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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Lowest Rung, by Mary Cholmondeley
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Lowest Rung
+       Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy 
+
+
+Author: Mary Cholmondeley
+
+
+
+Release Date: February 12, 2008  [eBook #24587]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOWEST RUNG***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Louise Pryor, Jacqueline Jeremy, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+THE LOWEST RUNG
+
+Together with The Hand on
+the Latch, St. Luke's Summer
+and The Understudy
+
+by
+
+MARY CHOLMONDELEY
+
+Author of "Red Pottage"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London
+John Murray, Albemarle Street, W.
+1908
+
+Copyright, 1908, in the
+United States of America
+
+
+
+
+    TO
+    HOWARD STURGIS
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                              PAGE
+
+    THE LOWEST RUNG             33
+
+    THE HAND ON THE LATCH       82
+
+    SAINT LUKE'S SUMMER        107
+
+    THE UNDERSTUDY             156
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+I have been writing books for five-and-twenty years, novels of which I
+believe myself to be the author, in spite of the fact that I have been
+assured over and over again that they are not my own work. When I have
+on several occasions ventured to claim them, I have seldom been
+believed, which seems the more odd as, when others have claimed them,
+they have been believed at once. Before I put my name to them they were
+invariably considered to be, and reviewed as, the work of a man; and for
+years after I had put my name to them various men have been mentioned to
+me as the real author.
+
+I remember once, when I was very young and shy, how at one of my first
+London dinner-parties a charming elderly man discussed one of my
+earliest books with such appreciation that I at last remarked that I had
+written it myself. If I had looked for a surprised flash of delight at
+the fact that so much talent was palpitating in white muslin beside him,
+I was doomed to be disappointed. He gravely and gently said, "I know
+that to be untrue," and the conversation was turned to other subjects.
+
+One man did indeed actually announce himself to be the author of "Red
+Pottage," in the presence of a large number of people, including the
+late Mr. William Sharp, who related the occurrence to me. But the
+incident ended uncomfortably for the claimant, which one would have
+thought he might have foreseen.
+
+But whether my books are mine or not, still whenever one of them appears
+the same thing happens. I am pressed to own that such-and-such a
+character "is taken from So-and-so." I have not yet yielded to these
+exhortations to confession, partly, no doubt, because it would be very
+awkward for me afterwards if I owned that thirty different persons were
+the one and only original of "So-and-so."
+
+My character for uprightness (if I ever had one) has never survived my
+tacit, or in some cases emphatic, refusal to be squeezed through the
+"clefts of confession."
+
+It is perhaps impossible for those who do not write fiction to form any
+conception how easily an erroneous idea gains credence that some one has
+been "put in a book"; or, if the idea has once been entertained, how
+impossible it is to eradicate it.
+
+Looking back over a string of incidents of this kind in my own personal
+experience, covering the last five-and-twenty years, I feel doubtful
+whether I shall be believed if I instance some of them. They seem now,
+after the lapse of years, frankly incredible, and yet they were real
+enough to give me not a little pain at the time. It is the fashion
+nowadays, if one says anything about oneself, to preface it by the
+pontifical remark that what one writes is penned for the sake of others,
+to save them, to cheer them, etc., etc. This, of course, now I come to
+think of it, must be my reason also for my lapse into autobiography. I
+see now that I only do it out of tenderness for the next generation.
+Therefore, young writers of the future, now on the playing-fields of
+Eton, take notice that my heart yearns over you. If, later on, you are
+harrowed as I have been harrowed, remember
+
+    _J'ai passé par là._
+
+Observe the prints of my goloshes on the steep ascent, and take courage.
+And if you are perturbed, as I have been perturbed, let me whisper to
+you the exhortation of the bankrupt to the terrestrial globe:
+
+    Never _you_ mind. Roll on.
+
+When I first took a pen into my youthful hand, I lived in a very
+secluded part of the Midlands, and perhaps, my little world being what
+it was, it was inevitable that the originals of my characters,
+especially the tiresome ones, should be immediately identified with the
+kindly neighbours within a five-mile radius of my paternal Rectory. Five
+miles was about the utmost our little pony could do. It was therefore
+obviously impossible that I could be acquainted with any one beyond that
+distance. And from first to last, from that day to this, no one leading
+a secluded life has been so fatuous as to believe that my characters
+were evolved out of my inner consciousness. "After all, you must own you
+took them from _some one_," is a phrase which has long lost its novelty
+for me. I remember even now my shocked astonishment when a furious
+neighbour walked up to me and said, "We all recognised Mrs. Alwynn at
+once as Mrs. ----, _and we all say it is not in the least like her_."
+
+It was not, indeed. There was no shadow of resemblance. Did Mrs. ----,
+who had been so kind to me from a child, ever hear that report, I
+wonder? It gave me many a miserable hour, just when I was expanding in
+the sunshine of my first favourable reviews.
+
+When I was still quite a beginner, Mrs. Clifford published her beautiful
+and touching book, "Aunt Anne."
+
+There was, I am willing to believe--it is my duty to believe
+_something_--a faint resemblance between her "Aunt Anne" and an old
+great-aunt of mine, "Aunt Anna Maria," long since dead, whom I had only
+seen once or twice when I was a small child.
+
+The fact that I could not have known my departed relation did not
+prevent two of my cousins, elderly maiden ladies who had had that
+privilege, from writing to me in great indignation at my having ventured
+to travesty my old aunt. They had found me out (I am always being found
+out), and the vials of their wrath were poured out over me.
+
+In my whilom ignorance, in my lamblike innocence of the darker side of
+human nature, I actually thought that a disclaimer would settle the
+matter.
+
+When has a disclaimer ever been of any use? When has it ever achieved
+anything except to add untruthfulness to my other crimes? Why have I
+ever written one, after that first disastrous essay, in which I civilly
+pointed out that not I, but Mrs. Clifford, the well-known writer, was
+the author of "Aunt Anne?"
+
+They replied at once to say that this was untrue, because I, and I
+alone, _could_ have written it.
+
+I showed my father the letter.
+
+The two infuriated ladies were attached to my father, and had known him
+for many years as a clergyman and a rural dean of unblemished character.
+He wrote to them himself to assure them that they had made a mistake,
+that I was not the author of the obnoxious work.
+
+But the only effect his letter had on their minds was a pained uprootal
+of their respect and long affection for him. And they both died some
+years later, and (presumably) went up to heaven, convinced of my guilt,
+in spite of the unscrupulous parental ruridiaconal effort to whitewash
+me.
+
+Long afterwards I mentioned this incident to Mrs. Clifford, but it did
+not cause her surprise. She had had her own experiences. She told me
+that when "Aunt Anne" appeared, she had many letters from persons with
+whom she was unacquainted, reproaching her for having portrayed their
+aunt.
+
+The reverse of the medal ought perhaps to be mentioned. So primitive was
+the circle in which my youth was passed that an adverse review, if seen
+by one of the community, was at once put down to a disaffected and
+totally uneducated person in our village.
+
+A witty but unfavourable criticism in _Punch_ of my first story was
+always believed by two ladies in the parish to have been penned by one
+of the village tradesmen. It was in vain I assured them that the person
+in question could not by any possibility be on the staff of _Punch_.
+They only shook their heads, and repeated mysteriously that they "had
+reasons for _knowing_ he had written it."
+
+When we moved to London, I hoped I might fare better. But evidently I
+had been born under an unlucky star. The "Aunt Anne" incident proved to
+be only the first playful ripple which heralded the incoming of the
+
+    Breakers of the boundless deep.
+
+After the publication of "Red Pottage" a storm burst respecting one of
+the characters--Mr. Gresley--which even now I have not forgotten. The
+personal note was struck once more with vigour, but this time by the
+clerical arm. I was denounced by name from a London pulpit. A Church
+newspaper which shall be nameless suggested that my portrait of Mr.
+Gresley was merely a piece of spite on my part, as I had probably been
+jilted by a clergyman. I will not pretend that the turmoil gave me
+unmixed pain. If it had, I should have been without literary vanity. But
+when a witty bishop wrote to me that he had enjoined on his clergy the
+study of Mr. Gresley as a Lenten penance, it was not possible for me to
+remain permanently depressed.
+
+The character was the outcome of long, close observation of large
+numbers of clergymen, but not of one particular parson. Why, then, was
+it so exactly like individual clergymen that I received excited or
+enthusiastic letters from the parishioners of I dare not say how many
+parishes, affirming that their vicar (whom I had never beheld), and he
+alone, could have been the prototype of Mr. Gresley? I was frequently
+implored to go down and "see for myself." Their most adorable platitudes
+were chronicled and sent up to me, till I wrung my hands because it was
+too late to insert them in "Red Pottage."[1] For they all fitted Mr.
+Gresley like a glove, and I should certainly have used them if it had
+been possible. For, as has been well said, "There is no copyright in
+platitudes." They are part of our goodly heritage. And though people
+like Mr. Gresley and my academic prig Wentworth have in one sense made a
+particular field of platitude their own, by exercising themselves
+continually upon it, nevertheless we cannot allow them to warn us off as
+trespassers, or permit them to annex or enclose common land, the
+property and birthright of the race.
+
+Young men fresh from public schools also informed me that Mr. Gresley
+was the facsimile of their tutor, and of no one else. I was at that time
+unacquainted with any schoolmasters, being cut off from social
+advantages. But that fact did me no good. The dispassionate statement of
+it had no more effect on my young friends than my father's denial had on
+my elderly relations.
+
+I am ashamed to say that once again, as in the case of "Aunt Anne," I
+endeavoured to exculpate myself in order to pacify two old maiden
+ladies. Why is it always the acutely unmarried who are made miserable by
+my books? Is it because--odious thought, avaunt!--married persons do not
+open them? These two ladies did not, indeed, think that I had been
+"paying out" some particular clergyman, as suggested in their favourite
+paper, _The Guardian_,[2] but they were shocked by the profanity of the
+book. Soon afterwards the Bishop of Stepney (now Bishop of London)
+preached on "Red Pottage" in St. Paul's. I sent them a newspaper which
+reprinted the sermon _verbatim_, with a note saying that I trusted this
+expression of opinion on the part of their idolised preacher might
+mitigate their condemnation of the book.
+
+But when have my attempts at making an effect ever come off? My firework
+never lights up properly like that of others! It only splutters and goes
+out. I received in due course a dignified answer that they had both been
+deeply distressed by my information, as it would prevent them ever going
+to hear the Bishop of Stepney again.
+
+My own experience, especially as to "Red Pottage" and "Prisoners,"
+struck me as so direful, I seemed so peculiarly outside the protection
+of Providence, like the celebrated plot of ground on which "no rain nor
+no dew never fell," that I consulted several other brother and sister
+novelists as to how they had fared in this delicate matter. It is not
+for me to reveal the interesting skeletons concealed in cupboards not my
+own, but I have almost invariably returned from these interviews
+cheered, chuckling, and consoled by the comfortable realisation that
+others had writhed on a hotter gridiron than I.
+
+Georges Sand, when she was accused of lampooning a certain _abbé_, said
+that to draw one character of that kind one must know a thousand. She
+has, I think, put her finger on the truth which is not easy to find--at
+least, I never found it until I read those words of hers.
+
+It is necessary to know a very large number of persons of a certain
+kind before one can evolve a type. Each he or she contributes a twig,
+and the author weaves them into a nest. I have no doubt that I must have
+taken such a twig from nearly every clergyman I met who had a _soupçon_
+of Mr. Gresley in him.
+
+But if an author takes one tiny trait, one saying, one sentiment, direct
+from a person, there is always the danger that the contributor will
+recognise the theft, and, if of a self-regarding temperament, will
+instantly conclude that the _whole_ character is drawn from himself.
+There is, for instance, no more universal trait, of what has been
+unkindly called "the old-maid temperament" in either sex, than the
+assertion that it is always busy. But when such a trait is noted in a
+book, how many sensitive readers assume that it is a cruel personality.
+If people could but perceive that what they think to be character in
+themselves is often only sex, or sexlessness; if they could but believe
+in the universality of what they hold to be their individuality! And yet
+how easily they believe in it when it is pleasant to do so, when they
+write books about themselves, and thousands of grateful readers bombard
+the gifted authoress with letters to tell her that they also have "felt
+just like that," and have "been helped" by her exquisite sentiments,
+which are the exact replicas of their own!
+
+The worst of it is that with the academic or clerical prig, when the
+mind has long been permitted to run in a deep, platitudinous groove from
+which it is at last powerless to escape, the resemblance to a prig in
+fiction is sometimes more than fanciful. It is real. For there is no
+doubt that prigs have a horrid family likeness to each other, whether in
+books or in real life. I have sometimes felt as the puzzled mother of
+some long-lost Tichborne might feel. Each claimant to the estates in
+turn seems to acquire a look of the original because he _is_ a claimant.
+Has not this one my lost Willy's eyes? But no! that one has Willy's
+hands. True, but the last-comer snuffles exactly as my lost Willy
+snuffled. How many men have begun suddenly and indubitably in my eyes to
+resemble one of the adored prigs of my novels, merely because they
+insisted on the likeness themselves.
+
+The most obnoxious accident which has yet befallen me, the most wanton
+blow below the belt which Fate has ever dealt me, is buried beneath the
+snows of twenty years. But even now I cannot recall it without a
+shudder. And if a carping critic ventures to point out that blows below
+the belt are not often buried beneath snow, then all I can say is that
+when I have made my meaning clear, I see no reason for a servile
+conformity to academic rules of composition.
+
+I was writing "Diana Tempest." One of the characters, a very worldly
+religious young female prig, was much in my mind. I know many such. I
+may as well mention here that I do not bless the hour on which I first
+saw the light. I have not found life an ardent feast of tumultuous joy.
+But I do realise that it has been embellished by the acquaintance of a
+larger number of delightful prigs than falls to the lot of most. I have
+much to be thankful for. Having got hold of the character of this lady,
+I piloted her through courtship and marriage. I gleefully invented _all_
+her sayings on these momentous occasions, and described the wedding and
+the abhorrent bridegroom with great minuteness. In short, I gloated over
+it.
+
+The book was finished, sold, finally corrected, and in the press when
+one of the young women who had unconsciously contributed a trait to the
+character became affianced. She immediately began throwing off with
+great dignity, as if by clock-work, all the best things which I had
+evolved out of my own brain and had put into the mouth of my female
+prig. At first I was delighted with my own cleverness, but gradually I
+became more and more uneasy, and when I attended the wedding my heart
+failed me altogether. In "Diana Tempest" I had described the rich,
+elderly, stout, and gouty bridegroom whom the lady had captured. There
+he was before my panic-stricken eyes! The wedding was exactly as I had
+already described it. It took place in London, just as I had said. The
+remembrance that the book had passed beyond my own control, the
+irrevocability of certain ghastly sentences, came over me in a flash,
+together with the certainty that, however earnestly I might deny, swear,
+take solemn oaths on family Bibles, nothing, nothing, not even a voice
+from heaven, much less that of a rural dean still on earth, could make
+my innocence credible.
+
+I may add that no voice from heaven sounded, and that I never made any
+attempt at self-exculpation, or invited my father to sacrifice himself a
+second time.
+
+As I heard "The Voice that breathed o'er Eden" and saw the bride of
+twenty-five advance up the aisle to meet the bridegroom of forty-five
+awaiting her deeply flushed, in a distorted white waistcoat--I had
+mercilessly alluded to his white waistcoat as an error of judgment--I
+gave myself up for lost; _and I was lost_.
+
+But all this time, while I have been giving a free rein to my
+autobiographic instincts, the question still remains unanswered, Why is
+human nature so prone to think it has been travestied that it becomes
+impervious to reason on the subject the moment the idea has entered the
+mind? Once lodged, I have never known such an idea dislodged, however
+fantastic. Why is it that if, like Mrs. Clifford, one has the good
+fortune to evolve a type, no one can believe it is not an individual?
+Why does not the outraged friend console himself with the remembrance
+that if he is one of many others who are feeling equally harrowed, he
+cannot really be the object of a malignant spite, carefully disguised
+till then under the apparel of a cheerful friendship?
+
+I think an answer--a partial answer--to the latter question may be found
+in the fact that balm was never yet poured on a wounded spirit by the
+assurance that there are thousands of others exactly like itself. We can
+all endure to be lampooned. (I have even known a man who was deeply
+disappointed when he was forced to believe that he had not been
+victimised.) But to be told we are one of a herd! This flesh and blood
+cannot tolerate. It is unthinkable; a living death. That we who "look
+before and after," and "whose sincerest laughter with some pain is
+fraught"; that _we_, lonely, superb, pining for what is not,
+misunderstood by our nearest and dearest, who don't know, and never
+_can_ know
+
+    Half the reasons why we smile or sigh
+
+(unless, indeed, we are autobiographists: then they know _all_ the
+reasons)--that WE should be confused with the vast mob of foolish,
+sentimental spinsters, or pedantic clerics, or egotistic old bachelors!
+
+Away!--away! The reeling mind stops its ears against these obscene
+suggestions.
+
+The only alternative which remains is that an unscrupulous novelist has
+_heard_ of us--nothing more likely--without being actually acquainted
+with us, and has listened to garbled accounts of us from our so-called
+friends; or has actually met us at a bazaar or a funeral, though of
+course he professes to have forgotten the meeting; has been impressed
+with our subtle personality--nothing more likely--has felt an envious
+admiration of what we ourselves value but little--our social charm--and
+has yielded--nothing more likely--to the ignoble temptation of
+caricaturing qualities which he cannot emulate. Or perhaps he has known
+us for years, and has shown a mysterious indifference to our society, an
+impatience of our deeper utterances, which we can now, _at last_, trace
+to its true source, a guilty consciousness of premeditated treachery
+which has led him to strike us in a dastardly manner, which we can
+indeed afford--being what we are--to forgive, but which we shall never
+forget. And if an opportunity offers later on, it is possible that an
+unprejudiced and judicial mind may feel called upon to indicate what it
+thinks of such conduct.
+
+Perhaps only those whose temperament leads them to believe themselves
+ridiculed in a book know the rankling smart, the exquisite pain, the
+sense of treachery of such an experience. It is probably the most
+offensive slight that can be offered to a sensitive nature.
+
+And if the author realises this, even while he knows himself to be
+guiltless in the matter, it is probable, if he also is somewhat
+sensitive--and some authors are--that a great deal of the delight he may
+derive from a successful novel may be dimmed by the realisation that he
+has unwittingly pained a stranger, or, worse still, an acquaintance, or,
+immeasurably worst of all, an old friend.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] One of these unknown correspondents wrote that their vicar had that
+Sunday begun--he would have said _commenced_--his sermon with the words,
+"God is Love, as the Archbishop of Canterbury remarked last week in
+Westminster Abbey."
+
+[2] _The Guardian_, April 11, 1900: "Truth to tell, when I appreciated,
+with much amusement, the light in which one was expected to regard Mr.
+Gresley, I came to the conclusion that the authoress was paying out some
+particular High Church parson, who had perhaps snubbed her or got the
+better of her, by 'putting him into a book.' The poor, feeble creature
+is described with appetite, so to speak, and when this is the case (with
+a lady writer) one is pretty safe in being sure one has come across the
+personal. Mr. Gresleys certainly exist, but only a woman in a (perhaps
+wholly justified) tantrum would speak of them as a type of the clergy in
+general."--THOS. J. BALL.
+
+
+
+
+THE LOWEST RUNG
+
+    We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung.
+    RUDYARD KIPLING.
+
+
+The sudden splendour of the afternoon made me lay down my pen, and
+tempted me afield. It had been a day of storm and great racing
+cloud-wracks, after a night of hurricane and lashing rain. But in the
+afternoon the sun had broken through, and I struggled across the
+water-meadows, the hurrying, turbid water nearly up to the single planks
+across the ditches, and climbed to the heathery uplands, battling my way
+inch by inch against a tearing wind.
+
+My art had driven me forth from my warm fireside, as it is her wont to
+drive her votaries, and the call of my art I have never disobeyed.
+
+For no artist must look at one side of life only. We must study it as a
+whole, gleaning rich and varied sheaves as we go. My forthcoming book
+of deep religious experiences, intertwined with descriptions of scenery,
+needed a little contrast. I had had abundance of summer mornings and
+dewy evenings, almost too many dewy evenings. And I thought a
+description of a storm would be in keeping with the chapter on which I
+was at that moment engaged, in which I dealt with the stress of my own
+illness of the previous spring, and the mystery of pain, which had
+necessitated a significant change in my life--a visit to Cromer. The
+chapter dealing with Cromer, and the insurgent doubts of convalescence,
+wandering on its poppy-strewn cliffs, as to the beneficence of the
+Deity, was already done, and one of the finest I had ever written.
+
+But I was dissatisfied with the preceding chapter, and, as usual, went
+for inspiration to Nature.
+
+It was late by the time I reached the upland, but I was rewarded for my
+climb.
+
+Far away under the flaring sunset the long lines of tidal river and sea
+stretched tawny and sinister, like drawn swords in firelight, between
+the distant woods and cornfields. The death-like stillness and
+smallness of the low-lying rigid landscape made the contrast with the
+rushing enormity and turmoil of the heavens almost terrific.
+
+Great clouds shouldered up out of the sea, blotting out the low sun,
+darkening the already darkened earth, and then towered up the sky,
+releasing the struggling sun only to extinguish it once more, in a new
+flying cohort.
+
+I do not know how long I stood there, spellbound, the woman lost in the
+artist, scribbling frantically in my notebook, when an onslaught of rain
+brought me to my senses and I looked round for shelter.
+
+Then I became aware that I had not been watching alone. A
+desolate-looking figure, crouching at a little distance, half hidden by
+a gorse-bush, was watching too, watching intently. She got up as I
+turned and came towards me, her uncouth garments whipped against her by
+the wind.
+
+The rain plunged down upon us, enveloping us both as in a whirlwind.
+
+"There is an empty cottage under the down," I shouted to her, and I
+began to run towards it. It was a tumbledown place, but "any port in
+such a storm."
+
+"It is not safe," she shouted back; "the roof is falling in."
+
+The squall of rain whirled past as suddenly as it had come, leaving me
+gasping. She seemed to take no notice of it.
+
+"I spent last night there," she said. "The ceiling came down in the next
+room. Besides," she added, "though possibly that may not deter you,
+there are two policemen there."
+
+I saw now that it had been the cottage which she had been watching. And
+sure enough, in a broken shaft of sunshine which straggled out for a
+moment, I saw two dark figures steal towards the cottage under cover of
+the wall.
+
+"Why are they there?" I said, gaping at such a strange sight. For I had
+been many months at Rufford, and I had never seen a policeman.
+
+"They are lying in wait for some one," she said.
+
+It flashed back across my mind how at luncheon that day the vicar had
+said that a female convict had escaped from Ipswich gaol, and had been
+traced to Bealings, and, it was conjectured, was lurking in the
+neighbourhood of Woodbridge.
+
+I took sudden note of my companion's peculiar dark bluish clothes and
+shawl, and the blood rushed to my head. I knew what those garments
+meant. She pushed back her grizzled hair from her lined, walnut-coloured
+face, and we looked hard at each other.
+
+There was no fear in her eyes, but a certain curiosity as to what I was
+going to do.
+
+"If I told you they were not looking for me," she said, "I could not,
+under the circumstances, expect you to believe it."
+
+I am too highly strung for this workaday world. I know it to my cost.
+The artistic temperament has its penalties. My doctor at Cromer often
+told me that I vibrated like a harp at the slightest touch. I vibrated
+now. Indeed, I almost sat down in the sodden track.
+
+But unlike many of my brothers and sisters of the pen, I am capable of
+impulsive, even quixotic action, and I ought, in justice to myself, to
+mention here that I had not then read that noble book "The Treasure of
+Heaven," in which it will be remembered that a generous-souled woman
+takes in from the storm, and nurses back to health in her lowly
+cottage, an aged tramp who turns out to be a millionaire, and leaves her
+his vast fortune. I did not get the idea of acting as I am about to
+relate from Marie Corelli, the head of our profession, or indeed from
+any other writer. But I have so often been accused of taking other
+people's plots and ideas and sentiments, that I owe it to myself to make
+this clear before I go on.
+
+"You poor soul," I said, "whatever you are, and whatever you've done, I
+will shelter you and help you to escape."
+
+I felt I really could not take her into the house, so I added, "I have a
+little stable in the garden, quite private, with nice dry hay in it.
+Follow me."
+
+I suppose she saw at a glance that she could trust me, for she nodded,
+and I sped down the hill, she following at a little distance, with the
+shrieking, denouncing wind behind us. I walked as quickly as I could,
+but when I got as far as the water-meadows my strength and breath gave
+way. I was never robust, and always foolishly prone to overtax my small
+store of strength. I was obliged to stop and lean my head on my arms
+against a stile.
+
+"There is no need for such hurry," she said tranquilly. She had come up
+noiselessly behind me. "There is not a soul in sight. Besides, look what
+you are missing."
+
+She pointed to the familiar fields before me which we had yet to cross,
+with the Dieben winding through them under his low, red-brick bridges,
+and beyond the little clustered village with its grey church spire
+standing shoulder high above the poplars.
+
+The sun had just set and there was no colour in the west, but over all
+the homely, wind-swept landscape a solemn and unearthly light shone and
+slowly passed, shone and slowly passed.
+
+"Look up," said my companion, turning a face of flame towards me.
+
+I looked up into the sky, as into an enormous furnace. Gigantic rolling
+clouds of flame were sweeping before the roaring wind like some vast
+prairie fire across the firmament. As they passed overhead, the
+reflection of the lurid light on them was smitten earthwards, and passed
+with them, making everything it traversed clear as noon--the lion on the
+swinging sign of the public-house just across the water, the delicate
+tracery of the church windows, the virginia creeper on my cottage porch.
+
+"I have only seen an afterglow like that once in my life," my companion
+said, "and that was in Teneriffe."
+
+A few moments more, and the sky paled to grey. The darkness came down
+with tropical suddenness. I made a movement forwards.
+
+"Shall I not be seen if I follow you through the village in these weird
+clothes?" she said civilly, as one who hesitates to make a suggestion.
+"Where is your house?"
+
+"My cot--it is not a house--is just at the end of those trees," I said.
+"It is the only one close to the park gates. It has virginia creeper
+over the porch, and a white gate."
+
+"It sounds charming."
+
+"But how on earth are we to get there?" I groaned. "And some one may
+come along this path at any moment."
+
+The dusk was falling rapidly. Candles were beginning to twinkle in
+latticed windows. A yellow light from the public-house made an
+impassable streak across the road. Cheerful voices were coming along the
+meadow path behind us. What was to be done?
+
+"Go home," she said steadily. "I will find my own way."
+
+"But my servant?"
+
+"Make your mind easy. She will not see me. I shall not ring the bell.
+Have you a dog?"
+
+"No. My dear little Lindo----"
+
+"It's going to be a black night. I shall be in the porch half an hour
+after dark."
+
+She went swiftly from me, and as the voices drew near I saw her pick her
+way noiselessly into one of the great ditches, and stand motionless in
+the water, obliterated against a pollard willow.
+
+I hurried home. My feet were quite wet, and even my stockings--a thing
+that had not happened to me for years. I changed at once, and took five
+drops of camphor on a lump of sugar. It would be extraordinarily
+inconvenient if I were to take cold, with my tendency to bronchial
+catarrh. I have no time to be ill in my busy life. Was not "Broodings
+beside the Dieben" being finished in hot haste for an eager publisher?
+And had I not promised to give away the Sunday-school prizes at
+Forlinghorn a fortnight hence?
+
+It was half-past six. My garden boy was pumping in the scullery. He kept
+his tools in the stable, and it was his duty to lock it up and hang the
+key on the nail inside the scullery door.
+
+Supposing he forgot to hang it up to-night of all nights! Supposing he
+took it away with him by mistake! I went into the scullery directly he
+had gone. I made a pretext of throwing away some flowers, though I had
+never thought of needing a pretext for going there before. The stable
+key was on its nail all right. I looked into the kitchen, where my
+little maid-servant was preparing my evening meal. When her back was
+turned, I snatched the key from the nail, dropped it noisily on the
+brick floor, caught it up, withdrew to the parlour, and sank down in my
+armchair shaking from head to foot. My doctor was right indeed when he
+said I vibrated like a harp.
+
+The life of contemplation and meditation is more suited to my highly
+strung nature than that of adventure and intrigue.
+
+My servant brought in the lamp, and I hurriedly sat on the key while she
+did so. Then she drew the curtains in the little houseplace, locked the
+outer door, and went back to the kitchen.
+
+There are two doors to my cottage--the front door with the porch leading
+to the lane, and the back door out of the scullery which opens into my
+little slip of garden. At the bottom of the garden is a disused stable,
+utilised by me to store wood in, and old boxes. The gate to the back way
+to the stable from the lane had been permanently closed till the day
+should come when I could afford a pony and cart. But in these days
+novels of not too refined a type are the only form of literature (if
+they can be called literature) for which the public is eager. It will
+devour and extol anything, however coarse, which panders to its love of
+excitement, while grave books dealing with the spiritual side of life,
+books of thought and culture, are left unheeded on the shelf. Such had
+been the fate of mine.
+
+The rain had ceased at last, and the wind was falling. My mind kept on
+making all sorts of uneasy suggestions to me as I sat in my armchair.
+What was I to do with the--the individual when I had got her safely into
+the stable, if I ever did get her safely there? How about food, how
+about dry clothes, how about a light, how about everything? Supposing
+she overslept herself, and Tommy found her there in the morning when he
+went for his tools? Supposing my landlord, Mr. Ledbury, who was a
+magistrate, found out I had harboured a criminal, and gave me notice
+just when I had repapered the parlour and put in a new back to the
+kitchen range? Such a calamity was unthinkable. What happened to people
+who compounded felonies? Was I compounding one? Why was not I sitting
+down? What was I doing standing in the middle of the parlour with the
+stable key in my hand, and, as I caught sight of myself in the glass,
+with my mouth wide open?
+
+I sat down again resolutely, hiding the key under the cushion, and
+calmer thoughts supervened. After all, it was most improbable, almost
+impossible, that I should be found out. And once the adventure was
+safely over, when I had successfully carried it through, what
+interesting accounts I should be able to give of it at luncheon parties
+in London in the winter. My brothers would really believe at last that I
+could act with energy and presence of mind. There was a rooted
+impression in the minds of my own family that I was a flurried sort of
+person, easily thrown off my balance, making mountains out of molehills
+(this was especially irritating to me, as I have always taken a broad,
+sane view of life), who always twisted my ankle if it could be twisted,
+or lost my luggage, or caught childish ailments for the second time.
+Where there is but one gifted member in a large and commonplace family,
+an absurd idea of this kind is apt to grow from a joke into an _idèe
+fixe_.
+
+It had obtained credence originally because I certainly had once in a
+dreamy moment got my gown shut into the door in an empty railway
+compartment on the far side. And as the glass was up on the station side
+I had been unable to attract any one's attention when I wanted to
+alight, and had had to go on to Portsmouth (where the train stopped for
+good) before I could make my presence and my predicament known. This
+trivial incident had never been forgotten by my family--so much so, that
+I had often regretted the hilarious spirit of pure comedy at my own
+expense which had prompted me to relate it to them.
+
+Now was the time to show what metal I was made of. My spirits rose as I
+felt I could rely on myself to be cautious, resourceful, bold. I sat on,
+outwardly composed, but inwardly excited, straining my ears for a sign
+that the fugitive was in the porch. I supposed I should presently hear a
+light tap on my parlour window, which was close to the outer door.
+
+But none came. More than an hour passed. It had long been perfectly
+dark. What could have happened? Had the poor creature been dogged and
+waylaid by those two policemen after all? Was it possible that they had
+seen us standing together at the stile, where she had so inconsiderately
+joined me for a moment? At last I became so nervous that I went to the
+outer door, opened it softly, and looked out. She was so near me that I
+very nearly screamed.
+
+"How long have you been here?" I whispered.
+
+"Close on an hour."
+
+"Why didn't you tap on the window or something? I was waiting to let you
+in."
+
+"I dared not do that. It might have been the kitchen window for all I
+knew, and then your servant would have seen me."
+
+"But the kitchen is the other side."
+
+"Indeed! And where is the stable?"
+
+"At the bottom of the garden, away from the road."
+
+"How are we going to get to it?"
+
+"We can only get to it through the garden, now the back way is closed. I
+closed it because the village children----"
+
+"Had not you better shut the door? If any one passed down the road, they
+would see it was open."
+
+"It's as dark as pitch."
+
+"Yes, but there's a little light from within. I can see you from outside
+quite plainly standing in the doorway."
+
+I led her indoors, and locked and bolted the door.
+
+"What is this room?"
+
+"The houseplace. I have my meals here. I live very primitively. My idea
+is----"
+
+"Then your servant may come in at any moment to lay your supper."
+
+I could not say that she seemed nervous or frightened, but the way she
+cut me short showed that she was so in reality. I was not offended, for
+I am the first to make allowance when rudeness is not intentional. I led
+the way hastily into the parlour.
+
+"She never comes in here," I said reassuringly, "after she has once
+brought in the lamp. I am supposed to be working, and must not be
+disturbed."
+
+"I'm not fit to come in," she said.
+
+And in truth she was not. She was caked with mud and dirt from head to
+foot, an appalling figure in the lamplight. The rain dripped from her
+hair, her sinister clothing, her whole person. She looked as if she must
+have hidden in a wet ditch. I gazed horror-struck at my speckless
+matting and pale Oriental rugs. I had never allowed a child or dog in
+the house for fear of the matting, except of course my poor Lindo, who
+had died a few months previously, and whom I had taught to wipe his feet
+on the mat.
+
+A ghost of a smile twitched her grey mouth.
+
+"Is not that the _Times_?" she said. "Spread it out four thick, and lay
+it on the floor."
+
+I did so, and she stepped carefully on to it.
+
+"Now," she said, standing on a great advertisement of a universal
+history--"now that I am not damaging the furniture, pull yourself
+together and _think_. How am I to get to the stable? I can't stop here."
+
+She could not indeed. I felt I might be absolutely powerless to get the
+muddy footprints out of the matting. And no doubt there were some in the
+houseplace too.
+
+"If I go through the scullery, I may be seen," she said, the water
+pattering off her on to the newspaper. "So lucky you take in the
+_Times_; it's printed on such thick paper. Where does that window look
+out?"
+
+She pointed to the window at the farther end of the room.
+
+"On to the garden."
+
+"Capital! Then we can get out through it, of course, without going
+through the scullery."
+
+I had not thought of that. I opened the window, and she was through it
+in two cautious strides.
+
+"Now," she said, looking back at me, "I'm comparatively safe for the
+moment, and so is the matting. But before we do anything more, get a
+duster--a person like you is sure to have a duster in a drawer. Just so,
+there it is. Now wipe up the marks of my muddy feet in the room we first
+came into as well as this, and then see to the paint of the window. I
+have probably smirched it. Then roll up the _Times_ tight, and put it
+in the waste-paper basket."
+
+She watched me obey her.
+
+"Having obliterated all traces of crime," she said when I had finished,
+"suppose we go on to the stable. Let me help you through the window. I
+will wipe my hands on the grass first. And would not you be wise to put
+on that little shawl I see on the sofa? It is getting cold."
+
+The window was only a yard from the ground, and I got out somehow,
+encumbered in my shawl, which a grateful reader had crocheted for me.
+She had, however, to help me in again directly I was out, for, between
+us, we had forgotten the stable key, which was underneath the cushion of
+my armchair.
+
+The rest was plain sailing. We stole down the garden path to the stable,
+and I unlocked the door and let her in.
+
+"Kindly lock me in and take away the key," she said, vanishing past me
+into the darkness, and I thought I detected a tone of relief in her
+brisk, matter-of-fact voice.
+
+"I will bring some food as soon as I can," I whispered. "If I knock
+three times, you will know it's only me."
+
+"Don't knock at all," she said; "it might be noticed. Why should you
+knock to go into your own stable?"
+
+"I won't, then. And how about your wet things?"
+
+"That's nothing. I'm accustomed to being wet."
+
+I crawled back to the cottage, and managed to scramble in by the parlour
+window, only to sink once more into my armchair in a state of collapse.
+I had always entered so acutely into the joys and sorrows of others,
+their love affairs, their difficulties, their bereavements (I had in
+this way led such a full life), that I was surprised at this juncture to
+find my nervous force so exhausted, until I remembered that ardent
+natures who give out a great deal in the way of helpfulness and interest
+are bound to suffer when the reaction comes. The reaction had come for
+me now. I saw only too plainly the folly I had been guilty of in
+harbouring a total stranger, the trouble I should probably get into, the
+difficulty that a nature naturally frank and open to a fault would find
+in keeping up a deception. I doubted my own powers, everything. The
+truth was--but I did not realise it till afterwards--that I had missed
+my tea.
+
+I could hear my servant laying my evening meal in the houseplace. In a
+few minutes she tapped to tell me it was ready, and I rose mechanically
+to obey the summons. And then, to my horror, I found I was still in
+morning dress. For the first time for years I had not dressed for
+dinner. What would she think if she saw me? But it was too late to
+change now; I must just go in as I was. My whole life seemed dislocated,
+torn up by the roots.
+
+There was not much to eat. Half a very small cold chicken, a lettuce,
+and a little custard pudding, fortunately very nutritious, being made
+with Eustace Miles's proteid. There were, however, a loaf and butter and
+plasmon biscuits on the sideboard. I cut up as much as I dared of the
+chicken, and put it between two very thick slices of buttered bread.
+Then I crept out again and took it to her. She got up out of the hay,
+and put out a gnarled brown hand for it.
+
+"I will bring you a cup of coffee later," I said. I was beginning to
+feel a kind of proprietorship in her. She would have starved but for me.
+
+My servant always left at nine o'clock, to sleep at her father's
+cottage, just over the way. I have a bell in the roof, which I can ring
+with a cord in case of fire or thieves.
+
+To-night she was, of course, later than usual, but at last she brought
+in the coffee, and then I heard her making her rounds, closing the
+shutters on the ground floor, and locking the front door--at least,
+trying to do so. I had already locked and bolted it. Then she locked the
+scullery door on the outside, abstracted the key, and I heard her step
+on the brick path, and the click of the gate. _She was gone_.
+
+I always heated the coffee myself over the parlour fire. It was already
+bubbling on the hob. Directly she had left I went to the kitchen, and
+got a second cup. I felt much better since I had had supper. And as I
+took the cup from the shelf the fantastic idea came into my mind to ask
+my protégée to come in and drink her coffee by the fire in the parlour.
+I must frankly own it was foolhardy; it was rash, it was even dangerous.
+But there it is! One cannot help the way one is made, and I am afraid I
+am not of those who invariably take the coldly prudent course and stick
+to it.
+
+I turned the idea over in my mind. I could put down sheets of brown
+paper--I always have a store--from the door to the fire, and an old
+mackintosh over the worst armchair, which was to be re-covered. Besides,
+I had not had a good look at her yet, or made out the real woman under
+the prison garb. That she was a person of education and refinement may
+appear hardly credible to my readers, but to one like myself, whose
+_métier_ it is to probe the secrets of my own heart and those of
+others--to _me_ it was sufficiently obvious from the first moment that,
+though I had to deal with a criminal, she was a very exceptional one,
+and belonging to my own class. I went out to the stable, and suggested
+to her that she should come in.
+
+"How do you know that I am not a man in disguise?" came a voice from the
+darkness; and it seemed to me, not for the first time, that she was
+amused at something. "I'm tall enough. Just think how stupendous it
+would be if, when I was inside and the door really locked, I proved to
+be a wicked, devastating, burglarious male."
+
+"I wish you would not say things like that," I said. "On your honour,
+_are_ you a man?"
+
+She hesitated, and then said in a changed voice:
+
+"I am not. I don't know what I am. I was a woman once, just as a
+derelict was a ship once. But whatever I am, I am not fit to come into a
+self-respecting house. I am one solid cake of mud."
+
+Something in her reluctance made me the more determined. Besides, one of
+the truths on which I have insisted most strongly in my "Veil of the
+Temple" is that if we show full trust and confidence in others, they
+will prove worthy of that trust. Her coming indoors had now become a
+matter of principle, and I insisted. I even said I could lend her a
+dressing-gown and slippers, so that her wet clothes might be dried by
+the kitchen fire.
+
+She murmured something about a good Samaritan, but still demurred, and
+asked if I had a bath-room. I said I had.
+
+That decided her. She seemed to have no difficulty in making up her
+mind. She did not see two sides to things, as I always do myself.
+
+She said that if I liked to allow her to go to the bath-room first, she
+should be happy to accept my kind invitation for an hour or so. If not,
+she would stay where she was.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Half an hour later she was sitting opposite me in the parlour, on the
+other side of the wood fire, sipping her coffee. I had not put down the
+brown paper or the mackintosh. It was not necessary. Her close-cropped,
+curly grey hair, still damp from the bath, was parted, and brushed
+stiffly back over her ears. It must have been very beautiful hair once.
+Her thin hands and thinner face and neck looked more like brown
+parchment than ever, as she sat in the lamplight, my old blue
+dressing-gown folded negligently round her, and taking picturesque folds
+which it never did when I was inside it. Those long, gaunt limbs must
+have been graceful once. Her feet were bare in her slippers--in my
+slippers, I mean. She looked rather like a well-bred Indian.
+
+It was obvious that she was a lady, but her speech had already told me
+that. What amazed me most where all amazed me was her self-possession.
+
+I wondered what her impression of me was, as we sat, such a strangely
+assorted couple, one on each side of the fire. Did I indeed seem to her
+the quixotic, impetuous, and yet withal dreamy creature which my books
+show me to be? But I have often been told by those who know me well that
+I am much more than my books.
+
+"I have not sat by a fire for how many months?" she said, her black eyes
+on the logs. "Let me see, last time was in a lonely cottage on the
+Cotswolds. It was a night like this, but colder, and a helpless old
+couple let me in, and allowed me to dry my clothes, and lie by their
+fire all night. Very unwise of them, wasn't it? I might have murdered
+them in their beds."
+
+I began to feel rather uncomfortable.
+
+"You are not undergoing a sentence for murder, are you?" I asked.
+
+She looked at me for a moment, and then said:
+
+"The desperate creature who escaped from gaol three days ago, and who
+was in for life for the murder of the man she lived with, and whose
+convict clothes I am wearing--whose clothes, I mean, are at this moment
+drying before your kitchen fire--is not the same woman who is now
+drinking your excellent coffee."
+
+"Do you mean to tell me you have never been in prison?"
+
+"Yes, for a year; but I served my time and finished it four years ago."
+
+I wrung my hands. I was deeply disappointed in her. Her transparent
+duplicity, which could impose on no one, not even so unsuspicious a
+nature as mine, hurt me to the quick.
+
+"Oh! you poor soul," I said, "don't lie to me. Indeed it isn't
+necessary. I will do all I can for you. I will help you to get away. I
+will give you other clothes, and money, and we will bury these--these
+garments of shame. But don't, for God's sake, don't lie to me."
+
+She looked gravely at me, as if she were measuring me, and seeing, no
+doubt, that I was not deceived, a dusky red rose for a moment to her
+face and brow.
+
+"It is not easy to speak the truth to some people," she said, her eyes
+dropping once more to the fire, "even when they are as compassionate and
+kind as you are."
+
+"Truthfulness is a habit that may be regained," I said earnestly. "I
+myself, without half your temptations, was untruthful once."
+
+To associate oneself with the sins of others, to show one's own scar,
+is not this sometimes the only way to comfort those overborne in the
+battle of life? Had I not chronicled my own failing in the matter of
+truthfulness when I foolishly and wickedly took blame on myself for the
+fault of one dear to me, in my first book, "With Broken Wing"? But I saw
+as I spoke that she had not read it, and did not realise to what I was
+alluding. I have so steadily refused to be interviewed that possibly
+also she had not even yet guessed who I was.
+
+"I am sure--I am quite sure," I went on after a moment, "that there is a
+great deal of good in you, that you are by nature truthful."
+
+"Am I? I wonder. Perhaps I was so once, in the early, untroubled days.
+But I have told many lies since then."
+
+She drank her coffee slowly, looking steadfastly into the fire, as if
+she saw in the wavering flame some reflection of another fire on another
+hearthstone.
+
+"How good it is!" she said at last, putting her cup down. "How
+dreadfully good it is--the coffee and the fire, and the quiet room, and
+to be dry and warm and clean! How good it all is! And how little I
+thought of them when I had all these things!"
+
+She got up and looked at a water-colour over the low mantelpiece.
+
+"Madeira, isn't it?" she said. "I seem to remember that peculiar effect
+of the vivid purple of the Bougainvillea against the dim, cloudy purple
+of the hills behind."
+
+"It is Madeira," I said. "I was there ten years ago. Perhaps you have
+read my little book, 'Beside the Bougainvillea'?"
+
+"My husband died there," she said, looking fixedly at the drawing. "He
+died just before sunrise, and when it was over I remember looking out
+across the sea, past the great English man-of-war in the harbour, to
+those three little islands--I forget their names--and as the first level
+rays touched them, the islands and the ship all seemed to melt into
+half-transparent amethyst in a sea of glass, beneath a sky of glass. How
+calm the sea was--hardly a ripple! I felt that even he, weak as he was,
+could walk upon it. It was like daybreak in heaven, not on earth. And
+his long martyrdom was over. It seemed as if we were both safe home at
+last."
+
+"Had he been ill long?"
+
+"A long time. He suffered terribly. And I gave him morphia under the
+doctor's directions. And then, when he was gone--not at first, but after
+a little bit--I took morphia myself, to numb my own anguish and to get a
+little sleep. I thought I should go mad if I could not get any sleep. I
+had better have gone mad. But I took morphia instead, and sealed my own
+doom. But how can you tell whether I am speaking the truth? Well, it
+doesn't matter if you don't believe me. I am accustomed to it. I am
+never believed now. And I don't care if I'm not. I don't deserve to be.
+But I suppose you can see that I was not always a tramp on the highway.
+And, at any rate, that is what I am now, and what I shall remain, unless
+I drift into prison again, which God forbid, for I should suffocate in a
+cell after the life in the open air which I am accustomed to."
+
+She shivered a little, as if she who seemed devoid of fear quailed at
+the remembrance of her cell.
+
+"You are wondering how I have fallen so low," she said. "Do you remember
+Kipling's lines--
+
+    "We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung?
+
+"Well, I have known what it is to drop down the ladder of life,
+clinging convulsively to each rung in turn, losing hold of it, and being
+caught back by compassionate hands, only to let go of it again; fighting
+desperately to hold on to the next rung when I was thrust from the one
+above it; having my hands beaten from each rung, one after another, one
+after another, sinking lower and lower yet, cling as I would, pray as I
+would, repent as I would."
+
+"Who beat your hands from the rungs?" I said.
+
+"Morphia," she replied.
+
+There was a long silence.
+
+"Morphia, that was the beginning and the middle and the end of my
+misfortunes," she said. "What did I do that gradually lost me my
+friends?--and I had such good friends, even after my best friend my
+sister died. What did I do that ruined me by inches? In Australia I have
+heard of evil men taken red-handed being left in the bush with food and
+water by them, bound to a fallen tree which has been set on fire at one
+end. And the fire smoulders and smoulders, and travels inch by inch
+along the trunk, and they watch their slow, inevitable death coming
+towards them day by day, until it at last destroys them also inch by
+inch. What had I done that I should find myself bound like those poor
+wretches? I cannot tell you. Morphia wipes out the memory as surely as
+drink. I only know that I was in torment. Faces, familiar and strange
+faces, some compassionate, some indignant, some horror-struck, come back
+to me sometimes, blurred as by smoke, but I see nothing clearly. I dimly
+remember fragments of appeals that were made to me, fragments of divine
+music in cathedrals where I sobbed my heart out. Broken, splintered,
+devastating memories of promises made in bitter tears, and endless lies
+and subterfuges to conceal what I could not conceal. For morphia looks
+out of the eyes of its victim. I knew that, but I thought no one could
+see it in mine, that I could hide it. And I have one vivid recollection
+of a quiet room with flowers in it, and latticed windows, but I don't
+know where it was or how I came there, or who were the people in it who
+spoke to me. There was a tall woman with grey parted hair in a lilac
+gown. I can see her now. And I swore before God that I had left off the
+drug. And some one standing behind me took the little infernal machine
+out of my pocket, and I was confronted with it. And the tall woman wrung
+her hands and groaned. How I hated her! And in my madness I accused her
+of putting it there to ruin me. And some one (a man) said slowly, 'She
+is impossible!--quite impossible!' That one memory stands out like a
+little oasis in a desert of mirage and shifting sand, and thirst. I
+should know the room again if I saw it. There was a window opening into
+a little paved courtyard with a fountain in it, and doves drinking. But
+I shall never see it again. And the drug became alive like a fiend, and
+pushed me lower and lower, down, always down, until I did something
+dreadful, I don't know now exactly what it was, though the prison
+chaplain explained it to me. But it was about a cheque, and I was
+convicted and sent to prison."
+
+"Then you have been in prison _twice_?" I said, anxious to make it easy
+for her to be entirely truthful, for I could not doubt the truth of much
+of this earlier history.
+
+She did not seem to hear me.
+
+"There is no crime," she went on, "however black, that I did not expiate
+then. If suffering can wash out sins, I washed out mine. I, who thought
+I had so many enemies, have no enemy. No one has ever injured me. But if
+I had the cruellest in the world, I would not condemn him, if he were a
+morphia maniac, to sudden enforced abstinence and prison life. And I
+could not die. I am very strong by nature. I could neither die nor live.
+It was months before I saw light, months of hell, consumed in the flame
+of hell which is thirst. And slowly the power to live came back to me. I
+was saved in spite of myself. And slowly the power of thought returned
+to me. I had time to think. My mind drifted and drifted, but I got
+control of it now and again, and then for longer intervals, as my poor
+body reasserted itself from the slavery of the drug. And I thought--I
+thought--I thought. And at last I made up my mind, my fierce, embittered
+mind. And when I came out of prison, I took to the road. Even then there
+were those who would have helped me, but I steeled my heart against
+them. There was a strange woman with a sweet face waiting at the prison
+door, who spoke kindly to me. But I distrusted her. I distrusted every
+one. And I did not mean to be helped any more. I had been helped time
+and time again. To be helped was to be put where I could get morphia,
+where I had something, if it was only my clothes, which I could sell to
+get it, where I could _steal_ things to sell to get it. If I had any
+possessions, I knew that some day--not for a time perhaps, but some
+day--I should sell it and get morphia somehow. They say you can't buy
+it, but you can. I always could in the past, and I knew I always should
+in the future. But on the road, in rags, a tramp, down in the dust, in
+the safe refuge of the dust--there it was not possible. There I was out
+of temptation. There I could not be burned in that flame again. That was
+all I thought of, to creep away where the fire could not reach me. And I
+felt sure I should not live long. In my ignorance I thought the exposure
+to all weathers, and privation, and the first frost of winter would
+bring me my release quickly. But they did not. They gave me new life
+instead. I came out in spring, and I begged my way to Abinger Forest,
+and nearly starved there; but I did not mind. Have you ever been in
+Abinger Forest in the spring when the wortleberry is out? Can the
+Elysian fields of Asphodel be more beautiful? Perhaps to others they
+might seem so; but not to me. My first glimpse of hope came to me in the
+woods at Abinger in a windless, sunny week at Easter. The gipsies gave
+me food once or twice. And I ate the scraps that the trippers left after
+their picnics at the top of Leith Hill where the tower is. And I lay in
+the sun by day and I slept in a stack of bracken by night, and my
+strained life relaxed. And I, who had become so hard and bitter, saw at
+last what endless love and compassion had been vainly lavished on me,
+and I was humbled. I had somehow got it rooted into my warped mind that
+I had been cruelly treated, betrayed, abandoned by my friends, by every
+one. I had tried hard to forgive them, but I could not. I saw at last
+that it was I who had been cruel, I who had betrayed, I who needed
+forgiveness; and I asked it of the only Friend I had left, the only
+Friend Who never forsakes us. And peace came back and the deep wound in
+my life healed. It seemed as if Nature, who had forgotten me for so
+long, had pity on me, and took me again to her heart. For I had loved
+her years ago, before my husband died.
+
+"When the weather broke, I took to the road, and the road has given me
+back my health, and much more than health. I can see beauty again now.
+And there is always beauty in the hedgerow; and wherever the road runs
+there is beauty. In the open down, beside the tidal rivers with their
+brown sails creeping among the buttercups, everywhere there is beauty.
+And I can sleep again now. I learnt how to sleep at Abinger. I had
+forgotten how it was done without morphia. O God! I can sleep, every
+night, anywhere. It's worth being a tramp for that alone, to be able to
+sleep naturally, to know in the daytime that you will have it at night,
+and then to lie down and feel it stealing over you like the blessing of
+God. I used to wake myself at first for sheer joy when it was coming.
+And then to nestle down, and sink into it, down, down into it, till one
+reaches the great peace. And no more wakings in torment as the drug
+passes off, waking as in some iron grave, unable to stir hand or foot,
+unable to beat back the suffocating horror and terror which lies cheek
+to cheek with us. No more wakings in hell. No more mornings like that.
+But instead, the cool, sweet waking in the crystal light in the open
+air. And to see the sun come up, and to lie still against the clean,
+fragrant haystack and let it warm you! And to watch the quiet, friendly
+beasts rise up in the long meadows! And to wake hungry, instead of that
+dreadful, maddening thirst! And to _like_ to eat--how good that is, even
+if you go fasting half the day! But I never do. The poor will always
+give you enough to eat. It hurts them to see any one hungry. Yes, I have
+dropped down the ladder rung by rung, and now I have reached the lowest
+rung. And it is a good place, the only safe place for wastrels such as
+I, the only refuge from my enemy. There is peace on the lowest rung. I
+can do no more harm there, and I have done so much. I was ambitious
+once, I was admired and clever once; but I found no abiding city
+anywhere. Temptation lurked everywhere. I was driven like chaff before
+the wind.... But now I have the road. No one will take the road from me
+while I live, or the ditch beside it to die in when my time comes. I am
+provided for at last. I lead a clean life at last."
+
+She sat silent, her dreamy eyes fixed, her thin hands folded one over
+the other. I looked at her with an aching heart. What strange mixture
+of truth and lies was all this! But I said nothing. What was the use?
+
+And as we sat silent beside the dying fire the great inequality between
+us pressed hard upon me: I, by no special virtue of my own, God knows!
+on one of the uppermost rungs of life. She poor soul--poor soul--on the
+lowest.
+
+The clock on the mantelpiece chimed eleven.
+
+She started slightly, looked at it, and then at me, as if uncertain of
+her surroundings, and the shrewd, sardonic look came back to her face.
+
+"I am keeping you up," she said, rising. "I think your strong coffee has
+gone to my head. This outburst of autobiography is a poor return for all
+your kindness. I had no idea it was so late or that I could be so
+garrulous, and I must make a very early start to-morrow. Shall I go into
+the kitchen and put on my own clothes again? They must be quite dry by
+now."
+
+"Oh! let me help you," I said impulsively. "Let me get you into a Home,
+or help you to emigrate. Don't go back to this wandering, aimless life.
+Work for others, interest in others, that is what _you_ need, what _I_
+need, what we _all_ need to take us out of ourselves, to make us forget
+our own misery."
+
+"I have half forgotten mine already," she said. "To-night I remembered
+it again. But I have long since put it from my mind. I think the moment
+for a change of clothing in the kitchen has arrived."
+
+She spoke quietly, but as if her last word were final. I found it
+impossible to continue the subject.
+
+"You will never escape in those clothes," I said. "You haven't the ghost
+of a chance. If you will come into my room, I will see what I can find
+for you."
+
+I had been willing to do much more than give her clothes, but I
+instinctively felt that my appeal to her better feelings had fallen on
+deaf ears.
+
+She followed me to my bedroom, and I got out all my oldest clothes and
+spread them before her. But she would have none of them.
+
+"The worst look like an ultra-respectable district visitor," she said,
+tossing aside one garment after another. It was the more curious that
+she should say that because my brother-in-law had always said I looked
+like one, and that my books even had a parochial flavour about them. But
+then he had never really studied them, or he would have seen their
+lighter side.
+
+"I had no idea pockets were worn in a little slit in the front seam,"
+said my visitor. "It shows how long it is since I have been 'in the
+know.' No doubt front pockets came in with the bicycles. No. It is very
+kind of you. But, except for that old dyed moreen petticoat, the things
+won't do. I always was particular about dress, and I never was more so
+than I am at this moment. You don't happen to have an old black ulster
+with all the buttons off, and a bit of mangy fur dropping off the neck?
+That's more my style. But of course you haven't."
+
+"I had one once of that kind; it was so bad that I could not even give
+it away. So I put it in the dog's basket. Lindo used to sleep on it. He
+loved it, poor dear! It may be there still."
+
+We went downstairs again, and I pulled Lindo's basket out from under the
+stairs.
+
+The old black wrap was still in it, but it was mildewy and stuck to the
+basket. It tore as I released it. It reminded me painfully of my lost
+darling.
+
+"The very thing!" she said, with enthusiasm, as the dilapidated travesty
+of a coat shook itself free. "Quiet and unobtrusive to the last degree.
+Parisian in colour and simplicity. And mole colour is so becoming. Can
+you really spare it? Then with the moreen petticoat I am provided,
+equipped."
+
+We went back to the kitchen again.
+
+"What will you do with them?" I said, pointing to her convict clothes
+which had dried perfectly stiff, owing to the amount of mud on them. How
+such quantities of mud could have got on to them was a mystery to me.
+
+"It certainly does not improve one's clothes, to hide in a wet ditch in
+a ploughed field," she said meditatively. "I will dispose of them early
+to-morrow morning. I picked a place as I found my way here."
+
+"Not on _my_ premises?" I said anxiously.
+
+"Of course not. Do you take me for a monster of ingratitude? I'll manage
+that all right."
+
+I suddenly remembered that she must have food to take with her. I went
+to the larder, and when I came back I looked at her with renewed
+amazement.
+
+My dressing-gown and slippers were laid carefully on a chair. The
+astonishing woman was a tramp once more, squatting on the brick floor,
+drawing on to her bare feet the shapeless excuses for boots which had
+been toasting before the fire.
+
+Then she leaned over the hearth, rubbed her hands in the ashes, and
+passed them gently over her face, her neck, her wrists and ankles. She
+drew forward and tangled her hair before the kitchen glass. Then she
+rolled up her convict clothes into a compact bundle, wiped her right
+hand carefully on the kitchen towel, and held it out to me.
+
+"Remember," I said gravely, taking it in both of mine and pressing it,
+"if ever you are in need of a friend, you know to whom to apply. Marion
+Dalrymple, Rufford, will always find me."
+
+I thought I ought not to let her go away without letting her know who I
+was. But my name seemed to have no especial meaning for her. Perhaps she
+had lived beyond the pale too long.
+
+"You have indeed been a friend to me," she said. "God bless you, you
+good Samaritan! May the world go well with you! Good-night, and thank
+you, and good-bye. If you'll give me the stable key, I'll let myself in.
+It's a pity you should come out; its raining again. And I'll leave the
+stable locked when I go. And the key will be in the lavender bush at the
+door. Good-bye again."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I did not sleep that night, and in the morning I was so tired that I
+made no attempt to work. I had, of course, stolen out before six to
+retrieve the stable key from the lavender bush, and hang it on its
+accustomed nail. I looked into the stable first. My guest had departed.
+
+I spent an idle morning musing on the events of the previous evening, if
+time thus spent can be called idling. It may seem so to others, but in
+my own experience these apparently profitless hours are often more
+fruitful than those spent in belabouring the brain to a forced activity.
+But then I have always preferred to remain, as the great Molinos
+advises, a learner rather than a teacher in the school of life. Early in
+the afternoon, as I was on my way to the post-office, my landlord, Mr.
+Ledbury, met me. He looked excited, an open telegram in his hand.
+
+"Have you heard about the escaped convict?" he said. "She has been
+taken. She was traced to Bronsal Heath yesterday, and run to earth this
+morning at Framlingham."
+
+He turned and walked with me. He was too much taken up with the news to
+notice how I started and how my colour changed. But indeed I flush and
+turn pale at nothing. All my life it has been a vexation to me that a
+chance word or allusion should bring the colour to my cheek.
+
+"Poor soul!" he said. "I could almost wish she had made good her escape.
+She got out, Heaven alone knows how, to see her child, which she had
+heard was ill. But the ground she must have covered in the time! She was
+absolutely dead beat when she was taken. And she was not in her prison
+clothes. That is so inexplicable. How she got others she alone knows.
+Some one must have befriended her, and given them to her--some one very
+poor, for she was miserably clad, and the extraordinary thing is that
+though she was traced to the deserted cottage on the heath yesterday,
+and taken at Framlingham to-day, her prison clothes were found hidden in
+my wood-yard, _here_ in my wood-yard, by Zack when he went to his work.
+And this place is not on the way to Framlingham. How in the name of
+fortune could she have hidden her clothes _here_?"
+
+"She must have wandered here in the dark," I suggested.
+
+"I don't understand it," he said, turning in at his own gate. "But
+anyhow, the poor thing has been caught."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My story should end here. Indeed, to my mind it does end here. And if I
+have been persuaded by my family to add a few more lines on the subject,
+it is sorely against the grain and against my artistic sense. And I am
+conscious that I have been unwise in allowing myself to be over-ruled by
+those who have not given their lives to literature as I have done, and
+who therefore cannot judge as I can when a story should be brought to a
+close.
+
+I need hardly say that I often thought of my unhappy visitant, often
+wondered how she was getting on. A year later I was staying with a
+friend in Ipswich who was a visitor at the prison there, and I
+remembered how it was to Ipswich she had been brought back, and I asked
+to see her. My friend knew her, and told me that she had made no further
+attempt to escape, and that she believed the child was dead. It had been
+an old promise that she would one day take me over the prison. I claimed
+it, and begged that I might be allowed to have a few words with that
+particular inmate. It was not according to the regulations, but my
+friend was a privileged person. That afternoon I passed with her under
+that dreary portal, and after walking along interminable white-washed
+passages, and past how many locked and numbered doors, my friend
+whispered to a warder, who motioned me to a cell.
+
+A woman was sitting on her bed with her head in her hands.
+
+"You have not forgotten me, I hope," I said gently. It may be weak, but
+I have never been able to speak ungently to any one in trouble, whatever
+the cause may be. I have known too much trouble myself.
+
+She raised her head slowly, pushed back her hair, and looked at me.
+
+I had never seen her before.
+
+I could only stare helplessly at her.
+
+"But you are not the woman who escaped last October?" I stammered at
+last.
+
+"Yes," she said pathetically, "I am. Who else should I be? What do you
+want with me?"
+
+But I was speechless. It was all so unexpected, so inexplicable. I have
+often thought since how much stranger fact is than fiction. The more
+interested one is in life and in one's fellow-creatures the more
+surprises there are in store for one. With every year I live my sense of
+wonder increases, and with it my realisation of my own ignorance. As I
+stared amazedly at her, a change came over her face. She looked at me
+almost with eagerness.
+
+"You didn't take me for 'er, did you?" she said hurriedly. "'Er as
+'elped me. Did you know 'er? She ain't copped, is she? Don't tell me as
+she's copped too."
+
+"I thought you _were_ her," I said. "I don't know what I thought. I
+don't understand it."
+
+"She found me on a dirty night," she said, "in a tumbledown cottage. I'd
+never seen her afore. But she crep' in and found me, and tole me there
+was a watch kep' for me at Woodbridge. And she changed clothes with me,
+so as to give me a bit of a chance. Mine was fair stiff with mud, for
+I'd laid in a wet ditch till night, but they showed the blasted colour
+for all that. And she give me all she had on her--her clothes, and a
+bite of bread and bacon, and two pence. And it wasn't as if we was pals.
+I'd never seen her afore. She stuck at nothing, and she only larfed at
+the risk, for they'd have shut her up for certain if they'd caught her.
+She said she'd manage some'ow. And she 'eartened me up, and put me on
+the road for Wickham, and she said she'd dror away the pursoot by hiding
+the prison clothes somewhere in the opsit direction where they could be
+found easy by the first fool."
+
+"She did it," I said.
+
+"And how did she spare 'em? She'd nuthin' but them."
+
+"I gave her some more. If she had been my own sister I could not have
+done more for her."
+
+"And she worn't caught, wor she?"
+
+"Not that I know of. No, I feel sure she never was. I helped her to get
+away."
+
+"I was took in spite of all," said the woman, "and by my own silliness.
+But I seed my little Nan alive fust, and that was all I wanted. And I
+don't know who she was, nor what she was. She tole me she was a outcast
+and a tramp and a good-for-nothing. But there's never been anybody yet,
+be they who they may, as done for me what she done. She'd have give me
+the skin orf her back if she could 'ave took it orf. And it worn't as if
+I knowed her. I'd never set eyes on 'er afore, nor never shall again."
+
+I have never seen her again, either.
+
+
+
+
+THE HAND ON THE LATCH
+
+    There came a man across the moor,
+      Fell and foul of face was he,
+      He left the path by the cross-roads three,
+    And stood in the shadow of the door.
+
+    MARY COLERIDGE.
+
+
+She stood at her low window with its uneven, wavering glass, and looked
+out across the prairie. A little snow had fallen, not much, only enough
+to add a sense of desolation to the boundless plain, the infinite plain
+outside the four cramped walls of her log hut. The log hut was like a
+tiny boat moored in some vast, tideless, impassable sea. The immensity
+of the prairie had crushed her in the earlier years of her married life;
+but gradually she had become accustomed to it, then reconciled to it, at
+last almost a part of it. The grey had come early to her thick hair, a
+certain fixity to the quiet courage of her eyes. Her calm, steadfast
+face showed that she was not given to depression, but nevertheless this
+evening, as she stood watching for her husband's return, for the first
+distant speck of him where the cart-rut vanished into the plain, a sense
+of impending misfortune enfolded her with the dusk. Was it because the
+first snow had fallen? Ah me! how much it meant. It was as significant
+for her as the grey pallor that falls on a sick man's face. It meant the
+endless winter, the greater isolation instead of the lesser, the
+powerlessness to move hand or foot in that all-enveloping shroud; the
+struggle, not for existence--with him beside her that was assured--not
+for luxury, she had ceased to care for it, though he had not ceased to
+care for her sake, but for life in any but its narrowest sense. Books,
+letters, human speech, through the long months these would be almost
+entirely denied her. The sudden remembrance of the larger needs of life
+flooded her soul, touching to momentary semblance of movement many
+things long cherished, but long since dead, like delicate sea-plants
+beyond high-water mark, that cannot exist between the long droughts when
+the spring tide does not come. She had known what she was doing when,
+against the wishes of her family, she of the South had married him of
+the North, when she left the busy city life she knew, and clave to her
+husband, following him over the rim of the world, as women will follow
+while they have feet to follow with. She was his superior in birth,
+cultivation, refinement, but she had never regretted what she had done.
+The regrets were his for her, for the poverty to which he had brought
+her, and to which she had not been accustomed. She had only one regret,
+if such a thin strip of a word as regret can be used to describe her
+passionate, controlled desolation, immense as the prairie, because she
+had no child. Perhaps if they had had children the walls of the log hut
+in the waste might have closed in on them less rigidly. It might have
+become more of a home.
+
+Her mind had taken its old mechanical bent, the trend of long habit, as
+she looked out from that low window. How often she had stood there and
+thought "If only we might have had a child!" And now, by sheer force of
+habit, she thought it yet again. And then a slow rapture took possession
+of her whole being, mounted, mounted till she leaned against the window
+still faint with joy. She was to have a child after all. She had hardly
+dared believe it at first; but as time had gone on a vague hope quickly
+suppressed as unbearable had turned to suspense, suspense had alternated
+with the fierce despair that precedes certainty. Certainty had come at
+last, clear and calm and exquisite as dawn. She would have a child in
+the spring. What was the winter to her now! Nothing but a step towards
+joy. The world was all broken up and made new. The prairie, its great
+loneliness, its death-like solitude, were gone out of her life. She was
+to have a child in the spring. She had not dared to tell her husband
+till she was sure. But she would tell him this evening, when they were
+sitting together over the fire.
+
+She stood motionless in the deepening dusk, trying to be calm. And at
+last in the far distance she saw a speck arise as it were out of a
+crease in the level earth. Her husband on his horse. How many hundreds
+of times she had seen him appear over the rim of the world, just as he
+was appearing now. She lit the lamp and put it in the window. She blew
+the log fire to a blaze. The firelight danced on the wooden walls,
+crowded with cheap pictures, and on the few precious daguerreotypes that
+reminded her she too had brothers and sisters and kin of her own, far
+away in one of those southern cities where the war was still smouldering
+grimly on.
+
+Her husband took his horse round and stalled him. Presently he came in.
+They stood a moment together in silence as their custom was, and she
+leaned her forehead against his shoulder. Then she busied herself with
+his supper, and he sat down heavily at the little table.
+
+"Had you any difficulty this time in getting the money together?" she
+asked.
+
+Her husband was a tax collector.
+
+"None," he said abstractedly; "at least--yes--a little. But I have it
+all, and the arrears as well. It makes a large sum."
+
+He was evidently thinking of something else. She did not speak again.
+She saw something was troubling him.
+
+"I heard news to-day at Philip's," he said at last, "which I don't like.
+If I had heard in time, and if I could have borrowed a fresh horse, I
+would have ridden straight on to ----. But it was too late in the day
+to be safe, and you would have been anxious what had become of me if I
+had been out all night with all this money on me. I shall go to-morrow
+as soon as it is light."
+
+They discussed the business which took him to the nearest town thirty
+miles away, where their small savings were invested, somewhat
+precariously, as it turned out. What was safe, who was safe, while the
+invisible war between North and South smouldered on and on? It had not
+come near them, but as an earthquake which is engulfing cities in one
+part of Europe will rattle a tea-cup without oversetting it on a cottage
+shelf half a continent away, so the civil war had reached them at last.
+
+"I take a hopeful view," he said, but his face was overcast. "I don't
+see why we should lose the little we have. It has been hard enough to
+scrape it together, God knows. Promptitude and joint action with
+Reynolds will probably save it. But I must be prompt." He still spoke
+abstractedly, as if even now he were thinking of something else.
+
+He began to take out of the leathern satchel various bags of money.
+
+"Shall I help you to count it?"
+
+She often did so.
+
+They counted the flimsy dirty paper-money together, and put it all back
+into the various labelled bags.
+
+"It comes right," he said.
+
+Suddenly she said, "But you can't pay it into the bank to-morrow if you
+go to ----."
+
+"I know," he said looking at her; "that is what I have been thinking of
+ever since I heard Philip's news. I don't like leaving you with all this
+money in the house; but I must."
+
+She was silent. She was not frightened for herself, but it was State
+money, not their own. She was not nervous as he was, but she had always
+shared with him a certain dread of those bulging bags, and had always
+been thankful to see him return safe--he never went twice by the same
+track--after paying the money in. In those wild days, when men went
+armed, with their lives in their hands, it was not well to be known to
+have large sums about you.
+
+He looked at the bags, frowning.
+
+"I am not afraid," she said.
+
+"There is no real need to be," he said after a moment. "When I leave
+to-morrow morning, it will be thought I have gone to pay it in.
+Still----"
+
+He did not finish his sentence, but she knew what was in his mind: the
+great loneliness of the prairie. Out in the white night came the short,
+sharp yap of a wolf.
+
+"I am not afraid," she said again.
+
+"I shall be gone only one night," he said.
+
+"I have often been a night alone."
+
+"I know," he said; "but somehow it's worse leaving you with so much
+money in the house."
+
+"No one knows it will be there."
+
+"That is true, except that every one knows I have been collecting large
+sums."
+
+"They will think you have gone to pay it in as usual."
+
+"Yes," he said with an effort.
+
+Then he got up, and went to his tool-box. She watched him open it,
+seeing him in a new light which encompassed him with even greater love.
+"If I tell him to-night," she thought, "it will make him still more
+anxious about leaving me. Perhaps he would refuse to go, and he must go.
+I will not tell him till he comes back."
+
+The resolution not to speak was like taking hold of a piece of iron in
+frost. She had not known it would hurt so much. A new tremulousness,
+sweet and strange, passed over her--not cowardice, not fear, not of the
+heart nor of the mind, but a sort of emotion of the whole being.
+
+"I will not tell him," she said again.
+
+Her husband got out his tools, took up a plank from the floor, and put
+the money into a hole beneath it, beside their small valuables, such as
+they were, in a biscuit tin. Then he replaced the plank, screwed it
+down, and she drew back a small fur mat over the place. He put away the
+tools and then came and stood in front of her. He was not conscious of
+her transfiguration, and she dropped her eyes for fear of showing it.
+
+"I shall start early," he said, "as soon as it is light, and I shall be
+back before sundown the day after to-morrow. I know it is unreasonable,
+but I shall go easier in my mind if you will promise me one thing."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Not to go out of the house, or to let any one else come in on any
+pretence whatever, while I am away," he said. "Bar everything, and stay
+inside."
+
+"I shan't want to go out."
+
+He made an impatient movement.
+
+"Promise me that, come what will, you will let no one in during my
+absence," he said.
+
+"I promise."
+
+"Swear it."
+
+She hesitated.
+
+"Swear it, to please me," he said.
+
+"I swear that I will let no one into the house, on any pretext whatever,
+until you come back," she said, smiling at him.
+
+He sighed and relapsed into his chair, and gave way to the great fatigue
+that possessed him.
+
+The next morning he started soon after daybreak, but not until he had
+brought her in sufficient fuel to last several days. There had been more
+snow in the night, fine snow like salt, but not enough to make
+travelling difficult. She watched him ride away, and silenced the voice
+within her which always said as she saw him go, "You will never see him
+again; you have heard his voice for the last time." Perhaps, after all,
+the difference between the brave and the cowardly lies in how they deal
+with that voice. Both hear it. She silenced it instantly. It spoke
+again, more insistently, "You have heard his voice, felt his kiss, for
+the last time. He will never see the face of his child." She silenced it
+again, and went about her work.
+
+The day passed as countless other days had passed. She was accustomed to
+be much alone. She had work to do, enough and to spare, within the
+little home which was to become a real home, please God, in the spring.
+The evening fell almost before she expected it. She locked and barred
+the doors, and closed the shutters of the windows. She made all secure,
+as she had done many a time before.
+
+And then, putting aside her work, she took down the newest of her
+well-worn books, lately sent her from New Orleans, and began to read.
+
+    Oui, sans doute, tout meurt: ce monde est un grand rêve,
+    Et le peu de bonheur qui nous vient en chemin,
+    Nous n'avons pas plus tôt ce roseau dans la main,
+        Que le vent nous l'enlève.
+
+"Que le vent nous l'enlève." She repeated the last words to herself. Ah
+no! the wind could not take her happiness out of her hand.
+
+A wandering wind had risen at nightfall, and it came softly across the
+snow, and tried the doors and windows as with a furtive hand. She could
+hear it coming as from an immense distance, passing with a sigh,
+returning plaintive, homeless, forlorn, to whisper round the house.
+
+    J'ai vu sous le soleil tomber bien d'autres choses
+    Que les feuilles des bois, et l'écume des eaux,
+    Bien d'autres s'en aller que le parfum des roses
+        Et le chant des oiseaux.
+
+That wind meant more snow. Involuntarily she laid down her book and
+listened to it.
+
+How like the sound of the wind was to wandering footsteps, slowly
+drawing near, creeping round the house. She could almost have fancied
+that a hand touched the shutters, was even now trying to raise the latch
+of the door.
+
+A moment of intense silence, in which the wind seemed to hold its breath
+and listen without, while she listened within. And then a low, distinct
+knock upon the door.
+
+She did not move.
+
+"It is the wind," she said to herself; but she knew it was not.
+
+The knock came again, low, urgent, not to be denied.
+
+She had become very cold. She had supposed fear was an emotion of the
+mind. She had not reckoned for this slow paralysis of the body.
+
+She managed to creep to the window and unbar the shutter an inch or two.
+By pressing her face against the extreme corner of the pane she could
+just discern in the snowlight part of a man's figure, wrapped in a long
+cloak.
+
+She barred the window once more. She was not surprised. She knew now
+that she had known it always. She had pretended to herself that the
+thief would not come; but she was expecting him when he knocked. And he
+stood there, outside. Presently he would be inside.
+
+He knocked yet again, this time more loudly. What need was there for
+silence when for miles and miles round there was no ear to hear save
+that of a chance prairie dog?
+
+She laid hold upon her courage, seeing that it was her only refuge, and
+went to the door.
+
+"Who is there?" she said through a chink.
+
+A man's voice, low and feeble, replied, "Let me in."
+
+"I cannot let you in."
+
+There was a short silence.
+
+"I pray you, let me in," he said again.
+
+"I have told you I cannot. Who are you?"
+
+"I am a soldier, wounded. I'm trying to get back to my friends at ----."
+He mentioned a settlement about fifty miles north. "I have missed my
+way, and I can't drag myself any farther."
+
+Her heart swung violently between suspicion and compassion.
+
+"I am alone in the house," she said. "My husband is away, and he made me
+promise not to let any one in on any pretence whatever during his
+absence."
+
+"Then I shall die on your doorstep," said the voice. "I can't drag
+myself any farther."
+
+There was another silence.
+
+"It is beginning to snow," he said.
+
+"I know," she said, and he heard the trouble in her voice.
+
+"Open the door and look at me," he said, "and see if I can do you any
+harm."
+
+She opened the door, and stood on the threshold, barring the way. He was
+leaning against the doorpost with his head against it, as she had often
+seen her husband lean when he was talking to her on a summer evening.
+Something in his attitude, so like her husband's, touched her strangely.
+Supposing he were in need, and pleaded for help in vain!
+
+The man turned his face towards her. It was sunk and hollow, ravaged
+with pain, an evil-looking face. His right arm was in a sling under his
+tattered military cloak. He seemed to have made his final effort, and
+now stood staring dumbly at her.
+
+"My husband will never forgive me," she said, with a sort of sob.
+
+He said nothing more. He seemed at the last point of exhaustion. Through
+the dim white night a few flakes of snow fell upon his harsh, repellent
+face and on his bandaged arm.
+
+A sudden wave of pity carried all before it.
+
+She beckoned him into the house, and locked and barred the door. She put
+him in her husband's chair by the fire. He hardly noticed anything. He
+seemed stupefied. He sat staring alternately at the fire and at her.
+When she asked him to which regiment he belonged, he did not answer.
+
+She set before him the supper she had prepared for herself, and chafed
+his hard, emaciated, dirty hand till the warmth returned to it. Then he
+ate, with difficulty at first, then with slow voracity, all she had put
+before him.
+
+A semblance of life returned gradually to him.
+
+"I was pretty near done up when I knocked," he said several times.
+
+She dressed his wound, which did not appear very deep, wrapped it in
+fresh bandages, and readjusted his sling. He took it all as a matter of
+course.
+
+She made up a little bed of rugs and blankets for him in the back
+kitchen. When she came back to the living-room, she found he had dragged
+himself to his feet, and was looking vacantly at a little picture of
+President Lincoln on the mantelshelf. She showed him the bed and told
+him to lie down on it. He obeyed her implicitly, like a child. She left
+him, and presently heard him cast himself down. A few minutes later she
+went to the door and listened. His heavy, regular breathing told her he
+was asleep.
+
+She went back to the kitchen, and sat down by the fire.
+
+Was he really asleep? Was it all feigned, the wound, the story, the
+exhaustion? Had she been trapped? Oh! what had she done? What had she
+done?
+
+She seemed like two people. One self, silent, alert, experienced,
+fearless, knew that she had allowed herself to be deluded, in spite of
+being warned; knew that her feelings had been played upon, made use of,
+not even dexterously made use of; knew that she had disobeyed her
+husband, broken her solemn oath to him, plunged him with herself into
+disgrace if the money were stolen. And in the eyes of that self it was
+already stolen. It was still under the plank beneath her feet, but it
+was already stolen.
+
+The other self, tremulous, inconsequent, full of irresistible tenderness
+for suffering and weakness even in its uncouthest garb, said
+incessantly, "I could do no less. If I die for it, still I could do no
+less. Somebody brought him into the world. Some woman cried for joy and
+anguish when he was born. He would have died if I had not taken him in.
+I could do no less."
+
+Through the long hours she sat by the fire, unable to reconcile herself
+to going upstairs to her own room and to bed.
+
+Once she got up and noiselessly took down her husband's revolver from
+the mantelshelf, and examined it. He had taken its fellow with him, and
+apparently, contrary to his custom, he had taken the powder-flask with
+him too, for it was gone from its nail. The revolvers were always kept
+loaded, but--by some evil chance--the one that remained was unloaded.
+She could have sworn she had seen her husband load it two days ago. Why
+was this numbness creeping over her again? She got out powder and
+bullets from a small store she had of her own, loaded and primed it, and
+laid it on the table beside her.
+
+The night had become very still. Her hearing seemed to reach out till
+she felt she could have heard a coyote move in its hole miles away. The
+log fire creaked and shifted. The tall clock in the corner ticked,
+catching its chain now and then as its manner was. The wooden walls
+shrunk and groaned a little. The small home-like sounds only accentuated
+the enormous silence without. Suddenly in the midst of them a real sound
+fell upon her ear--very low, but different, not like the fragmentary
+inadvertent murmur of the hut; a small, purposeful, stealthy, sound,
+aware of itself. She listened, as she had listened before, without
+moving. It was not louder than the whittling of a mouse behind the
+wainscot, hardly louder than the scraping of a mole's thin hand in the
+soil. It continued. Then it stopped. It was only her foolish fancy after
+all. There it was again. Where did it come from?
+
+_The man in the next room?_
+
+She took up the lamp and crept down the narrow passage to the door of
+the back kitchen. His loud, even breathing sounded distinctly through
+the crannies of the ill-fitting door. Surely it was overloud. She
+listened to it. She could hear nothing else. Was his breathing a
+pretence? She opened the door noiselessly, and went in, shading the
+light with her hand.
+
+She bent over the sleeping man. At the first glance her heart sank, for
+he had not taken off his boots. But as she looked hard at him her
+suspicions died within her. He lay on his back with his coarse,
+emaciated face towards her, his mouth open, showing his broken teeth.
+The sleep of utter exhaustion was upon him. She could have killed him
+as he lay. He was not acting. He was really asleep.
+
+She crept out of the room again, leaving the door ajar, and went back to
+the kitchen.
+
+Hardly had she sat down when she heard the sound again. It was too faint
+to reach her except when she was in the kitchen. She knew now where it
+came from--_the door_. Some one was picking the lock.
+
+The instant the sleeping man was out of her sight she suspected him
+again.
+
+Was he really asleep after all? He had not taken off his boots. When she
+came back from making his bed she had found him standing by the
+mantelshelf. Had he unloaded the pistol in her absence? Would he
+presently get up, and open the door to his confederates?
+
+Her mind rose clear and cold and unflinching. She took up the pistol,
+and then laid it down again. She wanted a more noiseless weapon. She got
+out her husband's great clasp-knife from the open tool-box, took the
+lamp, and crept back to the man's bedside. She should be able to kill
+him--certainly she should be able to kill him; and then she should have
+the pistol for the other one.
+
+But he still slept heavily. When she saw him again, again her
+suspicions fell from her. She _knew_ he was asleep.
+
+She shook him by the shoulder, noiselessly, but with increasing
+violence, until he opened his eyes with a groan. Then only she
+remembered that she was shaking his wounded arm. He saw the knife in her
+hand, and raised his left arm as if to ward off the blow.
+
+"Listen," she whispered, close to his ear. "Don't speak. There is a man
+trying to break into the house. You must get up and help me."
+
+He stared at her, vaguely at first, but with growing intelligence. The
+food and sleep had restored him somewhat to himself. He sat up on the
+couch.
+
+"Take off my boots," he whispered; "I tried, and could not."
+
+Her last suspicion of him vanished. She cut the laces with her knife,
+and dragged his boots off. They stuck to his feet, and bits of the
+woollen socks came off with them. They had evidently not been taken off
+for weeks. While she did it, he whispered, "Why should any one be
+wanting to break in? There's nothing here to take."
+
+"Yes, there is," she said. "There's a lot of money."
+
+"Good Lord! Where?"
+
+"Under the floor in the kitchen."
+
+"Then it's the kitchen they'll make for. You bet they know where the
+money is, if they know it's here. Are there many of 'em?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Well, we shall know soon enough," said the man. He had become alert,
+keen. "Have you any pistols?"
+
+"Yes, one."
+
+"Fetch it, but don't make a sound, mind."
+
+She stole away, and returned with the pistol. She would have put it into
+his hand, but he pushed it away.
+
+"It's no use to me," he said, "with my arm in a sling. I will see what I
+can do with my left hand and the knife. Can you shoot?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Can you hit anything?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"To be depended on?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, it's darned lucky. How long will that door hold?"
+
+They were both in the little passage by now, pressed close together,
+listening to the furtive pick, pick, of some one at the lock.
+
+"I don't think it will hold more than a minute."
+
+"Now, look here," he said, "I shall go and stand at the foot of the
+stair, and knife the second man, if there is a second. The first man
+I'll leave to you. There's a bit of light outside from the snow. He'll
+let in enough light to see him by as he opens the door. Don't wait. Fire
+at him as he comes in, and don't stop; go on firing at him till he
+drops. You've got six bullets. Don't you make any mistake and shoot me.
+I've had enough of that already. Now, you look carefully where I'm going
+to stand and when I'm there you put out the lamp."
+
+He spoke to her as a man does to his comrade.
+
+That she could be frightened did not seem to enter his calculations. He
+moved with cat-like stealth to the foot of the tiny staircase, and
+flattened himself against the wall. Then he stretched his left arm once
+or twice as if to make sure of it, licked the haft of the knife, and
+nodded at her.
+
+She instantly put out the lamp.
+
+All was dark save for a faint thread of light which outlined the door.
+Across the thread something moved once--twice. The sound of picking
+ceased. Then another sound succeeded it, a new one, unlike the last, as
+if something was being gently prized open, wrenched.
+
+"The bar will hold," she said to herself; and then remembered for the
+first time that the rung into which the bar slid had been loose these
+many days. It was giving now.
+
+It had given!
+
+The door opened silently, and a man came in.
+
+For a moment she saw him clear with the accomplice snowlight behind him.
+She did not hesitate. She shot once and again. He fell, and struggled
+violently up, and she shot again. He fell, and dragged himself to his
+knees, and she shot again. Then he sank gently and slowly down, as if
+tired, with his face against the wall, and moved no more.
+
+The man on the stairs rushed out and looked through the open door.
+
+"By G----! he was single-handed," he said.
+
+Then he stooped over the prostrate man, and turned him over on his
+back.
+
+"Dead!" he said, chuckling. "Well done, missus! Stone dead!"
+
+He was masked.
+
+The dirty left hand tore the mask callously off the grey face.
+
+The woman had drawn near, and looked over his shoulder.
+
+"Do you know him?" said the man.
+
+For a moment she did not answer, and the pistol which had done its work
+so well dropped noisily out of her palsied hand.
+
+"He is a stranger to me," she said, looking fixedly at her husband's
+fading face.
+
+
+
+
+SAINT LUKE'S SUMMER
+
+_IN TWO PARTS_
+
+
+PART I
+
+    When the world's asleep,
+    I awake and weep,
+      Deeply sighing, say,
+      "Come, O break of day,
+    Lead my feet in my beloved's way."
+
+    MARGARET L. WOODS.
+
+When first I knew Aunt Emmy I suppose she was about twenty-eight. I was
+ten, and I thought her old, but still an agreeable companion, infinitely
+pleasanter than her father and her brother, with whom she lived. She was
+not my real aunt, but her father was my great-uncle, and I always called
+her Aunt Emmy. Great-uncle Thomas and Uncle Tom were persons to be
+avoided, stout, heavy, bullet-headed, bull-necked, throat-clearing men,
+loud nose-blowers, loud soup-eaters, who reeked of tobacco when it was
+my horrid duty to kiss them, and who addressed me in jocular terms when
+they remembered my existence, of which I was always loth to remind them.
+With these two horrors, whom she loved, Aunt Emmy lived. She was wrapped
+up in them. I have actually seen her kiss Uncle Thomas when it was not
+necessary, when he was asleep; and she admired Uncle Tom very much too,
+though she seldom kissed him, I believe by his wish. He used to say
+something about sister's kisses being like cold veal. I don't suppose he
+invented that himself. He was always picking up things like that out of
+a rose-coloured paper, and firing them off as his own. Uncle Tom was
+tall and portly, and a wag out of office hours, with a moustache that,
+in spite of all his efforts, would not turn up, but insisted on making a
+melancholy inner semicircle just a size smaller than the rubicund circle
+of his face. How I hated kindly, vulgar Uncle Tom! I used to pray that
+he might die before the holidays. But he never did. I see now that Uncle
+Tom was far, far worse than Uncle Thomas, who had had a stroke, and was
+a kind of furious invalid who could not speak clearly, or eat anything
+except things that were bad for him. But when I was a child, and first
+began to spend my holidays in Pembridge Square, I regarded them both
+with the same repulsion.
+
+Aunt Emmy was different. I know now that she must have been a remarkably
+pretty woman, but I did not notice that at the time. But a faint,
+indefinable fragrance seemed to envelop her. I loved to stroke her soft
+white hand, and to turn the emerald ring on her third finger, and to
+lean against her soft shoulder. Aunt Emmy's cheek was very soft too, and
+so was her full, silky hair, which she wore parted all her life, though
+it was never the fashion to do so that I can remember, though I am told
+it is now the _dernier cri_ among the _débutantes_. Aunt Emmy had a
+beautifully shaped head, and the whitest brow and neck that I have ever
+seen. And she had a low voice, and was very dignified. I do not think
+that she was a very wise woman, or that she had ever wrestled with the
+deeper problems of life, or that the mystery of pain had ever caused her
+faith to totter. But she was very good to live with. She devoted
+herself.
+
+She never had her own way in anything that I can remember. The house
+never represented her. The furniture was leathern and velvet and
+stout-looking, the kind of furniture which seems to aim at being more or
+less exact moulds of the forms of middle-aged men. The armchairs were
+like commodious hip-baths in plush. Aunt Emmy and I were lost in them. I
+remember once walking as a child through the wilderness of armchairs at
+Maple's and thinking they all looked like Uncle Tom. A good deal of
+Utrecht velvet had gone to the upholstering of that house in Pembridge
+Square. It was comfortable, airless, flowerless, with gravy-coloured
+walls. As I grew older I wondered why it was all so ugly and dreary. But
+I found there were less means than I had supposed, and though the
+cooking remained excellent, flowers and new chintzes were dispensed with
+as unnecessary. Aunt Emmy opened a window surreptitiously now and then,
+but Uncle Thomas and Uncle Tom hated draughts, and they did not get off
+to sleep so quickly after dinner if the drawing-room had been aired
+during the meal. The dining-room windows were never opened at all,
+except when Uncle Thomas was too unwell to come in and Uncle Tom was
+away.
+
+Many men had wished to marry Aunt Emmy; not only sedentary professional
+men in long frock-coats, full to the brim of the best food, like Uncle
+Tom; but nice, lean, hungry-looking, open-air men who were majors, or
+country squires, or something interesting of that kind, whose clothes
+sat well on them, and who drew up in the Row on little skittish,
+curveting polo-ponies when Aunt Emmy and I walked there. I once asked
+her, after a certain good-looking Major Stoddart had ridden on, why she
+did not marry, but she only said reprovingly, with great dignity:
+
+"You don't understand such matters, my dear, or you would know that I
+could not possibly leave your Uncle Thomas."
+
+I was silenced. I felt with bitterness that this could not be her whole
+reason for celibacy, but that, owing to the purely superficial fact that
+my hair was still in a pigtail, she supposed I was unable to comprehend
+"lots of things" that I felt I understood perfectly, and on which my
+mind was already working with an energy which would have surprised her
+had she guessed it.
+
+By this time I worshipped Aunt Emmy, who represented in my somewhat
+colourless orphaned existence the beautiful and romantic side of life.
+Aunt Emmy looked romantic, and the contrast between her refined, gentle
+self-effacement and the commonplace egotism of her two men was of the
+glaring nature which appeals to a young girl's imagination.
+
+I never forgot Major Stoddart, and when I was eighteen, and had left
+school and was living in Pembridge Square, I had the good fortune to
+come in for the remains of a scene between Aunt Emmy and Uncle Tom--the
+very day after I had turned up my hair.
+
+It was at luncheon, to which I came in late. Uncle Thomas was in bed
+with gout, and Uncle Tom did not consider me of enough consequence to
+matter. He had not realised even _now_ that I was a grown-up woman.
+Looking back after all these years, I am not sure that he was not astute
+enough to hope that I might prove an ally.
+
+"What you have got to do, Emmy, is to think of the future," he was
+saying, scooping all the visible eggs out of an aspic pie. "It's no
+manner of use living only in the present. You think this comfortable
+home will go on for ever, where you have lived in luxury. It won't. It
+can't. It's not in the nature of things. I saw Blackett yesterday
+(Blackett was the doctor), and he told me that if the governor's gout
+rises--and nothing he can do can keep it down--he won't last more than a
+year at longest. In the nature of things," Uncle Tom continued, bolting
+half an egg, "I shall then marry. In fact--in short----"
+
+"Has Miss Collett accepted you?" said Aunt Emmy tremulously.
+
+Miss Collett was a person of means, and of somewhat bulged attractions
+for those who admire size, of whom Uncle Tom had often spoken as a
+deuced fine woman.
+
+"She has," said Uncle Tom. "I made pretty sure of that before I said
+anything myself. Nothing immediate, you understand; but eventually--when
+the old governor goes--I don't want to hurry him, Lord knows; but when
+the old man does pop off, I shall--bring her here."
+
+I looked round the room. I had seen Miss Collett, and the mahogany and
+ormolu dining-room, with its great gilt mirrors, seemed a fitting
+background for her.
+
+"I am very glad, dear Tom," said Aunt Emmy. "I think you and she will be
+very well suited, and I am sure she is very lucky, though I suppose I
+should never think any one _quite_ good enough."
+
+"Oh! that's all right," said Uncle Tom. "And as for the luck, it's all
+on my side."
+
+He did not really think this, I knew, but it was the right thing to say,
+so he said it.
+
+"But I am not thinking only of myself," he continued. "There is you to
+be considered."
+
+Aunt Emmy dropped her eyes.
+
+"You mean, where I shall live," she said faintly.
+
+"Just so. Just so. You speak like a sensible woman. We must not forget
+you." Uncle Tom was becoming visibly uneasy. "And I may as well tell you
+now, old girl--prepare your mind beforehand, don't you know--that the
+governor has not been able to leave you as much as he wished, as we
+_both_ wished. The truth is, what with one thing and another, and nearly
+all his capital tied up in the business, and this house on a long lease
+and expensive to keep up, with the best will in the world the poor old
+pater _can't_ do much for you."
+
+"It will be enough," said Aunt Emmy.
+
+"It will be the interest of seven thousand pounds at three and a half
+per cent.," said Uncle Tom brutally, because he was uncomfortable,
+"about two hundred and thirty pounds a year."
+
+"It will be ample," said Aunt Emmy. I knew by the faint colour in her
+cheeks that the conversation was odious to her. "Dear Tom, let us talk
+of something else."
+
+"We will," said Uncle Tom, with unexpected mental agility, and with the
+obvious relief of a man who has got safely round a difficult corner. "We
+will. Now, how about Colonel Stoddart?"
+
+My heart beat suddenly. I was beginning to see life--at last.
+
+"There is nothing to say about him," said Aunt Emmy.
+
+"A good chap, and a gentlemanly chap," said Uncle Tom urbanely, leaning
+back in his chair. "Eton, the 'varsity, and all that sort of thing.
+Quite one of ourselves. Old family, and a warm man. And suitable in age.
+_My_ age. Thirty-nine. (Uncle Tom was really forty-one.) You're no
+chicken yourself, you know, Emmy. Thirty-eight, though I own you don't
+look it, my dear. Well, what's the matter with Colonel Stoddart, I
+should like to know?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Well, I'm glad to hear it, for he tells me you refused him again only
+last week. Now, look here. One moment, please. Don't speak. I call it
+Providence, downright Providence," and Uncle Tom rapped the table with a
+thick finger. "And yet you won't look at him. I don't say marry him out
+of hand. Of course," Uncle Tom added hurriedly, "you can't leave the old
+pater while he is above ground. There's no question of that. But I _do_
+say, Give the fellow a chance. He's been dangling after you for years.
+Tell him that some day----"
+
+Aunt Emmy rose from the table, and laid down her napkin.
+
+"Now, look here, old girl," said Uncle Tom, not unkindly, "don't get
+your feathers up with me. Think better of it. You know this sort of
+first-class opportunity may not occur again. It really may not. If it
+isn't Providence, I'm sure I don't know what it is. And I believe your
+only reason for refusing him is because of Bob Kingston. Now, don't fly
+in the face of Providence just out of a bit of rotten sentiment which
+you ought to be ashamed of at your age."
+
+My brain reeled. I had never heard of Bob Kingston. I said "Good God!"
+to myself, not because it was natural to me to use such an expression,
+but because I felt it was suitable to the occasion and to a person whose
+hair was done up.
+
+"Tom," said Aunt Emmy, her soft eyes blazing, "I desire that you will
+never allude to Mr. Kingston again."
+
+She left the room, and I did the same, with what I hope was a withering
+glance at the open-mouthed Uncle Tom, who for days afterwards
+interlarded his conversation with the refrain that he was blessed if he
+could understand women.
+
+But I dared not follow Aunt Emmy to her little sitting-room at the top
+of the house. She who was almost never alone, clung, I knew, to that
+tiny refuge, and it was an understood thing between us that I might
+creep in and sit with her a little after tea, but not before.
+
+So I raged up and down the empty gilded and mirrored drawing-room,
+finding myself quite unable to reconcile the situation with my faith in
+a beneficent Deity; and then consoled myself by chronicling my tottering
+faith in my diary. I wrote a diary until I married. Then, I suppose, I
+became more interested in life than in recording my own feelings. At
+any rate, I discontinued it.
+
+At last, when Aunt Emmy did not come down for tea, I took her a cup.
+
+She was sitting in a low chair with her back to the light. I could see
+that she had been crying, but she was quite calm. She had a suspiciously
+clean pocket-handkerchief in her hand. Her sitting-room was a small
+north chamber under the roof, but it was the place I liked best in the
+house. On her rare expeditions abroad, before Uncle Thomas had become
+too ill to be left, she had picked up some quaint pieces of pottery and
+a few old Italian mirrors. The little white room with its pale blue
+linen coverings had an atmosphere and a refinement of its own. It was
+spring, and there was a bunch of daffodils near the open window in a
+blue-and-white oil-jar with _Ole Scorpio_ on it.
+
+Aunt Emmy drank some tea, and remarked that I made it better than she
+did.
+
+"Your Uncle Tom has a very kind heart," she said, looking a little
+pugnaciously at me. "It is so like him, just when he might naturally be
+taken up with his own affairs, to be anxious about me."
+
+We each knew the other was not deceived.
+
+I longed to say, "Why not marry Colonel Stoddart?"
+
+I had only seen him on horseback. I did not know how he looked on the
+ground, but I would have married him myself in a second if he had asked
+me, partly no doubt because he was a little like Lord K----, the hero of
+my teens to whom I had never spoken, and partly because he was the exact
+opposite of Uncle Tom. How Miss Collett _could_! How anybody could! Yet
+Uncle Tom always talked as if he had only to choose among the flower of
+English womanhood, and the stouter and more repellent he grew the more
+communicative and conscientious he became about his fear of raising
+expectations in female bosoms which he might not be able to gratify. How
+I scorned Uncle Tom when he talked like that, knowing as I did--but
+neither he nor Aunt Emmy knew I knew (it was always like that, they
+always thought I did not know things)--knowing as I did that Miss Rose
+Delaine and Miss Wright had both refused him. I did not realise in my
+intolerant youth that the anxiety of some middle-aged bachelors still to
+appear eligible, the way their minds hover round imaginary conquests,
+has its pathetic side. Looking back, I believe now that Miss Collett was
+not by any means poor Uncle Tom's first choice, but his last chance. And
+perhaps he was her last chance too.
+
+"I know father is dying. I have known it some time," said Aunt Emmy, and
+her face became convulsed. "He spoke so beautifully about it only
+yesterday. And I have known for a long time that Tom and Miss Collett
+were likely to come to an arrangement."
+
+She had not a grain of irony in her, but no word could have been more
+applicable to Uncle Tom and Miss Collett than an arrangement. One felt
+that each had measured the other by avoirdupois weight, and had found
+the balance even.
+
+"Is Uncle Thomas opposed to your marrying?" I ventured to say, with the
+tact of eighteen.
+
+"No, my dear; that is what is so wonderful. He was so dreadfully against
+it long ago--once--indeed, until quite lately. But it's no use speaking
+of that. But now he is quite anxious for it, so long as I don't leave
+him. He wants me to promise Colonel Stoddart, but to tell him that I
+could not leave my father during his lifetime, which of course I
+couldn't."
+
+"Won't Colonel Stoddart wait?" I said, waxing bolder. I had slipped down
+on the floor beside her and was stroking her white hand. I hoped I was
+saying the right thing. I was adoringly fond of her, but I was also
+eighteen, and this was my first introduction to a real romance. I was
+feverishly anxious to rise to the occasion, to have nothing to regret in
+retrospect.
+
+"I daresay he would. I think he said something about it," she said
+apathetically.
+
+I remembered a beautiful sentence I had read in a novel about
+confidences being mutual, and I said reproachfully, "Aunt Emmy, I have
+told you _all_ about Lord K----; won't you tell me, just me, no one
+else--about Mr. Kingston?"
+
+And she told me. I think it was a relief to speak to some one. I held my
+cheek against her hand all the time. It seemed that a sort of demigod of
+the name of Kingston had alighted in her life when she was nineteen (I
+felt with a pang that I had still a whole year to wait) and he was
+twenty-one. Aunt Emmy waxed boldly eloquent in her description of his
+unique and heroic character, shyly eloquent in her dispassionate
+indication of his almost terrifying beauty.
+
+I think Aunt Emmy became a girl in her teens again for a few minutes,
+carried away by her memory, and by the idolising sympathy of the other
+girl in her teens at her feet in a seventh heaven at being a confidant.
+But in one sense, on the sentimental plane, she had never ceased to be a
+girl. She and I viewed the situation almost from the same standpoint.
+
+"Aunt Emmy, _was_ he tall?"
+
+"He was, my love."
+
+"And slender?"
+
+My whole life hung in the balance. I had all a young girl's repulsion
+towards stout men.
+
+"He was thin and wiry, and very athletic, a great rider."
+
+I gave a sigh of relief.
+
+"Did his--it does not really matter" (I felt the essentials were all
+right and that I must not ask too much of life)--"but did his hair
+curl?"
+
+Aunt Emmy drew out of her bosom a little locket, hanging by a thin gold
+chain, with a forget-me-not in blue enamel on it, and opened it. Inside
+was a curl of chestnut hair. It was not tied in the shape of a curl. It
+was a real curl.
+
+I looked at it with awe.
+
+Aunt Emmy answered my highest expectations at every point. I had never
+seen that enamel locket before. Yet I divined at once that she had worn
+it under her clothes--as indeed she had, day and night for how many
+years! I felt that I would not care how it ended, happily or unhappily,
+if only I might have a romance and a locket like that.
+
+"He gave it me when we parted eighteen years ago," she said, her voice
+quivering a little.
+
+I knew well that lovers always did part. They invariably severed,
+"severed for years." I was not the least surprised to hear he was gone,
+for I was already learning "In the Gloaming," and trilled it forth in a
+thin, throaty voice which Aunt Emmy said was remarkably like what hers
+had been at my age.
+
+"Why were you parted?" I asked.
+
+"He had not any money, and he had his way to make. And he had an uncle
+out there who wanted him to go to him. It was a good opening, though he
+would not have taken it if it had not been for me, for though he was so
+fond of horses he was not the kind of person for that kind of life,
+sheep and things. He cared so much for books and poetry. And your Uncle
+Thomas was very much against my marrying at that time, in fact, he
+positively forbade it. You see, mother was dead, and your Uncle Thomas
+had become more dependent on me than he was quite aware until there was
+a question of my leaving him. Men are like that, my love. They need a
+woman all the time to look after them, and listen to their talk, and
+keep vexatious things away. And he was always a most tender father. He
+said he could not bear the thought of his only daughter roughing it in
+Australia. He said he would withdraw his opposition if--if--Bob (Bob was
+his name) came home with a sufficient fortune to keep me in comfort in
+England."
+
+"And he never did?"
+
+"He went out to try. I felt sure he would, and he felt sure he would. At
+twenty-two it seems as if fortunes can be made if it is really
+necessary. And I promised to wait for him, and he was to work to win
+me."
+
+I could not refrain from shedding a tear. It was all so beautiful, so
+far beyond anything I could have hoped. I pressed Aunt Emmy's hand in
+silence, and she went on:
+
+"But there were bad seasons, and though he worked and worked, and though
+he did get on, still, you could not call it a fortune. And after five
+years had passed he wrote to say that he was making a living, and his
+uncle had taken him into partnership, and could not I come out to him.
+He had built an extra room on purpose for me. Your Uncle Thomas was
+terribly angry when the letter came, because he had always been against
+my emigrating, and he forbade any further correspondence. Men are very
+high-handed, my love, when you come to live with them. We were not
+allowed to write after that. Do you know, my dear, I became so
+distressed that I had thoughts--I actually contemplated running away to
+Australia?"
+
+"Oh! why didn't you?" I groaned. That, of course, was the obvious
+solution of the difficulty.
+
+"Very soon after that your Uncle Thomas had his stroke, and after that
+of course I could not leave him."
+
+"Could not we do it still?" I suggested. Of course I took for granted
+that I should be involved in the elopement, as the confidential friend
+who carries a little reticule with jewels in it, and sustains throughout
+the spirits of the principal eloper.
+
+"_Now!_" said Aunt Emmy, and for a moment a violent emotion disfigured
+her sweet face. "Now. Oh! my child, all this happened fifteen years ago,
+when you were a toddling baby."
+
+"I wish to Heaven I had been as old then as I am now," I said with
+clenched hands. I felt that I could have vanquished Uncle Thomas and
+Uncle Tom, and all this conspiracy against my darling Aunt Emmy's
+happiness.
+
+"And is he still--still----?" I ventured.
+
+"I don't know whether he is still--free. I have not heard from him for
+fifteen years. Uncle Thomas was very firm about the correspondence. He
+is a very decided character, especially since his stroke, and I have
+ceased to hear anything at all about him since his mother died twelve
+years ago."
+
+To me twelve years ago was as in the time of Noah. Yet here was Aunt
+Emmy, to whom it was all as fresh as yesterday.
+
+"When she died," said Aunt Emmy, "she was ill for a long time before,
+and I used to go and sit with her. She was fond of me, but she never
+quite did your Uncle Thomas justice. When she died she sent me this
+ring." She touched the beautiful emerald ring she always wore. "She said
+she had left it to him, and he had asked that she would send it to me.
+It had been her own engagement ring."
+
+"Why don't you wear it on your engaged finger?"
+
+"I did at first. It was a kind of comfort to me. But Uncle Tom was
+constantly vexed with me about it. He said it might keep things off. He
+is a very practical person, Uncle Tom, a very shrewd man of business,
+I'm told. So, to please him, I wear it in the daytime on my right hand."
+
+By this time I was shedding tears of sheer sensibility.
+
+"I have thought of him day and night; there has not been a night I have
+not remembered him in my prayers for nearly twenty years. It will be
+twenty years next April. How could I begin to think of any one else
+_now_, Colonel Stoddart or any one? Uncle Tom is very clever, and so is
+your Uncle Thomas, but I don't think they have ever _quite_ understood
+what I feel about Mr. Kingston."
+
+An electric bell in a little box over the door rang in a furious manner.
+
+Aunt Emmy was on her feet in a second, smoothing her fair hair at the
+Venetian mirror.
+
+"Your Uncle Thomas is awake," she said, "and is ready to be read to. He
+never likes being kept waiting."
+
+This seemed to be the case, for as she left the room the electric bell
+rang again more furiously than before, and I shook my fist at it.
+
+
+PART II
+
+    If some star of heaven
+    Led him by at even,
+        If some magic fate
+        Brought him, should I wait,
+    Or fly within and bid them close the gate?
+
+    MARGARET L. WOODS.
+
+The following year I suddenly married a soldier, the only young man I
+knew, and I knew him very slightly, and went out to India with him. I
+did not forget Aunt Emmy, we corresponded regularly; but I was young
+and my life was a very full one. I had seen nothing of the world till I
+married. I had a child. The years rushed past, joyful, miserable, vivid,
+surprising, happy years, in spite of the fact that my husband was not
+remarkably like Lord K----in appearance, and not in the least like the
+"plaister saint" with whom I had hurried to the altar on such slight
+provocation.
+
+During these years Uncle Thomas died, and Uncle Tom married, and Aunt
+Emmy wrote to me that she had taken a little cottage in Abinger Forest
+against her brother's advice, and how, in spite of his opposition--how
+much it must have cost her to oppose him--he had forgiven her and
+presented her with the most expensive mahogany bedstead and bedding that
+Maple could supply--"so like him."
+
+I wondered vaguely once or twice whether there had been any question of
+her marrying Mr. Kingston, but there was no mention of him in her
+letters, and I did not like to ask. I knew that she was very poor, but
+presently my heart was gladdened by hearing from her that a distant
+relation had left her a legacy, and that she was now comfortably off.
+
+Then suddenly our life was darkened. Our child died. I struggled with
+my grief, became ill, and was sent home. Aunt Emmy urged me to go
+straight to her. She and Uncle Tom were my only near relations in
+England. He also offered to take me in for a time. He wrote with real
+kindness. He had a child himself. And his wife wrote too. But I need
+hardly say that I took my sore heart and my broken health straight to
+Aunt Emmy.
+
+It was late in August when I arrived. The honeysuckle was still in bloom
+on Aunt Emmy's white cottage, standing in its little orchard in a
+clearing in the forest. She was waiting for me in the porch, and I ran
+feebly to her up the narrow brick path between the tall clumps of
+hollyhocks and Michaelmas daisies; and she drew me into the little
+parlour and held me closely to her. And the years rolled away, and I was
+a child again, and she was comforting me for my broken doll.
+
+With the egotism of youth I fear I had not given a thought to Aunt
+Emmy's new home until I entered it. I knew that she was happy in it, and
+that it had once been a gamekeeper's cottage, but that was about all.
+Nowadays every one has a cottage--it is the fashion; and literary men
+and women, tired of adulatory crowds, weary of their own greatness, flee
+from the metropolis, and write exquisite articles about their gardens,
+and the peace that lurks under a thatched roof, and the simple life,
+lived far from shrilling crowds but near to nature, and _very_ near to
+the Deity. Fortunate Deity!
+
+But in the days of which I am writing cottages and their floral and
+spiritual appurtenances were not the rage.
+
+I never realised until I saw Aunt Emmy in a home of her own how much
+taste she possessed, or how pretty a cottage could be. It did not try to
+look like a house. It was just a cottage, standing amid its apple-trees,
+now red with apples, with its old well half hidden in clumps of
+lavender. The little dwelling itself, with its low ceilings and long oak
+beams and dim colouring and quaint furniture, had a certain austere
+charm, a quiet dignity of its own. The sunny air came softly in through
+wide-open latticed windows, bringing with it the scent of mignonette.
+There had never been a breath of air in the house in Pembridge Square.
+_Ole Scorpio_, that friend of my youth, looked peaceful and complacent
+in a little recess in which his soft colouring and perfect figure showed
+to great advantage against a white-washed wall in shadow.
+
+Aunt Emmy herself, in a gown of some dull white material, with a little
+grey in her rippling, parted hair, seemed at home for the first time in
+her life. She looked a shade older, a shade thinner in the face, her
+sweet eyes a little sunk inwards. But her tall figure had retained all
+its old soft dignity and beauty of line. Looking at her as she poured
+out my tea for me, I suddenly felt years older than she.
+
+This bewildering impression deepened as the days went on, and a
+protecting, wondering compassion became part of my affection for her.
+
+During the years I had spent in India I had seen a good deal of both
+sides of that motley, amazing fabric which we call life. I had felt the
+throbbing of its great loom. I had touched with my own shrinking hand
+the closeness of the texture, had marked the interweaving of the alien
+strands, had marvelled and been dismayed, had marvelled and been awed,
+had seen the dye of my own blood on one dim thread, the gold of my own
+joy on another. The sheltered life had not been mine.
+
+But Aunt Emmy had not moved mentally by a hair's-breadth. All her
+expansion, if expansion it could be called, had taken form in her house
+and garden. I had not been a week under her roof before I found that Mr.
+Kingston occupied exactly the same position in her life as he had done
+in Pembridge Square. She had brought down her romance to adorn her new
+home just as she had brought down _Ole Scorpio_, in cotton wool. Each
+had their niche. Perhaps it was unreasonable in me to expect to find her
+different. I had not expected it. But I had become such a totally
+different person myself that her attitude to life, which had appeared to
+me so romantic and natural when I was eighteen, now appeared
+irremediably pathetic, visionary, out of touch with reality. Perhaps,
+however, it was I who had become disillusioned and matter-of-fact. I saw
+with a kind of pitying wonder that her youthful romance still supplied
+to her, as it had done since she was nineteen, a certain atmosphere of
+pensive, prayerful resignation, a background for ethereal day-dreams.
+Her peaceful days were passed in a kind of picturesque haze, like the
+mist that, seeming in itself a rosy light, sometimes veils a tranquil
+September sunset.
+
+She was evidently very happy, but it was equally evident that she did
+not know it. From words she let drop now and then I saw that she still
+imagined she was bearing the heavy cross of her mutilated youth. But to
+me it seemed as if some tender hand had lifted it from her shoulder.
+
+"Aunt Emmy," I said, yielding to an ignoble curiosity in the second week
+of my visit, as we were picking the lavender together, "when Uncle
+Thomas died, I had thought I should hear of your marrying Mr. Kingston."
+
+"I also hoped it, my dear," said Aunt Emmy, snipping the lavender into a
+little basket, held in a loose white-gloved hand.
+
+I dared not look at her.
+
+"Mr. Kingston has not written," she said after a moment.
+
+"But did you write and tell him you were free, and still in the same
+mind?"
+
+"I did not. I thought it might be awkward for him in case he were--after
+all these years--contemplating some other possibility. I did not want to
+embarrass him. But your Uncle Thomas's death was in all the papers, and
+many of his relations are acquainted with us. I have no doubt the news
+reached him."
+
+Of course it had. I had felt that it was hardly to be expected that Mr.
+Kingston should have kept after twenty years, more than twenty years,
+the same vivid memory of his early love that she had done. His silence
+proved that he had not done so. I looked at Aunt Emmy. How pretty and
+graceful and remote she looked, and how young her face was under the
+shadow of her charming garden hat, tied with a soft black ribbon under
+her chin. As long as she was not confronted with any one really young,
+she had no look of age. It was difficult to believe that she was
+forty-four. And he must be forty-six. It was too late. Middle-aged
+marriages are risky affairs enough, when the Rubicon of forty is within
+sight. But when it has been passed----!
+
+As I looked at her I hoped with all my heart that he would not come back
+to disturb her peace of mind and dislocate her life afresh.
+
+But, astonishing to say, he did come back; and there was some adequate
+reason, I have forgotten exactly what, for his not coming earlier. At
+any rate, it was adequate.
+
+When I came down to breakfast a few days later, Aunt Emmy held a letter
+towards me with a shaking hand. Her lips trembled. She could not
+articulate.
+
+"Am I really to read it?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+It was a charming letter, written in a delicate, refined hand. Mr.
+Kingston had not heard of her father's death till the day before he
+wrote. He had been away up-country for a year, broken shoulder, etc. He
+was starting for England at once. He should travel almost as quickly as
+his letter. He should present himself at Pembridge Square and learn her
+address directly he landed. His ship was the _Sultana_.
+
+I took up the morning paper.
+
+"The _Sultana_ arrived yesterday," I said.
+
+I looked at the envelope. It was directed on from Pembridge Square.
+
+"Tom will give him my address," said Aunt Emmy faintly. "I wonder how he
+knows I am not living there now. _He will--arrive here--to-day._"
+
+She looked straight in front of her through the open windows to the
+hollyhocks basking in the still September sunshine. A radiance lit up
+her face, like that which perhaps shone on Christian's when at last
+across the river he saw the pearl gates of the New Jerusalem.
+
+"At last!" she said. "After all these years! After all these dreadful,
+dreadful years!"
+
+An unbearable pain went through me. It was not new to me. I had known it
+once before, when I had seen my child sicken. Why did it return now?
+
+The radiance passed. A pitiful trembling shook her like a leaf. Her eyes
+turned helplessly to mine, frightened and dimmed.
+
+"I forgot I am an old woman," she said.
+
+I kissed her hand. I told her that she was handsomer than any one. She
+was very dignified and gentle.
+
+"You are very kind to me, my dear, and it is sweet of you to feel as you
+do. I believe, as you say, that I am still nice-looking. But the fact
+remains that it is nearly twenty-five years since we have seen each
+other. I was nineteen then. And oh! I suppose I ought not to say it, but
+I _was_ pretty. People turned to look at me in the street. And now I am
+forty-four."
+
+"But he is older than you, isn't he?"
+
+"Two years. What is two years! We were the same age when we were young.
+But a man of forty-six is younger than a woman of forty-four."
+
+I was silent. There was no contradicting that obvious fact.
+
+"He will probably come by the 4.12 train," said Aunt Emmy, rising. "If
+you don't mind, as there are so many preparations to make, I will leave
+you to finish your breakfast. I have had mine."
+
+She left the room, and I stared at her empty plate. I was not hungry
+either. I was frightened for my dear Aunt Emmy.
+
+And yet, she was so yielding, so selfless, so absolutely uncritical,
+that if any woman could marry late she was the woman. She could have
+lived with a monster of egotism without finding it out. Had she not
+devoted herself to two such monsters most of her life? And perhaps Mr.
+Kingston was not a monster. Aunt Emmy arranged the flowers early as she
+only could arrange them. I was only allowed to fetch the water and clean
+the glasses. A certain pony-cart was sent to Muddington with the cook in
+it to buy a tongue, and a Stilton cheese, and a little barrel of
+anchovies, and various other condiments which Uncle Tom approved. Uncle
+Tom's tastes represented those of his whole sex for Aunt Emmy.
+
+I insisted on her eating some luncheon, but this was barely possible, as
+in the midst of it a telegram was brought in from Mr. Kingston to say he
+should arrive by the 4.12 train.
+
+After luncheon Aunt Emmy went to her room. I followed her there half an
+hour later to give her a note, and found her standing in the middle of
+the floor, looking at all her gowns laid out on chairs.
+
+"I am afraid you can only think me very silly, my dear," she said, with
+a sort of humble dignity. "I wished to consult you, but I did not like
+to; but as you _are_ here, and if you don't mind my asking you--a
+relation can often judge best what is advantageous--which gown _do_ you
+think suits me best, the grey voile, or the lilac delaine, or the white
+serge?"
+
+I decided on the white serge, and long before the dogcart ordered to
+meet him could possibly arrive, Aunt Emmy was sitting, paler than I had
+ever seen her, beside a wood fire in the parlour in the soft white gown
+I loved her best in, pretending to read. She had lit the fire, though
+we were not in the habit of having it till later in the day, because she
+thought Australians might feel chilly.
+
+"I don't know how it is," she said at last, laying down the book, "but I
+seem quite blind. I can't see the print."
+
+I could not see the needle-work I was bending over either. But that was
+because senseless tears kept on rising to my eyes, do what I would. Aunt
+Emmy's eyes had no tears in them.
+
+"It is very petty of me, I know, but I do hope he has not grown stout,"
+she said presently. "But of course it is to be expected, and if it is so
+I must try to bear it. It could not make any _real_ difference. Your
+Uncle Tom is the same age, and of course he is not--he really is _not_
+as thin as he was."
+
+"Was he ever thin?"
+
+"N-no. But Mr. Kingston was, at least, not thin, but very spare and
+agile-looking."
+
+At last the sound of wheels reached us. Aunt Emmy clasped the arms of
+her chair convulsively.
+
+"I daresay he has not come," she said almost inaudibly.
+
+The wheels stopped. I went into the tiny hall.
+
+A tall, spare, distinguished-looking man, with weather-beaten face and
+peculiarly intent, hawklike eyes, was at the gate, and I went out to
+greet him. As he took off his cap his crisp hair showed a little grey in
+it. He was delightful to look at.
+
+I don't know what I said, but I mumbled something as I shook hands with
+him, and pointed to the parlour door. He nodded gravely and went in,
+hitting his tall head against the low lintel. Then he closed the door
+gently. And I went to my room, and locked myself in.
+
+When I went into the parlour an hour later at tea-time I found them
+sitting one on each side of the fire. I wished with all my heart that
+they could have been sitting together at this moment after the marriage
+of their daughter. Both had cried a little, I could see. He certainly
+had. They got up when I came in, and stood together on the hearth, a
+splendid-looking couple, dwarfing the white room with its low ceiling.
+
+What they must have been in youth I could well imagine.
+
+I was reintroduced to him, and I am not sure, though they were both
+smiling at each other, that they were not relieved by my entrance with
+the tea. He handed her her cup and waited on her with the deferential
+awkwardness of a man who has not been in women's society for years.
+
+"I am a rough fellow, Emmy," he said once or twice. But he was not
+rough. He was charming. He did not fit in at all with my preconceived
+ideas of "Colonials." And it was quickly evident to me that his tender
+admiration of Aunt Emmy still survived. I was partly reassured. Perhaps,
+after all, he had brought happiness with him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Saint Luke's summer was glorious that year, and it was nowhere more
+wonderful than in the forest. One still golden day followed another, the
+gossamer-threaded sunshine flooding the glades of yellowing and amber
+trees, spilling itself headlong amid the rusting bracken, and losing
+itself in the tiny foliage of the whortleberry, which, all its little
+oval leaves, ruddy as a robin's breast, was imitating the trees, like a
+miniature autumn forest underfoot.
+
+Aunt Emmy and Mr. Kingston walked daily in the marvel of the forest, and
+it seemed as if the autumn sun shone kindly on them. Sometimes on her
+return there was a bewildered look in her face which I did not
+understand, and I wondered whether indeed all was well; but I put the
+thought away, for his love for her was beyond the possibility of doubt,
+and had not her love for him coloured her whole life?
+
+And yet--
+
+Once I saw him take up _Ole Scorpio_ with a careful hand, and then
+replace it in its recess with its spout pointing towards the room.
+Presently, when he had gone, she gently moved it back to its former
+position, exactly _en profile_, and the senseless idea darted through my
+mind as I watched her do it that if her romance were moved from its
+niche, she would instinctively wish to do the same, to readjust it to
+the angle from which she had looked at it so long.
+
+As the days passed and the first shyness between them wore off, the
+primitive life he had led for so many years showed itself in a certain
+slowness of speech, a disinclination to make acquaintance with the
+neighbours, and an increasing tendency to long, tranquil silences with a
+pipe in the garden. But, wonderful to say, it had not apparently
+blunted him mentally. And he actually cared for books. Unfortunately,
+there were almost no books in the cottage. How he had kept it I cannot
+imagine, but he certainly had retained a quickness of apprehension which
+made him half-unconsciously adapt himself to Aunt Emmy and her little
+habits in a way that astonished me. It was she who showed herself less
+perceptive as regarded him. But this she never divined. She had got it
+rooted into her small, graceful head that he would naturally wish to
+converse principally about his farm. And, in spite of scant
+encouragement, she continually "showed an interest," as she herself
+expressed it, in sheep, and water creeks, and snakes, and bush fires. He
+was always perfectly good-natured, and ready to answer; but I sometimes
+wondered how it was she did not realise that she asked the same
+questions over and over again.
+
+"Uncle Bob does not seem to care to talk much about his farming," I
+ventured one day. "Perhaps he wishes to forget it for a little while."
+
+"My dear," said Aunt Emmy rebukingly, "when you are as old as I am, you
+will know that the only thing men really care to talk of _is_ their
+business. My dear father always talked of stocks, and shares, and--and
+bonuses. He said I could not understand about them, as indeed I could
+not, but it interested me very much to listen. And your Uncle Tom, as
+you may remember"--I did indeed--"did the same. It is natural that Mr.
+Kingston's mind should dwell on agricultural subjects."
+
+Presently wicked men began to mow the bracken with great scythes, and to
+carry it away in carts which tilted and elbowed their way down the
+mossy, heather-fringed tracks. Here and there the down-stretched arms of
+the firs caught the topmost fronds of bracken and swept them from their
+murdered brethren, and held them precariously suspended, only to drop
+them when the first wind went by.
+
+I left the cottage for a week to visit my husband's relations, and when
+I returned the forest was bare. An indefinable sadness seemed to brood
+over it, and to have reached Aunt Emmy as well. Mr. Kingston had also
+been away to visit his relations, and had returned, and was staying at
+the little inn on the edge of the forest, from which he could more
+readily run up daily to town to have his shoulder massaged, which still
+troubled him.
+
+Aunt Emmy told me all this in her garden, where she was dividing her
+white pinks. I knew she intended to make a fresh border, but the action
+filled me with consternation.
+
+"But Aunt Emmy," I said (the foolish words jolted out of me by sudden
+anxiety), "will you--will you be _here_ next spring?"
+
+I could have struck myself the moment the words were out of my mouth.
+
+The trowel dropped from her hand.
+
+"Oh no!" she said confusedly. "Neither I shall. I was forgetting. I
+shall be in Australia."
+
+She looked round the little garden which she had made with her own
+hands, and back to the white cottage, up to its eyes in Michaelmas
+daisies, which had become such an ideal home, and in which, poor dear!
+she had taken a deeper root than she knew, and a bewildered pain passed
+for a moment over her face. It was as if she had been walking in her
+sleep, and had suddenly come in contact with some obstacle, and had
+waked up and was not for the first moment certain of her surroundings.
+
+"He is more to me than any cottage," she said, recovering herself
+with a little gasp. "I had hoped perhaps he would have come and lived
+here, and let me take care of him, after all his years of hard work.
+But it was a selfish idea. He has told me that he cannot leave his
+work or his uncle, who has been so kind to him, and who is very infirm
+now--partially paralysed, and needing the greatest care. I shall--let
+the cottage."
+
+"What is the place in Australia like?" I said with duplicity, for of
+course I knew by this time exactly what it was like. But I wanted to
+change her thoughts.
+
+She led the way indoors, and pointed to a sheaf of unmounted
+photographs. I took them up, and examined them as if for the first time.
+My heart sank as I looked at the inoffensive figure of the poor old
+uncle in the verandah, whom Aunt Emmy was of course to nurse. The house
+which that hard-working old man had built himself stood nakedly upon a
+piece of naked ground. There was not a tree near it. Beyond were the
+great cattle-yards and farm buildings, and what looked like an endless,
+shrubless field. And on the right was the new two-windowed room, no
+longer very new, which Mr. Kingston had built seventeen years ago for
+Aunt Emmy. I knew how much labour that hideous addition meant, which was
+a sort of degraded cousin many times removed from the pert villa
+drawing-rooms, peering over portugal laurels on the road to Muddington.
+I knew that Mr. Kingston had papered and painted that room with his own
+hands. I knew also, but Aunt Emmy did not, that he had repapered and
+repainted it several times while it waited for her. And yet by no
+wildest effort of the imagination could I picture Aunt Emmy living
+there, though her heart had been there all her life.
+
+A sudden rage rose within me against the deceased Uncle Thomas, and
+against this other decrepit uncle, waiting to be nursed.
+
+I laid down the photographs, and went a turn in the forest, leaving Aunt
+Emmy sitting idle in her gardening gloves. My foolish words had stopped
+her happy activity. I was angry with myself, with Fate, with Australia,
+with everything, and not least with Mr. Kingston.
+
+Everywhere in the bare glades little orphaned families of bracken held
+their arched necks a few inches from the ground. Even in their
+bereavement they too had remembered that it was autumn, and their tiny
+curled fronds protecting their downcast faces were golden and ruddy. As
+I turned a corner I suddenly caught sight of Mr. Kingston a few paces
+from me, looking earnestly at one of these little groups. I did not want
+to meet him just then, and I half turned aside; but he had already seen
+me, and he gave a gesture of welcome, and I had to stop.
+
+My anger subsided somewhat as he came up. He looked harassed, and as if
+he had not slept.
+
+"And so you are back," he said. "I was just wishing that you were at the
+moment I caught sight of you. If you think it possible that a word or
+two could be dragged out of such a silent enigmatical person as
+yourself, I should like to have a little talk with you."
+
+I could not help liking him. His keen eyes were kindly, though his face
+was grave.
+
+"What do you want to talk about?" I said bluntly.
+
+"What an unnecessary question. What can I want to talk about except
+Emmy?"
+
+I was silent. I felt more uncomfortable about the whole affair than I
+had done yet, and that was saying a good deal.
+
+Mr. Kingston led the way down a little track to a place where the trees
+grew so close together that the murderous scythes had not been able to
+get in among them. Here the bracken had been unmolested, and was going
+unharassed through all its most gorgeous pageant. Great fronds of ivory
+white, of palest gold, of brownest gold, of reddest gold upreared
+themselves among the purple waves of the heather, wearing the stray
+flecks of the sunshine like jewels on their breasts. We sat down on a
+fallen tree round which the bracken had wrapped its splendour.
+
+"How extraordinarily beautiful it is!" he said, more to himself than to
+me, putting out his long, artistic hand, gnarled and hardened with work,
+and touching a pale frond with a reverent finger. "I am glad to have
+seen it once more. It is twenty-five years since I have seen an English
+autumn."
+
+There was a moment's silence, and then he went on without any change of
+tone:
+
+"And you are thinking, you sad-faced, downright little woman who are so
+afraid that I am going to make your dear Aunt Emmy unhappy, you are
+thinking that you did not take a precarious seat on this trunk in order
+to hear a possible enemy descant on the beauties of nature."
+
+I was astonished at his penetration. My own experience, gleaned entirely
+from the genial little egotist whose wife I was, had taught me that men
+never noticed anything. I had had no idea that I had shown the fear of
+him which I felt.
+
+"And yet you are my only possible ally," he went on, "my only helper, if
+you are willing to help me, in the somewhat difficult task which I have
+in hand."
+
+"You mean, marrying my aunt?" I said.
+
+"No," he said, looking at me with a kindness which made me ready to sink
+into the ground with shame. "I can do _that_ without assistance. Emmy,
+God bless her! has been ready to marry me any time these twenty-five
+years, and, poor soul, she is ready now. She has not the faintest idea
+what she would be in for if she did, but she is ready to risk it."
+
+I was silent. I was bewildered for one thing, and I did not want "to put
+my foot in it" again immediately for another. And there was really no
+need for me to speak, for he went on slowly, looking full at me:
+
+"What I have to do, if I can, is to save Emmy's romance for her."
+
+I could only stare at him.
+
+"For twenty-five years," he went on, "that dear woman has lived on her
+love for me. It has coloured her whole life. I know what I know. It has
+been her support in all the endless years she nursed that cruel old
+egoist her father, who would not let her marry me, when we _could_ have
+married, seventeen years ago. But it is not _me_ that she wants now,
+though she did want me for many years; it is the thought of me--if you
+can't understand without my saying it, I can't make you--it's her
+romance which is important to her, and which I want her to keep, at all
+costs."
+
+"My darling Emmy," he said, and there were tears in his hawk eyes, "the
+most unselfish and devoted, the sweetest, the humblest, and the most
+beautiful creature I have ever known. And she has given up everything
+out of constancy to me, home, children, everything; no, not for me
+exactly, but for a dream, for an ideal, for something of which I was to
+her the symbol, but which I no more resemble than I resemble that frond
+of bracken."
+
+He turned his face away.
+
+"It would have been all right if they would have let us marry when we
+were both still young, and I had got a home together," he went on; "but
+now it would be inhuman to root her out of her little home and drag her
+across the world, and try to transplant her into my rough place. How
+rough it is I see, now that I have been back in England. I did not know
+it was so uncouth when I lived in it. It's the only life I'm accustomed
+to, the only life I'm fit for now, though it was sorely against the
+grain at first. I don't think I could have stuck to it, except for the
+hope of marrying her some day. But I see now the only life I'm fit for
+is not fit for her. And I can't give it up. I can't desert my poor old
+uncle, who is growing infirm and depends on me entirely."
+
+"Why did you come back?" I groaned.
+
+"I came back," he said, "because I have cared for her and worked for her
+all my life. And because I heard that her beast of a father had left her
+almost penniless, and that fat Tom had married and turned her out. And
+until I saw her again from day to day I did not realise the nature of
+her feeling for me. I came back to offer her what I had, not that it
+was much, hoping to marry her and take her back with me.... But that is
+not what would make my Emmy happy _now_. What she needs is to go on in
+this perfect little doll's house, this little haven, thinking of me, and
+praying for me, and tending her flowers, and mourning like a dove in its
+tree because we are parted."
+
+It was exactly what Aunt Emmy needed. I could not have put it into
+words, but this strange man had done so.
+
+"You will not speak," he said, "but you agree with me for all that. I
+had to make sure you agreed. Your confirmation is all I wanted, and now
+I have it."
+
+It was not that I would not speak. I could not speak. I was thinking of
+the room in that horrid wooden house which he had built for her.
+
+After a few minutes he went on quietly:
+
+"I think the thing for me to do is to be ruined, only partially, of
+course, not enough to make her miserable, and to hurry back to Australia
+without her at once for the time being, and from there to write
+regularly by every mail, nice letters (they cannot be forbidden now);
+but never to come back any more. A bank has just failed in Australia in
+which I had money. The situation can be arranged."
+
+I looked away from him.
+
+"I owe it to her," he said.
+
+
+
+
+THE UNDERSTUDY
+
+    The only form of human love that atrophies the heart is the love
+    of self.
+
+
+Marion Wright sat in the centre seat of the third row of the stalls,
+shivering in spite of her sables. It was the dress rehearsal of her
+first play, that play on which she had spent herself to the verge of
+mental bankruptcy.
+
+The nauseating presentiment of failure, the distaste and scorn of her
+own work, were upon her, which the artist never escapes, which return as
+acutely after twenty successes as in the hours of suspense before the
+first essay. Marion's surroundings were not of a nature to reassure her.
+To her unaccustomed eyes the empty, dimly lit theatre, swathed and
+bandaged in dust-sheets, looked ominously dreary. Had any one ever
+laughed in this shrouded desert? The long lines of stalls huddled under
+their wrinkled coverings stretched before and behind her. The boxes were
+shapeless holes of pallid grime. It was as if a London fog had trailed
+its dingy veil over everything. There was a fog outside as well, and the
+few electric lights which had been turned up peered blurred and yellow.
+An immense ladder, three ladders tied together, reared itself from the
+stalls to the roof. Something was being done to the lights on the
+ceiling. Tired-looking men in overcoats were creeping into the
+orchestra, thrusting white faces under screened lights, and rustling
+papers on stands.
+
+Marion had the theatre to herself except for a few whisperers in the
+back row of the stalls--her maid, an attendant, one or two actors of
+minor parts who did not appear in the first act, and a few costumiers.
+
+It was fiercely cold, and she had not slept for several nights. She
+wished she had never been born.
+
+A magnificent-looking woman, wearing her chin tilted slightly upwards,
+was squeezing herself and an immense fur coat towards her along the
+stalls, and sat down beside her. This was Lenore, the leading lady.
+
+She turned a colourless, beautifully shaped face and heavy eyes with
+bistred lashes towards Marion.
+
+"I suppose we shall have to wait about two hours for Mr. Montgomery,"
+she said apathetically.
+
+"Does he always keep people waiting?"
+
+"Always, since he made his great hit in _The Deodars_."
+
+There was a moment's silence.
+
+"Mr. Montgomery does not like his part," said the leading lady
+tentatively, hanging a hand in an interminable white glove over the back
+of the stall in front of her.
+
+Marion's face hardened.
+
+"It's not a sympathetic part," she said, "but an artist ought not to
+think of that."
+
+"No, it's not sympathetic," acquiesced Lenore, turning up her fur
+collar. "It seems as if the principal man's part never _is_ sympathetic
+in a woman's play. If the central figure is a woman, the men grouped
+round her are generally prize specimens of worms. I wonder why. In your
+play, now, Maggie's everything! George does not count for much, as far
+as I can see. Even Maggie had not much use for him."
+
+"She loved him," said the author, with asperity.
+
+"Did she? Sometimes when I'm playing Maggie to Montgomery's George I
+wonder if she did. And I just wonder now and then if I would have thrown
+him over as she did. I mean for good and all. It seems to me--if she'd
+cared for him, cared _really_, you know----"
+
+"She did," interposed Marion harshly.
+
+"Wouldn't she have quarrelled and made it up again? Would she have been
+quite so hard on him?"
+
+"Yes, she would. Think, just think what she must have suffered in the
+third act, the scene at the Savoy, when, loving him as she did, trusting
+him as she did, she saw him come in with----"
+
+"Well, I expect you know best," said Lenore, whose interest seemed to
+flag suddenly; "anyhow, she suffered, poor thing. Women like her always
+do, I think." She rose slowly. "I may as well go and dress. I suppose we
+shall be here till midnight."
+
+The orchestra struck up.
+
+"Anyhow, she suffered."
+
+The violins caught up the words and dinned them over and over again into
+Marion's ears. Women like Maggie, women with deep hearts like
+herself--for was not Maggie herself?--they always suffered, always
+suffered, always!--said the violins.
+
+The manager suddenly appeared in front of the curtain and walked swiftly
+over the little bridge from the stage to the stalls. He was a small,
+sturdy, thin-lipped, choleric man, who looked as if he were made up of
+energy; energy distilled and bottled. Some one had said of him that his
+hat was really a glass stopper, which might fly off at any moment.
+
+It was off now. There had evidently been an explosion. He held a note in
+his hand.
+
+"Montgomery has given up the part," he said. "He was odd at rehearsal
+yesterday. I felt there was something wrong. He said he had no show. Now
+he says he's too ill to come--bronchitis."
+
+The sense of disaster which had been hanging over Marion all day slipped
+and engulfed her like an avalanche. She felt paralysed.
+
+"Then the play can't go on?" she said.
+
+"If it had to happen, better to-night than to-morrow night," said the
+manager. "Montgomery is as slippery as an eel. I don't suppose he has
+got bronchitis; but I have no doubt if I rushed over there at this
+moment, I should find him in bed with a steam-kettle. He would play the
+part."
+
+"What will you do?" gasped Marion.
+
+"Do?" he said. "Do? There's only one thing to do. Go through with the
+play! It will start in two minutes, and we shall see what the understudy
+can make of it. He's as clever as he can stick, and he's word perfect,
+at any rate."
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+"A Mr. Delacour; at least, that's his stage name. He's been in America
+for the last five years. Clever enough, but a rolling stone. He's not to
+be depended on, poor devil; but it's Hobson's choice--we've got to
+depend on him."
+
+The manager sat down beside her and clapped his hands.
+
+The lights suddenly burned up behind the curtain, the curtain rose and
+the play began.
+
+Some plays, some books, some men and women, possess a mysterious force
+which, for lack of a better word, we call vitality. Those who possess it
+not call it by all manner of ugly names. But, nevertheless, it is the
+great gift, the power that overcomes, which makes life on a large scale
+possible, which makes the soldier, the lover, the saint, possible. Most
+of us are only half alive. Our work is half dead. We deal in creep-mouse
+sentiment, and call it love. We write pathetically of our impotence to
+live, and call it resignation. We who have never been young, compare
+notes with each other on how to remain senile, and call it the art of
+growing old.
+
+But others go through life, and spend themselves on it, piece by piece,
+with ardour as they go. These are the teachers--only they never teach.
+They know. If we want to learn anything, we can watch them. And some of
+us, again--and this is the hardest fate of all--come into life
+inadequately equipped, not provisioned for a prolonged journey. What
+little we have, and what little there is of us, we expend on the first
+part of life, and having nothing left for middle age.
+
+Such a woman was Marion. She had talent, and she had, besides--as the
+manager beside her had divined--one live play in her. But he doubted
+whether she had more than one. She looked insolvent, a dweller in the
+past, crippled by an acute memory. No doubt it was this self-regarding
+memory which had resulted in the play. It was obviously a personal
+experience, and as she was rich enough to share the risk of producing
+it, he was more than ready to put it on. It was full of faults; it was
+melodramatic, it was amateurish, but it was passionately alive. The pit
+and the gallery would love it; and if the stalls found it a little
+cheap, what of that? He had considerable _flair_. He believed it would
+succeed.
+
+He glanced once or twice furtively at the handsome, unhappy-looking,
+richly furred woman beside him--no longer young, "past youth, but not
+past passion," with much of the charm of youth lingering in her graceful
+erectness, her pretty hair, her delicate pallor.
+
+She had told him feverishly that the only thing she cared for--had ever
+cared for--was art, success, fame. He had heard something like it often
+before.
+
+He wished, with a half-sigh, that a little of that uneasy, egotistic
+ambition might have been instilled into the heart of Lenore, for whom
+he had a compassionate, bottled-up attachment of many years' standing.
+
+Poor Lenore! What an actress, and what a hopelessly womanly woman, still
+mourning the providential demise of an impossible brother who had lived
+on her.
+
+She was on the stage now, looking about seventeen, all youth and garden
+hat and white muslin.
+
+Marion's face twitched. She was living her own youth over again.
+
+There was a pause. Lenore picked a rose to gain time, and looked into
+the wings.
+
+"Delacour!" roared the manager, bouncing up in his stall and then
+sitting down again.
+
+"We cut it here," said Lenore, advancing to the footlights, "and he
+doesn't know. It is not his fault. He's waiting for his cue. See, Mr.
+Delacour! Leave out that bit about the daisies, and come on at
+'happiness.'"
+
+The understudy came on, and Marion's heart thrust suddenly at her like a
+rapier, and left her for dead, staring in front of her.
+
+This was no understudy. This was the original George of the drama when
+it was first acted. Marion saw the lover of her youth come on and kiss
+Lenore's hand, with the same gesture with which he had once kissed
+hers--in the sunshine, in a Kentish garden, beside a lavender bush, with
+a bumble bee in it, ten endless years ago.
+
+He was hardly changed--a little thinner, perhaps, but not a day older in
+his paint; the same reckless, debonair creature whom Marion had loved,
+who had wounded her and grieved her, whom she had discarded at last with
+bitter anger, whom she had never forgotten, whom she remembered with
+anguish.
+
+The curtain was down before she recovered herself, and the conductor was
+waving his baton.
+
+The manager turned to her with some excitement.
+
+"If only he can keep it up!" he said. "Delacour puts life into the
+love-making. He makes love well, don't you think?"
+
+"Admirably."
+
+"If only he can keep it up!" repeated the manager.
+
+Through the two acts which followed, the understudy kept it up. He did
+more. He acted with an intensity that made the rest of the play somewhat
+colourless. At the end of the scene at the Savoy, just before the
+curtain fell, he added a sentence of his own.
+
+In a second, before she knew what she had done, Marion had sprung to her
+feet, and had said in a harsh, loud voice:
+
+"That last sentence is not in the part."
+
+The play stopped. The hurrying waiters with dishes stood stock still and
+gaped, as astonished as if the interruption had been in real life. Some
+of the supers at the little tables in the background got up to see what
+was happening.
+
+Delacour, wineglass in hand, came forward to the footlights, and their
+eyes met.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said. "You say it is not in the part. I thought
+it was. I will omit it in future."
+
+"You will do no such thing!" bawled the manager, leaping to his feet and
+shaking his fist at him. "Omit it! Why, Miss Wright, it's an
+inspiration. Gets him the whole sympathy just at the critical moment.
+And what a curtain! Good God! What a curtain!"
+
+"Isn't it?" said Lenore. "Leave out my bit at the end altogether, and
+make _that_ the curtain. Don't you agree, Miss Wright? And, look here,
+Mr. Delacour, take the front centre here."
+
+"Start again at 'falsehood,'" said the manager briskly to Lenore. "Now,
+then, everybody. Sit down at the back there. Now----"
+
+The play started again. Marion, astonished at her own violence, ashamed,
+shattered by conflicting emotions, speechless, could only bow her
+approval of the change, not that the manager cared a pin whether she
+approved or not.
+
+_Was Delacour acting?_ Marion knew that he was not. And as the play
+proceeded it changed in character. The words were the words she had
+written. Many of them were the words he had used himself, but his
+passion transformed them. They took on a new meaning. It was Maggie who
+was becoming a mean figure in spite of her grandiloquence--perhaps
+because of it. Her rigid principles, her petty, egotistic pride, her
+faultless demeanour jarred on the audience. Lenore, like a true artist,
+caught the novel side of the situation and emphasised it. Her Maggie
+dwindled, dwindled, until the man held the stage alone, dominated it.
+Marion had never before seen his side of the miserable drama in which
+her happiness had made shipwreck, had never before seen her own
+character in this light. It was as if he were saying the truth at last,
+defending himself at last--which he had never done in real life.
+
+Finally repulsed, silent under her scornful invective, Delacour gathered
+himself together and went off magnificent in defeat.
+
+The curtain fell for the last time.
+
+The tiny audience, strengthened by the rest of the cast who were not
+needed in the final scene, broke into rapturous applause. The manager,
+excited and radiant, clapped with the rest.
+
+"He's immense. He's immense!" he kept on saying. "Delacour's the making
+of it. He's immense! Hang Montgomery! He may have bronchitis till he's
+blue. Delacour makes the play. I will fetch him!"
+
+He disappeared behind the curtain, and in a few minutes reappeared,
+dragging Delacour with him to introduce him to Marion.
+
+"We have met before," she said faintly, putting out her hand.
+
+"Did we ever really meet?" he said gently, taking it for a second in
+his.
+
+He seemed quite exhausted. Now that she saw him close at hand, he looked
+much older. And his face was grievously lined, deteriorated.
+
+She tried to thank him, to express her gratitude for the way he had
+extricated them from a great difficulty; but her words were so
+hesitating and frigid that the manager broke in, shaking him warmly by
+the hand.
+
+Delacour bowed his thanks, murmured something conventional, and was
+gone.
+
+Every one was in a hurry to go, too. Marion remained a moment longer
+talking to the manager, and then they went together through the royal
+box to the private entrance, where her brougham was waiting. Just as
+they reached it, he was called away, and an attendant let her out.
+
+Waiting beside her brougham, in the rain, holding the door for her, was
+Delacour, in a shabby overcoat, his hat in his hand.
+
+Again their eyes met in a long look. His, sombre, melancholy, humble,
+had a great appeal in them.
+
+She seemed encased in some steel armour, which made movement and speech
+wellnigh impossible. She thanked him inaudibly.
+
+He shut the door, said "Home" to the coachman, and turned away.
+
+The carriage drove off.
+
+Then something in Marion snapped. Her other self, the poor woman in her
+whom she had denied and starved and brow-beaten, pounced upon her and
+called out suddenly, desperately:
+
+"Forgive him. What is life without him? Think of the last ten years. Has
+there been one day in all those grinding years when you have not longed
+to see him? Has there ever been one day when you would not have given up
+your ease and luxury for a cottage with him? And now he has come back
+into your life. He still loves you. Are you going to lose him again? You
+were vindictive, and you know it. Go back now and kneel down in the wet
+street and ask him to forgive you. Quick! quick!--before it is too
+late."
+
+The other woman in her, the woman who had discarded him, stopped her
+ears.
+
+"No, no; I had good reasons for breaking with him. They hold as good
+to-day as ten years ago."
+
+"Very well," said the other scornfully. "Then never dare to tell
+yourself again that you ever loved him. Let that lie cease. Your love
+was only pretty words and pride and self-seeking, and a miserable streak
+of passion. What do you care what happens to him? Don't go back. You
+don't care for him. You never cared. Never, never. And he knows it. He
+is telling himself so now--at this moment."
+
+She stopped the brougham. She trembled so much that she could hardly
+tell the man to drive back to the theatre. He turned slowly, the horse
+evidently reluctant, and in a few minutes she was once more at the
+private entrance. The door was closed. No one was to be seen in the
+little _cul de sac_. The lamp over the door was out. She got out and
+rang--once, twice, and yet again. Then she realised that every one else
+had hurried away as precipitately as she had done, for the dawn was
+already in the sky. She dragged herself back into her carriage and drove
+home, shaking in every limb.
+
+After all, it did not matter. She would get his address from the manager
+first thing to-morrow, and go straight on and see him, and sacrifice her
+pride, and beseech him to take her back. She had been too proud. She
+saw that at last. She would say so. She saw at last that resentment is
+disloyalty. She would say so. She was so sick of her present life that
+she would say anything. And he loved her still, thank God! And--thank
+God, too--she was rich. And it was obvious that he was poor. She had
+much to share with him. And she was still attractive. Other men still
+wished to marry her. She was pretty, still. All that she had, all that
+she still was, she would give him. And this long nightmare of the last
+ten years would pass at last, as that other nightmare of her youth had
+passed--her wretched home, with a drunken father and a heartbroken
+mother. That had passed, though at the time it had seemed as if it would
+endure for ever. Her parents had died, and her vulgar, kindly, rich aunt
+had adopted her. And now this second nightmare was at an end, too. The
+ache would go out of her life, the long daily hunger and thirst would
+cease. There would be no more dreadful homecomings after evenings of
+amusement; no more sick recoil and despair at waking and seeing the pale
+finger of the dawn upon the blind. She would be happy at last.
+
+Marion cried herself to sleep that night. Next morning, as early as she
+dared, she was at the theatre. The manager was going through his usual
+paroxysm of anxiety and ill-temper which preceded a first night. He
+could hardly find time for a word with her. There was a hitch in the
+scenery of the last act; the lighting was not yet repaired; one of the
+actors of the minor parts was ill, for whom an understudy had not been
+provided; and the head scene-shifter had sprained his wrist.
+
+"I won't keep you," said Marion, as he hurried up, fuming; "I only want
+Mr. Delacour's address. I should like to see him at once--to--to talk to
+him about his part. There are a few points----"
+
+"Delacour's address?" said the manager. "Don't know it. Oh, yes, of
+course!" He tore a little notebook out of his pocket. Then he suddenly
+looked up at her. "Don't go to him. Send for him, if you like, or see
+him here. He'll be here in an hour--at least, he will be if Smith is
+worth his salt. I've bribed him to keep a lynx eye on him day and night,
+and bring him up to time. But don't go and see him. I suppose you know
+he----"
+
+"He's married?" gasped Marion.
+
+The manager laughed scornfully.
+
+"He _drinks_, my dear lady. He drinks. He's only just out of an
+inebriates' home. But don't alarm yourself. If he's watched, I dare say
+we shall manage all right. I hope to goodness we shall! Don't look so
+scared. Smith has charge of him, and he is accustomed to the job. He was
+quite sober last night. I hear he always is after an outbreak. You're
+going home? Well, I think you're right. Yes, very cold here now. Quite
+right not to stop. See you again later."
+
+Marion drove home and shut herself up in her room. There was no need to
+lock the door. She was alone in the world, alone in her handsome, empty
+house, where she had always been alone, even before her aunt died and
+left it to her.... She would always be alone now. Only yesterday she had
+hoped--what had she not hoped! She had seen him there in imagination
+changing this weary house into a home, brilliant and faulty as ever,
+lovable as ever, beloved as ever, surrounded by her lavished adoration.
+She had seen their children running along its wide passages, playing in
+its empty hall.
+
+And now.
+
+_He drank._
+
+She shuddered. She had seen drink once. She knew. Never while she lived
+would she forget what her home had been like. The past crowded back upon
+her with all its vileness and nausea, all its unspeakable degradation
+and violence, wrapped up with maudlin sentiment and cheap tears. The
+sweat stood on her forehead.
+
+What an escape she had had! To think that if it had not been for that
+chance word of the manager's she would by now have pledged herself
+irrevocably to a drunkard, waded back into the slough from which she had
+emerged. Oh, what a merciful fate it had been, after all, which had
+parted them! How faithless she had been all these years! How little she
+had realised how the divine love and wisdom had watched over her, had
+shielded her!
+
+"Oh! thank God! Thank God!" she groaned. The other self in her, the poor
+dying woman in her, arose on her deathbed and screamed to her, screamed
+insane things. If a certain voice is too long ignored, its dictates seem
+at last insane.
+
+"Take him back all the same!" gasped the dying voice. "Marry him.
+Devote yourself to him, day and night. Cure him. Set him up. You love
+him. Love can do it, if anything can."
+
+"I can't do it," groaned Marion. "Mother tried, but it was no good."
+
+"Then do as she did, try and fail."
+
+"I can't. He would break my heart."
+
+"Let him break it."
+
+Marion strangled the terrible, urgent voice with fury, and then cried as
+if her heart would indeed break. The silenced voice spoke no more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The play was a great success. Delacour, who had recently returned from
+America, was the making of it. Lenore was the first to acknowledge it,
+though his success was at her expense. Her part seemed only as a foil to
+the sombre splendour of his.
+
+The play ran and ran.
+
+Delacour made no further effort to speak to Marion. He avoided her
+systematically. He, on his side, was watched, was spied on, was
+protected from himself, was never given a chance of yielding to
+temptation. His self-imposed gaoler loved him. He was very lovable. The
+manager was enthusiastic. Ignorant people said he was reformed. It
+almost seemed as if he might grasp the great position to which his
+talent entitled him. But how often before he had fallen just when he was
+doing well! No one could depend on him. His record in America gradually
+became known. It was a record of hideous outbreaks and cancelled
+engagements.
+
+By dint of the strenuous will of others, to which he yielded himself, he
+was kept on his feet through the whole run of the play.
+
+And then, released from surveillance, exhausted in mind and body--he
+fell again.
+
+He blazed like a comet across the theatrical world, and then set as
+suddenly as he had risen.
+
+Marion heard of it and shuddered. She had had a narrow escape.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She never wrote another play--at least, she never wrote another that
+pleased a manager. She said she had not time. In spite of her success,
+she felt a distaste for things theatrical. And perhaps she found that
+success is not as warm a garment for a shivering life as she had
+expected. There is a little fleecy wrap called affection, within the
+reach of all of us, which she might have donned. But, as she often said,
+there was, unfortunately, no one for whom she had much affection. She
+was alone in the world. Her interest in the theatre was gradually
+replaced by religion. Once she heard with real regret that Lenore had
+lost her memory, and chloral was hinted at as the cause. She thought of
+trying to save her, of making an earnest appeal to that better self
+which, according to Marion, exists in all of us. But when she made
+further inquiries about her, with a view to rescuing her, she was
+daunted by the discovery that Lenore had been privately married to
+Delacour for some time past, and that her declension, which was really
+due to drink, dated from the time of the marriage.
+
+A year passed. Delacour began to make fitful reappearances, then more
+frequent ones. He took and kept regular engagements. But his wife
+returned no more.
+
+Presently Marion's own play was revived with success. It was one of
+Delacour's greatest parts. And Marion went to see it, hidden behind the
+curtains of her box.
+
+The years since she had last sat in that box had not dealt kindly with
+her. Her discontented face showed that she was one of the many victims
+of arrested development, still hampered in middle age by the egotistic
+longings of youth. In youth we all want to receive instead of to give,
+to be loved, to be served, to be admired. Middle age is the time to
+reverse engines, the time to love, to serve, to give rather than to
+receive. Marion had not learned that elementary lesson of life. We all
+recognise them at sight, the nervous, fretful faces of the middle-aged
+men and women who want to be loved. And love knows them, too, and--flies
+them.
+
+The manager, somewhat pinched and grizzled, as from a long fast, came in
+to see her between the acts, and growled out his disapproval of his
+leading lady.
+
+"She's nothing to Lenore," he said.
+
+"Is she too"--Marion sought for a charitable word--"too ill to act?"
+
+"She is too ill to act," said the manager. "She will never act any more.
+She is dying."
+
+There was a silence.
+
+"She is dying of drink," he said; "and if there is such a place as
+heaven, she is very near it. And if there is such a person as God, I
+hope she will say a word for me when she gets there."
+
+Marion did not speak. She was horrified.
+
+"She would marry Delacour," said the manager. "I begged her to marry me.
+Over and over again I asked her. But she said I could do without her,
+and Delacour couldn't. They fell in love with each other at this very
+play when it was first put on. I saw it coming, and it spelt disaster
+for her. But it was the real thing; and when the real thing comes, we
+all have to knock under to it. It doesn't come often. Most of us are
+quite incapable of it. I have only seen it once or twice. I dare say I
+have never felt it, though I should have liked to take care of Lenore,
+and not let her work so hard, and make a garden for her. She loves
+flowers and running water. I made the garden just on the chance, but she
+has never seen it. Down in Sussex it is, with a little old-world cottage
+in it. It is a pretty place. Pergola; small cascade with rustic bridge;
+fishpond, with green-tiled floor to show up the gold-fish. And a rose
+garden. I should have liked her to see it. But she and Delacour! It was
+like a thing in a book. They fell in love, and he behaved well. He
+wouldn't marry her. He said he knew he couldn't cure himself of
+drink--that his will was too weak. But she was determined to marry him.
+She said her will was strong enough for both of them. I don't know about
+her will. I think it was her love which was strong enough. He gave in at
+last and married her. I know I shouldn't have held out as long as he
+did. And for a little while things went well. He was at her feet. He
+told me it was the first time any woman had ever cared for him. For a
+little while I almost hoped--and then, in spite of his love for her, in
+spite of everything, he began to drink again. Then she told him that
+what he drank she should drink, and she stuck to it. If he drank, she
+drank the same. If he 'nipped,' she did the same. When he got drunk, she
+got drunk. It was kill or cure. And he loved her. That was her hold over
+him. It took time, but she broke him of it. He suffered too much seeing
+her kill herself for his sake, and it steadied him. He _had_ to give it
+up."
+
+"Then, now--why doesn't she give it up, too?"
+
+"She can't," said the manager, his face twitching. "She was too far gone
+by the time he was cured. She had not his physique. She was absolutely
+played out. She is dying, and they both know it. But she does not mind.
+She has saved him. That was the point. She is perfectly happy. She does
+not care about anything else. He is a great actor. She has lived to see
+him recognised. Some women wouldn't have risked it. But I suppose a
+woman will take any risk if she loves, at least, women like Lenore
+will."
+
+"And does he--in spite of this--does he love her still?" said Marion,
+with dry lips.
+
+The manager was silent.
+
+"I did not think any one could care as much for Lenore as I did," he
+said at last, "but Delacour does--he cares more."
+
+
+_Printed by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury._
+
+
+
+
+SHORTER NOVELS BY GREATER WRITERS
+
+_Each 2s. 6d. net._
+
+    THE GORGEOUS ISLE
+        By GERTRUDE ATHERTON
+        Author of "Rezanov," "Ancestors."
+
+    THE LOWEST RUNG
+        By Miss CHOLMONDELEY
+        Author of "Moth and Rust."
+
+    A COUNTY FAMILY
+        By STORER CLOUSTON
+        Author of "Count Bunker."
+
+    IRRESOLUTE CATHERINE
+        By VIOLET JACOBS
+        Author of "The Sheep Stealers."
+
+    OUT IN THE OPEN
+        By LUCAS MALET
+        Author of "Sir Richard Calmady."
+
+    A FISH OUT OF WATER
+        By F. F. MONTRÉSOR
+        Author of "The Burning Torch."
+
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+THIN PAPER EDITIONS.
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+THE DEFINITIVE EDITION OF THE WORKS OF GEORGE BORROW
+
+_In specially designed cover, with full gilt back. F'cap 8vo. Cloth,
+1s. net; Lambskin, gilt top, 2s. net._
+
+    THE BIBLE IN SPAIN; or, The Journeys, Adventures, and Imprisonments
+        of an Englishman in an Attempt to Circulate the Scriptures in
+        the Peninsula. With the Notes and Glossary of ULICK BURKE.
+
+        880 pages, with Portrait, and 3 Half-tone reproductions from
+        Water-Colour Sketches by A. H. Hallam Murray.
+
+    LAVENGRO: The Scholar, the Gypsy, the Priest. Containing
+        the Unaltered Text of the original issue; some suppressed
+        Episodes printed only in the editions issued by Mr. Murray;
+        MS. Variorum, Vocabulary, and Notes by Professor W. I. KNAPP.
+
+        608 pages, with 8 Pen and Ink Sketches by Percy Wadham.
+
+    ROMANY RYE. A sequel to "Lavengro." Containing the
+        Unaltered Text of the original issue, with Notes, etc., by
+        Professor W. I. KNAPP.
+
+        432 pages, with 7 Pen and Ink Sketches by F. G. Kitson.
+
+    WILD WALES: Its People, Language, and Scenery.
+        768 pages, 8 Half-tone Illustrations by A. S. Hartrick, and Map.
+
+    THE GYPSIES OF SPAIN. Their Manners, Customs, Religion and Language.
+        464 pages, with 7 Half-tone Illustrations by A. Wallis Mills.
+
+    ROMANO LAVO LIL: The Word Book of the Romany or English Gypsy
+        Language, with Specimens of Gypsy Poetry and an account of
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+        various things relating to Gypsy Life in England.
+
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+
+    DUTY. With Illustrations of Courage, Patience, and Endurance.
+        496 pages, with 5 Half-tone Illustrations.
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Lowest Rung, by Mary Cholmondeley</h1>
+<pre>
+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 <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p class="noi">Title: The Lowest Rung</p>
+<p class="noi">       Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy </p>
+<p class="noi">Author: Mary Cholmondeley</p>
+<p class="noi">Release Date: February 12, 2008  [eBook #24587]<br />
+Most recently revised: February 14, 2008</p>
+<p class="noi">Language: English</p>
+<p class="noi">Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p class="noi">***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOWEST RUNG***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h3>E-text prepared by Louise Pryor, Jacqueline Jeremy,<br />
+    and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1 class="head"><big>THE LOWEST RUNG</big></h1>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 496px;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="496" height="600" alt="Cover" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h2 class="head"><big>THE LOWEST RUNG</big><br /><br />
+<small><small>TOGETHER WITH THE HAND ON<br />
+THE LATCH, ST. LUKE'S SUMMER<br />
+AND THE UNDERSTUDY<br /><br /><br />
+
+BY MARY CHOLMONDELEY<br />
+<small><span class="smcap">author of "red pottage"</span></small><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
+
+LONDON<br />
+JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.<br />
+1908</small></small></h2>
+
+
+<h5 class="smcap head">COPYRIGHT, 1908, IN THE<br />
+UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</h5>
+
+
+<h2 class="head"><small><small>TO</small><br />
+HOWARD STURGIS</small></h2>
+
+
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><a name="CONTENTS" id="CONTENTS"></a>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+<div class="lib">
+
+<ul class="b1">
+<li class="smcap right"><small>page</small></li>
+</ul>
+
+<ul>
+
+<li class="con"><span class="left smcap">THE LOWEST RUNG</span>
+ <span class="right"><a href="#rung">33</a></span></li>
+
+<li class="con"><span class="left smcap">THE HAND ON THE LATCH</span>
+ <span class="right"><a href="#latch">82</a></span></li>
+
+<li class="con"><span class="left smcap">SAINT LUKE'S SUMMER</span>
+ <span class="right"><a href="#summer">107</a></span></li>
+
+<li class="con"><span class="left smcap">THE UNDERSTUDY</span>
+ <span class="right"><a href="#study">156</a></span></li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="hr2" />
+
+
+
+<h3 class="head"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>
+PREFACE</h3>
+
+
+<p class="noi"><span class="smcap">I have</span> been writing books for five-and-twenty years, novels of which I
+believe myself to be the author, in spite of the fact that I have been
+assured over and over again that they are not my own work. When I have
+on several occasions ventured to claim them, I have seldom been
+believed, which seems the more odd as, when others have claimed them,
+they have been believed at once. Before I put my name to them they were
+invariably considered to be, and reviewed as, the work of a man; and for
+years after I had put my name to them various men have been mentioned to
+me as the real author.</p>
+
+<p>I remember once, when I was very young and shy, how at one of my first
+London dinner-parties a charming elderly man discussed one of my<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>
+earliest books with such appreciation that I at last remarked that I had
+written it myself. If I had looked for a surprised flash of delight at
+the fact that so much talent was palpitating in white muslin beside him,
+I was doomed to be disappointed. He gravely and gently said, "I know
+that to be untrue," and the conversation was turned to other subjects.</p>
+
+<p>One man did indeed actually announce himself to be the author of "Red
+Pottage," in the presence of a large number of people, including the
+late Mr. William Sharp, who related the occurrence to me. But the
+incident ended uncomfortably for the claimant, which one would have
+thought he might have foreseen.</p>
+
+<p>But whether my books are mine or not, still whenever one of them appears
+the same thing happens. I am pressed to own that such-and-such a
+character "is taken from So-and-so." I have not yet yielded to these
+exhortations to confession, partly, no doubt, because it would be very<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>
+awkward for me afterwards if I owned that thirty different persons were
+the one and only original of "So-and-so."</p>
+
+<p>My character for uprightness (if I ever had one) has never survived my
+tacit, or in some cases emphatic, refusal to be squeezed through the
+"clefts of confession."</p>
+
+<p>It is perhaps impossible for those who do not write fiction to form any
+conception how easily an erroneous idea gains credence that some one has
+been "put in a book"; or, if the idea has once been entertained, how
+impossible it is to eradicate it.</p>
+
+<p>Looking back over a string of incidents of this kind in my own personal
+experience, covering the last five-and-twenty years, I feel doubtful
+whether I shall be believed if I instance some of them. They seem now,
+after the lapse of years, frankly incredible, and yet they were real
+enough to give me not a little pain at the time. It is the fashion<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>
+nowadays, if one says anything about oneself, to preface it by the
+pontifical remark that what one writes is penned for the sake of others,
+to save them, to cheer them, etc., etc. This, of course, now I come to
+think of it, must be my reason also for my lapse into autobiography. I
+see now that I only do it out of tenderness for the next generation.
+Therefore, young writers of the future, now on the playing-fields of
+Eton, take notice that my heart yearns over you. If, later on, you are
+harrowed as I have been harrowed, remember</p>
+
+<p class="centers"><em>J'ai pass&eacute; par l&agrave;.</em></p>
+
+<p>Observe the prints of my goloshes on the steep ascent, and take courage.
+And if you are perturbed, as I have been perturbed, let me whisper to
+you the exhortation of the bankrupt to the terrestrial globe:</p>
+
+<p class="centers">Never <em>you</em> mind. Roll on.</p>
+
+<p>When I first took a pen into my youthful <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>hand, I lived in a very
+secluded part of the Midlands, and perhaps, my little world being what
+it was, it was inevitable that the originals of my characters,
+especially the tiresome ones, should be immediately identified with the
+kindly neighbours within a five-mile radius of my paternal Rectory. Five
+miles was about the utmost our little pony could do. It was therefore
+obviously impossible that I could be acquainted with any one beyond that
+distance. And from first to last, from that day to this, no one leading
+a secluded life has been so fatuous as to believe that my characters
+were evolved out of my inner consciousness. "After all, you must own you
+took them from <em>some one</em>," is a phrase which has long lost its novelty
+for me. I remember even now my shocked astonishment when a furious
+neighbour walked up to me and said, "We all recognised Mrs. Alwynn at
+once as Mrs.&nbsp;&mdash;&mdash;, <em>and we all say it is not in the least like her</em>."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>It was not, indeed. There was no shadow of resemblance. Did Mrs.&nbsp;&mdash;&mdash;,
+who had been so kind to me from a child, ever hear that report, I
+wonder? It gave me many a miserable hour, just when I was expanding in
+the sunshine of my first favourable reviews.</p>
+
+<p>When I was still quite a beginner, Mrs. Clifford published her beautiful
+and touching book, "Aunt Anne."</p>
+
+<p>There was, I am willing to believe&mdash;it is my duty to believe
+<em>something</em>&mdash;a faint resemblance between her "Aunt Anne" and an old
+great-aunt of mine, "Aunt Anna Maria," long since dead, whom I had only
+seen once or twice when I was a small child.</p>
+
+<p>The fact that I could not have known my departed relation did not
+prevent two of my cousins, elderly maiden ladies who had had that
+privilege, from writing to me in great indignation at my having ventured
+to travesty my old aunt. They had found me <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>out (I am always being found
+out), and the vials of their wrath were poured out over me.</p>
+
+<p>In my whilom ignorance, in my lamblike innocence of the darker side of
+human nature, I actually thought that a disclaimer would settle the
+matter.</p>
+
+<p>When has a disclaimer ever been of any use? When has it ever achieved
+anything except to add untruthfulness to my other crimes? Why have I
+ever written one, after that first disastrous essay, in which I civilly
+pointed out that not I, but Mrs. Clifford, the well-known writer, was
+the author of "Aunt Anne?"</p>
+
+<p>They replied at once to say that this was untrue, because I, and I
+alone, <em>could</em> have written it.</p>
+
+<p>I showed my father the letter.</p>
+
+<p>The two infuriated ladies were attached to my father, and had known him
+for many years as a clergyman and a rural dean of unblemished character.
+He wrote to them <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span>himself to assure them that they had made a mistake,
+that I was not the author of the obnoxious work.</p>
+
+<p>But the only effect his letter had on their minds was a pained uprootal
+of their respect and long affection for him. And they both died some
+years later, and (presumably) went up to heaven, convinced of my guilt,
+in spite of the unscrupulous parental ruridiaconal effort to whitewash
+me.</p>
+
+<p>Long afterwards I mentioned this incident to Mrs. Clifford, but it did
+not cause her surprise. She had had her own experiences. She told me
+that when "Aunt Anne" appeared, she had many letters from persons with
+whom she was unacquainted, reproaching her for having portrayed their
+aunt.</p>
+
+<p>The reverse of the medal ought perhaps to be mentioned. So primitive was
+the circle in which my youth was passed that an adverse review, if seen
+by one of the community, was at once put down to a disaffected <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>and
+totally uneducated person in our village.</p>
+
+<p>A witty but unfavourable criticism in <em>Punch</em> of my first story was
+always believed by two ladies in the parish to have been penned by one
+of the village tradesmen. It was in vain I assured them that the person
+in question could not by any possibility be on the staff of <em>Punch</em>.
+They only shook their heads, and repeated mysteriously that they "had
+reasons for <em>knowing</em> he had written it."</p>
+
+<p>When we moved to London, I hoped I might fare better. But evidently I
+had been born under an unlucky star. The "Aunt Anne" incident proved to
+be only the first playful ripple which heralded the incoming of the</p>
+
+<p class="centers">Breakers of the boundless deep.</p>
+
+<p>After the publication of "Red Pottage" a storm burst respecting one of
+the characters&mdash;Mr. Gresley&mdash;which even now I have not forgotten. The
+personal note was struck <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>once more with vigour, but this time by the
+clerical arm. I was denounced by name from a London pulpit. A Church
+newspaper which shall be nameless suggested that my portrait of Mr.
+Gresley was merely a piece of spite on my part, as I had probably been
+jilted by a clergyman. I will not pretend that the turmoil gave me
+unmixed pain. If it had, I should have been without literary vanity. But
+when a witty bishop wrote to me that he had enjoined on his clergy the
+study of Mr. Gresley as a Lenten penance, it was not possible for me to
+remain permanently depressed.</p>
+
+<p>The character was the outcome of long, close observation of large
+numbers of clergymen, but not of one particular parson. Why, then, was
+it so exactly like individual clergymen that I received excited or
+enthusiastic letters from the parishioners of I dare not say how many
+parishes, affirming that their vicar (whom I had never beheld), and he
+alone, could have been the prototype of Mr. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>Gresley? I was frequently
+implored to go down and "see for myself." Their most adorable platitudes
+were chronicled and sent up to me, till I wrung my hands because it was
+too late to insert them in "Red Pottage."<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> For they all fitted Mr.
+Gresley like a glove, and I should certainly have used them if it had
+been possible. For, as has been well said, "There is no copyright in
+platitudes." They are part of our goodly heritage. And though people
+like Mr. Gresley and my academic prig Wentworth have in one sense made a
+particular field of platitude their own, by exercising themselves
+continually upon it, nevertheless we cannot allow them to warn us off as
+trespassers, or permit them to annex or enclose common land, the
+property and birthright of the race.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>Young men fresh from public schools also informed me that Mr. Gresley
+was the facsimile of their tutor, and of no one else. I was at that time
+unacquainted with any schoolmasters, being cut off from social
+advantages. But that fact did me no good. The dispassionate statement of
+it had no more effect on my young friends than my father's denial had on
+my elderly relations.</p>
+
+<p>I am ashamed to say that once again, as in the case of "Aunt Anne," I
+endeavoured to exculpate myself in order to pacify two old maiden
+ladies. Why is it always the acutely unmarried who are made miserable by
+my books? Is it because&mdash;odious thought, avaunt!&mdash;married persons do not
+open them? These two ladies did not, indeed, think that I had been
+"paying out" some particular clergyman, as suggested in their favourite
+paper, <em>The Guardian</em>,<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> but they were shocked <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>by the profanity of the
+book. Soon afterwards the Bishop of Stepney (now Bishop of London)
+preached on "Red Pottage" in St. Paul's. I sent them a newspaper which
+reprinted the sermon <em>verbatim</em>, with a note saying that I trusted this
+expression of opinion on the part of their idolised preacher might
+mitigate their condemnation of the book.</p>
+
+<p>But when have my attempts at making an effect ever come off? My firework
+never lights up properly like that of others! It only splutters and goes
+out. I received in due course a dignified answer that they had both been
+deeply distressed by my information, as it would prevent them ever going
+to hear the Bishop of Stepney again.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>My own experience, especially as to "Red Pottage" and "Prisoners,"
+struck me as so direful, I seemed so peculiarly outside the protection
+of Providence, like the celebrated plot of ground on which "no rain nor
+no dew never fell," that I consulted several other brother and sister
+novelists as to how they had fared in this delicate matter. It is not
+for me to reveal the interesting skeletons concealed in cupboards not my
+own, but I have almost invariably returned from these interviews
+cheered, chuckling, and consoled by the comfortable realisation that
+others had writhed on a hotter gridiron than I.</p>
+
+<p>Georges Sand, when she was accused of lampooning a certain <em>abb&eacute;</em>, said
+that to draw one character of that kind one must know a thousand. She
+has, I think, put her finger on the truth which is not easy to find&mdash;at
+least, I never found it until I read those words of hers.</p>
+
+<p>It is necessary to know a very large <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span>number of persons of a certain
+kind before one can evolve a type. Each he or she contributes a twig,
+and the author weaves them into a nest. I have no doubt that I must have
+taken such a twig from nearly every clergyman I met who had a <em>soup&ccedil;on</em>
+of Mr. Gresley in him.</p>
+
+<p>But if an author takes one tiny trait, one saying, one sentiment, direct
+from a person, there is always the danger that the contributor will
+recognise the theft, and, if of a self-regarding temperament, will
+instantly conclude that the <em>whole</em> character is drawn from himself.
+There is, for instance, no more universal trait, of what has been
+unkindly called "the old-maid temperament" in either sex, than the
+assertion that it is always busy. But when such a trait is noted in a
+book, how many sensitive readers assume that it is a cruel personality.
+If people could but perceive that what they think to be character in
+themselves is often only sex, or sexlessness; if they could but <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>believe
+in the universality of what they hold to be their individuality! And yet
+how easily they believe in it when it is pleasant to do so, when they
+write books about themselves, and thousands of grateful readers bombard
+the gifted authoress with letters to tell her that they also have "felt
+just like that," and have "been helped" by her exquisite sentiments,
+which are the exact replicas of their own!</p>
+
+<p>The worst of it is that with the academic or clerical prig, when the
+mind has long been permitted to run in a deep, platitudinous groove from
+which it is at last powerless to escape, the resemblance to a prig in
+fiction is sometimes more than fanciful. It is real. For there is no
+doubt that prigs have a horrid family likeness to each other, whether in
+books or in real life. I have sometimes felt as the puzzled mother of
+some long-lost Tichborne might feel. Each claimant to the estates in
+turn seems to acquire a look of the original because he <em>is</em> a claimant.
+Has <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>not this one my lost Willy's eyes? But no! that one has Willy's
+hands. True, but the last-comer snuffles exactly as my lost Willy
+snuffled. How many men have begun suddenly and indubitably in my eyes to
+resemble one of the adored prigs of my novels, merely because they
+insisted on the likeness themselves.</p>
+
+<p>The most obnoxious accident which has yet befallen me, the most wanton
+blow below the belt which Fate has ever dealt me, is buried beneath the
+snows of twenty years. But even now I cannot recall it without a
+shudder. And if a carping critic ventures to point out that blows below
+the belt are not often buried beneath snow, then all I can say is that
+when I have made my meaning clear, I see no reason for a servile
+conformity to academic rules of composition.</p>
+
+<p>I was writing "Diana Tempest." One of the characters, a very worldly
+religious young female prig, was much in my mind. I know many such. I
+may as well mention <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>here that I do not bless the hour on which I first
+saw the light. I have not found life an ardent feast of tumultuous joy.
+But I do realise that it has been embellished by the acquaintance of a
+larger number of delightful prigs than falls to the lot of most. I have
+much to be thankful for. Having got hold of the character of this lady,
+I piloted her through courtship and marriage. I gleefully invented <em>all</em>
+her sayings on these momentous occasions, and described the wedding and
+the abhorrent bridegroom with great minuteness. In short, I gloated over
+it.</p>
+
+<p>The book was finished, sold, finally corrected, and in the press when
+one of the young women who had unconsciously contributed a trait to the
+character became affianced. She immediately began throwing off with
+great dignity, as if by clock-work, all the best things which I had
+evolved out of my own brain and had put into the mouth of my female
+prig. At first I was delighted <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>with my own cleverness, but gradually I
+became more and more uneasy, and when I attended the wedding my heart
+failed me altogether. In "Diana Tempest" I had described the rich,
+elderly, stout, and gouty bridegroom whom the lady had captured. There
+he was before my panic-stricken eyes! The wedding was exactly as I had
+already described it. It took place in London, just as I had said. The
+remembrance that the book had passed beyond my own control, the
+irrevocability of certain ghastly sentences, came over me in a flash,
+together with the certainty that, however earnestly I might deny, swear,
+take solemn oaths on family Bibles, nothing, nothing, not even a voice
+from heaven, much less that of a rural dean still on earth, could make
+my innocence credible.</p>
+
+<p>I may add that no voice from heaven sounded, and that I never made any
+attempt at self-exculpation, or invited my father to sacrifice himself a
+second time.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>As I heard "The Voice that breathed o'er Eden" and saw the bride of
+twenty-five advance up the aisle to meet the bridegroom of forty-five
+awaiting her deeply flushed, in a distorted white waistcoat&mdash;I had
+mercilessly alluded to his white waistcoat as an error of judgment&mdash;I
+gave myself up for lost; <em>and I was lost</em>.</p>
+
+<p>But all this time, while I have been giving a free rein to my
+autobiographic instincts, the question still remains unanswered, Why is
+human nature so prone to think it has been travestied that it becomes
+impervious to reason on the subject the moment the idea has entered the
+mind? Once lodged, I have never known such an idea dislodged, however
+fantastic. Why is it that if, like Mrs. Clifford, one has the good
+fortune to evolve a type, no one can believe it is not an individual?
+Why does not the outraged friend console himself with the remembrance
+that if he is one of many others who are feeling equally harrowed, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>he
+cannot really be the object of a malignant spite, carefully disguised
+till then under the apparel of a cheerful friendship?</p>
+
+<p>I think an answer&mdash;a partial answer&mdash;to the latter question may be found
+in the fact that balm was never yet poured on a wounded spirit by the
+assurance that there are thousands of others exactly like itself. We can
+all endure to be lampooned. (I have even known a man who was deeply
+disappointed when he was forced to believe that he had not been
+victimised.) But to be told we are one of a herd! This flesh and blood
+cannot tolerate. It is unthinkable; a living death. That we who "look
+before and after," and "whose sincerest laughter with some pain is
+fraught"; that <em>we</em>, lonely, superb, pining for what is not,
+misunderstood by our nearest and dearest, who don't know, and never
+<em>can</em> know</p>
+
+<p class="centers">Half the reasons why we smile or sigh</p>
+
+<p class="noi">(unless, indeed, we are autobiographists: <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>then they know <em>all</em> the
+reasons)&mdash;that <span class="smcap">WE</span> should be confused with the vast mob of foolish,
+sentimental spinsters, or pedantic clerics, or egotistic old bachelors!</p>
+
+<p>Away!&mdash;away! The reeling mind stops its ears against these obscene
+suggestions.</p>
+
+<p>The only alternative which remains is that an unscrupulous novelist has
+<em>heard</em> of us&mdash;nothing more likely&mdash;without being actually acquainted
+with us, and has listened to garbled accounts of us from our so-called
+friends; or has actually met us at a bazaar or a funeral, though of
+course he professes to have forgotten the meeting; has been impressed
+with our subtle personality&mdash;nothing more likely&mdash;has felt an envious
+admiration of what we ourselves value but little&mdash;our social charm&mdash;and
+has yielded&mdash;nothing more likely&mdash;to the ignoble temptation of
+caricaturing qualities which he cannot emulate. Or perhaps he has known
+us for years, and has shown a mysterious indifference to our society, an
+impatience of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>our deeper utterances, which we can now, <em>at last</em>, trace
+to its true source, a guilty consciousness of premeditated treachery
+which has led him to strike us in a dastardly manner, which we can
+indeed afford&mdash;being what we are&mdash;to forgive, but which we shall never
+forget. And if an opportunity offers later on, it is possible that an
+unprejudiced and judicial mind may feel called upon to indicate what it
+thinks of such conduct.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps only those whose temperament leads them to believe themselves
+ridiculed in a book know the rankling smart, the exquisite pain, the
+sense of treachery of such an experience. It is probably the most
+offensive slight that can be offered to a sensitive nature.</p>
+
+<p>And if the author realises this, even while he knows himself to be
+guiltless in the matter, it is probable, if he also is somewhat
+sensitive&mdash;and some authors are&mdash;that a great deal of the delight he may
+derive from a successful <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>novel may be dimmed by the realisation that he
+has unwittingly pained a stranger, or, worse still, an acquaintance, or,
+immeasurably worst of all, an old friend.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<h3 class="foot">FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><sup>[1]</sup></a> One of these unknown correspondents wrote that their vicar
+had that Sunday begun&mdash;he would have said <em>commenced</em>&mdash;his sermon with
+the words, "God is Love, as the Archbishop of Canterbury remarked last
+week in Westminster Abbey."</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+<p class="footnote"><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><sup>[2]</sup></a> <em>The Guardian</em>, April 11, 1900: "Truth to tell, when I
+appreciated, with much amusement, the light in which one was expected to
+regard Mr. Gresley, I came to the conclusion that the authoress was
+paying out some particular High Church parson, who had perhaps snubbed
+her or got the better of her, by 'putting him into a book.' The poor,
+feeble creature is described with appetite, so to speak, and when this
+is the case (with a lady writer) one is pretty safe in being sure one
+has come across the personal. Mr. Gresleys certainly exist, but only a
+woman in a (perhaps wholly justified) tantrum would speak of them as a
+type of the clergy in general."&mdash;<span class="smcap">Thos. J. Ball.</span></p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>
+<a name="rung" id="rung"></a><big>The Lowest Rung</big></h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung.<br /></span>
+</div>
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Rudyard Kipling</span>.<br /></p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noi"><span class="smcap">The</span> sudden splendour of the afternoon made me lay down my pen, and
+tempted me afield. It had been a day of storm and great racing
+cloud-wracks, after a night of hurricane and lashing rain. But in the
+afternoon the sun had broken through, and I struggled across the
+water-meadows, the hurrying, turbid water nearly up to the single planks
+across the ditches, and climbed to the heathery uplands, battling my way
+inch by inch against a tearing wind.</p>
+
+<p>My art had driven me forth from my warm fireside, as it is her wont to
+drive her votaries, and the call of my art I have never disobeyed.</p>
+
+<p>For no artist must look at one side of life only. We must study it as a
+whole, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span>gleaning rich and varied sheaves as we go. My forthcoming book
+of deep religious experiences, intertwined with descriptions of scenery,
+needed a little contrast. I had had abundance of summer mornings and
+dewy evenings, almost too many dewy evenings. And I thought a
+description of a storm would be in keeping with the chapter on which I
+was at that moment engaged, in which I dealt with the stress of my own
+illness of the previous spring, and the mystery of pain, which had
+necessitated a significant change in my life&mdash;a visit to Cromer. The
+chapter dealing with Cromer, and the insurgent doubts of convalescence,
+wandering on its poppy-strewn cliffs, as to the beneficence of the
+Deity, was already done, and one of the finest I had ever written.</p>
+
+<p>But I was dissatisfied with the preceding chapter, and, as usual, went
+for inspiration to Nature.</p>
+
+<p>It was late by the time I reached the upland, but I was rewarded for my
+climb.</p>
+
+<p>Far away under the flaring sunset the long lines of tidal river and sea
+stretched tawny and sinister, like drawn swords in firelight, between
+the distant woods and cornfields. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>The death-like stillness and
+smallness of the low-lying rigid landscape made the contrast with the
+rushing enormity and turmoil of the heavens almost terrific.</p>
+
+<p>Great clouds shouldered up out of the sea, blotting out the low sun,
+darkening the already darkened earth, and then towered up the sky,
+releasing the struggling sun only to extinguish it once more, in a new
+flying cohort.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know how long I stood there, spellbound, the woman lost in the
+artist, scribbling frantically in my notebook, when an onslaught of rain
+brought me to my senses and I looked round for shelter.</p>
+
+<p>Then I became aware that I had not been watching alone. A
+desolate-looking figure, crouching at a little distance, half hidden by
+a gorse-bush, was watching too, watching intently. She got up as I
+turned and came towards me, her uncouth garments whipped against her by
+the wind.</p>
+
+<p>The rain plunged down upon us, enveloping us both as in a whirlwind.</p>
+
+<p>"There is an empty cottage under the down," I shouted to her, and I
+began to run towards it. It was a tumbledown place, but "any port in
+such a storm."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>"It is not safe," she shouted back; "the roof is falling in."</p>
+
+<p>The squall of rain whirled past as suddenly as it had come, leaving me
+gasping. She seemed to take no notice of it.</p>
+
+<p>"I spent last night there," she said. "The ceiling came down in the next
+room. Besides," she added, "though possibly that may not deter you,
+there are two policemen there."</p>
+
+<p>I saw now that it had been the cottage which she had been watching. And
+sure enough, in a broken shaft of sunshine which straggled out for a
+moment, I saw two dark figures steal towards the cottage under cover of
+the wall.</p>
+
+<p>"Why are they there?" I said, gaping at such a strange sight. For I had
+been many months at Rufford, and I had never seen a policeman.</p>
+
+<p>"They are lying in wait for some one," she said.</p>
+
+<p>It flashed back across my mind how at luncheon that day the vicar had
+said that a female convict had escaped from Ipswich gaol, and had been
+traced to Bealings, and, it was conjectured, was lurking in the
+neighbourhood of Woodbridge.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>I took sudden note of my companion's peculiar dark bluish clothes and
+shawl, and the blood rushed to my head. I knew what those garments
+meant. She pushed back her grizzled hair from her lined, walnut-coloured
+face, and we looked hard at each other.</p>
+
+<p>There was no fear in her eyes, but a certain curiosity as to what I was
+going to do.</p>
+
+<p>"If I told you they were not looking for me," she said, "I could not,
+under the circumstances, expect you to believe it."</p>
+
+<p>I am too highly strung for this workaday world. I know it to my cost.
+The artistic temperament has its penalties. My doctor at Cromer often
+told me that I vibrated like a harp at the slightest touch. I vibrated
+now. Indeed, I almost sat down in the sodden track.</p>
+
+<p>But unlike many of my brothers and sisters of the pen, I am capable of
+impulsive, even quixotic action, and I ought, in justice to myself, to
+mention here that I had not then read that noble book "The Treasure of
+Heaven," in which it will be remembered that a generous-souled woman
+takes in from the storm, and nurses back to health in her <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>lowly
+cottage, an aged tramp who turns out to be a millionaire, and leaves her
+his vast fortune. I did not get the idea of acting as I am about to
+relate from Marie Corelli, the head of our profession, or indeed from
+any other writer. But I have so often been accused of taking other
+people's plots and ideas and sentiments, that I owe it to myself to make
+this clear before I go on.</p>
+
+<p>"You poor soul," I said, "whatever you are, and whatever you've done, I
+will shelter you and help you to escape."</p>
+
+<p>I felt I really could not take her into the house, so I added, "I have a
+little stable in the garden, quite private, with nice dry hay in it.
+Follow me."</p>
+
+<p>I suppose she saw at a glance that she could trust me, for she nodded,
+and I sped down the hill, she following at a little distance, with the
+shrieking, denouncing wind behind us. I walked as quickly as I could,
+but when I got as far as the water-meadows my strength and breath gave
+way. I was never robust, and always foolishly prone to overtax my small
+store of strength. I was obliged to stop and lean my head on my arms
+against a stile.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>"There is no need for such hurry," she said tranquilly. She had come up
+noiselessly behind me. "There is not a soul in sight. Besides, look what
+you are missing."</p>
+
+<p>She pointed to the familiar fields before me which we had yet to cross,
+with the Dieben winding through them under his low, red-brick bridges,
+and beyond the little clustered village with its grey church spire
+standing shoulder high above the poplars.</p>
+
+<p>The sun had just set and there was no colour in the west, but over all
+the homely, wind-swept landscape a solemn and unearthly light shone and
+slowly passed, shone and slowly passed.</p>
+
+<p>"Look up," said my companion, turning a face of flame towards me.</p>
+
+<p>I looked up into the sky, as into an enormous furnace. Gigantic rolling
+clouds of flame were sweeping before the roaring wind like some vast
+prairie fire across the firmament. As they passed overhead, the
+reflection of the lurid light on them was smitten earthwards, and passed
+with them, making everything it traversed clear as noon&mdash;the lion on the
+swinging sign of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span>the public-house just across the water, the delicate
+tracery of the church windows, the virginia creeper on my cottage porch.</p>
+
+<p>"I have only seen an afterglow like that once in my life," my companion
+said, "and that was in Teneriffe."</p>
+
+<p>A few moments more, and the sky paled to grey. The darkness came down
+with tropical suddenness. I made a movement forwards.</p>
+
+<p>"Shall I not be seen if I follow you through the village in these weird
+clothes?" she said civilly, as one who hesitates to make a suggestion.
+"Where is your house?"</p>
+
+<p>"My cot&mdash;it is not a house&mdash;is just at the end of those trees," I said.
+"It is the only one close to the park gates. It has virginia creeper
+over the porch, and a white gate."</p>
+
+<p>"It sounds charming."</p>
+
+<p>"But how on earth are we to get there?" I groaned. "And some one may
+come along this path at any moment."</p>
+
+<p>The dusk was falling rapidly. Candles were beginning to twinkle in
+latticed windows. A yellow light from the public-house made an
+impassable streak across the road. Cheerful voices were coming along the
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>meadow path behind us. What was to be done?</p>
+
+<p>"Go home," she said steadily. "I will find my own way."</p>
+
+<p>"But my servant?"</p>
+
+<p>"Make your mind easy. She will not see me. I shall not ring the bell.
+Have you a dog?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. My dear little Lindo&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"It's going to be a black night. I shall be in the porch half an hour
+after dark."</p>
+
+<p>She went swiftly from me, and as the voices drew near I saw her pick her
+way noiselessly into one of the great ditches, and stand motionless in
+the water, obliterated against a pollard willow.</p>
+
+<p>I hurried home. My feet were quite wet, and even my stockings&mdash;a thing
+that had not happened to me for years. I changed at once, and took five
+drops of camphor on a lump of sugar. It would be extraordinarily
+inconvenient if I were to take cold, with my tendency to bronchial
+catarrh. I have no time to be ill in my busy life. Was not "Broodings
+beside the Dieben" being finished in hot haste for an eager publisher?
+And had I not promised to give away the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>Sunday-school prizes at
+Forlinghorn a fortnight hence?</p>
+
+<p>It was half-past six. My garden boy was pumping in the scullery. He kept
+his tools in the stable, and it was his duty to lock it up and hang the
+key on the nail inside the scullery door.</p>
+
+<p>Supposing he forgot to hang it up to-night of all nights! Supposing he
+took it away with him by mistake! I went into the scullery directly he
+had gone. I made a pretext of throwing away some flowers, though I had
+never thought of needing a pretext for going there before. The stable
+key was on its nail all right. I looked into the kitchen, where my
+little maid-servant was preparing my evening meal. When her back was
+turned, I snatched the key from the nail, dropped it noisily on the
+brick floor, caught it up, withdrew to the parlour, and sank down in my
+armchair shaking from head to foot. My doctor was right indeed when he
+said I vibrated like a harp.</p>
+
+<p>The life of contemplation and meditation is more suited to my highly
+strung nature than that of adventure and intrigue.</p>
+
+<p>My servant brought in the lamp, and I hurriedly sat on the key while she
+did so. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>Then she drew the curtains in the little houseplace, locked the
+outer door, and went back to the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>There are two doors to my cottage&mdash;the front door with the porch leading
+to the lane, and the back door out of the scullery which opens into my
+little slip of garden. At the bottom of the garden is a disused stable,
+utilised by me to store wood in, and old boxes. The gate to the back way
+to the stable from the lane had been permanently closed till the day
+should come when I could afford a pony and cart. But in these days
+novels of not too refined a type are the only form of literature (if
+they can be called literature) for which the public is eager. It will
+devour and extol anything, however coarse, which panders to its love of
+excitement, while grave books dealing with the spiritual side of life,
+books of thought and culture, are left unheeded on the shelf. Such had
+been the fate of mine.</p>
+
+<p>The rain had ceased at last, and the wind was falling. My mind kept on
+making all sorts of uneasy suggestions to me as I sat in my armchair.
+What was I to do with the&mdash;the individual when I had got her safely into
+the stable, if I ever did get her safely there? <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>How about food, how
+about dry clothes, how about a light, how about everything? Supposing
+she overslept herself, and Tommy found her there in the morning when he
+went for his tools? Supposing my landlord, Mr. Ledbury, who was a
+magistrate, found out I had harboured a criminal, and gave me notice
+just when I had repapered the parlour and put in a new back to the
+kitchen range? Such a calamity was unthinkable. What happened to people
+who compounded felonies? Was I compounding one? Why was not I sitting
+down? What was I doing standing in the middle of the parlour with the
+stable key in my hand, and, as I caught sight of myself in the glass,
+with my mouth wide open?</p>
+
+<p>I sat down again resolutely, hiding the key under the cushion, and
+calmer thoughts supervened. After all, it was most improbable, almost
+impossible, that I should be found out. And once the adventure was
+safely over, when I had successfully carried it through, what
+interesting accounts I should be able to give of it at luncheon parties
+in London in the winter. My brothers would really believe at last that I
+could act with energy and presence of mind. There was a <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>rooted
+impression in the minds of my own family that I was a flurried sort of
+person, easily thrown off my balance, making mountains out of molehills
+(this was especially irritating to me, as I have always taken a broad,
+sane view of life), who always twisted my ankle if it could be twisted,
+or lost my luggage, or caught childish ailments for the second time.
+Where there is but one gifted member in a large and commonplace family,
+an absurd idea of this kind is apt to grow from a joke into an <em>id&egrave;e
+fixe</em>.</p>
+
+<p>It had obtained credence originally because I certainly had once in a
+dreamy moment got my gown shut into the door in an empty railway
+compartment on the far side. And as the glass was up on the station side
+I had been unable to attract any one's attention when I wanted to
+alight, and had had to go on to Portsmouth (where the train stopped for
+good) before I could make my presence and my predicament known. This
+trivial incident had never been forgotten by my family&mdash;so much so, that
+I had often regretted the hilarious spirit of pure comedy at my own
+expense which had prompted me to relate it to them.</p>
+
+<p>Now was the time to show what metal <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>I was made of. My spirits rose as I
+felt I could rely on myself to be cautious, resourceful, bold. I sat on,
+outwardly composed, but inwardly excited, straining my ears for a sign
+that the fugitive was in the porch. I supposed I should presently hear a
+light tap on my parlour window, which was close to the outer door.</p>
+
+<p>But none came. More than an hour passed. It had long been perfectly
+dark. What could have happened? Had the poor creature been dogged and
+waylaid by those two policemen after all? Was it possible that they had
+seen us standing together at the stile, where she had so inconsiderately
+joined me for a moment? At last I became so nervous that I went to the
+outer door, opened it softly, and looked out. She was so near me that I
+very nearly screamed.</p>
+
+<p>"How long have you been here?" I whispered.</p>
+
+<p>"Close on an hour."</p>
+
+<p>"Why didn't you tap on the window or something? I was waiting to let you
+in."</p>
+
+<p>"I dared not do that. It might have been the kitchen window for all I
+knew, and then your servant would have seen me."</p>
+
+<p>"But the kitchen is the other side."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>"Indeed! And where is the stable?"</p>
+
+<p>"At the bottom of the garden, away from the road."</p>
+
+<p>"How are we going to get to it?"</p>
+
+<p>"We can only get to it through the garden, now the back way is closed. I
+closed it because the village children&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Had not you better shut the door? If any one passed down the road, they
+would see it was open."</p>
+
+<p>"It's as dark as pitch."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but there's a little light from within. I can see you from outside
+quite plainly standing in the doorway."</p>
+
+<p>I led her indoors, and locked and bolted the door.</p>
+
+<p>"What is this room?"</p>
+
+<p>"The houseplace. I have my meals here. I live very primitively. My idea
+is&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Then your servant may come in at any moment to lay your supper."</p>
+
+<p>I could not say that she seemed nervous or frightened, but the way she
+cut me short showed that she was so in reality. I was not offended, for
+I am the first to make allowance when rudeness is not intentional. I led
+the way hastily into the parlour.</p>
+
+<p>"She never comes in here," I said reassuringly, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>"after she has once
+brought in the lamp. I am supposed to be working, and must not be
+disturbed."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not fit to come in," she said.</p>
+
+<p>And in truth she was not. She was caked with mud and dirt from head to
+foot, an appalling figure in the lamplight. The rain dripped from her
+hair, her sinister clothing, her whole person. She looked as if she must
+have hidden in a wet ditch. I gazed horror-struck at my speckless
+matting and pale Oriental rugs. I had never allowed a child or dog in
+the house for fear of the matting, except of course my poor Lindo, who
+had died a few months previously, and whom I had taught to wipe his feet
+on the mat.</p>
+
+<p>A ghost of a smile twitched her grey mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Is not that the <em>Times</em>?" she said. "Spread it out four thick, and lay
+it on the floor."</p>
+
+<p>I did so, and she stepped carefully on to it.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," she said, standing on a great advertisement of a universal
+history&mdash;"now that I am not damaging the furniture, pull yourself
+together and <em>think</em>. How am I to get to the stable? I can't stop here."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span>She could not indeed. I felt I might be absolutely powerless to get the
+muddy footprints out of the matting. And no doubt there were some in the
+houseplace too.</p>
+
+<p>"If I go through the scullery, I may be seen," she said, the water
+pattering off her on to the newspaper. "So lucky you take in the
+<em>Times</em>; it's printed on such thick paper. Where does that window look
+out?"</p>
+
+<p>She pointed to the window at the farther end of the room.</p>
+
+<p>"On to the garden."</p>
+
+<p>"Capital! Then we can get out through it, of course, without going
+through the scullery."</p>
+
+<p>I had not thought of that. I opened the window, and she was through it
+in two cautious strides.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," she said, looking back at me, "I'm comparatively safe for the
+moment, and so is the matting. But before we do anything more, get a
+duster&mdash;a person like you is sure to have a duster in a drawer. Just so,
+there it is. Now wipe up the marks of my muddy feet in the room we first
+came into as well as this, and then see to the paint of the window. I
+have probably smirched <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>it. Then roll up the <em>Times</em> tight, and put it
+in the waste-paper basket."</p>
+
+<p>She watched me obey her.</p>
+
+<p>"Having obliterated all traces of crime," she said when I had finished,
+"suppose we go on to the stable. Let me help you through the window. I
+will wipe my hands on the grass first. And would not you be wise to put
+on that little shawl I see on the sofa? It is getting cold."</p>
+
+<p>The window was only a yard from the ground, and I got out somehow,
+encumbered in my shawl, which a grateful reader had crocheted for me.
+She had, however, to help me in again directly I was out, for, between
+us, we had forgotten the stable key, which was underneath the cushion of
+my armchair.</p>
+
+<p>The rest was plain sailing. We stole down the garden path to the stable,
+and I unlocked the door and let her in.</p>
+
+<p>"Kindly lock me in and take away the key," she said, vanishing past me
+into the darkness, and I thought I detected a tone of relief in her
+brisk, matter-of-fact voice.</p>
+
+<p>"I will bring some food as soon as I can," I whispered. "If I knock
+three times, you will know it's only me."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't knock at all," she said; "it might <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>be noticed. Why should you
+knock to go into your own stable?"</p>
+
+<p>"I won't, then. And how about your wet things?"</p>
+
+<p>"That's nothing. I'm accustomed to being wet."</p>
+
+<p>I crawled back to the cottage, and managed to scramble in by the parlour
+window, only to sink once more into my armchair in a state of collapse.
+I had always entered so acutely into the joys and sorrows of others,
+their love affairs, their difficulties, their bereavements (I had in
+this way led such a full life), that I was surprised at this juncture to
+find my nervous force so exhausted, until I remembered that ardent
+natures who give out a great deal in the way of helpfulness and interest
+are bound to suffer when the reaction comes. The reaction had come for
+me now. I saw only too plainly the folly I had been guilty of in
+harbouring a total stranger, the trouble I should probably get into, the
+difficulty that a nature naturally frank and open to a fault would find
+in keeping up a deception. I doubted my own powers, everything. The
+truth was&mdash;but I did not realise it till afterwards&mdash;that I had missed
+my tea.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>I could hear my servant laying my evening meal in the houseplace. In a
+few minutes she tapped to tell me it was ready, and I rose mechanically
+to obey the summons. And then, to my horror, I found I was still in
+morning dress. For the first time for years I had not dressed for
+dinner. What would she think if she saw me? But it was too late to
+change now; I must just go in as I was. My whole life seemed dislocated,
+torn up by the roots.</p>
+
+<p>There was not much to eat. Half a very small cold chicken, a lettuce,
+and a little custard pudding, fortunately very nutritious, being made
+with Eustace Miles's proteid. There were, however, a loaf and butter and
+plasmon biscuits on the sideboard. I cut up as much as I dared of the
+chicken, and put it between two very thick slices of buttered bread.
+Then I crept out again and took it to her. She got up out of the hay,
+and put out a gnarled brown hand for it.</p>
+
+<p>"I will bring you a cup of coffee later," I said. I was beginning to
+feel a kind of proprietorship in her. She would have starved but for me.</p>
+
+<p>My servant always left at nine o'clock, to sleep at her father's
+cottage, just over the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>way. I have a bell in the roof, which I can ring
+with a cord in case of fire or thieves.</p>
+
+<p>To-night she was, of course, later than usual, but at last she brought
+in the coffee, and then I heard her making her rounds, closing the
+shutters on the ground floor, and locking the front door&mdash;at least,
+trying to do so. I had already locked and bolted it. Then she locked the
+scullery door on the outside, abstracted the key, and I heard her step
+on the brick path, and the click of the gate. <em>She was gone</em>.</p>
+
+<p>I always heated the coffee myself over the parlour fire. It was already
+bubbling on the hob. Directly she had left I went to the kitchen, and
+got a second cup. I felt much better since I had had supper. And as I
+took the cup from the shelf the fantastic idea came into my mind to ask
+my prot&eacute;g&eacute;e to come in and drink her coffee by the fire in the parlour.
+I must frankly own it was foolhardy; it was rash, it was even dangerous.
+But there it is! One cannot help the way one is made, and I am afraid I
+am not of those who invariably take the coldly prudent course and stick
+to it.</p>
+
+<p>I turned the idea over in my mind. I <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span>could put down sheets of brown
+paper&mdash;I always have a store&mdash;from the door to the fire, and an old
+mackintosh over the worst armchair, which was to be re-covered. Besides,
+I had not had a good look at her yet, or made out the real woman under
+the prison garb. That she was a person of education and refinement may
+appear hardly credible to my readers, but to one like myself, whose
+<em>m&eacute;tier</em> it is to probe the secrets of my own heart and those of
+others&mdash;to <em>me</em> it was sufficiently obvious from the first moment that,
+though I had to deal with a criminal, she was a very exceptional one,
+and belonging to my own class. I went out to the stable, and suggested
+to her that she should come in.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you know that I am not a man in disguise?" came a voice from the
+darkness; and it seemed to me, not for the first time, that she was
+amused at something. "I'm tall enough. Just think how stupendous it
+would be if, when I was inside and the door really locked, I proved to
+be a wicked, devastating, burglarious male."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you would not say things like that," I said. "On your honour,
+<em>are</em> you a man?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>She hesitated, and then said in a changed voice:</p>
+
+<p>"I am not. I don't know what I am. I was a woman once, just as a
+derelict was a ship once. But whatever I am, I am not fit to come into a
+self-respecting house. I am one solid cake of mud."</p>
+
+<p>Something in her reluctance made me the more determined. Besides, one of
+the truths on which I have insisted most strongly in my "Veil of the
+Temple" is that if we show full trust and confidence in others, they
+will prove worthy of that trust. Her coming indoors had now become a
+matter of principle, and I insisted. I even said I could lend her a
+dressing-gown and slippers, so that her wet clothes might be dried by
+the kitchen fire.</p>
+
+<p>She murmured something about a good Samaritan, but still demurred, and
+asked if I had a bath-room. I said I had.</p>
+
+<p>That decided her. She seemed to have no difficulty in making up her
+mind. She did not see two sides to things, as I always do myself.</p>
+
+<p>She said that if I liked to allow her to go to the bath-room first, she
+should be happy to accept my kind invitation for an hour <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span>or so. If not,
+she would stay where she was.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr3" />
+
+<p>Half an hour later she was sitting opposite me in the parlour, on the
+other side of the wood fire, sipping her coffee. I had not put down the
+brown paper or the mackintosh. It was not necessary. Her close-cropped,
+curly grey hair, still damp from the bath, was parted, and brushed
+stiffly back over her ears. It must have been very beautiful hair once.
+Her thin hands and thinner face and neck looked more like brown
+parchment than ever, as she sat in the lamplight, my old blue
+dressing-gown folded negligently round her, and taking picturesque folds
+which it never did when I was inside it. Those long, gaunt limbs must
+have been graceful once. Her feet were bare in her slippers&mdash;in my
+slippers, I mean. She looked rather like a well-bred Indian.</p>
+
+<p>It was obvious that she was a lady, but her speech had already told me
+that. What amazed me most where all amazed me was her self-possession.</p>
+
+<p>I wondered what her impression of me was, as we sat, such a strangely
+assorted couple, one on each side of the fire. Did I indeed <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>seem to her
+the quixotic, impetuous, and yet withal dreamy creature which my books
+show me to be? But I have often been told by those who know me well that
+I am much more than my books.</p>
+
+<p>"I have not sat by a fire for how many months?" she said, her black eyes
+on the logs. "Let me see, last time was in a lonely cottage on the
+Cotswolds. It was a night like this, but colder, and a helpless old
+couple let me in, and allowed me to dry my clothes, and lie by their
+fire all night. Very unwise of them, wasn't it? I might have murdered
+them in their beds."</p>
+
+<p>I began to feel rather uncomfortable.</p>
+
+<p>"You are not undergoing a sentence for murder, are you?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>She looked at me for a moment, and then said:</p>
+
+<p>"The desperate creature who escaped from gaol three days ago, and who
+was in for life for the murder of the man she lived with, and whose
+convict clothes I am wearing&mdash;whose clothes, I mean, are at this moment
+drying before your kitchen fire&mdash;is not the same woman who is now
+drinking your excellent coffee."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>"Do you mean to tell me you have never been in prison?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, for a year; but I served my time and finished it four years ago."</p>
+
+<p>I wrung my hands. I was deeply disappointed in her. Her transparent
+duplicity, which could impose on no one, not even so unsuspicious a
+nature as mine, hurt me to the quick.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! you poor soul," I said, "don't lie to me. Indeed it isn't
+necessary. I will do all I can for you. I will help you to get away. I
+will give you other clothes, and money, and we will bury these&mdash;these
+garments of shame. But don't, for God's sake, don't lie to me."</p>
+
+<p>She looked gravely at me, as if she were measuring me, and seeing, no
+doubt, that I was not deceived, a dusky red rose for a moment to her
+face and brow.</p>
+
+<p>"It is not easy to speak the truth to some people," she said, her eyes
+dropping once more to the fire, "even when they are as compassionate and
+kind as you are."</p>
+
+<p>"Truthfulness is a habit that may be regained," I said earnestly. "I
+myself, without half your temptations, was untruthful once."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>To associate oneself with the sins of others, to show one's own scar,
+is not this sometimes the only way to comfort those overborne in the
+battle of life? Had I not chronicled my own failing in the matter of
+truthfulness when I foolishly and wickedly took blame on myself for the
+fault of one dear to me, in my first book, "With Broken Wing"? But I saw
+as I spoke that she had not read it, and did not realise to what I was
+alluding. I have so steadily refused to be interviewed that possibly
+also she had not even yet guessed who I was.</p>
+
+<p>"I am sure&mdash;I am quite sure," I went on after a moment, "that there is a
+great deal of good in you, that you are by nature truthful."</p>
+
+<p>"Am I? I wonder. Perhaps I was so once, in the early, untroubled days.
+But I have told many lies since then."</p>
+
+<p>She drank her coffee slowly, looking steadfastly into the fire, as if
+she saw in the wavering flame some reflection of another fire on another
+hearthstone.</p>
+
+<p>"How good it is!" she said at last, putting her cup down. "How
+dreadfully good it is&mdash;the coffee and the fire, and the quiet room, and
+to be dry and warm and clean! <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>How good it all is! And how little I
+thought of them when I had all these things!"</p>
+
+<p>She got up and looked at a water-colour over the low mantelpiece.</p>
+
+<p>"Madeira, isn't it?" she said. "I seem to remember that peculiar effect
+of the vivid purple of the Bougainvillea against the dim, cloudy purple
+of the hills behind."</p>
+
+<p>"It is Madeira," I said. "I was there ten years ago. Perhaps you have
+read my little book, 'Beside the Bougainvillea'?"</p>
+
+<p>"My husband died there," she said, looking fixedly at the drawing. "He
+died just before sunrise, and when it was over I remember looking out
+across the sea, past the great English man-of-war in the harbour, to
+those three little islands&mdash;I forget their names&mdash;and as the first level
+rays touched them, the islands and the ship all seemed to melt into
+half-transparent amethyst in a sea of glass, beneath a sky of glass. How
+calm the sea was&mdash;hardly a ripple! I felt that even he, weak as he was,
+could walk upon it. It was like daybreak in heaven, not on earth. And
+his long martyrdom was over. It seemed as if we were both safe home at
+last."</p>
+
+<p>"Had he been ill long?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>"A long time. He suffered terribly. And I gave him morphia under the
+doctor's directions. And then, when he was gone&mdash;not at first, but after
+a little bit&mdash;I took morphia myself, to numb my own anguish and to get a
+little sleep. I thought I should go mad if I could not get any sleep. I
+had better have gone mad. But I took morphia instead, and sealed my own
+doom. But how can you tell whether I am speaking the truth? Well, it
+doesn't matter if you don't believe me. I am accustomed to it. I am
+never believed now. And I don't care if I'm not. I don't deserve to be.
+But I suppose you can see that I was not always a tramp on the highway.
+And, at any rate, that is what I am now, and what I shall remain, unless
+I drift into prison again, which God forbid, for I should suffocate in a
+cell after the life in the open air which I am accustomed to."</p>
+
+<p>She shivered a little, as if she who seemed devoid of fear quailed at
+the remembrance of her cell.</p>
+
+<p>"You are wondering how I have fallen so low," she said. "Do you remember
+Kipling's lines&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung?<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="noi"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>"Well, I have known what it is to drop down the ladder of life,
+clinging convulsively to each rung in turn, losing hold of it, and being
+caught back by compassionate hands, only to let go of it again; fighting
+desperately to hold on to the next rung when I was thrust from the one
+above it; having my hands beaten from each rung, one after another, one
+after another, sinking lower and lower yet, cling as I would, pray as I
+would, repent as I would."</p>
+
+<p>"Who beat your hands from the rungs?" I said.</p>
+
+<p>"Morphia," she replied.</p>
+
+<p>There was a long silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Morphia, that was the beginning and the middle and the end of my
+misfortunes," she said. "What did I do that gradually lost me my
+friends?&mdash;and I had such good friends, even after my best friend my
+sister died. What did I do that ruined me by inches? In Australia I have
+heard of evil men taken red-handed being left in the bush with food and
+water by them, bound to a fallen tree which has been set on fire at one
+end. And the fire smoulders and smoulders, and travels inch by inch
+along the trunk, and they watch their slow, inevitable death coming
+towards <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span>them day by day, until it at last destroys them also inch by
+inch. What had I done that I should find myself bound like those poor
+wretches? I cannot tell you. Morphia wipes out the memory as surely as
+drink. I only know that I was in torment. Faces, familiar and strange
+faces, some compassionate, some indignant, some horror-struck, come back
+to me sometimes, blurred as by smoke, but I see nothing clearly. I dimly
+remember fragments of appeals that were made to me, fragments of divine
+music in cathedrals where I sobbed my heart out. Broken, splintered,
+devastating memories of promises made in bitter tears, and endless lies
+and subterfuges to conceal what I could not conceal. For morphia looks
+out of the eyes of its victim. I knew that, but I thought no one could
+see it in mine, that I could hide it. And I have one vivid recollection
+of a quiet room with flowers in it, and latticed windows, but I don't
+know where it was or how I came there, or who were the people in it who
+spoke to me. There was a tall woman with grey parted hair in a lilac
+gown. I can see her now. And I swore before God that I had left off the
+drug. And some one standing behind me took the little <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>infernal machine
+out of my pocket, and I was confronted with it. And the tall woman wrung
+her hands and groaned. How I hated her! And in my madness I accused her
+of putting it there to ruin me. And some one (a man) said slowly, 'She
+is impossible!&mdash;quite impossible!' That one memory stands out like a
+little oasis in a desert of mirage and shifting sand, and thirst. I
+should know the room again if I saw it. There was a window opening into
+a little paved courtyard with a fountain in it, and doves drinking. But
+I shall never see it again. And the drug became alive like a fiend, and
+pushed me lower and lower, down, always down, until I did something
+dreadful, I don't know now exactly what it was, though the prison
+chaplain explained it to me. But it was about a cheque, and I was
+convicted and sent to prison."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you have been in prison <em>twice</em>?" I said, anxious to make it easy
+for her to be entirely truthful, for I could not doubt the truth of much
+of this earlier history.</p>
+
+<p>She did not seem to hear me.</p>
+
+<p>"There is no crime," she went on, "however black, that I did not expiate
+then. If suffering can wash out sins, I washed out <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>mine. I, who thought
+I had so many enemies, have no enemy. No one has ever injured me. But if
+I had the cruellest in the world, I would not condemn him, if he were a
+morphia maniac, to sudden enforced abstinence and prison life. And I
+could not die. I am very strong by nature. I could neither die nor live.
+It was months before I saw light, months of hell, consumed in the flame
+of hell which is thirst. And slowly the power to live came back to me. I
+was saved in spite of myself. And slowly the power of thought returned
+to me. I had time to think. My mind drifted and drifted, but I got
+control of it now and again, and then for longer intervals, as my poor
+body reasserted itself from the slavery of the drug. And I thought&mdash;I
+thought&mdash;I thought. And at last I made up my mind, my fierce, embittered
+mind. And when I came out of prison, I took to the road. Even then there
+were those who would have helped me, but I steeled my heart against
+them. There was a strange woman with a sweet face waiting at the prison
+door, who spoke kindly to me. But I distrusted her. I distrusted every
+one. And I did not mean to be helped any more. I had been helped <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span>time
+and time again. To be helped was to be put where I could get morphia,
+where I had something, if it was only my clothes, which I could sell to
+get it, where I could <em>steal</em> things to sell to get it. If I had any
+possessions, I knew that some day&mdash;not for a time perhaps, but some
+day&mdash;I should sell it and get morphia somehow. They say you can't buy
+it, but you can. I always could in the past, and I knew I always should
+in the future. But on the road, in rags, a tramp, down in the dust, in
+the safe refuge of the dust&mdash;there it was not possible. There I was out
+of temptation. There I could not be burned in that flame again. That was
+all I thought of, to creep away where the fire could not reach me. And I
+felt sure I should not live long. In my ignorance I thought the exposure
+to all weathers, and privation, and the first frost of winter would
+bring me my release quickly. But they did not. They gave me new life
+instead. I came out in spring, and I begged my way to Abinger Forest,
+and nearly starved there; but I did not mind. Have you ever been in
+Abinger Forest in the spring when the wortleberry is out? Can the
+Elysian fields of Asphodel be more <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>beautiful? Perhaps to others they
+might seem so; but not to me. My first glimpse of hope came to me in the
+woods at Abinger in a windless, sunny week at Easter. The gipsies gave
+me food once or twice. And I ate the scraps that the trippers left after
+their picnics at the top of Leith Hill where the tower is. And I lay in
+the sun by day and I slept in a stack of bracken by night, and my
+strained life relaxed. And I, who had become so hard and bitter, saw at
+last what endless love and compassion had been vainly lavished on me,
+and I was humbled. I had somehow got it rooted into my warped mind that
+I had been cruelly treated, betrayed, abandoned by my friends, by every
+one. I had tried hard to forgive them, but I could not. I saw at last
+that it was I who had been cruel, I who had betrayed, I who needed
+forgiveness; and I asked it of the only Friend I had left, the only
+Friend Who never forsakes us. And peace came back and the deep wound in
+my life healed. It seemed as if Nature, who had forgotten me for so
+long, had pity on me, and took me again to her heart. For I had loved
+her years ago, before my husband died.</p>
+
+<p>"When the weather broke, I took to the road, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>and the road has given me
+back my health, and much more than health. I can see beauty again now.
+And there is always beauty in the hedgerow; and wherever the road runs
+there is beauty. In the open down, beside the tidal rivers with their
+brown sails creeping among the buttercups, everywhere there is beauty.
+And I can sleep again now. I learnt how to sleep at Abinger. I had
+forgotten how it was done without morphia. O God! I can sleep, every
+night, anywhere. It's worth being a tramp for that alone, to be able to
+sleep naturally, to know in the daytime that you will have it at night,
+and then to lie down and feel it stealing over you like the blessing of
+God. I used to wake myself at first for sheer joy when it was coming.
+And then to nestle down, and sink into it, down, down into it, till one
+reaches the great peace. And no more wakings in torment as the drug
+passes off, waking as in some iron grave, unable to stir hand or foot,
+unable to beat back the suffocating horror and terror which lies cheek
+to cheek with us. No more wakings in hell. No more mornings like that.
+But instead, the cool, sweet waking in the crystal light in the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span>open
+air. And to see the sun come up, and to lie still against the clean,
+fragrant haystack and let it warm you! And to watch the quiet, friendly
+beasts rise up in the long meadows! And to wake hungry, instead of that
+dreadful, maddening thirst! And to <em>like</em> to eat&mdash;how good that is, even
+if you go fasting half the day! But I never do. The poor will always
+give you enough to eat. It hurts them to see any one hungry. Yes, I have
+dropped down the ladder rung by rung, and now I have reached the lowest
+rung. And it is a good place, the only safe place for wastrels such as
+I, the only refuge from my enemy. There is peace on the lowest rung. I
+can do no more harm there, and I have done so much. I was ambitious
+once, I was admired and clever once; but I found no abiding city
+anywhere. Temptation lurked everywhere. I was driven like chaff before
+the wind.... But now I have the road. No one will take the road from me
+while I live, or the ditch beside it to die in when my time comes. I am
+provided for at last. I lead a clean life at last."</p>
+
+<p>She sat silent, her dreamy eyes fixed, her thin hands folded one over
+the other. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>I looked at her with an aching heart. What strange mixture
+of truth and lies was all this! But I said nothing. What was the use?</p>
+
+<p>And as we sat silent beside the dying fire the great inequality between
+us pressed hard upon me: I, by no special virtue of my own, God knows!
+on one of the uppermost rungs of life. She poor soul&mdash;poor soul&mdash;on the
+lowest.</p>
+
+<p>The clock on the mantelpiece chimed eleven.</p>
+
+<p>She started slightly, looked at it, and then at me, as if uncertain of
+her surroundings, and the shrewd, sardonic look came back to her face.</p>
+
+<p>"I am keeping you up," she said, rising. "I think your strong coffee has
+gone to my head. This outburst of autobiography is a poor return for all
+your kindness. I had no idea it was so late or that I could be so
+garrulous, and I must make a very early start to-morrow. Shall I go into
+the kitchen and put on my own clothes again? They must be quite dry by
+now."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! let me help you," I said impulsively. "Let me get you into a Home,
+or help you to emigrate. Don't go back to this wandering, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>aimless life.
+Work for others, interest in others, that is what <em>you</em> need, what <em>I</em>
+need, what we <em>all</em> need to take us out of ourselves, to make us forget
+our own misery."</p>
+
+<p>"I have half forgotten mine already," she said. "To-night I remembered
+it again. But I have long since put it from my mind. I think the moment
+for a change of clothing in the kitchen has arrived."</p>
+
+<p>She spoke quietly, but as if her last word were final. I found it
+impossible to continue the subject.</p>
+
+<p>"You will never escape in those clothes," I said. "You haven't the ghost
+of a chance. If you will come into my room, I will see what I can find
+for you."</p>
+
+<p>I had been willing to do much more than give her clothes, but I
+instinctively felt that my appeal to her better feelings had fallen on
+deaf ears.</p>
+
+<p>She followed me to my bedroom, and I got out all my oldest clothes and
+spread them before her. But she would have none of them.</p>
+
+<p>"The worst look like an ultra-respectable district visitor," she said,
+tossing aside one garment after another. It was the more <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>curious that
+she should say that because my brother-in-law had always said I looked
+like one, and that my books even had a parochial flavour about them. But
+then he had never really studied them, or he would have seen their
+lighter side.</p>
+
+<p>"I had no idea pockets were worn in a little slit in the front seam,"
+said my visitor. "It shows how long it is since I have been 'in the
+know.' No doubt front pockets came in with the bicycles. No. It is very
+kind of you. But, except for that old dyed moreen petticoat, the things
+won't do. I always was particular about dress, and I never was more so
+than I am at this moment. You don't happen to have an old black ulster
+with all the buttons off, and a bit of mangy fur dropping off the neck?
+That's more my style. But of course you haven't."</p>
+
+<p>"I had one once of that kind; it was so bad that I could not even give
+it away. So I put it in the dog's basket. Lindo used to sleep on it. He
+loved it, poor dear! It may be there still."</p>
+
+<p>We went downstairs again, and I pulled Lindo's basket out from under the
+stairs.</p>
+
+<p>The old black wrap was still in it, but it was mildewy and stuck to the
+basket. It <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>tore as I released it. It reminded me painfully of my lost
+darling.</p>
+
+<p>"The very thing!" she said, with enthusiasm, as the dilapidated travesty
+of a coat shook itself free. "Quiet and unobtrusive to the last degree.
+Parisian in colour and simplicity. And mole colour is so becoming. Can
+you really spare it? Then with the moreen petticoat I am provided,
+equipped."</p>
+
+<p>We went back to the kitchen again.</p>
+
+<p>"What will you do with them?" I said, pointing to her convict clothes
+which had dried perfectly stiff, owing to the amount of mud on them. How
+such quantities of mud could have got on to them was a mystery to me.</p>
+
+<p>"It certainly does not improve one's clothes, to hide in a wet ditch in
+a ploughed field," she said meditatively. "I will dispose of them early
+to-morrow morning. I picked a place as I found my way here."</p>
+
+<p>"Not on <em>my</em> premises?" I said anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course not. Do you take me for a monster of ingratitude? I'll manage
+that all right."</p>
+
+<p>I suddenly remembered that she must have food to take with her. I went
+to the larder, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>and when I came back I looked at her with renewed
+amazement.</p>
+
+<p>My dressing-gown and slippers were laid carefully on a chair. The
+astonishing woman was a tramp once more, squatting on the brick floor,
+drawing on to her bare feet the shapeless excuses for boots which had
+been toasting before the fire.</p>
+
+<p>Then she leaned over the hearth, rubbed her hands in the ashes, and
+passed them gently over her face, her neck, her wrists and ankles. She
+drew forward and tangled her hair before the kitchen glass. Then she
+rolled up her convict clothes into a compact bundle, wiped her right
+hand carefully on the kitchen towel, and held it out to me.</p>
+
+<p>"Remember," I said gravely, taking it in both of mine and pressing it,
+"if ever you are in need of a friend, you know to whom to apply. Marion
+Dalrymple, Rufford, will always find me."</p>
+
+<p>I thought I ought not to let her go away without letting her know who I
+was. But my name seemed to have no especial meaning for her. Perhaps she
+had lived beyond the pale too long.</p>
+
+<p>"You have indeed been a friend to me," <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span>she said. "God bless you, you
+good Samaritan! May the world go well with you! Good-night, and thank
+you, and good-bye. If you'll give me the stable key, I'll let myself in.
+It's a pity you should come out; its raining again. And I'll leave the
+stable locked when I go. And the key will be in the lavender bush at the
+door. Good-bye again."</p>
+
+<hr class="hr3" />
+
+<p>I did not sleep that night, and in the morning I was so tired that I
+made no attempt to work. I had, of course, stolen out before six to
+retrieve the stable key from the lavender bush, and hang it on its
+accustomed nail. I looked into the stable first. My guest had departed.</p>
+
+<p>I spent an idle morning musing on the events of the previous evening, if
+time thus spent can be called idling. It may seem so to others, but in
+my own experience these apparently profitless hours are often more
+fruitful than those spent in belabouring the brain to a forced activity.
+But then I have always preferred to remain, as the great Molinos
+advises, a learner rather than a teacher in the school of life. Early in
+the afternoon, as I was on my way to the post-office, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>my landlord, Mr.
+Ledbury, met me. He looked excited, an open telegram in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you heard about the escaped convict?" he said. "She has been
+taken. She was traced to Bronsal Heath yesterday, and run to earth this
+morning at Framlingham."</p>
+
+<p>He turned and walked with me. He was too much taken up with the news to
+notice how I started and how my colour changed. But indeed I flush and
+turn pale at nothing. All my life it has been a vexation to me that a
+chance word or allusion should bring the colour to my cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor soul!" he said. "I could almost wish she had made good her escape.
+She got out, Heaven alone knows how, to see her child, which she had
+heard was ill. But the ground she must have covered in the time! She was
+absolutely dead beat when she was taken. And she was not in her prison
+clothes. That is so inexplicable. How she got others she alone knows.
+Some one must have befriended her, and given them to her&mdash;some one very
+poor, for she was miserably clad, and the extraordinary thing is that
+though she was traced to the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>deserted cottage on the heath yesterday,
+and taken at Framlingham to-day, her prison clothes were found hidden in
+my wood-yard, <em>here</em> in my wood-yard, by Zack when he went to his work.
+And this place is not on the way to Framlingham. How in the name of
+fortune could she have hidden her clothes <em>here</em>?"</p>
+
+<p>"She must have wandered here in the dark," I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't understand it," he said, turning in at his own gate. "But
+anyhow, the poor thing has been caught."</p>
+
+<hr class="hr3" />
+
+<p>My story should end here. Indeed, to my mind it does end here. And if I
+have been persuaded by my family to add a few more lines on the subject,
+it is sorely against the grain and against my artistic sense. And I am
+conscious that I have been unwise in allowing myself to be over-ruled by
+those who have not given their lives to literature as I have done, and
+who therefore cannot judge as I can when a story should be brought to a
+close.</p>
+
+<p>I need hardly say that I often thought of my unhappy visitant, often
+wondered how she was getting on. A year later I was <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>staying with a
+friend in Ipswich who was a visitor at the prison there, and I
+remembered how it was to Ipswich she had been brought back, and I asked
+to see her. My friend knew her, and told me that she had made no further
+attempt to escape, and that she believed the child was dead. It had been
+an old promise that she would one day take me over the prison. I claimed
+it, and begged that I might be allowed to have a few words with that
+particular inmate. It was not according to the regulations, but my
+friend was a privileged person. That afternoon I passed with her under
+that dreary portal, and after walking along interminable white-washed
+passages, and past how many locked and numbered doors, my friend
+whispered to a warder, who motioned me to a cell.</p>
+
+<p>A woman was sitting on her bed with her head in her hands.</p>
+
+<p>"You have not forgotten me, I hope," I said gently. It may be weak, but
+I have never been able to speak ungently to any one in trouble, whatever
+the cause may be. I have known too much trouble myself.</p>
+
+<p>She raised her head slowly, pushed back her hair, and looked at me.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>I had never seen her before.</p>
+
+<p>I could only stare helplessly at her.</p>
+
+<p>"But you are not the woman who escaped last October?" I stammered at
+last.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," she said pathetically, "I am. Who else should I be? What do you
+want with me?"</p>
+
+<p>But I was speechless. It was all so unexpected, so inexplicable. I have
+often thought since how much stranger fact is than fiction. The more
+interested one is in life and in one's fellow-creatures the more
+surprises there are in store for one. With every year I live my sense of
+wonder increases, and with it my realisation of my own ignorance. As I
+stared amazedly at her, a change came over her face. She looked at me
+almost with eagerness.</p>
+
+<p>"You didn't take me for 'er, did you?" she said hurriedly. "'Er as
+'elped me. Did you know 'er? She ain't copped, is she? Don't tell me as
+she's copped too."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you <em>were</em> her," I said. "I don't know what I thought. I
+don't understand it."</p>
+
+<p>"She found me on a dirty night," she said, "in a tumbledown cottage. I'd
+never seen her afore. But she crep' in and found <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>me, and tole me there
+was a watch kep' for me at Woodbridge. And she changed clothes with me,
+so as to give me a bit of a chance. Mine was fair stiff with mud, for
+I'd laid in a wet ditch till night, but they showed the blasted colour
+for all that. And she give me all she had on her&mdash;her clothes, and a
+bite of bread and bacon, and two pence. And it wasn't as if we was pals.
+I'd never seen her afore. She stuck at nothing, and she only larfed at
+the risk, for they'd have shut her up for certain if they'd caught her.
+She said she'd manage some'ow. And she 'eartened me up, and put me on
+the road for Wickham, and she said she'd dror away the pursoot by hiding
+the prison clothes somewhere in the opsit direction where they could be
+found easy by the first fool."</p>
+
+<p>"She did it," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"And how did she spare 'em? She'd nuthin' but them."</p>
+
+<p>"I gave her some more. If she had been my own sister I could not have
+done more for her."</p>
+
+<p>"And she worn't caught, wor she?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not that I know of. No, I feel sure she never was. I helped her to get
+away."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>"I was took in spite of all," said the woman, "and by my own silliness.
+But I seed my little Nan alive fust, and that was all I wanted. And I
+don't know who she was, nor what she was. She tole me she was a outcast
+and a tramp and a good-for-nothing. But there's never been anybody yet,
+be they who they may, as done for me what she done. She'd have give me
+the skin orf her back if she could 'ave took it orf. And it worn't as if
+I knowed her. I'd never set eyes on 'er afore, nor never shall again."</p>
+
+<p>I have never seen her again, either.</p>
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>
+<a name="latch" id="latch"></a><big>The Hand on the Latch</big></h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There came a man across the moor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Fell and foul of face was he,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He left the path by the cross-roads three,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And stood in the shadow of the door.<br /></span>
+</div>
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Mary Coleridge.</span><br /></p>
+</div>
+
+
+<p class="noi"><span class="smcap">She</span> stood at her low window with its uneven, wavering glass, and looked
+out across the prairie. A little snow had fallen, not much, only enough
+to add a sense of desolation to the boundless plain, the infinite plain
+outside the four cramped walls of her log hut. The log hut was like a
+tiny boat moored in some vast, tideless, impassable sea. The immensity
+of the prairie had crushed her in the earlier years of her married life;
+but gradually she had become accustomed to it, then reconciled to it, at
+last almost a part of it. The grey had come early to her thick hair, a
+certain fixity to the quiet courage of her eyes. Her calm, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>steadfast
+face showed that she was not given to depression, but nevertheless this
+evening, as she stood watching for her husband's return, for the first
+distant speck of him where the cart-rut vanished into the plain, a sense
+of impending misfortune enfolded her with the dusk. Was it because the
+first snow had fallen? Ah me! how much it meant. It was as significant
+for her as the grey pallor that falls on a sick man's face. It meant the
+endless winter, the greater isolation instead of the lesser, the
+powerlessness to move hand or foot in that all-enveloping shroud; the
+struggle, not for existence&mdash;with him beside her that was assured&mdash;not
+for luxury, she had ceased to care for it, though he had not ceased to
+care for her sake, but for life in any but its narrowest sense. Books,
+letters, human speech, through the long months these would be almost
+entirely denied her. The sudden remembrance of the larger needs of life
+flooded her soul, touching to momentary semblance of movement many
+things long cherished, but long since dead, like delicate sea-plants
+beyond high-water mark, that cannot exist between the long droughts when
+the spring tide does not come. She <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span>had known what she was doing when,
+against the wishes of her family, she of the South had married him of
+the North, when she left the busy city life she knew, and clave to her
+husband, following him over the rim of the world, as women will follow
+while they have feet to follow with. She was his superior in birth,
+cultivation, refinement, but she had never regretted what she had done.
+The regrets were his for her, for the poverty to which he had brought
+her, and to which she had not been accustomed. She had only one regret,
+if such a thin strip of a word as regret can be used to describe her
+passionate, controlled desolation, immense as the prairie, because she
+had no child. Perhaps if they had had children the walls of the log hut
+in the waste might have closed in on them less rigidly. It might have
+become more of a home.</p>
+
+<p>Her mind had taken its old mechanical bent, the trend of long habit, as
+she looked out from that low window. How often she had stood there and
+thought "If only we might have had a child!" And now, by sheer force of
+habit, she thought it yet again. And then a slow rapture took possession
+of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>her whole being, mounted, mounted till she leaned against the window
+still faint with joy. She was to have a child after all. She had hardly
+dared believe it at first; but as time had gone on a vague hope quickly
+suppressed as unbearable had turned to suspense, suspense had alternated
+with the fierce despair that precedes certainty. Certainty had come at
+last, clear and calm and exquisite as dawn. She would have a child in
+the spring. What was the winter to her now! Nothing but a step towards
+joy. The world was all broken up and made new. The prairie, its great
+loneliness, its death-like solitude, were gone out of her life. She was
+to have a child in the spring. She had not dared to tell her husband
+till she was sure. But she would tell him this evening, when they were
+sitting together over the fire.</p>
+
+<p>She stood motionless in the deepening dusk, trying to be calm. And at
+last in the far distance she saw a speck arise as it were out of a
+crease in the level earth. Her husband on his horse. How many hundreds
+of times she had seen him appear over the rim of the world, just as he
+was appearing now. She lit the lamp and put it in the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>window. She blew
+the log fire to a blaze. The firelight danced on the wooden walls,
+crowded with cheap pictures, and on the few precious daguerreotypes that
+reminded her she too had brothers and sisters and kin of her own, far
+away in one of those southern cities where the war was still smouldering
+grimly on.</p>
+
+<p>Her husband took his horse round and stalled him. Presently he came in.
+They stood a moment together in silence as their custom was, and she
+leaned her forehead against his shoulder. Then she busied herself with
+his supper, and he sat down heavily at the little table.</p>
+
+<p>"Had you any difficulty this time in getting the money together?" she
+asked.</p>
+
+<p>Her husband was a tax collector.</p>
+
+<p>"None," he said abstractedly; "at least&mdash;yes&mdash;a little. But I have it
+all, and the arrears as well. It makes a large sum."</p>
+
+<p>He was evidently thinking of something else. She did not speak again.
+She saw something was troubling him.</p>
+
+<p>"I heard news to-day at Philip's," he said at last, "which I don't like.
+If I had heard in time, and if I could have borrowed a fresh horse, I
+would have ridden straight <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>on to&nbsp;&mdash;&mdash;. But it was too late in the day
+to be safe, and you would have been anxious what had become of me if I
+had been out all night with all this money on me. I shall go to-morrow
+as soon as it is light."</p>
+
+<p>They discussed the business which took him to the nearest town thirty
+miles away, where their small savings were invested, somewhat
+precariously, as it turned out. What was safe, who was safe, while the
+invisible war between North and South smouldered on and on? It had not
+come near them, but as an earthquake which is engulfing cities in one
+part of Europe will rattle a tea-cup without oversetting it on a cottage
+shelf half a continent away, so the civil war had reached them at last.</p>
+
+<p>"I take a hopeful view," he said, but his face was overcast. "I don't
+see why we should lose the little we have. It has been hard enough to
+scrape it together, God knows. Promptitude and joint action with
+Reynolds will probably save it. But I must be prompt." He still spoke
+abstractedly, as if even now he were thinking of something else.</p>
+
+<p>He began to take out of the leathern satchel various bags of money.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>"Shall I help you to count it?"</p>
+
+<p>She often did so.</p>
+
+<p>They counted the flimsy dirty paper-money together, and put it all back
+into the various labelled bags.</p>
+
+<p>"It comes right," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she said, "But you can't pay it into the bank to-morrow if you
+go to&nbsp;&mdash;&mdash;."</p>
+
+<p>"I know," he said looking at her; "that is what I have been thinking of
+ever since I heard Philip's news. I don't like leaving you with all this
+money in the house; but I must."</p>
+
+<p>She was silent. She was not frightened for herself, but it was State
+money, not their own. She was not nervous as he was, but she had always
+shared with him a certain dread of those bulging bags, and had always
+been thankful to see him return safe&mdash;he never went twice by the same
+track&mdash;after paying the money in. In those wild days, when men went
+armed, with their lives in their hands, it was not well to be known to
+have large sums about you.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at the bags, frowning.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not afraid," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"There is no real need to be," he said after a moment. "When I leave
+to-morrow <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>morning, it will be thought I have gone to pay it in.
+Still&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He did not finish his sentence, but she knew what was in his mind: the
+great loneliness of the prairie. Out in the white night came the short,
+sharp yap of a wolf.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not afraid," she said again.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be gone only one night," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I have often been a night alone."</p>
+
+<p>"I know," he said; "but somehow it's worse leaving you with so much
+money in the house."</p>
+
+<p>"No one knows it will be there."</p>
+
+<p>"That is true, except that every one knows I have been collecting large
+sums."</p>
+
+<p>"They will think you have gone to pay it in as usual."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said with an effort.</p>
+
+<p>Then he got up, and went to his tool-box. She watched him open it,
+seeing him in a new light which encompassed him with even greater love.
+"If I tell him to-night," she thought, "it will make him still more
+anxious about leaving me. Perhaps he would refuse to go, and he must go.
+I will not tell him till he comes back."</p>
+
+<p>The resolution not to speak was like taking hold of a piece of iron in
+frost. She <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>had not known it would hurt so much. A new tremulousness,
+sweet and strange, passed over her&mdash;not cowardice, not fear, not of the
+heart nor of the mind, but a sort of emotion of the whole being.</p>
+
+<p>"I will not tell him," she said again.</p>
+
+<p>Her husband got out his tools, took up a plank from the floor, and put
+the money into a hole beneath it, beside their small valuables, such as
+they were, in a biscuit tin. Then he replaced the plank, screwed it
+down, and she drew back a small fur mat over the place. He put away the
+tools and then came and stood in front of her. He was not conscious of
+her transfiguration, and she dropped her eyes for fear of showing it.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall start early," he said, "as soon as it is light, and I shall be
+back before sundown the day after to-morrow. I know it is unreasonable,
+but I shall go easier in my mind if you will promise me one thing."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not to go out of the house, or to let any one else come in on any
+pretence whatever, while I am away," he said. "Bar everything, and stay
+inside."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>"I shan't want to go out."</p>
+
+<p>He made an impatient movement.</p>
+
+<p>"Promise me that, come what will, you will let no one in during my
+absence," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I promise."</p>
+
+<p>"Swear it."</p>
+
+<p>She hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"Swear it, to please me," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I swear that I will let no one into the house, on any pretext whatever,
+until you come back," she said, smiling at him.</p>
+
+<p>He sighed and relapsed into his chair, and gave way to the great fatigue
+that possessed him.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning he started soon after daybreak, but not until he had
+brought her in sufficient fuel to last several days. There had been more
+snow in the night, fine snow like salt, but not enough to make
+travelling difficult. She watched him ride away, and silenced the voice
+within her which always said as she saw him go, "You will never see him
+again; you have heard his voice for the last time." Perhaps, after all,
+the difference between the brave and the cowardly lies in how they deal
+with that voice. Both hear it. She silenced it instantly. It spoke
+again, more insistently, "You have heard <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>his voice, felt his kiss, for
+the last time. He will never see the face of his child." She silenced it
+again, and went about her work.</p>
+
+<p>The day passed as countless other days had passed. She was accustomed to
+be much alone. She had work to do, enough and to spare, within the
+little home which was to become a real home, please God, in the spring.
+The evening fell almost before she expected it. She locked and barred
+the doors, and closed the shutters of the windows. She made all secure,
+as she had done many a time before.</p>
+
+<p>And then, putting aside her work, she took down the newest of her
+well-worn books, lately sent her from New Orleans, and began to read.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Oui, sans doute, tout meurt: ce monde est un grand r&ecirc;ve,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Et le peu de bonheur qui nous vient en chemin,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nous n'avons pas plus t&ocirc;t ce roseau dans la main,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Que le vent nous l'enl&egrave;ve.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>"Que le vent nous l'enl&egrave;ve." She repeated the last words to herself. Ah
+no! the wind could not take her happiness out of her hand.</p>
+
+<p>A wandering wind had risen at nightfall, and it came softly across the
+snow, and tried <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span>the doors and windows as with a furtive hand. She could
+hear it coming as from an immense distance, passing with a sigh,
+returning plaintive, homeless, forlorn, to whisper round the house.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">J'ai vu sous le soleil tomber bien d'autres choses<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Que les feuilles des bois, et l'&eacute;cume des eaux,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bien d'autres s'en aller que le parfum des roses<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Et le chant des oiseaux.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>That wind meant more snow. Involuntarily she laid down her book and
+listened to it.</p>
+
+<p>How like the sound of the wind was to wandering footsteps, slowly
+drawing near, creeping round the house. She could almost have fancied
+that a hand touched the shutters, was even now trying to raise the latch
+of the door.</p>
+
+<p>A moment of intense silence, in which the wind seemed to hold its breath
+and listen without, while she listened within. And then a low, distinct
+knock upon the door.</p>
+
+<p>She did not move.</p>
+
+<p>"It is the wind," she said to herself; but she knew it was not.</p>
+
+<p>The knock came again, low, urgent, not to be denied.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>She had become very cold. She had supposed fear was an emotion of the
+mind. She had not reckoned for this slow paralysis of the body.</p>
+
+<p>She managed to creep to the window and unbar the shutter an inch or two.
+By pressing her face against the extreme corner of the pane she could
+just discern in the snowlight part of a man's figure, wrapped in a long
+cloak.</p>
+
+<p>She barred the window once more. She was not surprised. She knew now
+that she had known it always. She had pretended to herself that the
+thief would not come; but she was expecting him when he knocked. And he
+stood there, outside. Presently he would be inside.</p>
+
+<p>He knocked yet again, this time more loudly. What need was there for
+silence when for miles and miles round there was no ear to hear save
+that of a chance prairie dog?</p>
+
+<p>She laid hold upon her courage, seeing that it was her only refuge, and
+went to the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is there?" she said through a chink.</p>
+
+<p>A man's voice, low and feeble, replied, "Let me in."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>"I cannot let you in."</p>
+
+<p>There was a short silence.</p>
+
+<p>"I pray you, let me in," he said again.</p>
+
+<p>"I have told you I cannot. Who are you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am a soldier, wounded. I'm trying to get back to my friends at&nbsp;&mdash;&mdash;."
+He mentioned a settlement about fifty miles north. "I have missed my
+way, and I can't drag myself any farther."</p>
+
+<p>Her heart swung violently between suspicion and compassion.</p>
+
+<p>"I am alone in the house," she said. "My husband is away, and he made me
+promise not to let any one in on any pretence whatever during his
+absence."</p>
+
+<p>"Then I shall die on your doorstep," said the voice. "I can't drag
+myself any farther."</p>
+
+<p>There was another silence.</p>
+
+<p>"It is beginning to snow," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I know," she said, and he heard the trouble in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Open the door and look at me," he said, "and see if I can do you any
+harm."</p>
+
+<p>She opened the door, and stood on the threshold, barring the way. He was
+leaning against the doorpost with his head against it, as she had often
+seen her husband lean <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>when he was talking to her on a summer evening.
+Something in his attitude, so like her husband's, touched her strangely.
+Supposing he were in need, and pleaded for help in vain!</p>
+
+<p>The man turned his face towards her. It was sunk and hollow, ravaged
+with pain, an evil-looking face. His right arm was in a sling under his
+tattered military cloak. He seemed to have made his final effort, and
+now stood staring dumbly at her.</p>
+
+<p>"My husband will never forgive me," she said, with a sort of sob.</p>
+
+<p>He said nothing more. He seemed at the last point of exhaustion. Through
+the dim white night a few flakes of snow fell upon his harsh, repellent
+face and on his bandaged arm.</p>
+
+<p>A sudden wave of pity carried all before it.</p>
+
+<p>She beckoned him into the house, and locked and barred the door. She put
+him in her husband's chair by the fire. He hardly noticed anything. He
+seemed stupefied. He sat staring alternately at the fire and at her.
+When she asked him to which regiment he belonged, he did not answer.</p>
+
+<p>She set before him the supper she had <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>prepared for herself, and chafed
+his hard, emaciated, dirty hand till the warmth returned to it. Then he
+ate, with difficulty at first, then with slow voracity, all she had put
+before him.</p>
+
+<p>A semblance of life returned gradually to him.</p>
+
+<p>"I was pretty near done up when I knocked," he said several times.</p>
+
+<p>She dressed his wound, which did not appear very deep, wrapped it in
+fresh bandages, and readjusted his sling. He took it all as a matter of
+course.</p>
+
+<p>She made up a little bed of rugs and blankets for him in the back
+kitchen. When she came back to the living-room, she found he had dragged
+himself to his feet, and was looking vacantly at a little picture of
+President Lincoln on the mantelshelf. She showed him the bed and told
+him to lie down on it. He obeyed her implicitly, like a child. She left
+him, and presently heard him cast himself down. A few minutes later she
+went to the door and listened. His heavy, regular breathing told her he
+was asleep.</p>
+
+<p>She went back to the kitchen, and sat down by the fire.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>Was he really asleep? Was it all feigned, the wound, the story, the
+exhaustion? Had she been trapped? Oh! what had she done? What had she
+done?</p>
+
+<p>She seemed like two people. One self, silent, alert, experienced,
+fearless, knew that she had allowed herself to be deluded, in spite of
+being warned; knew that her feelings had been played upon, made use of,
+not even dexterously made use of; knew that she had disobeyed her
+husband, broken her solemn oath to him, plunged him with herself into
+disgrace if the money were stolen. And in the eyes of that self it was
+already stolen. It was still under the plank beneath her feet, but it
+was already stolen.</p>
+
+<p>The other self, tremulous, inconsequent, full of irresistible tenderness
+for suffering and weakness even in its uncouthest garb, said
+incessantly, "I could do no less. If I die for it, still I could do no
+less. Somebody brought him into the world. Some woman cried for joy and
+anguish when he was born. He would have died if I had not taken him in.
+I could do no less."</p>
+
+<p>Through the long hours she sat by the fire, unable to reconcile herself
+to going upstairs to her own room and to bed.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>Once she got up and noiselessly took down her husband's revolver from
+the mantelshelf, and examined it. He had taken its fellow with him, and
+apparently, contrary to his custom, he had taken the powder-flask with
+him too, for it was gone from its nail. The revolvers were always kept
+loaded, but&mdash;by some evil chance&mdash;the one that remained was unloaded.
+She could have sworn she had seen her husband load it two days ago. Why
+was this numbness creeping over her again? She got out powder and
+bullets from a small store she had of her own, loaded and primed it, and
+laid it on the table beside her.</p>
+
+<p>The night had become very still. Her hearing seemed to reach out till
+she felt she could have heard a coyote move in its hole miles away. The
+log fire creaked and shifted. The tall clock in the corner ticked,
+catching its chain now and then as its manner was. The wooden walls
+shrunk and groaned a little. The small home-like sounds only accentuated
+the enormous silence without. Suddenly in the midst of them a real sound
+fell upon her ear&mdash;very low, but different, not like the fragmentary
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>inadvertent murmur of the hut; a small, purposeful, stealthy, sound,
+aware of itself. She listened, as she had listened before, without
+moving. It was not louder than the whittling of a mouse behind the
+wainscot, hardly louder than the scraping of a mole's thin hand in the
+soil. It continued. Then it stopped. It was only her foolish fancy after
+all. There it was again. Where did it come from?</p>
+
+<p><em>The man in the next room?</em></p>
+
+<p>She took up the lamp and crept down the narrow passage to the door of
+the back kitchen. His loud, even breathing sounded distinctly through
+the crannies of the ill-fitting door. Surely it was overloud. She
+listened to it. She could hear nothing else. Was his breathing a
+pretence? She opened the door noiselessly, and went in, shading the
+light with her hand.</p>
+
+<p>She bent over the sleeping man. At the first glance her heart sank, for
+he had not taken off his boots. But as she looked hard at him her
+suspicions died within her. He lay on his back with his coarse,
+emaciated face towards her, his mouth open, showing his broken teeth.
+The sleep of utter exhaustion was upon him. She could have <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>killed him
+as he lay. He was not acting. He was really asleep.</p>
+
+<p>She crept out of the room again, leaving the door ajar, and went back to
+the kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>Hardly had she sat down when she heard the sound again. It was too faint
+to reach her except when she was in the kitchen. She knew now where it
+came from&mdash;<em>the door</em>. Some one was picking the lock.</p>
+
+<p>The instant the sleeping man was out of her sight she suspected him
+again.</p>
+
+<p>Was he really asleep after all? He had not taken off his boots. When she
+came back from making his bed she had found him standing by the
+mantelshelf. Had he unloaded the pistol in her absence? Would he
+presently get up, and open the door to his confederates?</p>
+
+<p>Her mind rose clear and cold and unflinching. She took up the pistol,
+and then laid it down again. She wanted a more noiseless weapon. She got
+out her husband's great clasp-knife from the open tool-box, took the
+lamp, and crept back to the man's bedside. She should be able to kill
+him&mdash;certainly she should be able to kill him; and then she should have
+the pistol for the other one.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span>But he still slept heavily. When she saw him again, again her
+suspicions fell from her. She <em>knew</em> he was asleep.</p>
+
+<p>She shook him by the shoulder, noiselessly, but with increasing
+violence, until he opened his eyes with a groan. Then only she
+remembered that she was shaking his wounded arm. He saw the knife in her
+hand, and raised his left arm as if to ward off the blow.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen," she whispered, close to his ear. "Don't speak. There is a man
+trying to break into the house. You must get up and help me."</p>
+
+<p>He stared at her, vaguely at first, but with growing intelligence. The
+food and sleep had restored him somewhat to himself. He sat up on the
+couch.</p>
+
+<p>"Take off my boots," he whispered; "I tried, and could not."</p>
+
+<p>Her last suspicion of him vanished. She cut the laces with her knife,
+and dragged his boots off. They stuck to his feet, and bits of the
+woollen socks came off with them. They had evidently not been taken off
+for weeks. While she did it, he whispered, "Why should any one be
+wanting to break in? There's nothing here to take."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>"Yes, there is," she said. "There's a lot of money."</p>
+
+<p>"Good Lord! Where?"</p>
+
+<p>"Under the floor in the kitchen."</p>
+
+<p>"Then it's the kitchen they'll make for. You bet they know where the
+money is, if they know it's here. Are there many of 'em?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we shall know soon enough," said the man. He had become alert,
+keen. "Have you any pistols?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, one."</p>
+
+<p>"Fetch it, but don't make a sound, mind."</p>
+
+<p>She stole away, and returned with the pistol. She would have put it into
+his hand, but he pushed it away.</p>
+
+<p>"It's no use to me," he said, "with my arm in a sling. I will see what I
+can do with my left hand and the knife. Can you shoot?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Can you hit anything?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"To be depended on?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it's darned lucky. How long will that door hold?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>They were both in the little passage by now, pressed close together,
+listening to the furtive pick, pick, of some one at the lock.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think it will hold more than a minute."</p>
+
+<p>"Now, look here," he said, "I shall go and stand at the foot of the
+stair, and knife the second man, if there is a second. The first man
+I'll leave to you. There's a bit of light outside from the snow. He'll
+let in enough light to see him by as he opens the door. Don't wait. Fire
+at him as he comes in, and don't stop; go on firing at him till he
+drops. You've got six bullets. Don't you make any mistake and shoot me.
+I've had enough of that already. Now, you look carefully where I'm going
+to stand and when I'm there you put out the lamp."</p>
+
+<p>He spoke to her as a man does to his comrade.</p>
+
+<p>That she could be frightened did not seem to enter his calculations. He
+moved with cat-like stealth to the foot of the tiny staircase, and
+flattened himself against the wall. Then he stretched his left arm once
+or twice as if to make sure of it, licked the haft of the knife, and
+nodded at her.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span>She instantly put out the lamp.</p>
+
+<p>All was dark save for a faint thread of light which outlined the door.
+Across the thread something moved once&mdash;twice. The sound of picking
+ceased. Then another sound succeeded it, a new one, unlike the last, as
+if something was being gently prized open, wrenched.</p>
+
+<p>"The bar will hold," she said to herself; and then remembered for the
+first time that the rung into which the bar slid had been loose these
+many days. It was giving now.</p>
+
+<p>It had given!</p>
+
+<p>The door opened silently, and a man came in.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment she saw him clear with the accomplice snowlight behind him.
+She did not hesitate. She shot once and again. He fell, and struggled
+violently up, and she shot again. He fell, and dragged himself to his
+knees, and she shot again. Then he sank gently and slowly down, as if
+tired, with his face against the wall, and moved no more.</p>
+
+<p>The man on the stairs rushed out and looked through the open door.</p>
+
+<p>"By G&mdash;&mdash;! he was single-handed," he said.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>Then he stooped over the prostrate man, and turned him over on his
+back.</p>
+
+<p>"Dead!" he said, chuckling. "Well done, missus! Stone dead!"</p>
+
+<p>He was masked.</p>
+
+<p>The dirty left hand tore the mask callously off the grey face.</p>
+
+<p>The woman had drawn near, and looked over his shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know him?" said the man.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment she did not answer, and the pistol which had done its work
+so well dropped noisily out of her palsied hand.</p>
+
+<p>"He is a stranger to me," she said, looking fixedly at her husband's
+fading face.</p>
+
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>
+<a name="summer" id="summer"></a><big>Saint Luke's Summer</big><br />
+<br />
+<em>IN TWO PARTS</em></h2>
+
+
+<h3>PART I</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When the world's asleep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I awake and weep,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Deeply sighing, say,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">"Come, O break of day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lead my feet in my beloved's way."<br /></span>
+</div>
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Margaret L. Woods</span>.<br /></p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noi"><span class="smcap">When</span> first I knew Aunt Emmy I suppose she was about twenty-eight. I was
+ten, and I thought her old, but still an agreeable companion, infinitely
+pleasanter than her father and her brother, with whom she lived. She was
+not my real aunt, but her father was my great-uncle, and I always called
+her Aunt Emmy. Great-uncle Thomas and Uncle Tom were persons to be
+avoided, stout, heavy, bullet-headed, bull-necked, throat-clearing men,
+loud nose-blowers, loud soup-eaters, who reeked of tobacco when it <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>was
+my horrid duty to kiss them, and who addressed me in jocular terms when
+they remembered my existence, of which I was always loth to remind them.
+With these two horrors, whom she loved, Aunt Emmy lived. She was wrapped
+up in them. I have actually seen her kiss Uncle Thomas when it was not
+necessary, when he was asleep; and she admired Uncle Tom very much too,
+though she seldom kissed him, I believe by his wish. He used to say
+something about sister's kisses being like cold veal. I don't suppose he
+invented that himself. He was always picking up things like that out of
+a rose-coloured paper, and firing them off as his own. Uncle Tom was
+tall and portly, and a wag out of office hours, with a moustache that,
+in spite of all his efforts, would not turn up, but insisted on making a
+melancholy inner semicircle just a size smaller than the rubicund circle
+of his face. How I hated kindly, vulgar Uncle Tom! I used to pray that
+he might die before the holidays. But he never did. I see now that Uncle
+Tom was far, far worse than Uncle Thomas, who had had a stroke, and was
+a kind of furious invalid who could not speak clearly, or eat anything
+except <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>things that were bad for him. But when I was a child, and first
+began to spend my holidays in Pembridge Square, I regarded them both
+with the same repulsion.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Emmy was different. I know now that she must have been a remarkably
+pretty woman, but I did not notice that at the time. But a faint,
+indefinable fragrance seemed to envelop her. I loved to stroke her soft
+white hand, and to turn the emerald ring on her third finger, and to
+lean against her soft shoulder. Aunt Emmy's cheek was very soft too, and
+so was her full, silky hair, which she wore parted all her life, though
+it was never the fashion to do so that I can remember, though I am told
+it is now the <em>dernier cri</em> among the <em>d&eacute;butantes</em>. Aunt Emmy had a
+beautifully shaped head, and the whitest brow and neck that I have ever
+seen. And she had a low voice, and was very dignified. I do not think
+that she was a very wise woman, or that she had ever wrestled with the
+deeper problems of life, or that the mystery of pain had ever caused her
+faith to totter. But she was very good to live with. She devoted
+herself.</p>
+
+<p>She never had her own way in anything that I can remember. The house
+never <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>represented her. The furniture was leathern and velvet and
+stout-looking, the kind of furniture which seems to aim at being more or
+less exact moulds of the forms of middle-aged men. The armchairs were
+like commodious hip-baths in plush. Aunt Emmy and I were lost in them. I
+remember once walking as a child through the wilderness of armchairs at
+Maple's and thinking they all looked like Uncle Tom. A good deal of
+Utrecht velvet had gone to the upholstering of that house in Pembridge
+Square. It was comfortable, airless, flowerless, with gravy-coloured
+walls. As I grew older I wondered why it was all so ugly and dreary. But
+I found there were less means than I had supposed, and though the
+cooking remained excellent, flowers and new chintzes were dispensed with
+as unnecessary. Aunt Emmy opened a window surreptitiously now and then,
+but Uncle Thomas and Uncle Tom hated draughts, and they did not get off
+to sleep so quickly after dinner if the drawing-room had been aired
+during the meal. The dining-room windows were never opened at all,
+except when Uncle Thomas was too unwell to come in and Uncle Tom was
+away.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>Many men had wished to marry Aunt Emmy; not only sedentary professional
+men in long frock-coats, full to the brim of the best food, like Uncle
+Tom; but nice, lean, hungry-looking, open-air men who were majors, or
+country squires, or something interesting of that kind, whose clothes
+sat well on them, and who drew up in the Row on little skittish,
+curveting polo-ponies when Aunt Emmy and I walked there. I once asked
+her, after a certain good-looking Major Stoddart had ridden on, why she
+did not marry, but she only said reprovingly, with great dignity:</p>
+
+<p>"You don't understand such matters, my dear, or you would know that I
+could not possibly leave your Uncle Thomas."</p>
+
+<p>I was silenced. I felt with bitterness that this could not be her whole
+reason for celibacy, but that, owing to the purely superficial fact that
+my hair was still in a pigtail, she supposed I was unable to comprehend
+"lots of things" that I felt I understood perfectly, and on which my
+mind was already working with an energy which would have surprised her
+had she guessed it.</p>
+
+<p>By this time I worshipped Aunt Emmy, who represented in my somewhat
+colourless <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>orphaned existence the beautiful and romantic side of life.
+Aunt Emmy looked romantic, and the contrast between her refined, gentle
+self-effacement and the commonplace egotism of her two men was of the
+glaring nature which appeals to a young girl's imagination.</p>
+
+<p>I never forgot Major Stoddart, and when I was eighteen, and had left
+school and was living in Pembridge Square, I had the good fortune to
+come in for the remains of a scene between Aunt Emmy and Uncle Tom&mdash;the
+very day after I had turned up my hair.</p>
+
+<p>It was at luncheon, to which I came in late. Uncle Thomas was in bed
+with gout, and Uncle Tom did not consider me of enough consequence to
+matter. He had not realised even <em>now</em> that I was a grown-up woman.
+Looking back after all these years, I am not sure that he was not astute
+enough to hope that I might prove an ally.</p>
+
+<p>"What you have got to do, Emmy, is to think of the future," he was
+saying, scooping all the visible eggs out of an aspic pie. "It's no
+manner of use living only in the present. You think this comfortable
+home will go on for ever, where you have lived in luxury. It won't. It
+can't. It's not in <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>the nature of things. I saw Blackett yesterday
+(Blackett was the doctor), and he told me that if the governor's gout
+rises&mdash;and nothing he can do can keep it down&mdash;he won't last more than a
+year at longest. In the nature of things," Uncle Tom continued, bolting
+half an egg, "I shall then marry. In fact&mdash;in short&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Has Miss Collett accepted you?" said Aunt Emmy tremulously.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Collett was a person of means, and of somewhat bulged attractions
+for those who admire size, of whom Uncle Tom had often spoken as a
+deuced fine woman.</p>
+
+<p>"She has," said Uncle Tom. "I made pretty sure of that before I said
+anything myself. Nothing immediate, you understand; but eventually&mdash;when
+the old governor goes&mdash;I don't want to hurry him, Lord knows; but when
+the old man does pop off, I shall&mdash;bring her here."</p>
+
+<p>I looked round the room. I had seen Miss Collett, and the mahogany and
+ormolu dining-room, with its great gilt mirrors, seemed a fitting
+background for her.</p>
+
+<p>"I am very glad, dear Tom," said Aunt Emmy. "I think you and she will be
+very well suited, and I am sure she is very lucky, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>though I suppose I
+should never think any one <em>quite</em> good enough."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! that's all right," said Uncle Tom. "And as for the luck, it's all
+on my side."</p>
+
+<p>He did not really think this, I knew, but it was the right thing to say,
+so he said it.</p>
+
+<p>"But I am not thinking only of myself," he continued. "There is you to
+be considered."</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Emmy dropped her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"You mean, where I shall live," she said faintly.</p>
+
+<p>"Just so. Just so. You speak like a sensible woman. We must not forget
+you." Uncle Tom was becoming visibly uneasy. "And I may as well tell you
+now, old girl&mdash;prepare your mind beforehand, don't you know&mdash;that the
+governor has not been able to leave you as much as he wished, as we
+<em>both</em> wished. The truth is, what with one thing and another, and nearly
+all his capital tied up in the business, and this house on a long lease
+and expensive to keep up, with the best will in the world the poor old
+pater <em>can't</em> do much for you."</p>
+
+<p>"It will be enough," said Aunt Emmy.</p>
+
+<p>"It will be the interest of seven thousand <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>pounds at three and a half
+per cent.," said Uncle Tom brutally, because he was uncomfortable,
+"about two hundred and thirty pounds a year."</p>
+
+<p>"It will be ample," said Aunt Emmy. I knew by the faint colour in her
+cheeks that the conversation was odious to her. "Dear Tom, let us talk
+of something else."</p>
+
+<p>"We will," said Uncle Tom, with unexpected mental agility, and with the
+obvious relief of a man who has got safely round a difficult corner. "We
+will. Now, how about Colonel Stoddart?"</p>
+
+<p>My heart beat suddenly. I was beginning to see life&mdash;at last.</p>
+
+<p>"There is nothing to say about him," said Aunt Emmy.</p>
+
+<p>"A good chap, and a gentlemanly chap," said Uncle Tom urbanely, leaning
+back in his chair. "Eton, the 'varsity, and all that sort of thing.
+Quite one of ourselves. Old family, and a warm man. And suitable in age.
+<em>My</em> age. Thirty-nine. (Uncle Tom was really forty-one.) You're no
+chicken yourself, you know, Emmy. Thirty-eight, though I own you don't
+look it, my dear. Well, what's the matter with Colonel Stoddart, I
+should like to know?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>"Nothing."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I'm glad to hear it, for he tells me you refused him again only
+last week. Now, look here. One moment, please. Don't speak. I call it
+Providence, downright Providence," and Uncle Tom rapped the table with a
+thick finger. "And yet you won't look at him. I don't say marry him out
+of hand. Of course," Uncle Tom added hurriedly, "you can't leave the old
+pater while he is above ground. There's no question of that. But I <em>do</em>
+say, Give the fellow a chance. He's been dangling after you for years.
+Tell him that some day&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Emmy rose from the table, and laid down her napkin.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, look here, old girl," said Uncle Tom, not unkindly, "don't get
+your feathers up with me. Think better of it. You know this sort of
+first-class opportunity may not occur again. It really may not. If it
+isn't Providence, I'm sure I don't know what it is. And I believe your
+only reason for refusing him is because of Bob Kingston. Now, don't fly
+in the face of Providence just out of a bit of rotten sentiment which
+you ought to be ashamed of at your age."</p>
+
+<p>My brain reeled. I had never heard of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>Bob Kingston. I said "Good God!"
+to myself, not because it was natural to me to use such an expression,
+but because I felt it was suitable to the occasion and to a person whose
+hair was done up.</p>
+
+<p>"Tom," said Aunt Emmy, her soft eyes blazing, "I desire that you will
+never allude to Mr. Kingston again."</p>
+
+<p>She left the room, and I did the same, with what I hope was a withering
+glance at the open-mouthed Uncle Tom, who for days afterwards
+interlarded his conversation with the refrain that he was blessed if he
+could understand women.</p>
+
+<p>But I dared not follow Aunt Emmy to her little sitting-room at the top
+of the house. She who was almost never alone, clung, I knew, to that
+tiny refuge, and it was an understood thing between us that I might
+creep in and sit with her a little after tea, but not before.</p>
+
+<p>So I raged up and down the empty gilded and mirrored drawing-room,
+finding myself quite unable to reconcile the situation with my faith in
+a beneficent Deity; and then consoled myself by chronicling my tottering
+faith in my diary. I wrote a diary until I married. Then, I suppose, I
+became <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>more interested in life than in recording my own feelings. At
+any rate, I discontinued it.</p>
+
+<p>At last, when Aunt Emmy did not come down for tea, I took her a cup.</p>
+
+<p>She was sitting in a low chair with her back to the light. I could see
+that she had been crying, but she was quite calm. She had a suspiciously
+clean pocket-handkerchief in her hand. Her sitting-room was a small
+north chamber under the roof, but it was the place I liked best in the
+house. On her rare expeditions abroad, before Uncle Thomas had become
+too ill to be left, she had picked up some quaint pieces of pottery and
+a few old Italian mirrors. The little white room with its pale blue
+linen coverings had an atmosphere and a refinement of its own. It was
+spring, and there was a bunch of daffodils near the open window in a
+blue-and-white oil-jar with <em>Ole Scorpio</em> on it.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Emmy drank some tea, and remarked that I made it better than she
+did.</p>
+
+<p>"Your Uncle Tom has a very kind heart," she said, looking a little
+pugnaciously at me. "It is so like him, just when he might naturally be
+taken up with his own affairs, to be anxious about me."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>We each knew the other was not deceived.</p>
+
+<p>I longed to say, "Why not marry Colonel Stoddart?"</p>
+
+<p>I had only seen him on horseback. I did not know how he looked on the
+ground, but I would have married him myself in a second if he had asked
+me, partly no doubt because he was a little like Lord K&mdash;&mdash;, the hero of
+my teens to whom I had never spoken, and partly because he was the exact
+opposite of Uncle Tom. How Miss Collett <em>could</em>! How anybody could! Yet
+Uncle Tom always talked as if he had only to choose among the flower of
+English womanhood, and the stouter and more repellent he grew the more
+communicative and conscientious he became about his fear of raising
+expectations in female bosoms which he might not be able to gratify. How
+I scorned Uncle Tom when he talked like that, knowing as I did&mdash;but
+neither he nor Aunt Emmy knew I knew (it was always like that, they
+always thought I did not know things)&mdash;knowing as I did that Miss Rose
+Delaine and Miss Wright had both refused him. I did not realise in my
+intolerant youth that the anxiety of some middle-aged bachelors still to
+appear eligible, the way their minds hover round imaginary <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>conquests,
+has its pathetic side. Looking back, I believe now that Miss Collett was
+not by any means poor Uncle Tom's first choice, but his last chance. And
+perhaps he was her last chance too.</p>
+
+<p>"I know father is dying. I have known it some time," said Aunt Emmy, and
+her face became convulsed. "He spoke so beautifully about it only
+yesterday. And I have known for a long time that Tom and Miss Collett
+were likely to come to an arrangement."</p>
+
+<p>She had not a grain of irony in her, but no word could have been more
+applicable to Uncle Tom and Miss Collett than an arrangement. One felt
+that each had measured the other by avoirdupois weight, and had found
+the balance even.</p>
+
+<p>"Is Uncle Thomas opposed to your marrying?" I ventured to say, with the
+tact of eighteen.</p>
+
+<p>"No, my dear; that is what is so wonderful. He was so dreadfully against
+it long ago&mdash;once&mdash;indeed, until quite lately. But it's no use speaking
+of that. But now he is quite anxious for it, so long as I don't leave
+him. He wants me to promise Colonel Stoddart, but to tell him that I
+could not <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>leave my father during his lifetime, which of course I
+couldn't."</p>
+
+<p>"Won't Colonel Stoddart wait?" I said, waxing bolder. I had slipped down
+on the floor beside her and was stroking her white hand. I hoped I was
+saying the right thing. I was adoringly fond of her, but I was also
+eighteen, and this was my first introduction to a real romance. I was
+feverishly anxious to rise to the occasion, to have nothing to regret in
+retrospect.</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay he would. I think he said something about it," she said
+apathetically.</p>
+
+<p>I remembered a beautiful sentence I had read in a novel about
+confidences being mutual, and I said reproachfully, "Aunt Emmy, I have
+told you <em>all</em> about Lord K&mdash;&mdash;; won't you tell me, just me, no one
+else&mdash;about Mr. Kingston?"</p>
+
+<p>And she told me. I think it was a relief to speak to some one. I held my
+cheek against her hand all the time. It seemed that a sort of demigod of
+the name of Kingston had alighted in her life when she was nineteen (I
+felt with a pang that I had still a whole year to wait) and he was
+twenty-one. Aunt Emmy waxed boldly eloquent in her description of his
+unique and heroic <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>character, shyly eloquent in her dispassionate
+indication of his almost terrifying beauty.</p>
+
+<p>I think Aunt Emmy became a girl in her teens again for a few minutes,
+carried away by her memory, and by the idolising sympathy of the other
+girl in her teens at her feet in a seventh heaven at being a confidant.
+But in one sense, on the sentimental plane, she had never ceased to be a
+girl. She and I viewed the situation almost from the same standpoint.</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Emmy, <em>was</em> he tall?"</p>
+
+<p>"He was, my love."</p>
+
+<p>"And slender?"</p>
+
+<p>My whole life hung in the balance. I had all a young girl's repulsion
+towards stout men.</p>
+
+<p>"He was thin and wiry, and very athletic, a great rider."</p>
+
+<p>I gave a sigh of relief.</p>
+
+<p>"Did his&mdash;it does not really matter" (I felt the essentials were all
+right and that I must not ask too much of life)&mdash;"but did his hair
+curl?"</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Emmy drew out of her bosom a little locket, hanging by a thin gold
+chain, with a forget-me-not in blue enamel on it, and opened it. Inside
+was a curl of chestnut <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>hair. It was not tied in the shape of a curl. It
+was a real curl.</p>
+
+<p>I looked at it with awe.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Emmy answered my highest expectations at every point. I had never
+seen that enamel locket before. Yet I divined at once that she had worn
+it under her clothes&mdash;as indeed she had, day and night for how many
+years! I felt that I would not care how it ended, happily or unhappily,
+if only I might have a romance and a locket like that.</p>
+
+<p>"He gave it me when we parted eighteen years ago," she said, her voice
+quivering a little.</p>
+
+<p>I knew well that lovers always did part. They invariably severed,
+"severed for years." I was not the least surprised to hear he was gone,
+for I was already learning "In the Gloaming," and trilled it forth in a
+thin, throaty voice which Aunt Emmy said was remarkably like what hers
+had been at my age.</p>
+
+<p>"Why were you parted?" I asked.</p>
+
+<p>"He had not any money, and he had his way to make. And he had an uncle
+out there who wanted him to go to him. It was a good opening, though he
+would not have <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>taken it if it had not been for me, for though he was so
+fond of horses he was not the kind of person for that kind of life,
+sheep and things. He cared so much for books and poetry. And your Uncle
+Thomas was very much against my marrying at that time, in fact, he
+positively forbade it. You see, mother was dead, and your Uncle Thomas
+had become more dependent on me than he was quite aware until there was
+a question of my leaving him. Men are like that, my love. They need a
+woman all the time to look after them, and listen to their talk, and
+keep vexatious things away. And he was always a most tender father. He
+said he could not bear the thought of his only daughter roughing it in
+Australia. He said he would withdraw his opposition if&mdash;if&mdash;Bob (Bob was
+his name) came home with a sufficient fortune to keep me in comfort in
+England."</p>
+
+<p>"And he never did?"</p>
+
+<p>"He went out to try. I felt sure he would, and he felt sure he would. At
+twenty-two it seems as if fortunes can be made if it is really
+necessary. And I promised to wait for him, and he was to work to win
+me."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span>I could not refrain from shedding a tear. It was all so beautiful, so
+far beyond anything I could have hoped. I pressed Aunt Emmy's hand in
+silence, and she went on:</p>
+
+<p>"But there were bad seasons, and though he worked and worked, and though
+he did get on, still, you could not call it a fortune. And after five
+years had passed he wrote to say that he was making a living, and his
+uncle had taken him into partnership, and could not I come out to him.
+He had built an extra room on purpose for me. Your Uncle Thomas was
+terribly angry when the letter came, because he had always been against
+my emigrating, and he forbade any further correspondence. Men are very
+high-handed, my love, when you come to live with them. We were not
+allowed to write after that. Do you know, my dear, I became so
+distressed that I had thoughts&mdash;I actually contemplated running away to
+Australia?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! why didn't you?" I groaned. That, of course, was the obvious
+solution of the difficulty.</p>
+
+<p>"Very soon after that your Uncle Thomas had his stroke, and after that
+of course I could not leave him."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>"Could not we do it still?" I suggested. Of course I took for granted
+that I should be involved in the elopement, as the confidential friend
+who carries a little reticule with jewels in it, and sustains throughout
+the spirits of the principal eloper.</p>
+
+<p>"<em>Now!</em>" said Aunt Emmy, and for a moment a violent emotion disfigured
+her sweet face. "Now. Oh! my child, all this happened fifteen years ago,
+when you were a toddling baby."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish to Heaven I had been as old then as I am now," I said with
+clenched hands. I felt that I could have vanquished Uncle Thomas and
+Uncle Tom, and all this conspiracy against my darling Aunt Emmy's
+happiness.</p>
+
+<p>"And is he still&mdash;still&mdash;&mdash;?" I ventured.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know whether he is still&mdash;free. I have not heard from him for
+fifteen years. Uncle Thomas was very firm about the correspondence. He
+is a very decided character, especially since his stroke, and I have
+ceased to hear anything at all about him since his mother died twelve
+years ago."</p>
+
+<p>To me twelve years ago was as in the time of Noah. Yet here was Aunt
+Emmy, to whom it was all as fresh as yesterday.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>"When she died," said Aunt Emmy, "she was ill for a long time before,
+and I used to go and sit with her. She was fond of me, but she never
+quite did your Uncle Thomas justice. When she died she sent me this
+ring." She touched the beautiful emerald ring she always wore. "She said
+she had left it to him, and he had asked that she would send it to me.
+It had been her own engagement ring."</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you wear it on your engaged finger?"</p>
+
+<p>"I did at first. It was a kind of comfort to me. But Uncle Tom was
+constantly vexed with me about it. He said it might keep things off. He
+is a very practical person, Uncle Tom, a very shrewd man of business,
+I'm told. So, to please him, I wear it in the daytime on my right hand."</p>
+
+<p>By this time I was shedding tears of sheer sensibility.</p>
+
+<p>"I have thought of him day and night; there has not been a night I have
+not remembered him in my prayers for nearly twenty years. It will be
+twenty years next April. How could I begin to think of any one else
+<em>now</em>, Colonel Stoddart or any <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>one? Uncle Tom is very clever, and so is
+your Uncle Thomas, but I don't think they have ever <em>quite</em> understood
+what I feel about Mr. Kingston."</p>
+
+<p>An electric bell in a little box over the door rang in a furious manner.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Emmy was on her feet in a second, smoothing her fair hair at the
+Venetian mirror.</p>
+
+<p>"Your Uncle Thomas is awake," she said, "and is ready to be read to. He
+never likes being kept waiting."</p>
+
+<p>This seemed to be the case, for as she left the room the electric bell
+rang again more furiously than before, and I shook my fist at it.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr4" />
+
+<h3>PART II</h3>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">If some star of heaven<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Led him by at even,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">If some magic fate<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Brought him, should I wait,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or fly within and bid them close the gate?<br /></span>
+</div>
+<p class="right"><span class="smcap">Margaret L. Woods</span>.<br /></p>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noi"><span class="smcap">The</span> following year I suddenly married a soldier, the only young man I
+knew, and I knew him very slightly, and went out to India with him. I
+did not forget Aunt <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>Emmy, we corresponded regularly; but I was young
+and my life was a very full one. I had seen nothing of the world till I
+married. I had a child. The years rushed past, joyful, miserable, vivid,
+surprising, happy years, in spite of the fact that my husband was not
+remarkably like Lord K&mdash;&mdash;in appearance, and not in the least like the
+"plaister saint" with whom I had hurried to the altar on such slight
+provocation.</p>
+
+<p>During these years Uncle Thomas died, and Uncle Tom married, and Aunt
+Emmy wrote to me that she had taken a little cottage in Abinger Forest
+against her brother's advice, and how, in spite of his opposition&mdash;how
+much it must have cost her to oppose him&mdash;he had forgiven her and
+presented her with the most expensive mahogany bedstead and bedding that
+Maple could supply&mdash;"so like him."</p>
+
+<p>I wondered vaguely once or twice whether there had been any question of
+her marrying Mr. Kingston, but there was no mention of him in her
+letters, and I did not like to ask. I knew that she was very poor, but
+presently my heart was gladdened by hearing from her that a distant
+relation had left her a legacy, and that she was now comfortably off.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>Then suddenly our life was darkened. Our child died. I struggled with
+my grief, became ill, and was sent home. Aunt Emmy urged me to go
+straight to her. She and Uncle Tom were my only near relations in
+England. He also offered to take me in for a time. He wrote with real
+kindness. He had a child himself. And his wife wrote too. But I need
+hardly say that I took my sore heart and my broken health straight to
+Aunt Emmy.</p>
+
+<p>It was late in August when I arrived. The honeysuckle was still in bloom
+on Aunt Emmy's white cottage, standing in its little orchard in a
+clearing in the forest. She was waiting for me in the porch, and I ran
+feebly to her up the narrow brick path between the tall clumps of
+hollyhocks and Michaelmas daisies; and she drew me into the little
+parlour and held me closely to her. And the years rolled away, and I was
+a child again, and she was comforting me for my broken doll.</p>
+
+<p>With the egotism of youth I fear I had not given a thought to Aunt
+Emmy's new home until I entered it. I knew that she was happy in it, and
+that it had once been a gamekeeper's cottage, but that was about <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>all.
+Nowadays every one has a cottage&mdash;it is the fashion; and literary men
+and women, tired of adulatory crowds, weary of their own greatness, flee
+from the metropolis, and write exquisite articles about their gardens,
+and the peace that lurks under a thatched roof, and the simple life,
+lived far from shrilling crowds but near to nature, and <em>very</em> near to
+the Deity. Fortunate Deity!</p>
+
+<p>But in the days of which I am writing cottages and their floral and
+spiritual appurtenances were not the rage.</p>
+
+<p>I never realised until I saw Aunt Emmy in a home of her own how much
+taste she possessed, or how pretty a cottage could be. It did not try to
+look like a house. It was just a cottage, standing amid its apple-trees,
+now red with apples, with its old well half hidden in clumps of
+lavender. The little dwelling itself, with its low ceilings and long oak
+beams and dim colouring and quaint furniture, had a certain austere
+charm, a quiet dignity of its own. The sunny air came softly in through
+wide-open latticed windows, bringing with it the scent of mignonette.
+There had never been a breath of air in the house in Pembridge Square.
+<em>Ole Scorpio</em>, that friend of my youth, looked peaceful and <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>complacent
+in a little recess in which his soft colouring and perfect figure showed
+to great advantage against a white-washed wall in shadow.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Emmy herself, in a gown of some dull white material, with a little
+grey in her rippling, parted hair, seemed at home for the first time in
+her life. She looked a shade older, a shade thinner in the face, her
+sweet eyes a little sunk inwards. But her tall figure had retained all
+its old soft dignity and beauty of line. Looking at her as she poured
+out my tea for me, I suddenly felt years older than she.</p>
+
+<p>This bewildering impression deepened as the days went on, and a
+protecting, wondering compassion became part of my affection for her.</p>
+
+<p>During the years I had spent in India I had seen a good deal of both
+sides of that motley, amazing fabric which we call life. I had felt the
+throbbing of its great loom. I had touched with my own shrinking hand
+the closeness of the texture, had marked the interweaving of the alien
+strands, had marvelled and been dismayed, had marvelled and been awed,
+had seen the dye of my own blood on one dim thread, the gold of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>my own
+joy on another. The sheltered life had not been mine.</p>
+
+<p>But Aunt Emmy had not moved mentally by a hair's-breadth. All her
+expansion, if expansion it could be called, had taken form in her house
+and garden. I had not been a week under her roof before I found that Mr.
+Kingston occupied exactly the same position in her life as he had done
+in Pembridge Square. She had brought down her romance to adorn her new
+home just as she had brought down <em>Ole Scorpio</em>, in cotton wool. Each
+had their niche. Perhaps it was unreasonable in me to expect to find her
+different. I had not expected it. But I had become such a totally
+different person myself that her attitude to life, which had appeared to
+me so romantic and natural when I was eighteen, now appeared
+irremediably pathetic, visionary, out of touch with reality. Perhaps,
+however, it was I who had become disillusioned and matter-of-fact. I saw
+with a kind of pitying wonder that her youthful romance still supplied
+to her, as it had done since she was nineteen, a certain atmosphere of
+pensive, prayerful resignation, a background for ethereal day-dreams.
+Her peaceful days were passed in <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span>a kind of picturesque haze, like the
+mist that, seeming in itself a rosy light, sometimes veils a tranquil
+September sunset.</p>
+
+<p>She was evidently very happy, but it was equally evident that she did
+not know it. From words she let drop now and then I saw that she still
+imagined she was bearing the heavy cross of her mutilated youth. But to
+me it seemed as if some tender hand had lifted it from her shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Emmy," I said, yielding to an ignoble curiosity in the second week
+of my visit, as we were picking the lavender together, "when Uncle
+Thomas died, I had thought I should hear of your marrying Mr. Kingston."</p>
+
+<p>"I also hoped it, my dear," said Aunt Emmy, snipping the lavender into a
+little basket, held in a loose white-gloved hand.</p>
+
+<p>I dared not look at her.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Kingston has not written," she said after a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"But did you write and tell him you were free, and still in the same
+mind?"</p>
+
+<p>"I did not. I thought it might be awkward for him in case he were&mdash;after
+all these years&mdash;contemplating some other possibility. I did not want to
+embarrass him. But your <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>Uncle Thomas's death was in all the papers, and
+many of his relations are acquainted with us. I have no doubt the news
+reached him."</p>
+
+<p>Of course it had. I had felt that it was hardly to be expected that Mr.
+Kingston should have kept after twenty years, more than twenty years,
+the same vivid memory of his early love that she had done. His silence
+proved that he had not done so. I looked at Aunt Emmy. How pretty and
+graceful and remote she looked, and how young her face was under the
+shadow of her charming garden hat, tied with a soft black ribbon under
+her chin. As long as she was not confronted with any one really young,
+she had no look of age. It was difficult to believe that she was
+forty-four. And he must be forty-six. It was too late. Middle-aged
+marriages are risky affairs enough, when the Rubicon of forty is within
+sight. But when it has been passed&mdash;&mdash;!</p>
+
+<p>As I looked at her I hoped with all my heart that he would not come back
+to disturb her peace of mind and dislocate her life afresh.</p>
+
+<p>But, astonishing to say, he did come back; and there was some adequate
+reason, I have <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>forgotten exactly what, for his not coming earlier. At
+any rate, it was adequate.</p>
+
+<p>When I came down to breakfast a few days later, Aunt Emmy held a letter
+towards me with a shaking hand. Her lips trembled. She could not
+articulate.</p>
+
+<p>"Am I really to read it?"</p>
+
+<p>She nodded.</p>
+
+<p>It was a charming letter, written in a delicate, refined hand. Mr.
+Kingston had not heard of her father's death till the day before he
+wrote. He had been away up-country for a year, broken shoulder, etc. He
+was starting for England at once. He should travel almost as quickly as
+his letter. He should present himself at Pembridge Square and learn her
+address directly he landed. His ship was the <em>Sultana</em>.</p>
+
+<p>I took up the morning paper.</p>
+
+<p>"The <em>Sultana</em> arrived yesterday," I said.</p>
+
+<p>I looked at the envelope. It was directed on from Pembridge Square.</p>
+
+<p>"Tom will give him my address," said Aunt Emmy faintly. "I wonder how he
+knows I am not living there now. <em>He will&mdash;arrive here&mdash;to-day.</em>"</p>
+
+<p>She looked straight in front of her through the open windows to the
+hollyhocks basking <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>in the still September sunshine. A radiance lit up
+her face, like that which perhaps shone on Christian's when at last
+across the river he saw the pearl gates of the New Jerusalem.</p>
+
+<p>"At last!" she said. "After all these years! After all these dreadful,
+dreadful years!"</p>
+
+<p>An unbearable pain went through me. It was not new to me. I had known it
+once before, when I had seen my child sicken. Why did it return now?</p>
+
+<p>The radiance passed. A pitiful trembling shook her like a leaf. Her eyes
+turned helplessly to mine, frightened and dimmed.</p>
+
+<p>"I forgot I am an old woman," she said.</p>
+
+<p>I kissed her hand. I told her that she was handsomer than any one. She
+was very dignified and gentle.</p>
+
+<p>"You are very kind to me, my dear, and it is sweet of you to feel as you
+do. I believe, as you say, that I am still nice-looking. But the fact
+remains that it is nearly twenty-five years since we have seen each
+other. I was nineteen then. And oh! I suppose I ought not to say it, but
+I <em>was</em> pretty. People turned to look at me in the street. And now I am
+forty-four."</p>
+
+<p>"But he is older than you, isn't he?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>"Two years. What is two years! We were the same age when we were young.
+But a man of forty-six is younger than a woman of forty-four."</p>
+
+<p>I was silent. There was no contradicting that obvious fact.</p>
+
+<p>"He will probably come by the 4.12 train," said Aunt Emmy, rising. "If
+you don't mind, as there are so many preparations to make, I will leave
+you to finish your breakfast. I have had mine."</p>
+
+<p>She left the room, and I stared at her empty plate. I was not hungry
+either. I was frightened for my dear Aunt Emmy.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, she was so yielding, so selfless, so absolutely uncritical,
+that if any woman could marry late she was the woman. She could have
+lived with a monster of egotism without finding it out. Had she not
+devoted herself to two such monsters most of her life? And perhaps Mr.
+Kingston was not a monster. Aunt Emmy arranged the flowers early as she
+only could arrange them. I was only allowed to fetch the water and clean
+the glasses. A certain pony-cart was sent to Muddington with the cook in
+it to buy a tongue, and a Stilton cheese, and a little barrel of
+anchovies, and various other <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span>condiments which Uncle Tom approved. Uncle
+Tom's tastes represented those of his whole sex for Aunt Emmy.</p>
+
+<p>I insisted on her eating some luncheon, but this was barely possible, as
+in the midst of it a telegram was brought in from Mr. Kingston to say he
+should arrive by the 4.12 train.</p>
+
+<p>After luncheon Aunt Emmy went to her room. I followed her there half an
+hour later to give her a note, and found her standing in the middle of
+the floor, looking at all her gowns laid out on chairs.</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid you can only think me very silly, my dear," she said, with
+a sort of humble dignity. "I wished to consult you, but I did not like
+to; but as you <em>are</em> here, and if you don't mind my asking you&mdash;a
+relation can often judge best what is advantageous&mdash;which gown <em>do</em> you
+think suits me best, the grey voile, or the lilac delaine, or the white
+serge?"</p>
+
+<p>I decided on the white serge, and long before the dogcart ordered to
+meet him could possibly arrive, Aunt Emmy was sitting, paler than I had
+ever seen her, beside a wood fire in the parlour in the soft white gown
+I loved her best in, pretending to read. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>She had lit the fire, though
+we were not in the habit of having it till later in the day, because she
+thought Australians might feel chilly.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know how it is," she said at last, laying down the book, "but I
+seem quite blind. I can't see the print."</p>
+
+<p>I could not see the needle-work I was bending over either. But that was
+because senseless tears kept on rising to my eyes, do what I would. Aunt
+Emmy's eyes had no tears in them.</p>
+
+<p>"It is very petty of me, I know, but I do hope he has not grown stout,"
+she said presently. "But of course it is to be expected, and if it is so
+I must try to bear it. It could not make any <em>real</em> difference. Your
+Uncle Tom is the same age, and of course he is not&mdash;he really is <em>not</em>
+as thin as he was."</p>
+
+<p>"Was he ever thin?"</p>
+
+<p>"N-no. But Mr. Kingston was, at least, not thin, but very spare and
+agile-looking."</p>
+
+<p>At last the sound of wheels reached us. Aunt Emmy clasped the arms of
+her chair convulsively.</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay he has not come," she said almost inaudibly.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>The wheels stopped. I went into the tiny hall.</p>
+
+<p>A tall, spare, distinguished-looking man, with weather-beaten face and
+peculiarly intent, hawklike eyes, was at the gate, and I went out to
+greet him. As he took off his cap his crisp hair showed a little grey in
+it. He was delightful to look at.</p>
+
+<p>I don't know what I said, but I mumbled something as I shook hands with
+him, and pointed to the parlour door. He nodded gravely and went in,
+hitting his tall head against the low lintel. Then he closed the door
+gently. And I went to my room, and locked myself in.</p>
+
+<p>When I went into the parlour an hour later at tea-time I found them
+sitting one on each side of the fire. I wished with all my heart that
+they could have been sitting together at this moment after the marriage
+of their daughter. Both had cried a little, I could see. He certainly
+had. They got up when I came in, and stood together on the hearth, a
+splendid-looking couple, dwarfing the white room with its low ceiling.</p>
+
+<p>What they must have been in youth I could well imagine.</p>
+
+<p>I was reintroduced to him, and I am not <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>sure, though they were both
+smiling at each other, that they were not relieved by my entrance with
+the tea. He handed her her cup and waited on her with the deferential
+awkwardness of a man who has not been in women's society for years.</p>
+
+<p>"I am a rough fellow, Emmy," he said once or twice. But he was not
+rough. He was charming. He did not fit in at all with my preconceived
+ideas of "Colonials." And it was quickly evident to me that his tender
+admiration of Aunt Emmy still survived. I was partly reassured. Perhaps,
+after all, he had brought happiness with him.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr5" />
+
+<p>Saint Luke's summer was glorious that year, and it was nowhere more
+wonderful than in the forest. One still golden day followed another, the
+gossamer-threaded sunshine flooding the glades of yellowing and amber
+trees, spilling itself headlong amid the rusting bracken, and losing
+itself in the tiny foliage of the whortleberry, which, all its little
+oval leaves, ruddy as a robin's breast, was imitating the trees, like a
+miniature autumn forest underfoot.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Emmy and Mr. Kingston walked daily in the marvel of the forest, and
+it <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>seemed as if the autumn sun shone kindly on them. Sometimes on her
+return there was a bewildered look in her face which I did not
+understand, and I wondered whether indeed all was well; but I put the
+thought away, for his love for her was beyond the possibility of doubt,
+and had not her love for him coloured her whole life?</p>
+
+<p>And yet&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Once I saw him take up <em>Ole Scorpio</em> with a careful hand, and then
+replace it in its recess with its spout pointing towards the room.
+Presently, when he had gone, she gently moved it back to its former
+position, exactly <em>en profile</em>, and the senseless idea darted through my
+mind as I watched her do it that if her romance were moved from its
+niche, she would instinctively wish to do the same, to readjust it to
+the angle from which she had looked at it so long.</p>
+
+<p>As the days passed and the first shyness between them wore off, the
+primitive life he had led for so many years showed itself in a certain
+slowness of speech, a disinclination to make acquaintance with the
+neighbours, and an increasing tendency to long, tranquil silences with a
+pipe in the garden. But, wonderful to say, it had not apparently
+<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>blunted him mentally. And he actually cared for books. Unfortunately,
+there were almost no books in the cottage. How he had kept it I cannot
+imagine, but he certainly had retained a quickness of apprehension which
+made him half-unconsciously adapt himself to Aunt Emmy and her little
+habits in a way that astonished me. It was she who showed herself less
+perceptive as regarded him. But this she never divined. She had got it
+rooted into her small, graceful head that he would naturally wish to
+converse principally about his farm. And, in spite of scant
+encouragement, she continually "showed an interest," as she herself
+expressed it, in sheep, and water creeks, and snakes, and bush fires. He
+was always perfectly good-natured, and ready to answer; but I sometimes
+wondered how it was she did not realise that she asked the same
+questions over and over again.</p>
+
+<p>"Uncle Bob does not seem to care to talk much about his farming," I
+ventured one day. "Perhaps he wishes to forget it for a little while."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear," said Aunt Emmy rebukingly, "when you are as old as I am, you
+will know that the only thing men really care <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>to talk of <em>is</em> their
+business. My dear father always talked of stocks, and shares, and&mdash;and
+bonuses. He said I could not understand about them, as indeed I could
+not, but it interested me very much to listen. And your Uncle Tom, as
+you may remember"&mdash;I did indeed&mdash;"did the same. It is natural that Mr.
+Kingston's mind should dwell on agricultural subjects."</p>
+
+<p>Presently wicked men began to mow the bracken with great scythes, and to
+carry it away in carts which tilted and elbowed their way down the
+mossy, heather-fringed tracks. Here and there the down-stretched arms of
+the firs caught the topmost fronds of bracken and swept them from their
+murdered brethren, and held them precariously suspended, only to drop
+them when the first wind went by.</p>
+
+<p>I left the cottage for a week to visit my husband's relations, and when
+I returned the forest was bare. An indefinable sadness seemed to brood
+over it, and to have reached Aunt Emmy as well. Mr. Kingston had also
+been away to visit his relations, and had returned, and was staying at
+the little inn on the edge of the forest, from which he could more
+readily run up daily to town <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>to have his shoulder massaged, which still
+troubled him.</p>
+
+<p>Aunt Emmy told me all this in her garden, where she was dividing her
+white pinks. I knew she intended to make a fresh border, but the action
+filled me with consternation.</p>
+
+<p>"But Aunt Emmy," I said (the foolish words jolted out of me by sudden
+anxiety), "will you&mdash;will you be <em>here</em> next spring?"</p>
+
+<p>I could have struck myself the moment the words were out of my mouth.</p>
+
+<p>The trowel dropped from her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no!" she said confusedly. "Neither I shall. I was forgetting. I
+shall be in Australia."</p>
+
+<p>She looked round the little garden which she had made with her own
+hands, and back to the white cottage, up to its eyes in Michaelmas
+daisies, which had become such an ideal home, and in which, poor dear!
+she had taken a deeper root than she knew, and a bewildered pain passed
+for a moment over her face. It was as if she had been walking in her
+sleep, and had suddenly come in contact with some obstacle, and had
+waked up and was not for the first moment certain of her surroundings.</p>
+
+<p>"He is more to me than any cottage," <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span>she said, recovering herself with
+a little gasp. "I had hoped perhaps he would have come and lived here,
+and let me take care of him, after all his years of hard work. But it
+was a selfish idea. He has told me that he cannot leave his work or his
+uncle, who has been so kind to him, and who is very infirm
+now&mdash;partially paralysed, and needing the greatest care. I shall&mdash;let
+the cottage."</p>
+
+<p>"What is the place in Australia like?" I said with duplicity, for of
+course I knew by this time exactly what it was like. But I wanted to
+change her thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>She led the way indoors, and pointed to a sheaf of unmounted
+photographs. I took them up, and examined them as if for the first time.
+My heart sank as I looked at the inoffensive figure of the poor old
+uncle in the verandah, whom Aunt Emmy was of course to nurse. The house
+which that hard-working old man had built himself stood nakedly upon a
+piece of naked ground. There was not a tree near it. Beyond were the
+great cattle-yards and farm buildings, and what looked like an endless,
+shrubless field. And on the right was the new two-windowed room, no
+longer very new, which Mr. Kingston had built seventeen years ago <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>for
+Aunt Emmy. I knew how much labour that hideous addition meant, which was
+a sort of degraded cousin many times removed from the pert villa
+drawing-rooms, peering over portugal laurels on the road to Muddington.
+I knew that Mr. Kingston had papered and painted that room with his own
+hands. I knew also, but Aunt Emmy did not, that he had repapered and
+repainted it several times while it waited for her. And yet by no
+wildest effort of the imagination could I picture Aunt Emmy living
+there, though her heart had been there all her life.</p>
+
+<p>A sudden rage rose within me against the deceased Uncle Thomas, and
+against this other decrepit uncle, waiting to be nursed.</p>
+
+<p>I laid down the photographs, and went a turn in the forest, leaving Aunt
+Emmy sitting idle in her gardening gloves. My foolish words had stopped
+her happy activity. I was angry with myself, with Fate, with Australia,
+with everything, and not least with Mr. Kingston.</p>
+
+<p>Everywhere in the bare glades little orphaned families of bracken held
+their arched necks a few inches from the ground. Even in their
+bereavement they too had <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>remembered that it was autumn, and their tiny
+curled fronds protecting their downcast faces were golden and ruddy. As
+I turned a corner I suddenly caught sight of Mr. Kingston a few paces
+from me, looking earnestly at one of these little groups. I did not want
+to meet him just then, and I half turned aside; but he had already seen
+me, and he gave a gesture of welcome, and I had to stop.</p>
+
+<p>My anger subsided somewhat as he came up. He looked harassed, and as if
+he had not slept.</p>
+
+<p>"And so you are back," he said. "I was just wishing that you were at the
+moment I caught sight of you. If you think it possible that a word or
+two could be dragged out of such a silent enigmatical person as
+yourself, I should like to have a little talk with you."</p>
+
+<p>I could not help liking him. His keen eyes were kindly, though his face
+was grave.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want to talk about?" I said bluntly.</p>
+
+<p>"What an unnecessary question. What can I want to talk about except
+Emmy?"</p>
+
+<p>I was silent. I felt more uncomfortable about the whole affair than I
+had done yet, and that was saying a good deal.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>Mr. Kingston led the way down a little track to a place where the trees
+grew so close together that the murderous scythes had not been able to
+get in among them. Here the bracken had been unmolested, and was going
+unharassed through all its most gorgeous pageant. Great fronds of ivory
+white, of palest gold, of brownest gold, of reddest gold upreared
+themselves among the purple waves of the heather, wearing the stray
+flecks of the sunshine like jewels on their breasts. We sat down on a
+fallen tree round which the bracken had wrapped its splendour.</p>
+
+<p>"How extraordinarily beautiful it is!" he said, more to himself than to
+me, putting out his long, artistic hand, gnarled and hardened with work,
+and touching a pale frond with a reverent finger. "I am glad to have
+seen it once more. It is twenty-five years since I have seen an English
+autumn."</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment's silence, and then he went on without any change of
+tone:</p>
+
+<p>"And you are thinking, you sad-faced, downright little woman who are so
+afraid that I am going to make your dear Aunt Emmy unhappy, you are
+thinking that you did not take a precarious seat on this trunk in <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span>order
+to hear a possible enemy descant on the beauties of nature."</p>
+
+<p>I was astonished at his penetration. My own experience, gleaned entirely
+from the genial little egotist whose wife I was, had taught me that men
+never noticed anything. I had had no idea that I had shown the fear of
+him which I felt.</p>
+
+<p>"And yet you are my only possible ally," he went on, "my only helper, if
+you are willing to help me, in the somewhat difficult task which I have
+in hand."</p>
+
+<p>"You mean, marrying my aunt?," I said.</p>
+
+<p>"No," he said, looking at me with a kindness which made me ready to sink
+into the ground with shame. "I can do <em>that</em> without assistance. Emmy,
+God bless her! has been ready to marry me any time these twenty-five
+years, and, poor soul, she is ready now. She has not the faintest idea
+what she would be in for if she did, but she is ready to risk it."</p>
+
+<p>I was silent. I was bewildered for one thing, and I did not want "to put
+my foot in it" again immediately for another. And there was really no
+need for me to speak, for he went on slowly, looking full at me:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>"What I have to do, if I can, is to save Emmy's romance for her."</p>
+
+<p>I could only stare at him.</p>
+
+<p>"For twenty-five years," he went on, "that dear woman has lived on her
+love for me. It has coloured her whole life. I know what I know. It has
+been her support in all the endless years she nursed that cruel old
+egoist her father, who would not let her marry me, when we <em>could</em> have
+married, seventeen years ago. But it is not <em>me</em> that she wants now,
+though she did want me for many years; it is the thought of me&mdash;if you
+can't understand without my saying it, I can't make you&mdash;it's her
+romance which is important to her, and which I want her to keep, at all
+costs."</p>
+
+<p>"My darling Emmy," he said, and there were tears in his hawk eyes, "the
+most unselfish and devoted, the sweetest, the humblest, and the most
+beautiful creature I have ever known. And she has given up everything
+out of constancy to me, home, children, everything; no, not for me
+exactly, but for a dream, for an ideal, for something of which I was to
+her the symbol, but which I no more resemble than I resemble that frond
+of bracken."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>He turned his face away.</p>
+
+<p>"It would have been all right if they would have let us marry when we
+were both still young, and I had got a home together," he went on; "but
+now it would be inhuman to root her out of her little home and drag her
+across the world, and try to transplant her into my rough place. How
+rough it is I see, now that I have been back in England. I did not know
+it was so uncouth when I lived in it. It's the only life I'm accustomed
+to, the only life I'm fit for now, though it was sorely against the
+grain at first. I don't think I could have stuck to it, except for the
+hope of marrying her some day. But I see now the only life I'm fit for
+is not fit for her. And I can't give it up. I can't desert my poor old
+uncle, who is growing infirm and depends on me entirely."</p>
+
+<p>"Why did you come back?" I groaned.</p>
+
+<p>"I came back," he said, "because I have cared for her and worked for her
+all my life. And because I heard that her beast of a father had left her
+almost penniless, and that fat Tom had married and turned her out. And
+until I saw her again from day to day I did not realise the nature of
+her feeling for me. I came back to offer her what I had, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>not that it
+was much, hoping to marry her and take her back with me.... But that is
+not what would make my Emmy happy <em>now</em>. What she needs is to go on in
+this perfect little doll's house, this little haven, thinking of me, and
+praying for me, and tending her flowers, and mourning like a dove in its
+tree because we are parted."</p>
+
+<p>It was exactly what Aunt Emmy needed. I could not have put it into
+words, but this strange man had done so.</p>
+
+<p>"You will not speak," he said, "but you agree with me for all that. I
+had to make sure you agreed. Your confirmation is all I wanted, and now
+I have it."</p>
+
+<p>It was not that I would not speak. I could not speak. I was thinking of
+the room in that horrid wooden house which he had built for her.</p>
+
+<p>After a few minutes he went on quietly:</p>
+
+<p>"I think the thing for me to do is to be ruined, only partially, of
+course, not enough to make her miserable, and to hurry back to Australia
+without her at once for the time being, and from there to write
+regularly by every mail, nice letters (they cannot be forbidden now);
+but never to come back any <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>more. A bank has just failed in Australia in
+which I had money. The situation can be arranged."</p>
+
+<p>I looked away from him.</p>
+
+<p>"I owe it to her," he said.</p>
+
+
+<hr />
+
+
+<h2><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span>
+<a name="study" id="study"></a><big>The Understudy</big></h2>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The only form of human love that atrophies the heart is the love
+of self.</span></div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noi"><span class="smcap">Marion Wright</span> sat in the centre seat of the third row of the stalls,
+shivering in spite of her sables. It was the dress rehearsal of her
+first play, that play on which she had spent herself to the verge of
+mental bankruptcy.</p>
+
+<p>The nauseating presentiment of failure, the distaste and scorn of her
+own work, were upon her, which the artist never escapes, which return as
+acutely after twenty successes as in the hours of suspense before the
+first essay. Marion's surroundings were not of a nature to reassure her.
+To her unaccustomed eyes the empty, dimly lit theatre, swathed and
+bandaged in dust-sheets, looked ominously dreary. Had any one ever
+laughed in this shrouded desert? The long lines of <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>stalls huddled under
+their wrinkled coverings stretched before and behind her. The boxes were
+shapeless holes of pallid grime. It was as if a London fog had trailed
+its dingy veil over everything. There was a fog outside as well, and the
+few electric lights which had been turned up peered blurred and yellow.
+An immense ladder, three ladders tied together, reared itself from the
+stalls to the roof. Something was being done to the lights on the
+ceiling. Tired-looking men in overcoats were creeping into the
+orchestra, thrusting white faces under screened lights, and rustling
+papers on stands.</p>
+
+<p>Marion had the theatre to herself except for a few whisperers in the
+back row of the stalls&mdash;her maid, an attendant, one or two actors of
+minor parts who did not appear in the first act, and a few costumiers.</p>
+
+<p>It was fiercely cold, and she had not slept for several nights. She
+wished she had never been born.</p>
+
+<p>A magnificent-looking woman, wearing her chin tilted slightly upwards,
+was squeezing herself and an immense fur coat towards her along the
+stalls, and sat down beside her. This was Lenore, the leading lady.</p>
+
+<p>She turned a colourless, beautifully shaped <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>face and heavy eyes with
+bistred lashes towards Marion.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose we shall have to wait about two hours for Mr. Montgomery,"
+she said apathetically.</p>
+
+<p>"Does he always keep people waiting?"</p>
+
+<p>"Always, since he made his great hit in <em>The Deodars</em>."</p>
+
+<p>There was a moment's silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Montgomery does not like his part," said the leading lady
+tentatively, hanging a hand in an interminable white glove over the back
+of the stall in front of her.</p>
+
+<p>Marion's face hardened.</p>
+
+<p>"It's not a sympathetic part," she said, "but an artist ought not to
+think of that."</p>
+
+<p>"No, it's not sympathetic," acquiesced Lenore, turning up her fur
+collar. "It seems as if the principal man's part never <em>is</em> sympathetic
+in a woman's play. If the central figure is a woman, the men grouped
+round her are generally prize specimens of worms. I wonder why. In your
+play, now, Maggie's everything! George does not count for much, as far
+as I can see. Even Maggie had not much use for him."</p>
+
+<p>"She loved him," said the author, with asperity.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>"Did she? Sometimes when I'm playing Maggie to Montgomery's George I
+wonder if she did. And I just wonder now and then if I would have thrown
+him over as she did. I mean for good and all. It seems to me&mdash;if she'd
+cared for him, cared <em>really</em>, you know&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"She did," interposed Marion harshly.</p>
+
+<p>"Wouldn't she have quarrelled and made it up again? Would she have been
+quite so hard on him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, she would. Think, just think what she must have suffered in the
+third act, the scene at the Savoy, when, loving him as she did, trusting
+him as she did, she saw him come in with&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I expect you know best," said Lenore, whose interest seemed to
+flag suddenly; "anyhow, she suffered, poor thing. Women like her always
+do, I think." She rose slowly. "I may as well go and dress. I suppose we
+shall be here till midnight."</p>
+
+<p>The orchestra struck up.</p>
+
+<p>"Anyhow, she suffered."</p>
+
+<p>The violins caught up the words and dinned them over and over again into
+Marion's ears. Women like Maggie, women <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>with deep hearts like
+herself&mdash;for was not Maggie herself?&mdash;they always suffered, always
+suffered, always!&mdash;said the violins.</p>
+
+<p>The manager suddenly appeared in front of the curtain and walked swiftly
+over the little bridge from the stage to the stalls. He was a small,
+sturdy, thin-lipped, choleric man, who looked as if he were made up of
+energy; energy distilled and bottled. Some one had said of him that his
+hat was really a glass stopper, which might fly off at any moment.</p>
+
+<p>It was off now. There had evidently been an explosion. He held a note in
+his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Montgomery has given up the part," he said. "He was odd at rehearsal
+yesterday. I felt there was something wrong. He said he had no show. Now
+he says he's too ill to come&mdash;bronchitis."</p>
+
+<p>The sense of disaster which had been hanging over Marion all day slipped
+and engulfed her like an avalanche. She felt paralysed.</p>
+
+<p>"Then the play can't go on?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"If it had to happen, better to-night than to-morrow night," said the
+manager. "Montgomery is as slippery as an eel. I <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span>don't suppose he has
+got bronchitis; but I have no doubt if I rushed over there at this
+moment, I should find him in bed with a steam-kettle. He would play the
+part."</p>
+
+<p>"What will you do?" gasped Marion.</p>
+
+<p>"Do?" he said. "Do? There's only one thing to do. Go through with the
+play! It will start in two minutes, and we shall see what the understudy
+can make of it. He's as clever as he can stick, and he's word perfect,
+at any rate."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"A Mr. Delacour; at least, that's his stage name. He's been in America
+for the last five years. Clever enough, but a rolling stone. He's not to
+be depended on, poor devil; but it's Hobson's choice&mdash;we've got to
+depend on him."</p>
+
+<p>The manager sat down beside her and clapped his hands.</p>
+
+<p>The lights suddenly burned up behind the curtain, the curtain rose and
+the play began.</p>
+
+<p>Some plays, some books, some men and women, possess a mysterious force
+which, for lack of a better word, we call vitality. Those who possess it
+not call it by all <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>manner of ugly names. But, nevertheless, it is the
+great gift, the power that overcomes, which makes life on a large scale
+possible, which makes the soldier, the lover, the saint, possible. Most
+of us are only half alive. Our work is half dead. We deal in creep-mouse
+sentiment, and call it love. We write pathetically of our impotence to
+live, and call it resignation. We who have never been young, compare
+notes with each other on how to remain senile, and call it the art of
+growing old.</p>
+
+<p>But others go through life, and spend themselves on it, piece by piece,
+with ardour as they go. These are the teachers&mdash;only they never teach.
+They know. If we want to learn anything, we can watch them. And some of
+us, again&mdash;and this is the hardest fate of all&mdash;come into life
+inadequately equipped, not provisioned for a prolonged journey. What
+little we have, and what little there is of us, we expend on the first
+part of life, and having nothing left for middle age.</p>
+
+<p>Such a woman was Marion. She had talent, and she had, besides&mdash;as the
+manager beside her had divined&mdash;one live play in her. But he doubted
+whether she had more <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>than one. She looked insolvent, a dweller in the
+past, crippled by an acute memory. No doubt it was this self-regarding
+memory which had resulted in the play. It was obviously a personal
+experience, and as she was rich enough to share the risk of producing
+it, he was more than ready to put it on. It was full of faults; it was
+melodramatic, it was amateurish, but it was passionately alive. The pit
+and the gallery would love it; and if the stalls found it a little
+cheap, what of that? He had considerable <em>flair</em>. He believed it would
+succeed.</p>
+
+<p>He glanced once or twice furtively at the handsome, unhappy-looking,
+richly furred woman beside him&mdash;no longer young, "past youth, but not
+past passion," with much of the charm of youth lingering in her graceful
+erectness, her pretty hair, her delicate pallor.</p>
+
+<p>She had told him feverishly that the only thing she cared for&mdash;had ever
+cared for&mdash;was art, success, fame. He had heard something like it often
+before.</p>
+
+<p>He wished, with a half-sigh, that a little of that uneasy, egotistic
+ambition might have been instilled into the heart of Lenore, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>for whom
+he had a compassionate, bottled-up attachment of many years' standing.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Lenore! What an actress, and what a hopelessly womanly woman, still
+mourning the providential demise of an impossible brother who had lived
+on her.</p>
+
+<p>She was on the stage now, looking about seventeen, all youth and garden
+hat and white muslin.</p>
+
+<p>Marion's face twitched. She was living her own youth over again.</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause. Lenore picked a rose to gain time, and looked into
+the wings.</p>
+
+<p>"Delacour!" roared the manager, bouncing up in his stall and then
+sitting down again.</p>
+
+<p>"We cut it here," said Lenore, advancing to the footlights, "and he
+doesn't know. It is not his fault. He's waiting for his cue. See, Mr.
+Delacour! Leave out that bit about the daisies, and come on at
+'happiness.'"</p>
+
+<p>The understudy came on, and Marion's heart thrust suddenly at her like a
+rapier, and left her for dead, staring in front of her.</p>
+
+<p>This was no understudy. This was the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span>original George of the drama when
+it was first acted. Marion saw the lover of her youth come on and kiss
+Lenore's hand, with the same gesture with which he had once kissed
+hers&mdash;in the sunshine, in a Kentish garden, beside a lavender bush, with
+a bumble bee in it, ten endless years ago.</p>
+
+<p>He was hardly changed&mdash;a little thinner, perhaps, but not a day older in
+his paint; the same reckless, debonair creature whom Marion had loved,
+who had wounded her and grieved her, whom she had discarded at last with
+bitter anger, whom she had never forgotten, whom she remembered with
+anguish.</p>
+
+<p>The curtain was down before she recovered herself, and the conductor was
+waving his baton.</p>
+
+<p>The manager turned to her with some excitement.</p>
+
+<p>"If only he can keep it up!" he said. "Delacour puts life into the
+love-making. He makes love well, don't you think?"</p>
+
+<p>"Admirably."</p>
+
+<p>"If only he can keep it up!" repeated the manager.</p>
+
+<p>Through the two acts which followed, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span>the understudy kept it up. He did
+more. He acted with an intensity that made the rest of the play somewhat
+colourless. At the end of the scene at the Savoy, just before the
+curtain fell, he added a sentence of his own.</p>
+
+<p>In a second, before she knew what she had done, Marion had sprung to her
+feet, and had said in a harsh, loud voice:</p>
+
+<p>"That last sentence is not in the part."</p>
+
+<p>The play stopped. The hurrying waiters with dishes stood stock still and
+gaped, as astonished as if the interruption had been in real life. Some
+of the supers at the little tables in the background got up to see what
+was happening.</p>
+
+<p>Delacour, wineglass in hand, came forward to the footlights, and their
+eyes met.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon," he said. "You say it is not in the part. I thought
+it was. I will omit it in future."</p>
+
+<p>"You will do no such thing!" bawled the manager, leaping to his feet and
+shaking his fist at him. "Omit it! Why, Miss Wright, it's an
+inspiration. Gets him the whole sympathy just at the critical moment.
+And what a curtain! Good God! What a curtain!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>"Isn't it?" said Lenore. "Leave out my bit at the end altogether, and
+make <em>that</em> the curtain. Don't you agree, Miss Wright? And, look here,
+Mr. Delacour, take the front centre here."</p>
+
+<p>"Start again at 'falsehood,'" said the manager briskly to Lenore. "Now,
+then, everybody. Sit down at the back there. Now&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>The play started again. Marion, astonished at her own violence, ashamed,
+shattered by conflicting emotions, speechless, could only bow her
+approval of the change, not that the manager cared a pin whether she
+approved or not.</p>
+
+<p><em>Was Delacour acting?</em> Marion knew that he was not. And as the play
+proceeded it changed in character. The words were the words she had
+written. Many of them were the words he had used himself, but his
+passion transformed them. They took on a new meaning. It was Maggie who
+was becoming a mean figure in spite of her grandiloquence&mdash;perhaps
+because of it. Her rigid principles, her petty, egotistic pride, her
+faultless demeanour jarred on the audience. Lenore, like a true artist,
+caught the novel side of the situation and emphasised <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>it. Her Maggie
+dwindled, dwindled, until the man held the stage alone, dominated it.
+Marion had never before seen his side of the miserable drama in which
+her happiness had made shipwreck, had never before seen her own
+character in this light. It was as if he were saying the truth at last,
+defending himself at last&mdash;which he had never done in real life.</p>
+
+<p>Finally repulsed, silent under her scornful invective, Delacour gathered
+himself together and went off magnificent in defeat.</p>
+
+<p>The curtain fell for the last time.</p>
+
+<p>The tiny audience, strengthened by the rest of the cast who were not
+needed in the final scene, broke into rapturous applause. The manager,
+excited and radiant, clapped with the rest.</p>
+
+<p>"He's immense. He's immense!" he kept on saying. "Delacour's the making
+of it. He's immense! Hang Montgomery! He may have bronchitis till he's
+blue. Delacour makes the play. I will fetch him!"</p>
+
+<p>He disappeared behind the curtain, and in a few minutes reappeared,
+dragging Delacour with him to introduce him to Marion.</p>
+
+<p>"We have met before," she said faintly, putting out her hand.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span>"Did we ever really meet?" he said gently, taking it for a second in
+his.</p>
+
+<p>He seemed quite exhausted. Now that she saw him close at hand, he looked
+much older. And his face was grievously lined, deteriorated.</p>
+
+<p>She tried to thank him, to express her gratitude for the way he had
+extricated them from a great difficulty; but her words were so
+hesitating and frigid that the manager broke in, shaking him warmly by
+the hand.</p>
+
+<p>Delacour bowed his thanks, murmured something conventional, and was
+gone.</p>
+
+<p>Every one was in a hurry to go, too. Marion remained a moment longer
+talking to the manager, and then they went together through the royal
+box to the private entrance, where her brougham was waiting. Just as
+they reached it, he was called away, and an attendant let her out.</p>
+
+<p>Waiting beside her brougham, in the rain, holding the door for her, was
+Delacour, in a shabby overcoat, his hat in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>Again their eyes met in a long look. His, sombre, melancholy, humble,
+had a great appeal in them.</p>
+
+<p>She seemed encased in some steel armour, <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>which made movement and speech
+wellnigh impossible. She thanked him inaudibly.</p>
+
+<p>He shut the door, said "Home" to the coachman, and turned away.</p>
+
+<p>The carriage drove off.</p>
+
+<p>Then something in Marion snapped. Her other self, the poor woman in her
+whom she had denied and starved and brow-beaten, pounced upon her and
+called out suddenly, desperately:</p>
+
+<p>"Forgive him. What is life without him? Think of the last ten years. Has
+there been one day in all those grinding years when you have not longed
+to see him? Has there ever been one day when you would not have given up
+your ease and luxury for a cottage with him? And now he has come back
+into your life. He still loves you. Are you going to lose him again? You
+were vindictive, and you know it. Go back now and kneel down in the wet
+street and ask him to forgive you. Quick! quick!&mdash;before it is too
+late."</p>
+
+<p>The other woman in her, the woman who had discarded him, stopped her
+ears.</p>
+
+<p>"No, no; I had good reasons for breaking with him. They hold as good
+to-day as ten years ago."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>"Very well," said the other scornfully. "Then never dare to tell
+yourself again that you ever loved him. Let that lie cease. Your love
+was only pretty words and pride and self-seeking, and a miserable streak
+of passion. What do you care what happens to him? Don't go back. You
+don't care for him. You never cared. Never, never. And he knows it. He
+is telling himself so now&mdash;at this moment."</p>
+
+<p>She stopped the brougham. She trembled so much that she could hardly
+tell the man to drive back to the theatre. He turned slowly, the horse
+evidently reluctant, and in a few minutes she was once more at the
+private entrance. The door was closed. No one was to be seen in the
+little <em>cul de sac</em>. The lamp over the door was out. She got out and
+rang&mdash;once, twice, and yet again. Then she realised that every one else
+had hurried away as precipitately as she had done, for the dawn was
+already in the sky. She dragged herself back into her carriage and drove
+home, shaking in every limb.</p>
+
+<p>After all, it did not matter. She would get his address from the manager
+first thing to-morrow, and go straight on and see him, and sacrifice her
+pride, and beseech him to <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>take her back. She had been too proud. She
+saw that at last. She would say so. She saw at last that resentment is
+disloyalty. She would say so. She was so sick of her present life that
+she would say anything. And he loved her still, thank God! And&mdash;thank
+God, too&mdash;she was rich. And it was obvious that he was poor. She had
+much to share with him. And she was still attractive. Other men still
+wished to marry her. She was pretty, still. All that she had, all that
+she still was, she would give him. And this long nightmare of the last
+ten years would pass at last, as that other nightmare of her youth had
+passed&mdash;her wretched home, with a drunken father and a heartbroken
+mother. That had passed, though at the time it had seemed as if it would
+endure for ever. Her parents had died, and her vulgar, kindly, rich aunt
+had adopted her. And now this second nightmare was at an end, too. The
+ache would go out of her life, the long daily hunger and thirst would
+cease. There would be no more dreadful homecomings after evenings of
+amusement; no more sick recoil and despair at waking and seeing the pale
+finger of the dawn upon the blind. She would be happy at last.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>Marion cried herself to sleep that night. Next morning, as early as she
+dared, she was at the theatre. The manager was going through his usual
+paroxysm of anxiety and ill-temper which preceded a first night. He
+could hardly find time for a word with her. There was a hitch in the
+scenery of the last act; the lighting was not yet repaired; one of the
+actors of the minor parts was ill, for whom an understudy had not been
+provided; and the head scene-shifter had sprained his wrist.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't keep you," said Marion, as he hurried up, fuming; "I only want
+Mr. Delacour's address. I should like to see him at once&mdash;to&mdash;to talk to
+him about his part. There are a few points&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Delacour's address?" said the manager. "Don't know it. Oh, yes, of
+course!" He tore a little notebook out of his pocket. Then he suddenly
+looked up at her. "Don't go to him. Send for him, if you like, or see
+him here. He'll be here in an hour&mdash;at least, he will be if Smith is
+worth his salt. I've bribed him to keep a lynx eye on him day and night,
+and bring him up to time. But don't go and see him. I suppose you know
+he&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>"He's married?" gasped Marion.</p>
+
+<p>The manager laughed scornfully.</p>
+
+<p>"He <em>drinks</em>, my dear lady. He drinks. He's only just out of an
+inebriates' home. But don't alarm yourself. If he's watched, I dare say
+we shall manage all right. I hope to goodness we shall! Don't look so
+scared. Smith has charge of him, and he is accustomed to the job. He was
+quite sober last night. I hear he always is after an outbreak. You're
+going home? Well, I think you're right. Yes, very cold here now. Quite
+right not to stop. See you again later."</p>
+
+<p>Marion drove home and shut herself up in her room. There was no need to
+lock the door. She was alone in the world, alone in her handsome, empty
+house, where she had always been alone, even before her aunt died and
+left it to her.... She would always be alone now. Only yesterday she had
+hoped&mdash;what had she not hoped! She had seen him there in imagination
+changing this weary house into a home, brilliant and faulty as ever,
+lovable as ever, beloved as ever, surrounded by her lavished adoration.
+She had seen their children running along its wide passages, playing in
+its empty hall.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>And now.</p>
+
+<p><em>He drank.</em></p>
+
+<p>She shuddered. She had seen drink once. She knew. Never while she lived
+would she forget what her home had been like. The past crowded back upon
+her with all its vileness and nausea, all its unspeakable degradation
+and violence, wrapped up with maudlin sentiment and cheap tears. The
+sweat stood on her forehead.</p>
+
+<p>What an escape she had had! To think that if it had not been for that
+chance word of the manager's she would by now have pledged herself
+irrevocably to a drunkard, waded back into the slough from which she had
+emerged. Oh, what a merciful fate it had been, after all, which had
+parted them! How faithless she had been all these years! How little she
+had realised how the divine love and wisdom had watched over her, had
+shielded her!</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! thank God! Thank God!" she groaned. The other self in her, the poor
+dying woman in her, arose on her deathbed and screamed to her, screamed
+insane things. If a certain voice is too long ignored, its dictates seem
+at last insane.</p>
+
+<p>"Take him back all the same!" gasped <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>the dying voice. "Marry him.
+Devote yourself to him, day and night. Cure him. Set him up. You love
+him. Love can do it, if anything can."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't do it," groaned Marion. "Mother tried, but it was no good."</p>
+
+<p>"Then do as she did, try and fail."</p>
+
+<p>"I can't. He would break my heart."</p>
+
+<p>"Let him break it."</p>
+
+<p>Marion strangled the terrible, urgent voice with fury, and then cried as
+if her heart would indeed break. The silenced voice spoke no more.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr3" />
+
+<p>The play was a great success. Delacour, who had recently returned from
+America, was the making of it. Lenore was the first to acknowledge it,
+though his success was at her expense. Her part seemed only as a foil to
+the sombre splendour of his.</p>
+
+<p>The play ran and ran.</p>
+
+<p>Delacour made no further effort to speak to Marion. He avoided her
+systematically. He, on his side, was watched, was spied on, was
+protected from himself, was never given a chance of yielding to
+temptation. His self-imposed gaoler loved him. He was very lovable. The
+manager was enthusiastic. <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span>Ignorant people said he was reformed. It
+almost seemed as if he might grasp the great position to which his
+talent entitled him. But how often before he had fallen just when he was
+doing well! No one could depend on him. His record in America gradually
+became known. It was a record of hideous outbreaks and cancelled
+engagements.</p>
+
+<p>By dint of the strenuous will of others, to which he yielded himself, he
+was kept on his feet through the whole run of the play.</p>
+
+<p>And then, released from surveillance, exhausted in mind and body&mdash;he
+fell again.</p>
+
+<p>He blazed like a comet across the theatrical world, and then set as
+suddenly as he had risen.</p>
+
+<p>Marion heard of it and shuddered. She had had a narrow escape.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr3" />
+
+<p>She never wrote another play&mdash;at least, she never wrote another that
+pleased a manager. She said she had not time. In spite of her success,
+she felt a distaste for things theatrical. And perhaps she found that
+success is not as warm a garment for a shivering life as she had
+expected. There is a little fleecy wrap called affection, within <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>the
+reach of all of us, which she might have donned. But, as she often said,
+there was, unfortunately, no one for whom she had much affection. She
+was alone in the world. Her interest in the theatre was gradually
+replaced by religion. Once she heard with real regret that Lenore had
+lost her memory, and chloral was hinted at as the cause. She thought of
+trying to save her, of making an earnest appeal to that better self
+which, according to Marion, exists in all of us. But when she made
+further inquiries about her, with a view to rescuing her, she was
+daunted by the discovery that Lenore had been privately married to
+Delacour for some time past, and that her declension, which was really
+due to drink, dated from the time of the marriage.</p>
+
+<p>A year passed. Delacour began to make fitful reappearances, then more
+frequent ones. He took and kept regular engagements. But his wife
+returned no more.</p>
+
+<p>Presently Marion's own play was revived with success. It was one of
+Delacour's greatest parts. And Marion went to see it, hidden behind the
+curtains of her box.</p>
+
+<p>The years since she had last sat in that box had not dealt kindly with
+her. Her <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>discontented face showed that she was one of the many victims
+of arrested development, still hampered in middle age by the egotistic
+longings of youth. In youth we all want to receive instead of to give,
+to be loved, to be served, to be admired. Middle age is the time to
+reverse engines, the time to love, to serve, to give rather than to
+receive. Marion had not learned that elementary lesson of life. We all
+recognise them at sight, the nervous, fretful faces of the middle-aged
+men and women who want to be loved. And love knows them, too, and&mdash;flies
+them.</p>
+
+<p>The manager, somewhat pinched and grizzled, as from a long fast, came in
+to see her between the acts, and growled out his disapproval of his
+leading lady.</p>
+
+<p>"She's nothing to Lenore," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Is she too"&mdash;Marion sought for a charitable word&mdash;"too ill to act?"</p>
+
+<p>"She is too ill to act," said the manager. "She will never act any more.
+She is dying."</p>
+
+<p>There was a silence.</p>
+
+<p>"She is dying of drink," he said; "and if there is such a place as
+heaven, she is very near it. And if there is such a person <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span>as God, I
+hope she will say a word for me when she gets there."</p>
+
+<p>Marion did not speak. She was horrified.</p>
+
+<p>"She would marry Delacour," said the manager. "I begged her to marry me.
+Over and over again I asked her. But she said I could do without her,
+and Delacour couldn't. They fell in love with each other at this very
+play when it was first put on. I saw it coming, and it spelt disaster
+for her. But it was the real thing; and when the real thing comes, we
+all have to knock under to it. It doesn't come often. Most of us are
+quite incapable of it. I have only seen it once or twice. I dare say I
+have never felt it, though I should have liked to take care of Lenore,
+and not let her work so hard, and make a garden for her. She loves
+flowers and running water. I made the garden just on the chance, but she
+has never seen it. Down in Sussex it is, with a little old-world cottage
+in it. It is a pretty place. Pergola; small cascade with rustic bridge;
+fishpond, with green-tiled floor to show up the gold-fish. And a rose
+garden. I should have liked her to see it. But she and Delacour! It was
+like a thing in a book. They fell in love, and he <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>behaved well. He
+wouldn't marry her. He said he knew he couldn't cure himself of
+drink&mdash;that his will was too weak. But she was determined to marry him.
+She said her will was strong enough for both of them. I don't know about
+her will. I think it was her love which was strong enough. He gave in at
+last and married her. I know I shouldn't have held out as long as he
+did. And for a little while things went well. He was at her feet. He
+told me it was the first time any woman had ever cared for him. For a
+little while I almost hoped&mdash;and then, in spite of his love for her, in
+spite of everything, he began to drink again. Then she told him that
+what he drank she should drink, and she stuck to it. If he drank, she
+drank the same. If he 'nipped,' she did the same. When he got drunk, she
+got drunk. It was kill or cure. And he loved her. That was her hold over
+him. It took time, but she broke him of it. He suffered too much seeing
+her kill herself for his sake, and it steadied him. He <em>had</em> to give it
+up."</p>
+
+<p>"Then, now&mdash;why doesn't she give it up, too?"</p>
+
+<p>"She can't," said the manager, his face twitching. "She was too far gone
+by the <span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>time he was cured. She had not his physique. She was absolutely
+played out. She is dying, and they both know it. But she does not mind.
+She has saved him. That was the point. She is perfectly happy. She does
+not care about anything else. He is a great actor. She has lived to see
+him recognised. Some women wouldn't have risked it. But I suppose a
+woman will take any risk if she loves, at least, women like Lenore
+will."</p>
+
+<p>"And does he&mdash;in spite of this&mdash;does he love her still?" said Marion,
+with dry lips.</p>
+
+<p>The manager was silent.</p>
+
+<p>"I did not think any one could care as much for Lenore as I did," he
+said at last, "but Delacour does&mdash;he cares more."</p>
+
+<hr class="hr6" />
+
+<h5><em>Printed by Hazell, Watson &amp; Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.</em></h5>
+
+<hr class="hr7" />
+
+
+
+<div class="box">
+<h2>SHORTER NOVELS<br />
+BY GREATER WRITERS</h2>
+<h3><em>Each 2s. 6d. net.</em></h3>
+
+<p class="left"><big>THE GORGEOUS ISLE</big><br />
+<span class="ti8">By GERTRUDE ATHERTON</span><br />
+<span class="ti10">Author of "Rezanov," "Ancestors."</span></p>
+
+<p class="left"><big>THE LOWEST RUNG</big><br />
+<span class="ti8">By Miss CHOLMONDELEY</span><br />
+<span class="ti10">Author of "Moth and Rust."</span></p>
+
+<p class="left"><big>A COUNTY FAMILY</big><br />
+<span class="ti8">By STORER CLOUSTON</span><br />
+<span class="ti10">Author of "Count Bunker."</span></p>
+
+<p class="left"><big>IRRESOLUTE CATHERINE</big><br />
+<span class="ti8">By VIOLET JACOBS</span><br />
+<span class="ti10">Author of "The Sheep Stealers."</span></p>
+
+<p class="left"><big>OUT IN THE OPEN</big><br />
+<span class="ti8">By LUCAS MALET</span><br />
+<span class="ti10">Author of "Sir Richard Calmady."</span></p>
+
+<p class="left"><big>A FISH OUT OF WATER</big><br />
+<span class="ti8">By F. F. MONTR&Eacute;SOR</span><br />
+<span class="ti10">Author of "The Burning Torch."</span></p>
+
+<p class="left"><big>THE MILLS OF THE GODS</big><br />
+<span class="ti8">By ELIZABETH ROBINS</span><br />
+<span class="ti10">Author of "The Magnetic North."</span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="box">
+<h4>THIN PAPER EDITIONS.</h4>
+
+<h2><small>THE DEFINITIVE EDITION OF THE</small><br />
+WORKS OF GEORGE BORROW</h2>
+
+<p class="center noi"><small><em>In specially designed cover, with full gilt back.<br />
+F'cap 8vo. Cloth, 1s. net; Lambskin, gilt top, 2s. net.</em></small></p>
+
+
+<p class="hang"><big>THE BIBLE IN SPAIN</big>; or, The Journeys, Adventures, and
+Imprisonments of an Englishman in an Attempt to Circulate
+the Scriptures in the Peninsula. With the Notes and Glossary
+of <span class="smcap">Ulick Burke</span>.<br />
+<small>880 pages, with Portrait, and 3 Half-tone reproductions from
+Water-Colour Sketches by A. H. Hallam Murray.</small></p>
+
+<p class="hang"><big>LAVENGRO</big>: The Scholar, the Gypsy, the Priest. Containing
+the Unaltered Text of the original issue; some suppressed Episodes
+printed only in the editions issued by Mr. Murray; MS. Variorum,
+Vocabulary, and Notes by Professor <span class="smcap">W. I. Knapp</span>.<br />
+<small>608 pages, with 8 Pen and Ink Sketches by Percy Wadham.</small></p>
+
+<p class="hang"><big>ROMANY RYE</big>. A sequel to "Lavengro." Containing the
+Unaltered Text of the original issue, with Notes, etc., by Professor
+<span class="smcap">W. I. Knapp</span>.<br />
+<small>432 pages, with 7 Pen and Ink Sketches by F. G. Kitson.</small></p>
+
+<p class="hang"><big>WILD WALES</big>: Its People, Language, and Scenery.<br />
+<small>768 pages, 8 Half-tone Illustrations by A. S. Hartrick, and Map.</small></p>
+
+<p class="hang"><big>THE GYPSIES OF SPAIN</big>. Their Manners, Customs,
+Religion and Language.<br />
+<small>464 pages, with 7 Half-tone Illustrations by A. Wallis Mills.</small></p>
+
+<p class="hang"><big>ROMANO LAVO LIL:</big> The Word Book of the Romany or
+English Gypsy Language, with Specimens of Gypsy Poetry and
+an account of certain Gypsyries, or places inhabited by them,
+and of various things relating to Gypsy Life in England.</p>
+</div>
+
+
+<div class="box">
+<h2>WORKS OF SAMUEL SMILES</h2>
+
+<p class="center"><small><em>In specially designed cover,<br />
+With full gilt back, gilt top, and silk marker.<br />
+F'cap 8vo. Cloth, 2s. net; Lambskin, 2s. 6d. net.</em></small></p>
+
+<p class="hang"><big>SELF-HELP</big>. With Illustrations of Conduct and Perseverance.<br />
+<small>512 pages, with 6 Half-tone Illustrations.</small></p>
+
+<p class="hang"><big>CHARACTER</big>. A Book of Noble Characteristics.<br />
+<small>448 pages, with 6 Half-tone Illustrations.</small></p>
+
+<p class="hang"><big>DUTY</big>. With Illustrations of Courage, Patience, and Endurance.<br />
+<small>496 pages, with 5 Half-tone Illustrations.</small></p>
+
+<p class="hang"><big>THRIFT</big>. A Book of Domestic Counsel.<br />
+<small>448 pages, with 7 Half-tone Illustrations.</small></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Lowest Rung, by Mary Cholmondeley
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Lowest Rung
+       Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy 
+
+
+Author: Mary Cholmondeley
+
+
+
+Release Date: February 12, 2008  [eBook #24587]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LOWEST RUNG***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Louise Pryor, Jacqueline Jeremy, and the Project
+Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)
+
+
+
+THE LOWEST RUNG
+
+Together with The Hand on
+the Latch, St. Luke's Summer
+and The Understudy
+
+by
+
+MARY CHOLMONDELEY
+
+Author of "Red Pottage"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London
+John Murray, Albemarle Street, W.
+1908
+
+Copyright, 1908, in the
+United States of America
+
+
+
+
+    TO
+    HOWARD STURGIS
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                              PAGE
+
+    THE LOWEST RUNG             33
+
+    THE HAND ON THE LATCH       82
+
+    SAINT LUKE'S SUMMER        107
+
+    THE UNDERSTUDY             156
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+I have been writing books for five-and-twenty years, novels of which I
+believe myself to be the author, in spite of the fact that I have been
+assured over and over again that they are not my own work. When I have
+on several occasions ventured to claim them, I have seldom been
+believed, which seems the more odd as, when others have claimed them,
+they have been believed at once. Before I put my name to them they were
+invariably considered to be, and reviewed as, the work of a man; and for
+years after I had put my name to them various men have been mentioned to
+me as the real author.
+
+I remember once, when I was very young and shy, how at one of my first
+London dinner-parties a charming elderly man discussed one of my
+earliest books with such appreciation that I at last remarked that I had
+written it myself. If I had looked for a surprised flash of delight at
+the fact that so much talent was palpitating in white muslin beside him,
+I was doomed to be disappointed. He gravely and gently said, "I know
+that to be untrue," and the conversation was turned to other subjects.
+
+One man did indeed actually announce himself to be the author of "Red
+Pottage," in the presence of a large number of people, including the
+late Mr. William Sharp, who related the occurrence to me. But the
+incident ended uncomfortably for the claimant, which one would have
+thought he might have foreseen.
+
+But whether my books are mine or not, still whenever one of them appears
+the same thing happens. I am pressed to own that such-and-such a
+character "is taken from So-and-so." I have not yet yielded to these
+exhortations to confession, partly, no doubt, because it would be very
+awkward for me afterwards if I owned that thirty different persons were
+the one and only original of "So-and-so."
+
+My character for uprightness (if I ever had one) has never survived my
+tacit, or in some cases emphatic, refusal to be squeezed through the
+"clefts of confession."
+
+It is perhaps impossible for those who do not write fiction to form any
+conception how easily an erroneous idea gains credence that some one has
+been "put in a book"; or, if the idea has once been entertained, how
+impossible it is to eradicate it.
+
+Looking back over a string of incidents of this kind in my own personal
+experience, covering the last five-and-twenty years, I feel doubtful
+whether I shall be believed if I instance some of them. They seem now,
+after the lapse of years, frankly incredible, and yet they were real
+enough to give me not a little pain at the time. It is the fashion
+nowadays, if one says anything about oneself, to preface it by the
+pontifical remark that what one writes is penned for the sake of others,
+to save them, to cheer them, etc., etc. This, of course, now I come to
+think of it, must be my reason also for my lapse into autobiography. I
+see now that I only do it out of tenderness for the next generation.
+Therefore, young writers of the future, now on the playing-fields of
+Eton, take notice that my heart yearns over you. If, later on, you are
+harrowed as I have been harrowed, remember
+
+    _J'ai passe par la._
+
+Observe the prints of my goloshes on the steep ascent, and take courage.
+And if you are perturbed, as I have been perturbed, let me whisper to
+you the exhortation of the bankrupt to the terrestrial globe:
+
+    Never _you_ mind. Roll on.
+
+When I first took a pen into my youthful hand, I lived in a very
+secluded part of the Midlands, and perhaps, my little world being what
+it was, it was inevitable that the originals of my characters,
+especially the tiresome ones, should be immediately identified with the
+kindly neighbours within a five-mile radius of my paternal Rectory. Five
+miles was about the utmost our little pony could do. It was therefore
+obviously impossible that I could be acquainted with any one beyond that
+distance. And from first to last, from that day to this, no one leading
+a secluded life has been so fatuous as to believe that my characters
+were evolved out of my inner consciousness. "After all, you must own you
+took them from _some one_," is a phrase which has long lost its novelty
+for me. I remember even now my shocked astonishment when a furious
+neighbour walked up to me and said, "We all recognised Mrs. Alwynn at
+once as Mrs. ----, _and we all say it is not in the least like her_."
+
+It was not, indeed. There was no shadow of resemblance. Did Mrs. ----,
+who had been so kind to me from a child, ever hear that report, I
+wonder? It gave me many a miserable hour, just when I was expanding in
+the sunshine of my first favourable reviews.
+
+When I was still quite a beginner, Mrs. Clifford published her beautiful
+and touching book, "Aunt Anne."
+
+There was, I am willing to believe--it is my duty to believe
+_something_--a faint resemblance between her "Aunt Anne" and an old
+great-aunt of mine, "Aunt Anna Maria," long since dead, whom I had only
+seen once or twice when I was a small child.
+
+The fact that I could not have known my departed relation did not
+prevent two of my cousins, elderly maiden ladies who had had that
+privilege, from writing to me in great indignation at my having ventured
+to travesty my old aunt. They had found me out (I am always being found
+out), and the vials of their wrath were poured out over me.
+
+In my whilom ignorance, in my lamblike innocence of the darker side of
+human nature, I actually thought that a disclaimer would settle the
+matter.
+
+When has a disclaimer ever been of any use? When has it ever achieved
+anything except to add untruthfulness to my other crimes? Why have I
+ever written one, after that first disastrous essay, in which I civilly
+pointed out that not I, but Mrs. Clifford, the well-known writer, was
+the author of "Aunt Anne?"
+
+They replied at once to say that this was untrue, because I, and I
+alone, _could_ have written it.
+
+I showed my father the letter.
+
+The two infuriated ladies were attached to my father, and had known him
+for many years as a clergyman and a rural dean of unblemished character.
+He wrote to them himself to assure them that they had made a mistake,
+that I was not the author of the obnoxious work.
+
+But the only effect his letter had on their minds was a pained uprootal
+of their respect and long affection for him. And they both died some
+years later, and (presumably) went up to heaven, convinced of my guilt,
+in spite of the unscrupulous parental ruridiaconal effort to whitewash
+me.
+
+Long afterwards I mentioned this incident to Mrs. Clifford, but it did
+not cause her surprise. She had had her own experiences. She told me
+that when "Aunt Anne" appeared, she had many letters from persons with
+whom she was unacquainted, reproaching her for having portrayed their
+aunt.
+
+The reverse of the medal ought perhaps to be mentioned. So primitive was
+the circle in which my youth was passed that an adverse review, if seen
+by one of the community, was at once put down to a disaffected and
+totally uneducated person in our village.
+
+A witty but unfavourable criticism in _Punch_ of my first story was
+always believed by two ladies in the parish to have been penned by one
+of the village tradesmen. It was in vain I assured them that the person
+in question could not by any possibility be on the staff of _Punch_.
+They only shook their heads, and repeated mysteriously that they "had
+reasons for _knowing_ he had written it."
+
+When we moved to London, I hoped I might fare better. But evidently I
+had been born under an unlucky star. The "Aunt Anne" incident proved to
+be only the first playful ripple which heralded the incoming of the
+
+    Breakers of the boundless deep.
+
+After the publication of "Red Pottage" a storm burst respecting one of
+the characters--Mr. Gresley--which even now I have not forgotten. The
+personal note was struck once more with vigour, but this time by the
+clerical arm. I was denounced by name from a London pulpit. A Church
+newspaper which shall be nameless suggested that my portrait of Mr.
+Gresley was merely a piece of spite on my part, as I had probably been
+jilted by a clergyman. I will not pretend that the turmoil gave me
+unmixed pain. If it had, I should have been without literary vanity. But
+when a witty bishop wrote to me that he had enjoined on his clergy the
+study of Mr. Gresley as a Lenten penance, it was not possible for me to
+remain permanently depressed.
+
+The character was the outcome of long, close observation of large
+numbers of clergymen, but not of one particular parson. Why, then, was
+it so exactly like individual clergymen that I received excited or
+enthusiastic letters from the parishioners of I dare not say how many
+parishes, affirming that their vicar (whom I had never beheld), and he
+alone, could have been the prototype of Mr. Gresley? I was frequently
+implored to go down and "see for myself." Their most adorable platitudes
+were chronicled and sent up to me, till I wrung my hands because it was
+too late to insert them in "Red Pottage."[1] For they all fitted Mr.
+Gresley like a glove, and I should certainly have used them if it had
+been possible. For, as has been well said, "There is no copyright in
+platitudes." They are part of our goodly heritage. And though people
+like Mr. Gresley and my academic prig Wentworth have in one sense made a
+particular field of platitude their own, by exercising themselves
+continually upon it, nevertheless we cannot allow them to warn us off as
+trespassers, or permit them to annex or enclose common land, the
+property and birthright of the race.
+
+Young men fresh from public schools also informed me that Mr. Gresley
+was the facsimile of their tutor, and of no one else. I was at that time
+unacquainted with any schoolmasters, being cut off from social
+advantages. But that fact did me no good. The dispassionate statement of
+it had no more effect on my young friends than my father's denial had on
+my elderly relations.
+
+I am ashamed to say that once again, as in the case of "Aunt Anne," I
+endeavoured to exculpate myself in order to pacify two old maiden
+ladies. Why is it always the acutely unmarried who are made miserable by
+my books? Is it because--odious thought, avaunt!--married persons do not
+open them? These two ladies did not, indeed, think that I had been
+"paying out" some particular clergyman, as suggested in their favourite
+paper, _The Guardian_,[2] but they were shocked by the profanity of the
+book. Soon afterwards the Bishop of Stepney (now Bishop of London)
+preached on "Red Pottage" in St. Paul's. I sent them a newspaper which
+reprinted the sermon _verbatim_, with a note saying that I trusted this
+expression of opinion on the part of their idolised preacher might
+mitigate their condemnation of the book.
+
+But when have my attempts at making an effect ever come off? My firework
+never lights up properly like that of others! It only splutters and goes
+out. I received in due course a dignified answer that they had both been
+deeply distressed by my information, as it would prevent them ever going
+to hear the Bishop of Stepney again.
+
+My own experience, especially as to "Red Pottage" and "Prisoners,"
+struck me as so direful, I seemed so peculiarly outside the protection
+of Providence, like the celebrated plot of ground on which "no rain nor
+no dew never fell," that I consulted several other brother and sister
+novelists as to how they had fared in this delicate matter. It is not
+for me to reveal the interesting skeletons concealed in cupboards not my
+own, but I have almost invariably returned from these interviews
+cheered, chuckling, and consoled by the comfortable realisation that
+others had writhed on a hotter gridiron than I.
+
+Georges Sand, when she was accused of lampooning a certain _abbe_, said
+that to draw one character of that kind one must know a thousand. She
+has, I think, put her finger on the truth which is not easy to find--at
+least, I never found it until I read those words of hers.
+
+It is necessary to know a very large number of persons of a certain
+kind before one can evolve a type. Each he or she contributes a twig,
+and the author weaves them into a nest. I have no doubt that I must have
+taken such a twig from nearly every clergyman I met who had a _soupcon_
+of Mr. Gresley in him.
+
+But if an author takes one tiny trait, one saying, one sentiment, direct
+from a person, there is always the danger that the contributor will
+recognise the theft, and, if of a self-regarding temperament, will
+instantly conclude that the _whole_ character is drawn from himself.
+There is, for instance, no more universal trait, of what has been
+unkindly called "the old-maid temperament" in either sex, than the
+assertion that it is always busy. But when such a trait is noted in a
+book, how many sensitive readers assume that it is a cruel personality.
+If people could but perceive that what they think to be character in
+themselves is often only sex, or sexlessness; if they could but believe
+in the universality of what they hold to be their individuality! And yet
+how easily they believe in it when it is pleasant to do so, when they
+write books about themselves, and thousands of grateful readers bombard
+the gifted authoress with letters to tell her that they also have "felt
+just like that," and have "been helped" by her exquisite sentiments,
+which are the exact replicas of their own!
+
+The worst of it is that with the academic or clerical prig, when the
+mind has long been permitted to run in a deep, platitudinous groove from
+which it is at last powerless to escape, the resemblance to a prig in
+fiction is sometimes more than fanciful. It is real. For there is no
+doubt that prigs have a horrid family likeness to each other, whether in
+books or in real life. I have sometimes felt as the puzzled mother of
+some long-lost Tichborne might feel. Each claimant to the estates in
+turn seems to acquire a look of the original because he _is_ a claimant.
+Has not this one my lost Willy's eyes? But no! that one has Willy's
+hands. True, but the last-comer snuffles exactly as my lost Willy
+snuffled. How many men have begun suddenly and indubitably in my eyes to
+resemble one of the adored prigs of my novels, merely because they
+insisted on the likeness themselves.
+
+The most obnoxious accident which has yet befallen me, the most wanton
+blow below the belt which Fate has ever dealt me, is buried beneath the
+snows of twenty years. But even now I cannot recall it without a
+shudder. And if a carping critic ventures to point out that blows below
+the belt are not often buried beneath snow, then all I can say is that
+when I have made my meaning clear, I see no reason for a servile
+conformity to academic rules of composition.
+
+I was writing "Diana Tempest." One of the characters, a very worldly
+religious young female prig, was much in my mind. I know many such. I
+may as well mention here that I do not bless the hour on which I first
+saw the light. I have not found life an ardent feast of tumultuous joy.
+But I do realise that it has been embellished by the acquaintance of a
+larger number of delightful prigs than falls to the lot of most. I have
+much to be thankful for. Having got hold of the character of this lady,
+I piloted her through courtship and marriage. I gleefully invented _all_
+her sayings on these momentous occasions, and described the wedding and
+the abhorrent bridegroom with great minuteness. In short, I gloated over
+it.
+
+The book was finished, sold, finally corrected, and in the press when
+one of the young women who had unconsciously contributed a trait to the
+character became affianced. She immediately began throwing off with
+great dignity, as if by clock-work, all the best things which I had
+evolved out of my own brain and had put into the mouth of my female
+prig. At first I was delighted with my own cleverness, but gradually I
+became more and more uneasy, and when I attended the wedding my heart
+failed me altogether. In "Diana Tempest" I had described the rich,
+elderly, stout, and gouty bridegroom whom the lady had captured. There
+he was before my panic-stricken eyes! The wedding was exactly as I had
+already described it. It took place in London, just as I had said. The
+remembrance that the book had passed beyond my own control, the
+irrevocability of certain ghastly sentences, came over me in a flash,
+together with the certainty that, however earnestly I might deny, swear,
+take solemn oaths on family Bibles, nothing, nothing, not even a voice
+from heaven, much less that of a rural dean still on earth, could make
+my innocence credible.
+
+I may add that no voice from heaven sounded, and that I never made any
+attempt at self-exculpation, or invited my father to sacrifice himself a
+second time.
+
+As I heard "The Voice that breathed o'er Eden" and saw the bride of
+twenty-five advance up the aisle to meet the bridegroom of forty-five
+awaiting her deeply flushed, in a distorted white waistcoat--I had
+mercilessly alluded to his white waistcoat as an error of judgment--I
+gave myself up for lost; _and I was lost_.
+
+But all this time, while I have been giving a free rein to my
+autobiographic instincts, the question still remains unanswered, Why is
+human nature so prone to think it has been travestied that it becomes
+impervious to reason on the subject the moment the idea has entered the
+mind? Once lodged, I have never known such an idea dislodged, however
+fantastic. Why is it that if, like Mrs. Clifford, one has the good
+fortune to evolve a type, no one can believe it is not an individual?
+Why does not the outraged friend console himself with the remembrance
+that if he is one of many others who are feeling equally harrowed, he
+cannot really be the object of a malignant spite, carefully disguised
+till then under the apparel of a cheerful friendship?
+
+I think an answer--a partial answer--to the latter question may be found
+in the fact that balm was never yet poured on a wounded spirit by the
+assurance that there are thousands of others exactly like itself. We can
+all endure to be lampooned. (I have even known a man who was deeply
+disappointed when he was forced to believe that he had not been
+victimised.) But to be told we are one of a herd! This flesh and blood
+cannot tolerate. It is unthinkable; a living death. That we who "look
+before and after," and "whose sincerest laughter with some pain is
+fraught"; that _we_, lonely, superb, pining for what is not,
+misunderstood by our nearest and dearest, who don't know, and never
+_can_ know
+
+    Half the reasons why we smile or sigh
+
+(unless, indeed, we are autobiographists: then they know _all_ the
+reasons)--that WE should be confused with the vast mob of foolish,
+sentimental spinsters, or pedantic clerics, or egotistic old bachelors!
+
+Away!--away! The reeling mind stops its ears against these obscene
+suggestions.
+
+The only alternative which remains is that an unscrupulous novelist has
+_heard_ of us--nothing more likely--without being actually acquainted
+with us, and has listened to garbled accounts of us from our so-called
+friends; or has actually met us at a bazaar or a funeral, though of
+course he professes to have forgotten the meeting; has been impressed
+with our subtle personality--nothing more likely--has felt an envious
+admiration of what we ourselves value but little--our social charm--and
+has yielded--nothing more likely--to the ignoble temptation of
+caricaturing qualities which he cannot emulate. Or perhaps he has known
+us for years, and has shown a mysterious indifference to our society, an
+impatience of our deeper utterances, which we can now, _at last_, trace
+to its true source, a guilty consciousness of premeditated treachery
+which has led him to strike us in a dastardly manner, which we can
+indeed afford--being what we are--to forgive, but which we shall never
+forget. And if an opportunity offers later on, it is possible that an
+unprejudiced and judicial mind may feel called upon to indicate what it
+thinks of such conduct.
+
+Perhaps only those whose temperament leads them to believe themselves
+ridiculed in a book know the rankling smart, the exquisite pain, the
+sense of treachery of such an experience. It is probably the most
+offensive slight that can be offered to a sensitive nature.
+
+And if the author realises this, even while he knows himself to be
+guiltless in the matter, it is probable, if he also is somewhat
+sensitive--and some authors are--that a great deal of the delight he may
+derive from a successful novel may be dimmed by the realisation that he
+has unwittingly pained a stranger, or, worse still, an acquaintance, or,
+immeasurably worst of all, an old friend.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] One of these unknown correspondents wrote that their vicar had that
+Sunday begun--he would have said _commenced_--his sermon with the words,
+"God is Love, as the Archbishop of Canterbury remarked last week in
+Westminster Abbey."
+
+[2] _The Guardian_, April 11, 1900: "Truth to tell, when I appreciated,
+with much amusement, the light in which one was expected to regard Mr.
+Gresley, I came to the conclusion that the authoress was paying out some
+particular High Church parson, who had perhaps snubbed her or got the
+better of her, by 'putting him into a book.' The poor, feeble creature
+is described with appetite, so to speak, and when this is the case (with
+a lady writer) one is pretty safe in being sure one has come across the
+personal. Mr. Gresleys certainly exist, but only a woman in a (perhaps
+wholly justified) tantrum would speak of them as a type of the clergy in
+general."--THOS. J. BALL.
+
+
+
+
+THE LOWEST RUNG
+
+    We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung.
+    RUDYARD KIPLING.
+
+
+The sudden splendour of the afternoon made me lay down my pen, and
+tempted me afield. It had been a day of storm and great racing
+cloud-wracks, after a night of hurricane and lashing rain. But in the
+afternoon the sun had broken through, and I struggled across the
+water-meadows, the hurrying, turbid water nearly up to the single planks
+across the ditches, and climbed to the heathery uplands, battling my way
+inch by inch against a tearing wind.
+
+My art had driven me forth from my warm fireside, as it is her wont to
+drive her votaries, and the call of my art I have never disobeyed.
+
+For no artist must look at one side of life only. We must study it as a
+whole, gleaning rich and varied sheaves as we go. My forthcoming book
+of deep religious experiences, intertwined with descriptions of scenery,
+needed a little contrast. I had had abundance of summer mornings and
+dewy evenings, almost too many dewy evenings. And I thought a
+description of a storm would be in keeping with the chapter on which I
+was at that moment engaged, in which I dealt with the stress of my own
+illness of the previous spring, and the mystery of pain, which had
+necessitated a significant change in my life--a visit to Cromer. The
+chapter dealing with Cromer, and the insurgent doubts of convalescence,
+wandering on its poppy-strewn cliffs, as to the beneficence of the
+Deity, was already done, and one of the finest I had ever written.
+
+But I was dissatisfied with the preceding chapter, and, as usual, went
+for inspiration to Nature.
+
+It was late by the time I reached the upland, but I was rewarded for my
+climb.
+
+Far away under the flaring sunset the long lines of tidal river and sea
+stretched tawny and sinister, like drawn swords in firelight, between
+the distant woods and cornfields. The death-like stillness and
+smallness of the low-lying rigid landscape made the contrast with the
+rushing enormity and turmoil of the heavens almost terrific.
+
+Great clouds shouldered up out of the sea, blotting out the low sun,
+darkening the already darkened earth, and then towered up the sky,
+releasing the struggling sun only to extinguish it once more, in a new
+flying cohort.
+
+I do not know how long I stood there, spellbound, the woman lost in the
+artist, scribbling frantically in my notebook, when an onslaught of rain
+brought me to my senses and I looked round for shelter.
+
+Then I became aware that I had not been watching alone. A
+desolate-looking figure, crouching at a little distance, half hidden by
+a gorse-bush, was watching too, watching intently. She got up as I
+turned and came towards me, her uncouth garments whipped against her by
+the wind.
+
+The rain plunged down upon us, enveloping us both as in a whirlwind.
+
+"There is an empty cottage under the down," I shouted to her, and I
+began to run towards it. It was a tumbledown place, but "any port in
+such a storm."
+
+"It is not safe," she shouted back; "the roof is falling in."
+
+The squall of rain whirled past as suddenly as it had come, leaving me
+gasping. She seemed to take no notice of it.
+
+"I spent last night there," she said. "The ceiling came down in the next
+room. Besides," she added, "though possibly that may not deter you,
+there are two policemen there."
+
+I saw now that it had been the cottage which she had been watching. And
+sure enough, in a broken shaft of sunshine which straggled out for a
+moment, I saw two dark figures steal towards the cottage under cover of
+the wall.
+
+"Why are they there?" I said, gaping at such a strange sight. For I had
+been many months at Rufford, and I had never seen a policeman.
+
+"They are lying in wait for some one," she said.
+
+It flashed back across my mind how at luncheon that day the vicar had
+said that a female convict had escaped from Ipswich gaol, and had been
+traced to Bealings, and, it was conjectured, was lurking in the
+neighbourhood of Woodbridge.
+
+I took sudden note of my companion's peculiar dark bluish clothes and
+shawl, and the blood rushed to my head. I knew what those garments
+meant. She pushed back her grizzled hair from her lined, walnut-coloured
+face, and we looked hard at each other.
+
+There was no fear in her eyes, but a certain curiosity as to what I was
+going to do.
+
+"If I told you they were not looking for me," she said, "I could not,
+under the circumstances, expect you to believe it."
+
+I am too highly strung for this workaday world. I know it to my cost.
+The artistic temperament has its penalties. My doctor at Cromer often
+told me that I vibrated like a harp at the slightest touch. I vibrated
+now. Indeed, I almost sat down in the sodden track.
+
+But unlike many of my brothers and sisters of the pen, I am capable of
+impulsive, even quixotic action, and I ought, in justice to myself, to
+mention here that I had not then read that noble book "The Treasure of
+Heaven," in which it will be remembered that a generous-souled woman
+takes in from the storm, and nurses back to health in her lowly
+cottage, an aged tramp who turns out to be a millionaire, and leaves her
+his vast fortune. I did not get the idea of acting as I am about to
+relate from Marie Corelli, the head of our profession, or indeed from
+any other writer. But I have so often been accused of taking other
+people's plots and ideas and sentiments, that I owe it to myself to make
+this clear before I go on.
+
+"You poor soul," I said, "whatever you are, and whatever you've done, I
+will shelter you and help you to escape."
+
+I felt I really could not take her into the house, so I added, "I have a
+little stable in the garden, quite private, with nice dry hay in it.
+Follow me."
+
+I suppose she saw at a glance that she could trust me, for she nodded,
+and I sped down the hill, she following at a little distance, with the
+shrieking, denouncing wind behind us. I walked as quickly as I could,
+but when I got as far as the water-meadows my strength and breath gave
+way. I was never robust, and always foolishly prone to overtax my small
+store of strength. I was obliged to stop and lean my head on my arms
+against a stile.
+
+"There is no need for such hurry," she said tranquilly. She had come up
+noiselessly behind me. "There is not a soul in sight. Besides, look what
+you are missing."
+
+She pointed to the familiar fields before me which we had yet to cross,
+with the Dieben winding through them under his low, red-brick bridges,
+and beyond the little clustered village with its grey church spire
+standing shoulder high above the poplars.
+
+The sun had just set and there was no colour in the west, but over all
+the homely, wind-swept landscape a solemn and unearthly light shone and
+slowly passed, shone and slowly passed.
+
+"Look up," said my companion, turning a face of flame towards me.
+
+I looked up into the sky, as into an enormous furnace. Gigantic rolling
+clouds of flame were sweeping before the roaring wind like some vast
+prairie fire across the firmament. As they passed overhead, the
+reflection of the lurid light on them was smitten earthwards, and passed
+with them, making everything it traversed clear as noon--the lion on the
+swinging sign of the public-house just across the water, the delicate
+tracery of the church windows, the virginia creeper on my cottage porch.
+
+"I have only seen an afterglow like that once in my life," my companion
+said, "and that was in Teneriffe."
+
+A few moments more, and the sky paled to grey. The darkness came down
+with tropical suddenness. I made a movement forwards.
+
+"Shall I not be seen if I follow you through the village in these weird
+clothes?" she said civilly, as one who hesitates to make a suggestion.
+"Where is your house?"
+
+"My cot--it is not a house--is just at the end of those trees," I said.
+"It is the only one close to the park gates. It has virginia creeper
+over the porch, and a white gate."
+
+"It sounds charming."
+
+"But how on earth are we to get there?" I groaned. "And some one may
+come along this path at any moment."
+
+The dusk was falling rapidly. Candles were beginning to twinkle in
+latticed windows. A yellow light from the public-house made an
+impassable streak across the road. Cheerful voices were coming along the
+meadow path behind us. What was to be done?
+
+"Go home," she said steadily. "I will find my own way."
+
+"But my servant?"
+
+"Make your mind easy. She will not see me. I shall not ring the bell.
+Have you a dog?"
+
+"No. My dear little Lindo----"
+
+"It's going to be a black night. I shall be in the porch half an hour
+after dark."
+
+She went swiftly from me, and as the voices drew near I saw her pick her
+way noiselessly into one of the great ditches, and stand motionless in
+the water, obliterated against a pollard willow.
+
+I hurried home. My feet were quite wet, and even my stockings--a thing
+that had not happened to me for years. I changed at once, and took five
+drops of camphor on a lump of sugar. It would be extraordinarily
+inconvenient if I were to take cold, with my tendency to bronchial
+catarrh. I have no time to be ill in my busy life. Was not "Broodings
+beside the Dieben" being finished in hot haste for an eager publisher?
+And had I not promised to give away the Sunday-school prizes at
+Forlinghorn a fortnight hence?
+
+It was half-past six. My garden boy was pumping in the scullery. He kept
+his tools in the stable, and it was his duty to lock it up and hang the
+key on the nail inside the scullery door.
+
+Supposing he forgot to hang it up to-night of all nights! Supposing he
+took it away with him by mistake! I went into the scullery directly he
+had gone. I made a pretext of throwing away some flowers, though I had
+never thought of needing a pretext for going there before. The stable
+key was on its nail all right. I looked into the kitchen, where my
+little maid-servant was preparing my evening meal. When her back was
+turned, I snatched the key from the nail, dropped it noisily on the
+brick floor, caught it up, withdrew to the parlour, and sank down in my
+armchair shaking from head to foot. My doctor was right indeed when he
+said I vibrated like a harp.
+
+The life of contemplation and meditation is more suited to my highly
+strung nature than that of adventure and intrigue.
+
+My servant brought in the lamp, and I hurriedly sat on the key while she
+did so. Then she drew the curtains in the little houseplace, locked the
+outer door, and went back to the kitchen.
+
+There are two doors to my cottage--the front door with the porch leading
+to the lane, and the back door out of the scullery which opens into my
+little slip of garden. At the bottom of the garden is a disused stable,
+utilised by me to store wood in, and old boxes. The gate to the back way
+to the stable from the lane had been permanently closed till the day
+should come when I could afford a pony and cart. But in these days
+novels of not too refined a type are the only form of literature (if
+they can be called literature) for which the public is eager. It will
+devour and extol anything, however coarse, which panders to its love of
+excitement, while grave books dealing with the spiritual side of life,
+books of thought and culture, are left unheeded on the shelf. Such had
+been the fate of mine.
+
+The rain had ceased at last, and the wind was falling. My mind kept on
+making all sorts of uneasy suggestions to me as I sat in my armchair.
+What was I to do with the--the individual when I had got her safely into
+the stable, if I ever did get her safely there? How about food, how
+about dry clothes, how about a light, how about everything? Supposing
+she overslept herself, and Tommy found her there in the morning when he
+went for his tools? Supposing my landlord, Mr. Ledbury, who was a
+magistrate, found out I had harboured a criminal, and gave me notice
+just when I had repapered the parlour and put in a new back to the
+kitchen range? Such a calamity was unthinkable. What happened to people
+who compounded felonies? Was I compounding one? Why was not I sitting
+down? What was I doing standing in the middle of the parlour with the
+stable key in my hand, and, as I caught sight of myself in the glass,
+with my mouth wide open?
+
+I sat down again resolutely, hiding the key under the cushion, and
+calmer thoughts supervened. After all, it was most improbable, almost
+impossible, that I should be found out. And once the adventure was
+safely over, when I had successfully carried it through, what
+interesting accounts I should be able to give of it at luncheon parties
+in London in the winter. My brothers would really believe at last that I
+could act with energy and presence of mind. There was a rooted
+impression in the minds of my own family that I was a flurried sort of
+person, easily thrown off my balance, making mountains out of molehills
+(this was especially irritating to me, as I have always taken a broad,
+sane view of life), who always twisted my ankle if it could be twisted,
+or lost my luggage, or caught childish ailments for the second time.
+Where there is but one gifted member in a large and commonplace family,
+an absurd idea of this kind is apt to grow from a joke into an _idee
+fixe_.
+
+It had obtained credence originally because I certainly had once in a
+dreamy moment got my gown shut into the door in an empty railway
+compartment on the far side. And as the glass was up on the station side
+I had been unable to attract any one's attention when I wanted to
+alight, and had had to go on to Portsmouth (where the train stopped for
+good) before I could make my presence and my predicament known. This
+trivial incident had never been forgotten by my family--so much so, that
+I had often regretted the hilarious spirit of pure comedy at my own
+expense which had prompted me to relate it to them.
+
+Now was the time to show what metal I was made of. My spirits rose as I
+felt I could rely on myself to be cautious, resourceful, bold. I sat on,
+outwardly composed, but inwardly excited, straining my ears for a sign
+that the fugitive was in the porch. I supposed I should presently hear a
+light tap on my parlour window, which was close to the outer door.
+
+But none came. More than an hour passed. It had long been perfectly
+dark. What could have happened? Had the poor creature been dogged and
+waylaid by those two policemen after all? Was it possible that they had
+seen us standing together at the stile, where she had so inconsiderately
+joined me for a moment? At last I became so nervous that I went to the
+outer door, opened it softly, and looked out. She was so near me that I
+very nearly screamed.
+
+"How long have you been here?" I whispered.
+
+"Close on an hour."
+
+"Why didn't you tap on the window or something? I was waiting to let you
+in."
+
+"I dared not do that. It might have been the kitchen window for all I
+knew, and then your servant would have seen me."
+
+"But the kitchen is the other side."
+
+"Indeed! And where is the stable?"
+
+"At the bottom of the garden, away from the road."
+
+"How are we going to get to it?"
+
+"We can only get to it through the garden, now the back way is closed. I
+closed it because the village children----"
+
+"Had not you better shut the door? If any one passed down the road, they
+would see it was open."
+
+"It's as dark as pitch."
+
+"Yes, but there's a little light from within. I can see you from outside
+quite plainly standing in the doorway."
+
+I led her indoors, and locked and bolted the door.
+
+"What is this room?"
+
+"The houseplace. I have my meals here. I live very primitively. My idea
+is----"
+
+"Then your servant may come in at any moment to lay your supper."
+
+I could not say that she seemed nervous or frightened, but the way she
+cut me short showed that she was so in reality. I was not offended, for
+I am the first to make allowance when rudeness is not intentional. I led
+the way hastily into the parlour.
+
+"She never comes in here," I said reassuringly, "after she has once
+brought in the lamp. I am supposed to be working, and must not be
+disturbed."
+
+"I'm not fit to come in," she said.
+
+And in truth she was not. She was caked with mud and dirt from head to
+foot, an appalling figure in the lamplight. The rain dripped from her
+hair, her sinister clothing, her whole person. She looked as if she must
+have hidden in a wet ditch. I gazed horror-struck at my speckless
+matting and pale Oriental rugs. I had never allowed a child or dog in
+the house for fear of the matting, except of course my poor Lindo, who
+had died a few months previously, and whom I had taught to wipe his feet
+on the mat.
+
+A ghost of a smile twitched her grey mouth.
+
+"Is not that the _Times_?" she said. "Spread it out four thick, and lay
+it on the floor."
+
+I did so, and she stepped carefully on to it.
+
+"Now," she said, standing on a great advertisement of a universal
+history--"now that I am not damaging the furniture, pull yourself
+together and _think_. How am I to get to the stable? I can't stop here."
+
+She could not indeed. I felt I might be absolutely powerless to get the
+muddy footprints out of the matting. And no doubt there were some in the
+houseplace too.
+
+"If I go through the scullery, I may be seen," she said, the water
+pattering off her on to the newspaper. "So lucky you take in the
+_Times_; it's printed on such thick paper. Where does that window look
+out?"
+
+She pointed to the window at the farther end of the room.
+
+"On to the garden."
+
+"Capital! Then we can get out through it, of course, without going
+through the scullery."
+
+I had not thought of that. I opened the window, and she was through it
+in two cautious strides.
+
+"Now," she said, looking back at me, "I'm comparatively safe for the
+moment, and so is the matting. But before we do anything more, get a
+duster--a person like you is sure to have a duster in a drawer. Just so,
+there it is. Now wipe up the marks of my muddy feet in the room we first
+came into as well as this, and then see to the paint of the window. I
+have probably smirched it. Then roll up the _Times_ tight, and put it
+in the waste-paper basket."
+
+She watched me obey her.
+
+"Having obliterated all traces of crime," she said when I had finished,
+"suppose we go on to the stable. Let me help you through the window. I
+will wipe my hands on the grass first. And would not you be wise to put
+on that little shawl I see on the sofa? It is getting cold."
+
+The window was only a yard from the ground, and I got out somehow,
+encumbered in my shawl, which a grateful reader had crocheted for me.
+She had, however, to help me in again directly I was out, for, between
+us, we had forgotten the stable key, which was underneath the cushion of
+my armchair.
+
+The rest was plain sailing. We stole down the garden path to the stable,
+and I unlocked the door and let her in.
+
+"Kindly lock me in and take away the key," she said, vanishing past me
+into the darkness, and I thought I detected a tone of relief in her
+brisk, matter-of-fact voice.
+
+"I will bring some food as soon as I can," I whispered. "If I knock
+three times, you will know it's only me."
+
+"Don't knock at all," she said; "it might be noticed. Why should you
+knock to go into your own stable?"
+
+"I won't, then. And how about your wet things?"
+
+"That's nothing. I'm accustomed to being wet."
+
+I crawled back to the cottage, and managed to scramble in by the parlour
+window, only to sink once more into my armchair in a state of collapse.
+I had always entered so acutely into the joys and sorrows of others,
+their love affairs, their difficulties, their bereavements (I had in
+this way led such a full life), that I was surprised at this juncture to
+find my nervous force so exhausted, until I remembered that ardent
+natures who give out a great deal in the way of helpfulness and interest
+are bound to suffer when the reaction comes. The reaction had come for
+me now. I saw only too plainly the folly I had been guilty of in
+harbouring a total stranger, the trouble I should probably get into, the
+difficulty that a nature naturally frank and open to a fault would find
+in keeping up a deception. I doubted my own powers, everything. The
+truth was--but I did not realise it till afterwards--that I had missed
+my tea.
+
+I could hear my servant laying my evening meal in the houseplace. In a
+few minutes she tapped to tell me it was ready, and I rose mechanically
+to obey the summons. And then, to my horror, I found I was still in
+morning dress. For the first time for years I had not dressed for
+dinner. What would she think if she saw me? But it was too late to
+change now; I must just go in as I was. My whole life seemed dislocated,
+torn up by the roots.
+
+There was not much to eat. Half a very small cold chicken, a lettuce,
+and a little custard pudding, fortunately very nutritious, being made
+with Eustace Miles's proteid. There were, however, a loaf and butter and
+plasmon biscuits on the sideboard. I cut up as much as I dared of the
+chicken, and put it between two very thick slices of buttered bread.
+Then I crept out again and took it to her. She got up out of the hay,
+and put out a gnarled brown hand for it.
+
+"I will bring you a cup of coffee later," I said. I was beginning to
+feel a kind of proprietorship in her. She would have starved but for me.
+
+My servant always left at nine o'clock, to sleep at her father's
+cottage, just over the way. I have a bell in the roof, which I can ring
+with a cord in case of fire or thieves.
+
+To-night she was, of course, later than usual, but at last she brought
+in the coffee, and then I heard her making her rounds, closing the
+shutters on the ground floor, and locking the front door--at least,
+trying to do so. I had already locked and bolted it. Then she locked the
+scullery door on the outside, abstracted the key, and I heard her step
+on the brick path, and the click of the gate. _She was gone_.
+
+I always heated the coffee myself over the parlour fire. It was already
+bubbling on the hob. Directly she had left I went to the kitchen, and
+got a second cup. I felt much better since I had had supper. And as I
+took the cup from the shelf the fantastic idea came into my mind to ask
+my protegee to come in and drink her coffee by the fire in the parlour.
+I must frankly own it was foolhardy; it was rash, it was even dangerous.
+But there it is! One cannot help the way one is made, and I am afraid I
+am not of those who invariably take the coldly prudent course and stick
+to it.
+
+I turned the idea over in my mind. I could put down sheets of brown
+paper--I always have a store--from the door to the fire, and an old
+mackintosh over the worst armchair, which was to be re-covered. Besides,
+I had not had a good look at her yet, or made out the real woman under
+the prison garb. That she was a person of education and refinement may
+appear hardly credible to my readers, but to one like myself, whose
+_metier_ it is to probe the secrets of my own heart and those of
+others--to _me_ it was sufficiently obvious from the first moment that,
+though I had to deal with a criminal, she was a very exceptional one,
+and belonging to my own class. I went out to the stable, and suggested
+to her that she should come in.
+
+"How do you know that I am not a man in disguise?" came a voice from the
+darkness; and it seemed to me, not for the first time, that she was
+amused at something. "I'm tall enough. Just think how stupendous it
+would be if, when I was inside and the door really locked, I proved to
+be a wicked, devastating, burglarious male."
+
+"I wish you would not say things like that," I said. "On your honour,
+_are_ you a man?"
+
+She hesitated, and then said in a changed voice:
+
+"I am not. I don't know what I am. I was a woman once, just as a
+derelict was a ship once. But whatever I am, I am not fit to come into a
+self-respecting house. I am one solid cake of mud."
+
+Something in her reluctance made me the more determined. Besides, one of
+the truths on which I have insisted most strongly in my "Veil of the
+Temple" is that if we show full trust and confidence in others, they
+will prove worthy of that trust. Her coming indoors had now become a
+matter of principle, and I insisted. I even said I could lend her a
+dressing-gown and slippers, so that her wet clothes might be dried by
+the kitchen fire.
+
+She murmured something about a good Samaritan, but still demurred, and
+asked if I had a bath-room. I said I had.
+
+That decided her. She seemed to have no difficulty in making up her
+mind. She did not see two sides to things, as I always do myself.
+
+She said that if I liked to allow her to go to the bath-room first, she
+should be happy to accept my kind invitation for an hour or so. If not,
+she would stay where she was.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Half an hour later she was sitting opposite me in the parlour, on the
+other side of the wood fire, sipping her coffee. I had not put down the
+brown paper or the mackintosh. It was not necessary. Her close-cropped,
+curly grey hair, still damp from the bath, was parted, and brushed
+stiffly back over her ears. It must have been very beautiful hair once.
+Her thin hands and thinner face and neck looked more like brown
+parchment than ever, as she sat in the lamplight, my old blue
+dressing-gown folded negligently round her, and taking picturesque folds
+which it never did when I was inside it. Those long, gaunt limbs must
+have been graceful once. Her feet were bare in her slippers--in my
+slippers, I mean. She looked rather like a well-bred Indian.
+
+It was obvious that she was a lady, but her speech had already told me
+that. What amazed me most where all amazed me was her self-possession.
+
+I wondered what her impression of me was, as we sat, such a strangely
+assorted couple, one on each side of the fire. Did I indeed seem to her
+the quixotic, impetuous, and yet withal dreamy creature which my books
+show me to be? But I have often been told by those who know me well that
+I am much more than my books.
+
+"I have not sat by a fire for how many months?" she said, her black eyes
+on the logs. "Let me see, last time was in a lonely cottage on the
+Cotswolds. It was a night like this, but colder, and a helpless old
+couple let me in, and allowed me to dry my clothes, and lie by their
+fire all night. Very unwise of them, wasn't it? I might have murdered
+them in their beds."
+
+I began to feel rather uncomfortable.
+
+"You are not undergoing a sentence for murder, are you?" I asked.
+
+She looked at me for a moment, and then said:
+
+"The desperate creature who escaped from gaol three days ago, and who
+was in for life for the murder of the man she lived with, and whose
+convict clothes I am wearing--whose clothes, I mean, are at this moment
+drying before your kitchen fire--is not the same woman who is now
+drinking your excellent coffee."
+
+"Do you mean to tell me you have never been in prison?"
+
+"Yes, for a year; but I served my time and finished it four years ago."
+
+I wrung my hands. I was deeply disappointed in her. Her transparent
+duplicity, which could impose on no one, not even so unsuspicious a
+nature as mine, hurt me to the quick.
+
+"Oh! you poor soul," I said, "don't lie to me. Indeed it isn't
+necessary. I will do all I can for you. I will help you to get away. I
+will give you other clothes, and money, and we will bury these--these
+garments of shame. But don't, for God's sake, don't lie to me."
+
+She looked gravely at me, as if she were measuring me, and seeing, no
+doubt, that I was not deceived, a dusky red rose for a moment to her
+face and brow.
+
+"It is not easy to speak the truth to some people," she said, her eyes
+dropping once more to the fire, "even when they are as compassionate and
+kind as you are."
+
+"Truthfulness is a habit that may be regained," I said earnestly. "I
+myself, without half your temptations, was untruthful once."
+
+To associate oneself with the sins of others, to show one's own scar,
+is not this sometimes the only way to comfort those overborne in the
+battle of life? Had I not chronicled my own failing in the matter of
+truthfulness when I foolishly and wickedly took blame on myself for the
+fault of one dear to me, in my first book, "With Broken Wing"? But I saw
+as I spoke that she had not read it, and did not realise to what I was
+alluding. I have so steadily refused to be interviewed that possibly
+also she had not even yet guessed who I was.
+
+"I am sure--I am quite sure," I went on after a moment, "that there is a
+great deal of good in you, that you are by nature truthful."
+
+"Am I? I wonder. Perhaps I was so once, in the early, untroubled days.
+But I have told many lies since then."
+
+She drank her coffee slowly, looking steadfastly into the fire, as if
+she saw in the wavering flame some reflection of another fire on another
+hearthstone.
+
+"How good it is!" she said at last, putting her cup down. "How
+dreadfully good it is--the coffee and the fire, and the quiet room, and
+to be dry and warm and clean! How good it all is! And how little I
+thought of them when I had all these things!"
+
+She got up and looked at a water-colour over the low mantelpiece.
+
+"Madeira, isn't it?" she said. "I seem to remember that peculiar effect
+of the vivid purple of the Bougainvillea against the dim, cloudy purple
+of the hills behind."
+
+"It is Madeira," I said. "I was there ten years ago. Perhaps you have
+read my little book, 'Beside the Bougainvillea'?"
+
+"My husband died there," she said, looking fixedly at the drawing. "He
+died just before sunrise, and when it was over I remember looking out
+across the sea, past the great English man-of-war in the harbour, to
+those three little islands--I forget their names--and as the first level
+rays touched them, the islands and the ship all seemed to melt into
+half-transparent amethyst in a sea of glass, beneath a sky of glass. How
+calm the sea was--hardly a ripple! I felt that even he, weak as he was,
+could walk upon it. It was like daybreak in heaven, not on earth. And
+his long martyrdom was over. It seemed as if we were both safe home at
+last."
+
+"Had he been ill long?"
+
+"A long time. He suffered terribly. And I gave him morphia under the
+doctor's directions. And then, when he was gone--not at first, but after
+a little bit--I took morphia myself, to numb my own anguish and to get a
+little sleep. I thought I should go mad if I could not get any sleep. I
+had better have gone mad. But I took morphia instead, and sealed my own
+doom. But how can you tell whether I am speaking the truth? Well, it
+doesn't matter if you don't believe me. I am accustomed to it. I am
+never believed now. And I don't care if I'm not. I don't deserve to be.
+But I suppose you can see that I was not always a tramp on the highway.
+And, at any rate, that is what I am now, and what I shall remain, unless
+I drift into prison again, which God forbid, for I should suffocate in a
+cell after the life in the open air which I am accustomed to."
+
+She shivered a little, as if she who seemed devoid of fear quailed at
+the remembrance of her cell.
+
+"You are wondering how I have fallen so low," she said. "Do you remember
+Kipling's lines--
+
+    "We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung?
+
+"Well, I have known what it is to drop down the ladder of life,
+clinging convulsively to each rung in turn, losing hold of it, and being
+caught back by compassionate hands, only to let go of it again; fighting
+desperately to hold on to the next rung when I was thrust from the one
+above it; having my hands beaten from each rung, one after another, one
+after another, sinking lower and lower yet, cling as I would, pray as I
+would, repent as I would."
+
+"Who beat your hands from the rungs?" I said.
+
+"Morphia," she replied.
+
+There was a long silence.
+
+"Morphia, that was the beginning and the middle and the end of my
+misfortunes," she said. "What did I do that gradually lost me my
+friends?--and I had such good friends, even after my best friend my
+sister died. What did I do that ruined me by inches? In Australia I have
+heard of evil men taken red-handed being left in the bush with food and
+water by them, bound to a fallen tree which has been set on fire at one
+end. And the fire smoulders and smoulders, and travels inch by inch
+along the trunk, and they watch their slow, inevitable death coming
+towards them day by day, until it at last destroys them also inch by
+inch. What had I done that I should find myself bound like those poor
+wretches? I cannot tell you. Morphia wipes out the memory as surely as
+drink. I only know that I was in torment. Faces, familiar and strange
+faces, some compassionate, some indignant, some horror-struck, come back
+to me sometimes, blurred as by smoke, but I see nothing clearly. I dimly
+remember fragments of appeals that were made to me, fragments of divine
+music in cathedrals where I sobbed my heart out. Broken, splintered,
+devastating memories of promises made in bitter tears, and endless lies
+and subterfuges to conceal what I could not conceal. For morphia looks
+out of the eyes of its victim. I knew that, but I thought no one could
+see it in mine, that I could hide it. And I have one vivid recollection
+of a quiet room with flowers in it, and latticed windows, but I don't
+know where it was or how I came there, or who were the people in it who
+spoke to me. There was a tall woman with grey parted hair in a lilac
+gown. I can see her now. And I swore before God that I had left off the
+drug. And some one standing behind me took the little infernal machine
+out of my pocket, and I was confronted with it. And the tall woman wrung
+her hands and groaned. How I hated her! And in my madness I accused her
+of putting it there to ruin me. And some one (a man) said slowly, 'She
+is impossible!--quite impossible!' That one memory stands out like a
+little oasis in a desert of mirage and shifting sand, and thirst. I
+should know the room again if I saw it. There was a window opening into
+a little paved courtyard with a fountain in it, and doves drinking. But
+I shall never see it again. And the drug became alive like a fiend, and
+pushed me lower and lower, down, always down, until I did something
+dreadful, I don't know now exactly what it was, though the prison
+chaplain explained it to me. But it was about a cheque, and I was
+convicted and sent to prison."
+
+"Then you have been in prison _twice_?" I said, anxious to make it easy
+for her to be entirely truthful, for I could not doubt the truth of much
+of this earlier history.
+
+She did not seem to hear me.
+
+"There is no crime," she went on, "however black, that I did not expiate
+then. If suffering can wash out sins, I washed out mine. I, who thought
+I had so many enemies, have no enemy. No one has ever injured me. But if
+I had the cruellest in the world, I would not condemn him, if he were a
+morphia maniac, to sudden enforced abstinence and prison life. And I
+could not die. I am very strong by nature. I could neither die nor live.
+It was months before I saw light, months of hell, consumed in the flame
+of hell which is thirst. And slowly the power to live came back to me. I
+was saved in spite of myself. And slowly the power of thought returned
+to me. I had time to think. My mind drifted and drifted, but I got
+control of it now and again, and then for longer intervals, as my poor
+body reasserted itself from the slavery of the drug. And I thought--I
+thought--I thought. And at last I made up my mind, my fierce, embittered
+mind. And when I came out of prison, I took to the road. Even then there
+were those who would have helped me, but I steeled my heart against
+them. There was a strange woman with a sweet face waiting at the prison
+door, who spoke kindly to me. But I distrusted her. I distrusted every
+one. And I did not mean to be helped any more. I had been helped time
+and time again. To be helped was to be put where I could get morphia,
+where I had something, if it was only my clothes, which I could sell to
+get it, where I could _steal_ things to sell to get it. If I had any
+possessions, I knew that some day--not for a time perhaps, but some
+day--I should sell it and get morphia somehow. They say you can't buy
+it, but you can. I always could in the past, and I knew I always should
+in the future. But on the road, in rags, a tramp, down in the dust, in
+the safe refuge of the dust--there it was not possible. There I was out
+of temptation. There I could not be burned in that flame again. That was
+all I thought of, to creep away where the fire could not reach me. And I
+felt sure I should not live long. In my ignorance I thought the exposure
+to all weathers, and privation, and the first frost of winter would
+bring me my release quickly. But they did not. They gave me new life
+instead. I came out in spring, and I begged my way to Abinger Forest,
+and nearly starved there; but I did not mind. Have you ever been in
+Abinger Forest in the spring when the wortleberry is out? Can the
+Elysian fields of Asphodel be more beautiful? Perhaps to others they
+might seem so; but not to me. My first glimpse of hope came to me in the
+woods at Abinger in a windless, sunny week at Easter. The gipsies gave
+me food once or twice. And I ate the scraps that the trippers left after
+their picnics at the top of Leith Hill where the tower is. And I lay in
+the sun by day and I slept in a stack of bracken by night, and my
+strained life relaxed. And I, who had become so hard and bitter, saw at
+last what endless love and compassion had been vainly lavished on me,
+and I was humbled. I had somehow got it rooted into my warped mind that
+I had been cruelly treated, betrayed, abandoned by my friends, by every
+one. I had tried hard to forgive them, but I could not. I saw at last
+that it was I who had been cruel, I who had betrayed, I who needed
+forgiveness; and I asked it of the only Friend I had left, the only
+Friend Who never forsakes us. And peace came back and the deep wound in
+my life healed. It seemed as if Nature, who had forgotten me for so
+long, had pity on me, and took me again to her heart. For I had loved
+her years ago, before my husband died.
+
+"When the weather broke, I took to the road, and the road has given me
+back my health, and much more than health. I can see beauty again now.
+And there is always beauty in the hedgerow; and wherever the road runs
+there is beauty. In the open down, beside the tidal rivers with their
+brown sails creeping among the buttercups, everywhere there is beauty.
+And I can sleep again now. I learnt how to sleep at Abinger. I had
+forgotten how it was done without morphia. O God! I can sleep, every
+night, anywhere. It's worth being a tramp for that alone, to be able to
+sleep naturally, to know in the daytime that you will have it at night,
+and then to lie down and feel it stealing over you like the blessing of
+God. I used to wake myself at first for sheer joy when it was coming.
+And then to nestle down, and sink into it, down, down into it, till one
+reaches the great peace. And no more wakings in torment as the drug
+passes off, waking as in some iron grave, unable to stir hand or foot,
+unable to beat back the suffocating horror and terror which lies cheek
+to cheek with us. No more wakings in hell. No more mornings like that.
+But instead, the cool, sweet waking in the crystal light in the open
+air. And to see the sun come up, and to lie still against the clean,
+fragrant haystack and let it warm you! And to watch the quiet, friendly
+beasts rise up in the long meadows! And to wake hungry, instead of that
+dreadful, maddening thirst! And to _like_ to eat--how good that is, even
+if you go fasting half the day! But I never do. The poor will always
+give you enough to eat. It hurts them to see any one hungry. Yes, I have
+dropped down the ladder rung by rung, and now I have reached the lowest
+rung. And it is a good place, the only safe place for wastrels such as
+I, the only refuge from my enemy. There is peace on the lowest rung. I
+can do no more harm there, and I have done so much. I was ambitious
+once, I was admired and clever once; but I found no abiding city
+anywhere. Temptation lurked everywhere. I was driven like chaff before
+the wind.... But now I have the road. No one will take the road from me
+while I live, or the ditch beside it to die in when my time comes. I am
+provided for at last. I lead a clean life at last."
+
+She sat silent, her dreamy eyes fixed, her thin hands folded one over
+the other. I looked at her with an aching heart. What strange mixture
+of truth and lies was all this! But I said nothing. What was the use?
+
+And as we sat silent beside the dying fire the great inequality between
+us pressed hard upon me: I, by no special virtue of my own, God knows!
+on one of the uppermost rungs of life. She poor soul--poor soul--on the
+lowest.
+
+The clock on the mantelpiece chimed eleven.
+
+She started slightly, looked at it, and then at me, as if uncertain of
+her surroundings, and the shrewd, sardonic look came back to her face.
+
+"I am keeping you up," she said, rising. "I think your strong coffee has
+gone to my head. This outburst of autobiography is a poor return for all
+your kindness. I had no idea it was so late or that I could be so
+garrulous, and I must make a very early start to-morrow. Shall I go into
+the kitchen and put on my own clothes again? They must be quite dry by
+now."
+
+"Oh! let me help you," I said impulsively. "Let me get you into a Home,
+or help you to emigrate. Don't go back to this wandering, aimless life.
+Work for others, interest in others, that is what _you_ need, what _I_
+need, what we _all_ need to take us out of ourselves, to make us forget
+our own misery."
+
+"I have half forgotten mine already," she said. "To-night I remembered
+it again. But I have long since put it from my mind. I think the moment
+for a change of clothing in the kitchen has arrived."
+
+She spoke quietly, but as if her last word were final. I found it
+impossible to continue the subject.
+
+"You will never escape in those clothes," I said. "You haven't the ghost
+of a chance. If you will come into my room, I will see what I can find
+for you."
+
+I had been willing to do much more than give her clothes, but I
+instinctively felt that my appeal to her better feelings had fallen on
+deaf ears.
+
+She followed me to my bedroom, and I got out all my oldest clothes and
+spread them before her. But she would have none of them.
+
+"The worst look like an ultra-respectable district visitor," she said,
+tossing aside one garment after another. It was the more curious that
+she should say that because my brother-in-law had always said I looked
+like one, and that my books even had a parochial flavour about them. But
+then he had never really studied them, or he would have seen their
+lighter side.
+
+"I had no idea pockets were worn in a little slit in the front seam,"
+said my visitor. "It shows how long it is since I have been 'in the
+know.' No doubt front pockets came in with the bicycles. No. It is very
+kind of you. But, except for that old dyed moreen petticoat, the things
+won't do. I always was particular about dress, and I never was more so
+than I am at this moment. You don't happen to have an old black ulster
+with all the buttons off, and a bit of mangy fur dropping off the neck?
+That's more my style. But of course you haven't."
+
+"I had one once of that kind; it was so bad that I could not even give
+it away. So I put it in the dog's basket. Lindo used to sleep on it. He
+loved it, poor dear! It may be there still."
+
+We went downstairs again, and I pulled Lindo's basket out from under the
+stairs.
+
+The old black wrap was still in it, but it was mildewy and stuck to the
+basket. It tore as I released it. It reminded me painfully of my lost
+darling.
+
+"The very thing!" she said, with enthusiasm, as the dilapidated travesty
+of a coat shook itself free. "Quiet and unobtrusive to the last degree.
+Parisian in colour and simplicity. And mole colour is so becoming. Can
+you really spare it? Then with the moreen petticoat I am provided,
+equipped."
+
+We went back to the kitchen again.
+
+"What will you do with them?" I said, pointing to her convict clothes
+which had dried perfectly stiff, owing to the amount of mud on them. How
+such quantities of mud could have got on to them was a mystery to me.
+
+"It certainly does not improve one's clothes, to hide in a wet ditch in
+a ploughed field," she said meditatively. "I will dispose of them early
+to-morrow morning. I picked a place as I found my way here."
+
+"Not on _my_ premises?" I said anxiously.
+
+"Of course not. Do you take me for a monster of ingratitude? I'll manage
+that all right."
+
+I suddenly remembered that she must have food to take with her. I went
+to the larder, and when I came back I looked at her with renewed
+amazement.
+
+My dressing-gown and slippers were laid carefully on a chair. The
+astonishing woman was a tramp once more, squatting on the brick floor,
+drawing on to her bare feet the shapeless excuses for boots which had
+been toasting before the fire.
+
+Then she leaned over the hearth, rubbed her hands in the ashes, and
+passed them gently over her face, her neck, her wrists and ankles. She
+drew forward and tangled her hair before the kitchen glass. Then she
+rolled up her convict clothes into a compact bundle, wiped her right
+hand carefully on the kitchen towel, and held it out to me.
+
+"Remember," I said gravely, taking it in both of mine and pressing it,
+"if ever you are in need of a friend, you know to whom to apply. Marion
+Dalrymple, Rufford, will always find me."
+
+I thought I ought not to let her go away without letting her know who I
+was. But my name seemed to have no especial meaning for her. Perhaps she
+had lived beyond the pale too long.
+
+"You have indeed been a friend to me," she said. "God bless you, you
+good Samaritan! May the world go well with you! Good-night, and thank
+you, and good-bye. If you'll give me the stable key, I'll let myself in.
+It's a pity you should come out; its raining again. And I'll leave the
+stable locked when I go. And the key will be in the lavender bush at the
+door. Good-bye again."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+I did not sleep that night, and in the morning I was so tired that I
+made no attempt to work. I had, of course, stolen out before six to
+retrieve the stable key from the lavender bush, and hang it on its
+accustomed nail. I looked into the stable first. My guest had departed.
+
+I spent an idle morning musing on the events of the previous evening, if
+time thus spent can be called idling. It may seem so to others, but in
+my own experience these apparently profitless hours are often more
+fruitful than those spent in belabouring the brain to a forced activity.
+But then I have always preferred to remain, as the great Molinos
+advises, a learner rather than a teacher in the school of life. Early in
+the afternoon, as I was on my way to the post-office, my landlord, Mr.
+Ledbury, met me. He looked excited, an open telegram in his hand.
+
+"Have you heard about the escaped convict?" he said. "She has been
+taken. She was traced to Bronsal Heath yesterday, and run to earth this
+morning at Framlingham."
+
+He turned and walked with me. He was too much taken up with the news to
+notice how I started and how my colour changed. But indeed I flush and
+turn pale at nothing. All my life it has been a vexation to me that a
+chance word or allusion should bring the colour to my cheek.
+
+"Poor soul!" he said. "I could almost wish she had made good her escape.
+She got out, Heaven alone knows how, to see her child, which she had
+heard was ill. But the ground she must have covered in the time! She was
+absolutely dead beat when she was taken. And she was not in her prison
+clothes. That is so inexplicable. How she got others she alone knows.
+Some one must have befriended her, and given them to her--some one very
+poor, for she was miserably clad, and the extraordinary thing is that
+though she was traced to the deserted cottage on the heath yesterday,
+and taken at Framlingham to-day, her prison clothes were found hidden in
+my wood-yard, _here_ in my wood-yard, by Zack when he went to his work.
+And this place is not on the way to Framlingham. How in the name of
+fortune could she have hidden her clothes _here_?"
+
+"She must have wandered here in the dark," I suggested.
+
+"I don't understand it," he said, turning in at his own gate. "But
+anyhow, the poor thing has been caught."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+My story should end here. Indeed, to my mind it does end here. And if I
+have been persuaded by my family to add a few more lines on the subject,
+it is sorely against the grain and against my artistic sense. And I am
+conscious that I have been unwise in allowing myself to be over-ruled by
+those who have not given their lives to literature as I have done, and
+who therefore cannot judge as I can when a story should be brought to a
+close.
+
+I need hardly say that I often thought of my unhappy visitant, often
+wondered how she was getting on. A year later I was staying with a
+friend in Ipswich who was a visitor at the prison there, and I
+remembered how it was to Ipswich she had been brought back, and I asked
+to see her. My friend knew her, and told me that she had made no further
+attempt to escape, and that she believed the child was dead. It had been
+an old promise that she would one day take me over the prison. I claimed
+it, and begged that I might be allowed to have a few words with that
+particular inmate. It was not according to the regulations, but my
+friend was a privileged person. That afternoon I passed with her under
+that dreary portal, and after walking along interminable white-washed
+passages, and past how many locked and numbered doors, my friend
+whispered to a warder, who motioned me to a cell.
+
+A woman was sitting on her bed with her head in her hands.
+
+"You have not forgotten me, I hope," I said gently. It may be weak, but
+I have never been able to speak ungently to any one in trouble, whatever
+the cause may be. I have known too much trouble myself.
+
+She raised her head slowly, pushed back her hair, and looked at me.
+
+I had never seen her before.
+
+I could only stare helplessly at her.
+
+"But you are not the woman who escaped last October?" I stammered at
+last.
+
+"Yes," she said pathetically, "I am. Who else should I be? What do you
+want with me?"
+
+But I was speechless. It was all so unexpected, so inexplicable. I have
+often thought since how much stranger fact is than fiction. The more
+interested one is in life and in one's fellow-creatures the more
+surprises there are in store for one. With every year I live my sense of
+wonder increases, and with it my realisation of my own ignorance. As I
+stared amazedly at her, a change came over her face. She looked at me
+almost with eagerness.
+
+"You didn't take me for 'er, did you?" she said hurriedly. "'Er as
+'elped me. Did you know 'er? She ain't copped, is she? Don't tell me as
+she's copped too."
+
+"I thought you _were_ her," I said. "I don't know what I thought. I
+don't understand it."
+
+"She found me on a dirty night," she said, "in a tumbledown cottage. I'd
+never seen her afore. But she crep' in and found me, and tole me there
+was a watch kep' for me at Woodbridge. And she changed clothes with me,
+so as to give me a bit of a chance. Mine was fair stiff with mud, for
+I'd laid in a wet ditch till night, but they showed the blasted colour
+for all that. And she give me all she had on her--her clothes, and a
+bite of bread and bacon, and two pence. And it wasn't as if we was pals.
+I'd never seen her afore. She stuck at nothing, and she only larfed at
+the risk, for they'd have shut her up for certain if they'd caught her.
+She said she'd manage some'ow. And she 'eartened me up, and put me on
+the road for Wickham, and she said she'd dror away the pursoot by hiding
+the prison clothes somewhere in the opsit direction where they could be
+found easy by the first fool."
+
+"She did it," I said.
+
+"And how did she spare 'em? She'd nuthin' but them."
+
+"I gave her some more. If she had been my own sister I could not have
+done more for her."
+
+"And she worn't caught, wor she?"
+
+"Not that I know of. No, I feel sure she never was. I helped her to get
+away."
+
+"I was took in spite of all," said the woman, "and by my own silliness.
+But I seed my little Nan alive fust, and that was all I wanted. And I
+don't know who she was, nor what she was. She tole me she was a outcast
+and a tramp and a good-for-nothing. But there's never been anybody yet,
+be they who they may, as done for me what she done. She'd have give me
+the skin orf her back if she could 'ave took it orf. And it worn't as if
+I knowed her. I'd never set eyes on 'er afore, nor never shall again."
+
+I have never seen her again, either.
+
+
+
+
+THE HAND ON THE LATCH
+
+    There came a man across the moor,
+      Fell and foul of face was he,
+      He left the path by the cross-roads three,
+    And stood in the shadow of the door.
+
+    MARY COLERIDGE.
+
+
+She stood at her low window with its uneven, wavering glass, and looked
+out across the prairie. A little snow had fallen, not much, only enough
+to add a sense of desolation to the boundless plain, the infinite plain
+outside the four cramped walls of her log hut. The log hut was like a
+tiny boat moored in some vast, tideless, impassable sea. The immensity
+of the prairie had crushed her in the earlier years of her married life;
+but gradually she had become accustomed to it, then reconciled to it, at
+last almost a part of it. The grey had come early to her thick hair, a
+certain fixity to the quiet courage of her eyes. Her calm, steadfast
+face showed that she was not given to depression, but nevertheless this
+evening, as she stood watching for her husband's return, for the first
+distant speck of him where the cart-rut vanished into the plain, a sense
+of impending misfortune enfolded her with the dusk. Was it because the
+first snow had fallen? Ah me! how much it meant. It was as significant
+for her as the grey pallor that falls on a sick man's face. It meant the
+endless winter, the greater isolation instead of the lesser, the
+powerlessness to move hand or foot in that all-enveloping shroud; the
+struggle, not for existence--with him beside her that was assured--not
+for luxury, she had ceased to care for it, though he had not ceased to
+care for her sake, but for life in any but its narrowest sense. Books,
+letters, human speech, through the long months these would be almost
+entirely denied her. The sudden remembrance of the larger needs of life
+flooded her soul, touching to momentary semblance of movement many
+things long cherished, but long since dead, like delicate sea-plants
+beyond high-water mark, that cannot exist between the long droughts when
+the spring tide does not come. She had known what she was doing when,
+against the wishes of her family, she of the South had married him of
+the North, when she left the busy city life she knew, and clave to her
+husband, following him over the rim of the world, as women will follow
+while they have feet to follow with. She was his superior in birth,
+cultivation, refinement, but she had never regretted what she had done.
+The regrets were his for her, for the poverty to which he had brought
+her, and to which she had not been accustomed. She had only one regret,
+if such a thin strip of a word as regret can be used to describe her
+passionate, controlled desolation, immense as the prairie, because she
+had no child. Perhaps if they had had children the walls of the log hut
+in the waste might have closed in on them less rigidly. It might have
+become more of a home.
+
+Her mind had taken its old mechanical bent, the trend of long habit, as
+she looked out from that low window. How often she had stood there and
+thought "If only we might have had a child!" And now, by sheer force of
+habit, she thought it yet again. And then a slow rapture took possession
+of her whole being, mounted, mounted till she leaned against the window
+still faint with joy. She was to have a child after all. She had hardly
+dared believe it at first; but as time had gone on a vague hope quickly
+suppressed as unbearable had turned to suspense, suspense had alternated
+with the fierce despair that precedes certainty. Certainty had come at
+last, clear and calm and exquisite as dawn. She would have a child in
+the spring. What was the winter to her now! Nothing but a step towards
+joy. The world was all broken up and made new. The prairie, its great
+loneliness, its death-like solitude, were gone out of her life. She was
+to have a child in the spring. She had not dared to tell her husband
+till she was sure. But she would tell him this evening, when they were
+sitting together over the fire.
+
+She stood motionless in the deepening dusk, trying to be calm. And at
+last in the far distance she saw a speck arise as it were out of a
+crease in the level earth. Her husband on his horse. How many hundreds
+of times she had seen him appear over the rim of the world, just as he
+was appearing now. She lit the lamp and put it in the window. She blew
+the log fire to a blaze. The firelight danced on the wooden walls,
+crowded with cheap pictures, and on the few precious daguerreotypes that
+reminded her she too had brothers and sisters and kin of her own, far
+away in one of those southern cities where the war was still smouldering
+grimly on.
+
+Her husband took his horse round and stalled him. Presently he came in.
+They stood a moment together in silence as their custom was, and she
+leaned her forehead against his shoulder. Then she busied herself with
+his supper, and he sat down heavily at the little table.
+
+"Had you any difficulty this time in getting the money together?" she
+asked.
+
+Her husband was a tax collector.
+
+"None," he said abstractedly; "at least--yes--a little. But I have it
+all, and the arrears as well. It makes a large sum."
+
+He was evidently thinking of something else. She did not speak again.
+She saw something was troubling him.
+
+"I heard news to-day at Philip's," he said at last, "which I don't like.
+If I had heard in time, and if I could have borrowed a fresh horse, I
+would have ridden straight on to ----. But it was too late in the day
+to be safe, and you would have been anxious what had become of me if I
+had been out all night with all this money on me. I shall go to-morrow
+as soon as it is light."
+
+They discussed the business which took him to the nearest town thirty
+miles away, where their small savings were invested, somewhat
+precariously, as it turned out. What was safe, who was safe, while the
+invisible war between North and South smouldered on and on? It had not
+come near them, but as an earthquake which is engulfing cities in one
+part of Europe will rattle a tea-cup without oversetting it on a cottage
+shelf half a continent away, so the civil war had reached them at last.
+
+"I take a hopeful view," he said, but his face was overcast. "I don't
+see why we should lose the little we have. It has been hard enough to
+scrape it together, God knows. Promptitude and joint action with
+Reynolds will probably save it. But I must be prompt." He still spoke
+abstractedly, as if even now he were thinking of something else.
+
+He began to take out of the leathern satchel various bags of money.
+
+"Shall I help you to count it?"
+
+She often did so.
+
+They counted the flimsy dirty paper-money together, and put it all back
+into the various labelled bags.
+
+"It comes right," he said.
+
+Suddenly she said, "But you can't pay it into the bank to-morrow if you
+go to ----."
+
+"I know," he said looking at her; "that is what I have been thinking of
+ever since I heard Philip's news. I don't like leaving you with all this
+money in the house; but I must."
+
+She was silent. She was not frightened for herself, but it was State
+money, not their own. She was not nervous as he was, but she had always
+shared with him a certain dread of those bulging bags, and had always
+been thankful to see him return safe--he never went twice by the same
+track--after paying the money in. In those wild days, when men went
+armed, with their lives in their hands, it was not well to be known to
+have large sums about you.
+
+He looked at the bags, frowning.
+
+"I am not afraid," she said.
+
+"There is no real need to be," he said after a moment. "When I leave
+to-morrow morning, it will be thought I have gone to pay it in.
+Still----"
+
+He did not finish his sentence, but she knew what was in his mind: the
+great loneliness of the prairie. Out in the white night came the short,
+sharp yap of a wolf.
+
+"I am not afraid," she said again.
+
+"I shall be gone only one night," he said.
+
+"I have often been a night alone."
+
+"I know," he said; "but somehow it's worse leaving you with so much
+money in the house."
+
+"No one knows it will be there."
+
+"That is true, except that every one knows I have been collecting large
+sums."
+
+"They will think you have gone to pay it in as usual."
+
+"Yes," he said with an effort.
+
+Then he got up, and went to his tool-box. She watched him open it,
+seeing him in a new light which encompassed him with even greater love.
+"If I tell him to-night," she thought, "it will make him still more
+anxious about leaving me. Perhaps he would refuse to go, and he must go.
+I will not tell him till he comes back."
+
+The resolution not to speak was like taking hold of a piece of iron in
+frost. She had not known it would hurt so much. A new tremulousness,
+sweet and strange, passed over her--not cowardice, not fear, not of the
+heart nor of the mind, but a sort of emotion of the whole being.
+
+"I will not tell him," she said again.
+
+Her husband got out his tools, took up a plank from the floor, and put
+the money into a hole beneath it, beside their small valuables, such as
+they were, in a biscuit tin. Then he replaced the plank, screwed it
+down, and she drew back a small fur mat over the place. He put away the
+tools and then came and stood in front of her. He was not conscious of
+her transfiguration, and she dropped her eyes for fear of showing it.
+
+"I shall start early," he said, "as soon as it is light, and I shall be
+back before sundown the day after to-morrow. I know it is unreasonable,
+but I shall go easier in my mind if you will promise me one thing."
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"Not to go out of the house, or to let any one else come in on any
+pretence whatever, while I am away," he said. "Bar everything, and stay
+inside."
+
+"I shan't want to go out."
+
+He made an impatient movement.
+
+"Promise me that, come what will, you will let no one in during my
+absence," he said.
+
+"I promise."
+
+"Swear it."
+
+She hesitated.
+
+"Swear it, to please me," he said.
+
+"I swear that I will let no one into the house, on any pretext whatever,
+until you come back," she said, smiling at him.
+
+He sighed and relapsed into his chair, and gave way to the great fatigue
+that possessed him.
+
+The next morning he started soon after daybreak, but not until he had
+brought her in sufficient fuel to last several days. There had been more
+snow in the night, fine snow like salt, but not enough to make
+travelling difficult. She watched him ride away, and silenced the voice
+within her which always said as she saw him go, "You will never see him
+again; you have heard his voice for the last time." Perhaps, after all,
+the difference between the brave and the cowardly lies in how they deal
+with that voice. Both hear it. She silenced it instantly. It spoke
+again, more insistently, "You have heard his voice, felt his kiss, for
+the last time. He will never see the face of his child." She silenced it
+again, and went about her work.
+
+The day passed as countless other days had passed. She was accustomed to
+be much alone. She had work to do, enough and to spare, within the
+little home which was to become a real home, please God, in the spring.
+The evening fell almost before she expected it. She locked and barred
+the doors, and closed the shutters of the windows. She made all secure,
+as she had done many a time before.
+
+And then, putting aside her work, she took down the newest of her
+well-worn books, lately sent her from New Orleans, and began to read.
+
+    Oui, sans doute, tout meurt: ce monde est un grand reve,
+    Et le peu de bonheur qui nous vient en chemin,
+    Nous n'avons pas plus tot ce roseau dans la main,
+        Que le vent nous l'enleve.
+
+"Que le vent nous l'enleve." She repeated the last words to herself. Ah
+no! the wind could not take her happiness out of her hand.
+
+A wandering wind had risen at nightfall, and it came softly across the
+snow, and tried the doors and windows as with a furtive hand. She could
+hear it coming as from an immense distance, passing with a sigh,
+returning plaintive, homeless, forlorn, to whisper round the house.
+
+    J'ai vu sous le soleil tomber bien d'autres choses
+    Que les feuilles des bois, et l'ecume des eaux,
+    Bien d'autres s'en aller que le parfum des roses
+        Et le chant des oiseaux.
+
+That wind meant more snow. Involuntarily she laid down her book and
+listened to it.
+
+How like the sound of the wind was to wandering footsteps, slowly
+drawing near, creeping round the house. She could almost have fancied
+that a hand touched the shutters, was even now trying to raise the latch
+of the door.
+
+A moment of intense silence, in which the wind seemed to hold its breath
+and listen without, while she listened within. And then a low, distinct
+knock upon the door.
+
+She did not move.
+
+"It is the wind," she said to herself; but she knew it was not.
+
+The knock came again, low, urgent, not to be denied.
+
+She had become very cold. She had supposed fear was an emotion of the
+mind. She had not reckoned for this slow paralysis of the body.
+
+She managed to creep to the window and unbar the shutter an inch or two.
+By pressing her face against the extreme corner of the pane she could
+just discern in the snowlight part of a man's figure, wrapped in a long
+cloak.
+
+She barred the window once more. She was not surprised. She knew now
+that she had known it always. She had pretended to herself that the
+thief would not come; but she was expecting him when he knocked. And he
+stood there, outside. Presently he would be inside.
+
+He knocked yet again, this time more loudly. What need was there for
+silence when for miles and miles round there was no ear to hear save
+that of a chance prairie dog?
+
+She laid hold upon her courage, seeing that it was her only refuge, and
+went to the door.
+
+"Who is there?" she said through a chink.
+
+A man's voice, low and feeble, replied, "Let me in."
+
+"I cannot let you in."
+
+There was a short silence.
+
+"I pray you, let me in," he said again.
+
+"I have told you I cannot. Who are you?"
+
+"I am a soldier, wounded. I'm trying to get back to my friends at ----."
+He mentioned a settlement about fifty miles north. "I have missed my
+way, and I can't drag myself any farther."
+
+Her heart swung violently between suspicion and compassion.
+
+"I am alone in the house," she said. "My husband is away, and he made me
+promise not to let any one in on any pretence whatever during his
+absence."
+
+"Then I shall die on your doorstep," said the voice. "I can't drag
+myself any farther."
+
+There was another silence.
+
+"It is beginning to snow," he said.
+
+"I know," she said, and he heard the trouble in her voice.
+
+"Open the door and look at me," he said, "and see if I can do you any
+harm."
+
+She opened the door, and stood on the threshold, barring the way. He was
+leaning against the doorpost with his head against it, as she had often
+seen her husband lean when he was talking to her on a summer evening.
+Something in his attitude, so like her husband's, touched her strangely.
+Supposing he were in need, and pleaded for help in vain!
+
+The man turned his face towards her. It was sunk and hollow, ravaged
+with pain, an evil-looking face. His right arm was in a sling under his
+tattered military cloak. He seemed to have made his final effort, and
+now stood staring dumbly at her.
+
+"My husband will never forgive me," she said, with a sort of sob.
+
+He said nothing more. He seemed at the last point of exhaustion. Through
+the dim white night a few flakes of snow fell upon his harsh, repellent
+face and on his bandaged arm.
+
+A sudden wave of pity carried all before it.
+
+She beckoned him into the house, and locked and barred the door. She put
+him in her husband's chair by the fire. He hardly noticed anything. He
+seemed stupefied. He sat staring alternately at the fire and at her.
+When she asked him to which regiment he belonged, he did not answer.
+
+She set before him the supper she had prepared for herself, and chafed
+his hard, emaciated, dirty hand till the warmth returned to it. Then he
+ate, with difficulty at first, then with slow voracity, all she had put
+before him.
+
+A semblance of life returned gradually to him.
+
+"I was pretty near done up when I knocked," he said several times.
+
+She dressed his wound, which did not appear very deep, wrapped it in
+fresh bandages, and readjusted his sling. He took it all as a matter of
+course.
+
+She made up a little bed of rugs and blankets for him in the back
+kitchen. When she came back to the living-room, she found he had dragged
+himself to his feet, and was looking vacantly at a little picture of
+President Lincoln on the mantelshelf. She showed him the bed and told
+him to lie down on it. He obeyed her implicitly, like a child. She left
+him, and presently heard him cast himself down. A few minutes later she
+went to the door and listened. His heavy, regular breathing told her he
+was asleep.
+
+She went back to the kitchen, and sat down by the fire.
+
+Was he really asleep? Was it all feigned, the wound, the story, the
+exhaustion? Had she been trapped? Oh! what had she done? What had she
+done?
+
+She seemed like two people. One self, silent, alert, experienced,
+fearless, knew that she had allowed herself to be deluded, in spite of
+being warned; knew that her feelings had been played upon, made use of,
+not even dexterously made use of; knew that she had disobeyed her
+husband, broken her solemn oath to him, plunged him with herself into
+disgrace if the money were stolen. And in the eyes of that self it was
+already stolen. It was still under the plank beneath her feet, but it
+was already stolen.
+
+The other self, tremulous, inconsequent, full of irresistible tenderness
+for suffering and weakness even in its uncouthest garb, said
+incessantly, "I could do no less. If I die for it, still I could do no
+less. Somebody brought him into the world. Some woman cried for joy and
+anguish when he was born. He would have died if I had not taken him in.
+I could do no less."
+
+Through the long hours she sat by the fire, unable to reconcile herself
+to going upstairs to her own room and to bed.
+
+Once she got up and noiselessly took down her husband's revolver from
+the mantelshelf, and examined it. He had taken its fellow with him, and
+apparently, contrary to his custom, he had taken the powder-flask with
+him too, for it was gone from its nail. The revolvers were always kept
+loaded, but--by some evil chance--the one that remained was unloaded.
+She could have sworn she had seen her husband load it two days ago. Why
+was this numbness creeping over her again? She got out powder and
+bullets from a small store she had of her own, loaded and primed it, and
+laid it on the table beside her.
+
+The night had become very still. Her hearing seemed to reach out till
+she felt she could have heard a coyote move in its hole miles away. The
+log fire creaked and shifted. The tall clock in the corner ticked,
+catching its chain now and then as its manner was. The wooden walls
+shrunk and groaned a little. The small home-like sounds only accentuated
+the enormous silence without. Suddenly in the midst of them a real sound
+fell upon her ear--very low, but different, not like the fragmentary
+inadvertent murmur of the hut; a small, purposeful, stealthy, sound,
+aware of itself. She listened, as she had listened before, without
+moving. It was not louder than the whittling of a mouse behind the
+wainscot, hardly louder than the scraping of a mole's thin hand in the
+soil. It continued. Then it stopped. It was only her foolish fancy after
+all. There it was again. Where did it come from?
+
+_The man in the next room?_
+
+She took up the lamp and crept down the narrow passage to the door of
+the back kitchen. His loud, even breathing sounded distinctly through
+the crannies of the ill-fitting door. Surely it was overloud. She
+listened to it. She could hear nothing else. Was his breathing a
+pretence? She opened the door noiselessly, and went in, shading the
+light with her hand.
+
+She bent over the sleeping man. At the first glance her heart sank, for
+he had not taken off his boots. But as she looked hard at him her
+suspicions died within her. He lay on his back with his coarse,
+emaciated face towards her, his mouth open, showing his broken teeth.
+The sleep of utter exhaustion was upon him. She could have killed him
+as he lay. He was not acting. He was really asleep.
+
+She crept out of the room again, leaving the door ajar, and went back to
+the kitchen.
+
+Hardly had she sat down when she heard the sound again. It was too faint
+to reach her except when she was in the kitchen. She knew now where it
+came from--_the door_. Some one was picking the lock.
+
+The instant the sleeping man was out of her sight she suspected him
+again.
+
+Was he really asleep after all? He had not taken off his boots. When she
+came back from making his bed she had found him standing by the
+mantelshelf. Had he unloaded the pistol in her absence? Would he
+presently get up, and open the door to his confederates?
+
+Her mind rose clear and cold and unflinching. She took up the pistol,
+and then laid it down again. She wanted a more noiseless weapon. She got
+out her husband's great clasp-knife from the open tool-box, took the
+lamp, and crept back to the man's bedside. She should be able to kill
+him--certainly she should be able to kill him; and then she should have
+the pistol for the other one.
+
+But he still slept heavily. When she saw him again, again her
+suspicions fell from her. She _knew_ he was asleep.
+
+She shook him by the shoulder, noiselessly, but with increasing
+violence, until he opened his eyes with a groan. Then only she
+remembered that she was shaking his wounded arm. He saw the knife in her
+hand, and raised his left arm as if to ward off the blow.
+
+"Listen," she whispered, close to his ear. "Don't speak. There is a man
+trying to break into the house. You must get up and help me."
+
+He stared at her, vaguely at first, but with growing intelligence. The
+food and sleep had restored him somewhat to himself. He sat up on the
+couch.
+
+"Take off my boots," he whispered; "I tried, and could not."
+
+Her last suspicion of him vanished. She cut the laces with her knife,
+and dragged his boots off. They stuck to his feet, and bits of the
+woollen socks came off with them. They had evidently not been taken off
+for weeks. While she did it, he whispered, "Why should any one be
+wanting to break in? There's nothing here to take."
+
+"Yes, there is," she said. "There's a lot of money."
+
+"Good Lord! Where?"
+
+"Under the floor in the kitchen."
+
+"Then it's the kitchen they'll make for. You bet they know where the
+money is, if they know it's here. Are there many of 'em?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+"Well, we shall know soon enough," said the man. He had become alert,
+keen. "Have you any pistols?"
+
+"Yes, one."
+
+"Fetch it, but don't make a sound, mind."
+
+She stole away, and returned with the pistol. She would have put it into
+his hand, but he pushed it away.
+
+"It's no use to me," he said, "with my arm in a sling. I will see what I
+can do with my left hand and the knife. Can you shoot?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Can you hit anything?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"To be depended on?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Well, it's darned lucky. How long will that door hold?"
+
+They were both in the little passage by now, pressed close together,
+listening to the furtive pick, pick, of some one at the lock.
+
+"I don't think it will hold more than a minute."
+
+"Now, look here," he said, "I shall go and stand at the foot of the
+stair, and knife the second man, if there is a second. The first man
+I'll leave to you. There's a bit of light outside from the snow. He'll
+let in enough light to see him by as he opens the door. Don't wait. Fire
+at him as he comes in, and don't stop; go on firing at him till he
+drops. You've got six bullets. Don't you make any mistake and shoot me.
+I've had enough of that already. Now, you look carefully where I'm going
+to stand and when I'm there you put out the lamp."
+
+He spoke to her as a man does to his comrade.
+
+That she could be frightened did not seem to enter his calculations. He
+moved with cat-like stealth to the foot of the tiny staircase, and
+flattened himself against the wall. Then he stretched his left arm once
+or twice as if to make sure of it, licked the haft of the knife, and
+nodded at her.
+
+She instantly put out the lamp.
+
+All was dark save for a faint thread of light which outlined the door.
+Across the thread something moved once--twice. The sound of picking
+ceased. Then another sound succeeded it, a new one, unlike the last, as
+if something was being gently prized open, wrenched.
+
+"The bar will hold," she said to herself; and then remembered for the
+first time that the rung into which the bar slid had been loose these
+many days. It was giving now.
+
+It had given!
+
+The door opened silently, and a man came in.
+
+For a moment she saw him clear with the accomplice snowlight behind him.
+She did not hesitate. She shot once and again. He fell, and struggled
+violently up, and she shot again. He fell, and dragged himself to his
+knees, and she shot again. Then he sank gently and slowly down, as if
+tired, with his face against the wall, and moved no more.
+
+The man on the stairs rushed out and looked through the open door.
+
+"By G----! he was single-handed," he said.
+
+Then he stooped over the prostrate man, and turned him over on his
+back.
+
+"Dead!" he said, chuckling. "Well done, missus! Stone dead!"
+
+He was masked.
+
+The dirty left hand tore the mask callously off the grey face.
+
+The woman had drawn near, and looked over his shoulder.
+
+"Do you know him?" said the man.
+
+For a moment she did not answer, and the pistol which had done its work
+so well dropped noisily out of her palsied hand.
+
+"He is a stranger to me," she said, looking fixedly at her husband's
+fading face.
+
+
+
+
+SAINT LUKE'S SUMMER
+
+_IN TWO PARTS_
+
+
+PART I
+
+    When the world's asleep,
+    I awake and weep,
+      Deeply sighing, say,
+      "Come, O break of day,
+    Lead my feet in my beloved's way."
+
+    MARGARET L. WOODS.
+
+When first I knew Aunt Emmy I suppose she was about twenty-eight. I was
+ten, and I thought her old, but still an agreeable companion, infinitely
+pleasanter than her father and her brother, with whom she lived. She was
+not my real aunt, but her father was my great-uncle, and I always called
+her Aunt Emmy. Great-uncle Thomas and Uncle Tom were persons to be
+avoided, stout, heavy, bullet-headed, bull-necked, throat-clearing men,
+loud nose-blowers, loud soup-eaters, who reeked of tobacco when it was
+my horrid duty to kiss them, and who addressed me in jocular terms when
+they remembered my existence, of which I was always loth to remind them.
+With these two horrors, whom she loved, Aunt Emmy lived. She was wrapped
+up in them. I have actually seen her kiss Uncle Thomas when it was not
+necessary, when he was asleep; and she admired Uncle Tom very much too,
+though she seldom kissed him, I believe by his wish. He used to say
+something about sister's kisses being like cold veal. I don't suppose he
+invented that himself. He was always picking up things like that out of
+a rose-coloured paper, and firing them off as his own. Uncle Tom was
+tall and portly, and a wag out of office hours, with a moustache that,
+in spite of all his efforts, would not turn up, but insisted on making a
+melancholy inner semicircle just a size smaller than the rubicund circle
+of his face. How I hated kindly, vulgar Uncle Tom! I used to pray that
+he might die before the holidays. But he never did. I see now that Uncle
+Tom was far, far worse than Uncle Thomas, who had had a stroke, and was
+a kind of furious invalid who could not speak clearly, or eat anything
+except things that were bad for him. But when I was a child, and first
+began to spend my holidays in Pembridge Square, I regarded them both
+with the same repulsion.
+
+Aunt Emmy was different. I know now that she must have been a remarkably
+pretty woman, but I did not notice that at the time. But a faint,
+indefinable fragrance seemed to envelop her. I loved to stroke her soft
+white hand, and to turn the emerald ring on her third finger, and to
+lean against her soft shoulder. Aunt Emmy's cheek was very soft too, and
+so was her full, silky hair, which she wore parted all her life, though
+it was never the fashion to do so that I can remember, though I am told
+it is now the _dernier cri_ among the _debutantes_. Aunt Emmy had a
+beautifully shaped head, and the whitest brow and neck that I have ever
+seen. And she had a low voice, and was very dignified. I do not think
+that she was a very wise woman, or that she had ever wrestled with the
+deeper problems of life, or that the mystery of pain had ever caused her
+faith to totter. But she was very good to live with. She devoted
+herself.
+
+She never had her own way in anything that I can remember. The house
+never represented her. The furniture was leathern and velvet and
+stout-looking, the kind of furniture which seems to aim at being more or
+less exact moulds of the forms of middle-aged men. The armchairs were
+like commodious hip-baths in plush. Aunt Emmy and I were lost in them. I
+remember once walking as a child through the wilderness of armchairs at
+Maple's and thinking they all looked like Uncle Tom. A good deal of
+Utrecht velvet had gone to the upholstering of that house in Pembridge
+Square. It was comfortable, airless, flowerless, with gravy-coloured
+walls. As I grew older I wondered why it was all so ugly and dreary. But
+I found there were less means than I had supposed, and though the
+cooking remained excellent, flowers and new chintzes were dispensed with
+as unnecessary. Aunt Emmy opened a window surreptitiously now and then,
+but Uncle Thomas and Uncle Tom hated draughts, and they did not get off
+to sleep so quickly after dinner if the drawing-room had been aired
+during the meal. The dining-room windows were never opened at all,
+except when Uncle Thomas was too unwell to come in and Uncle Tom was
+away.
+
+Many men had wished to marry Aunt Emmy; not only sedentary professional
+men in long frock-coats, full to the brim of the best food, like Uncle
+Tom; but nice, lean, hungry-looking, open-air men who were majors, or
+country squires, or something interesting of that kind, whose clothes
+sat well on them, and who drew up in the Row on little skittish,
+curveting polo-ponies when Aunt Emmy and I walked there. I once asked
+her, after a certain good-looking Major Stoddart had ridden on, why she
+did not marry, but she only said reprovingly, with great dignity:
+
+"You don't understand such matters, my dear, or you would know that I
+could not possibly leave your Uncle Thomas."
+
+I was silenced. I felt with bitterness that this could not be her whole
+reason for celibacy, but that, owing to the purely superficial fact that
+my hair was still in a pigtail, she supposed I was unable to comprehend
+"lots of things" that I felt I understood perfectly, and on which my
+mind was already working with an energy which would have surprised her
+had she guessed it.
+
+By this time I worshipped Aunt Emmy, who represented in my somewhat
+colourless orphaned existence the beautiful and romantic side of life.
+Aunt Emmy looked romantic, and the contrast between her refined, gentle
+self-effacement and the commonplace egotism of her two men was of the
+glaring nature which appeals to a young girl's imagination.
+
+I never forgot Major Stoddart, and when I was eighteen, and had left
+school and was living in Pembridge Square, I had the good fortune to
+come in for the remains of a scene between Aunt Emmy and Uncle Tom--the
+very day after I had turned up my hair.
+
+It was at luncheon, to which I came in late. Uncle Thomas was in bed
+with gout, and Uncle Tom did not consider me of enough consequence to
+matter. He had not realised even _now_ that I was a grown-up woman.
+Looking back after all these years, I am not sure that he was not astute
+enough to hope that I might prove an ally.
+
+"What you have got to do, Emmy, is to think of the future," he was
+saying, scooping all the visible eggs out of an aspic pie. "It's no
+manner of use living only in the present. You think this comfortable
+home will go on for ever, where you have lived in luxury. It won't. It
+can't. It's not in the nature of things. I saw Blackett yesterday
+(Blackett was the doctor), and he told me that if the governor's gout
+rises--and nothing he can do can keep it down--he won't last more than a
+year at longest. In the nature of things," Uncle Tom continued, bolting
+half an egg, "I shall then marry. In fact--in short----"
+
+"Has Miss Collett accepted you?" said Aunt Emmy tremulously.
+
+Miss Collett was a person of means, and of somewhat bulged attractions
+for those who admire size, of whom Uncle Tom had often spoken as a
+deuced fine woman.
+
+"She has," said Uncle Tom. "I made pretty sure of that before I said
+anything myself. Nothing immediate, you understand; but eventually--when
+the old governor goes--I don't want to hurry him, Lord knows; but when
+the old man does pop off, I shall--bring her here."
+
+I looked round the room. I had seen Miss Collett, and the mahogany and
+ormolu dining-room, with its great gilt mirrors, seemed a fitting
+background for her.
+
+"I am very glad, dear Tom," said Aunt Emmy. "I think you and she will be
+very well suited, and I am sure she is very lucky, though I suppose I
+should never think any one _quite_ good enough."
+
+"Oh! that's all right," said Uncle Tom. "And as for the luck, it's all
+on my side."
+
+He did not really think this, I knew, but it was the right thing to say,
+so he said it.
+
+"But I am not thinking only of myself," he continued. "There is you to
+be considered."
+
+Aunt Emmy dropped her eyes.
+
+"You mean, where I shall live," she said faintly.
+
+"Just so. Just so. You speak like a sensible woman. We must not forget
+you." Uncle Tom was becoming visibly uneasy. "And I may as well tell you
+now, old girl--prepare your mind beforehand, don't you know--that the
+governor has not been able to leave you as much as he wished, as we
+_both_ wished. The truth is, what with one thing and another, and nearly
+all his capital tied up in the business, and this house on a long lease
+and expensive to keep up, with the best will in the world the poor old
+pater _can't_ do much for you."
+
+"It will be enough," said Aunt Emmy.
+
+"It will be the interest of seven thousand pounds at three and a half
+per cent.," said Uncle Tom brutally, because he was uncomfortable,
+"about two hundred and thirty pounds a year."
+
+"It will be ample," said Aunt Emmy. I knew by the faint colour in her
+cheeks that the conversation was odious to her. "Dear Tom, let us talk
+of something else."
+
+"We will," said Uncle Tom, with unexpected mental agility, and with the
+obvious relief of a man who has got safely round a difficult corner. "We
+will. Now, how about Colonel Stoddart?"
+
+My heart beat suddenly. I was beginning to see life--at last.
+
+"There is nothing to say about him," said Aunt Emmy.
+
+"A good chap, and a gentlemanly chap," said Uncle Tom urbanely, leaning
+back in his chair. "Eton, the 'varsity, and all that sort of thing.
+Quite one of ourselves. Old family, and a warm man. And suitable in age.
+_My_ age. Thirty-nine. (Uncle Tom was really forty-one.) You're no
+chicken yourself, you know, Emmy. Thirty-eight, though I own you don't
+look it, my dear. Well, what's the matter with Colonel Stoddart, I
+should like to know?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Well, I'm glad to hear it, for he tells me you refused him again only
+last week. Now, look here. One moment, please. Don't speak. I call it
+Providence, downright Providence," and Uncle Tom rapped the table with a
+thick finger. "And yet you won't look at him. I don't say marry him out
+of hand. Of course," Uncle Tom added hurriedly, "you can't leave the old
+pater while he is above ground. There's no question of that. But I _do_
+say, Give the fellow a chance. He's been dangling after you for years.
+Tell him that some day----"
+
+Aunt Emmy rose from the table, and laid down her napkin.
+
+"Now, look here, old girl," said Uncle Tom, not unkindly, "don't get
+your feathers up with me. Think better of it. You know this sort of
+first-class opportunity may not occur again. It really may not. If it
+isn't Providence, I'm sure I don't know what it is. And I believe your
+only reason for refusing him is because of Bob Kingston. Now, don't fly
+in the face of Providence just out of a bit of rotten sentiment which
+you ought to be ashamed of at your age."
+
+My brain reeled. I had never heard of Bob Kingston. I said "Good God!"
+to myself, not because it was natural to me to use such an expression,
+but because I felt it was suitable to the occasion and to a person whose
+hair was done up.
+
+"Tom," said Aunt Emmy, her soft eyes blazing, "I desire that you will
+never allude to Mr. Kingston again."
+
+She left the room, and I did the same, with what I hope was a withering
+glance at the open-mouthed Uncle Tom, who for days afterwards
+interlarded his conversation with the refrain that he was blessed if he
+could understand women.
+
+But I dared not follow Aunt Emmy to her little sitting-room at the top
+of the house. She who was almost never alone, clung, I knew, to that
+tiny refuge, and it was an understood thing between us that I might
+creep in and sit with her a little after tea, but not before.
+
+So I raged up and down the empty gilded and mirrored drawing-room,
+finding myself quite unable to reconcile the situation with my faith in
+a beneficent Deity; and then consoled myself by chronicling my tottering
+faith in my diary. I wrote a diary until I married. Then, I suppose, I
+became more interested in life than in recording my own feelings. At
+any rate, I discontinued it.
+
+At last, when Aunt Emmy did not come down for tea, I took her a cup.
+
+She was sitting in a low chair with her back to the light. I could see
+that she had been crying, but she was quite calm. She had a suspiciously
+clean pocket-handkerchief in her hand. Her sitting-room was a small
+north chamber under the roof, but it was the place I liked best in the
+house. On her rare expeditions abroad, before Uncle Thomas had become
+too ill to be left, she had picked up some quaint pieces of pottery and
+a few old Italian mirrors. The little white room with its pale blue
+linen coverings had an atmosphere and a refinement of its own. It was
+spring, and there was a bunch of daffodils near the open window in a
+blue-and-white oil-jar with _Ole Scorpio_ on it.
+
+Aunt Emmy drank some tea, and remarked that I made it better than she
+did.
+
+"Your Uncle Tom has a very kind heart," she said, looking a little
+pugnaciously at me. "It is so like him, just when he might naturally be
+taken up with his own affairs, to be anxious about me."
+
+We each knew the other was not deceived.
+
+I longed to say, "Why not marry Colonel Stoddart?"
+
+I had only seen him on horseback. I did not know how he looked on the
+ground, but I would have married him myself in a second if he had asked
+me, partly no doubt because he was a little like Lord K----, the hero of
+my teens to whom I had never spoken, and partly because he was the exact
+opposite of Uncle Tom. How Miss Collett _could_! How anybody could! Yet
+Uncle Tom always talked as if he had only to choose among the flower of
+English womanhood, and the stouter and more repellent he grew the more
+communicative and conscientious he became about his fear of raising
+expectations in female bosoms which he might not be able to gratify. How
+I scorned Uncle Tom when he talked like that, knowing as I did--but
+neither he nor Aunt Emmy knew I knew (it was always like that, they
+always thought I did not know things)--knowing as I did that Miss Rose
+Delaine and Miss Wright had both refused him. I did not realise in my
+intolerant youth that the anxiety of some middle-aged bachelors still to
+appear eligible, the way their minds hover round imaginary conquests,
+has its pathetic side. Looking back, I believe now that Miss Collett was
+not by any means poor Uncle Tom's first choice, but his last chance. And
+perhaps he was her last chance too.
+
+"I know father is dying. I have known it some time," said Aunt Emmy, and
+her face became convulsed. "He spoke so beautifully about it only
+yesterday. And I have known for a long time that Tom and Miss Collett
+were likely to come to an arrangement."
+
+She had not a grain of irony in her, but no word could have been more
+applicable to Uncle Tom and Miss Collett than an arrangement. One felt
+that each had measured the other by avoirdupois weight, and had found
+the balance even.
+
+"Is Uncle Thomas opposed to your marrying?" I ventured to say, with the
+tact of eighteen.
+
+"No, my dear; that is what is so wonderful. He was so dreadfully against
+it long ago--once--indeed, until quite lately. But it's no use speaking
+of that. But now he is quite anxious for it, so long as I don't leave
+him. He wants me to promise Colonel Stoddart, but to tell him that I
+could not leave my father during his lifetime, which of course I
+couldn't."
+
+"Won't Colonel Stoddart wait?" I said, waxing bolder. I had slipped down
+on the floor beside her and was stroking her white hand. I hoped I was
+saying the right thing. I was adoringly fond of her, but I was also
+eighteen, and this was my first introduction to a real romance. I was
+feverishly anxious to rise to the occasion, to have nothing to regret in
+retrospect.
+
+"I daresay he would. I think he said something about it," she said
+apathetically.
+
+I remembered a beautiful sentence I had read in a novel about
+confidences being mutual, and I said reproachfully, "Aunt Emmy, I have
+told you _all_ about Lord K----; won't you tell me, just me, no one
+else--about Mr. Kingston?"
+
+And she told me. I think it was a relief to speak to some one. I held my
+cheek against her hand all the time. It seemed that a sort of demigod of
+the name of Kingston had alighted in her life when she was nineteen (I
+felt with a pang that I had still a whole year to wait) and he was
+twenty-one. Aunt Emmy waxed boldly eloquent in her description of his
+unique and heroic character, shyly eloquent in her dispassionate
+indication of his almost terrifying beauty.
+
+I think Aunt Emmy became a girl in her teens again for a few minutes,
+carried away by her memory, and by the idolising sympathy of the other
+girl in her teens at her feet in a seventh heaven at being a confidant.
+But in one sense, on the sentimental plane, she had never ceased to be a
+girl. She and I viewed the situation almost from the same standpoint.
+
+"Aunt Emmy, _was_ he tall?"
+
+"He was, my love."
+
+"And slender?"
+
+My whole life hung in the balance. I had all a young girl's repulsion
+towards stout men.
+
+"He was thin and wiry, and very athletic, a great rider."
+
+I gave a sigh of relief.
+
+"Did his--it does not really matter" (I felt the essentials were all
+right and that I must not ask too much of life)--"but did his hair
+curl?"
+
+Aunt Emmy drew out of her bosom a little locket, hanging by a thin gold
+chain, with a forget-me-not in blue enamel on it, and opened it. Inside
+was a curl of chestnut hair. It was not tied in the shape of a curl. It
+was a real curl.
+
+I looked at it with awe.
+
+Aunt Emmy answered my highest expectations at every point. I had never
+seen that enamel locket before. Yet I divined at once that she had worn
+it under her clothes--as indeed she had, day and night for how many
+years! I felt that I would not care how it ended, happily or unhappily,
+if only I might have a romance and a locket like that.
+
+"He gave it me when we parted eighteen years ago," she said, her voice
+quivering a little.
+
+I knew well that lovers always did part. They invariably severed,
+"severed for years." I was not the least surprised to hear he was gone,
+for I was already learning "In the Gloaming," and trilled it forth in a
+thin, throaty voice which Aunt Emmy said was remarkably like what hers
+had been at my age.
+
+"Why were you parted?" I asked.
+
+"He had not any money, and he had his way to make. And he had an uncle
+out there who wanted him to go to him. It was a good opening, though he
+would not have taken it if it had not been for me, for though he was so
+fond of horses he was not the kind of person for that kind of life,
+sheep and things. He cared so much for books and poetry. And your Uncle
+Thomas was very much against my marrying at that time, in fact, he
+positively forbade it. You see, mother was dead, and your Uncle Thomas
+had become more dependent on me than he was quite aware until there was
+a question of my leaving him. Men are like that, my love. They need a
+woman all the time to look after them, and listen to their talk, and
+keep vexatious things away. And he was always a most tender father. He
+said he could not bear the thought of his only daughter roughing it in
+Australia. He said he would withdraw his opposition if--if--Bob (Bob was
+his name) came home with a sufficient fortune to keep me in comfort in
+England."
+
+"And he never did?"
+
+"He went out to try. I felt sure he would, and he felt sure he would. At
+twenty-two it seems as if fortunes can be made if it is really
+necessary. And I promised to wait for him, and he was to work to win
+me."
+
+I could not refrain from shedding a tear. It was all so beautiful, so
+far beyond anything I could have hoped. I pressed Aunt Emmy's hand in
+silence, and she went on:
+
+"But there were bad seasons, and though he worked and worked, and though
+he did get on, still, you could not call it a fortune. And after five
+years had passed he wrote to say that he was making a living, and his
+uncle had taken him into partnership, and could not I come out to him.
+He had built an extra room on purpose for me. Your Uncle Thomas was
+terribly angry when the letter came, because he had always been against
+my emigrating, and he forbade any further correspondence. Men are very
+high-handed, my love, when you come to live with them. We were not
+allowed to write after that. Do you know, my dear, I became so
+distressed that I had thoughts--I actually contemplated running away to
+Australia?"
+
+"Oh! why didn't you?" I groaned. That, of course, was the obvious
+solution of the difficulty.
+
+"Very soon after that your Uncle Thomas had his stroke, and after that
+of course I could not leave him."
+
+"Could not we do it still?" I suggested. Of course I took for granted
+that I should be involved in the elopement, as the confidential friend
+who carries a little reticule with jewels in it, and sustains throughout
+the spirits of the principal eloper.
+
+"_Now!_" said Aunt Emmy, and for a moment a violent emotion disfigured
+her sweet face. "Now. Oh! my child, all this happened fifteen years ago,
+when you were a toddling baby."
+
+"I wish to Heaven I had been as old then as I am now," I said with
+clenched hands. I felt that I could have vanquished Uncle Thomas and
+Uncle Tom, and all this conspiracy against my darling Aunt Emmy's
+happiness.
+
+"And is he still--still----?" I ventured.
+
+"I don't know whether he is still--free. I have not heard from him for
+fifteen years. Uncle Thomas was very firm about the correspondence. He
+is a very decided character, especially since his stroke, and I have
+ceased to hear anything at all about him since his mother died twelve
+years ago."
+
+To me twelve years ago was as in the time of Noah. Yet here was Aunt
+Emmy, to whom it was all as fresh as yesterday.
+
+"When she died," said Aunt Emmy, "she was ill for a long time before,
+and I used to go and sit with her. She was fond of me, but she never
+quite did your Uncle Thomas justice. When she died she sent me this
+ring." She touched the beautiful emerald ring she always wore. "She said
+she had left it to him, and he had asked that she would send it to me.
+It had been her own engagement ring."
+
+"Why don't you wear it on your engaged finger?"
+
+"I did at first. It was a kind of comfort to me. But Uncle Tom was
+constantly vexed with me about it. He said it might keep things off. He
+is a very practical person, Uncle Tom, a very shrewd man of business,
+I'm told. So, to please him, I wear it in the daytime on my right hand."
+
+By this time I was shedding tears of sheer sensibility.
+
+"I have thought of him day and night; there has not been a night I have
+not remembered him in my prayers for nearly twenty years. It will be
+twenty years next April. How could I begin to think of any one else
+_now_, Colonel Stoddart or any one? Uncle Tom is very clever, and so is
+your Uncle Thomas, but I don't think they have ever _quite_ understood
+what I feel about Mr. Kingston."
+
+An electric bell in a little box over the door rang in a furious manner.
+
+Aunt Emmy was on her feet in a second, smoothing her fair hair at the
+Venetian mirror.
+
+"Your Uncle Thomas is awake," she said, "and is ready to be read to. He
+never likes being kept waiting."
+
+This seemed to be the case, for as she left the room the electric bell
+rang again more furiously than before, and I shook my fist at it.
+
+
+PART II
+
+    If some star of heaven
+    Led him by at even,
+        If some magic fate
+        Brought him, should I wait,
+    Or fly within and bid them close the gate?
+
+    MARGARET L. WOODS.
+
+The following year I suddenly married a soldier, the only young man I
+knew, and I knew him very slightly, and went out to India with him. I
+did not forget Aunt Emmy, we corresponded regularly; but I was young
+and my life was a very full one. I had seen nothing of the world till I
+married. I had a child. The years rushed past, joyful, miserable, vivid,
+surprising, happy years, in spite of the fact that my husband was not
+remarkably like Lord K----in appearance, and not in the least like the
+"plaister saint" with whom I had hurried to the altar on such slight
+provocation.
+
+During these years Uncle Thomas died, and Uncle Tom married, and Aunt
+Emmy wrote to me that she had taken a little cottage in Abinger Forest
+against her brother's advice, and how, in spite of his opposition--how
+much it must have cost her to oppose him--he had forgiven her and
+presented her with the most expensive mahogany bedstead and bedding that
+Maple could supply--"so like him."
+
+I wondered vaguely once or twice whether there had been any question of
+her marrying Mr. Kingston, but there was no mention of him in her
+letters, and I did not like to ask. I knew that she was very poor, but
+presently my heart was gladdened by hearing from her that a distant
+relation had left her a legacy, and that she was now comfortably off.
+
+Then suddenly our life was darkened. Our child died. I struggled with
+my grief, became ill, and was sent home. Aunt Emmy urged me to go
+straight to her. She and Uncle Tom were my only near relations in
+England. He also offered to take me in for a time. He wrote with real
+kindness. He had a child himself. And his wife wrote too. But I need
+hardly say that I took my sore heart and my broken health straight to
+Aunt Emmy.
+
+It was late in August when I arrived. The honeysuckle was still in bloom
+on Aunt Emmy's white cottage, standing in its little orchard in a
+clearing in the forest. She was waiting for me in the porch, and I ran
+feebly to her up the narrow brick path between the tall clumps of
+hollyhocks and Michaelmas daisies; and she drew me into the little
+parlour and held me closely to her. And the years rolled away, and I was
+a child again, and she was comforting me for my broken doll.
+
+With the egotism of youth I fear I had not given a thought to Aunt
+Emmy's new home until I entered it. I knew that she was happy in it, and
+that it had once been a gamekeeper's cottage, but that was about all.
+Nowadays every one has a cottage--it is the fashion; and literary men
+and women, tired of adulatory crowds, weary of their own greatness, flee
+from the metropolis, and write exquisite articles about their gardens,
+and the peace that lurks under a thatched roof, and the simple life,
+lived far from shrilling crowds but near to nature, and _very_ near to
+the Deity. Fortunate Deity!
+
+But in the days of which I am writing cottages and their floral and
+spiritual appurtenances were not the rage.
+
+I never realised until I saw Aunt Emmy in a home of her own how much
+taste she possessed, or how pretty a cottage could be. It did not try to
+look like a house. It was just a cottage, standing amid its apple-trees,
+now red with apples, with its old well half hidden in clumps of
+lavender. The little dwelling itself, with its low ceilings and long oak
+beams and dim colouring and quaint furniture, had a certain austere
+charm, a quiet dignity of its own. The sunny air came softly in through
+wide-open latticed windows, bringing with it the scent of mignonette.
+There had never been a breath of air in the house in Pembridge Square.
+_Ole Scorpio_, that friend of my youth, looked peaceful and complacent
+in a little recess in which his soft colouring and perfect figure showed
+to great advantage against a white-washed wall in shadow.
+
+Aunt Emmy herself, in a gown of some dull white material, with a little
+grey in her rippling, parted hair, seemed at home for the first time in
+her life. She looked a shade older, a shade thinner in the face, her
+sweet eyes a little sunk inwards. But her tall figure had retained all
+its old soft dignity and beauty of line. Looking at her as she poured
+out my tea for me, I suddenly felt years older than she.
+
+This bewildering impression deepened as the days went on, and a
+protecting, wondering compassion became part of my affection for her.
+
+During the years I had spent in India I had seen a good deal of both
+sides of that motley, amazing fabric which we call life. I had felt the
+throbbing of its great loom. I had touched with my own shrinking hand
+the closeness of the texture, had marked the interweaving of the alien
+strands, had marvelled and been dismayed, had marvelled and been awed,
+had seen the dye of my own blood on one dim thread, the gold of my own
+joy on another. The sheltered life had not been mine.
+
+But Aunt Emmy had not moved mentally by a hair's-breadth. All her
+expansion, if expansion it could be called, had taken form in her house
+and garden. I had not been a week under her roof before I found that Mr.
+Kingston occupied exactly the same position in her life as he had done
+in Pembridge Square. She had brought down her romance to adorn her new
+home just as she had brought down _Ole Scorpio_, in cotton wool. Each
+had their niche. Perhaps it was unreasonable in me to expect to find her
+different. I had not expected it. But I had become such a totally
+different person myself that her attitude to life, which had appeared to
+me so romantic and natural when I was eighteen, now appeared
+irremediably pathetic, visionary, out of touch with reality. Perhaps,
+however, it was I who had become disillusioned and matter-of-fact. I saw
+with a kind of pitying wonder that her youthful romance still supplied
+to her, as it had done since she was nineteen, a certain atmosphere of
+pensive, prayerful resignation, a background for ethereal day-dreams.
+Her peaceful days were passed in a kind of picturesque haze, like the
+mist that, seeming in itself a rosy light, sometimes veils a tranquil
+September sunset.
+
+She was evidently very happy, but it was equally evident that she did
+not know it. From words she let drop now and then I saw that she still
+imagined she was bearing the heavy cross of her mutilated youth. But to
+me it seemed as if some tender hand had lifted it from her shoulder.
+
+"Aunt Emmy," I said, yielding to an ignoble curiosity in the second week
+of my visit, as we were picking the lavender together, "when Uncle
+Thomas died, I had thought I should hear of your marrying Mr. Kingston."
+
+"I also hoped it, my dear," said Aunt Emmy, snipping the lavender into a
+little basket, held in a loose white-gloved hand.
+
+I dared not look at her.
+
+"Mr. Kingston has not written," she said after a moment.
+
+"But did you write and tell him you were free, and still in the same
+mind?"
+
+"I did not. I thought it might be awkward for him in case he were--after
+all these years--contemplating some other possibility. I did not want to
+embarrass him. But your Uncle Thomas's death was in all the papers, and
+many of his relations are acquainted with us. I have no doubt the news
+reached him."
+
+Of course it had. I had felt that it was hardly to be expected that Mr.
+Kingston should have kept after twenty years, more than twenty years,
+the same vivid memory of his early love that she had done. His silence
+proved that he had not done so. I looked at Aunt Emmy. How pretty and
+graceful and remote she looked, and how young her face was under the
+shadow of her charming garden hat, tied with a soft black ribbon under
+her chin. As long as she was not confronted with any one really young,
+she had no look of age. It was difficult to believe that she was
+forty-four. And he must be forty-six. It was too late. Middle-aged
+marriages are risky affairs enough, when the Rubicon of forty is within
+sight. But when it has been passed----!
+
+As I looked at her I hoped with all my heart that he would not come back
+to disturb her peace of mind and dislocate her life afresh.
+
+But, astonishing to say, he did come back; and there was some adequate
+reason, I have forgotten exactly what, for his not coming earlier. At
+any rate, it was adequate.
+
+When I came down to breakfast a few days later, Aunt Emmy held a letter
+towards me with a shaking hand. Her lips trembled. She could not
+articulate.
+
+"Am I really to read it?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+It was a charming letter, written in a delicate, refined hand. Mr.
+Kingston had not heard of her father's death till the day before he
+wrote. He had been away up-country for a year, broken shoulder, etc. He
+was starting for England at once. He should travel almost as quickly as
+his letter. He should present himself at Pembridge Square and learn her
+address directly he landed. His ship was the _Sultana_.
+
+I took up the morning paper.
+
+"The _Sultana_ arrived yesterday," I said.
+
+I looked at the envelope. It was directed on from Pembridge Square.
+
+"Tom will give him my address," said Aunt Emmy faintly. "I wonder how he
+knows I am not living there now. _He will--arrive here--to-day._"
+
+She looked straight in front of her through the open windows to the
+hollyhocks basking in the still September sunshine. A radiance lit up
+her face, like that which perhaps shone on Christian's when at last
+across the river he saw the pearl gates of the New Jerusalem.
+
+"At last!" she said. "After all these years! After all these dreadful,
+dreadful years!"
+
+An unbearable pain went through me. It was not new to me. I had known it
+once before, when I had seen my child sicken. Why did it return now?
+
+The radiance passed. A pitiful trembling shook her like a leaf. Her eyes
+turned helplessly to mine, frightened and dimmed.
+
+"I forgot I am an old woman," she said.
+
+I kissed her hand. I told her that she was handsomer than any one. She
+was very dignified and gentle.
+
+"You are very kind to me, my dear, and it is sweet of you to feel as you
+do. I believe, as you say, that I am still nice-looking. But the fact
+remains that it is nearly twenty-five years since we have seen each
+other. I was nineteen then. And oh! I suppose I ought not to say it, but
+I _was_ pretty. People turned to look at me in the street. And now I am
+forty-four."
+
+"But he is older than you, isn't he?"
+
+"Two years. What is two years! We were the same age when we were young.
+But a man of forty-six is younger than a woman of forty-four."
+
+I was silent. There was no contradicting that obvious fact.
+
+"He will probably come by the 4.12 train," said Aunt Emmy, rising. "If
+you don't mind, as there are so many preparations to make, I will leave
+you to finish your breakfast. I have had mine."
+
+She left the room, and I stared at her empty plate. I was not hungry
+either. I was frightened for my dear Aunt Emmy.
+
+And yet, she was so yielding, so selfless, so absolutely uncritical,
+that if any woman could marry late she was the woman. She could have
+lived with a monster of egotism without finding it out. Had she not
+devoted herself to two such monsters most of her life? And perhaps Mr.
+Kingston was not a monster. Aunt Emmy arranged the flowers early as she
+only could arrange them. I was only allowed to fetch the water and clean
+the glasses. A certain pony-cart was sent to Muddington with the cook in
+it to buy a tongue, and a Stilton cheese, and a little barrel of
+anchovies, and various other condiments which Uncle Tom approved. Uncle
+Tom's tastes represented those of his whole sex for Aunt Emmy.
+
+I insisted on her eating some luncheon, but this was barely possible, as
+in the midst of it a telegram was brought in from Mr. Kingston to say he
+should arrive by the 4.12 train.
+
+After luncheon Aunt Emmy went to her room. I followed her there half an
+hour later to give her a note, and found her standing in the middle of
+the floor, looking at all her gowns laid out on chairs.
+
+"I am afraid you can only think me very silly, my dear," she said, with
+a sort of humble dignity. "I wished to consult you, but I did not like
+to; but as you _are_ here, and if you don't mind my asking you--a
+relation can often judge best what is advantageous--which gown _do_ you
+think suits me best, the grey voile, or the lilac delaine, or the white
+serge?"
+
+I decided on the white serge, and long before the dogcart ordered to
+meet him could possibly arrive, Aunt Emmy was sitting, paler than I had
+ever seen her, beside a wood fire in the parlour in the soft white gown
+I loved her best in, pretending to read. She had lit the fire, though
+we were not in the habit of having it till later in the day, because she
+thought Australians might feel chilly.
+
+"I don't know how it is," she said at last, laying down the book, "but I
+seem quite blind. I can't see the print."
+
+I could not see the needle-work I was bending over either. But that was
+because senseless tears kept on rising to my eyes, do what I would. Aunt
+Emmy's eyes had no tears in them.
+
+"It is very petty of me, I know, but I do hope he has not grown stout,"
+she said presently. "But of course it is to be expected, and if it is so
+I must try to bear it. It could not make any _real_ difference. Your
+Uncle Tom is the same age, and of course he is not--he really is _not_
+as thin as he was."
+
+"Was he ever thin?"
+
+"N-no. But Mr. Kingston was, at least, not thin, but very spare and
+agile-looking."
+
+At last the sound of wheels reached us. Aunt Emmy clasped the arms of
+her chair convulsively.
+
+"I daresay he has not come," she said almost inaudibly.
+
+The wheels stopped. I went into the tiny hall.
+
+A tall, spare, distinguished-looking man, with weather-beaten face and
+peculiarly intent, hawklike eyes, was at the gate, and I went out to
+greet him. As he took off his cap his crisp hair showed a little grey in
+it. He was delightful to look at.
+
+I don't know what I said, but I mumbled something as I shook hands with
+him, and pointed to the parlour door. He nodded gravely and went in,
+hitting his tall head against the low lintel. Then he closed the door
+gently. And I went to my room, and locked myself in.
+
+When I went into the parlour an hour later at tea-time I found them
+sitting one on each side of the fire. I wished with all my heart that
+they could have been sitting together at this moment after the marriage
+of their daughter. Both had cried a little, I could see. He certainly
+had. They got up when I came in, and stood together on the hearth, a
+splendid-looking couple, dwarfing the white room with its low ceiling.
+
+What they must have been in youth I could well imagine.
+
+I was reintroduced to him, and I am not sure, though they were both
+smiling at each other, that they were not relieved by my entrance with
+the tea. He handed her her cup and waited on her with the deferential
+awkwardness of a man who has not been in women's society for years.
+
+"I am a rough fellow, Emmy," he said once or twice. But he was not
+rough. He was charming. He did not fit in at all with my preconceived
+ideas of "Colonials." And it was quickly evident to me that his tender
+admiration of Aunt Emmy still survived. I was partly reassured. Perhaps,
+after all, he had brought happiness with him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Saint Luke's summer was glorious that year, and it was nowhere more
+wonderful than in the forest. One still golden day followed another, the
+gossamer-threaded sunshine flooding the glades of yellowing and amber
+trees, spilling itself headlong amid the rusting bracken, and losing
+itself in the tiny foliage of the whortleberry, which, all its little
+oval leaves, ruddy as a robin's breast, was imitating the trees, like a
+miniature autumn forest underfoot.
+
+Aunt Emmy and Mr. Kingston walked daily in the marvel of the forest, and
+it seemed as if the autumn sun shone kindly on them. Sometimes on her
+return there was a bewildered look in her face which I did not
+understand, and I wondered whether indeed all was well; but I put the
+thought away, for his love for her was beyond the possibility of doubt,
+and had not her love for him coloured her whole life?
+
+And yet--
+
+Once I saw him take up _Ole Scorpio_ with a careful hand, and then
+replace it in its recess with its spout pointing towards the room.
+Presently, when he had gone, she gently moved it back to its former
+position, exactly _en profile_, and the senseless idea darted through my
+mind as I watched her do it that if her romance were moved from its
+niche, she would instinctively wish to do the same, to readjust it to
+the angle from which she had looked at it so long.
+
+As the days passed and the first shyness between them wore off, the
+primitive life he had led for so many years showed itself in a certain
+slowness of speech, a disinclination to make acquaintance with the
+neighbours, and an increasing tendency to long, tranquil silences with a
+pipe in the garden. But, wonderful to say, it had not apparently
+blunted him mentally. And he actually cared for books. Unfortunately,
+there were almost no books in the cottage. How he had kept it I cannot
+imagine, but he certainly had retained a quickness of apprehension which
+made him half-unconsciously adapt himself to Aunt Emmy and her little
+habits in a way that astonished me. It was she who showed herself less
+perceptive as regarded him. But this she never divined. She had got it
+rooted into her small, graceful head that he would naturally wish to
+converse principally about his farm. And, in spite of scant
+encouragement, she continually "showed an interest," as she herself
+expressed it, in sheep, and water creeks, and snakes, and bush fires. He
+was always perfectly good-natured, and ready to answer; but I sometimes
+wondered how it was she did not realise that she asked the same
+questions over and over again.
+
+"Uncle Bob does not seem to care to talk much about his farming," I
+ventured one day. "Perhaps he wishes to forget it for a little while."
+
+"My dear," said Aunt Emmy rebukingly, "when you are as old as I am, you
+will know that the only thing men really care to talk of _is_ their
+business. My dear father always talked of stocks, and shares, and--and
+bonuses. He said I could not understand about them, as indeed I could
+not, but it interested me very much to listen. And your Uncle Tom, as
+you may remember"--I did indeed--"did the same. It is natural that Mr.
+Kingston's mind should dwell on agricultural subjects."
+
+Presently wicked men began to mow the bracken with great scythes, and to
+carry it away in carts which tilted and elbowed their way down the
+mossy, heather-fringed tracks. Here and there the down-stretched arms of
+the firs caught the topmost fronds of bracken and swept them from their
+murdered brethren, and held them precariously suspended, only to drop
+them when the first wind went by.
+
+I left the cottage for a week to visit my husband's relations, and when
+I returned the forest was bare. An indefinable sadness seemed to brood
+over it, and to have reached Aunt Emmy as well. Mr. Kingston had also
+been away to visit his relations, and had returned, and was staying at
+the little inn on the edge of the forest, from which he could more
+readily run up daily to town to have his shoulder massaged, which still
+troubled him.
+
+Aunt Emmy told me all this in her garden, where she was dividing her
+white pinks. I knew she intended to make a fresh border, but the action
+filled me with consternation.
+
+"But Aunt Emmy," I said (the foolish words jolted out of me by sudden
+anxiety), "will you--will you be _here_ next spring?"
+
+I could have struck myself the moment the words were out of my mouth.
+
+The trowel dropped from her hand.
+
+"Oh no!" she said confusedly. "Neither I shall. I was forgetting. I
+shall be in Australia."
+
+She looked round the little garden which she had made with her own
+hands, and back to the white cottage, up to its eyes in Michaelmas
+daisies, which had become such an ideal home, and in which, poor dear!
+she had taken a deeper root than she knew, and a bewildered pain passed
+for a moment over her face. It was as if she had been walking in her
+sleep, and had suddenly come in contact with some obstacle, and had
+waked up and was not for the first moment certain of her surroundings.
+
+"He is more to me than any cottage," she said, recovering herself
+with a little gasp. "I had hoped perhaps he would have come and lived
+here, and let me take care of him, after all his years of hard work.
+But it was a selfish idea. He has told me that he cannot leave his
+work or his uncle, who has been so kind to him, and who is very infirm
+now--partially paralysed, and needing the greatest care. I shall--let
+the cottage."
+
+"What is the place in Australia like?" I said with duplicity, for of
+course I knew by this time exactly what it was like. But I wanted to
+change her thoughts.
+
+She led the way indoors, and pointed to a sheaf of unmounted
+photographs. I took them up, and examined them as if for the first time.
+My heart sank as I looked at the inoffensive figure of the poor old
+uncle in the verandah, whom Aunt Emmy was of course to nurse. The house
+which that hard-working old man had built himself stood nakedly upon a
+piece of naked ground. There was not a tree near it. Beyond were the
+great cattle-yards and farm buildings, and what looked like an endless,
+shrubless field. And on the right was the new two-windowed room, no
+longer very new, which Mr. Kingston had built seventeen years ago for
+Aunt Emmy. I knew how much labour that hideous addition meant, which was
+a sort of degraded cousin many times removed from the pert villa
+drawing-rooms, peering over portugal laurels on the road to Muddington.
+I knew that Mr. Kingston had papered and painted that room with his own
+hands. I knew also, but Aunt Emmy did not, that he had repapered and
+repainted it several times while it waited for her. And yet by no
+wildest effort of the imagination could I picture Aunt Emmy living
+there, though her heart had been there all her life.
+
+A sudden rage rose within me against the deceased Uncle Thomas, and
+against this other decrepit uncle, waiting to be nursed.
+
+I laid down the photographs, and went a turn in the forest, leaving Aunt
+Emmy sitting idle in her gardening gloves. My foolish words had stopped
+her happy activity. I was angry with myself, with Fate, with Australia,
+with everything, and not least with Mr. Kingston.
+
+Everywhere in the bare glades little orphaned families of bracken held
+their arched necks a few inches from the ground. Even in their
+bereavement they too had remembered that it was autumn, and their tiny
+curled fronds protecting their downcast faces were golden and ruddy. As
+I turned a corner I suddenly caught sight of Mr. Kingston a few paces
+from me, looking earnestly at one of these little groups. I did not want
+to meet him just then, and I half turned aside; but he had already seen
+me, and he gave a gesture of welcome, and I had to stop.
+
+My anger subsided somewhat as he came up. He looked harassed, and as if
+he had not slept.
+
+"And so you are back," he said. "I was just wishing that you were at the
+moment I caught sight of you. If you think it possible that a word or
+two could be dragged out of such a silent enigmatical person as
+yourself, I should like to have a little talk with you."
+
+I could not help liking him. His keen eyes were kindly, though his face
+was grave.
+
+"What do you want to talk about?" I said bluntly.
+
+"What an unnecessary question. What can I want to talk about except
+Emmy?"
+
+I was silent. I felt more uncomfortable about the whole affair than I
+had done yet, and that was saying a good deal.
+
+Mr. Kingston led the way down a little track to a place where the trees
+grew so close together that the murderous scythes had not been able to
+get in among them. Here the bracken had been unmolested, and was going
+unharassed through all its most gorgeous pageant. Great fronds of ivory
+white, of palest gold, of brownest gold, of reddest gold upreared
+themselves among the purple waves of the heather, wearing the stray
+flecks of the sunshine like jewels on their breasts. We sat down on a
+fallen tree round which the bracken had wrapped its splendour.
+
+"How extraordinarily beautiful it is!" he said, more to himself than to
+me, putting out his long, artistic hand, gnarled and hardened with work,
+and touching a pale frond with a reverent finger. "I am glad to have
+seen it once more. It is twenty-five years since I have seen an English
+autumn."
+
+There was a moment's silence, and then he went on without any change of
+tone:
+
+"And you are thinking, you sad-faced, downright little woman who are so
+afraid that I am going to make your dear Aunt Emmy unhappy, you are
+thinking that you did not take a precarious seat on this trunk in order
+to hear a possible enemy descant on the beauties of nature."
+
+I was astonished at his penetration. My own experience, gleaned entirely
+from the genial little egotist whose wife I was, had taught me that men
+never noticed anything. I had had no idea that I had shown the fear of
+him which I felt.
+
+"And yet you are my only possible ally," he went on, "my only helper, if
+you are willing to help me, in the somewhat difficult task which I have
+in hand."
+
+"You mean, marrying my aunt?" I said.
+
+"No," he said, looking at me with a kindness which made me ready to sink
+into the ground with shame. "I can do _that_ without assistance. Emmy,
+God bless her! has been ready to marry me any time these twenty-five
+years, and, poor soul, she is ready now. She has not the faintest idea
+what she would be in for if she did, but she is ready to risk it."
+
+I was silent. I was bewildered for one thing, and I did not want "to put
+my foot in it" again immediately for another. And there was really no
+need for me to speak, for he went on slowly, looking full at me:
+
+"What I have to do, if I can, is to save Emmy's romance for her."
+
+I could only stare at him.
+
+"For twenty-five years," he went on, "that dear woman has lived on her
+love for me. It has coloured her whole life. I know what I know. It has
+been her support in all the endless years she nursed that cruel old
+egoist her father, who would not let her marry me, when we _could_ have
+married, seventeen years ago. But it is not _me_ that she wants now,
+though she did want me for many years; it is the thought of me--if you
+can't understand without my saying it, I can't make you--it's her
+romance which is important to her, and which I want her to keep, at all
+costs."
+
+"My darling Emmy," he said, and there were tears in his hawk eyes, "the
+most unselfish and devoted, the sweetest, the humblest, and the most
+beautiful creature I have ever known. And she has given up everything
+out of constancy to me, home, children, everything; no, not for me
+exactly, but for a dream, for an ideal, for something of which I was to
+her the symbol, but which I no more resemble than I resemble that frond
+of bracken."
+
+He turned his face away.
+
+"It would have been all right if they would have let us marry when we
+were both still young, and I had got a home together," he went on; "but
+now it would be inhuman to root her out of her little home and drag her
+across the world, and try to transplant her into my rough place. How
+rough it is I see, now that I have been back in England. I did not know
+it was so uncouth when I lived in it. It's the only life I'm accustomed
+to, the only life I'm fit for now, though it was sorely against the
+grain at first. I don't think I could have stuck to it, except for the
+hope of marrying her some day. But I see now the only life I'm fit for
+is not fit for her. And I can't give it up. I can't desert my poor old
+uncle, who is growing infirm and depends on me entirely."
+
+"Why did you come back?" I groaned.
+
+"I came back," he said, "because I have cared for her and worked for her
+all my life. And because I heard that her beast of a father had left her
+almost penniless, and that fat Tom had married and turned her out. And
+until I saw her again from day to day I did not realise the nature of
+her feeling for me. I came back to offer her what I had, not that it
+was much, hoping to marry her and take her back with me.... But that is
+not what would make my Emmy happy _now_. What she needs is to go on in
+this perfect little doll's house, this little haven, thinking of me, and
+praying for me, and tending her flowers, and mourning like a dove in its
+tree because we are parted."
+
+It was exactly what Aunt Emmy needed. I could not have put it into
+words, but this strange man had done so.
+
+"You will not speak," he said, "but you agree with me for all that. I
+had to make sure you agreed. Your confirmation is all I wanted, and now
+I have it."
+
+It was not that I would not speak. I could not speak. I was thinking of
+the room in that horrid wooden house which he had built for her.
+
+After a few minutes he went on quietly:
+
+"I think the thing for me to do is to be ruined, only partially, of
+course, not enough to make her miserable, and to hurry back to Australia
+without her at once for the time being, and from there to write
+regularly by every mail, nice letters (they cannot be forbidden now);
+but never to come back any more. A bank has just failed in Australia in
+which I had money. The situation can be arranged."
+
+I looked away from him.
+
+"I owe it to her," he said.
+
+
+
+
+THE UNDERSTUDY
+
+    The only form of human love that atrophies the heart is the love
+    of self.
+
+
+Marion Wright sat in the centre seat of the third row of the stalls,
+shivering in spite of her sables. It was the dress rehearsal of her
+first play, that play on which she had spent herself to the verge of
+mental bankruptcy.
+
+The nauseating presentiment of failure, the distaste and scorn of her
+own work, were upon her, which the artist never escapes, which return as
+acutely after twenty successes as in the hours of suspense before the
+first essay. Marion's surroundings were not of a nature to reassure her.
+To her unaccustomed eyes the empty, dimly lit theatre, swathed and
+bandaged in dust-sheets, looked ominously dreary. Had any one ever
+laughed in this shrouded desert? The long lines of stalls huddled under
+their wrinkled coverings stretched before and behind her. The boxes were
+shapeless holes of pallid grime. It was as if a London fog had trailed
+its dingy veil over everything. There was a fog outside as well, and the
+few electric lights which had been turned up peered blurred and yellow.
+An immense ladder, three ladders tied together, reared itself from the
+stalls to the roof. Something was being done to the lights on the
+ceiling. Tired-looking men in overcoats were creeping into the
+orchestra, thrusting white faces under screened lights, and rustling
+papers on stands.
+
+Marion had the theatre to herself except for a few whisperers in the
+back row of the stalls--her maid, an attendant, one or two actors of
+minor parts who did not appear in the first act, and a few costumiers.
+
+It was fiercely cold, and she had not slept for several nights. She
+wished she had never been born.
+
+A magnificent-looking woman, wearing her chin tilted slightly upwards,
+was squeezing herself and an immense fur coat towards her along the
+stalls, and sat down beside her. This was Lenore, the leading lady.
+
+She turned a colourless, beautifully shaped face and heavy eyes with
+bistred lashes towards Marion.
+
+"I suppose we shall have to wait about two hours for Mr. Montgomery,"
+she said apathetically.
+
+"Does he always keep people waiting?"
+
+"Always, since he made his great hit in _The Deodars_."
+
+There was a moment's silence.
+
+"Mr. Montgomery does not like his part," said the leading lady
+tentatively, hanging a hand in an interminable white glove over the back
+of the stall in front of her.
+
+Marion's face hardened.
+
+"It's not a sympathetic part," she said, "but an artist ought not to
+think of that."
+
+"No, it's not sympathetic," acquiesced Lenore, turning up her fur
+collar. "It seems as if the principal man's part never _is_ sympathetic
+in a woman's play. If the central figure is a woman, the men grouped
+round her are generally prize specimens of worms. I wonder why. In your
+play, now, Maggie's everything! George does not count for much, as far
+as I can see. Even Maggie had not much use for him."
+
+"She loved him," said the author, with asperity.
+
+"Did she? Sometimes when I'm playing Maggie to Montgomery's George I
+wonder if she did. And I just wonder now and then if I would have thrown
+him over as she did. I mean for good and all. It seems to me--if she'd
+cared for him, cared _really_, you know----"
+
+"She did," interposed Marion harshly.
+
+"Wouldn't she have quarrelled and made it up again? Would she have been
+quite so hard on him?"
+
+"Yes, she would. Think, just think what she must have suffered in the
+third act, the scene at the Savoy, when, loving him as she did, trusting
+him as she did, she saw him come in with----"
+
+"Well, I expect you know best," said Lenore, whose interest seemed to
+flag suddenly; "anyhow, she suffered, poor thing. Women like her always
+do, I think." She rose slowly. "I may as well go and dress. I suppose we
+shall be here till midnight."
+
+The orchestra struck up.
+
+"Anyhow, she suffered."
+
+The violins caught up the words and dinned them over and over again into
+Marion's ears. Women like Maggie, women with deep hearts like
+herself--for was not Maggie herself?--they always suffered, always
+suffered, always!--said the violins.
+
+The manager suddenly appeared in front of the curtain and walked swiftly
+over the little bridge from the stage to the stalls. He was a small,
+sturdy, thin-lipped, choleric man, who looked as if he were made up of
+energy; energy distilled and bottled. Some one had said of him that his
+hat was really a glass stopper, which might fly off at any moment.
+
+It was off now. There had evidently been an explosion. He held a note in
+his hand.
+
+"Montgomery has given up the part," he said. "He was odd at rehearsal
+yesterday. I felt there was something wrong. He said he had no show. Now
+he says he's too ill to come--bronchitis."
+
+The sense of disaster which had been hanging over Marion all day slipped
+and engulfed her like an avalanche. She felt paralysed.
+
+"Then the play can't go on?" she said.
+
+"If it had to happen, better to-night than to-morrow night," said the
+manager. "Montgomery is as slippery as an eel. I don't suppose he has
+got bronchitis; but I have no doubt if I rushed over there at this
+moment, I should find him in bed with a steam-kettle. He would play the
+part."
+
+"What will you do?" gasped Marion.
+
+"Do?" he said. "Do? There's only one thing to do. Go through with the
+play! It will start in two minutes, and we shall see what the understudy
+can make of it. He's as clever as he can stick, and he's word perfect,
+at any rate."
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+"A Mr. Delacour; at least, that's his stage name. He's been in America
+for the last five years. Clever enough, but a rolling stone. He's not to
+be depended on, poor devil; but it's Hobson's choice--we've got to
+depend on him."
+
+The manager sat down beside her and clapped his hands.
+
+The lights suddenly burned up behind the curtain, the curtain rose and
+the play began.
+
+Some plays, some books, some men and women, possess a mysterious force
+which, for lack of a better word, we call vitality. Those who possess it
+not call it by all manner of ugly names. But, nevertheless, it is the
+great gift, the power that overcomes, which makes life on a large scale
+possible, which makes the soldier, the lover, the saint, possible. Most
+of us are only half alive. Our work is half dead. We deal in creep-mouse
+sentiment, and call it love. We write pathetically of our impotence to
+live, and call it resignation. We who have never been young, compare
+notes with each other on how to remain senile, and call it the art of
+growing old.
+
+But others go through life, and spend themselves on it, piece by piece,
+with ardour as they go. These are the teachers--only they never teach.
+They know. If we want to learn anything, we can watch them. And some of
+us, again--and this is the hardest fate of all--come into life
+inadequately equipped, not provisioned for a prolonged journey. What
+little we have, and what little there is of us, we expend on the first
+part of life, and having nothing left for middle age.
+
+Such a woman was Marion. She had talent, and she had, besides--as the
+manager beside her had divined--one live play in her. But he doubted
+whether she had more than one. She looked insolvent, a dweller in the
+past, crippled by an acute memory. No doubt it was this self-regarding
+memory which had resulted in the play. It was obviously a personal
+experience, and as she was rich enough to share the risk of producing
+it, he was more than ready to put it on. It was full of faults; it was
+melodramatic, it was amateurish, but it was passionately alive. The pit
+and the gallery would love it; and if the stalls found it a little
+cheap, what of that? He had considerable _flair_. He believed it would
+succeed.
+
+He glanced once or twice furtively at the handsome, unhappy-looking,
+richly furred woman beside him--no longer young, "past youth, but not
+past passion," with much of the charm of youth lingering in her graceful
+erectness, her pretty hair, her delicate pallor.
+
+She had told him feverishly that the only thing she cared for--had ever
+cared for--was art, success, fame. He had heard something like it often
+before.
+
+He wished, with a half-sigh, that a little of that uneasy, egotistic
+ambition might have been instilled into the heart of Lenore, for whom
+he had a compassionate, bottled-up attachment of many years' standing.
+
+Poor Lenore! What an actress, and what a hopelessly womanly woman, still
+mourning the providential demise of an impossible brother who had lived
+on her.
+
+She was on the stage now, looking about seventeen, all youth and garden
+hat and white muslin.
+
+Marion's face twitched. She was living her own youth over again.
+
+There was a pause. Lenore picked a rose to gain time, and looked into
+the wings.
+
+"Delacour!" roared the manager, bouncing up in his stall and then
+sitting down again.
+
+"We cut it here," said Lenore, advancing to the footlights, "and he
+doesn't know. It is not his fault. He's waiting for his cue. See, Mr.
+Delacour! Leave out that bit about the daisies, and come on at
+'happiness.'"
+
+The understudy came on, and Marion's heart thrust suddenly at her like a
+rapier, and left her for dead, staring in front of her.
+
+This was no understudy. This was the original George of the drama when
+it was first acted. Marion saw the lover of her youth come on and kiss
+Lenore's hand, with the same gesture with which he had once kissed
+hers--in the sunshine, in a Kentish garden, beside a lavender bush, with
+a bumble bee in it, ten endless years ago.
+
+He was hardly changed--a little thinner, perhaps, but not a day older in
+his paint; the same reckless, debonair creature whom Marion had loved,
+who had wounded her and grieved her, whom she had discarded at last with
+bitter anger, whom she had never forgotten, whom she remembered with
+anguish.
+
+The curtain was down before she recovered herself, and the conductor was
+waving his baton.
+
+The manager turned to her with some excitement.
+
+"If only he can keep it up!" he said. "Delacour puts life into the
+love-making. He makes love well, don't you think?"
+
+"Admirably."
+
+"If only he can keep it up!" repeated the manager.
+
+Through the two acts which followed, the understudy kept it up. He did
+more. He acted with an intensity that made the rest of the play somewhat
+colourless. At the end of the scene at the Savoy, just before the
+curtain fell, he added a sentence of his own.
+
+In a second, before she knew what she had done, Marion had sprung to her
+feet, and had said in a harsh, loud voice:
+
+"That last sentence is not in the part."
+
+The play stopped. The hurrying waiters with dishes stood stock still and
+gaped, as astonished as if the interruption had been in real life. Some
+of the supers at the little tables in the background got up to see what
+was happening.
+
+Delacour, wineglass in hand, came forward to the footlights, and their
+eyes met.
+
+"I beg your pardon," he said. "You say it is not in the part. I thought
+it was. I will omit it in future."
+
+"You will do no such thing!" bawled the manager, leaping to his feet and
+shaking his fist at him. "Omit it! Why, Miss Wright, it's an
+inspiration. Gets him the whole sympathy just at the critical moment.
+And what a curtain! Good God! What a curtain!"
+
+"Isn't it?" said Lenore. "Leave out my bit at the end altogether, and
+make _that_ the curtain. Don't you agree, Miss Wright? And, look here,
+Mr. Delacour, take the front centre here."
+
+"Start again at 'falsehood,'" said the manager briskly to Lenore. "Now,
+then, everybody. Sit down at the back there. Now----"
+
+The play started again. Marion, astonished at her own violence, ashamed,
+shattered by conflicting emotions, speechless, could only bow her
+approval of the change, not that the manager cared a pin whether she
+approved or not.
+
+_Was Delacour acting?_ Marion knew that he was not. And as the play
+proceeded it changed in character. The words were the words she had
+written. Many of them were the words he had used himself, but his
+passion transformed them. They took on a new meaning. It was Maggie who
+was becoming a mean figure in spite of her grandiloquence--perhaps
+because of it. Her rigid principles, her petty, egotistic pride, her
+faultless demeanour jarred on the audience. Lenore, like a true artist,
+caught the novel side of the situation and emphasised it. Her Maggie
+dwindled, dwindled, until the man held the stage alone, dominated it.
+Marion had never before seen his side of the miserable drama in which
+her happiness had made shipwreck, had never before seen her own
+character in this light. It was as if he were saying the truth at last,
+defending himself at last--which he had never done in real life.
+
+Finally repulsed, silent under her scornful invective, Delacour gathered
+himself together and went off magnificent in defeat.
+
+The curtain fell for the last time.
+
+The tiny audience, strengthened by the rest of the cast who were not
+needed in the final scene, broke into rapturous applause. The manager,
+excited and radiant, clapped with the rest.
+
+"He's immense. He's immense!" he kept on saying. "Delacour's the making
+of it. He's immense! Hang Montgomery! He may have bronchitis till he's
+blue. Delacour makes the play. I will fetch him!"
+
+He disappeared behind the curtain, and in a few minutes reappeared,
+dragging Delacour with him to introduce him to Marion.
+
+"We have met before," she said faintly, putting out her hand.
+
+"Did we ever really meet?" he said gently, taking it for a second in
+his.
+
+He seemed quite exhausted. Now that she saw him close at hand, he looked
+much older. And his face was grievously lined, deteriorated.
+
+She tried to thank him, to express her gratitude for the way he had
+extricated them from a great difficulty; but her words were so
+hesitating and frigid that the manager broke in, shaking him warmly by
+the hand.
+
+Delacour bowed his thanks, murmured something conventional, and was
+gone.
+
+Every one was in a hurry to go, too. Marion remained a moment longer
+talking to the manager, and then they went together through the royal
+box to the private entrance, where her brougham was waiting. Just as
+they reached it, he was called away, and an attendant let her out.
+
+Waiting beside her brougham, in the rain, holding the door for her, was
+Delacour, in a shabby overcoat, his hat in his hand.
+
+Again their eyes met in a long look. His, sombre, melancholy, humble,
+had a great appeal in them.
+
+She seemed encased in some steel armour, which made movement and speech
+wellnigh impossible. She thanked him inaudibly.
+
+He shut the door, said "Home" to the coachman, and turned away.
+
+The carriage drove off.
+
+Then something in Marion snapped. Her other self, the poor woman in her
+whom she had denied and starved and brow-beaten, pounced upon her and
+called out suddenly, desperately:
+
+"Forgive him. What is life without him? Think of the last ten years. Has
+there been one day in all those grinding years when you have not longed
+to see him? Has there ever been one day when you would not have given up
+your ease and luxury for a cottage with him? And now he has come back
+into your life. He still loves you. Are you going to lose him again? You
+were vindictive, and you know it. Go back now and kneel down in the wet
+street and ask him to forgive you. Quick! quick!--before it is too
+late."
+
+The other woman in her, the woman who had discarded him, stopped her
+ears.
+
+"No, no; I had good reasons for breaking with him. They hold as good
+to-day as ten years ago."
+
+"Very well," said the other scornfully. "Then never dare to tell
+yourself again that you ever loved him. Let that lie cease. Your love
+was only pretty words and pride and self-seeking, and a miserable streak
+of passion. What do you care what happens to him? Don't go back. You
+don't care for him. You never cared. Never, never. And he knows it. He
+is telling himself so now--at this moment."
+
+She stopped the brougham. She trembled so much that she could hardly
+tell the man to drive back to the theatre. He turned slowly, the horse
+evidently reluctant, and in a few minutes she was once more at the
+private entrance. The door was closed. No one was to be seen in the
+little _cul de sac_. The lamp over the door was out. She got out and
+rang--once, twice, and yet again. Then she realised that every one else
+had hurried away as precipitately as she had done, for the dawn was
+already in the sky. She dragged herself back into her carriage and drove
+home, shaking in every limb.
+
+After all, it did not matter. She would get his address from the manager
+first thing to-morrow, and go straight on and see him, and sacrifice her
+pride, and beseech him to take her back. She had been too proud. She
+saw that at last. She would say so. She saw at last that resentment is
+disloyalty. She would say so. She was so sick of her present life that
+she would say anything. And he loved her still, thank God! And--thank
+God, too--she was rich. And it was obvious that he was poor. She had
+much to share with him. And she was still attractive. Other men still
+wished to marry her. She was pretty, still. All that she had, all that
+she still was, she would give him. And this long nightmare of the last
+ten years would pass at last, as that other nightmare of her youth had
+passed--her wretched home, with a drunken father and a heartbroken
+mother. That had passed, though at the time it had seemed as if it would
+endure for ever. Her parents had died, and her vulgar, kindly, rich aunt
+had adopted her. And now this second nightmare was at an end, too. The
+ache would go out of her life, the long daily hunger and thirst would
+cease. There would be no more dreadful homecomings after evenings of
+amusement; no more sick recoil and despair at waking and seeing the pale
+finger of the dawn upon the blind. She would be happy at last.
+
+Marion cried herself to sleep that night. Next morning, as early as she
+dared, she was at the theatre. The manager was going through his usual
+paroxysm of anxiety and ill-temper which preceded a first night. He
+could hardly find time for a word with her. There was a hitch in the
+scenery of the last act; the lighting was not yet repaired; one of the
+actors of the minor parts was ill, for whom an understudy had not been
+provided; and the head scene-shifter had sprained his wrist.
+
+"I won't keep you," said Marion, as he hurried up, fuming; "I only want
+Mr. Delacour's address. I should like to see him at once--to--to talk to
+him about his part. There are a few points----"
+
+"Delacour's address?" said the manager. "Don't know it. Oh, yes, of
+course!" He tore a little notebook out of his pocket. Then he suddenly
+looked up at her. "Don't go to him. Send for him, if you like, or see
+him here. He'll be here in an hour--at least, he will be if Smith is
+worth his salt. I've bribed him to keep a lynx eye on him day and night,
+and bring him up to time. But don't go and see him. I suppose you know
+he----"
+
+"He's married?" gasped Marion.
+
+The manager laughed scornfully.
+
+"He _drinks_, my dear lady. He drinks. He's only just out of an
+inebriates' home. But don't alarm yourself. If he's watched, I dare say
+we shall manage all right. I hope to goodness we shall! Don't look so
+scared. Smith has charge of him, and he is accustomed to the job. He was
+quite sober last night. I hear he always is after an outbreak. You're
+going home? Well, I think you're right. Yes, very cold here now. Quite
+right not to stop. See you again later."
+
+Marion drove home and shut herself up in her room. There was no need to
+lock the door. She was alone in the world, alone in her handsome, empty
+house, where she had always been alone, even before her aunt died and
+left it to her.... She would always be alone now. Only yesterday she had
+hoped--what had she not hoped! She had seen him there in imagination
+changing this weary house into a home, brilliant and faulty as ever,
+lovable as ever, beloved as ever, surrounded by her lavished adoration.
+She had seen their children running along its wide passages, playing in
+its empty hall.
+
+And now.
+
+_He drank._
+
+She shuddered. She had seen drink once. She knew. Never while she lived
+would she forget what her home had been like. The past crowded back upon
+her with all its vileness and nausea, all its unspeakable degradation
+and violence, wrapped up with maudlin sentiment and cheap tears. The
+sweat stood on her forehead.
+
+What an escape she had had! To think that if it had not been for that
+chance word of the manager's she would by now have pledged herself
+irrevocably to a drunkard, waded back into the slough from which she had
+emerged. Oh, what a merciful fate it had been, after all, which had
+parted them! How faithless she had been all these years! How little she
+had realised how the divine love and wisdom had watched over her, had
+shielded her!
+
+"Oh! thank God! Thank God!" she groaned. The other self in her, the poor
+dying woman in her, arose on her deathbed and screamed to her, screamed
+insane things. If a certain voice is too long ignored, its dictates seem
+at last insane.
+
+"Take him back all the same!" gasped the dying voice. "Marry him.
+Devote yourself to him, day and night. Cure him. Set him up. You love
+him. Love can do it, if anything can."
+
+"I can't do it," groaned Marion. "Mother tried, but it was no good."
+
+"Then do as she did, try and fail."
+
+"I can't. He would break my heart."
+
+"Let him break it."
+
+Marion strangled the terrible, urgent voice with fury, and then cried as
+if her heart would indeed break. The silenced voice spoke no more.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The play was a great success. Delacour, who had recently returned from
+America, was the making of it. Lenore was the first to acknowledge it,
+though his success was at her expense. Her part seemed only as a foil to
+the sombre splendour of his.
+
+The play ran and ran.
+
+Delacour made no further effort to speak to Marion. He avoided her
+systematically. He, on his side, was watched, was spied on, was
+protected from himself, was never given a chance of yielding to
+temptation. His self-imposed gaoler loved him. He was very lovable. The
+manager was enthusiastic. Ignorant people said he was reformed. It
+almost seemed as if he might grasp the great position to which his
+talent entitled him. But how often before he had fallen just when he was
+doing well! No one could depend on him. His record in America gradually
+became known. It was a record of hideous outbreaks and cancelled
+engagements.
+
+By dint of the strenuous will of others, to which he yielded himself, he
+was kept on his feet through the whole run of the play.
+
+And then, released from surveillance, exhausted in mind and body--he
+fell again.
+
+He blazed like a comet across the theatrical world, and then set as
+suddenly as he had risen.
+
+Marion heard of it and shuddered. She had had a narrow escape.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+She never wrote another play--at least, she never wrote another that
+pleased a manager. She said she had not time. In spite of her success,
+she felt a distaste for things theatrical. And perhaps she found that
+success is not as warm a garment for a shivering life as she had
+expected. There is a little fleecy wrap called affection, within the
+reach of all of us, which she might have donned. But, as she often said,
+there was, unfortunately, no one for whom she had much affection. She
+was alone in the world. Her interest in the theatre was gradually
+replaced by religion. Once she heard with real regret that Lenore had
+lost her memory, and chloral was hinted at as the cause. She thought of
+trying to save her, of making an earnest appeal to that better self
+which, according to Marion, exists in all of us. But when she made
+further inquiries about her, with a view to rescuing her, she was
+daunted by the discovery that Lenore had been privately married to
+Delacour for some time past, and that her declension, which was really
+due to drink, dated from the time of the marriage.
+
+A year passed. Delacour began to make fitful reappearances, then more
+frequent ones. He took and kept regular engagements. But his wife
+returned no more.
+
+Presently Marion's own play was revived with success. It was one of
+Delacour's greatest parts. And Marion went to see it, hidden behind the
+curtains of her box.
+
+The years since she had last sat in that box had not dealt kindly with
+her. Her discontented face showed that she was one of the many victims
+of arrested development, still hampered in middle age by the egotistic
+longings of youth. In youth we all want to receive instead of to give,
+to be loved, to be served, to be admired. Middle age is the time to
+reverse engines, the time to love, to serve, to give rather than to
+receive. Marion had not learned that elementary lesson of life. We all
+recognise them at sight, the nervous, fretful faces of the middle-aged
+men and women who want to be loved. And love knows them, too, and--flies
+them.
+
+The manager, somewhat pinched and grizzled, as from a long fast, came in
+to see her between the acts, and growled out his disapproval of his
+leading lady.
+
+"She's nothing to Lenore," he said.
+
+"Is she too"--Marion sought for a charitable word--"too ill to act?"
+
+"She is too ill to act," said the manager. "She will never act any more.
+She is dying."
+
+There was a silence.
+
+"She is dying of drink," he said; "and if there is such a place as
+heaven, she is very near it. And if there is such a person as God, I
+hope she will say a word for me when she gets there."
+
+Marion did not speak. She was horrified.
+
+"She would marry Delacour," said the manager. "I begged her to marry me.
+Over and over again I asked her. But she said I could do without her,
+and Delacour couldn't. They fell in love with each other at this very
+play when it was first put on. I saw it coming, and it spelt disaster
+for her. But it was the real thing; and when the real thing comes, we
+all have to knock under to it. It doesn't come often. Most of us are
+quite incapable of it. I have only seen it once or twice. I dare say I
+have never felt it, though I should have liked to take care of Lenore,
+and not let her work so hard, and make a garden for her. She loves
+flowers and running water. I made the garden just on the chance, but she
+has never seen it. Down in Sussex it is, with a little old-world cottage
+in it. It is a pretty place. Pergola; small cascade with rustic bridge;
+fishpond, with green-tiled floor to show up the gold-fish. And a rose
+garden. I should have liked her to see it. But she and Delacour! It was
+like a thing in a book. They fell in love, and he behaved well. He
+wouldn't marry her. He said he knew he couldn't cure himself of
+drink--that his will was too weak. But she was determined to marry him.
+She said her will was strong enough for both of them. I don't know about
+her will. I think it was her love which was strong enough. He gave in at
+last and married her. I know I shouldn't have held out as long as he
+did. And for a little while things went well. He was at her feet. He
+told me it was the first time any woman had ever cared for him. For a
+little while I almost hoped--and then, in spite of his love for her, in
+spite of everything, he began to drink again. Then she told him that
+what he drank she should drink, and she stuck to it. If he drank, she
+drank the same. If he 'nipped,' she did the same. When he got drunk, she
+got drunk. It was kill or cure. And he loved her. That was her hold over
+him. It took time, but she broke him of it. He suffered too much seeing
+her kill herself for his sake, and it steadied him. He _had_ to give it
+up."
+
+"Then, now--why doesn't she give it up, too?"
+
+"She can't," said the manager, his face twitching. "She was too far gone
+by the time he was cured. She had not his physique. She was absolutely
+played out. She is dying, and they both know it. But she does not mind.
+She has saved him. That was the point. She is perfectly happy. She does
+not care about anything else. He is a great actor. She has lived to see
+him recognised. Some women wouldn't have risked it. But I suppose a
+woman will take any risk if she loves, at least, women like Lenore
+will."
+
+"And does he--in spite of this--does he love her still?" said Marion,
+with dry lips.
+
+The manager was silent.
+
+"I did not think any one could care as much for Lenore as I did," he
+said at last, "but Delacour does--he cares more."
+
+
+_Printed by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury._
+
+
+
+
+SHORTER NOVELS BY GREATER WRITERS
+
+_Each 2s. 6d. net._
+
+    THE GORGEOUS ISLE
+        By GERTRUDE ATHERTON
+        Author of "Rezanov," "Ancestors."
+
+    THE LOWEST RUNG
+        By Miss CHOLMONDELEY
+        Author of "Moth and Rust."
+
+    A COUNTY FAMILY
+        By STORER CLOUSTON
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+    OUT IN THE OPEN
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+THIN PAPER EDITIONS.
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+        Water-Colour Sketches by A. H. Hallam Murray.
+
+    LAVENGRO: The Scholar, the Gypsy, the Priest. Containing
+        the Unaltered Text of the original issue; some suppressed
+        Episodes printed only in the editions issued by Mr. Murray;
+        MS. Variorum, Vocabulary, and Notes by Professor W. I. KNAPP.
+
+        608 pages, with 8 Pen and Ink Sketches by Percy Wadham.
+
+    ROMANY RYE. A sequel to "Lavengro." Containing the
+        Unaltered Text of the original issue, with Notes, etc., by
+        Professor W. I. KNAPP.
+
+        432 pages, with 7 Pen and Ink Sketches by F. G. Kitson.
+
+    WILD WALES: Its People, Language, and Scenery.
+        768 pages, 8 Half-tone Illustrations by A. S. Hartrick, and Map.
+
+    THE GYPSIES OF SPAIN. Their Manners, Customs, Religion and Language.
+        464 pages, with 7 Half-tone Illustrations by A. Wallis Mills.
+
+    ROMANO LAVO LIL: The Word Book of the Romany or English Gypsy
+        Language, with Specimens of Gypsy Poetry and an account of
+        certain Gypsyries, or places inhabited by them, and of
+        various things relating to Gypsy Life in England.
+
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+
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+        496 pages, with 5 Half-tone Illustrations.
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+        448 pages, with 7 Half-tone Illustrations.
+
+
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