her.  The "treasure" was the only person she
+felt she could bear to have about her.  Half an hour before it was time
+to start for church her mother looked her up again.  She had grown still
+paler, if possible, during the interval, and also more nervous and
+irritable.  She threatened to go to bed and stop there if she was not
+left quite alone.  She almost turned her mother out of the room, locking
+the door behind her.  Mrs. Hodskiss had never known her daughter to be
+like this before.
+
+The others went on, leaving her to follow in the last carriage with her
+father.  The contractor, forewarned, spoke little to her.  Only once he
+had occasion to ask her a question, and then she answered in a strained,
+unnatural voice.  She appeared, so far as could be seen under her heavy
+veil, to be crying.
+
+"Well, this is going to be a damned cheerful wedding," said Mr. Hodskiss,
+and lapsed into sulkiness.
+
+The wedding was not so quiet as had been anticipated.  The village had
+got scent of it, and had spread itself upon the event, while half the
+house party from G--- Hall had insisted on driving over to take part in
+the proceedings.  The little church was better filled than it had been
+for many a long year past.
+
+The presence of the stylish crowd unnerved the ancient clergyman, long
+unaccustomed to the sight of a strange face, and the first sound of the
+ancient clergyman's voice unnerved the stylish crowd.  What little
+articulation he possessed entirely disappeared, no one could understand a
+word he said.  He appeared to be uttering sounds of distress.  The
+ancient gentleman's infliction had to be explained in low asides, and it
+also had to be explained why such an one had been chosen to perform the
+ceremony.
+
+"It was a whim of Clementina's," whispered her mother.  "Her father and
+myself were married from here, and he christened her.  The dear child's
+full of sentiment.  I think it so nice of her."
+
+Everybody agreed it was charming, but wished it were over.  The general
+effect was weird in the extreme.
+
+Lord C--- spoke up fairly well, but the bride's responses were singularly
+indistinct, the usual order of things being thus reversed.  The story of
+the naval lieutenant was remembered, and added to, and some of the more
+sentimental of the women began to cry in sympathy.
+
+In the vestry things assumed a brighter tone.  There was no lack of
+witnesses to sign the register.  The verger pointed out to them the
+place, and they wrote their names, as people in such cases do, without
+stopping to read.  Then it occurred to some one that the bride had not
+yet signed.  She stood apart, with her veil still down, and appeared to
+have been forgotten.  Encouraged, she came forward meekly, and took the
+pen from the hand of the verger.  The countess came and stood behind her.
+
+"Mary," wrote the bride, in a hand that looked as though it ought to have
+been firm, but which was not.
+
+"Dear me," said the countess, "I never knew there was a Mary in your
+name.  How differently you write when you write slowly."
+
+The bride did not answer, but followed with "Susannah."
+
+"Why, what a lot of names you must have, my dear!" exclaimed the
+countess.  "When are you going to get to the ones we all know?"
+
+"Ruth," continued the bride without answering.
+
+Breeding is not always proof against strong emotion.  The countess
+snatched the bride's veil from her face, and Mary Susannah Ruth Sewell
+stood before her, flushed and trembling, but looking none the less pretty
+because of that.  At this point the crowd came in useful.
+
+"I am sure your ladyship does not wish a scene," said Mary, speaking low.
+"The thing is done."
+
+"The thing can be undone, and will be," retorted the countess in the same
+tone.  "You, you--"
+
+"My wife, don't forget that, mother," said Lord C--- coming between them,
+and slipping Mary's hand on to his arm.  "We are both sorry to have had
+to go about the thing in this roundabout way, but we wanted to avoid a
+fuss.  I think we had better be getting away.  I'm afraid Mr. Hodskiss is
+going to be noisy."
+
+* * * * *
+
+The doctor poured himself out a glass of claret, and drank it off.  His
+throat must have been dry.
+
+"And what became of Clementina?" I asked.  "Did the naval lieutenant,
+while the others were at church, dash up in a post-chaise and carry her
+off?"
+
+"That's what ought to have happened, for the whole thing to be in
+keeping," agreed the doctor.  "I believe as a matter of fact she did
+marry him eventually, but not till some years later, after the contractor
+had died."
+
+"And did Mr. Hodskiss make a noise in the vestry?" I persisted.  The
+doctor never will finish a story.
+
+"I can't say for certain," answered my host, "I only saw the gentleman
+once.  That was at a shareholders' meeting.  I should incline to the
+opinion that he did."
+
+"I suppose the bride and bridegroom slipped out as quietly as possible
+and drove straight off," I suggested.
+
+"That would have been the sensible thing for them to do," agreed the
+doctor.
+
+"But how did she manage about her travelling frock?" I continued.  "She
+could hardly have gone back to her Aunt Jane's and changed her things."
+The doctor has no mind for minutiae.
+
+"I cannot tell you about all that," he replied.  "I think I mentioned
+that Mary was a practical girl.  Possibly she had thought of these
+details."
+
+"And did the countess take the matter quietly?" I asked.
+
+I like a tidy story, where everybody is put into his or her proper place
+at the end.  Your modern romance leaves half his characters lying about
+just anyhow.
+
+"That also I cannot tell you for certain," answered the doctor, "but I
+give her credit for so much sense.  Lord C--- was of age, and with Mary
+at his elbow, quite knew his own mind.  I believe they travelled for two
+or three years.  The first time I myself set eyes on the countess (_nee_
+Mary Sewell) was just after the late earl's death.  I thought she looked
+a countess, every inch of her, but then I had not heard the story.  I
+mistook the dowager for the housekeeper."
+
+
+
+
+BLASE BILLY
+
+
+It was towards the end of August.  He and I appeared to be the only two
+men left to the Club.  He was sitting by an open window, the _Times_
+lying on the floor beside him.  I drew my chair a little closer and
+remarked:--"Good morning."
+
+He suppressed a yawn, and replied "Mornin'"--dropping the "g."  The
+custom was just coming into fashion; he was always correct.
+
+"Going to be a very hot day, I am afraid," I continued.
+
+"'Fraid so," was the response, after which he turned his head away and
+gently closed his eyes.
+
+I opined that conversation was not to his wish, but this only made me
+more determined to talk, and to talk to him above all others in London.
+The desire took hold of me to irritate him--to break down the
+imperturbable calm within which he moved and had his being; and I
+gathered myself together, and settled down to the task.
+
+"Interesting paper the _Times_," I observed.
+
+"Very," he replied, taking it from the floor and handing it to me.  "Won't
+you read it?"
+
+I had been careful to throw into my voice an aggressive cheeriness which
+I had calculated would vex him, but his manner remained that of a man who
+is simply bored.  I argued with him politely concerning the paper; but he
+insisted, still with the same weary air, that he had done with it.  I
+thanked him effusively.  I judged that he hated effusiveness.
+
+"They say that to read a _Times_ leader," I persisted, "is a lesson in
+English composition."
+
+"So I've been told," he answered tranquilly.  "Personally I don't take
+them."
+
+The _Times_, I could see, was not going to be of much assistance to me.  I
+lit a cigarette, and remarked that he was not shooting.  He admitted the
+fact.  Under the circumstances, it would have taxed him to deny it, but
+the necessity for confession aroused him.
+
+"To myself," he said, "a tramp through miles of mud, in company with four
+gloomy men in black velveteen, a couple of depressed-looking dogs, and a
+heavy gun, the entire cavalcade being organised for the purpose of
+killing some twelve-and-sixpence worth of poultry, suggests the
+disproportionate."
+
+I laughed boisterously, and cried, "Good, good--very good!"
+
+He was the type of man that shudders inwardly at the sound of laughter.  I
+had the will to slap him on the back, but I thought maybe that would send
+him away altogether.
+
+I asked him if he hunted.  He replied that fourteen hours' talk a day
+about horses, and only about horses tired him, and that in consequence he
+had abandoned hunting.
+
+"You fish?" I said.
+
+"I was never sufficiently imaginative," he answered.
+
+"You travel a good deal," I suggested.
+
+He had apparently made up his mind to abandon himself to his fate, for he
+turned towards me with a resigned air.  An ancient nurse of mine had
+always described me as the most "wearing" child she had ever come across.
+I prefer to speak of myself as persevering.
+
+"I should go about more," he said, "were I able to see any difference
+between one place and another."
+
+"Tried Central Africa?" I inquired.
+
+"Once or twice," he answered.  "It always reminds me of Kew Gardens."
+
+"China?" I hazarded.
+
+"Cross between a willow-pattern plate and a New York slum," was his
+comment.
+
+"The North Pole?" I tried, thinking the third time might be lucky.
+
+"Never got quite up to it," he returned.  "Reached Cape Hakluyt once."
+
+"How did that impress you?" I asked.
+
+"It didn't impress me," he replied.
+
+The talk drifted to women and bogus companies, dogs, literature, and such-
+like matters.  I found him well informed upon and bored by all.
+
+"They used to be amusing," he said, speaking of the first named, "until
+they began to take themselves seriously.  Now they are merely silly."
+
+I was forced into closer companionship with "Blase Billy" that autumn,
+for by chance a month later he and I found ourselves the guests of the
+same delightful hostess, and I came to liking him better.  He was a
+useful man to have about one.  In matters of fashion one could always
+feel safe following his lead.  One knew that his necktie, his collar, his
+socks, if not the very newest departure, were always correct; and upon
+social paths, as guide, philosopher, and friend, he was invaluable.  He
+knew every one, together with his or her previous convictions.  He was
+acquainted with every woman's past, and shrewdly surmised every man's
+future.  He could point you out the coal-shed where the Countess of
+Glenleman had gambolled in her days of innocence, and would take you to
+breakfast at the coffee-shop off the Mile End Road where "Sam. Smith,
+Estd. 1820," own brother to the world-famed society novelist,
+Smith-Stratford, lived an uncriticised, unparagraphed, unphotographed
+existence upon the profits of "rashers" at three-ha'pence and
+"door-steps" at two a penny.  He knew at what houses it was inadvisable
+to introduce soap, and at what tables it would be bad form to denounce
+political jobbery.  He could tell you offhand what trade-mark went with
+what crest, and remembered the price paid for every baronetcy created
+during the last twenty-five years.
+
+Regarding himself, he might have made claim with King Charles never to
+have said a foolish thing, and never to have done a wise one.  He
+despised, or affected to despise, most of his fellow-men, and those of
+his fellow-men whose opinion was most worth having unaffectedly despised
+him.
+
+Shortly described, one might have likened him to a Gaiety Johnny with
+brains.  He was capital company after dinner, but in the early morning
+one avoided him.
+
+So I thought of him until one day he fell in love; or to put it in the
+words of Teddy Tidmarsh, who brought the news to us, "got mashed on Gerty
+Lovell."
+
+"The red-haired one," Teddy explained, to distinguish her from her
+sister, who had lately adopted the newer golden shade.
+
+"Gerty Lovell!" exclaimed the captain, "why, I've always been told the
+Lovell girls hadn't a penny among them."
+
+"The old man's stone broke, I know for a certainty," volunteered Teddy,
+who picked up a mysterious but, in other respects, satisfactory income in
+an office near Hatton Garden, and who was candour itself concerning the
+private affairs of everybody but himself.
+
+"Oh, some rich pork-packing or diamond-sweating uncle has cropped up in
+Australia, or America, or one of those places," suggested the captain,
+"and Billy's got wind of it in good time.  Billy knows his way about."
+
+We agreed that some such explanation was needed, though in all other
+respects Gerty Lovell was just the girl that Reason (not always consulted
+on these occasions) might herself have chosen for "Blase Billy's" mate.
+
+The sunlight was not too kind to her, but at evening parties, where the
+lighting has been well considered, I have seen her look quite girlish.  At
+her best she was not beautiful, but at her worst there was about her an
+air of breeding and distinction that always saved her from being passed
+over, and she dressed to perfection.  In character she was the typical
+society woman: always charming, generally insincere.  She went to
+Kensington for her religion and to Mayfair for her morals; accepted her
+literature from Mudie's and her art from the Grosvenor Gallery; and could
+and would gabble philanthropy, philosophy, and politics with equal
+fluency at every five-o'clock tea-table she visited.  Her ideas could
+always be guaranteed as the very latest, and her opinion as that of the
+person to whom she was talking.  Asked by a famous novelist one
+afternoon, at the Pioneer Club, to give him some idea of her, little Mrs.
+Bund, the painter's wife, had remained for a few moments with her pretty
+lips pursed, and had then said:
+
+"She is a woman to whom life could bring nothing more fully satisfying
+than a dinner invitation from a duchess, and whose nature would be
+incapable of sustaining deeper suffering than that caused by an
+ill-fitting costume."
+
+At the time I should have said the epigram was as true as it was cruel,
+but I suppose we none of us quite know each other.
+
+I congratulated "Blase Billy," or to drop his Club nickname and give him
+the full benefit of his social label, "The Hon. William Cecil Wychwood
+Stanley Drayton," on the occasion of our next meeting, which happened
+upon the steps of the Savoy Restaurant, and I thought--unless a quiver of
+the electric light deceived me--that he blushed.
+
+"Charming girl," I said.  "You're a lucky dog, Billy."
+
+It was the phrase that custom demands upon such occasions, and it came of
+its own accord to my tongue without costing me the trouble of
+composition, but he seized upon it as though it had been a gem of
+friendly sincerity.
+
+"You will like her even more when you know her better," he said.  "She is
+so different from the usual woman that one meets.  Come and see her to-
+morrow afternoon, she will be so pleased.  Go about four, I will tell her
+to expect you."
+
+I rang the bell at ten minutes past five.  Billy was there.  She greeted
+me with a little tremor of embarrassment, which sat oddly upon her, but
+which was not altogether unpleasing.  She said it was kind of me to come
+so early.  I stayed for about half an hour, but conversation flagged, and
+some of my cleverest remarks attracted no attention whatever.
+
+When I rose to take my leave, Billy said that he must be off too, and
+that he would accompany me.  Had they been ordinary lovers, I should have
+been careful to give them an opportunity of making their adieus in
+secret; but in the case of the Honourable William Drayton and the eldest
+Miss Lovell I concluded that such tactics were needless, so I waited till
+he had shaken hands, and went downstairs with him.
+
+But in the hall Billy suddenly ejaculated, "By Jove!  Half a minute," and
+ran back up the stairs three at a time.  Apparently he found what he had
+gone for on the landing, for I did not hear the opening of the drawing-
+room door.  Then the Honourable Billy redescended with a sober,
+nonchalent air.
+
+"Left my gloves behind me," he explained, as he took my arm.  "I am
+always leaving my gloves about."
+
+I did not mention that I had seen him take them from his hat and slip
+them into his coat-tail pocket.
+
+We at the Club did not see very much of Billy during the next three
+months, but the captain, who prided himself upon his playing of the
+_role_ of smoking-room cynic--though he would have been better in the
+part had he occasionally displayed a little originality--was of opinion
+that our loss would be more than made up to us after the marriage.  Once
+in the twilight I caught sight of a figure that reminded me of Billy's,
+accompanied by a figure that might have been that of the eldest Miss
+Lovell; but as the spot was Battersea Park, which is not a fashionable
+evening promenade, and the two figures were holding each other's hands,
+the whole picture being suggestive of the closing chapter of a _London
+Journal_ romance, I concluded I had made an error.
+
+But I did see them in the Adelphi stalls one evening, rapt in a
+sentimental melodrama.  I joined them between the acts, and poked fun at
+the play, as one does at the Adelphi, but Miss Lovell begged me quite
+earnestly not to spoil her interest, and Billy wanted to enter upon a
+serious argument as to whether a man was justified in behaving as Will
+Terriss had just behaved towards the woman he loved.  I left them and
+returned to my own party, to the satisfaction, I am inclined to think, of
+all concerned.
+
+They married in due course.  We were mistaken on one point.  She brought
+Billy nothing.  But they both seemed quite content on his not too
+extravagant fortune.  They took a tiny house not far from Victoria
+Station, and hired a brougham for the season.  They did not entertain
+very much, but they contrived to be seen everywhere it was right and
+fashionable they should be seen.  The Honourable Mrs. Drayton was a much
+younger and brighter person than had been the eldest Miss Lovell, and as
+she continued to dress charmingly, her social position rose rapidly.
+Billy went everywhere with her, and evidently took a keen pride in her
+success.  It was even said that he designed her dresses for her, and I
+have myself seen him earnestly studying the costumes in Russell and
+Allen's windows.
+
+The captain's prophecy remained unfulfilled.  "Blase Billy"--if the name
+could still be applied to him--hardly ever visited the Club after his
+marriage.  But I had grown to like him, and, as he had foretold, to like
+his wife.  I found their calm indifference to the burning questions of
+the day a positive relief from the strenuous atmosphere of literary and
+artistic circles.  In the drawing-room of their little house in Eaton
+Row, the comparative merits of George Meredith and George R. Sims were
+not considered worth discussion.  Both were regarded as persons who
+afforded a certain amount of amusement in return for a certain amount of
+cash.  And on any Wednesday afternoon, Henrick Ibsen and Arthur Roberts
+would have been equally welcome, as adding piquancy to the small
+gathering.  Had I been compelled to pass my life in such a house, this
+Philistine attitude might have palled upon me; but, under the
+circumstances, it refreshed me, and I made use of my welcome, which I
+believe was genuine, to its full extent.
+
+As months went by, they seemed to me to draw closer to one another,
+though I am given to understand that such is not the rule in fashionable
+circles.  One evening I arrived a little before my time, and was shown up
+into the drawing-room by the soft-footed butler.  They were sitting in
+the dusk with their arms round one another.  It was impossible to
+withdraw, so I faced the situation and coughed.  A pair of middle-class
+lovers could not have appeared more awkward or surprised.
+
+But the incident established an understanding between us, and I came to
+be regarded as a friend before whom there was less necessity to act.
+
+Studying them, I came to the conclusion that the ways and manners of love
+are very same-like throughout the world, as though the foolish boy,
+unheedful of human advance, kept but one school for minor poet and East
+End shop-boy, for Girton girl and little milliner; taught but the one
+lesson to the end-of-the-nineteenth-century Johnny that he taught to
+bearded Pict and Hun four thousand years ago.
+
+Thus the summer and the winter passed pleasantly for the Honourable
+Billy, and then, as luck would have it, he fell ill just in the very
+middle of the London season, when invitations to balls and dinner
+parties, luncheons and "At Homes," were pouring in from every quarter;
+when the lawns at Hurlingham were at their smoothest, and the paddocks at
+their smartest.
+
+It was unfortunate, too, that the fashions that season suited the
+Honourable Mrs. Billy as they had not suited her for years.  In the early
+spring, she and Billy had been hard at work planning costumes calculated
+to cause a flutter through Mayfair, and the dresses and the bonnets--each
+one a work of art--were waiting on their stands to do their killing work.
+But the Honourable Mrs. Billy, for the first time in her life, had lost
+interest in such things.
+
+Their friends were genuinely sorry, for society was Billy's element, and
+in it he was interesting and amusing.  But, as Lady Gower said, there was
+no earthly need for his wife to constitute herself a prisoner.  Her
+shutting herself off from the world could do him no good and it would
+look odd.
+
+Accordingly the Honourable Mrs. Drayton, to whom oddness was a crime, and
+the voice of Lady Gower as the voice of duty, sacrificed her inclinations
+on the social shrine, laced the new costumes tight across her aching
+heart, and went down into society.
+
+But the Honourable Mrs. Drayton achieved not the success of former
+seasons.  Her small talk grew so very small, that even Park Lane found it
+unsatisfying.  Her famous laugh rang mechanically.  She smiled at the
+wisdom of dukes, and became sad at the funny stories of millionaires.
+Society voted her a good wife but bad company, and confined its
+attentions to cards of inquiry.  And for this relief the Honourable Mrs.
+Drayton was grateful, for Billy waned weaker and weaker.  In the world of
+shadows in which she moved, he was the one real thing.  She was of very
+little practical use, but it comforted her to think that she was helping
+to nurse him.
+
+But Billy himself it troubled.
+
+"I do wish you would go out more," he would say.  "It makes me feel that
+I'm such a selfish brute, keeping you tied up here in this dismal little
+house.  Besides," he would add, "people miss you; they will hate me for
+keeping you away."  For, where his wife was concerned, Billy's knowledge
+of the world availed him little.  He really thought society craved for
+the Honourable Mrs. Drayton, and would not be comforted where she was
+not.
+
+"I would rather stop with you, dear," would be the answer; "I don't care
+to go about by myself.  You must get well quickly and take me."
+
+And so the argument continued, until one evening, as she sat by herself,
+the nurse entered softly, closed the door behind her, and came over to
+her.
+
+"I wish you would go out to-night, ma'am," said the nurse, "just for an
+hour or two.  I think it would please the master; he is worrying himself
+because he thinks it is his fault that you do not; and just now"--the
+woman hesitated for a moment--"just now I want to keep him very quiet."
+
+"Is he weaker, nurse?"
+
+"Well, he is not stronger, ma'am, and I think--I think we must humour
+him."
+
+The Honourable Mrs. Drayton rose, and, crossing to the window, stood for
+a while looking out.
+
+"But where am I to go, nurse?" she said at length, turning with a smile.
+"I've no invitations anywhere."
+
+"Can't you make believe to have one?" said the nurse.  "It is only seven
+o'clock.  Say you are going to a dinner-party; you can come home early
+then.  Go and dress yourself, and come down and say good-bye to him, and
+then come in again about eleven, as though you had just returned."
+
+"You think I must, nurse?"
+
+"I think it would be better, ma'am.  I wish you would try it."
+
+The Honourable Mrs. Drayton went to the door, then paused.
+
+"He has such sharp ears, nurse; he will listen for the opening of the
+door and the sound of the carriage."
+
+"I will see to that," said the nurse.  "I will tell them to have the
+carriage here at ten minutes to eight.  Then you can drive to the end of
+the street, slip out, and walk back.  I will let you in myself."
+
+"And about coming home?" asked the other woman.
+
+"You must slip out for a few minutes before eleven, and the carriage must
+be waiting for you at the corner again.  Leave all that to me."
+
+In half an hour the Honourable Mrs. Drayton entered the sick-room,
+radiant in evening dress and jewels.  Fortunately the lights were low, or
+"Blase-Billy" might have been doubtful as to the effect his wife was
+likely to produce.  For her face was not the face that one takes to
+dinner-parties.
+
+"Nurse tells me you are going to the Grevilles this evening.  I am so
+glad.  I've been worrying myself about you, moped up here right through
+the season."
+
+He took her hands in his and held her out at arm's length from him.
+
+"How handsome you look, dear!" he said.  "How they must have all been
+cursing me for keeping you shut up here, like a princess in an ogre's
+castle!  I shall never dare to face them again."
+
+She laughed, well pleased at his words.
+
+"I shall not be late," she said.  "I shall be so anxious to get back and
+see how my boy has behaved.  If you have not been good I shan't go
+again."
+
+They kissed and parted, and at eleven she returned to the room.  She told
+him what a delightful evening it had been, and bragged a little of her
+own success.
+
+The nurse told her that he had been more cheerful that evening than for
+many nights.
+
+So every day the farce was played for him.  One day it was to a luncheon
+that she went, in a costume by Redfern; the next night to a ball, in a
+frock direct from Paris; again to an "At Home," or concert, or dinner-
+party.  Loafers and passers-by would stop to stare at a haggard, red-eyed
+woman, dressed as for a drawing-room, slipping thief-like in and out of
+her own door.
+
+I heard them talking of her one afternoon, at a house where I called, and
+I joined the group to listen.
+
+"I always thought her heartless, but I gave her credit for sense," a
+woman was saying.  "One doesn't expect a woman to be fond of her husband,
+but she needn't make a parade of ignoring him when he is dying."
+
+I pleaded absence from town to inquire what was meant, and from all lips
+I heard the same account.  One had noticed her carriage at the door two
+or three evenings in succession.  Another had seen her returning home.  A
+third had seen her coming out, and so on.
+
+I could not fit the fact in with my knowledge of her, so the next evening
+I called.  The door was opened instantly by herself.
+
+"I saw you from the window," she said.  "Come in here; don't speak."
+
+I followed her, and she closed the door behind her.  She was dressed in a
+magnificent costume, her hair sparkling with diamonds, and I looked my
+questions.
+
+She laughed bitterly.
+
+"I am supposed to be at the opera to-night," she explained.  "Sit down,
+if you have a few minutes to spare."
+
+I said it was for a talk that I had come; and there, in the dark room,
+lighted only by the street lamp without, she told me all.  And at the end
+she dropped her head on her bare arms; and I turned away and looked out
+of the window for a while.
+
+"I feel so ridiculous," she said, rising and coming towards me.  "I sit
+here all the evening dressed like this.  I'm afraid I don't act my part
+very well; but, fortunately, dear Billy never was much of a judge of art,
+and it is good enough for him.  I tell him the most awful lies about what
+everybody has said to me, and what I've said to everybody, and how my
+gowns were admired.  What do you think of this one?"
+
+For answer I took the privilege of a friend.
+
+"I'm glad you think well of me," she said.  "Billy has such a high
+opinion of you.  You will hear some funny tales.  I'm glad you know."
+
+I had to leave London again, and Billy died before I returned.  I heard
+that she had to be fetched from a ball, and was only just in time to
+touch his lips before they were cold.  But her friends excused her by
+saying that the end had come very suddenly.
+
+I called on her a little later, and before I left I hinted to her what
+people were saying, and asked her if I had not better tell them the
+truth.
+
+"I would rather you didn't," she answered.  "It seems like making public
+the secret side of one's life."
+
+"But," I urged, "they will think--"
+
+She interrupted me.
+
+"Does it matter very much what they think?"
+
+Which struck me as a very remarkable sentiment, coming from the Hon. Mrs.
+Drayton, _nee_ the elder Miss Lovell.
+
+
+
+
+THE CHOICE OF CYRIL HARJOHN
+
+
+Between a junior resident master of twenty-one, and a backward lad of
+fifteen, there yawns an impassable gulf.  Between a struggling journalist
+of one-and-thirty, and an M.D. of twenty-five, with a brilliant record
+behind him, and a career of exceptional promise before him, a close
+friendship is however permissible.
+
+My introduction to Cyril Harjohn was through the Rev. Charles Fauerberg.
+
+"Our young friend," said the Rev. Mr. Fauerberg, standing in the most
+approved tutorial attitude, with his hand upon his pupil's shoulder, "our
+young friend has been somewhat neglected, but I see in him possibilities
+warranting hope--warranting, I may say, very great hope.  For the present
+he will be under my especial care, and you will not therefore concern
+yourself with his studies.  He will sleep with Milling and the others in
+dormitory number two."
+
+The lad formed a liking for me, and I think, and hope, I rendered his
+sojourn at "Alpha House" less irksome than otherwise it might have been.
+The Reverend Charles' method with the backward was on all fours with that
+adopted for the bringing on of geese; he cooped them up and crammed them.
+The process is profitable to the trainer, but painful to the goose.
+
+Young Harjohn and myself left "Alpha House" at the end of the same term;
+he bound for Brasenose, I for Bloomsbury.  He made a point of never
+coming up to London without calling on me, when we would dine together in
+one of Soho's many dingy, garlic-scented restaurants, and afterwards,
+over our bottle of cheap Beaune, discuss the coming of our lives; and
+when he entered Guy's I left John Street, and took chambers close to his
+in Staple Inn.  Those were pleasant days.  Childhood is an over-rated
+period, fuller of sorrow than of joy.  I would not take my childhood
+back, were it a gift, but I would give the rest of my life to live the
+twenties over again.
+
+To Cyril I was the man of the world, and he looked to me for wisdom, not
+seeing always, I fear, that he got it; while from him I gathered
+enthusiasm, and learnt the profit that comes to a man from the keeping of
+ideals.
+
+Often as we have talked, I have felt as though a visible light came from
+him, framing his face as with the halo of some pictured saint.  Nature
+had wasted him, putting him into this nineteenth century of ours.  Her
+victories are accomplished.  Her army of heroes, the few sung, the many
+forgotten, is disbanded.  The long peace won by their blood and pain is
+settled on the land.  She had fashioned Cyril Harjohn for one of her
+soldiers.  He would have been a martyr, in the days when thought led to
+the stake, a fighter for the truth, when to speak one's mind meant death.
+To lead some forlorn hope for Civilisation would have been his true work;
+Fate had condemned him to sentry duty in a well-ordered barrack.
+
+But there is work to be done in the world, though the labour lies now in
+the vineyard, not on the battlefield.  A small but sufficient fortune
+purchased for him freedom.  To most men an assured income is the grave of
+ambition; to Cyril it was the foundation of desire.  Relieved from the
+necessity of working to live, he could afford the luxury of living to
+work.  His profession was to him a passion; he regarded it, not with the
+cold curiosity of the scholar, but with the imaginative devotion of the
+disciple.  To help to push its frontiers forward, to carry its flag
+farther into the untravelled desert that ever lies beyond the moving
+boundary of human knowledge, was his dream.
+
+One summer evening, I remember, we were sitting in his rooms, and during
+a silence there came to us through the open window the moaning of the
+city, as of a tired child.  He rose and stretched his arms out towards
+the darkening streets, as if he would gather to him all the toiling men
+and women and comfort them.
+
+"Oh, that I could help you!" he cried, "my brothers and my sisters.  Take
+my life, oh God, and spend it for me among your people."
+
+The speech sounds theatrical, as I read it, written down, but to the
+young such words are not ridiculous, as to us older men.
+
+In the natural order of events, he fell in love, and with just the woman
+one would expect him to be attracted by.  Elspeth Grant was of the type
+from which the world, by instinct rather than by convention, has drawn
+its Madonnas and its saints.  To describe a woman in words is impossible.
+Her beauty was not a possession to be catalogued, but herself.  One felt
+it as one feels the beauty of a summer's dawn breaking the shadows of a
+sleeping city, but one cannot set it down.  I often met her, and, when
+talking to her, I knew myself--I, hack-journalist, frequenter of Fleet
+Street bars, retailer of smoke-room stories--a great gentleman, incapable
+of meanness, fit for all noble deeds.
+
+In her presence life became a thing beautiful and gracious; a school for
+courtesy, and tenderness, and simplicity.
+
+I have wondered since, coming to see a little more clearly into the ways
+of men, whether it would not have been better had she been less
+spiritual, had her nature possessed a greater alloy of earth, making it
+more fit for the uses of this work-a-day world.  But at the time, these
+two friends of mine seemed to me to have been created for one another.
+
+She appealed to all that was highest in Cyril's character, and he
+worshipped her with an unconcealed adoration that, from any man less high-
+minded, would have appeared affectation, and which she accepted with the
+sweet content that Artemis might have accorded to the homage of Endymion.
+
+There was no formal engagement between them.  Cyril seemed to shrink from
+the materialising of his love by any thought of marriage.  To him she was
+an ideal of womanhood rather than a flesh-and-blood woman.  His love for
+her was a religion; it had no taint of earthly passion in its
+composition.
+
+Had I known the world better I might have anticipated the result; for the
+red blood ran in my friend's veins; and, alas, we dream our poems, not
+live them.  But at the time, the idea of any other woman coming between
+them would have appeared to me folly.  The suggestion that that other
+woman might be Geraldine Fawley I should have resented as an insult to my
+intelligence: that is the point of the story I do not understand to this
+day.
+
+That he should be attracted by her, that he should love to linger near
+her, watching the dark flush come and go across her face, seeking to call
+the fire into her dark eyes was another matter, and quite comprehensible;
+for the girl was wonderfully handsome, with a bold, voluptuous beauty
+which invited while it dared.  But considered in any other light than
+that of an animal, she repelled.  At times when, for her ends, it seemed
+worth the exertion, she would assume a certain wayward sweetness, but her
+acting was always clumsy and exaggerated, capable of deceiving no one but
+a fool.
+
+Cyril, at all events, was not taken in by it.  One evening, at a Bohemian
+gathering, the _entree_ to which was notoriety rather than character,
+they had been talking together for some considerable time when, wishing
+to speak to Cyril, I strolled up to join them.  As I came towards them
+she moved away, her dislike for me being equal to mine for her; a thing
+which was, perhaps, well for me.
+
+"Miss Fawley prefers two as company to three," I observed, looking after
+her retreating figure.
+
+"I am afraid she finds you what we should call an anti-sympathetic
+element," he replied, laughing.
+
+"Do you like her?" I asked him, somewhat bluntly.
+
+His eyes rested upon her as she stood in the doorway, talking to a small,
+black-bearded man who had just been introduced to her.  After a few
+moments she went out upon his arm, and then Cyril turned to me.
+
+"I think her," he replied, speaking, as was necessary, very low, "the
+embodiment of all that is evil in womanhood.  In old days she would have
+been a Cleopatra, a Theodora, a Delilah.  To-day, lacking opportunity,
+she is the 'smart woman' grubbing for an opening into society--and old
+Fawley's daughter.  I'm tired; let us go home."
+
+His allusion to her parentage was significant.  Few people thought of
+connecting clever, handsome Geraldine Fawley with "Rogue Fawley," Jew
+renegade, ex-gaol bird, and outside broker; who, having expectations from
+his daughter, took care not to hamper her by ever being seen in her
+company.  But no one who had once met the father could ever forget the
+relationship while talking to the daughter.  The older face, with its
+cruelty, its cunning, and its greed stood reproduced, feature for
+feature, line for line.  It was as though Nature, for an artistic freak,
+had set herself the task of fashioning hideousness and beauty from
+precisely the same materials.  Between the leer of the man and the smile
+of the girl, where lay the difference?  It would have puzzled any student
+of anatomy to point it out.  Yet the one sickened, while to gain the
+other most men would have given much.
+
+Cyril's answer to my question satisfied me for the time.  He met the girl
+often, as was natural.  She was a singer of some repute, and our social
+circle was what is commonly called "literary and artistic."  To do her
+justice, however, she made no attempt to fascinate him, nor even to be
+particularly agreeable to him.  Indeed, she seemed to be at pains to show
+him her natural--in other words, her most objectionable side.
+
+Coming out of the theatre one first night, we met her in the lobby.  I
+was following Cyril at some little distance, but as he stopped to speak
+to her the movement of the crowd placed me just behind them.
+
+"Will you be at Leightons' to-morrow?" I heard him ask her in a low tone.
+
+"Yes," she answered, "and I wish you wouldn't come."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because you're a fool, and you bore me."
+
+Under ordinary circumstances I should have taken the speech for
+badinage--it was the kind of wit the woman would have indulged in.  But
+Cyril's face clouded with anger and vexation.  I said nothing.  I did not
+wish him to know that I had overheard.  I tried to believe that he was
+amusing himself, but my own explanation did not satisfy me.
+
+Next evening I went to Leightons' by myself.  The Grants were in town,
+and Cyril was dining with them.  I found I did not know many people, and
+cared little for those I did.  I was about to escape when Miss Fawley's
+name was announced.  I was close to the door, and she had to stop and
+speak to me.  We exchanged a few commonplaces.  She either made love to a
+man or was rude to him.  She generally talked to me without looking at
+me, nodding and smiling meanwhile to people around.  I have met many
+women equally ill-mannered, and without her excuse.  For a moment,
+however, she turned her eyes to mine.
+
+"Where's your friend, Mr. Harjohn?" she asked.  "I thought you were
+inseparables."
+
+I looked at her in astonishment.
+
+"He is dining out to-night," I replied.  "I do not think he will come."
+
+She laughed.  I think it was the worst part about the woman, her laugh;
+it suggested so much cruelty.
+
+"I think he will," she said.
+
+It angered me into an indiscretion.  She was moving away.  I stepped in
+front of her and stopped her.
+
+"What makes you think so?" I asked, and my voice, I know, betrayed the
+anxiety I felt as to her reply.  She looked me straight in the face.
+There was one virtue she possessed--the virtue that animals hold above
+mankind--truthfulness.  She knew I disliked her--hate would be, perhaps,
+a more exact expression, did not the word sound out of date, and she made
+no pretence of not knowing it and returning the compliment.
+
+"Because I am here," she answered.  "Why don't you save him?  Have you no
+influence over him?  Tell the Saint to keep him; I don't want him.  You
+heard what I said to him last night.  I shall only marry him for the sake
+of his position, and the money he can earn if he likes to work and not
+play the fool.  Tell him what I have said; I shan't deny it."
+
+She passed on to greet a decrepit old lord with a languishing smile, and
+I stood staring after her with, I fear, a somewhat stupid expression,
+until some young fool came up grinning, to ask me whether I had seen a
+ghost or backed a "wrong 'un."
+
+There was no need to wait; I felt no curiosity.  Something told me the
+woman had spoken the truth.  It was mere want of motive that made me
+linger.  I saw him come in, and watched him hanging round her, like a
+dog, waiting for a kind word, or failing that, a look.  I knew she saw
+me, and I knew it added to her zest that I was there.  Not till we were
+in the street did I speak to him.  He started as I touched him.  We were
+neither of us good actors.  He must have read much in my face, and I saw
+that he had read it; and we walked side by side in silence, I thinking
+what to say, wondering whether I should do good or harm, wishing that we
+were anywhere but in these silent, life-packed streets, so filled with
+the unseen.  It was not until we had nearly reached the Albert Hall that
+we broke the silence.  Then it was he who spoke:
+
+"Do you think I haven't told myself all that?" he said.  "Do you think I
+don't know I'm a damned fool, a cad, a liar!  What the devil's the good
+of talking about it?"
+
+"But I can't understand it," I said.
+
+"No," he replied, "because you're a fool, because you have only seen one
+side of me.  You think me a grand gentleman, because I talk big, and am
+full of noble sentiment.  Why, you idiot, the Devil himself could take
+you in.  _He_ has his fine moods, I suppose, talks like a saint, and says
+his prayers with the rest of us.  Do you remember the first night at old
+Fauerberg's?  You poked your silly head into the dormitory, and saw me
+kneeling by the bedside, while the other fellows stood by grinning.  You
+closed the door softly--you thought I never saw you.  I was not praying,
+I was trying to pray."
+
+"It showed that you had pluck, if it showed nothing else," I answered.
+"Most boys would not have tried, and you kept it up."
+
+"Ah, yes," he answered, "I promised the Mater I would, and I did.  Poor
+old soul, she was as big a fool as you are.  She believed in me.  Don't
+you remember, finding me one Saturday afternoon all alone, stuffing
+myself with cake and jam?"
+
+I laughed at the recollection, though Heaven knows I was in no laughing
+mood.  I had found him with an array of pastry spread out before him,
+sufficient to make him ill for a week, and I had boxed his ears, and had
+thrown the whole collection into the road.
+
+"The Mater gave me half-a-crown a week for pocket-money," he continued,
+"and I told the fellows I had only a shilling, so that I could gorge
+myself with the other eighteenpence undisturbed.  Pah!  I was a little
+beast even in those days!"
+
+"It was only a schoolboy trick," I argued, "it was natural enough."
+
+"Yes," he answered, "and this is only a man's trick, and is natural
+enough; but it is going to ruin my life, to turn me into a beast instead
+of a man.  Good God! do you think I don't know what that woman will do
+for me?  She will drag me down, down, down, to her own level.  All my
+ideas, all my ambition, all my life's work will be bartered for a smug
+practice, among paying patients.  I shall scheme and plot to make a big
+income that we may live like a couple of plump animals, that we may dress
+ourselves gaudily and parade our wealth.  Nothing will satisfy her.  Such
+women are leeches; their only cry is 'give, give, give.'  So long as I
+can supply her with money she will tolerate me, and to get it for her I
+shall sell my heart, and my brain, and my soul.  She will load herself
+with jewels, and go about from house to house, half naked, to leer at
+every man she comes across: that is 'life' to such women.  And I shall
+trot behind her, the laughing stock of every fool, the contempt of every
+man."
+
+His vehemence made any words I could say sound weak before they were
+uttered.  What argument could I show stronger than that he had already
+put before himself?  I knew his answer to everything I could urge.
+
+My mistake had been in imagining him different from other men.  I began
+to see that he was like the rest of us: part angel, part devil.  But the
+new point he revealed to me was that the higher the one, the lower the
+other.  It seems as if nature must balance her work; the nearer the
+leaves to heaven, the deeper the roots striking down into the darkness.  I
+knew that his passion for this woman made no change in his truer love.
+The one was a spiritual, the other a mere animal passion.  The memory of
+incidents that had puzzled me came back to enlighten me.  I remembered
+how often on nights when I had sat up late, working, I had heard his
+steps pass my door, heavy and uncertain; how once in a dingy quarter of
+London, I had met one who had strangely resembled him.  I had followed
+him to speak, but the man's bleared eyes had stared angrily at me, and I
+had turned away, calling myself a fool for my mistake.  But as I looked
+at the face beside me now, I understood.
+
+And then there rose up before my eyes the face I knew better, the eager
+noble face that to merely look upon had been good.  We had reached a
+small, evil-smelling street, leading from Leicester Square towards
+Holborn.  I caught him by the shoulders and turned him round with his
+back against some church railings.  I forget what I said.  We are strange
+mixtures.  I thought of the shy, backward boy I had coached and bullied
+at old Fauerberg's, of the laughing handsome lad I had watched grow into
+manhood.  The very restaurant we had most frequented in his old Oxford
+days--where we had poured out our souls to one another, was in this very
+street where we were standing.  For the moment I felt towards him as
+perhaps his mother might have felt; I wanted to scold him and to cry with
+him; to shake him and to put my arms about him.  I pleaded with him, and
+urged him, and called him every name I could put my tongue to.  It must
+have seemed an odd conversation.  A passing policeman, making a not
+unnatural mistake, turned his bull's-eye upon us, and advised us sternly
+to go home.  We laughed, and with that laugh Cyril came back to his own
+self, and we walked on to Staple Inn more soberly.  He promised me to go
+away by the very first train the next morning, and to travel for some
+four or five months, and I undertook to make all the necessary
+explanations for him.
+
+We both felt better for our talk, and when I wished him good-night at his
+door, it was the real Cyril Harjohn whose hand I gripped--the real Cyril,
+because the best that is in a man is his real self.  If there be any
+future for man beyond this world, it is the good that is in him that will
+live.  The other side of him is of the earth; it is that he will leave
+behind him.
+
+He kept his word.  In the morning he was gone, and I never saw him again.
+I had many letters from him, hopeful at first, full of strong resolves.
+He told me he had written to Elspeth, not telling her everything, for
+that she would not understand, but so much as would explain; and from her
+he had had sweet womanly letters in reply.  I feared she might have been
+cold and unsympathetic, for often good women, untouched by temptation
+themselves, have small tenderness for those who struggle.  But her
+goodness was something more than a mere passive quantity; she loved him
+the better because he had need of her.  I believe she would have saved
+him from himself, had not fate interfered and taken the matter out of her
+hands.  Women are capable of big sacrifices; I think this woman would
+have been content to lower herself, if by so doing she could have raised
+him.
+
+But it was not to be.  From India he wrote to me that he was coming home.
+I had not met the Fawley woman for some time, and she had gone out of my
+mind until one day, chancing upon a theatrical paper, some weeks old, I
+read that "Miss Fawley had sailed for Calcutta to fulfil an engagement of
+long standing."
+
+I had his last letter in my pocket.  I sat down and worked out the
+question of date.  She would arrive in Calcutta the day before he left.
+Whether it was chance or intention on her part I never knew; as likely as
+not the former, for there is a fatalism in this world shaping our ends.
+
+I heard no more from him, I hardly expected to do so, but three months
+later a mutual acquaintance stopped me on the Club steps.
+
+"Have you heard the news," he said, "about young Harjohn?"
+
+"No," I replied.  "Is he married?"
+
+"Married," he answered, "No, poor devil, he's dead!"
+
+"Thank God," was on my lips, but fortunately I checked myself.  "How did
+it happen?" I asked.
+
+"At a shooting party, up at some Rajah's place.  Must have caught his gun
+in some brambles, I suppose.  The bullet went clean through his head."
+
+"Dear me," I said, "how very sad!"  I could think of nothing else to say
+at the moment.
+
+
+
+
+THE MATERIALISATION OF CHARLES AND MIVANWAY
+
+
+The fault that most people will find with this story is that it is
+unconvincing.  Its scheme is improbable, its atmosphere artificial.  To
+confess that the thing really happened--not as I am about to set it down,
+for the pen of the professional writer cannot but adorn and embroider,
+even to the detriment of his material--is, I am well aware, only an
+aggravation of my offence, for the facts of life are the impossibilities
+of fiction.  A truer artist would have left this story alone, or at most
+have kept it for the irritation of his private circle.  My lower instinct
+is to make use of it.  A very old man told me the tale.  He was landlord
+of the Cromlech Arms, the only inn of a small, rock-sheltered village on
+the north-east coast of Cornwall, and had been so for nine and forty
+years.  It is called the Cromlech Hotel now, and is under new management,
+and during the season some four coach-loads of tourists sit down each day
+to _table d'hote_ lunch in the low-ceilinged parlour.  But I am speaking
+of years ago, when the place was a mere fishing harbour, undiscovered by
+the guide books.
+
+The old landlord talked, and I hearkened the while we both sat drinking
+thin ale from earthenware mugs, late one summer's evening, on the bench
+that runs along the wall just beneath the latticed windows.  And during
+the many pauses, when the old landlord stopped to puff his pipe in
+silence, and lay in a new stock of breath, there came to us the murmuring
+voices of the Atlantic; and often, mingled with the pompous roar of the
+big breakers farther out, we would hear the rippling laugh of some small
+wave that, maybe, had crept in to listen to the tale the landlord told.
+
+The mistake that Charles Seabohn, junior partner of the firm of Seabohn &
+Son, civil engineers of London and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and Mivanway
+Evans, youngest daughter of the Rev. Thomas Evans, Pastor of the
+Presbyterian Church at Bristol, made originally, was marrying too young.
+Charles Seabohn could hardly have been twenty years of age, and Mivanway
+could have been little more than seventeen, when they first met upon the
+cliffs, two miles beyond the Cromlech Arms.  Young Charles Seabohn,
+coming across the village in the course of a walking tour, had decided to
+spend a day or two exploring the picturesque coast, and Mivanway's father
+had hired that year a neighbouring farmhouse wherein to spend his summer
+vacation.
+
+Early one morning--for at twenty one is virtuous, and takes exercise
+before breakfast--as young Charles Seabohn lay upon the cliffs, watching
+the white waters coming and going upon the black rocks below, he became
+aware of a form rising from the waves.  The figure was too far off for
+him to see it clearly, but judging from the costume, it was a female
+figure, and promptly the mind of Charles, poetically inclined, turned to
+thoughts of Venus--or Aphrodite, as he, being a gentleman of delicate
+taste would have preferred to term her.  He saw the figure disappear
+behind a head-land, but still waited.  In about ten minutes or a quarter
+of an hour it reappeared, clothed in the garments of the
+eighteen-sixties, and came towards him.  Hidden from sight himself behind
+a group of rocks, he could watch it at his leisure, ascending the steep
+path from the beach, and an exceedingly sweet and dainty figure it would
+have appeared, even to eyes less susceptible than those of twenty.  Sea-
+water--I stand open to correction--is not, I believe, considered anything
+of a substitute for curling tongs, but to the hair of the youngest Miss
+Evans it had given an additional and most fascinating wave.  Nature's red
+and white had been most cunningly laid on, and the large childish eyes
+seemed to be searching the world for laughter, with which to feed a pair
+of delicious, pouting lips.  Charles's upturned face, petrified into
+admiration, was just the sort of thing for which they were on the look-
+out.  A startled "Oh!" came from the slightly parted lips, followed by
+the merriest of laughs, which in its turn was suddenly stopped by a deep
+blush.  Then the youngest Miss Evans looked offended, as though the whole
+affair had been Charles's fault, which is the way of women.  And Charles,
+feeling himself guilty under that stern gaze of indignation, rose
+awkwardly and apologised meekly, whether for being on the cliffs at all
+or for having got up too early, he would have been unable to explain.
+
+The youngest Miss Evans graciously accepted the apology thus tendered
+with a bow, and passed on, and Charles stood staring after her till the
+valley gathered her into its spreading arms and hid her from his view.
+
+That was the beginning of all things.  I am speaking of the Universe as
+viewed from the standpoint of Charles and Mivanway.
+
+Six months later they were man and wife, or perhaps it would be more
+correct to say boy and wifelet.  Seabohn senior counselled delay, but was
+overruled by the impatience of his junior partner.  The Reverend Mr.
+Evans, in common with most theologians, possessed a goodly supply of
+unmarried daughters, and a limited income.  Personally he saw no
+necessity for postponement of the marriage.
+
+The month's honeymoon was spent in the New Forest.  That was a mistake to
+begin with.  The New Forest in February is depressing, and they had
+chosen the loneliest spot they could find.  A fortnight in Paris or Rome
+would have been more helpful.  As yet they had nothing to talk about
+except love, and that they had been talking and writing about steadily
+all through the winter.  On the tenth morning Charles yawned, and
+Mivanway had a quiet half-hour's cry about it in her own room.  On the
+sixteenth evening, Mivanway, feeling irritable, and wondering why (as
+though fifteen damp, chilly days in the New Forest were not sufficient to
+make any woman irritable), requested Charles not to disarrange her hair;
+and Charles, speechless with astonishment, went out into the garden, and
+swore before all the stars that he would never caress Mivanway's hair
+again as long as he lived.
+
+One supreme folly they had conspired to commit, even before the
+commencement of the honeymoon.  Charles, after the manner of very young
+lovers, had earnestly requested Mivanway to impose upon him some task.  He
+desired to do something great and noble to show his devotion.  Dragons
+was the thing he had in mind, though he may not have been aware of it.
+Dragons also, no doubt, flitted through Mivanway's brain, but
+unfortunately for lovers the supply of dragons has lapsed.  Mivanway,
+liking the conceit, however, thought over it, and then decided that
+Charles must give up smoking.  She had discussed the matter with her
+favourite sister, and that was the only thing the girls could think of.
+Charles's face fell.  He suggested some more Herculean labour, some
+sacrifice more worthy to lay at Mivanway's feet.  But Mivanway had
+spoken.  She might think of some other task, but the smoking prohibition
+would, in any case, remain.  She dismissed the subject with a pretty
+_hauteur_ that would have graced Marie Antoinette.
+
+Thus tobacco, the good angel of all men, no longer came each day to teach
+Charles patience and amiability, and he fell into the ways of short
+temper and selfishness.
+
+They took up their residence in a suburb of Newcastle, and this was also
+unfortunate for them, because there the society was scanty and middle-
+aged; and, in consequence, they had still to depend much upon their own
+resources.  They knew little of life, less of each other, and nothing at
+all of themselves.  Of course they quarrelled, and each quarrel left the
+wound a little more raw.  No kindly, experienced friend was at hand to
+laugh at them.  Mivanway would write down all her sorrows in a bulky
+diary, which made her feel worse; so that before she had written for ten
+minutes her pretty, unwise head would drop upon her dimpled arm, and the
+book--the proper place for which was behind the fire--would become damp
+with her tears; and Charles, his day's work done and the clerks gone,
+would linger in his dingy office and hatch trifles into troubles.
+
+The end came one evening after dinner, when, in the heat of a silly
+squabble, Charles boxed Mivanway's ears.  That was very ungentlemanly
+conduct, and he was heartily ashamed of himself the moment he had done
+it, which was right and proper for him to be.  The only excuse to be
+urged on his behalf is that girls sufficiently pretty to have been spoilt
+from childhood by everyone about them can at times be intensely
+irritating.  Mivanway rushed up to her room, and locked herself in.
+Charles flew after her to apologise, but only arrived in time to have the
+door slammed in his face.
+
+It had only been the merest touch.  A boy's muscles move quicker than his
+thoughts.  But to Mivanway it was a blow.  This was what it had come to!
+This was the end of a man's love!
+
+She spent half the night writing in the precious diary, with the result
+that in the morning she came down feeling more bitter than she had gone
+up.  Charles had walked the streets of Newcastle all night, and that had
+not done him any good.  He met her with an apology combined with an
+excuse, which was bad tactics.  Mivanway, of course, fastened upon the
+excuse, and the quarrel recommenced.  She mentioned that she hated him;
+he hinted that she had never loved him, and she retorted that he had
+never loved her.  Had there been anybody by to knock their heads together
+and suggest breakfast, the thing might have blown over, but the combined
+effect of a sleepless night and an empty stomach upon each proved
+disastrous.  Their words came poisoned from their brains, and each
+believed they meant what they said.  That afternoon Charles sailed from
+Hull, on a ship bound for the Cape, and that evening Mivanway arrived at
+the paternal home in Bristol with two trunks and the curt information
+that she and Charles had separated for ever.  The next morning both
+thought of a soft speech to say to the other, but the next morning was
+just twenty-four hours too late.
+
+Eight days afterwards Charles's ship was run down in a fog, near the
+coast of Portugal, and every soul on board was supposed to have perished.
+Mivanway read his name among the list of lost; the child died within her,
+and she knew herself for a woman who had loved deeply, and will not love
+again.
+
+Good luck intervening, however, Charles and one other man were rescued by
+a small trading vessel, and landed in Algiers.  There Charles learnt of
+his supposed death, and the idea occurred to him to leave the report
+uncontradicted.  For one thing, it solved a problem that had been
+troubling him.  He could trust his father to see to it that his own small
+fortune, with possibly something added, was handed over to Mivanway, and
+she would be free if she wished to marry again.  He was convinced that
+she did not care for him, and that she had read of his death with a sense
+of relief.  He would make a new life for himself, and forget her.
+
+He continued his journey to the Cape, and once there he soon gained for
+himself an excellent position.  The colony was young, engineers were
+welcome, and Charles knew his business.  He found the life interesting
+and exciting.  The rough, dangerous up-country work suited him, and the
+time passed swiftly.
+
+But in thinking he would forget Mivanway, he had not taken into
+consideration his own character, which at bottom was a very gentlemanly
+character.  Out on the lonely veldt he found himself dreaming of her.  The
+memory of her pretty face and merry laugh came back to him at all hours.
+Occasionally he would curse her roundly, but that only meant that he was
+sore because of the thought of her; what he was really cursing was
+himself and his own folly.  Softened by the distance, her quick temper,
+her very petulance became mere added graces; and if we consider women as
+human beings and not as angels, it was certainly a fact that he had lost
+a very sweet and lovable woman.  Ah! if she only were by his side now--now
+that he was a man capable of appreciating her, and not a foolish, selfish
+boy.  This thought would come to him as he sat smoking at the door of his
+tent, and then he would regret that the stars looking down upon him were
+not the same stars that were watching her, it would have made him feel
+nearer to her.  For, though young people may not credit it, one grows
+more sentimental as one grows older; at least, some of us do, and they
+perhaps not the least wise.
+
+One night he had a vivid dream of her.  She came to him and held out her
+hand, and he took it, and they said good-bye to one another.  They were
+standing on the cliff where he had first met her, and one of them was
+going upon a long journey, though he was not sure which.
+
+In the towns men laugh at dreams, but away from civilisation we listen
+more readily to the strange tales that Nature whispers to us.  Charles
+Seabohn recollected this dream when he awoke in the morning.
+
+"She is dying," he said, "and she has come to wish me good-bye."
+
+He made up his mind to return to England at once; perhaps if he made
+haste he would be in time to kiss her.  But he could not start that day,
+for work was to be done; and Charles Seabohn, lover though he still was,
+had grown to be a man, and knew that work must not be neglected even
+though the heart may be calling.  So for a day or two he stayed, and on
+the third night he dreamed of Mivanway again, and this time she lay
+within the little chapel at Bristol where, on Sunday mornings, he had
+often sat with her.  He heard her father's voice reading the burial
+service over her, and the sister she had loved best was sitting beside
+him, crying softly.  Then Charles knew that there was no need for him to
+hasten.  So he remained to finish his work.  That done, he would return
+to England.  He would like again to stand upon the cliffs, above the
+little Cornish village, where they had first met.
+
+Thus a few months later Charles Seabohn, or Charles Denning, as he called
+himself, aged and bronzed, not easily recognisable by those who had not
+known him well, walked into the Cromlech Arms, as six years before he had
+walked in with his knapsack on his back, and asked for a room, saying he
+would be stopping in the village for a short while.
+
+In the evening he strolled out and made his way to the cliffs.  It was
+twilight when he reached the place of rocks to which the fancy-loving
+Cornish folk had given the name of the Witches' Cauldron.  It was from
+this spot that he had first watched Mivanway coming to him from the sea.
+
+He took the pipe from his mouth, and leaning against a rock, whose rugged
+outline seemed fashioned into the face of an old friend, gazed down the
+narrow pathway now growing indistinct in the dim light.  And as he gazed
+the figure of Mivanway came slowly up the pathway from the sea, and
+paused before him.
+
+He felt no fear.  He had half expected it.  Her coming was the complement
+of his dreams.  She looked older and graver than he remembered her, but
+for that the face was the sweeter.
+
+He wondered if she would speak to him, but she only looked at him with
+sad eyes; and he stood there in the shadow of the rocks without moving,
+and she passed on into the twilight.
+
+Had he on his return cared to discuss the subject with his landlord, had
+he even shown himself a ready listener--for the old man loved to
+gossip--he might have learnt that a young widow lady named Mrs. Charles
+Seabohn, accompanied by an unmarried sister, had lately come to reside in
+the neighbourhood, having, upon the death of a former tenant, taken the
+lease of a small farmhouse sheltered in the valley a mile beyond the
+village, and that her favourite evening's walk was to the sea and back by
+the steep footway leading past the Witches' Cauldron.
+
+Had he followed the figure of Mivanway into the valley, he would have
+known that out of sight of the Witches' Cauldron it took to running fast
+till it reached a welcome door, and fell panting into the arms of another
+figure that had hastened out to meet it.
+
+"My dear," said the elder woman, "you are trembling like a leaf.  What
+has happened?"
+
+"I have seen him," answered Mivanway.
+
+"Seen whom?"
+
+"Charles."
+
+"Charles!" repeated the other, looking at Mivanway as though she thought
+her mad.
+
+"His spirit, I mean," explained Mivanway, in an awed voice.  "It was
+standing in the shadow of the rocks, in the exact spot where we first
+met.  It looked older and more careworn; but, oh! Margaret, so sad and
+reproachful."
+
+"My dear," said her sister, leading her in, "you are overwrought.  I wish
+we had never come back to this house."
+
+"Oh!  I was not frightened," answered Mivanway, "I have been expecting it
+every evening.  I am so glad it came.  Perhaps it will come again, and I
+can ask it to forgive me."
+
+So next night Mivanway, though much against her sister's wishes and
+advice, persisted in her usual walk, and Charles at the same twilight
+hour started from the inn.
+
+Again Mivanway saw him standing in the shadow of the rocks.  Charles had
+made up his mind that if the thing happened again he would speak, but
+when the silent figure of Mivanway, clothed in the fading light, stopped
+and gazed at him, his will failed him.
+
+That it was the spirit of Mivanway standing before him he had not the
+faintest doubt.  One may dismiss other people's ghosts as the phantasies
+of a weak brain, but one knows one's own to be realities, and Charles for
+the last five years had mingled with a people whose dead dwell about
+them.  Once, drawing his courage around him, he made to speak, but as he
+did so the figure of Mivanway shrank from him, and only a sigh escaped
+his lips, and hearing that the figure of Mivanway turned and again passed
+down the path into the valley, leaving Charles gazing after it.
+
+But the third night both arrived at the trysting spot with determination
+screwed up to the sticking point.
+
+Charles was the first to speak.  As the figure of Mivanway came towards
+him, with its eyes fixed sadly on him, he moved from the shadow of the
+rocks, and stood before it.
+
+"Mivanway!" he said.
+
+"Charles!" replied the figure of Mivanway.  Both spoke in an awed whisper
+suitable to the circumstances, and each stood gazing sorrowfully upon the
+other.
+
+"Are you happy?" asked Mivanway.
+
+The question strikes one as somewhat farcical, but it must be remembered
+that Mivanway was the daughter of a Gospeller of the old school, and had
+been brought up to beliefs that were not then out of date.
+
+"As happy as I deserve to be," was the sad reply, and the answer--the
+inference was not complimentary to Charles's deserts--struck a chill to
+Mivanway's heart.
+
+"How could I be happy having lost you?" went on the voice of Charles.
+
+Now this speech fell very pleasantly upon Mivanway's ears.  In the first
+place it relieved her of her despair regarding Charles's future.  No
+doubt his present suffering was keen, but there was hope for him.
+Secondly, it was a decidedly "pretty" speech for a ghost, and I am not at
+all sure that Mivanway was the kind of woman to be averse to a little
+mild flirtation with the spirit of Charles.
+
+"Can you forgive me?" asked Mivanway.
+
+"Forgive _you_!" replied Charles, in a tone of awed astonishment.  "Can
+you forgive me?  I was a brute--a fool--I was not worthy to love you."
+
+A most gentlemanly spirit it seemed to be.  Mivanway forgot to be afraid
+of it.
+
+"We were both to blame," answered Mivanway.  But this time there was less
+submission in her tones.  "But I was the most at fault.  I was a petulant
+child.  I did not know how deeply I loved you."
+
+"You loved me!" repeated the voice of Charles, and the voice lingered
+over the words as though it found them sweet.
+
+"Surely you never doubted it," answered the voice of Mivanway.  "I never
+ceased to love you.  I shall love you always and ever."
+
+The figure of Charles sprang forward as though it would clasp the ghost
+of Mivanway in its arms, but halted a step or two off.
+
+"Bless me before you go," he said, and with uncovered head the figure of
+Charles knelt to the figure of Mivanway.
+
+Really, ghosts could be exceedingly nice when they liked.  Mivanway bent
+graciously towards her shadowy suppliant, and, as she did so, her eye
+caught sight of something on the grass beside it, and that something was
+a well-coloured meerschaum pipe.  There was no mistaking it for anything
+else, even in that treacherous light; it lay glistening where Charles, in
+falling upon his knees had jerked it from his breast-pocket.
+
+Charles, following Mivanway's eyes, saw it also, and the memory of the
+prohibition against smoking came back to him.
+
+Without stopping to consider the futility of the action--nay, the direct
+confession implied thereby--he instinctively grabbed at the pipe, and
+rammed it back into his pocket; and then an avalanche of mingled
+understanding and bewilderment, fear and joy, swept Mivanway's brain
+before it.  She felt she must do one of two things, laugh or scream and
+go on screaming, and she laughed.  Peal after peal of laughter she sent
+echoing among the rocks, and Charles springing to his feet was just in
+time to catch her as she fell forward a dead weight into his arms.
+
+Ten minutes later the eldest Miss Evans, hearing heavy footsteps, went to
+the door.  She saw what she took to be the spirit of Charles Seabohn,
+staggering under the weight of the lifeless body of Mivanway, and the
+sight not unnaturally alarmed her.  Charles's suggestion of brandy,
+however, sounded human, and the urgent need of attending to Mivanway kept
+her mind from dwelling upon problems tending towards insanity.
+
+Charles carried Mivanway to her room, and laid her upon the bed.
+
+"I'll leave her with you," he whispered to the eldest Miss Evans.  "It
+will be better for her not to see me until she is quite recovered.  She
+has had a shock."
+
+Charles waited in the dark parlour for what seemed to him an exceedingly
+long time.  But at last the eldest Miss Evans returned.
+
+"She's all right now," were the welcome words he heard.
+
+"I'll go and see her," he said.
+
+"But she's in bed," exclaimed the scandalised Miss Evans.
+
+And then as Charles only laughed, "Oh, ah--yes, I suppose--of course,"
+she added.
+
+And the eldest Miss Evans, left alone, sat down and wrestled with the
+conviction that she was dreaming.
+
+
+
+
+PORTRAIT OF A LADY
+
+
+My work pressed upon me, but the louder it challenged me--such is the
+heart of the timid fighter--the less stomach I felt for the contest.  I
+wrestled with it in my study, only to be driven to my books.  I walked
+out to meet it in the streets, only to seek shelter from it in music-hall
+or theatre.  Thereupon it waxed importunate and over-bearing, till the
+shadow of it darkened all my doings.  The thought of it sat beside me at
+the table, and spoilt my appetite.  The memory of it followed me abroad,
+and stood between me and my friends, so that all talk died upon my lips,
+and I moved among men as one ghost-ridden.
+
+Then the throbbing town, with its thousand distracting voices, grew
+maddening to me.  I felt the need of converse with solitude, that master
+and teacher of all the arts, and I bethought me of the Yorkshire Wolds,
+where a man may walk all day, meeting no human creature, hearing no voice
+but the curlew's cry; where, lying prone upon the sweet grass, he may
+feel the pulsation of the earth, travelling at its eleven hundred miles a
+minute through the ether.  So one morning I bundled many things, some
+needful, more needless, into a bag, hurrying lest somebody or something
+should happen to stay me, and that night I lay in a small northern town
+that stands upon the borders of smokedom at the gate of the great moors;
+and at seven the next morning I took my seat beside a one-eyed carrier
+behind an ancient piebald mare.  The one-eyed carrier cracked his whip,
+the piebald horse jogged forward.  The nineteenth century, with its
+turmoil, fell away behind us; the distant hills, creeping nearer,
+swallowed us up, and we became but a moving speck upon the face of the
+quiet earth.
+
+Late in the afternoon we arrived at a village, the memory of which had
+been growing in my mind.  It lies in the triangle formed by the sloping
+walls of three great fells, and not even the telegraph wire has reached
+it yet, to murmur to it whispers of the restless world--or had not at the
+time of which I write.  Nought disturbs it save, once a day, the one-eyed
+carrier--if he and his piebald mare have not yet laid their ancient bones
+to rest--who, passing through, leaves a few letters and parcels to be
+called for by the people of the scattered hill-farms round about.  It is
+the meeting-place of two noisy brooks.  Through the sleepy days and the
+hushed nights, one hears them ever chattering to themselves as children
+playing alone some game of make-believe.  Coming from their far-off homes
+among the hills, they mingle their waters here, and journey on in
+company, and then their converse is more serious, as becomes those who
+have joined hands and are moving onward towards life together.  Later
+they reach sad, weary towns, black beneath a never-lifted pall of smoke,
+where day and night the clang of iron drowns all human voices, where the
+children play with ashes, where the men and women have dull, patient
+faces; and so on, muddy and stained, to the deep sea that ceaselessly
+calls to them.  Here, however, their waters are fresh and clear, and
+their passing makes the only stir that the valley has ever known.  Surely,
+of all peaceful places, this was the one where a tired worker might find
+strength.
+
+My one-eyed friend had suggested I should seek lodgings at the house of
+one Mistress Cholmondley, a widow lady, who resided with her only
+daughter in the white-washed cottage that is the last house in the
+village, if you take the road that leads over Coll Fell.
+
+"Tha' can see th' house from here, by reason o' its standing so high
+above t'others," said the carrier, pointing with his whip.  "It's theer
+or nowhere, aw'm thinking, for folks don't often coom seeking lodgings in
+these parts."
+
+The tiny dwelling, half smothered in June roses, looked idyllic, and
+after a lunch of bread and cheese at the little inn I made my way to it
+by the path that passes through the churchyard.  I had conjured up the
+vision of a stout, pleasant, comfort-radiating woman, assisted by some
+bright, fresh girl, whose rosy cheeks and sunburnt hands would help me
+banish from my mind all clogging recollections of the town; and hopeful,
+I pushed back the half-opened door and entered.
+
+The cottage was furnished with a taste that surprised me, but in
+themselves my hosts disappointed me.  My bustling, comely housewife
+turned out a wizened, blear-eyed dame.  All day long she dozed in her big
+chair, or crouched with shrivelled hands spread out before the fire.  My
+dream of winsome maidenhood vanished before the reality of a
+weary-looking, sharp-featured woman of between forty and fifty.  Perhaps
+there had been a time when the listless eyes had sparkled with roguish
+merriment, when the shrivelled, tight-drawn lips had pouted temptingly;
+but spinsterhood does not sweeten the juices of a woman, and strong
+country air, though, like old ale, it is good when taken occasionally,
+dulls the brain if lived upon.  A narrow, uninteresting woman I found
+her, troubled with a shyness that sat ludicrously upon her age, and that
+yet failed to save her from the landlady's customary failing of loquacity
+concerning "better days," together with an irritating, if harmless,
+affectation of youthfulness.
+
+All other details were, however, most satisfactory; and at the window
+commanding the road that leads through the valley towards the distant
+world I settled down to face my work.
+
+But the spirit of industry, once driven forth, returns with coy steps.  I
+wrote for perhaps an hour, and then throwing down my halting pen I looked
+about the room, seeking distraction.  A Chippendale book-case stood
+against the wall and I strolled over to it.  The key was in the lock, and
+opening its glass doors, I examined the well-filled shelves.  They held a
+curious collection: miscellanies with quaint, glazed bindings; novels and
+poems; whose authors I had never heard of; old magazines long dead, their
+very names forgotten; "keepsakes" and annuals, redolent of an age of
+vastly pretty sentiments and lavender-coloured silks.  On the top shelf,
+however, was a volume of Keats wedged between a number of the
+_Evangelical Rambler_ and Young's _Night Thoughts_, and standing on tip-
+toe, I sought to draw it from its place.
+
+The book was jambed so tightly that my efforts brought two or three
+others tumbling about me, covering me with a cloud of fine dust, and to
+my feet there fell, with a rattle of glass and metal, a small miniature
+painting, framed in black wood.
+
+I picked it up, and, taking it to the window, examined it.  It was the
+picture of a young girl, dressed in the fashion of thirty years ago--I
+mean thirty years ago then.  I fear it must be nearer fifty, speaking as
+from now--when our grandmothers wore corkscrew curls, and low-cut bodices
+that one wonders how they kept from slipping down.  The face was
+beautiful, not merely with the conventional beauty of tiresome regularity
+and impossible colouring such as one finds in all miniatures, but with
+soul behind the soft deep eyes.  As I gazed, the sweet lips seemed to
+laugh at me, and yet there lurked a sadness in the smile, as though the
+artist, in some rare moment, had seen the coming shadow of life across
+the sunshine of the face.  Even my small knowledge of Art told me that
+the work was clever, and I wondered why it should have lain so long
+neglected, when as a mere ornament it was valuable.  It must have been
+placed in the book-case years ago by someone, and forgotten.
+
+I replaced it among its dusty companions, and sat down once more to my
+work.  But between me and the fading light came the face of the
+miniature, and would not be banished.  Wherever I turned it looked out at
+me from the shadows.  I am not naturally fanciful, and the work I was
+engaged upon--the writing of a farcical comedy--was not of the kind to
+excite the dreamy side of a man's nature.  I grew angry with myself, and
+made a further effort to fix my mind upon the paper in front of me.  But
+my thoughts refused to return from their wanderings.  Once, glancing back
+over my shoulder, I could have sworn I saw the original of the picture
+sitting in the big chintz-covered chair in the far corner.  It was
+dressed in a faded lilac frock, trimmed with some old lace, and I could
+not help noticing the beauty of the folded hands, though in the portrait
+only the head and shoulders had been drawn.
+
+Next morning I had forgotten the incident, but with the lighting of the
+lamp the memory of it awoke within me, and my interest grew so strong
+that again I took the miniature from its hiding-place and looked at it.
+
+And then the knowledge suddenly came to me that I knew the face.  Where
+had I seen her, and when?  I had met her and spoken to her.  The picture
+smiled at me, as if rallying me on my forgetfulness.  I put it back upon
+its shelf, and sat racking my brains trying to recollect.  We had met
+somewhere--in the country--a long time ago, and had talked of
+common-place things.  To the vision of her clung the scent of roses and
+the murmuring voices of haymakers.  Why had I never seen her again?  Why
+had she passed so completely out of my mind?
+
+My landlady entered to lay my supper, and I questioned her assuming a
+careless tone.  Reason with or laugh at myself as I would, this shadowy
+memory was becoming a romance to me.  It was as though I were talking of
+some loved, dead friend, even to speak of whom to commonplace people was
+a sacrilege.  I did not want the woman to question me in return.
+
+"Oh, yes," answered my landlady.  Ladies had often lodged with her.
+Sometimes people stayed the whole summer, wandering about the woods and
+fells, but to her thinking the great hills were lonesome.  Some of her
+lodgers had been young ladies, but she could not remember any of them
+having impressed her with their beauty.  But then it was said women were
+never a judge of other women.  They had come and gone.  Few had ever
+returned, and fresh faces drove out the old.
+
+"You have been letting lodgings for a long time?" I asked.  "I suppose it
+could be fifteen--twenty years ago that strangers to you lived in this
+room?"
+
+"Longer than that," she said quietly, dropping for the moment all
+affectation.  "We came here from the farm when my father died.  He had
+had losses, and there was but little left.  That is twenty-seven years
+ago now."
+
+I hastened to close the conversation, fearing long-winded recollections
+of "better days."  I have heard such so often from one landlady and
+another.  I had not learnt much.  Who was the original of the miniature,
+how it came to be lying forgotten in the dusty book-case were still
+mysteries; and with a strange perversity I could not have explained to
+myself I shrank from putting a direct question.
+
+So two days more passed by.  My work took gradually a firmer grip upon my
+mind, and the face of the miniature visited me less often.  But in the
+evening of the third day, which was a Sunday, a curious thing happened.
+
+I was returning from a stroll, and dusk was falling as I reached the
+cottage.  I had been thinking of my farce, and I was laughing to myself
+at a situation that seemed to me comical, when, passing the window of my
+room, I saw looking out the sweet fair face that had become so familiar
+to me.  It stood close to the latticed panes, a slim, girlish figure,
+clad in the old-fashioned lilac-coloured frock in which I had imagined it
+on the first night of my arrival, the beautiful hands clasped across the
+breast, as then they had been folded on the lap.  Her eyes were gazing
+down the road that passes through the village and goes south, but they
+seemed to be dreaming, not seeing, and the sadness in them struck upon
+one almost as a cry.  I was close to the window, but the hedge screened
+me, and I remained watching, until, after a minute I suppose, though it
+appeared longer, the figure drew back into the darkness of the room and
+disappeared.
+
+I entered, but the room was empty.  I called, but no one answered.  The
+uncomfortable suggestion took hold of me that I must be growing a little
+crazy.  All that had gone before I could explain to myself as a mere
+train of thought, but this time it had come to me suddenly, uninvited,
+while my thoughts had been busy elsewhere.  This thing had appeared not
+to my brain but to my senses.  I am not a believer in ghosts, but I am in
+the hallucinations of a weak mind, and my own explanation was in
+consequence not very satisfactory to myself.
+
+I tried to dismiss the incident, but it would not leave me, and later
+that same evening something else occurred that fixed it still clearer in
+my thoughts.  I had taken out two or three books at random with which to
+amuse myself, and turning over the leaves of one of them, a volume of
+verses by some obscure poet, I found its sentimental passages much scored
+and commented upon in pencil as was common fifty years ago--as may be
+common now, for your Fleet Street cynic has not altered the world and its
+ways to quite the extent that he imagines.
+
+One poem in particular had evidently appealed greatly to the reader's
+sympathies.  It was the old, old story of the gallant who woos and rides
+away, leaving the maiden to weep.  The poetry was poor, and at another
+time its conventionality would have excited only my ridicule.  But,
+reading it in conjunction with the quaint, naive notes scattered about
+its margins, I felt no inclination to jeer.  These hackneyed stories that
+we laugh at are deep profundities to the many who find in them some
+shadow of their own sorrows, and she--for it was a woman's handwriting--to
+whom this book belonged had loved its trite verses, because in them she
+had read her own heart.  This, I told myself, was her story also.  A
+common enough story in life as in literature, but novel to those who live
+it.
+
+There was no reason for my connecting her with the original of the
+miniature, except perhaps a subtle relationship between the thin nervous
+handwriting and the mobile features; yet I felt instinctively they were
+one and the same, and that I was tracing, link by link, the history of my
+forgotten friend.
+
+I felt urged to probe further, and next morning while my landlady was
+clearing away my breakfast things, I fenced round the subject once again.
+
+"By the way," I said, "while I think of it, if I leave any books or
+papers here behind me, send them on at once.  I have a knack of doing
+that sort of thing.  I suppose," I added, "your lodgers often do leave
+some of their belongings behind them."
+
+It sounded to myself a clumsy ruse.  I wondered if she would suspect what
+was behind it.
+
+"Not often," she answered.  "Never that I can remember, except in the
+case of one poor lady who died here."
+
+I glanced up quickly.
+
+"In this room?" I asked.
+
+My landlady seemed troubled at my tone.
+
+"Well, not exactly in this very room.  We carried her upstairs, but she
+died immediately.  She was dying when she came here.  I should not have
+taken her in had I known.  So many people are prejudiced against a house
+where death has occurred, as if there were anywhere it had not.  It was
+not quite fair to us."
+
+I did not speak for a while, and the rattle of the plates and knives
+continued undisturbed.
+
+"What did she leave here?" I asked at length.
+
+"Oh, just a few books and photographs, and such-like small things that
+people bring with them to lodgings," was the reply.  "Her people promised
+to send for them, but they never did, and I suppose I forgot them.  They
+were not of any value."
+
+The woman turned as she was leaving the room.
+
+"It won't drive you away, sir, I hope, what I have told you," she said.
+"It all happened a long while ago.
+
+"Of course not," I answered.  "It interested me, that was all."  And the
+woman went out, closing the door behind her.
+
+So here was the explanation, if I chose to accept it.  I sat long that
+morning, wondering to myself whether things I had learnt to laugh at
+could be after all realities.  And a day or two afterwards I made a
+discovery that confirmed all my vague surmises.
+
+Rummaging through this same dusty book-case, I found in one of the ill-
+fitting drawers, beneath a heap of torn and tumbled books, a diary
+belonging to the fifties, stuffed with many letters and shapeless
+flowers, pressed between stained pages; and there--for the writer of
+stories, tempted by human documents, is weak--in faded ink, brown and
+withered like the flowers, I read the story I already knew.
+
+Such a very old story it was, and so conventional.  He was an artist--was
+ever story of this type written where the hero was not an artist?  They
+had been children together, loving each other without knowing it till one
+day it was revealed to them.  Here is the entry:--
+
+   "May 18th.--I do not know what to say, or how to begin.  Chris loves
+   me.  I have been praying to God to make me worthy of him, and dancing
+   round the room in my bare feet for fear of waking them below.  He
+   kissed my hands and clasped them round his neck, saying they were
+   beautiful as the hands of a goddess, and he knelt and kissed them
+   again.  I am holding them before me and kissing them myself.  I am
+   glad they are so beautiful.  O God, why are you so good to me?  Help
+   me to be a true wife to him.  Help me that I may never give him an
+   instant's pain!  Oh, that I had more power of loving, that I might
+   love him better,"--and thus foolish thoughts for many pages, but
+   foolish thoughts of the kind that has kept this worn old world,
+   hanging for so many ages in space, from turning sour.
+
+Later, in February, there is another entry that carries on the story:--
+
+   "Chris left this morning.  He put a little packet into my hands at the
+   last moment, saying it was the most precious thing he possessed, and
+   that when I looked at it I was to think of him who loved it.  Of
+   course I guessed what it was, but I did not open it till I was alone
+   in my room.  It is the picture of myself that he has been so secret
+   about, but oh, so beautiful.  I wonder if I am really as beautiful as
+   this.  But I wish he had not made me look so sad.  I am kissing the
+   little lips.  I love them, because he loved to kiss them.  Oh,
+   sweetheart! it will be long before you kiss them again.  Of course it
+   was right for him to go, and I am glad he has been able to manage it.
+   He could not study properly in this quiet country place, and now he
+   will be able to go to Paris and Rome and he will be great.  Even the
+   stupid people here see how clever he is.  But, oh, it will be so long
+   before I see him again, my love! my king!"
+
+With each letter that comes from him, similar foolish rhapsodies are
+written down, but these letters of his, I gather, as I turn the pages,
+grow after a while colder and fewer, and a chill fear that dare not be
+penned creeps in among the words.
+
+   "March 12th.  Six weeks and no letter from Chris, and, oh dear! I am
+   so hungry for one, for the last I have almost kissed to pieces.  I
+   suppose he will write more often when he gets to London.  He is
+   working hard, I know, and it is selfish of me to expect him to write
+   more often, but I would sit up all night for a week rather than miss
+   writing to him.  I suppose men are not like that.  O God, help me,
+   help me, whatever happens!  How foolish I am to-night!  He was always
+   careless.  I will punish him for it when he comes back, but not very
+   much."
+
+Truly enough a conventional story.
+
+Letters do come from him after that, but apparently they are less and
+less satisfactory, for the diary grows angry and bitter, and the faded
+writing is blotted at times with tears.  Then towards the end of another
+year there comes this entry, written in a hand of strange neatness and
+precision:--
+
+   "It is all over now.  I am glad it is finished.  I have written to
+   him, giving him up.  I have told him I have ceased to care for him,
+   and that it is better we should both be free.  It is best that way.  He
+   would have had to ask me to release him, and that would have given him
+   pain.  He was always gentle.  Now he will be able to marry her with an
+   easy conscience, and he need never know what I have suffered.  She is
+   more fitted for him than I am.  I hope he will be happy.  I think I
+   have done the right thing."
+
+A few lines follow, left blank, and then the writing is resumed, but in a
+stronger, more vehement hand.
+
+   "Why do I lie to myself?  I hate her!  I would kill her if I could.  I
+   hope she will make him wretched, and that he will come to hate her as
+   I do, and that she will die!  Why did I let them persuade me to send
+   that lying letter?  He will show it to her, and she will see through
+   it and laugh at me.  I could have held him to his promise; he could
+   not have got out of it.
+
+   "What do I care about dignity, and womanliness, and right, and all the
+   rest of the canting words!  I want him.  I want his kisses and his
+   arms about me.  He is mine!  He loved me once!  I have only given him
+   up because I thought it a fine thing to play the saint.  It is only an
+   acted lie.  I would rather be evil, and he loved me.  Why do I deceive
+   myself?  I want him.  I care for nothing else at the bottom of my
+   heart--his love, his kisses!"
+
+And towards the end.  "My God, what am I saying?  Have I no shame, no
+strength?  O God, help me!"
+
+* * * * *
+
+And there the diary closes.
+
+I looked among the letters lying between the pages of the book.  Most of
+them were signed simply "Chris." or "Christopher."  But one gave his name
+in full, and it was a name I know well as that of a famous man, whose
+hand I have often shaken.  I thought of his hard-featured, handsome wife,
+and of his great chill place, half house, half exhibition, in Kensington,
+filled constantly with its smart, chattering set, among whom he seemed
+always to be the uninvited guest; of his weary face and bitter tongue.
+And thinking thus there rose up before me the sweet, sad face of the
+woman of the miniature, and, meeting her eyes as she smiled at me from
+out of the shadows, I looked at her my wonder.
+
+I took the miniature from its shelf.  There would be no harm now in
+learning her name.  So I stood with it in my hand till a little later my
+landlady entered to lay the cloth.
+
+"I tumbled this out of your book-case," I said, "in reaching down some
+books.  It is someone I know, someone I have met, but I cannot think
+where.  Do you know who it is?"
+
+The woman took it from my hand, and a faint flush crossed her withered
+face.  "I had lost it," she answered.  "I never thought of looking there.
+It's a portrait of myself, painted years ago, by a friend."
+
+I looked from her to the miniature, as she stood among the shadows, with
+the lamplight falling on her face, and saw her perhaps for the first
+time.
+
+"How stupid of me," I answered.  "Yes, I see the likeness now."
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN WHO WOULD MANAGE
+
+
+It has been told me by those in a position to know--and I can believe
+it--that at nineteen months of age he wept because his grandmother would
+not allow him to feed her with a spoon, and that at three and a half he
+was fished, in an exhausted condition, out of the water-butt, whither he
+had climbed for the purpose of teaching a frog to swim.
+
+Two years later he permanently injured his left eye, showing the cat how
+to carry kittens without hurting them, and about the same period was
+dangerously stung by a bee while conveying it from a flower where, as it
+seemed to him, it was only wasting its time, to one more rich in honey-
+making properties.
+
+His desire was always to help others.  He would spend whole mornings
+explaining to elderly hens how to hatch eggs, and would give up an
+afternoon's black-berrying to sit at home and crack nuts for his pet
+squirrel.  Before he was seven he would argue with his mother upon the
+management of children, and reprove his father for the way he was
+bringing him up.
+
+As a child nothing could afford him greater delight than "minding" other
+children, or them less.  He would take upon himself this harassing duty
+entirely of his own accord, without hope of reward or gratitude.  It was
+immaterial to him whether the other children were older than himself or
+younger, stronger or weaker, whenever and wherever he found them he set
+to work to "mind" them.  Once, during a school treat, piteous cries were
+heard coming from a distant part of the wood, and upon search being made,
+he was discovered prone upon the ground, with a cousin of his, a boy
+twice his own weight, sitting upon him and steadily whacking him.  Having
+rescued him, the teacher said:
+
+"Why don't you keep with the little boys?  What are you doing along with
+him?"
+
+"Please, sir," was the answer, "I was minding him."
+
+He would have "minded" Noah if he had got hold of him.
+
+He was a good-natured lad, and at school he was always willing for the
+whole class to copy from his slate--indeed he would urge them to do so.
+He meant it kindly, but inasmuch as his answers were invariably quite
+wrong--with a distinctive and inimitable wrongness peculiar to
+himself--the result to his followers was eminently unsatisfactory; and
+with the shallowness of youth that, ignoring motives, judges solely from
+results, they would wait for him outside and punch him.
+
+All his energies went to the instruction of others, leaving none for his
+own purposes.  He would take callow youths to his chambers and teach them
+to box.
+
+"Now, try and hit me on the nose," he would say, standing before them in
+an attitude of defence.  "Don't be afraid.  Hit as hard as ever you can."
+
+And they would do it.  And so soon as he had recovered from his surprise,
+and a little lessened the bleeding, he would explain to them how they had
+done it all wrong, and how easily he could have stopped the blow if they
+had only hit him properly.
+
+Twice at golf he lamed himself for over a week, showing a novice how to
+"drive"; and at cricket on one occasion I remember seeing his middle
+stump go down like a ninepin just as he was explaining to the bowler how
+to get the balls in straight.  After which he had a long argument with
+the umpire as to whether he was in or out.
+
+He has been known, during a stormy Channel passage, to rush excitedly
+upon the bridge in order to inform the captain that he had "just seen a
+light about two miles away to the left"; and if he is on the top of an
+omnibus he generally sits beside the driver, and points out to him the
+various obstacles likely to impede their progress.
+
+It was upon an omnibus that my own personal acquaintanceship with him
+began.  I was sitting behind two ladies when the conductor came up to
+collect fares.  One of them handed him a sixpence telling him to take to
+Piccadilly Circus, which was twopence.
+
+"No," said the other lady to her friend, handing the man a shilling, "I
+owe you sixpence, you give me fourpence and I'll pay for the two."
+
+The conductor took the shilling, punched two twopenny tickets, and then
+stood trying to think it out.
+
+"That's right," said the lady who had spoken last, "give my friend
+fourpence."
+
+The conductor did so.
+
+"Now you give that fourpence to me."
+
+The friend handed it to her.
+
+"And you," she concluded to the conductor, "give me eightpence, then we
+shall be all right."
+
+The conductor doled out to her the eightpence--the sixpence he had taken
+from the first lady, with a penny and two halfpennies out of his own
+bag--distrustfully, and retired, muttering something about his duties not
+including those of a lightning calculator.
+
+"Now," said the elder lady to the younger, "I owe you a shilling."
+
+I deemed the incident closed, when suddenly a florid gentleman on the
+opposite seat called out in stentorian tones:--
+
+"Hi, conductor! you've cheated these ladies out of fourpence."
+
+"'Oo's cheated 'oo out 'o fourpence?" replied the indignant conductor
+from the top of the steps, "it was a twopenny fare."
+
+"Two twopences don't make eightpence," retorted the florid gentleman
+hotly.  "How much did you give the fellow, my dear?" he asked, addressing
+the first of the young ladies.
+
+"I gave him sixpence," replied the lady, examining her purse.  "And then
+I gave you fourpence, you know," she added, addressing her companion.
+
+"That's a dear two pen'oth," chimed in a common-looking man on the seat
+behind.
+
+"Oh, that's impossible, dear," returned the other, "because I owed you
+sixpence to begin with."
+
+"But I did," persisted the first lady.
+
+"You gave me a shilling," said the conductor, who had returned, pointing
+an accusing forefinger at the elder of the ladies.
+
+The elder lady nodded.
+
+"And I gave you sixpence and two pennies, didn't I?"
+
+The lady admitted it.
+
+"An' I give 'er"--he pointed towards the younger lady--"fourpence, didn't
+I?"
+
+"Which I gave you, you know, dear," remarked the younger lady.
+
+"Blow me if it ain't _me_ as 'as been cheated out of the fourpence,"
+cried the conductor.
+
+"But," said the florid gentleman, "the other lady gave you sixpence."
+
+"Which I give to 'er," replied the conductor, again pointing the finger
+of accusation at the elder lady.  "You can search my bag if yer like.  I
+ain't got a bloomin' sixpence on me."
+
+By this time everybody had forgotten what they had done, and contradicted
+themselves and one another.  The florid man took it upon himself to put
+everybody right, with the result that before Piccadilly Circus was
+reached three passengers had threatened to report the conductor for
+unbecoming language.  The conductor had called a policeman and had taken
+the names and addresses of the two ladies, intending to sue them for the
+fourpence (which they wanted to pay, but which the florid man would not
+allow them to do); the younger lady had become convinced that the elder
+lady had meant to cheat her, and the elder lady was in tears.
+
+The florid gentleman and myself continued to Charing Cross Station.  At
+the booking office window it transpired that we were bound for the same
+suburb, and we journeyed down together.  He talked about the fourpence
+all the way.
+
+At my gate we shook hands, and he was good enough to express delight at
+the discovery that we were near neighbours.  What attracted him to myself
+I failed to understand, for he had bored me considerably, and I had, to
+the best of my ability, snubbed him.  Subsequently I learned that it was
+a peculiarity of his to be charmed with anyone who did not openly insult
+him.
+
+Three days afterwards he burst into my study unannounced--he appeared to
+regard himself as my bosom friend--and asked me to forgive him for not
+having called sooner, which I did.
+
+"I met the postman as I was coming along," he said, handing me a blue
+envelope, "and he gave me this, for you."
+
+I saw it was an application for the water-rate.
+
+"We must make a stand against this," he continued.  "That's for water to
+the 29th September.  You've no right to pay it in June."
+
+I replied to the effect that water-rates had to be paid, and that it
+seemed to me immaterial whether they were paid in June or September.
+
+"That's not it," he answered, "it's the principle of the thing.  Why
+should you pay for water you have never had?  What right have they to
+bully you into paying what you don't owe?"
+
+He was a fluent talker, and I was ass enough to listen to him.  By the
+end of half an hour he had persuaded me that the question was bound up
+with the inalienable rights of man, and that if I paid that fourteen and
+tenpence in June instead of in September, I should be unworthy of the
+privileges my forefathers had fought and died to bestow upon me.
+
+He told me the company had not a leg to stand upon, and at his
+instigation I sat down and wrote an insulting letter to the chairman.
+
+The secretary replied that, having regard to the attitude I had taken up,
+it would be incumbent upon themselves to treat it as a test case, and
+presumed that my solicitors would accept service on my behalf.
+
+When I showed him this letter he was delighted.
+
+"You leave it to me," he said, pocketing the correspondence, "and we'll
+teach them a lesson."
+
+I left it to him.  My only excuse is that at the time I was immersed in
+the writing of what in those days was termed a comedy-drama.  The little
+sense I possessed must, I suppose, have been absorbed by the play.
+
+The magistrate's decision somewhat damped my ardour, but only inflamed
+his zeal.  Magistrates, he said, were muddle-headed old fogies.  This was
+a matter for a judge.
+
+The judge was a kindly old gentleman, and said that bearing in mind the
+unsatisfactory wording of the sub-clause, he did not think he could allow
+the company their costs, so that, all told, I got off for something under
+fifty pounds, inclusive of the original fourteen and tenpence.
+
+Afterwards our friendship waned, but living as we did in the same
+outlying suburb, I was bound to see a good deal of him; and to hear more.
+
+At parties of all kinds he was particularly prominent, and on such
+occasions, being in his most good-natured mood, was most to be dreaded.
+No human being worked harder for the enjoyment of others, or produced
+more universal wretchedness.
+
+One Christmas afternoon, calling upon a friend, I found some fourteen or
+fifteen elderly ladies and gentlemen trotting solemnly round a row of
+chairs in the centre of the drawing-room while Poppleton played the
+piano.  Every now and then Poppleton would suddenly cease, and everyone
+would drop wearily into the nearest chair, evidently glad of a rest; all
+but one, who would thereupon creep quietly away, followed by the envying
+looks of those left behind.  I stood by the door watching the weird
+scene.  Presently an escaped player came towards me, and I enquired of
+him what the ceremony was supposed to signify.
+
+"Don't ask me," he answered grumpily.  "Some of Poppleton's damned
+tomfoolery."  Then he added savagely, "We've got to play forfeits after
+this."
+
+The servant was still waiting a favourable opportunity to announce me.  I
+gave her a shilling not to, and got away unperceived.
+
+After a satisfactory dinner, he would suggest an impromptu dance, and
+want you to roll up mats, or help him move the piano to the other end of
+the room.
+
+He knew enough round games to have started a small purgatory of his own.
+Just as you were in the middle of an interesting discussion, or a
+delightful _tete-a-tete_ with a pretty woman, he would swoop down upon
+you with: "Come along, we're going to play literary consequences," and
+dragging you to the table, and putting a piece of paper and a pencil
+before you, would tell you to write a description of your favourite
+heroine in fiction, and would see that you did it.
+
+He never spared himself.  It was always he who would volunteer to escort
+the old ladies to the station, and who would never leave them until he
+had seen them safely into the wrong train.  He it was who would play
+"wild beasts" with the children, and frighten them into fits that would
+last all night.
+
+So far as intention went, he was the kindest man alive.  He never visited
+poor sick persons without taking with him in his pocket some little
+delicacy calculated to disagree with them and make them worse.  He
+arranged yachting excursions for bad sailors, entirely at his own
+expense, and seemed to regard their subsequent agonies as ingratitude.
+
+He loved to manage a wedding.  Once he planned matters so that the bride
+arrived at the altar three-quarters of an hour before the groom, which
+led to unpleasantness upon a day that should have been filled only with
+joy, and once he forgot the clergyman.  But he was always ready to admit
+when he made a mistake.
+
+At funerals, also, he was to the fore, pointing out to the grief-stricken
+relatives how much better it was for all concerned that the corpse was
+dead, and expressing a pious hope that they would soon join it.
+
+The chiefest delight of his life, however, was to be mixed up in other
+people's domestic quarrels.  No domestic quarrel for miles round was
+complete without him.  He generally came in as mediator, and finished as
+leading witness for the appellant.
+
+As a journalist or politician his wonderful grasp of other people's
+business would have won for him esteem.  The error he made was working it
+out in practice.
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN WHO LIVED FOR OTHERS
+
+
+The first time we met, to speak, he was sitting with his back against a
+pollard willow, smoking a clay pipe.  He smoked it very slowly, but very
+conscientiously.  After each whiff he removed the pipe from his mouth and
+fanned away the smoke with his cap.
+
+"Feeling bad?" I asked from behind a tree, at the same time making ready
+for a run, big boys' answers to small boys' impertinences being usually
+of the nature of things best avoided.
+
+To my surprise and relief--for at second glance I perceived I had under-
+estimated the length of his legs--he appeared to regard the question as a
+natural and proper one, replying with unaffected candour, "Not yet."
+
+My desire became to comfort him--a sentiment I think he understood and
+was grateful for.  Advancing into the open, I sat down over against him,
+and watched him for a while in silence.  Presently he said:--
+
+"Have you ever tried drinking beer?"
+
+I admitted I had not.
+
+"Oh, it is beastly stuff," he rejoined with an involuntary shudder.
+
+Rendered forgetful of present trouble by bitter recollection of the past,
+he puffed away at his pipe carelessly and without judgment.
+
+"Do you often drink it?" I inquired.
+
+"Yes," he replied gloomily; "all we fellows in the fifth form drink beer
+and smoke pipes."
+
+A deeper tinge of green spread itself over his face.
+
+He rose suddenly and made towards the hedge.  Before he reached it,
+however, he stopped and addressed me, but without turning round.
+
+"If you follow me, young 'un, or look, I'll punch your head," he said
+swiftly, and disappeared with a gurgle.
+
+He left at the end of the term and I did not see him again until we were
+both young men.  Then one day I ran against him in Oxford Street, and he
+asked me to come and spend a few days with his people in Surrey.
+
+I found him wan-looking and depressed, and every now and then he sighed.
+During a walk across the common he cheered up considerably, but the
+moment we got back to the house door he seemed to recollect himself, and
+began to sigh again.  He ate no dinner whatever, merely sipping a glass
+of wine and crumbling a piece of bread.  I was troubled at noticing this,
+but his relatives--a maiden aunt, who kept house, two elder sisters, and
+a weak-eyed female cousin who had left her husband behind her in
+India--were evidently charmed.  They glanced at each other, and nodded
+and smiled.  Once in a fit of abstraction he swallowed a bit of crust,
+and immediately they all looked pained and surprised.
+
+In the drawing-room, under cover of a sentimental song, sung by the
+female cousin, I questioned his aunt on the subject.
+
+"What's the matter with him?" I said.  "Is he ill?"
+
+The old lady chuckled.
+
+"You'll be like that one day," she whispered gleefully.
+
+"When," I asked, not unnaturally alarmed.
+
+"When you're in love," she answered.
+
+"Is _he_ in love?" I inquired after a pause.
+
+"Can't you see he is?" she replied somewhat scornfully.
+
+I was a young man, and interested in the question.
+
+"Won't he ever eat any dinner till he's got over it?" I asked.
+
+She looked round sharply at me, but apparently decided that I was only
+foolish.
+
+"You wait till your time comes," she answered, shaking her curls at me.
+"You won't care much about your dinner--not if you are _really_ in love."
+
+In the night, about half-past eleven, I heard, as I thought, footsteps in
+the passage, and creeping to the door and opening it I saw the figure of
+my friend in dressing-gown and slippers, vanishing down the stairs.  My
+idea was that, his brain weakened by trouble, he had developed
+sleep-walking tendencies.  Partly out of curiosity, partly to watch over
+him, I slipped on a pair of trousers and followed him.
+
+He placed his candle on the kitchen table and made a bee-line for the
+pantry door, from where he subsequently emerged with two pounds of cold
+beef on a plate and about a quart of beer in a jug; and I came away,
+leaving him fumbling for pickles.
+
+I assisted at his wedding, where it seemed to me he endeavoured to
+display more ecstasy than it was possible for any human being to feel;
+and fifteen months later, happening to catch sight of an advertisement in
+the births column of _The Times_, I called on my way home from the City
+to congratulate him.  He was pacing up and down the passage with his hat
+on, pausing at intervals to partake of an uninviting-looking meal,
+consisting of a cold mutton chop and a glass of lemonade, spread out upon
+a chair.  Seeing that the cook and the housemaid were wandering about the
+house evidently bored for want of something to do, and that the dining-
+room, where he would have been much more out of the way, was empty and
+quite in order, I failed at first to understand the reason for his
+deliberate choice of discomfort.  I, however, kept my reflections to
+myself, and inquired after the mother and child.
+
+"Couldn't be better," he replied with a groan.  "The doctor said he'd
+never had a more satisfactory case in all his experience."
+
+"Oh, I'm glad to hear that," I answered; "I was afraid you'd been
+worrying yourself."
+
+"Worried!" he exclaimed.  "My dear boy, I don't know whether I'm standing
+on my head or my heels" (he gave one that idea).  "This is the first
+morsel of food that's passed my lips for twenty-four hours."
+
+At this moment the nurse appeared at the top of the stairs.  He flew
+towards her, upsetting the lemonade in his excitement.
+
+"What is it?" he asked hoarsely.  "Is it all right?"
+
+The old lady glanced from him to his cold chop, and smiled approvingly.
+
+"They're doing splendidly," she answered, patting him on the shoulder in
+a motherly fashion.  "Don't you worry."
+
+"I can't help it, Mrs. Jobson," he replied, sitting down upon the bottom
+stair, and leaning his head against the banisters.
+
+"Of course you can't," said Mrs. Jobson admiringly; "and you wouldn't be
+much of a man if you could."  Then it was borne in upon me why he wore
+his hat, and dined off cold chops in the passage.
+
+The following summer they rented a picturesque old house in Berkshire,
+and invited me down from a Saturday to Monday.  Their place was near the
+river, so I slipped a suit of flannels in my bag, and on the Sunday
+morning I came down in them.  He met me in the garden.  He was dressed in
+a frock coat and a white waistcoat; and I noticed that he kept looking at
+me out of the corner of his eye, and that he seemed to have a trouble on
+his mind.  The first breakfast bell rang, and then he said, "You haven't
+got any proper clothes with you, have you?"
+
+"Proper clothes!" I exclaimed, stopping in some alarm.  "Why, has
+anything given way?"
+
+"No, not that," he explained.  "I mean clothes to go to church in."
+
+"Church," I said.  "You're surely not going to church a fine day like
+this?  I made sure you'd be playing tennis, or going on the river.  You
+always used to."
+
+"Yes," he replied, nervously flicking a rose-bush with a twig he had
+picked up.  "You see, it isn't ourselves exactly.  Maud and I would
+rather like to, but our cook, she's Scotch, and a little strict in her
+notions."
+
+"And does she insist on your going to church every Sunday morning?" I
+inquired.
+
+"Well," he answered, "she thinks it strange if we don't, and so we
+generally do, just in the morning--and evening.  And then in the
+afternoon a few of the village girls drop in, and we have a little
+singing and that sort of thing.  I never like hurting anyone's feelings
+if I can help it."
+
+I did not say what I thought.  Instead I said, "I've got that tweed suit
+I wore yesterday.  I can put that on if you like."
+
+He ceased flicking the rose-bush, and knitted his brows.  He seemed to be
+recalling it to his imagination.
+
+"No," he said, shaking his head, "I'm afraid it would shock her.  It's my
+fault, I know," he added, remorsefully.  "I ought to have told you."
+
+Then an idea came to him.
+
+"I suppose," he said, "you wouldn't care to pretend you were ill, and
+stop in bed just for the day?"
+
+I explained that my conscience would not permit my being a party to such
+deception
+
+"No, I thought you wouldn't," he replied.  "I must explain it to her.  I
+think I'll say you've lost your bag.  I shouldn't like her to think bad
+of us."
+
+Later on a fourteenth cousin died, leaving him a large fortune.  He
+purchased an estate in Yorkshire, and became a "county family," and then
+his real troubles began.
+
+From May to the middle of August, save for a little fly fishing, which
+generally resulted in his getting his feet wet and catching a cold, life
+was fairly peaceful; but from early autumn to late spring he found the
+work decidedly trying.  He was a stout man, constitutionally nervous of
+fire-arms, and a six-hours' tramp with a heavy gun across ploughed
+fields, in company with a crowd of careless persons who kept blazing away
+within an inch of other people's noses, harassed and exhausted him.  He
+had to get out of bed at four on chilly October mornings to go
+cub-hunting, and twice a week throughout the winter--except when a
+blessed frost brought him a brief respite--he had to ride to hounds.  That
+he usually got off with nothing more serious than mere bruises and slight
+concussions of the spine, he probably owed to the fortunate circumstances
+of his being little and fat.  At stiff timber he shut his eyes and rode
+hard; and ten yards from a river he would begin to think about bridges.
+
+Yet he never complained.
+
+"If you are a country gentleman," he would say, "you must behave as a
+country gentleman, and take the rough with the smooth."
+
+As ill fate would have it a chance speculation doubled his fortune, and
+it became necessary that he should go into Parliament and start a yacht.
+Parliament made his head ache, and the yacht made him sick.
+Notwithstanding, every summer he would fill it with a lot of expensive
+people who bored him, and sail away for a month's misery in the
+Mediterranean.
+
+During one cruise his guests built up a highly-interesting gambling
+scandal.  He himself was confined to his cabin at the time, and knew
+nothing about it; but the Opposition papers, getting hold of the story,
+referred casually to the yacht as a "floating hell," and _The Police
+News_ awarded his portrait the place of honour as the chief criminal of
+the week.
+
+Later on he got into a cultured set, ruled by a thick-lipped
+undergraduate.  His favourite literature had hitherto been of the Corelli
+and _Tit-Bits_ order, but now he read Meredith and the yellow book, and
+tried to understand them; and instead of the Gaiety, he subscribed to the
+Independent Theatre, and fed "his soul," on Dutch Shakespeares.  What he
+liked in art was a pretty girl by a cottage-door with an eligible young
+man in the background, or a child and a dog doing something funny.  They
+told him these things were wrong and made him buy "Impressions" that
+stirred his liver to its deepest depths every time he looked at
+them--green cows on red hills by pink moonlight, or scarlet-haired
+corpses with three feet of neck.
+
+He said meekly that such seemed to him unnatural, but they answered that
+nature had nothing to do with the question; that the artist saw things
+like that, and that whatever an artist saw--no matter in what condition
+he may have been when he saw it--that was art.
+
+They took him to Wagner festivals and Burne-Jones's private views.  They
+read him all the minor poets.  They booked seats for him at all Ibsen's
+plays.  They introduced him into all the most soulful circles of artistic
+society.  His days were one long feast of other people's enjoyments.
+
+One morning I met him coming down the steps of the Arts Club.  He looked
+weary.  He was just off to a private view at the New Gallery.  In the
+afternoon he had to attend an amateur performance of "The Cenci," given
+by the Shelley Society.  Then followed three literary and artistic At
+Homes, a dinner with an Indian nabob who couldn't speak a word of
+English, "Tristam and Isolde" at Covent Garden Theatre, and a ball at
+Lord Salisbury's to wind up the day.
+
+I laid my hand upon his shoulder.
+
+"Come with me to Epping Forest," I said.  "There's a four-horse brake
+starts from Charing Cross at eleven.  It's Saturday, and there's bound to
+be a crowd down there.  I'll play you a game of skittles, and we will
+have a shy at the cocoa-nuts.  You used to be rather smart at cocoa-nuts.
+We can have lunch there and be back at seven, dine at the Troc., spend
+the evening at the Empire, and sup at the Savoy.  What do you say?"
+
+He stood hesitating on the steps, a wistful look in his eyes.
+
+His brougham drew up against the curb, and he started as if from a dream.
+
+"My dear fellow," he replied, "what would people say?"  And shaking me by
+the hand, he took his seat, and the footman slammed the door upon him.
+
+
+
+
+A MAN OF HABIT
+
+
+There were three of us in the smoke-room of the _Alexandra_--a very good
+friend of mine, myself, and, in the opposite corner, a shy-looking,
+unobtrusive man, the editor, as we subsequently learned, of a New York
+Sunday paper.
+
+My friend and I were discussing habits, good and bad.
+
+"After the first few months," said my friend, "it is no more effort for a
+man to be a saint than to be a sinner; it becomes a mere matter of
+habit."
+
+"I know," I interrupted, "it is every whit as easy to spring out of bed
+the instant you are called as to say 'All Right,' and turn over for just
+another five minutes' snooze, when you have got into the way of it.  It
+is no more trouble not to swear than to swear, if you make a custom of
+it.  Toast and water is as delicious as champagne, when you have acquired
+the taste for it.  Things are also just as easy the other way about.  It
+is a mere question of making your choice and sticking to it."
+
+He agreed with me.
+
+"Now take these cigars of mine," he said, pushing his open case towards
+me.
+
+"Thank you," I replied hurriedly, "I'm not smoking this passage."
+
+"Don't be alarmed," he answered, "I meant merely as an argument.  Now one
+of these would make you wretched for a week."
+
+I admitted his premise.
+
+"Very well," he continued.  "Now I, as you know, smoke them all day long,
+and enjoy them.  Why?  Because I have got into the habit.  Years ago,
+when I was a young man, I smoked expensive Havanas.  I found that I was
+ruining myself.  It was absolutely necessary that I should take a cheaper
+weed.  I was living in Belgium at the time, and a friend showed me these.
+I don't know what they are--probably cabbage leaves soaked in guano; they
+tasted to me like that at first--but they were cheap.  Buying them by the
+five hundred, they cost me three a penny.  I determined to like them, and
+started with one a day.  It was terrible work, I admit, but as I said to
+myself, nothing could be worse than the Havanas themselves had been in
+the beginning.  Smoking is an acquired taste, and it must be as easy to
+learn to like one flavour as another.  I persevered and I conquered.
+Before the year was over I could think of them without loathing, at the
+end of two I could smoke them without positive discomfort.  Now I prefer
+them to any other brand on the market.  Indeed, a good cigar disagrees
+with me."
+
+I suggested it might have been less painful to have given up smoking
+altogether.
+
+"I did think of it," he replied, "but a man who doesn't smoke always
+seems to me bad company.  There is something very sociable about smoke."
+
+He leant back and puffed great clouds into the air, filling the small den
+with an odour suggestive of bilge water and cemeteries.
+
+"Then again," he resumed after a pause, "take my claret.  No, you don't
+like it."  (I had not spoken, but my face had evidently betrayed me.)
+"Nobody does, at least no one I have ever met.  Three years ago, when I
+was living in Hammersmith, we caught two burglars with it.  They broke
+open the sideboard, and swallowed five bottlefuls between them.  A
+policeman found them afterwards, sitting on a doorstep a hundred yards
+off, the 'swag' beside them in a carpet bag.  They were too ill to offer
+any resistance, and went to the station like lambs, he promising to send
+the doctor to them the moment they were safe in the cells.  Ever since
+then I have left out a decanterful upon the table every night.
+
+"Well, I like that claret, and it does me good.  I come in sometimes dead
+beat.  I drink a couple of glasses, and I'm a new man.  I took to it in
+the first instance for the same reason that I took to the cigars--it was
+cheap.  I have it sent over direct from Geneva, and it costs me six
+shillings a dozen.  How they do it I don't know.  I don't want to know.
+As you may remember, it's fairly heady and there's body in it.
+
+"I knew one man," he continued, "who had a regular Mrs. Caudle of a wife.
+All day long she talked to him, or at him, or of him, and at night he
+fell asleep to the rising and falling rhythm of what she thought about
+him.  At last she died, and his friends congratulated him, telling him
+that now he would enjoy peace.  But it was the peace of the desert, and
+the man did not enjoy it.  For two-and-twenty years her voice had filled
+the house, penetrated through the conservatory, and floated in faint
+shrilly waves of sound round the garden, and out into the road beyond.
+The silence now pervading everywhere frightened and disturbed him.  The
+place was no longer home to him.  He missed the breezy morning insult,
+the long winter evening's reproaches beside the flickering fire.  At
+night he could not sleep.  For hours he would lie tossing restlessly, his
+ears aching for the accustomed soothing flow of invective.
+
+"'Ah!' he would cry bitterly to himself, 'it is the old story, we never
+know the value of a thing until we have lost it.'
+
+"He grew ill.  The doctors dosed him with sleeping draughts in vain.  At
+last they told him bluntly that his life depended upon his finding
+another wife, able and willing to nag him to sleep.
+
+"There were plenty of wives of the type he wanted in the neighbourhood,
+but the unmarried women were, of necessity, inexperienced, and his health
+was such that he could not afford the time to train them.
+
+"Fortunately, just as despair was about to take possession of him, a man
+died in the next parish, literally talked to death, the gossip said, by
+his wife.  He obtained an introduction, and called upon her the day after
+the funeral.  She was a cantankerous old woman, and the wooing was a
+harassing affair, but his heart was in his work, and before six months
+were gone he had won her for his own.
+
+"She proved, however, but a poor substitute.  The spirit was willing but
+the flesh was weak.  She had neither that command of language nor of wind
+that had distinguished her rival.  From his favourite seat at the bottom
+of the garden he could not hear her at all, so he had his chair brought
+up into the conservatory.  It was all right for him there so long as she
+continued to abuse him; but every now and again, just as he was getting
+comfortably settled down with his pipe and his newspaper, she would
+suddenly stop.
+
+"He would drop his paper and sit listening, with a troubled, anxious
+expression.
+
+"'Are you there, dear?' he would call out after a while.
+
+"'Yes, I'm here.  Where do you think I am you old fool?' she would gasp
+back in an exhausted voice.
+
+"His face would brighten at the sound of her words.  'Go on, dear,' he
+would answer.  'I'm listening.  I like to hear you talk.'
+
+"But the poor woman was utterly pumped out, and had not so much as a
+snort left.
+
+"Then he would shake his head sadly.  'No, she hasn't poor dear Susan's
+flow,' he would say.  'Ah! what a woman that was!'
+
+"At night she would do her best, but it was a lame and halting
+performance by comparison.  After rating him for little over
+three-quarters of an hour, she would sink back on the pillow, and want to
+go to sleep.  But he would shake her gently by the shoulder.
+
+"'Yes, dear,' he would say, 'you were speaking about Jane, and the way I
+kept looking at her during lunch.'
+
+"It's extraordinary," concluded my friend, lighting a fresh cigar, "what
+creatures of habit we are."
+
+"Very," I replied.  "I knew a man who told tall stories till when he told
+a true one nobody believed it."
+
+"Ah, that was a very sad case," said my friend.
+
+"Speaking of habit," said the unobtrusive man in the corner, "I can tell
+you a true story that I'll bet my bottom dollar you won't believe."
+
+"Haven't got a bottom dollar, but I'll bet you half a sovereign I do,"
+replied my friend, who was of a sporting turn.  "Who shall be judge?"
+
+"I'll take your word for it," said the unobtrusive man, and started
+straight away.
+
+* * * * *
+
+"He was a Jefferson man, this man I'm going to tell you of," he begun.
+"He was born in the town, and for forty-seven years he never slept a
+night outside it.  He was a most respectable man--a drysalter from nine
+to four, and a Presbyterian in his leisure moments.  He said that a good
+life merely meant good habits.  He rose at seven, had family prayer at
+seven-thirty, breakfasted at eight, got to his business at nine, had his
+horse brought round to the office at four, and rode for an hour, reached
+home at five, had a bath and a cup of tea, played with and read to the
+children (he was a domesticated man) till half-past six, dressed and
+dined at seven, went round to the club and played whist till quarter
+after ten, home again to evening prayer at ten-thirty, and bed at eleven.
+For five-and-twenty years he lived that life with never a variation.  It
+worked into his system and became mechanical.  The church clocks were set
+by him.  He was used by the local astronomers to check the sun.
+
+"One day a distant connection of his in London, an East Indian Merchant
+and an ex-Lord Mayor died, leaving him sole legatee and executor.  The
+business was a complicated one and needed management.  He determined to
+leave his son by his first wife, now a young man of twenty-four, in
+charge at Jefferson, and to establish himself with his second family in
+England, and look after the East Indian business.
+
+"He set out from Jefferson City on October the fourth, and arrived in
+London on the seventeenth.  He had been ill during the whole of the
+voyage, and he reached the furnished house he had hired in Bayswater
+somewhat of a wreck.  A couple of days in bed, however, pulled him round,
+and on the Wednesday evening he announced his intention of going into the
+City the next day to see to his affairs.
+
+"On the Thursday morning he awoke at one o'clock.  His wife told him she
+had not disturbed him, thinking the sleep would do him good.  He admitted
+that perhaps it had.  Anyhow, he felt very well, and he got up and
+dressed himself.  He said he did not like the idea of beginning his first
+day by neglecting a religious duty, and his wife agreeing with him, they
+assembled the servants and the children in the dining-room, and had
+family prayer at half-past one.  After which he breakfasted and set off,
+reaching the City about three.
+
+"His reputation for punctuality had preceded him, and surprise was
+everywhere expressed at his late arrival.  He explained the
+circumstances, however, and made his appointments for the following day
+to commence from nine-thirty.
+
+"He remained at the office until late, and then went home.  For dinner,
+usually the chief meal of the day, he could manage to eat only a biscuit
+and some fruit.  He attributed his loss of appetite to want of his
+customary ride.  He was strangely unsettled all the evening.  He said he
+supposed he missed his game of whist, and determined to look about him
+without loss of time for some quiet, respectable club.  At eleven he
+retired with his wife to bed, but could not sleep.  He tossed and turned,
+and turned and tossed, but grew only more and more wakeful and energetic.
+A little after midnight an overpowering desire seized him to go and wish
+the children good-night.  He slipped on a dressing-gown and stole into
+the nursery.  He did not intend it, but the opening of the door awoke
+them, and he was glad.  He wrapped them up in the quilt, and, sitting on
+the edge of the bed, told them moral stories till one o'clock.
+
+"Then he kissed them, bidding them be good and go to sleep; and finding
+himself painfully hungry, crept downstairs, where in the back kitchen he
+made a hearty meal off cold game pie and cucumber.
+
+"He retired to bed feeling more peaceful, yet still could not sleep, so
+lay thinking about his business affairs till five, when he dropped off.
+
+"At one o'clock to the minute he awoke.  His wife told him she had made
+every endeavour to rouse him, but in vain.  The man was vexed and
+irritated.  If he had not been a very good man indeed, I believe he would
+have sworn.  The same programme was repeated as on the Thursday, and
+again he reached the City at three.
+
+"This state of things went on for a month.  The man fought against
+himself, but was unable to alter himself.  Every morning, or rather every
+afternoon at one he awoke.  Every night at one he crept down into the
+kitchen and foraged for food.  Every morning at five he fell asleep.
+
+"He could not understand it, nobody could understand it.  The doctor
+treated him for water on the brain, hypnotic irresponsibility and
+hereditary lunacy.  Meanwhile his business suffered, and his health grew
+worse.  He seemed to be living upside down.  His days seemed to have
+neither beginning nor end, but to be all middle.  There was no time for
+exercise or recreation.  When he began to feel cheerful and sociable
+everybody else was asleep.
+
+"One day by chance the explanation came.  His eldest daughter was
+preparing her home studies after dinner.
+
+"'What time is it now in New York?' she asked, looking up from her
+geography book.
+
+"'New York,' said her father, glancing at his watch, 'let me see.  It's
+just ten now, and there's a little over four and a half hours'
+difference.  Oh, about half-past five in the afternoon.'
+
+"'Then in Jefferson,' said the mother, 'it would be still earlier,
+wouldn't it?'
+
+"'Yes,' replied the girl, examining the map, 'Jefferson is nearly two
+degrees further west.'
+
+"'Two degrees,' mused the father, 'and there's forty minutes to a degree.
+That would make it now, at the present moment in Jefferson--'
+
+"He leaped to his feet with a cry:
+
+"'I've got it!' he shouted, 'I see it.'
+
+"'See what?' asked his wife, alarmed.
+
+"'Why, it's four o'clock in Jefferson, and just time for my ride.  That's
+what I'm wanting.'
+
+"There could be no doubt about it.  For five-and-twenty years he had
+lived by clockwork.  But it was by Jefferson clockwork, not London
+clockwork.  He had changed his longitude, but not himself.  The habits of
+a quarter of a century were not to be shifted at the bidding of the sun.
+
+"He examined the problem in all its bearings, and decided that the only
+solution was for him to return to the order of his old life.  He saw the
+difficulties in his way, but they were less than those he was at present
+encountering.  He was too formed by habit to adapt himself to
+circumstances.  Circumstances must adapt themselves to him.
+
+"He fixed his office hours from three till ten, leaving himself at half-
+past nine.  At ten he mounted his horse and went for a canter in the Row,
+and on very dark nights he carried a lantern.  News of it got abroad, and
+crowds would assemble to see him ride past.
+
+"He dined at one o'clock in the morning, and afterwards strolled down to
+his club.  He had tried to discover a quiet, respectable club where the
+members were willing to play whist till four in the morning, but failing,
+had been compelled to join a small Soho gambling-hell, where they taught
+him poker.  The place was occasionally raided by the police, but thanks
+to his respectable appearance, he generally managed to escape.
+
+"At half-past four he returned home, and woke up the family for evening
+prayers.  At five he went to bed and slept like a top.
+
+"The City chaffed him, and Bayswater shook its head over him, but that he
+did not mind.  The only thing that really troubled him was loss of
+spiritual communion.  At five o'clock on Sunday afternoons he felt he
+wanted chapel, but had to do without it.  At seven he ate his simple mid-
+day meal.  At eleven he had tea and muffins, and at midnight he began to
+crave again for hymns and sermons.  At three he had a bread-and-cheese
+supper, and retired early at four a.m., feeling sad and unsatisfied.
+
+"He was essentially a man of habit."
+
+* * * * *
+
+The unobtrusive stranger ceased, and we sat gazing in silence at the
+ceiling.
+
+At length my friend rose, and taking half-a-sovereign from his pocket,
+laid it upon the table, and linking his arm in mine went out with me upon
+the deck.
+
+
+
+
+THE ABSENT-MINDED MAN
+
+
+You ask him to dine with you on Thursday to meet a few people who are
+anxious to know him.
+
+"Now don't make a muddle of it," you say, recollectful of former mishaps,
+"and come on the Wednesday."
+
+He laughs good-naturedly as he hunts through the room for his diary.
+
+"Shan't be able to come Wednesday," he says, "shall be at the Mansion
+House, sketching dresses, and on Friday I start for Scotland, so as to be
+at the opening of the Exhibition on Saturday.  It's bound to be all right
+this time.  Where the deuce is that diary!  Never mind, I'll make a note
+of it on this--you can see me do it."
+
+You stand over him while he writes the appointment down on a sheet of
+foolscap, and watch him pin it up over his desk.  Then you come away
+contented.
+
+"I do hope he'll turn up," you say to your wife on the Thursday evening,
+while dressing.
+
+"Are you sure you made it clear to him?" she replies, suspiciously, and
+you instinctively feel that whatever happens she is going to blame you
+for it.
+
+Eight o'clock arrives, and with it the other guests.  At half-past eight
+your wife is beckoned mysteriously out of the room, where the parlour-
+maid informs her that the cook has expressed a determination, in case of
+further delay, to wash her hands, figuratively speaking, of the whole
+affair.
+
+Your wife, returning, suggests that if the dinner is to be eaten at all
+it had better be begun.  She evidently considers that in pretending to
+expect him you have been merely playing a part, and that it would have
+been manlier and more straightforward for you to have admitted at the
+beginning that you had forgotten to invite him.
+
+During the soup and the fish you recount anecdotes of his unpunctuality.
+By the time the _entree_ arrives the empty chair has begun to cast a
+gloom over the dinner, and with the joint the conversation drifts into
+talk about dead relatives.
+
+On Friday, at a quarter past eight, he dashes to the door and rings
+violently.  Hearing his voice in the hall, you go to meet him.
+
+"Sorry I'm late," he sings out cheerily.  "Fool of a cabman took me to
+Alfred Place instead of--"
+
+"Well, what do you want now you are come?" you interrupt, feeling
+anything but genially inclined towards him.  He is an old friend, so you
+can be rude to him.
+
+He laughs, and slaps you on the shoulder.
+
+"Why, my dinner, my dear boy, I'm starving."
+
+"Oh," you grunt in reply.  "Well, you go and get it somewhere else, then.
+You're not going to have it here."
+
+"What the devil do you mean?" he says.  "You asked me to dinner."
+
+"I did nothing of the kind," you tell him.  "I asked you to dinner on
+Thursday, not on Friday."
+
+He stares at you incredulously.
+
+"How did I get Friday fixed in my mind?" inquiringly.
+
+"Because yours is the sort of mind that would get Friday firmly fixed
+into it, when Thursday was the day," you explain.  "I thought you had to
+be off to Edinburgh to-night," you add.
+
+"Great Scott!" he cries, "so I have."
+
+And without another word he dashes out, and you hear him rushing down the
+road, shouting for the cab he has just dismissed.
+
+As you return to your study you reflect that he will have to travel all
+the way to Scotland in evening dress, and will have to send out the hotel
+porter in the morning to buy him a suit of ready-made clothes, and are
+glad.
+
+Matters work out still more awkwardly when it is he who is the host.  I
+remember being with him on his house-boat one day.  It was a little after
+twelve, and we were sitting on the edge of the boat, dangling our feet in
+the river--the spot was a lonely one, half-way between Wallingford and
+Day's Lock.  Suddenly round the bend appeared two skiffs, each one
+containing six elaborately-dressed persons.  As soon as they caught sight
+of us they began waving handkerchiefs and parasols.
+
+"Hullo!" I said, "here's some people hailing you."
+
+"Oh, they all do that about here," he answered, without looking up.  "Some
+beanfeast from Abingdon, I expect."
+
+The boats draw nearer.  When about two hundred yards off an elderly
+gentleman raised himself up in the prow of the leading one and shouted to
+us.
+
+McQuae heard his voice, and gave a start that all but pitched him into
+the water.
+
+"Good God!" he cried, "I'd forgotten all about it."
+
+"About what?" I asked.
+
+"Why, it's the Palmers and the Grahams and the Hendersons.  I've asked
+them all over to lunch, and there's not a blessed thing on board but two
+mutton chops and a pound of potatoes, and I've given the boy a holiday."
+
+Another day I was lunching with him at the Junior Hogarth, when a man
+named Hallyard, a mutual friend, strolled across to us.
+
+"What are you fellows going to do this afternoon?" he asked, seating
+himself the opposite side of the table.
+
+"I'm going to stop here and write letters," I answered.
+
+"Come with me if you want something to do," said McQuae.  "I'm going to
+drive Leena down to Richmond."  ("Leena" was the young lady he
+recollected being engaged to.  It transpired afterwards that he was
+engaged to three girls at the time.  The other two he had forgotten all
+about.)  "It's a roomy seat at the back."
+
+"Oh, all right," said Hallyard, and they went away together in a hansom.
+
+An hour and a half later Hallyard walked into the smoking-room looking
+depressed and worn, and flung himself into a chair.
+
+"I thought you were going to Richmond with McQuae," I said.
+
+"So did I," he answered.
+
+"Had an accident?" I asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+He was decidedly curt in his replies.
+
+"Cart upset?" I continued.
+
+"No, only me."
+
+His grammar and his nerves seemed thoroughly shaken.
+
+I waited for an explanation, and after a while he gave it.
+
+"We got to Putney," he said, "with just an occasional run into a tram-
+car, and were going up the hill, when suddenly he turned a corner.  You
+know his style at a corner--over the curb, across the road, and into the
+opposite lamp-post.  Of course, as a rule one is prepared for it, but I
+never reckoned on his turning up there, and the first thing I recollect
+is finding myself sitting in the middle of the street with a dozen fools
+grinning at me.
+
+"It takes a man a few minutes in such a case to think where he is and
+what has happened, and when I got up they were some distance away.  I ran
+after them for a quarter of a mile, shouting at the top of my voice, and
+accompanied by a mob of boys, all yelling like hell on a Bank Holiday.
+But one might as well have tried to hail the dead, so I took the 'bus
+back.
+
+"They might have guessed what had happened," he added, "by the shifting
+of the cart, if they'd had any sense.  I'm not a light-weight."
+
+He complained of soreness, and said he would go home.  I suggested a cab,
+but he replied that he would rather walk.
+
+I met McQuae in the evening at the St. James's Theatre.  It was a first
+night, and he was taking sketches for _The Graphic_.  The moment he saw
+me he made his way across to me.
+
+"The very man I wanted to see," he said.  "Did I take Hallyard with me in
+the cart to Richmond this afternoon?"
+
+"You did," I replied.
+
+"So Leena says," he answered, greatly bewildered, "but I'll swear he
+wasn't there when we got to the Queen's Hotel."
+
+"It's all right," I said, "you dropped him at Putney."
+
+"Dropped him at Putney!" he repeated.  "I've no recollection of doing
+so."
+
+"He has," I answered.  "You ask him about it.  He's full of it."
+
+Everybody said he never would get married; that it was absurd to suppose
+he ever would remember the day, the church, and the girl, all in one
+morning; that if he did get as far as the altar he would forget what he
+had come for, and would give the bride away to his own best man.  Hallyard
+had an idea that he was already married, but that the fact had slipped
+his memory.  I myself felt sure that if he did marry he would forget all
+about it the next day.
+
+But everybody was wrong.  By some miraculous means the ceremony got
+itself accomplished, so that if Hallyard's idea be correct (as to which
+there is every possibility), there will be trouble.  As for my own fears,
+I dismissed them the moment I saw the lady.  She was a charming, cheerful
+little woman, but did not look the type that would let him forget all
+about it.
+
+I had not seen him since his marriage, which had happened in the spring.
+Working my way back from Scotland by easy stages, I stopped for a few
+days at Scarboro'.  After _table d'hote_ I put on my mackintosh, and went
+out for a walk.  It was raining hard, but after a month in Scotland one
+does not notice English weather, and I wanted some air.  Struggling along
+the dark beach with my head against the wind, I stumbled over a crouching
+figure, seeking to shelter itself a little from the storm under the lee
+of the Spa wall.
+
+I expected it to swear at me, but it seemed too broken-spirited to mind
+anything.
+
+"I beg your pardon," I said.  "I did not see you."
+
+At the sound of my voice it started to its feet.
+
+"Is that you, old man?" it cried.
+
+"McQuae!" I exclaimed.
+
+"By Jove!" he said, "I was never so glad to see a man in all my life
+before."
+
+And he nearly shook my hand off.
+
+"But what in thunder!" I said, "are you doing here?  Why, you're drenched
+to the skin."
+
+He was dressed in flannels and a tennis-coat.
+
+"Yes," he answered.  "I never thought it would rain.  It was a lovely
+morning."
+
+I began to fear he had overworked himself into a brain fever.
+
+"Why don't you go home?" I asked.
+
+"I can't," he replied.  "I don't know where I live.  I've forgotten the
+address."
+
+"For heaven's sake," he said, "take me somewhere, and give me something
+to eat.  I'm literally starving."
+
+"Haven't you any money?" I asked him, as we turned towards the hotel.
+
+"Not a sou," he answered.  "We got in here from York, the wife and I,
+about eleven.  We left our things at the station, and started to hunt for
+apartments.  As soon as we were fixed, I changed my clothes and came out
+for a walk, telling Maud I should be back at one to lunch.  Like a fool,
+I never took the address, and never noticed the way I was going.
+
+"It's an awful business," he continued.  "I don't see how I'm ever going
+to find her.  I hoped she might stroll down to the Spa in the evening,
+and I've been hanging about the gates ever since six.  I hadn't the
+threepence to go in."
+
+"But have you no notion of the sort of street or the kind of house it
+was?" I enquired.
+
+"Not a ghost," he replied.  "I left it all to Maud, and didn't trouble."
+
+"Have you tried any of the lodging-houses?" I asked.
+
+"Tried!" he exclaimed bitterly.  "I've been knocking at doors, and asking
+if Mrs. McQuae lives there steadily all the afternoon, and they slam the
+door in my face, mostly without answering.  I told a policeman--I thought
+perhaps he might suggest something--but the idiot only burst out
+laughing, and that made me so mad that I gave him a black eye, and had to
+cut.  I expect they're on the lookout for me now."
+
+"I went into a restaurant," he continued gloomily, "and tried to get them
+to trust me for a steak.  But the proprietress said she'd heard that tale
+before, and ordered me out before all the other customers.  I think I'd
+have drowned myself if you hadn't turned up."
+
+After a change of clothes and some supper, he discussed the case more
+calmly, but it was really a serious affair.  They had shut up their flat,
+and his wife's relatives were travelling abroad.  There was no one to
+whom he could send a letter to be forwarded; there was no one with whom
+she would be likely to communicate.  Their chance of meeting again in
+this world appeared remote.
+
+Nor did it seem to me--fond as he was of his wife, and anxious as he
+undoubtedly was to recover her--that he looked forward to the actual
+meeting, should it ever arrive, with any too pleasurable anticipation.
+
+"She will think it strange," he murmured reflectively, sitting on the
+edge of the bed, and thoughtfully pulling off his socks.  "She is sure to
+think it strange."
+
+The following day, which was Wednesday, we went to a solicitor, and laid
+the case before him, and he instituted inquiries among all the lodging-
+house keepers in Scarborough, with the result that on Thursday afternoon
+McQuae was restored (after the manner of an Adelphi hero in the last act)
+to his home and wife.
+
+I asked him next time I met him what she had said.
+
+"Oh, much what I expected," he replied.
+
+But he never told me what he had expected.
+
+
+
+
+A CHARMING WOMAN
+
+
+"Not _the Mr. ---_, _really_?"
+
+In her deep brown eyes there lurked pleased surprise, struggling with
+wonder.  She looked from myself to the friend who introduced us with a
+bewitching smile of incredulity, tempered by hope.
+
+He assured her, adding laughingly, "The only genuine and original," and
+left us.
+
+"I've always thought of you as a staid, middle-aged man," she said, with
+a delicious little laugh, then added in low soft tones, "I'm so very
+pleased to meet you, really."
+
+The words were conventional, but her voice crept round one like a warm
+caress.
+
+"Come and talk to me," she said, seating herself upon a small settee, and
+making room for me.
+
+I sat down awkwardly beside her, my head buzzing just a little, as with
+one glass too many of champagne.  I was in my literary childhood.  One
+small book and a few essays and criticisms, scattered through various
+obscure periodicals had been as yet my only contributions to current
+literature.  The sudden discovery that I was the Mr. Anybody, and that
+charming women thought of me, and were delighted to meet me, was a brain-
+disturbing thought.
+
+"And it was really you who wrote that clever book?" she continued, "and
+all those brilliant things, in the magazines and journals.  Oh, it must
+be delightful to be clever."
+
+She gave breath to a little sigh of vain regret that went to my heart.  To
+console her I commenced a laboured compliment, but she stopped me with
+her fan.  On after reflection I was glad she had--it would have been one
+of those things better expressed otherwise.
+
+"I know what you are going to say," she laughed, "but don't.  Besides,
+from you I should not know quite how to take it.  You can be so
+satirical."
+
+I tried to look as though I could be, but in her case would not.
+
+She let her ungloved hand rest for an instant upon mine.  Had she left it
+there for two, I should have gone down on my knees before her, or have
+stood on my head at her feet--have made a fool of myself in some way or
+another before the whole room full.  She timed it to a nicety.
+
+"I don't want _you_ to pay me compliments," she said, "I want us to be
+friends.  Of course, in years, I'm old enough to be your mother."  (By
+the register I should say she might have been thirty-two, but looked
+twenty-six.  I was twenty-three, and I fear foolish for my age.)  "But
+you know the world, and you're so different to the other people one
+meets.  Society is so hollow and artificial; don't you find it so?  You
+don't know how I long sometimes to get away from it, to know someone to
+whom I could show my real self, who would understand me.  You'll come and
+see me sometimes--I'm always at home on Wednesdays--and let me talk to
+you, won't you, and you must tell me all your clever thoughts."
+
+It occurred to me that, maybe, she would like to hear a few of them there
+and then, but before I had got well started a hollow Society man came up
+and suggested supper, and she was compelled to leave me.  As she
+disappeared, however, in the throng, she looked back over her shoulder
+with a glance half pathetic, half comic, that I understood.  It said,
+"Pity me, I've got to be bored by this vapid, shallow creature," and I
+did.
+
+I sought her through all the rooms before I went.  I wished to assure her
+of my sympathy and support.  I learned, however, from the butler that she
+had left early, in company with the hollow Society man.
+
+A fortnight later I ran against a young literary friend in Regent Street,
+and we lunched together at the Monico.
+
+"I met such a charming woman last night," he said, "a Mrs. Clifton
+Courtenay, a delightful woman."
+
+"Oh, do _you_ know her?" I exclaimed.  "Oh, we're very old friends.  She's
+always wanting me to go and see her.  I really must."
+
+"Oh, I didn't know _you_ knew her," he answered.  Somehow, the fact of my
+knowing her seemed to lessen her importance in his eyes.  But soon he
+recovered his enthusiasm for her.
+
+"A wonderfully clever woman," he continued.  "I'm afraid I disappointed
+her a little though."  He said this, however, with a laugh that
+contradicted his words.  "She would not believe I was _the_ Mr. Smith.
+She imagined from my book that I was quite an old man."
+
+I could see nothing in my friend's book myself to suggest that the author
+was, of necessity, anything over eighteen.  The mistake appeared to me to
+display want of acumen, but it had evidently pleased him greatly.
+
+"I felt quite sorry for her," he went on, "chained to that bloodless,
+artificial society in which she lives.  'You can't tell,' she said to me,
+'how I long to meet someone to whom I could show my real self--who would
+understand me.'  I'm going to see her on Wednesday."
+
+I went with him.  My conversation with her was not as confidential as I
+had anticipated, owing to there being some eighty other people present in
+a room intended for the accommodation of eight; but after surging round
+for an hour in hot and aimless misery--as very young men at such
+gatherings do, knowing as a rule only the man who has brought them, and
+being unable to find him--I contrived to get a few words with her.
+
+She greeted me with a smile, in the light of which I at once forgot my
+past discomfort, and let her fingers rest, with delicious pressure, for a
+moment upon mine.
+
+"How good of you to keep your promise," she said.  "These people have
+been tiring me so.  Sit here, and tell me all you have been doing."
+
+She listened for about ten seconds, and then interrupted me with--
+
+"And that clever friend of yours that you came with.  I met him at dear
+Lady Lennon's last week.  Has _he_ written anything?"
+
+I explained to her that he had.
+
+"Tell me about it?" she said.  "I get so little time for reading, and
+then I only care to read the books that help me," and she gave me a
+grateful look more eloquent than words.
+
+I described the work to her, and wishing to do my friend justice I even
+recited a few of the passages upon which, as I knew, he especially prided
+himself.
+
+One sentence in particular seemed to lay hold of her.  "A good woman's
+arms round a man's neck is a lifebelt thrown out to him from heaven."
+
+"How beautiful!" she murmured.  "Say it again."
+
+I said it again, and she repeated it after me.
+
+Then a noisy old lady swooped down upon her, and I drifted away into a
+corner, where I tried to look as if I were enjoying myself, and failed.
+
+Later on, feeling it time to go, I sought my friend, and found him
+talking to her in a corner.  I approached and waited.  They were
+discussing the latest east-end murder.  A drunken woman had been killed
+by her husband, a hard-working artizan, who had been maddened by the ruin
+of his home.
+
+"Ah," she was saying, "what power a woman has to drag a man down or lift
+him up.  I never read a case in which a woman is concerned without
+thinking of those beautiful lines of yours: 'A good woman's arms round a
+man's neck is a lifebelt thrown out to him from heaven.'"
+
+* * * * *
+
+Opinions differed concerning her religion and politics.  Said the Low
+Church parson: "An earnest Christian woman, sir, of that unostentatious
+type that has always been the bulwark of our Church.  I am proud to know
+that woman, and I am proud to think that poor words of mine have been the
+humble instrument to wean that true woman's heart from the frivolities of
+fashion, and to fix her thoughts upon higher things.  A good Churchwoman,
+sir, a good Churchwoman, in the best sense of the word."
+
+Said the pale aristocratic-looking young Abbe to the Comtesse, the light
+of old-world enthusiasm shining from his deep-set eyes: "I have great
+hopes for our dear friend.  She finds it hard to sever the ties of time
+and love.  We are all weak, but her heart turns towards our mother Church
+as a child, though suckled among strangers, yearns after many years for
+the bosom that has borne it.  We have spoken, and I, even I, may be the
+voice in the wilderness leading the lost sheep back to the fold."
+
+Said Sir Harry Bennett, the great Theosophist lecturer, writing to a
+friend: "A singularly gifted woman, and a woman evidently thirsting for
+the truth.  A woman capable of willing her own life.  A woman not afraid
+of thought and reason, a lover of wisdom.  I have talked much with her at
+one time or another, and I have found her grasp my meaning with a
+quickness of perception quite unusual in my experience; and the arguments
+I have let fall, I am convinced, have borne excellent fruit.  I look
+forward to her becoming, at no very distant date, a valued member of our
+little band.  Indeed, without betraying confidence, I may almost say I
+regard her conversion as an accomplished fact."
+
+Colonel Maxim always spoke of her as "a fair pillar of the State."
+
+"With the enemy in our midst," said the florid old soldier, "it behoves
+every true man--aye, and every true woman--to rally to the defence of the
+country; and all honour, say I, to noble ladies such as Mrs. Clifton
+Courtenay, who, laying aside their natural shrinking from publicity, come
+forward in such a crisis as the present to combat the forces of disorder
+and disloyalty now rampant in the land."
+
+"But," some listener would suggest, "I gathered from young Jocelyn that
+Mrs. Clifton Courtenay held somewhat advanced views on social and
+political questions."
+
+"Jocelyn," the Colonel would reply with scorn; "pah!  There may have been
+a short space of time during which the fellow's long hair and windy
+rhetoric impressed her.  But I flatter myself I've put _my_ spoke in Mr.
+Jocelyn's wheel.  Why, damme, sir, she's consented to stand for Grand
+Dame of the Bermondsey Branch of the Primrose League next year.  What's
+Jocelyn to say to that, the scoundrel!"
+
+What Jocelyn said was:--
+
+"I know the woman is weak.  But I do not blame her; I pity her.  When the
+time comes, as soon it will, when woman is no longer a puppet, dancing to
+the threads held by some brainless man--when a woman is not threatened
+with social ostracism for daring to follow her own conscience instead of
+that of her nearest male relative--then will be the time to judge her.  It
+is not for me to betray the confidence reposed in me by a suffering
+woman, but you can tell that interesting old fossil, Colonel Maxim, that
+he and the other old women of the Bermondsey Branch of the Primrose
+League may elect Mrs. Clifton Courtenay for their President, and make the
+most of it; they have only got the outside of the woman.  Her heart is
+beating time to the tramp of an onward-marching people; her soul's eyes
+are straining for the glory of a coming dawn."
+
+But they all agreed she was a charming woman.
+
+
+
+
+WHIBLEY'S SPIRIT
+
+
+I never met it myself, but I knew Whibley very well indeed, so that I
+came to hear a goodish deal about it.
+
+It appeared to be devoted to Whibley, and Whibley was extremely fond of
+it.  Personally I am not interested in spirits, and no spirit has ever
+interested itself in me.  But I have friends whom they patronise, and my
+mind is quite open on the subject.  Of Whibley's Spirit I wish to speak
+with every possible respect.  It was, I am willing to admit, as
+hard-working and conscientious a spirit as any one could wish to live
+with.  The only thing I have to say against it is that it had no sense.
+
+It came with a carved cabinet that Whibley had purchased in Wardour
+Street for old oak, but which, as a matter of fact, was chestnut wood,
+manufactured in Germany, and at first was harmless enough, saying nothing
+but "Yes!" or "No!" and that only when spoken to.
+
+Whibley would amuse himself of an evening asking it questions, being
+careful to choose tolerably simple themes, such as, "Are you there?" (to
+which the Spirit would sometimes answer "Yes!" and sometimes "No!")  "Can
+you hear me?"  "Are you happy?"--and so on.  The Spirit made the cabinet
+crack--three times for "Yes" and twice for "No."  Now and then it would
+reply both "Yes!" and "No!" to the same question, which Whibley
+attributed to over-scrupulousness.  When nobody asked it anything it
+would talk to itself, repeating "Yes!"  "No!"  "No!"  "Yes!" over and
+over again in an aimless, lonesome sort of a way that made you feel sorry
+for it.
+
+After a while Whibley bought a table, and encouraged it to launch out
+into more active conversation.  To please Whibley, I assisted at some of
+the earlier seances, but during my presence it invariably maintained a
+reticence bordering on positive dulness.  I gathered from Whibley that it
+disliked me, thinking that I was unsympathetic.  The complaint was
+unjust; I was not unsympathetic, at least not at the commencement.  I
+came to hear it talk, and I wanted to hear it talk; I would have listened
+to it by the hour.  What tired me was its slowness in starting, and its
+foolishness when it had started, in using long words that it did not know
+how to spell.  I remember on one occasion, Whibley, Jobstock (Whibley's
+partner), and myself, sitting for two hours, trying to understand what
+the thing meant by "H-e-s-t-u-r-n-e-m-y-s-f-e-a-r."  It used no stops
+whatever.  It never so much as hinted where one sentence ended and
+another began.  It never even told us when it came to a proper name.  Its
+idea of an evening's conversation was to plump down a hundred or so
+vowels and consonants in front of you and leave you to make whatever
+sense out of them you could.
+
+We fancied at first it was talking about somebody named Hester (it had
+spelt Hester with a "u" before we allowed a margin for spelling), and we
+tried to work the sentence out on that basis, "Hester enemies fear," we
+thought it might be.  Whibley had a niece named Hester, and we decided
+the warning had reference to her.  But whether she was our enemy, and we
+were to fear her, or whether we had to fear her enemies (and, if so, who
+were they?), or whether it was our enemies who were to be frightened by
+Hester, or her enemies, or enemies generally, still remained doubtful.  We
+asked the table if it meant the first suggestion, and it said "No."  We
+asked what it did mean, and it said "Yes."
+
+This answer annoyed me, but Whibley explained that the Spirit was angry
+with us for our stupidity (which seemed quaint).  He informed us that it
+always said first "No," and then "Yes," when it was angry, and as it was
+his Spirit, and we were in his house, we kept our feelings to ourselves
+and started afresh.
+
+This time we abandoned the "Hestur" theory altogether.  Jobstock
+suggested "Haste" for the first word, and, thought the Spirit might have
+gone on phonetically.
+
+"Haste! you are here, Miss Sfear!" was what he made of it.
+
+Whibley asked him sarcastically if he'd kindly explain what that meant.
+
+I think Jobstock was getting irritable.  We had been sitting cramped up
+round a wretched little one-legged table all the evening, and this was
+almost the first bit of gossip we had got out of it.  To further excuse
+him, it should also be explained that the gas had been put out by
+Whibley, and that the fire had gone out of its own accord.  He replied
+that it was hard labour enough to find out what the thing said without
+having to make sense of it.
+
+"It can't spell," he added, "and it's got a nasty, sulky temper.  If it
+was my spirit I'd hire another spirit to kick it."
+
+Whibley was one of the mildest little men I ever knew, but chaff or abuse
+of his Spirit roused the devil in him, and I feared we were going to have
+a scene.  Fortunately, I was able to get his mind back to the
+consideration of "Hesturnemysfear" before anything worse happened than a
+few muttered remarks about the laughter of fools, and want of reverence
+for sacred subjects being the sign of a shallow mind.
+
+We tried "He's stern," and "His turn," and the "fear of Hesturnemy," and
+tried to think who "Hesturnemy" might be.  Three times we went over the
+whole thing again from the beginning, which meant six hundred and six
+tiltings of the table, and then suddenly the explanation struck
+me--"Eastern Hemisphere."
+
+Whibley had asked it for any information it might possess concerning his
+wife's uncle, from whom he had not heard for months, and that apparently
+was its idea of an address.
+
+The fame of Whibley's Spirit became noised abroad, with the result that
+Whibley was able to command the willing service of more congenial
+assistants, and Jobstock and myself were dismissed.  But we bore no
+malice.
+
+Under these more favourable conditions the Spirit plucked up wonderfully,
+and talked everybody's head off.  It could never have been a cheerful
+companion, however, for its conversation was chiefly confined to warnings
+and prognostications of evil.  About once a fortnight Whibley would drop
+round on me, in a friendly way, to tell me that I was to beware of a man
+who lived in a street beginning with a "C," or to inform me that if I
+would go to a town on the coast where there were three churches I should
+meet someone who would do me an irreparable injury, and, that I did not
+rush off then and there in search of that town he regarded as flying in
+the face of Providence.
+
+In its passion for poking its ghostly nose into other people's affairs it
+reminded me of my earthly friend Poppleton.  Nothing pleased it better
+than being appealed to for aid and advice, and Whibley, who was a perfect
+slave to it, would hunt half over the parish for people in trouble and
+bring them to it.
+
+It would direct ladies, eager for divorce court evidence, to go to the
+third house from the corner of the fifth street, past such and such a
+church or public-house (it never would give a plain, straightforward
+address), and ring the bottom bell but one twice.  They would thank it
+effusively, and next morning would start to find the fifth street past
+the church, and would ring the bottom bell but one of the third house
+from the corner twice, and a man in his shirt sleeves would come to the
+door and ask them what they wanted.
+
+They could not tell what they wanted, they did not know themselves, and
+the man would use bad language, and slam the door in their faces.
+
+Then they would think that perhaps the Spirit meant the fifth street the
+other way, or the third house from the opposite corner, and would try
+again, with still more unpleasant results.
+
+One July I met Whibley, mooning disconsolately along Princes Street,
+Edinburgh.
+
+"Hullo!" I exclaimed, "what are you doing here?  I thought you were busy
+over that School Board case."
+
+"Yes," he answered, "I ought really to be in London, but the truth is I'm
+rather expecting something to happen down here."
+
+"Oh!" I said, "and what's that?"
+
+"Well," he replied hesitatingly, as though he would rather not talk about
+it, "I don't exactly know yet."
+
+"You've come from London to Edinburgh, and don't know what you've come
+for!" I cried.
+
+"Well, you see," he said, still more reluctantly, as it seemed to me, "it
+was Maria's idea; she wished--"
+
+"Maria!" I interrupted, looking perhaps a little sternly at him, "who's
+Maria?"  (His wife's name I knew was Emily Georgina Anne.)
+
+"Oh!  I forgot," he explained; "she never would tell her name before you,
+would she?  It's the Spirit, you know."
+
+"Oh! that," I said, "it's she that has sent you here.  Didn't she tell
+you what for?"
+
+"No," he answered, "that's what worries me.  All she would say was, 'Go
+to Edinburgh--something will happen.'"
+
+"And how long are you going to remain here?" I inquired.
+
+"I don't know," he replied.  "I've been here a week already, and Jobstock
+writes quite angrily.  I wouldn't have come if Maria hadn't been so
+urgent.  She repeated it three evenings running."
+
+I hardly knew what to do.  The little man was so dreadfully in earnest
+about the business that one could not argue much with him.
+
+"You are sure," I said, after thinking a while, "that this Maria is a
+good Spirit?  There are all sorts going about, I'm told.  You're sure
+this isn't the spirit of some deceased lunatic, playing the fool with
+you?"
+
+"I've thought of that," he admitted.  "Of course that might be so.  If
+nothing happens soon I shall almost begin to suspect it."
+
+"Well, I should certainly make some inquiries into its character before I
+trusted it any further," I answered, and left him.
+
+About a month later I ran against him outside the Law Courts.
+
+"It was all right about Maria; something did happen in Edinburgh while I
+was there.  That very morning I met you one of my oldest clients died
+quite suddenly at his house at Queensferry, only a few miles outside the
+city."
+
+"I'm glad of that," I answered, "I mean, of course, for Maria's sake.  It
+was lucky you went then."
+
+"Well, not altogether," he replied, "at least, not in a worldly sense.  He
+left his affairs in a very complicated state, and his eldest son went
+straight up to London to consult me about them, and, not finding me
+there, and time being important, went to Kebble.  I was rather
+disappointed when I got back and heard about it."
+
+"Umph!" I said; "she's not a smart spirit, anyway."
+
+"No," he answered, "perhaps not.  But, you see, something did really
+happen."
+
+After that his affection for "Maria" increased tenfold, while her
+attachment to himself became a burden to his friends.  She grew too big
+for her table, and, dispensing with all mechanical intermediaries, talked
+to him direct.  She followed him everywhere.  Mary's lamb couldn't have
+been a bigger nuisance.  She would even go with him into the bedroom, and
+carry on long conversations with him in the middle of the night.  His
+wife objected; she said it seemed hardly decent, but there was no keeping
+her out.
+
+She turned up with him at picnics and Christmas parties.  Nobody heard
+her speak to him, but it seemed necessary for him to reply to her aloud,
+and to see him suddenly get up from his chair and slip away to talk
+earnestly to nothing in a corner disturbed the festivities.
+
+"I should really be glad," he once confessed to me, "to get a little time
+to myself.  She means kindly, but it _is_ a strain.  And then the others
+don't like it.  It makes them nervous.  I can see it does."
+
+One evening she caused quite a scene at the club.  Whibley had been
+playing whist, with the Major for a partner.  At the end of the game the
+Major, leaning across the table toward him, asked, in a tone of deadly
+calm, "May I inquire, sir, whether there was any earthly reason" (he
+emphasised "earthly") "for your following my lead of spades with your
+only trump?"
+
+"I--I--am very sorry, Major," replied Whibley apologetically.
+"I--I--somehow felt I--I ought to play that queen."
+
+"Entirely your own inspiration, or suggested?" persisted the Major, who
+had, of course, heard of "Maria."
+
+Whibley admitted the play had been suggested to him.  The Major rose from
+the table.
+
+"Then, sir," said he, with concentrated indignation, "I decline to
+continue this game.  A human fool I can tolerate for a partner, but if I
+am to be hampered by a damned spirit--"
+
+"You've no right to say that," cried Whibley hotly.
+
+"I apologise," returned the Major coldly; "we will say a blessed spirit.
+I decline to play whist with spirits of any kind; and I advise you, sir,
+if you intend giving many exhibitions with the lady, first to teach her
+the rudiments of the game."
+
+Saying which the Major put on his hat and left the club, and I made
+Whibley drink a stiff glass of brandy and water, and sent him and "Maria"
+home in a cab.
+
+Whibley got rid of "Maria" at last.  It cost him in round figures about
+eight thousand pounds, but his family said it was worth it.
+
+A Spanish Count hired a furnished house a few doors from Whibley's, and
+one evening he was introduced to Whibley, and came home and had a chat
+with him.  Whibley told him about "Maria," and the Count quite fell in
+love with her.  He said that if only he had had such a spirit to help and
+advise him, it might have altered his whole life.
+
+He was the first man who had ever said a kind word about the spirit, and
+Whibley loved him for it.  The Count seemed as though he could never see
+enough of Whibley after that evening, and the three of them--Whibley, the
+Count, and "Maria"--would sit up half the night talking together.
+
+The precise particulars I never heard.  Whibley was always very reticent
+on the matter.  Whether "Maria" really did exist, and the Count
+deliberately set to work to bamboozle her (she was fool enough for
+anything), or whether she was a mere hallucination of Whibley's, and the
+man tricked Whibley by "hypnotic suggestions" (as I believe it is
+called), I am not prepared to say.  The only thing certain is that
+"Maria" convinced Whibley that the Count had discovered a secret gold
+mine in Peru.  She said she knew all about it, and counselled Whibley to
+beg the Count to let him put a few thousands into the working of it.
+"Maria," it appeared, had known the Count from his boyhood, and could
+answer for it that he was the most honourable man in all South America.
+Possibly enough he was.
+
+The Count was astonished to find that Whibley knew all about his mine.
+Eight thousand pounds was needed to start the workings, but he had not
+mentioned it to any one, as he wanted to keep the whole thing to himself,
+and thought he could save the money on his estates in Portugal.  However,
+to oblige "Maria," he would let Whibley supply the money.  Whibley
+supplied it--in cash, and no one has ever seen the Count since.
+
+That broke up Whibley's faith in "Maria," and a sensible doctor, getting
+hold of him threatened to prescribe a lunatic asylum for him if ever he
+found him carrying on with any spirits again.  That completed the cure.
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN WHO WENT WRONG
+
+
+I first met Jack Burridge nearly ten years ago on a certain North-country
+race-course.
+
+The saddling bell had just rung for the chief event of the day.  I was
+sauntering along with my hands in my pockets, more interested in the
+crowd than in the race, when a sporting friend, crossing on his way to
+the paddock, seized me by the arm and whispered hoarsely in my ear:--
+
+"Put your shirt on Mrs. Waller."
+
+"Put my--?" I began.
+
+"Put your shirt on Mrs. Waller," he repeated still more impressively, and
+disappeared in the throng.
+
+I stared after him in blank amazement.  Why should I put my shirt on Mrs.
+Waller?  Even if it would fit a lady.  And how about myself?
+
+I was passing the grand stand, and, glancing up, I saw "Mrs. Waller,
+twelve to one," chalked on a bookmaker's board.  Then it dawned upon me
+that "Mrs. Waller" was a horse, and, thinking further upon the matter, I
+evolved the idea that my friend's advice, expressed in more becoming
+language, was "Back 'Mrs. Waller' for as much as you can possibly
+afford."
+
+"Thank you," I said to myself, "I have backed cast-iron certainties
+before.  Next time I bet upon a horse I shall make the selection by
+shutting my eyes and putting a pin through the card."
+
+But the seed had taken root.  My friend's words surged in my brain.  The
+birds passing overhead twittered, "Put your shirt on 'Mrs. Waller.'"
+
+I reasoned with myself.  I reminded myself of my few former ventures.  But
+the craving to put, if not my shirt, at all events half a sovereign on
+"Mrs. Waller" only grew the stronger the more strongly I battled against
+it.  I felt that if "Mrs. Waller" won and I had nothing on her, I should
+reproach myself to my dying day.
+
+I was on the other side of the course.  There was no time to get back to
+the enclosure.  The horses were already forming for the start.  A few
+yards off, under a white umbrella, an outside bookmaker was shouting his
+final prices in stentorian tones.  He was a big, genial-looking man, with
+an honest red face.
+
+"What price 'Mrs. Waller'?" I asked him.
+
+"Fourteen to one," he answered, "and good luck to you."
+
+I handed him half a sovereign, and he wrote me out a ticket.  I crammed
+it into my waistcoat pocket, and hurried off to see the race.  To my
+intense astonishment "Mrs. Waller" won.  The novel sensation of having
+backed the winner so excited me that I forgot all about my money, and it
+was not until a good hour afterwards that I recollected my bet.
+
+Then I started off to search for the man under the white umbrella.  I
+went to where I thought I had left him, but no white umbrella could I
+find.
+
+Consoling myself with the reflection that my loss served me right for
+having been fool enough to trust an outside "bookie," I turned on my heel
+and began to make my way back to my seat.  Suddenly a voice hailed me:--
+
+"Here you are, sir.  It's Jack Burridge you want.  Over here, sir."
+
+I looked round, and there was Jack Burridge at my elbow.
+
+"I saw you looking about, sir," he said, "but I could not make you hear.
+You was looking the wrong side of the tent."
+
+It was pleasant to find that his honest face had not belied him.
+
+"It is very good of you," I said; "I had given up all hopes of seeing
+you.  Or," I added with a smile, "my seven pounds."
+
+"Seven pun' ten," he corrected me; "you're forgetting your own thin 'un."
+
+He handed me the money and went back to his stand.
+
+On my way into the town I came across him again.  A small crowd was
+collected, thoughtfully watching a tramp knocking about a
+miserable-looking woman.
+
+Jack, pushing to the front, took in the scene and took off his coat in
+the same instant.
+
+"Now then, my fine old English gentleman," he sang out, "come and have a
+try at me for a change."
+
+The tramp was a burly ruffian, and I have seen better boxers than Jack.
+He got himself a black eye, and a nasty cut over the lip, before he
+hardly knew where he was.  But in spite of that--and a good deal more--he
+stuck to his man and finished him.
+
+At the end, as he helped his adversary up, I heard him say to the fellow
+in a kindly whisper:--
+
+"You're too good a sort, you know, to whollop a woman.  Why, you very
+near give me a licking.  You must have forgot yourself, matey."
+
+The fellow interested me.  I waited and walked on with him.  He told me
+about his home in London, at Mile End--about his old father and mother,
+his little brothers and sisters--and what he was saving up to do for
+them.  Kindliness oozed from every pore in his skin.
+
+Many that we met knew him, and all, when they saw his round, red face,
+smiled unconsciously.  At the corner of the High Street a pale-faced
+little drudge of a girl passed us, saying as she slipped by
+"Good-evening, Mr. Burridge."
+
+He made a dart and caught her by the shoulder.
+
+"And how is father?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, if you please, Mr. Burridge, he is out again.  All the mills is
+closed," answered the child.
+
+"And mother?"
+
+"She don't get no better, sir."
+
+"And who's keeping you all?"
+
+"Oh, if you please, sir, Jimmy's earning something now," replied the
+mite.
+
+He took a couple of sovereigns from his waistcoat pocket, and closed the
+child's hand upon them.
+
+"That's all right, my lass, that's all right," he said, stopping her
+stammering thanks.  "You write to me if things don't get better.  You
+know where to find Jack Burridge."
+
+Strolling about the streets in the evening, I happened to pass the inn
+where he was staying.  The parlour window was open, and out into the
+misty night his deep, cheery voice, trolling forth an old-fashioned
+drinking song, came rolling like a wind, cleansing the corners of one's
+heart with its breezy humanness.  He was sitting at the head of the table
+surrounded by a crowd of jovial cronies.  I lingered for a while watching
+the scene.  It made the world appear a less sombre dwelling-place than I
+had sometimes pictured it.
+
+I determined, on my return to London, to look him up, and accordingly one
+evening started to find the little by-street off the Mile End Road in
+which he lived.  As I turned the corner he drove up in his dog-cart; it
+was a smart turn-out.  On the seat beside him sat a neat, withered little
+old woman, whom he introduced to me as his mother.
+
+"I tell 'im it's a fine gell as 'e oughter 'ave up 'ere aside 'im," said
+the old lady, preparing to dismount, "an old woman like me takes all the
+paint off the show."
+
+"Get along with yer," he replied laughingly, jumping down and handing the
+reins to the lad who had been waiting, "you could give some of the young
+uns points yet, mother.  I allus promised the old lady as she should ride
+behind her own 'oss one day," he continued, turning to me, "didn't I,
+mother?"
+
+"Ay, ay," replied the old soul, as she hobbled nimbly up the steps,
+"ye're a good son, Jack, ye're a good son."
+
+He led the way into the parlour.  As he entered every face lightened up
+with pleasure, a harmony of joyous welcome greeted him.  The old hard
+world had been shut out with the slam of the front door.  I seemed to
+have wandered into Dickensland.  The red-faced man with the small
+twinkling eyes and the lungs of leather loomed before me, a large, fat
+household fairy.  From his capacious pockets came forth tobacco for the
+old father; a huge bunch of hot-house grapes for a neighbour's sickly
+child, who was stopping with them; a book of Henty's--beloved of boys--for
+a noisy youngster who called him "uncle"; a bottle of port wine for a
+wan, elderly woman with a swollen face--his widowed sister-in-law, as I
+subsequently learned; sweets enough for the baby (whose baby I don't
+know) to make it sick for a week; and a roll of music for his youngest
+sister.
+
+"We're a-going to make a lady of her," he said, drawing the child's shy
+face against his gaudy waistcoat, and running his coarse hand through her
+pretty curls; "and she shall marry a jockey when she grows up."
+
+After supper he brewed some excellent whisky punch, and insisted upon the
+old lady joining us, which she eventually did with much coughing and
+protestation; but I noticed that she finished the tumblerful.  For the
+children he concocted a marvellous mixture, which he called an
+"eye-composer," the chief ingredients being hot lemonade, ginger wine,
+sugar, oranges, and raspberry vinegar.  It had the desired effect.
+
+I stayed till late, listening to his inexhaustible fund of stories.  Over
+most of them he laughed with us himself--a great gusty laugh that made
+the cheap glass ornaments upon the mantelpiece to tremble; but now and
+then a recollection came to him that spread a sudden gravity across his
+jovial face, bringing a curious quaver into his deep voice.
+
+Their tongues a little loosened by the punch, the old folks would have
+sung his praises to the verge of tediousness had he not almost sternly
+interrupted them.
+
+"Shut up, mother," he cried at last, quite gruffly, "what I does I does
+to please myself.  I likes to see people comfortable about me.  If they
+wasn't, it's me as would be more upset than them."
+
+I did not see him again for nearly two years.  Then one October evening,
+strolling about the East End, I met him coming out of a little Chapel in
+the Burdett Road.  He was so changed that I should not have known him had
+not I overheard a woman as she passed him say, "Good-evening, Mr.
+Burridge."
+
+A pair of bushy side-whiskers had given to his red face an aggressively
+respectable appearance.  He was dressed in an ill-fitting suit of black,
+and carried an umbrella in one hand and a book in the other.
+
+In some mysterious way he managed to look both thinner and shorter than
+my recollection of him.  Altogether, he suggested to me the idea that he
+himself--the real man--had by some means or other been extracted, leaving
+only his shrunken husk behind.  The genial juices of humanity had been
+squeezed out of him.
+
+"Not Jack Burridge!" I exclaimed, confronting him in astonishment.
+
+His little eyes wandered shiftily up and down the street.  "No, sir," he
+replied (his tones had lost their windy boisterousness--a hard, metallic
+voice spoke to me), "not the one as you used to know, praise be the
+Lord."
+
+"And have you given up the old business?" I asked.
+
+"Yes, sir," he replied, "that's all over; I've been a vile sinner in my
+time, God forgive me for it.  But, thank Heaven, I have repented in
+time."
+
+"Come and have a drink," I said, slipping my arm through his, "and tell
+me all about it."
+
+He disengaged himself from me, firmly but gently.  "You mean well, sir,"
+he said, "but I have given up the drink."
+
+Evidently he would have been rid of me, but a literary man, scenting
+material for his stockpot, is not easily shaken off.  I asked after the
+old folks, and if they were still stopping with him.
+
+"Yes," he said, "for the present.  Of course, a man can't be expected to
+keep people for ever; so many mouths to fill is hard work these times,
+and everybody sponges on a man just because he's good-natured."
+
+"And how are you getting on?" I asked.
+
+"Tolerably well, thank you, sir.  The Lord provides for His servants," he
+replied with a smug smile.  "I have got a little shop now in the
+Commercial Road."
+
+"Whereabouts?" I persisted.  "I would like to call and see you."
+
+He gave me the address reluctantly, and said he would esteem it a great
+pleasure if I would honour him by a visit, which was a palpable lie.
+
+The following afternoon I went.  I found the place to be a pawnbroker's
+shop, and from all appearances he must have been doing a very brisk
+business.  He was out himself attending a temperance committee, but his
+old father was behind the counter, and asked me inside.  Though it was a
+chilly day there was no fire in the parlour, and the two old folks sat
+one each side of the empty hearth, silent and sad.  They seemed little
+more pleased to see me than their son, but after a while Mrs. Burridge's
+natural garrulity asserted itself, and we fell into chat.
+
+I asked what had become of his sister-in-law, the lady with the swollen
+face.
+
+"I couldn't rightly tell you, sir," answered the old lady, "she ain't
+livin' with us now.  You see, sir," she continued, "John's got different
+notions to what 'e used to 'ave.  'E don't cotten much to them as ain't
+found grace, and poor Jane never did 'ave much religion!"
+
+"And the little one?" I inquired.  "The one with the curls?"
+
+"What, Bessie, sir?" said the old lady.  "Oh, she's out at service, sir;
+John don't think it good for young folks to be idle."
+
+"Your son seems to have changed a good deal, Mrs. Burridge," I remarked.
+
+"Ay, sir," she assented, "you may well say that.  It nearly broke my 'art
+at fust; everythin' so different to what it 'ad been.  Not as I'd stand
+in the boy's light.  If our being a bit uncomfortable like in this world
+is a-going to do 'im any good in the next me and father ain't the ones to
+begrudge it, are we, old man?"
+
+The "old man" concurred grumpily.
+
+"Was it a sudden conversion?" I asked.  "How did it come about?"
+
+"It was a young woman as started 'im off," explained the old lady.  "She
+come round to our place one day a-collectin' for somethin' or other, and
+Jack, in 'is free-'anded way, 'e give 'er a five-pun' note.  Next week
+she come agen for somethin' else, and stopped and talked to 'im about 'is
+soul in the passage.  She told 'im as 'e was a-goin' straight to 'ell,
+and that 'e oughter give up the bookmakin' and settle down to a
+respec'ble, God-fearin' business.  At fust 'e only laughed, but she
+lammed in tracts at 'im full of the most awful language; and one day she
+fetched 'im round to one of them revivalist chaps, as fair settled 'im.
+
+"'E ain't never been his old self since then.  'E give up the bettin' and
+bought this 'ere, though what's the difference blessed if I can see.  It
+makes my 'eart ache, it do, to 'ear my Jack a-beatin' down the poor
+people--and it ain't like 'im.  It went agen 'is grain at fust, I could
+see; but they told him as 'ow it was folks's own fault that they was
+poor, and as 'ow it was the will of God, because they was a drinkin',
+improvident lot.
+
+"Then they made 'im sign the pledge.  'E'd allus been used to 'is glass,
+Jack 'ad, and I think as knockin' it off 'ave soured 'im a bit--seems as
+if all the sperit 'ad gone out of 'im--and of course me and father 'ave
+'ad to give up our little drop too.  Then they told 'im as 'e must give
+up smokin'- that was another way of goin' straight to 'ell--and that
+ain't made 'im any the more cheerful like, and father misses 'is little
+bit--don't ye, father?"
+
+"Ay," answered the old fellow savagely; "can't say I thinks much of these
+'ere folks as is going to heaven; blowed if I don't think they'll be a
+chirpier lot in t'other place."
+
+An angry discussion in the shop interrupted us.  Jack had returned, and
+was threatening an excited woman with the police.  It seemed she had
+miscalculated the date, and had come a day too late with her interest.
+
+Having got rid of her, he came into the parlour with the watch in his
+hand.
+
+"It's providential she was late," he said, looking at it; "it's worth ten
+times what I lent on it."
+
+He packed his father back into the shop, and his mother down into the
+kitchen to get his tea, and for a while we sat together talking.
+
+I found his conversation a strange mixture of self-laudation, showing
+through a flimsy veil of self-disparagement, and of satisfaction at the
+conviction that he was "saved," combined with equally evident
+satisfaction that most other people weren't--somewhat trying, however;
+and, remembering an appointment, rose to go.
+
+He made no effort to stay me, but I could see that he was bursting to
+tell me something.  At last, taking a religious paper from his pocket,
+and pointing to a column, he blurted out:
+
+"You don't take any interest in the Lord's vineyard, I suppose, sir?"
+
+I glanced at the part of the paper indicated.  It announced a new mission
+to the Chinese, and heading the subscription list stood the name, "Mr.
+John Burridge, one hundred guineas."
+
+"You subscribe largely, Mr. Burridge," I said, handing him back the
+paper.
+
+He rubbed his big hands together.  "The Lord will repay a hundredfold,"
+he answered.
+
+"In which case it's just as well to have a note of the advance down in
+black and white, eh?" I added.
+
+His little eyes looked sharply at me; but he made no reply, and, shaking
+hands, I left him.
+
+
+
+
+THE HOBBY RIDER
+
+
+Bump.  Bump.  Bump-bump.  Bump.
+
+I sat up in bed and listened intently.  It seemed to me as if someone
+with a muffled hammer were trying to knock bricks out of the wall.
+
+"Burglars," I said to myself (one assumes, as a matter of course, that
+everything happening in this world after 1 a.m. is due to burglars), and
+I reflected what a curiously literal, but at the same time slow and
+cumbersome, method of housebreaking they had adopted.
+
+The bumping continued irregularly, yet uninterruptedly.
+
+My bed was by the window.  I reached out my hand and drew aside a corner
+of the curtain.  The sunlight streamed into the room.  I looked at my
+watch: it was ten minutes past five.
+
+A most unbusinesslike hour for burglars, I thought.  Why, it will be
+breakfast-time before they get in.
+
+Suddenly there came a crash, and some substance striking against the
+blind fell upon the floor.  I sprang out of bed and threw open the
+window.
+
+A red-haired young gentleman, scantily clad in a sweater and a pair of
+flannel trousers, stood on the lawn below me.
+
+"Good morning," he said cheerily.  "Do you mind throwing me back my
+ball?"
+
+"What ball?" I said.
+
+"My tennis ball," he answered.  "It must be somewhere in the room; it
+went clean through the window."
+
+I found the ball and threw it back to him.
+
+"What are you doing?" I asked.  "Playing tennis?"
+
+"No," he said.  "I am just practising against the side of the house.  It
+improves your game wonderfully."
+
+"It don't improve my night's rest," I answered somewhat surlily I fear.
+"I came down here for peace and quiet.  Can't you do it in the daytime?"
+
+"Daytime!" he laughed.  "Why it has been daytime for the last two hours.
+Never mind, I'll go round the other side."
+
+He disappeared round the corner, and set to work at the back, where he
+woke up the dog.  I heard another window smash, followed by a sound as of
+somebody getting up violently in a distant part of the house, and shortly
+afterwards I must have fallen asleep again.
+
+I had come to spend a few weeks at a boarding establishment in Deal.  He
+was the only other young man in the house, and I was naturally thrown a
+good deal upon his society.  He was a pleasant, genial young fellow, but
+he would have been better company had he been a little less enthusiastic
+as regards tennis.
+
+He played tennis ten hours a day on the average.  He got up romantic
+parties to play it by moonlight (when half his time was generally taken
+up in separating his opponents), and godless parties to play it on
+Sundays.  On wet days I have seen him practising services by himself in a
+mackintosh and goloshes.
+
+He had been spending the winter with his people at Tangiers, and I asked
+him how he liked the place.
+
+"Oh, a beast of a hole!" he replied.  "There is not a court anywhere in
+the town.  We tried playing on the roof, but the _mater_ thought it
+dangerous."
+
+Switzerland he had been delighted with.  He counselled me next time I
+went to stay at Zermatt.
+
+"There is a capital court at Zermatt," he said.  "You might almost fancy
+yourself at Wimbledon."
+
+A mutual acquaintance whom I subsequently met told me that at the top of
+the Jungfrau he had said to him, his eyes fixed the while upon a small
+snow plateau enclosed by precipices a few hundred feet below them--
+
+"By Jove!  That wouldn't make half a bad little tennis court--that flat
+bit down there.  Have to be careful you didn't run back too far."
+
+When he was not playing tennis, or practising tennis, or reading about
+tennis, he was talking about tennis.  Renshaw was the prominent figure in
+the tennis world at that time, and he mentioned Renshaw until there grew
+up within my soul a dark desire to kill Renshaw in a quiet,
+unostentatious way, and bury him.
+
+One drenching afternoon he talked tennis to me for three hours on end,
+referring to Renshaw, so far as I kept count, four thousand nine hundred
+and thirteen times.  After tea he drew his chair to the window beside me,
+and commenced--
+
+"Have you ever noticed how Renshaw--"
+
+I said--
+
+"Suppose someone took a gun--someone who could aim very straight--and
+went out and shot Renshaw till he was quite dead, would you tennis
+players drop him and talk about somebody else?"
+
+"Oh, but who would shoot Renshaw?" he said indignantly.
+
+"Never mind," I said, "supposing someone did?"
+
+"Well, then, there would be his brother," he replied.
+
+I had forgotten that.
+
+"Well, we won't argue about how many of them there are," I said.  "Suppose
+someone killed the lot, should we hear less of Renshaw?"
+
+"Never," he replied emphatically.  "Renshaw will always be a name
+wherever tennis is spoken of."
+
+I dread to think what the result might have been had his answer been
+other than it was.
+
+The next year he dropped tennis completely and became an ardent amateur
+photographer, whereupon all his friends implored him to return to tennis,
+and sought to interest him in talk about services and returns and
+volleys, and in anecdotes concerning Renshaw.  But he would not heed
+them.
+
+Whatever he saw, wherever he went, he took.  He took his friends, and
+made them his enemies.  He took babies, and brought despair to fond
+mothers' hearts.  He took young wives, and cast a shadow on the home.
+Once there was a young man who loved not wisely, so his friends thought,
+but the more they talked against her the more he clung to her.  Then a
+happy idea occurred to the father.  He got Begglely to photograph her in
+seven different positions.
+
+When her lover saw the first, he said--
+
+"What an awful looking thing!  Who did it?"
+
+When Begglely showed him the second, he said--
+
+"But, my dear fellow, it's not a bit like her.  You've made her look an
+ugly old woman."
+
+At the third he said--
+
+"Whatever have you done to her feet?  They can't be that size, you know.
+It isn't in nature!"
+
+At the fourth he exclaimed--
+
+"But, heavens, man!  Look at the shape you've made her.  Where on earth
+did you get the idea from?"
+
+At the first glimpse of the fifth he staggered.
+
+"Great Scott!" he cried with a shudder, "what a ghastly expression you've
+got into it!  It isn't human!"
+
+Begglely was growing offended, but the father, who was standing by, came
+to his defence.
+
+"It's nothing to do with Begglely," exclaimed the old gentleman suavely.
+"It can't be _his_ fault.  What is a photographer?  Simply an instrument
+in the hands of science.  He arranges his apparatus, and whatever is in
+front of it comes into it."
+
+"No," continued the old gentleman, laying a constrained hand upon
+Begglely, who was about to resume the exhibition, "don't--don't show him
+the other two."
+
+I was sorry for the poor girl, for I believe she really cared for the
+youngster; and as for her looks, they were quite up to the average.  But
+some evil sprite seemed to have got into Begglely's camera.  It seized
+upon defects with the unerring instinct of a born critic, and dilated
+upon them to the obscuration of all virtues.  A man with a pimple became
+a pimple with a man as background.  People with strongly marked features
+became merely adjuncts to their own noses.  One man in the neighbourhood
+had, undetected, worn a wig for fourteen years.  Begglely's camera
+discovered the fraud in an instant, and so completely exposed it that the
+man's friends wondered afterwards how the fact ever could have escaped
+them.  The thing seemed to take a pleasure in showing humanity at its
+very worst.  Babies usually came out with an expression of low cunning.
+Most young girls had to take their choice of appearing either as
+simpering idiots or embryo vixens.  To mild old ladies it generally gave
+a look of aggressive cynicism.  Our vicar, as excellent an old gentleman
+as ever breathed, Begglely presented to us as a beetle-browed savage of a
+peculiarly low type of intellect; while upon the leading solicitor of the
+town he bestowed an expression of such thinly-veiled hypocrisy that few
+who saw the photograph cared ever again to trust him with their affairs.
+
+As regards myself I should, perhaps, make no comment, I am possibly a
+prejudiced party.  All I will say, therefore, is that if I in any way
+resemble Begglely's photograph of me, then the critics are fully
+justified in everything they have at any time, anywhere, said of me--and
+more.  Nor, I maintain--though I make no pretence of possessing the
+figure of Apollo--is one of my legs twice the length of the other, and
+neither does it curve upwards.  This I can prove.  Begglely allowed that
+an accident had occurred to the negative during the process of
+development, but this explanation does not appear on the picture, and I
+cannot help feeling that an injustice has been done me.
+
+His perspective seemed to be governed by no law either human or divine.  I
+have seen a photograph of his uncle and a windmill, judging from which I
+defy any unprejudiced person to say which is the bigger, the uncle or the
+mill.
+
+On one occasion he created quite a scandal in the parish by exhibiting a
+well-known and eminently respectable maiden lady nursing a young man on
+her knee.  The gentleman's face was indistinct, and he was dressed in a
+costume which, upon a man of his size--one would have estimated him as
+rising 6 ft. 4 in.--appeared absurdly juvenile.  He had one arm round her
+neck, and she was holding his other hand and smirking.
+
+I, knowing something of Begglely's machine, willingly accepted the lady's
+explanation, which was to the effect that the male in question was her
+nephew, aged eleven; but the uncharitable ridiculed this statement, and
+appearances were certainly against her.
+
+It was in the early days of the photographic craze, and an inexperienced
+world was rather pleased with the idea of being taken on the cheap.  The
+consequence was that nearly everyone for three miles round sat or stood
+or leant or laid to Begglely at one time or another, with the result that
+a less conceited parish than ours it would have been difficult to
+discover.  No one who had once looked upon a photograph of himself taken
+by Begglely ever again felt any pride in his personal appearance.  The
+picture was invariably a revelation to him.
+
+Later, some evil-disposed person invented Kodaks, and Begglely went
+everywhere slung on to a thing that looked like an overgrown missionary
+box, and that bore a legend to the effect that if Begglely would pull the
+button, a shameless Company would do the rest.  Life became a misery to
+Begglely's friends.  Nobody dared to do anything for fear of being taken
+in the act.  He took an instantaneous photograph of his own father
+swearing at the gardener, and snapped his youngest sister and her lover
+at the exact moment of farewell at the garden gate.  Nothing was sacred
+to him.  He Kodaked his aunt's funeral from behind, and showed the chief
+mourner but one whispering a funny story into the ear of the third cousin
+as they stood behind their hats beside the grave.
+
+Public indignation was at its highest when a new comer to the
+neighbourhood, a young fellow named Haynoth, suggested the getting
+together of a party for a summer's tour in Turkey.  Everybody took up the
+idea with enthusiasm, and recommended Begglely as the "party."  We had
+great hopes from that tour.  Our idea was that Begglely would pull his
+button outside a harem or behind a sultana, and that a Bashi Bazouk or a
+Janissary would do the rest for us.
+
+We were, however, partly doomed to disappointment--I say, "partly,"
+because, although Begglely returned alive, he came back entirely cured of
+his photographic craze.  He said that every English-speaking man, woman,
+or child whom he met abroad had its camera with it, and that after a time
+the sight of a black cloth or the click of a button began to madden him.
+
+He told us that on the summit of Mount Tutra, in the Carpathians, the
+English and American amateur photographers waiting to take "the grand
+panorama" were formed by the Hungarian police in queue, two abreast, each
+with his or her camera under his or her arm, and that a man had to stand
+sometimes as long as three and a half hours before his turn came round.
+He also told us that the beggars in Constantinople went about with
+placards hung round their necks, stating their charges for being
+photographed.  One of these price lists he brought back with him as a
+sample.
+
+It ran:--
+
+One snap shot, back or front ..    ...    ... 2 frcs.
+       ,,       with expression     ...    ... 3 ,,
+       ,,       surprised in quaint attitude . 4 ,,
+       ,,       while saying prayers ...   ... 5 ,,
+       ,,       while fighting       ...   ... 10 ,,
+
+
+He said that in some instances where a man had an exceptionally
+villainous cast of countenance, or was exceptionally deformed, as much as
+twenty francs were demanded and readily obtained.
+
+He abandoned photography and took to golf.  He showed people how, by
+digging a hole here and putting a brickbat or two there, they could
+convert a tennis-lawn into a miniature golf link,--and did it for them.
+He persuaded elderly ladies and gentlemen that it was the mildest
+exercise going, and would drag them for miles over wet gorse and heather,
+and bring them home dead beat, coughing, and full of evil thoughts.
+
+The last time I saw him was in Switzerland, a few months ago.  He
+appeared indifferent to the subject of golf, but talked much about whist.
+We met by chance at Grindelwald, and agreed to climb the Faulhorn
+together next morning.  Half-way up we rested, and I strolled on a little
+way by myself to gain a view.  Returning, I found him with a "Cavendish"
+in his hand and a pack of cards spread out before him on the grass,
+solving a problem.
+
+
+
+
+THE MAN WHO DID NOT BELIEVE IN LUCK
+
+
+He got in at Ipswich with seven different weekly papers under his arm.  I
+noticed that each one insured its reader against death or injury by
+railway accident.  He arranged his luggage upon the rack above him, took
+off his hat and laid it on the seat beside him, mopped his bald head with
+a red silk handkerchief, and then set to work steadily to write his name
+and address upon each of the seven papers.  I sat opposite to him and
+read _Punch_.  I always take the old humour when travelling; I find it
+soothing to the nerves.
+
+Passing over the points at Manningtree the train gave a lurch, and a
+horse-shoe he had carefully placed in the rack above him slipped through
+the netting, falling with a musical ring upon his head.
+
+He appeared neither surprised nor angry.  Having staunched the wound with
+his handkerchief, he stooped and picked the horse-shoe up, glanced at it
+with, as I thought, an expression of reproach, and dropped it gently out
+of the window.
+
+"Did it hurt you?" I asked.
+
+It was a foolish question.  I told myself so the moment I had uttered it.
+The thing must have weighed three pounds at the least; it was an
+exceptionally large and heavy shoe.  The bump on his head was swelling
+visibly before my eyes.  Anyone but an idiot must have seen that he was
+hurt.  I expected an irritable reply.  I should have given one myself had
+I been in his place.  Instead, however, he seemed to regard the inquiry
+as a natural and kindly expression of sympathy.
+
+"It did, a little," he replied.
+
+"What were you doing with it?" I asked.  It was an odd sort of thing for
+a man to be travelling with.
+
+"It was lying in the roadway just outside the station," he explained; "I
+picked it up for luck."
+
+He refolded his handkerchief so as to bring a cooler surface in contact
+with the swelling, while I murmured something genial about the
+inscrutability of Providence.
+
+"Yes," he said, "I've had a deal of luck in my time, but it's never
+turned out well."
+
+"I was born on a Wednesday," he continued, "which, as I daresay you know,
+is the luckiest day a man can be born on.  My mother was a widow, and
+none of my relatives would do anything for me.  They said it would be
+like taking coals to Newcastle, helping a boy born on a Wednesday; and my
+uncle, when he died, left every penny of his money to my brother Sam, as
+a slight compensation to him for having been born on a Friday.  All I
+ever got was advice upon the duties and responsibilities of wealth, when
+it arrived, and entreaties that I would not neglect those with claims
+upon me when I came to be a rich man."
+
+He paused while folding up his various insurance papers and placing them
+in the inside breast-pocket of his coat.
+
+"Then there are black cats," he went on; "they're said to be lucky.  Why,
+there never was a blacker cat than the one that followed me into my rooms
+in Bolsover Street the very first night I took them."
+
+"Didn't it bring you luck?" I enquired, finding that he had stopped.
+
+A far-away look came into his eyes.
+
+"Well, of course it all depends," he answered dreamily.  "Maybe we'd
+never have suited one another; you can always look at it that way.  Still,
+I'd like to have tried."
+
+He sat staring out of the window, and for a while I did not care to
+intrude upon his evidently painful memories.
+
+"What happened then?" I asked, however, at last.
+
+He roused himself from his reverie.
+
+"Oh," he said.  "Nothing extraordinary.  She had to leave London for a
+time, and gave me her pet canary to take charge of while she was away."
+
+"But it wasn't your fault," I urged.
+
+"No, perhaps not," he agreed; "but it created a coldness which others
+were not slow to take advantage of."
+
+"I offered her the cat, too," he added, but more to himself than to me.
+
+We sat and smoked in silence.  I felt that the consolations of a stranger
+would sound weak.
+
+"Piebald horses are lucky, too," he observed, knocking the ashes from his
+pipe against the window sash.  "I had one of them once."
+
+"What did it do to you?" I enquired.
+
+"Lost me the best crib I ever had in my life," was the simple rejoinder.
+"The governor stood it a good deal longer than I had any right to expect;
+but you can't keep a man who is _always_ drunk.  It gives a firm a bad
+name."
+
+"It would," I agreed.
+
+"You see," he went on, "I never had the head for it.  To some men it
+would not have so much mattered, but the very first glass was enough to
+upset me.  I'd never been used to it."
+
+"But why did you take it?" I persisted.  "The horse didn't make you
+drink, did he?"
+
+"Well, it was this way," he explained, continuing to rub gently the lump
+which was now about the size of an egg.  "The animal had belonged to a
+gentleman who travelled in the wine and spirit line, and who had been
+accustomed to visit in the way of business almost every public-house he
+came to.  The result was you couldn't get that little horse past a public-
+house--at least I couldn't.  He sighted them a quarter of a mile off, and
+made straight for the door.  I struggled with him at first, but it was
+five to ten minutes' work getting him away, and folks used to gather
+round and bet on us.  I think, maybe, I'd have stuck to it, however, if
+it hadn't been for a temperance chap who stopped one day and lectured the
+crowd about it from the opposite side of the street.  He called me
+Pilgrim, and said the little horse was 'Pollion,' or some such name, and
+kept on shouting out that I was to fight him for a heavenly crown.  After
+that they called us "Polly and the Pilgrim, fighting for the crown."  It
+riled me, that did, and at the very next house at which he pulled up I
+got down and said I'd come for two of Scotch.  That was the beginning.  It
+took me years to break myself of the habit.
+
+"But there," he continued, "it has always been the same.  I hadn't been a
+fortnight in my first situation before my employer gave me a goose
+weighing eighteen pounds as a Christmas present."
+
+"Well, that couldn't have done you any harm," I remarked.  "That was
+lucky enough."
+
+"So the other clerks said at the time," he replied.  "The old gentleman
+had never been known to give anything away before in his life.  'He's
+taken a fancy to you,' they said; 'you are a lucky beggar!'"
+
+He sighed heavily.  I felt there was a story attached.
+
+"What did you do with it?" I asked.
+
+"That was the trouble," he returned.  "I didn't know what to do with it.
+It was ten o'clock on Christmas Eve, just as I was leaving, that he gave
+it to me.  'Tiddling Brothers have sent me a goose, Biggles,' he said to
+me as I helped him on with his great-coat.  'Very kind of 'em, but I
+don't want it myself; you can have it!'
+
+"Of course I thanked him, and was very grateful.  He wished me a merry
+Christmas and went out.  I tied the thing up in brown paper, and took it
+under my arm.  It was a fine bird, but heavy.
+
+"Under all the circumstances, and it being Christmas time, I thought I
+would treat myself to a glass of beer.  I went into a quiet little house
+at the corner of the Lane and laid the goose on the counter.
+
+"'That's a big 'un,' said the landlord; 'you'll get a good cut off him to-
+morrow.'
+
+"His words set me thinking, and for the first time it struck me that I
+didn't want the bird--that it was of no use to me at all.  I was going
+down to spend the holidays with my young lady's people in Kent."
+
+"Was this the canary young lady?" I interrupted.
+
+"No," he replied.  "This was before that one.  It was this goose I'm
+telling you of that upset this one.  Well, her folks were big farmers; it
+would have been absurd taking a goose down to them, and I knew no one in
+London to give it to, so when the landlord came round again I asked him
+if he would care to buy it.  I told him he could have it cheap.
+
+"'I don't want it myself,' he answered.  'I've got three in the house
+already.  Perhaps one of these gentlemen would like to make an offer.'
+
+"He turned to a couple of chaps who were sitting drinking gin.  They
+didn't look to me worth the price of a chicken between them.  The
+seediest said he'd like to look at it, however, and I undid the parcel.
+He mauled the thing pretty considerably, and cross-examined me as to how
+I come by it, ending by upsetting half a tumbler of gin and water over
+it.  Then he offered me half a crown for it.  It made me so angry that I
+took the brown paper and the string in one hand and the goose in the
+other, and walked straight out without saying a word.
+
+"I carried it in this way for some distance, because I was excited and
+didn't care how I carried it; but as I cooled, I began to reflect how
+ridiculous I must look.  One or two small boys evidently noticed the same
+thing.  I stopped under a lamp-post and tried to tie it up again.  I had
+a bag and an umbrella with me at the same time, and the first thing I did
+was to drop the goose into the gutter, which is just what I might have
+expected to do, attempting to handle four separate articles and three
+yards of string with one pair of hands.  I picked up about a quart of mud
+with that goose, and got the greater part of it over my hands and clothes
+and a fair quantity over the brown paper; and then it began to rain.
+
+"I bundled everything up into my arm and made for the nearest pub, where
+I thought I would ask for a piece more string and make a neat job of it.
+
+"The bar was crowded.  I pushed my way to the counter and flung the goose
+down in front of me.  The men nearest stopped talking to look at it; and
+a young fellow standing next to me said--
+
+"'Well, you've killed it.'  I daresay I did seem a bit excited.
+
+"I had intended making another effort to sell it here, but they were
+clearly not the right sort.  I had a pint of ale--for I was feeling
+somewhat tired and hot--scraped as much of the mud off the bird as I
+could, made a fresh parcel of it, and came out.
+
+"Crossing the road a happy idea occurred to me.  I thought I would raffle
+it.  At once I set to work to find a house where there might seem to be a
+likely lot.  It cost me three or four whiskies--for I felt I didn't want
+any more beer, which is a thing that easily upsets me--but at length I
+found just the crowd I wanted--a quiet domestic-looking set in a homely
+little place off the Goswell Road.
+
+"I explained my views to the landlord.  He said he had no objection; he
+supposed I would stand drinks round afterwards.  I said I should be
+delighted to do so, and showed him the bird.
+
+"'It looks a bit poorly,' he said.  He was a Devonshire man.
+
+"'Oh, that's nothing,' I explained.  'I happened to drop it.  That will
+all wash off.'
+
+"'It smells a bit queer, too,' he said.
+
+"'That's mud,' I answered; 'you know what London mud is.  And a gentleman
+spilled some gin over it.  Nobody will notice that when it's cooked.'
+
+"'Well,' he replied.  'I don't think I'll take a hand myself, but if any
+other gent likes to, that's his affair.'
+
+"Nobody seemed enthusiastic.  I started it at sixpence, and took a ticket
+myself.  The potman had a free chance for superintending the
+arrangements, and he succeeded in inducing five other men, much against
+their will, to join us.  I won it myself, and paid out three and twopence
+for drinks.  A solemn-looking individual who had been snoring in a corner
+suddenly woke up as I was going out, and offered me sevenpence ha'penny
+for it--why sevenpence ha'penny I have never been able to understand.  He
+would have taken it away, I should never have seen it again, and my whole
+life might have been different.  But Fate has always been against me.  I
+replied, with perhaps unnecessary hauteur, that I wasn't a Christmas
+dinner fund for the destitute, and walked out.
+
+"It was getting late, and I had a long walk home to my lodgings.  I was
+beginning to wish I had never seen the bird.  I estimated its weight by
+this time to be thirty-six pounds.
+
+"The idea occurred to me to sell it to a poulterer.  I looked for a shop,
+I found one in Myddleton Street.  There wasn't a customer near it, but by
+the way the man was shouting you might have thought that he was doing all
+the trade of Clerkenwell.  I took the goose out of the parcel and laid it
+on the shelf before him.
+
+"'What's this?' he asked.
+
+"'It's a goose,' I said.  'You can have it cheap.'
+
+"He just seized the thing by the neck and flung it at me.  I dodged, and
+it caught the side of my head.  You can have no idea, if you've never
+been hit on the head with a goose, how if hurts.  I picked it up and hit
+him back with it, and a policeman came up with the usual, 'Now then,
+what's all this about?'
+
+"I explained the facts.  The poulterer stepped to the edge of the curb
+and apostrophised the universe generally.
+
+"'Look at that shop,' he said.  'It's twenty minutes to twelve, and
+there's seven dozen geese hanging there that I'm willing to give away,
+and this fool asks me if I want to buy another.'
+
+"I perceived then that my notion had been a foolish one, and I followed
+the policeman's advice, and went away quietly, taking the bird with me.
+
+"Then said I to myself, 'I will give it away.  I will select some poor
+deserving person, and make him a present of the damned thing.'  I passed
+a good many people, but no one looked deserving enough.  It may have been
+the time or it may have been the neighbourhood, but those I met seemed to
+me to be unworthy of the bird.  I offered it to a man in Judd Street, who
+I thought appeared hungry.  He turned out to be a drunken ruffian.  I
+could not make him understand what I meant, and he followed me down the
+road abusing me at the top of his voice, until, turning a corner without
+knowing it, he plunged down Tavistock Place, shouting after the wrong
+man.  In the Euston Road I stopped a half-starved child and pressed it
+upon her.  She answered 'Not me!' and ran away.  I heard her calling
+shrilly after me, 'Who stole the goose?'
+
+"I dropped it in a dark part of Seymour Street.  A man picked it up and
+brought it after me.  I was unequal to any more explanations or
+arguments.  I gave him twopence and plodded on with it once more.  The
+pubs were just closing, and I went into one for a final drink.  As a
+matter of fact I had had enough already, being, as I am, unaccustomed to
+anything more than an occasional class of beer.  But I felt depressed,
+and I thought it might cheer me.  I think I had gin, which is a thing I
+loathe.
+
+"I meant to fling it over into Oakley Square, but a policeman had his eye
+on me, and followed me twice round the railings.  In Golding Road I
+sought to throw it down an area, but was frustrated in like manner.  The
+whole night police of London seemed to have nothing else to do but
+prevent my getting rid of that goose.
+
+"They appeared so anxious about it that I fancied they might like to have
+it.  I went up to one in Camden Street.  I called him 'Bobby,' and asked
+him if he wanted a goose.
+
+"'I'll tell you what I don't want,' he replied severely, 'and that is
+none of your sauce.'
+
+"He was very insulting, and I naturally answered him back.  What actually
+passed I forget, but it ended in his announcing his intention of taking
+me in charge.
+
+"I slipped out of his hands and bolted down King Street.  He blew his
+whistle and started after me.  A man sprang out from a doorway in College
+Street and tried to stop me.  I tied him up with a butt in the stomach,
+and cut through the Crescent, doubling back into the Camden Road by Batt
+Street.
+
+"At the Canal Bridge I looked behind me, and could see no one.  I dropped
+the goose over the parapet, and it fell with a splash into the water.
+
+"Heaving a sigh of relief, I turned and crossed into Randolph Street, and
+there a constable collared me.  I was arguing with him when the first
+fool came up breathless.  They told me I had better explain the matter to
+the Inspector, and I thought so too.
+
+"The Inspector asked me why I had run away when the other constable
+wanted to take me in charge.  I replied that it was because I did not
+desire to spend my Christmas holidays in the lock-up, which he evidently
+regarded as a singularly weak argument.  He asked me what I had thrown
+into the canal.  I told him a goose.  He asked me why I had thrown a
+goose into the canal.  I told him because I was sick and tired of the
+animal.
+
+"At this stage a sergeant came in to say that they had succeeded in
+recovering the parcel.  They opened it on the Inspector's table.  It
+contained a dead baby.
+
+"I pointed out to them that it wasn't my parcel, and that it wasn't my
+baby, but they hardly took the trouble to disguise the fact that they did
+not believe me.
+
+"The Inspector said it was too grave a case for bail, which, seeing that
+I did not know a soul in London, was somewhat immaterial.  I got them to
+send a telegram to my young lady to say that I was unavoidably detained
+in town, and passed as quiet and uneventful a Christmas Day and Boxing
+Day as I ever wish to spend.
+
+"In the end the evidence against me was held to be insufficient to
+justify a conviction, and I got off on the minor charge of drunk and
+disorderly.  But I lost my situation and I lost my young lady, and I
+don't care if I never see a goose again."
+
+We were nearing Liverpool Street.  He collected his luggage, and taking
+up his hat made an attempt to put it on his head.  But in consequence of
+the swelling caused by the horseshoe it would not go anywhere near him,
+and he laid it sadly back upon the seat.
+
+"No," he said quietly, "I can't say that I believe very much in luck."
+
+
+
+
+DICK DUNKERMAN'S CAT
+
+
+Richard Dunkerman and I had been old school-fellows, if a gentleman
+belonging to the Upper Sixth, and arriving each morning in a "topper" and
+a pair of gloves, and "a discredit to the Lower Fourth," in a Scotch cap,
+can by any manner of means be classed together.  And though in those
+early days a certain amount of coldness existed between us, originating
+in a poem, composed and sung on occasions by myself in commemoration of
+an alleged painful incident connected with a certain breaking-up day, and
+which, if I remember rightly ran:--
+
+   Dicky, Dicky, Dunk,
+   Always in a funk,
+   Drank a glass of sherry wine,
+   And went home roaring drunk,
+
+and kept alive by his brutal criticism of the same, expressed with the
+bony part of the knee, yet in after life we came to know and like each
+other better.  I drifted into journalism, while he for years had been an
+unsuccessful barrister and dramatist; but one spring, to the astonishment
+of us all, he brought out the play of the season, a somewhat impossible
+little comedy, but full of homely sentiment and belief in human nature.
+It was about a couple of months after its production that he first
+introduced me to "Pyramids, Esquire."
+
+I was in love at the time.  Her name was, I think, Naomi, and I wanted to
+talk to somebody about her.  Dick had a reputation for taking an
+intelligent interest in other men's love affairs.  He would let a lover
+rave by the hour to him, taking brief notes the while in a bulky
+red-covered volume labelled "Commonplace Book."  Of course everybody knew
+that he was using them merely as raw material for his dramas, but we did
+not mind that so long as he would only listen.  I put on my hat and went
+round to his chambers.
+
+We talked about indifferent matters for a quarter of an hour or so, and
+then I launched forth upon my theme.  I had exhausted her beauty and
+goodness, and was well into my own feelings--the madness of my ever
+imagining I had loved before, the utter impossibility of my ever caring
+for any other woman, and my desire to die breathing her name--before he
+made a move.  I thought he had risen to reach down, as usual, the
+"Commonplace Book," and so waited, but instead he went to the door and
+opened it, and in glided one of the largest and most beautiful black tom-
+cats I have ever seen.  It sprang on Dick's knee with a soft "cur-roo,"
+and sat there upright, watching me, and I went on with my tale.
+
+After a few minutes Dick interrupted me with:--
+
+"I thought you said her name was Naomi?"
+
+"So it is," I replied.  "Why?"
+
+"Oh, nothing," he answered, "only just now you referred to her as Enid."
+
+This was remarkable, as I had not seen Enid for years, and had quite
+forgotten her.  Somehow it took the glitter out of the conversation.  A
+dozen sentences later Dick stopped me again with:--
+
+"Who's Julia?"
+
+I began to get irritated.  Julia, I remembered, had been cashier in a
+city restaurant, and had, when I was little more than a boy, almost
+inveigled me into an engagement.  I found myself getting hot at the
+recollection of the spooney rhapsodies I had hoarsely poured into her
+powder-streaked ear while holding her flabby hand across the counter.
+
+"Did I really say 'Julia'?" I answered somewhat sharply, "or are you
+joking?"
+
+"You certainly alluded to her as Julia," he replied mildly.  "But never
+mind, you go on as you like, I shall know whom you mean."
+
+But the flame was dead within me.  I tried to rekindle it, but every time
+I glanced up and met the green eyes of the black Tom it flickered out
+again.  I recalled the thrill that had penetrated my whole being when
+Naomi's hand had accidently touched mine in the conservatory, and
+wondered whether she had done it on purpose.  I thought how good and
+sweet she was to that irritatingly silly old frump her mother, and
+wondered if it really were her mother, or only hired.  I pictured her
+crown of gold-brown hair as I had last seen it with the sunlight kissing
+its wanton waves, and felt I would like to be quite sure that it were all
+her own.
+
+Once I clutched the flying skirts of my enthusiasm with sufficient
+firmness to remark that in my own private opinion a good woman was more
+precious than rubies; adding immediately afterwards--the words escaping
+me unconsciously before I was aware even of the thought--"pity it's so
+difficult to tell 'em."
+
+Then I gave it up, and sat trying to remember what I had said to her the
+evening before, and hoping I had not committed myself.
+
+Dick's voice roused me from my unpleasant reverie.
+
+"No," he said, "I thought you would not be able to.  None of them can."
+
+"None of them can what?" I asked.  Somehow I was feeling angry with Dick
+and with Dick's cat, and with myself and most other things.
+
+"Why talk love or any other kind of sentiment before old Pyramids here?"
+he replied, stroking the cat's soft head as it rose and arched its back.
+
+"What's the confounded cat got to do with it?" I snapped.
+
+"That's just what I can't tell you," he answered, "but it's very
+remarkable.  Old Leman dropped in here the other evening and began in his
+usual style about Ibsen and the destiny of the human race, and the
+Socialistic idea and all the rest of it--you know his way.  Pyramids sat
+on the edge of the table there and looked at him, just as he sat looking
+at you a few minutes ago, and in less than a quarter of an hour Leman had
+come to the conclusion that society would do better without ideals and
+that the destiny of the human race was in all probability the dust heap.
+He pushed his long hair back from his eyes and looked, for the first time
+in his life, quite sane.  'We talk about ourselves,' he said, 'as though
+we were the end of creation.  I get tired listening to myself sometimes.
+Pah!' he continued, 'for all we know the human race may die out utterly
+and another insect take our place, as possibly we pushed out and took the
+place of a former race of beings.  I wonder if the ant tribe may not be
+the future inheritors of the earth.  They understand combination, and
+already have an extra sense that we lack.  If in the courses of evolution
+they grow bigger in brain and body, they may become powerful rivals, who
+knows?'  Curious to hear old Leman talking like that, wasn't it?"
+
+"What made you call him 'Pyramids'?" I asked of Dick.
+
+"I don't know," he answered, "I suppose because he looked so old.  The
+name came to me."
+
+I leaned across and looked into the great green eyes, and the creature,
+never winking, never blinking, looked back into mine, until the feeling
+came to me that I was being drawn down into the very wells of time.  It
+seemed as though the panorama of the ages must have passed in review
+before those expressionless orbs--all the loves and hopes and desires of
+mankind; all the everlasting truths that have been found false; all the
+eternal faiths discovered to save, until it was discovered they damned.
+The strange black creature grew and grew till it seemed to fill the room,
+and Dick and I to be but shadows floating in the air.
+
+I forced from myself a laugh, that only in part, however, broke the
+spell, and inquired of Dick how he had acquired possession of it.
+
+"It came to me," he answered, "one night six months ago.  I was down on
+my luck at the time.  Two of my plays, on which I had built great hopes,
+had failed, one on top of the other--you remember them--and it appeared
+absurd to think that any manager would ever look at anything of mine
+again.  Old Walcott had just told me that he did not consider it right of
+me under all the circumstances to hold Lizzie any longer to her
+engagement, and that I ought to go away and give her a chance of
+forgetting me, and I had agreed with him.  I was alone in the world, and
+heavily in debt.  Altogether things seemed about as hopeless as they
+could be, and I don't mind confessing to you now that I had made up my
+mind to blow out my brains that very evening.  I had loaded my revolver,
+and it lay before me on the desk.  My hand was toying with it when I
+heard a faint scratching at the door.  I paid no attention at first, but
+it grew more persistent, and at length, to stop the faint noise which
+excited me more than I could account for, I rose and opened the door and
+_it_ walked in.
+
+"It perched itself upon the corner of my desk beside the loaded pistol,
+and sat there bolt upright looking at me; and I, pushing back my chair,
+sat looking at it.  And there came a letter telling me that a man of
+whose name I had never heard had been killed by a cow in Melbourne, and
+that under his will a legacy of three thousand pounds fell into the
+estate of a distant relative of my own who had died peacefully and
+utterly insolvent eighteen months previously, leaving me his sole heir
+and representative, and I put the revolver back into the drawer."
+
+"Do you think Pyramids would come and stop with me for a week?" I asked,
+reaching over to stroke the cat as it lay softly purring on Dick's knee.
+
+"Maybe he will some day," replied Dick in a low voice, but before the
+answer came--I know not why--I had regretted the jesting words.
+
+"I came to talk to him as though he were a human creature," continued
+Dick, "and to discuss things with him.  My last play I regard as a
+collaboration; indeed, it is far more his than mine."
+
+I should have thought Dick mad had not the cat been sitting there before
+me with its eyes looking into mine.  As it was, I only grew more
+interested in his tale.
+
+"It was rather a cynical play as I first wrote it," he went on, "a
+truthful picture of a certain corner of society as I saw and knew it.
+From an artistic point of view I felt it was good; from the box-office
+standard it was doubtful.  I drew it from my desk on the third evening
+after Pyramids' advent, and read it through.  He sat on the arm of the
+chair and looked over the pages as I turned them.
+
+"It was the best thing I had ever written.  Insight into life ran through
+every line, I found myself reading it again with delight.  Suddenly a
+voice beside me said:--
+
+"'Very clever, my boy, very clever indeed.  If you would just turn it
+topsy-turvy, change all those bitter, truthful speeches into noble
+sentiments; make your Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs (who never has
+been a popular character) die in the last act instead of the
+Yorkshireman, and let your bad woman be reformed by her love for the hero
+and go off somewhere by herself and be good to the poor in a black frock,
+the piece might be worth putting on the stage.'
+
+"I turned indignantly to see who was speaking.  The opinions sounded like
+those of a theatrical manager.  No one was in the room but I and the cat.
+No doubt I had been talking to myself, but the voice was strange to me.
+
+"'Be reformed by her love for the hero!' I retorted, contemptuously, for
+I was unable to grasp the idea that I was arguing only with myself, 'why
+it's his mad passion for her that ruins his life.'
+
+"'And will ruin the play with the great B.P.,' returned the other voice.
+'The British dramatic hero has no passion, but a pure and respectful
+admiration for an honest, hearty English girl--pronounced "gey-url."  You
+don't know the canons of your art.'
+
+"'And besides,' I persisted, unheeding the interruption, 'women born and
+bred and soaked for thirty years in an atmosphere of sin don't reform.'
+
+"'Well, this one's got to, that's all,' was the sneering reply, 'let her
+hear an organ.'
+
+"'But as an artist--,' I protested.
+
+"'You will be always unsuccessful,' was the rejoinder.  'My dear fellow,
+you and your plays, artistic or in artistic, will be forgotten in a very
+few years hence.  You give the world what it wants, and the world will
+give you what you want.  Please, if you wish to live.'
+
+"So, with Pyramids beside me day by day, I re-wrote the play, and
+whenever I felt a thing to be utterly impossible and false I put it down
+with a grin.  And every character I made to talk clap-trap sentiment
+while Pyramids purred, and I took care that everyone of my puppets did
+that which was right in the eyes of the lady with the lorgnettes in the
+second row of the dress circle; and old Hewson says the play will run
+five hundred nights.
+
+"But what is worst," concluded Dick, "is that I am not ashamed of myself,
+and that I seem content."
+
+"What do you think the animal is?" I asked with a laugh, "an evil
+spirit"?  For it had passed into the next room and so out through the
+open window, and its strangely still green eyes no longer drawing mine
+towards them, I felt my common sense returning to me.
+
+"You have not lived with it for six months," answered Dick quietly, "and
+felt its eyes for ever on you as I have.  And I am not the only one.  You
+know Canon Whycherly, the great preacher?"
+
+"My knowledge of modern church history is not extensive," I replied.  "I
+know him by name, of course.  What about him?"
+
+"He was a curate in the East End," continued Dick, "and for ten years he
+laboured, poor and unknown, leading one of those noble, heroic lives that
+here and there men do yet live, even in this age.  Now he is the prophet
+of the fashionable up-to-date Christianity of South Kensington, drives to
+his pulpit behind a pair of thorough-bred Arabs, and his waistcoat is
+taking to itself the curved line of prosperity.  He was in here the other
+morning on behalf of Princess ---.  They are giving a performance of one
+of my plays in aid of the Destitute Vicars' Fund."
+
+"And did Pyramids discourage him?" I asked, with perhaps the suggestion
+of a sneer.
+
+"No," answered Dick, "so far as I could judge, it approved the scheme.
+The point of the matter is that the moment Whycherly came into the room
+the cat walked over to him and rubbed itself affectionately against his
+legs.  He stood and stroked it."
+
+"'Oh, so it's come to you, has it?' he said, with a curious smile.
+
+"There was no need for any further explanation between us.  I understood
+what lay behind those few words."
+
+I lost sight of Dick for some time, though I heard a good deal of him,
+for he was rapidly climbing into the position of the most successful
+dramatist of the day, and Pyramids I had forgotten all about, until one
+afternoon calling on an artist friend who had lately emerged from the
+shadows of starving struggle into the sunshine of popularity, I saw a
+pair of green eyes that seemed familiar to me gleaming at me from a dark
+corner of the studio.
+
+"Why, surely," I exclaimed, crossing over to examine the animal more
+closely, "why, yes, you've got Dick Dunkerman's cat."
+
+He raised his face from the easel and glanced across at me.
+
+"Yes," he said, "we can't live on ideals," and I, remembering, hastened
+to change the conversation.
+
+Since then I have met Pyramids in the rooms of many friends of mine.  They
+give him different names, but I am sure it is the same cat, I know those
+green eyes.  He always brings them luck, but they are never quite the
+same men again afterwards.
+
+Sometimes I sit wondering if I hear his scratching at the door.
+
+
+
+
+THE MINOR POET'S STORY
+
+
+"It doesn't suit you at all," I answered.
+
+"You're very disagreeable," said she, "I shan't ever ask your advice
+again."
+
+"Nobody," I hastened to add, "would look well in it.  You, of course,
+look less awful in it than any other woman would, but it's not your
+style."
+
+"He means," exclaimed the Minor Poet, "that the thing itself not being
+pre-eminently beautiful, it does not suit, is not in agreement with you.
+The contrast between you and anything approaching the ugly or the
+commonplace, is too glaring to be aught else than displeasing."
+
+"He didn't say it," replied the Woman of the World; "and besides it isn't
+ugly.  It's the very latest fashion."
+
+"Why is it," asked the Philosopher, "that women are such slaves to
+fashion?  They think clothes, they talk clothes, they read clothes, yet
+they have never understood clothes.  The purpose of dress, after the
+primary object of warmth has been secured, is to adorn, to beautify the
+particular wearer.  Yet not one woman in a thousand stops to consider
+what colours will go best with her complexion, what cut will best hide
+the defects or display the advantages of her figure.  If it be the
+fashion, she must wear it.  And so we have pale-faced girls looking
+ghastly in shades suitable to dairy-maids, and dots waddling about in
+costumes fit and proper to six-footers.  It is as if crows insisted on
+wearing cockatoo's feathers on their heads, and rabbits ran about with
+peacocks' tails fastened behind them."
+
+"And are not you men every bit as foolish?" retorted the Girton Girl.
+"Sack coats come into fashion, and dumpy little men trot up and down in
+them, looking like butter-tubs on legs.  You go about in July melting
+under frock-coats and chimney-pot hats, and because it is the stylish
+thing to do, you all play tennis in still shirts and stand-up collars,
+which is idiotic.  If fashion decreed that you should play cricket in a
+pair of top-boots and a diver's helmet, you would play cricket in a pair
+of top-boots and a diver's helmet, and dub every sensible fellow who
+didn't a cad.  It's worse in you than in us; men are supposed to think
+for themselves, and to be capable of it, the womanly woman isn't."
+
+"Big women and little men look well in nothing," said the Woman of the
+World.  "Poor Emily was five foot ten and a half, and never looked an
+inch under seven foot, whatever she wore.  Empires came into fashion, and
+the poor child looked like the giant's baby in a pantomime.  We thought
+the Greek might help her, but it only suggested a Crystal Palace statue
+tied up in a sheet, and tied up badly; and when puff-sleeves and shoulder-
+capes were in and Teddy stood up behind her at a water-party and sang
+'Under the spreading chestnut-tree,' she took it as a personal insult and
+boxed his ears.  Few men liked to be seen with her, and I'm sure George
+proposed to her partly with the idea of saving himself the expense of a
+step-ladder, she reaches down his boots for him from the top shelf."
+
+"I," said the Minor Poet, "take up the position of not wanting to waste
+my brain upon the subject.  Tell me what to wear, and I will wear it, and
+there is an end of the matter.  If Society says, 'Wear blue shirts and
+white collars,' I wear blue shirts and white collars.  If she says, 'The
+time has now come when hats should be broad-brimmed,' I take unto myself
+a broad-brimmed hat.  The question does not interest me sufficiently for
+me to argue it.  It is your fop who refuses to follow fashion.  He wishes
+to attract attention to himself by being peculiar.  A novelist whose
+books pass unnoticed, gains distinction by designing his own necktie; and
+many an artist, following the line of least resistance, learns to let his
+hair grow instead of learning to paint."
+
+"The fact is," remarked the Philosopher, "we are the mere creatures of
+fashion.  Fashion dictates to us our religion, our morality, our
+affections, our thoughts.  In one age successful cattle-lifting is a
+virtue, a few hundred years later company-promoting takes its place as a
+respectable and legitimate business.  In England and America Christianity
+is fashionable, in Turkey, Mohammedanism, and 'the crimes of Clapham are
+chaste in Martaban.'  In Japan a woman dresses down to the knees, but
+would be considered immodest if she displayed bare arms.  In Europe it is
+legs that no pure-minded woman is supposed to possess.  In China we
+worship our mother-in-law and despise our wife; in England we treat our
+wife with respect, and regard our mother-in-law as the bulwark of comic
+journalism.  The stone age, the iron age, the age of faith, the age of
+infidelism, the philosophic age, what are they but the passing fashions
+of the world?  It is fashion, fashion, fashion wherever we turn.  Fashion
+waits beside our cradle to lead us by the hand through life.  Now
+literature is sentimental, now hopefully humorous, now psychological, now
+new-womanly.  Yesterday's pictures are the laughing-stock of the up-to-
+date artist of to-day, and to-day's art will be sneered at to-morrow.  Now
+it is fashionable to be democratic, to pretend that no virtue or wisdom
+can exist outside corduroy, and to abuse the middle classes.  One season
+we go slumming, and the next we are all socialists.  We think we are
+thinking; we are simply dressing ourselves up in words we do not
+understand for the gods to laugh at us."
+
+"Don't be pessimistic," retorted the Minor Poet, "pessimism is going out.
+You call such changes fashions, I call them the footprints of progress.
+Each phase of thought is an advance upon the former, bringing the
+footsteps of the many nearer to the landmarks left by the mighty climbers
+of the past upon the mountain paths of truth.  The crowd that was
+satisfied with _The Derby Day_ now appreciates Millet.  The public that
+were content to wag their heads to _The Bohemian Girl_ have made Wagner
+popular."
+
+"And the play lovers, who stood for hours to listen to Shakespeare,"
+interrupted the Philosopher, "now crowd to music-halls."
+
+"The track sometimes descends for a little way, but it will wind upwards
+again," returned the Poet.  "The music-hall itself is improving; I
+consider it the duty of every intellectual man to visit such places.  The
+mere influence of his presence helps to elevate the tone of the
+performance.  I often go myself!"
+
+"I was looking," said the Woman of the World, "at some old illustrated
+papers of thirty years ago, showing the men dressed in those very absurd
+trousers, so extremely roomy about the waist, and so extremely tight
+about the ankles.  I recollect poor papa in them; I always used to long
+to fill them out by pouring in sawdust at the top."
+
+"You mean the peg-top period," I said.  "I remember them distinctly
+myself, but it cannot be more than three-and-twenty years ago at the
+outside."
+
+"That is very nice of you," replied the Woman of the World, "and shows
+more tact than I should have given you credit for.  It could, as you say,
+have been only twenty-three years ago.  I know I was a very little girl
+at the time.  I think there must be some subtle connection between
+clothes and thought.  I cannot imagine men in those trousers and
+Dundreary whiskers talking as you fellows are talking now, any more than
+I could conceive of a woman in a crinoline and a poke bonnet smoking a
+cigarette.  I think it must be so, because dear mother used to be the
+most easy-going woman in the world in her ordinary clothes, and would let
+papa smoke all over the house.  But about once every three weeks she
+would put on a hideous old-fashioned black silk dress, that looked as if
+Queen Elizabeth must have slept in it during one of those seasons when
+she used to go about sleeping anywhere, and then we all had to sit up.
+'Look out, ma's got her black silk dress on,' came to be a regular
+formula.  We could always make papa take us out for a walk or a drive by
+whispering it to him."
+
+"I can never bear to look at those pictures of by-gone fashions," said
+the Old Maid, "I see the by-gone people in them, and it makes me feel as
+though the faces that we love are only passing fashions with the rest.  We
+wear them for a little while upon our hearts, and think so much of them,
+and then there comes a time when we lay them by, and forget them, and
+newer faces take their place, and we are satisfied.  It seems so sad."
+
+"I wrote a story some years ago," remarked the Minor Poet, "about a young
+Swiss guide, who was betrothed to a laughing little French peasant girl."
+
+"Named Suzette," interrupted the Girton Girl.  "I know her.  Go on."
+
+"Named Jeanne," corrected the Poet, "the majority of laughing French
+girls, in fiction, are named Suzette, I am well aware.  But this girl's
+mother's family was English.  She was christened Jeanne after an aunt
+Jane, who lived in Birmingham, and from whom she had expectations."
+
+"I beg your pardon," apologised the Girton Girl, "I was not aware of that
+fact.  What happened to her?"
+
+"One morning, a few days before the date fixed for the wedding," said the
+Minor Poet, "she started off to pay a visit to a relative living in the
+village, the other side of the mountain.  It was a dangerous track,
+climbing half-way up the mountain before it descended again, and skirting
+more than one treacherous slope, but the girl was mountain born and bred,
+sure-footed as a goat, and no one dreamed of harm."
+
+"She went over, of course," said the Philosopher, "those sure-footed
+girls always do."
+
+"What happened," replied the Minor Poet, "was never known.  The girl was
+never seen again."
+
+"And what became of her lover?" asked the Girton Girl.  "Was he, when
+next year's snow melted, and the young men of the village went forth to
+gather Edelweiss, wherewith to deck their sweethearts, found by them
+dead, beside her, at the bottom of the crevasse?"
+
+"No," said the Poet; "you do not know this story, you had better let me
+tell it.  Her lover returned the morning before the wedding day, to be
+met with the news.  He gave way to no sign of grief, he repelled all
+consolation.  Taking his rope and axe he went up into the mountain by
+himself.  All through the winter he haunted the track by which she must
+have travelled, indifferent to the danger that he ran, impervious
+apparently to cold, or hunger, or fatigue, undeterred by storm, or mist,
+or avalanche.  At the beginning of the spring he returned to the village,
+purchased building utensils, and day after day carried them back with him
+up into the mountain.  He hired no labour, he rejected the proffered
+assistance of his brother guides.  Choosing an almost inaccessible spot,
+at the edge of the great glacier, far from all paths, he built himself a
+hut, with his own hands; and there for eighteen years he lived alone.
+
+"In the 'season' he earned good fees, being known far and wide as one of
+the bravest and hardiest of all the guides, but few of his clients liked
+him, for he was a silent, gloomy man, speaking little, and with never a
+laugh or jest on the journey.  Each fall, having provisioned himself, he
+would retire to his solitary hut, and bar the door, and no human soul
+would set eyes on him again until the snows melted.
+
+"One year, however, as the spring days wore on, and he did not appear
+among the guides, as was his wont, the elder men, who remembered his
+story and pitied him, grew uneasy; and, after much deliberation, it was
+determined that a party of them should force their way up to his eyrie.
+They cut their path across the ice where no foot among them had trodden
+before, and finding at length the lonely snow-encompassed hut, knocked
+loudly with their axe-staves on the door; but only the whirling echoes
+from the glacier's thousand walls replied, so the foremost put his strong
+shoulder to the worn timber and the door flew open with a crash.
+
+"They found him dead, as they had more than half expected, lying stiff
+and frozen on the rough couch at the farther end of the hut; and, beside
+him, looking down upon him with a placid face, as a mother might watch
+beside her sleeping child, stood Jeanne.  She wore the flowers pinned to
+her dress that she had gathered when their eyes had last seen her.  The
+girl's face that had laughed back to their good-bye in the village,
+nineteen years ago.
+
+"A strange steely light clung round her, half illuminating, half
+obscuring her, and the men drew back in fear, thinking they saw a vision,
+till one, bolder than the rest, stretched out his hand and touched the
+ice that formed her coffin.
+
+"For eighteen years the man had lived there with this face that he had
+loved.  A faint flush still lingered on the fair cheeks, the laughing
+lips were still red.  Only at one spot, above her temple, the wavy hair
+lay matted underneath a clot of blood."
+
+The Minor Poet ceased.
+
+"What a very unpleasant way of preserving one's love!" said the Girton
+Girl.
+
+"When did the story appear?" I asked.  "I don't remember reading it."
+
+"I never published it," explained the Minor Poet.  "Within the same week
+two friends of mine, one of whom had just returned from Norway and the
+other from Switzerland, confided to me their intention of writing stories
+about girls who had fallen into glaciers, and who had been found by their
+friends long afterwards, looking as good as new; and a few days later I
+chanced upon a book, the heroine of which had been dug out of a glacier
+alive three hundred years after she had fallen in.  There seemed to be a
+run on ice maidens, and I decided not to add to their number."
+
+"It is curious," said the Philosopher, "how there seems to be a fashion
+even in thought.  An idea has often occurred to me that has seemed to me
+quite new, and taking up a newspaper I have found that some man in Russia
+or San Francisco has just been saying the very same thing in almost the
+very same words.  We say a thing is 'in the air'; it is more true than we
+are aware of.  Thought does not grow in us.  It is a thing apart, we
+simply gather it.  All truths, all discoveries, all inventions, they have
+not come to us from any one man.  The time grows ripe for them, and from
+this corner of the earth and from that, hands, guided by some instinct,
+grope for and grasp them.  Buddha and Christ seize hold of the morality
+needful to civilisation, and promulgate it, unknown to one another, the
+one on the shores of the Ganges, the other by the Jordan.  A dozen
+forgotten explorers, _feeling_ America, prepared the way for Columbus to
+discover it.  A deluge of blood is required to sweep away old follies,
+and Rousseau and Voltaire, and a myriad others are set to work to fashion
+the storm clouds.  The steam-engine, the spinning loom is 'in the air.'  A
+thousand brains are busy with them, a few go further than the rest.  It
+is idle to talk of human thought; there is no such thing.  Our minds are
+fed as our bodies with the food God has provided for us.  Thought hangs
+by the wayside, and we pick it and cook it, and eat it, and cry out what
+clever 'thinkers' we are!"
+
+"I cannot agree with you," replied the Minor Poet, "if we were simply
+automata, as your argument would suggest, what was the purpose of
+creating us?"
+
+"The intelligent portion of mankind has been asking itself that question
+for many ages," returned the Philosopher.
+
+"I hate people who always think as I do," said the Girton Girl; "there
+was a girl in our corridor who never would disagree with me.  Every
+opinion I expressed turned out to be her opinion also.  It always
+irritated me."
+
+"That might have been weak-mindedness," said the Old Maid, which sounded
+ambiguous.
+
+"It is not so unpleasant as having a person always disagreeing with you,"
+said the Woman of the World.  "My cousin Susan never would agree with any
+one.  If I came down in red she would say, 'Why don't you try green,
+dear? every one says you look so well in green'; and when I wore green
+she would say, 'Why have you given up red dear?  I thought you rather
+fancied yourself in red.'  When I told her of my engagement to Tom, she
+burst into tears and said she couldn't help it.  She had always felt that
+George and I were intended for one another; and when Tom never wrote for
+two whole months, and behaved disgracefully in--in other ways, and I told
+her I was engaged to George, she reminded me of every word I had ever
+said about my affection for Tom, and of how I had ridiculed poor George.
+Papa used to say, 'If any man ever tells Susan that he loves her, she
+will argue him out of it, and will never accept him until he has jilted
+her, and will refuse to marry him every time he asks her to fix the
+day."'
+
+"Is she married?" asked the Philosopher.
+
+"Oh, yes," answered the Woman of the World, "and is devoted to her
+children.  She lets them do everything they don't want to."
+
+
+
+
+THE DEGENERATION OF THOMAS HENRY
+
+
+The most respectable cat I have ever known was Thomas Henry.  His
+original name was Thomas, but it seemed absurd to call him that.  The
+family at Hawarden would as soon think of addressing Mr. Gladstone as
+"Bill."  He came to us from the Reform Club, _via_ the butcher, and the
+moment I saw him I felt that of all the clubs in London that was the club
+he must have come from.  Its atmosphere of solid dignity and petrified
+conservatism seemed to cling to him.  Why he left the club I am unable,
+at this distance of time, to remember positively, but I am inclined to
+think that it came about owing to a difference with the new _chef_, an
+overbearing personage who wanted all the fire to himself.  The butcher,
+hearing of the quarrel, and knowing us as a catless family, suggested a
+way out of the _impasse_ that was welcomed both by cat and cook.  The
+parting between them, I believe, was purely formal, and Thomas arrived
+prejudiced in our favour.
+
+My wife, the moment she saw him, suggested Henry as a more suitable name.
+It struck me that the combination of the two would be still more
+appropriate, and accordingly, in the privacy of the domestic circle,
+Thomas Henry he was called.  When speaking of him to friends, we
+generally alluded to him as Thomas Henry, Esquire.
+
+He approved of us in his quiet, undemonstrative way.  He chose my own
+particular easy chair for himself, and stuck to it.  An ordinary cat I
+should have shot out, but Thomas Henry was not the cat one chivvies.  Had
+I made it clear to him that I objected to his presence in my chair, I
+feel convinced he would have regarded me much as I should expect to be
+regarded by Queen Victoria, were that gracious Lady to call upon me in a
+friendly way, and were I to inform her that I was busy, and request her
+to look in again some other afternoon.  He would have risen, and have
+walked away, but he never would have spoken to me again so long as we
+lived under the same roof.
+
+We had a lady staying with us at the time--she still resides with us, but
+she is now older, and possessed of more judgment--who was no respecter of
+cats.  Her argument was that seeing the tail stuck up, and came
+conveniently to one's hand, that was the natural appendage by which to
+raise a cat.  She also laboured under the error that the way to feed a
+cat was to ram things into its head, and that its pleasure was to be
+taken out for a ride in a doll's perambulator.  I dreaded the first
+meeting of Thomas Henry with this lady.  I feared lest she should give
+him a false impression of us as a family, and that we should suffer in
+his eyes.
+
+But I might have saved myself all anxiety.  There was a something about
+Thomas Henry that checked forwardness and damped familiarity.  His
+attitude towards her was friendly but firm.  Hesitatingly, and with a new-
+born respect for cats, she put out her hand timidly towards its tail.  He
+gently put it on the other side, and looked at her.  It was not an angry
+look nor an offended look.  It was the expression with which Solomon
+might have received the advances of the Queen of Sheba.  It expressed
+condescension, combined with distance.
+
+He was really a most gentlemanly cat.  A friend of mine, who believes in
+the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, was convinced that he was
+Lord Chesterfield.  He never clamoured for food, as other cats do.  He
+would sit beside me at meals, and wait till he was served.  He would eat
+only the knuckle-end of a leg of mutton, and would never look at over-
+done beef.  A visitor of ours once offered him a piece of gristle; he
+said nothing, but quietly left the room, and we did not see him again
+until our friend had departed.
+
+But every one has his price, and Thomas Henry's price was roast duck.
+Thomas Henry's attitude in the presence of roast duck came to me as a
+psychological revelation.  It showed me at once the lower and more animal
+side of his nature.  In the presence of roast duck Thomas Henry became
+simply and merely a cat, swayed by all the savage instincts of his race.
+His dignity fell from him as a cloak.  He clawed for roast duck, he
+grovelled for it.  I believe he would have sold himself to the devil for
+roast duck.
+
+We accordingly avoided that particular dish: it was painful to see a
+cat's character so completely demoralised.  Besides, his manners, when
+roast duck was on the table, afforded a bad example to the children.
+
+He was a shining light among all the eats of our neighbourhood.  One
+might have set one's watch by his movements.  After dinner he invariably
+took half an hour's constitutional in the square; at ten o'clock each
+night, precisely, he returned to the area door, and at eleven o'clock he
+was asleep in my easy chair.  He made no friends among the other cats.  He
+took no pleasure in fighting, and I doubt his ever having loved, even in
+youth; his was too cold and self-contained a nature, female society he
+regarded with utter indifference.
+
+So he lived with us a blameless existence during the whole winter.  In
+the summer we took him down with us into the country.  We thought the
+change of air would do him good; he was getting decidedly stout.  Alas,
+poor Thomas Henry! the country was his ruin.  What brought about the
+change I cannot say: maybe the air was too bracing.  He slid down the
+moral incline with frightful rapidity.  The first night he stopped out
+till eleven, the second night he never came home at all, the third night
+he came home at six o'clock in the morning, minus half the fur on the top
+of his head.  Of course, there was a lady in the case, indeed, judging by
+the riot that went on all night, I am inclined to think there must have
+been a dozen.  He was certainly a fine cat, and they took to calling for
+him in the day time.  Then gentleman cats who had been wronged took to
+calling also, and demanding explanations, which Thomas Henry, to do him
+justice, was always ready to accord.
+
+The village boys used to loiter round all day to watch the fights, and
+angry housewives would be constantly charging into our kitchen to fling
+dead cats upon the table, and appeal to Heaven and myself for justice.
+Our kitchen became a veritable cat's morgue, and I had to purchase a new
+kitchen table.  The cook said it would make her work simpler if she could
+keep a table entirely to herself.  She said it quite confused her, having
+so many dead cats lying round among her joints and vegetables: she was
+afraid of making a mistake.  Accordingly, the old table was placed under
+the window, and devoted to the cats; and, after that, she would never
+allow anyone to bring a cat, however dead, to her table.
+
+"What do you want me to do with it," I heard her asking an excited lady
+on one occasion; "cook it?"
+
+"It's my cat," said the lady; "that's what that is."
+
+"Well, I'm not making cat pie to-day," answered our cook.  "You take it
+to its proper table.  This is my table."
+
+At first, "Justice" was generally satisfied with half a crown, but as
+time went on cats rose.  I had hitherto regarded cats as a cheap
+commodity, and I became surprised at the value attached to them.  I began
+to think seriously of breeding cats as an industry.  At the prices
+current in that village, I could have made an income of thousands.
+
+"Look what your beast has done," said one irate female, to whom I had
+been called out in the middle of dinner.
+
+I looked.  Thomas Henry appeared to have "done" a mangy, emaciated
+animal, that must have been far happier dead than alive.  Had the poor
+creature been mine I should have thanked him; but some people never know
+when they are well off.
+
+"I wouldn't ha' taken a five-pun' note for that cat," said the lady.
+
+"It's a matter of opinion," I replied, "but personally I think you would
+have been unwise to refuse it.  Taking the animal as it stands, I don't
+feel inclined to give you more than a shilling for it.  If you think you
+can do better by taking it elsewhere, you do so."
+
+"He was more like a Christian than a cat," said the lady.
+
+"I'm not taking dead Christians," I answered firmly, "and even if I were
+I wouldn't give more than a shilling for a specimen like that.  You can
+consider him as a Christian, or you can consider him as a cat; but he's
+not worth more than a shilling in either case."
+
+We settled eventually for eighteenpence.
+
+The number of cats that Thomas Henry contrived to dispose of also
+surprised me.  Quite a massacre of cats seemed to be in progress.
+
+One evening, going into the kitchen, for I made it a practice now to
+visit the kitchen each evening, to inspect the daily consignment of dead
+cats, I found, among others, a curiously marked tortoiseshell cat, lying
+on the table.
+
+"That cat's worth half a sovereign," said the owner, who was standing by,
+drinking beer.
+
+I took up the animal, and examined it.
+
+"Your cat killed him yesterday," continued the man.  "It's a burning
+shame."
+
+"My cat has killed him three times," I replied.  "He was killed on
+Saturday as Mrs. Hedger's cat; on Monday he was killed for Mrs. Myers.  I
+was not quite positive on Monday; but I had my suspicions, and I made
+notes.  Now I recognise him.  You take my advice, and bury him before he
+breeds a fever.  I don't care how many lives a cat has got; I only pay
+for one."
+
+We gave Thomas Henry every chance to reform; but he only went from bad to
+worse, and added poaching and chicken-stalking to his other crimes, and I
+grew tired of paying for his vices.
+
+I consulted the gardener, and the gardener said he had known cats taken
+that way before.
+
+"Do you know of any cure for it?" I asked.
+
+"Well, sir," replied the gardener, "I have heard as how a dose of
+brickbat and pond is a good thing in a general way."
+
+"We'll try him with a dose just before bed time," I answered.  The
+gardener administered it, and we had no further trouble with him.
+
+Poor Thomas Henry!  It shows to one how a reputation for respectability
+may lie in the mere absence of temptation.  Born and bred in the
+atmosphere of the Reform Club, what gentleman could go wrong?  I was
+sorry for Thomas Henry, and I have never believed in the moral influence
+of the country since.
+
+
+
+
+THE CITY OF THE SEA
+
+
+They say, the chroniclers who have written the history of that low-lying,
+wind-swept coast, that years ago the foam fringe of the ocean lay further
+to the east; so that where now the North Sea creeps among the treacherous
+sand-reefs, it was once dry land.  In those days, between the Abbey and
+the sea, there stood a town of seven towers and four rich churches,
+surrounded by a wall of twelve stones' thickness, making it, as men
+reckoned then, a place of strength and much import; and the monks,
+glancing their eyes downward from the Abbey garden on the hill, saw
+beneath their feet its narrow streets, gay with the ever passing of rich
+merchandise, saw its many wharves and water-ways, ever noisy with the
+babel of strange tongues, saw its many painted masts, wagging their grave
+heads above the dormer roofs and quaintly-carved oak gables.
+
+Thus the town prospered till there came a night when it did evil in the
+sight of God and man.  Those were troublous times to Saxon dwellers by
+the sea, for the Danish water-rats swarmed round each river mouth,
+scenting treasure from afar; and by none was the white flash of their
+sharp, strong teeth more often seen than by the men of Eastern Anglia,
+and by none in Eastern Anglia more often than by the watchers on the
+walls of the town of seven towers that once stood upon the dry land, but
+which now lies twenty fathom deep below the waters.  Many a bloody fight
+raged now without and now within its wall of twelve stones' thickness.
+Many a groan of dying man, many a shriek of murdered woman, many a wail
+of mangled child, knocked at the Abbey door upon its way to Heaven,
+calling the trembling-monks from their beds, to pray for the souls that
+were passing by.
+
+But at length peace came to the long-troubled land: Dane and Saxon
+agreeing to dwell in friendship side by side, East Anglia being wide, and
+there being room for both.  And all men rejoiced greatly, for all were
+weary of a strife in which little had been gained on either side beyond
+hard blows, and their thoughts were of the ingle-nook.  So the
+long-bearded Danes, their thirsty axes harmless on their backs, passed to
+and fro in straggling bands, seeking where undisturbed and undisturbing
+they might build their homes; and thus it came about that Haafager and
+his company, as the sun was going down, drew near to the town of seven
+towers, that in those days stood on dry land between the Abbey and the
+sea.
+
+And the men of the town, seeing the Danes, opened wide their gates
+saying:--
+
+"We have fought, but now there is peace.  Enter, and make merry with us,
+and to-morrow go your way."
+
+But Haafager made answer:--
+
+"I am an old man, I pray you do not take my words amiss.  There is peace
+between us, as you say, and we thank you for your courtesy, but the
+stains are still fresh upon our swords.  Let us camp here without your
+walls, and a little later, when the grass has grown upon the fields where
+we have striven, and our young men have had time to forget, we will make
+merry together, as men should who dwell side by side in the same land."
+
+But the men of the town still urged Haafager, calling his people
+neighbours; and the Abbot, who had hastened down, fearing there might be
+strife, added his words to theirs, saying:--
+
+"Pass in, my children.  Let there indeed be peace between you, that the
+blessing of God may be upon the land, and upon both Dane and Saxon"; for
+the Abbot saw that the townsmen were well disposed towards the Danes, and
+knew that men, when they have feasted and drunk together, think kinder of
+one another.
+
+Then answered Haafager, who knew the Abbot for a holy man:--
+
+"Hold up your staff, my father, that the shadow of the cross your people
+worship may fall upon our path, so we will pass into the town and there
+shall be peace between us, for though your gods are not our gods, faith
+between man and man is of all altars."
+
+And the Abbot held his staff aloft between Haafager's people and the sun,
+it being fashioned in the form of a cross, and under its shadow the Danes
+passed by into the town of seven towers, there being of them, with the
+women and the children, nearly two thousand souls, and the gates were
+made fast behind them.
+
+So they who had fought face to face, feasted side by side, pledging one
+another in the wine cup, as was the custom; and Haafager's men, knowing
+themselves amongst friends, cast aside their arms, and when the feast was
+done, being weary, they lay down to sleep.
+
+Then an evil voice arose in the town, and said: "Who are these that have
+come among us to share our land?  Are not the stones of our streets red
+with the blood of wife and child that they have slain?  Do men let the
+wolf go free when they have trapped him with meat?  Let us fall upon them
+now that they are heavy with food and wine, so that not one of them shall
+escape.  Thus no further harm shall come to us from them nor from their
+children."
+
+And the voice of evil prevailed, and the men of the town of seven towers
+fell upon the Danes with whom they had broken meat, even to the women and
+the little children; and the blood of the people of Haafager cried with a
+loud voice at the Abbey door, through the long night it cried, saying:--
+
+"I trusted in your spoken word.  I broke meat with you.  I put my faith
+in you and in your God.  I passed beneath the shadow of your cross to
+enter your doors.  Let your God make answer!"
+
+Nor was there silence till the dawn.
+
+Then the Abbot rose from where he knelt and called to God, saying:--
+
+"Thou hast heard, O God.  Make answer."
+
+And there came a great sound from the sea as though a tongue had been
+given to the deep, so that the monks fell upon their knees in fear; but
+the Abbot answered:--
+
+"It is the voice of God speaking through the waters.  He hath made
+answer."
+
+And that winter a mighty storm arose, the like of which no man had known
+before; for the sea was piled upon the dry land until the highest tower
+of the town of seven towers was not more high; and the waters moved
+forward over the dry land.  And the men of the town of seven towers fled
+from the oncoming of the waters, but the waters overtook them so that not
+one of them escaped.  And the town of the seven towers and of the four
+churches, and of the many streets and quays, was buried underneath the
+waters, and the feet of the waters still moved till they came to the hill
+whereon the Abbey stood.  Then the Abbot prayed to God that the waters
+might be stayed, and God heard, and the sea came no farther.
+
+And that this tale is true, and not a fable made by the weavers of words,
+he who doubts may know from the fisher-folk, who to-day ply their calling
+amongst the reefs and sandbanks of that lonely coast.  For there are
+those among them who, peering from the bows of their small craft, have
+seen far down beneath their keels a city of strange streets and many
+quays.  But as to this, I, who repeat these things to you, cannot speak
+of my own knowledge, for this city of the sea is only visible when a rare
+wind, blowing from the north, sweeps the shadows from the waves; and
+though on many a sunny day I have drifted where its seven towers should
+once have stood, yet for me that wind has never blown, pushing back the
+curtains of the sea, and, therefore, I have strained my eyes in vain.
+
+But this I do know, that the rumbling stones of that ancient Abbey,
+between which and the foam fringe of the ocean the town of seven towers
+once lay, now stand upon a wave-washed cliff, and that he who looks forth
+from its shattered mullions to-day sees only the marshland and the
+wrinkled waters, hears only the plaint of the circling gulls and the
+weary crying of the sea.
+
+And that God's anger is not everlasting, and that the evil that there is
+in men shall be blotted out, he who doubts may also learn from the wisdom
+of the simple fisher-folk, who dwell about the borders of the marsh-land;
+for they will tell him that on stormy nights there speaks a deep voice
+from the sea, calling the dead monks to rise from their forgotten graves,
+and chant a mass for the souls of the men of the town of seven towers.
+Clothed in long glittering white, they move with slowly pacing feet
+around the Abbey's grass-grown aisles, and the music of their prayers is
+heard above the screaming of the storm.  And to this I also can bear
+witness, for I have seen the passing of their shrouded forms behind the
+blackness of the shattered shafts; I have heard their sweet, sad singing
+above the wailing of the wind.
+
+Thus for many ages have the dead monks prayed that the men of the town of
+seven towers may be forgiven.  Thus, for many ages yet shall they so
+pray, till the day come when of their once fair Abbey not a single stone
+shall stand upon its fellow; and in that day it shall be known that the
+anger of God against the men of the town of seven towers has passed away;
+and in that day the feet of the waters shall move back, and the town of
+seven towers shall stand again upon the dry land.
+
+There be some, I know, who say that this is but a legend; who will tell
+you that the shadowy shapes that you may see with your own eyes on stormy
+nights, waving their gleaming arms behind the ruined buttresses are but
+of phosphorescent foam, tossed by the raging waves above the cliffs; and
+that the sweet, sad harmony cleaving the trouble of the night is but the
+aeolian music of the wind.
+
+But such are of the blind, who see only with their eyes.  For myself I
+see the white-robed monks, and hear the chanting of their mass for the
+souls of the sinful men of the town of seven towers.  For it has been
+said that when an evil deed is done, a prayer is born to follow it
+through time into eternity, and plead for it.  Thus is the whole world
+clasped around with folded hands both of the dead and of the living, as
+with a shield, lest the shafts of God's anger should consume it.
+
+Therefore, I know that the good monks of this nameless Abbey are still
+praying that the sin of those they love may be forgiven.
+
+God grant good men may say a mass for us.
+
+
+
+
+DRIFTWOOD
+
+
+CHARACTERS
+
+
+MR. TRAVERS.
+
+MRS. TRAVERS.
+
+MARION [their daughter].
+
+DAN [a gentleman of no position].
+
+* * * * *
+
+SCENE: A room opening upon a garden.  The shadows creep from their
+corners, driving before them the fading twilight.
+
+MRS. TRAVERS sits in a wickerwork easy chair.  MR. TRAVERS, smoking a
+cigar, sits the other side of the room.  MARION stands by the open French
+window, looking out.
+
+MR. TRAVERS.  Nice little place Harry's got down here.
+
+MRS. TRAVERS.  Yes; I should keep this on if I were you, Marion.  You'll
+find it very handy.  One can entertain so cheaply up the river; one is
+not expected to make much of a show.  [She turns to her husband.]  Your
+poor cousin Emily used to work off quite half her list that way--relations
+and Americans, and those sort of people, you know--at that little place
+of theirs at Goring.  You remember it--a poky hole I always thought it,
+but it had a lot of green stuff over the door--looked very pretty from
+the other side of the river.  She always used to have cold meat and
+pickles for lunch--called it a picnic.  People said it was so homely and
+simple.
+
+MR. TRAVERS.  They didn't stop long, I remember.
+
+MRS. TRAVERS.  And there was a special champagne she always kept for the
+river--only twenty-five shillings a dozen, I think she told me she paid
+for it, and very good it was too, for the price.  That old Indian
+major--what was his name?--said it suited him better than anything else
+he had ever tried.  He always used to drink a tumblerful before
+breakfast; such a funny thing to do.  I've often wondered where she got
+it.
+
+MR. TRAVERS.  So did most people who tasted it.  Marion wants to forget
+those lessons, not learn them.  She is going to marry a rich man who will
+be able to entertain his guests decently.
+
+MRS. TRAVERS.  Oh, well, James, I don't know.  None of us can afford to
+live up to the income we want people to think we've got.  One must
+economise somewhere.  A pretty figure we should cut in the county if I
+didn't know how to make fivepence look like a shilling.  And, besides,
+there are certain people that one has to be civil to, that, at the same
+time, one doesn't want to introduce into one's regular circle.  If you
+take my advice, Marion, you won't encourage those sisters of Harry's more
+than you can help.  They're dear sweet girls, and you can be very nice to
+them; but don't have them too much about.  Their manners are terribly old-
+fashioned, and they've no notion how to dress, and those sort of people
+let down the tone of a house.
+
+MARION.  I'm not likely to have many "dear sweet girls" on my visiting
+list.  [With a laugh.]  There will hardly be enough in common to make the
+company desired, on either side.
+
+MRS. TRAVERS.  Well, I only want you to be careful, my dear.  So much
+depends on how you begin, and with prudence there's really no reason why
+you shouldn't do very well.  I suppose there's no doubt about Harry's
+income.  He won't object to a few inquiries?
+
+MARION.  I think you may trust me to see to that, mamma.  It would be a
+bad bargain for me, if even the cash were not certain.
+
+MR. TRAVERS [jumping up].  Oh, I do wish you women wouldn't discuss the
+matter in that horribly business-like way.  One would think the girl was
+selling herself.
+
+MRS. TRAVERS.  Oh, don't be foolish, James.  One must look at the
+practical side of these things.  Marriage is a matter of sentiment to a
+man--very proper that it should be.  A woman has to remember that she's
+fixing her position for life.
+
+MARION.  You see, papa dear, it's her one venture.  If she doesn't sell
+herself to advantage then, she doesn't get another opportunity--very
+easily.
+
+MR. TRAVERS.  Umph!  When I was a young man, girls talked more about love
+and less about income.
+
+MARION.  Perhaps they had not our educational advantages.
+
+[DAN enters from the garden.  He is a man of a little over forty, his
+linen somewhat frayed about the edges.]
+
+MRS. TRAVERS.  Ah!  We were just wondering where all you people had got
+to.
+
+DAN.  We've been out sailing.  I've been sent up to fetch you.  It's
+delightful on the river.  The moon is just rising.
+
+MRS. TRAVERS.  But it's so cold.
+
+MR. TRAVERS.  Oh, never mind the cold.  It's many a long year since you
+and I looked at the moon together.  It will do us good.
+
+MRS. TRAVERS.  Ah, dear.  Boys will be boys.  Give me my wrap then.
+
+[DAN places it about her.  They move towards the window, where they stand
+talking.  MARION has slipped out and returns with her father's cap.  He
+takes her face between his hands and looks at her.]
+
+MR. TRAVERS.  Do you really care for Harry, Marion?
+
+MARION.  As much as one can care for a man with five thousand a year.
+Perhaps he will make it ten one day--then I shall care for him twice as
+much.  [Laughs.]
+
+MR. TRAVERS.  And are you content with this marriage?
+
+MARION.  Quite.
+
+[He shakes his head gravely at her.]
+
+MRS. TRAVERS.  Aren't you coming, Marion?
+
+MARION.  No.  I'm feeling tired.
+
+[MR. and MRS. TRAVERS go out.]
+
+DAN.  Are you going to leave Harry alone with two pairs of lovers?
+
+MARION [with a laugh].  Yes--let him see how ridiculous they look.  I
+hate the night--it follows you and asks questions.  Shut it out.  Come
+and talk to me.  Amuse me.
+
+DAN.  What shall I talk to you about?
+
+MARION.  Oh, tell me all the news.  What is the world doing?  Who has run
+away with whose wife?  Who has been swindling whom?  Which philanthropist
+has been robbing the poor?  What saint has been discovered sinning?  What
+is the latest scandal?  Who has been found out? and what is it they have
+been doing? and what is everybody saying about it?
+
+DAN.  Would it amuse you?
+
+MARION [she sits by the piano, softly touching the keys, idly recalling
+many memories].  What should it do?  Make me weep?  Should not one be
+glad to know one's friends better?
+
+DAN.  I wish you wouldn't be clever.  Everyone one meets is clever
+nowadays.  It came in when the sun-flower went out.  I preferred the sun-
+flower; it was more amusing.
+
+MARION.  And stupid people, I suppose, will come in when the clever
+people go out.  I prefer the clever.  They have better manners.  You're
+exceedingly disagreeable.  [She leaves the piano, and, throwing herself
+upon the couch, takes up a book.]
+
+DAN.  I know I am.  The night has been with me also.  It follows one and
+asks questions.
+
+MARION.  What questions has it been asking you?
+
+DAN.  Many--and so many of them have no answer.  Why am I a useless,
+drifting log upon the world's tide?  Why have all the young men passed
+me?  Why am I, at thirty-nine, let us say, with brain, with power, with
+strength--nobody thinks I am worth anything, but I am--I know it.  I
+might have been an able editor, devoting every morning from ten till
+three to arranging the affairs of the Universe, or a popular politician,
+trying to understand what I was talking about, and to believe it.  And
+what am I?  A newspaper reporter, at three-ha'pence a line--I beg their
+pardon, its occasionally twopence.
+
+MARION.  Does it matter?
+
+DAN.  Does it matter!  Does it matter whether a Union Jack or a Tricolor
+floats over the turrets of Badajoz? yet we pour our blood into its
+ditches to decide the argument.  Does it matter whether one star more or
+less is marked upon our charts? yet we grow blind peering into their
+depths.  Does it matter that one keel should slip through the grip of the
+Polar ice? yet nearer, nearer to it, we pile our whitening bones.  And
+it's worth playing, the game of life.  And there's a meaning in it.  It's
+worth playing, if only that it strengthens the muscles of our souls.  I'd
+like to have taken a hand in it.
+
+MARION.  Why didn't you?
+
+DAN.  No partner.  Dull playing by oneself.  No object.
+
+MARION [after a silence].  What was she like?
+
+DAN.  So like you that there are times when I almost wish I had never met
+you.  You set me thinking about myself, and that is a subject I find it
+pleasanter to forget.
+
+MARION.  And this woman that was like me--she could have made a man's
+life?
+
+DAN.  Ay!
+
+MARION.  Won't you tell me about her?  Had she many faults?
+
+DAN.  Enough to love her by.
+
+MARION.  But she must have been good.
+
+DAN.  Good enough to be a woman.
+
+MARION.  That might mean so much or so little.
+
+DAN.  It should mean much to my thinking.  There are few women.
+
+MARION.  Few!  I thought the economists held that there were too many of
+us.
+
+DAN.  Not enough--not enough to go round.  That is why a true woman has
+many lovers.
+
+[There is a silence between them.  Then MARION rises, but their eyes do
+not meet.]
+
+MARION.  How serious we have grown!
+
+DAN.  They say a dialogue between a man and woman always does.
+
+MARION [she moves away, then, hesitating, half returns].  May I ask you a
+question?
+
+DAN.  That is an easy favour to grant.
+
+MARION.  If--if at any time you felt regard again for a woman, would you,
+for her sake, if she wished it, seek to gain, even now, that position in
+the world which is your right--which would make her proud of your
+friendship--would make her feel that even her life had not been
+altogether without purpose?
+
+DAN.  Too late!  The old hack can only look over the hedge, and watch the
+field race by.  The old ambition stirs within me at times--especially
+after a glass of good wine--and Harry's wine--God bless him--is
+excellent--but to-morrow morning--[with a shrug of his shoulders he
+finishes his meaning].
+
+MARION.  Then she could do nothing?
+
+DAN.  Nothing for his fortunes--much for himself.  My dear young lady,
+never waste pity on a man in love--nor upon a child crying for the moon.
+The moon is a good thing to cry for.
+
+MARION.  I am glad I am like her.  I am glad that I have met you.
+
+[She gives him her hand, and for a moment he holds it.  Then she goes
+out.]
+
+[A flower has fallen from her breast, whether by chance or meaning, he
+knows not.  He picks it up and kisses it; stands twirling it, undecided
+for a second, then lets it fall again upon the floor.]
+
+
+
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