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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Villa Rubein et al, by John Galsworthy
+
+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.net
+
+
+Title: Villa Rubein et al
+
+Author: John Galsworthy
+
+Release Date: September 24, 2004 [EBook #2639]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VILLA RUBEIN ET AL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+[NOTE:  Spelling conforms to the original: "s's" instead of our "z's";
+and "c's" where we would have "s's"; and "...our" as in colour and
+flavour; many interesting double consonants; etc.]
+
+
+
+
+THE WORKS OF JOHN GALSWORTHY
+
+VILLA RUBEIN
+
+
+
+
+Contents:
+  Villa Rubein
+  A Man of Devon
+  A Knight
+  Salvation of a Forsyte
+  The Silence
+
+
+
+
+VILLA RUBEIN
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+Writing not long ago to my oldest literary friend, I expressed in a
+moment of heedless sentiment the wish that we might have again one of our
+talks of long-past days, over the purposes and methods of our art.  And
+my friend, wiser than I, as he has always been, replied with this
+doubting phrase "Could we recapture the zest of that old time?"
+
+I would not like to believe that our faith in the value of imaginative
+art has diminished, that we think it less worth while to struggle for
+glimpses of truth and for the words which may pass them on to other eyes;
+or that we can no longer discern the star we tried to follow; but I do
+fear, with him, that half a lifetime of endeavour has dulled the
+exuberance which kept one up till morning discussing the ways and means
+of aesthetic achievement.  We have discovered, perhaps with a certain
+finality, that by no talk can a writer add a cubit to his stature, or
+change the temperament which moulds and colours the vision of life he
+sets before the few who will pause to look at it.  And so--the rest is
+silence, and what of work we may still do will be done in that dogged
+muteness which is the lot of advancing years.
+
+Other times, other men and modes, but not other truth.  Truth, though
+essentially relative, like Einstein's theory, will never lose its
+ever-new and unique quality-perfect proportion; for Truth, to the human
+consciousness at least, is but that vitally just relation of part to
+whole which is the very condition of life itself.  And the task before
+the imaginative writer, whether at the end of the last century or all
+these aeons later, is the presentation of a vision which to eye and ear
+and mind has the implicit proportions of Truth.
+
+I confess to have always looked for a certain flavour in the writings of
+others, and craved it for my own, believing that all true vision is so
+coloured by the temperament of the seer, as to have not only the just
+proportions but the essential novelty of a living thing for, after all,
+no two living things are alike.  A work of fiction should carry the hall
+mark of its author as surely as a Goya, a Daumier, a Velasquez, and a
+Mathew Maris, should be the unmistakable creations of those masters. This
+is not to speak of tricks and manners which lend themselves to that
+facile elf, the caricaturist, but of a certain individual way of seeing
+and feeling.  A young poet once said of another and more popular poet:
+"Oh! yes, but be cuts no ice." And, when one came to think of it, he did
+not; a certain flabbiness of spirit, a lack of temperament, an absence,
+perhaps, of the ironic, or passionate, view, insubstantiated his work; it
+had no edge--just a felicity which passed for distinction with the crowd.
+
+Let me not be understood to imply that a novel should be a sort of
+sandwich, in which the author's mood or philosophy is the slice of ham.
+One's demand is for a far more subtle impregnation of flavour; just that,
+for instance, which makes De Maupassant a more poignant and fascinating
+writer than his master Flaubert, Dickens and Thackeray more living and
+permanent than George Eliot or Trollope. It once fell to my lot to be the
+preliminary critic of a book on painting, designed to prove that the
+artist's sole function was the impersonal elucidation of the truths of
+nature.  I was regretfully compelled to observe that there were no such
+things as the truths of Nature, for the purposes of art, apart from the
+individual vision of the artist.  Seer and thing seen, inextricably
+involved one with the other, form the texture of any masterpiece; and I,
+at least, demand therefrom a distinct impression of temperament.  I never
+saw, in the flesh, either De Maupassant or Tchekov--those masters of such
+different methods entirely devoid of didacticism--but their work leaves
+on me a strangely potent sense of personality.  Such subtle intermingling
+of seer with thing seen is the outcome only of long and intricate
+brooding, a process not too favoured by modern life, yet without which we
+achieve little but a fluent chaos of clever insignificant impressions, a
+kind of glorified journalism, holding much the same relation to the
+deeply-impregnated work of Turgenev, Hardy, and Conrad, as a film bears
+to a play.
+
+Speaking for myself, with the immodesty required of one who hazards an
+introduction to his own work, I was writing fiction for five years before
+I could master even its primary technique, much less achieve that union
+of seer with thing seen, which perhaps begins to show itself a little in
+this volume--binding up the scanty harvests of 1899, 1900, and
+1901--especially in the tales: "A Knight," and "Salvation of a Forsyte." 
+Men, women, trees, and works of fiction--very tiny are the seeds from
+which they spring.  I used really to see the "Knight"--in 1896, was
+it?--sitting in the "Place" in front of the Casino at Monte Carlo; and
+because his dried-up elegance, his burnt straw hat, quiet courtesy of
+attitude, and big dog, used to fascinate and intrigue me, I began to
+imagine his life so as to answer my own questions and to satisfy, I
+suppose, the mood I was in. I never spoke to him, I never saw him again. 
+His real story, no doubt, was as different from that which I wove around
+his figure as night from day.
+
+As for Swithin, wild horses will not drag from me confession of where and
+when I first saw the prototype which became enlarged to his bulky
+stature.  I owe Swithin much, for he first released the satirist in me,
+and is, moreover, the only one of my characters whom I killed before I
+gave him life, for it is in "The Man of Property" that Swithin Forsyte
+more memorably lives.
+
+Ranging beyond this volume, I cannot recollect writing the first words of
+"The Island Pharisees"--but it would be about August, 1901. Like all the
+stories in "Villa Rubein," and, indeed, most of my tales, the book
+originated in the curiosity, philosophic reflections, and unphilosophic
+emotions roused in me by some single figure in real life.  In this case
+it was Ferrand, whose real name, of course, was not Ferrand, and who died
+in some "sacred institution" many years ago of a consumption brought on
+by the conditions of his wandering life. If not "a beloved," he was a
+true vagabond, and I first met him in the Champs Elysees, just as in "The
+Pigeon" he describes his meeting with Wellwyn.  Though drawn very much
+from life, he did not in the end turn out very like the Ferrand of real
+life--the, figures of fiction soon diverge from their prototypes.
+
+The first draft of "The Island Pharisees" was buried in a drawer; when
+retrieved the other day, after nineteen years, it disclosed a picaresque
+string of anecdotes told by Ferrand in the first person. These two-thirds
+of a book were laid to rest by Edward Garnett's dictum that its author
+was not sufficiently within Ferrand's skin; and, struggling heavily with
+laziness and pride, he started afresh in the skin of Shelton.  Three
+times be wrote that novel, and then it was long in finding the eye of
+Sydney Pawling, who accepted it for Heinemann's in 1904.  That was a
+period of ferment and transition with me, a kind of long awakening to the
+home truths of social existence and national character.  The liquor
+bubbled too furiously for clear bottling.  And the book, after all,
+became but an introduction to all those following novels which
+depict--somewhat satirically--the various sections of English "Society"
+with a more or less capital "S."
+
+Looking back on the long-stretched-out body of one's work, it is
+interesting to mark the endless duel fought within a man between the
+emotional and critical sides of his nature, first one, then the other,
+getting the upper hand, and too seldom fusing till the result has the
+mellowness of full achievement.  One can even tell the nature of one's
+readers, by their preference for the work which reveals more of this side
+than of that.  My early work was certainly more emotional than critical.
+But from 1901 came nine years when the critical was, in the main, holding
+sway.  From 1910 to 1918 the emotional again struggled for the upper
+hand; and from that time on there seems to have been something of a "dead
+beat."  So the conflict goes, by what mysterious tides promoted, I know
+not.
+
+An author must ever wish to discover a hapless member of the Public who,
+never yet having read a word of his writing, would submit to the ordeal
+of reading him right through from beginning to end.  Probably the effect
+could only be judged through an autopsy, but in the remote case of
+survival, it would interest one so profoundly to see the differences, if
+any, produced in that reader's character or outlook over life.  This,
+however, is a consummation which will remain devoutly to be wished, for
+there is a limit to human complaisance. One will never know the exact
+measure of one's infecting power; or whether, indeed, one is not just a
+long soporific.
+
+A writer they say, should not favouritize among his creations; but then a
+writer should not do so many things that he does.  This writer,
+certainly, confesses to having favourites, and of his novels so far be
+likes best: The Forsyte Series; "The Country House"; "Fraternity"; "The
+Dark Flower"; and "Five Tales"; believing these to be the works which
+most fully achieve fusion of seer with thing seen, most subtly disclose
+the individuality of their author, and best reveal such of truth as has
+been vouchsafed to him. JOHN GALSWORTHY.
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+MY SISTER BLANCHE LILIAN SAUTER
+
+
+
+
+VILLA RUBEIN
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+Walking along the river wall at Botzen, Edmund Dawney said to Alois Harz:
+"Would you care to know the family at that pink house, Villa Rubein?"
+
+Harz answered with a smile:
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"Come with me then this afternoon."
+
+They had stopped before an old house with a blind, deserted look, that
+stood by itself on the wall; Harz pushed the door open.
+
+"Come in, you don't want breakfast yet.  I'm going to paint the river
+to-day."
+
+He ran up the bare broad stairs, and Dawney followed leisurely, his
+thumbs hooked in the armholes of his waistcoat, and his head thrown back.
+
+In the attic which filled the whole top story, Harz had pulled a canvas
+to the window.  He was a young man of middle height, square shouldered,
+active, with an angular face, high cheek-bones, and a strong, sharp chin.
+His eyes were piercing and steel-blue, his eyebrows very flexible, nose
+long and thin with a high bridge; and his dark, unparted hair fitted him
+like a cap.  His clothes looked as if he never gave them a second
+thought.
+
+This room, which served for studio, bedroom, and sitting-room, was bare
+and dusty.  Below the window the river in spring flood rushed down the
+valley, a stream, of molten bronze.  Harz dodged before the canvas like a
+fencer finding his distance; Dawney took his seat on a packingcase.
+
+"The snows have gone with a rush this year," he drawled.  "The Talfer
+comes down brown, the Eisack comes down blue; they flow into the Etsch
+and make it green; a parable of the Spring for you, my painter."
+
+Harz mixed his colours.
+
+"I've no time for parables," he said, "no time for anything.  If I could
+be guaranteed to live to ninety-nine, like Titian--he had a chance. Look
+at that poor fellow who was killed the other day!  All that struggle, and
+then--just at the turn!"
+
+He spoke English with a foreign accent; his voice was rather harsh, but
+his smile very kindly.
+
+Dawney lit a cigarette.
+
+"You painters," he said, "are better off than most of us.  You can strike
+out your own line.  Now if I choose to treat a case out of the ordinary
+way and the patient dies, I'm ruined."
+
+"My dear Doctor--if I don't paint what the public likes, I starve; all
+the same I'm going to paint in my own way; in the end I shall come out on
+top."
+
+"It pays to work in the groove, my friend, until you've made your name;
+after that--do what you like, they'll lick your boots all the same."
+
+"Ah, you don't love your work."
+
+Dawney answered slowly: "Never so happy as when my hands are full. But I
+want to make money, to get known, to have a good time, good cigars, good
+wine.  I hate discomfort.  No, my boy, I must work it on the usual lines;
+I don't like it, but I must lump it.  One starts in life with some notion
+of the ideal--it's gone by the board with me. I've got to shove along
+until I've made my name, and then, my little man--then--"
+
+"Then you'll be soft!"
+
+"You pay dearly for that first period!"
+
+"Take my chance of that; there's no other way."
+
+"Make one!"
+
+"Humph!"
+
+Harz poised his brush, as though it were a spear:
+
+"A man must do the best in him.  If he has to suffer--let him!"
+
+Dawney stretched his large soft body; a calculating look had come into
+his eyes.
+
+"You're a tough little man!" he said.
+
+"I've had to be tough."
+
+Dawney rose; tobacco smoke was wreathed round his unruffled hair.
+
+"Touching Villa Rubein," he said, "shall I call for you?  It's a mixed
+household, English mostly--very decent people."
+
+"No, thank you.  I shall be painting all day.  Haven't time to know the
+sort of people who expect one to change one's clothes."
+
+"As you like; ta-to!"  And, puffing out his chest, Dawney vanished
+through a blanket looped across the doorway.
+
+Harz set a pot of coffee on a spirit-lamp, and cut himself some bread.
+Through the window the freshness of the morning came; the scent of sap
+and blossom and young leaves; the scent of earth, and the mountains freed
+from winter; the new flights and songs of birds; all the odorous,
+enchanted, restless Spring.
+
+There suddenly appeared through the doorway a white rough-haired terrier
+dog, black-marked about the face, with shaggy tan eyebrows. He sniffed at
+Harz, showed the whites round his eyes, and uttered a sharp bark.  A
+young voice called:
+
+"Scruff!  Thou naughty dog!"  Light footsteps were heard on the stairs;
+from the distance a thin, high voice called:
+
+"Greta!  You mustn't go up there!"
+
+A little girl of twelve, with long fair hair under a wide-brimmed hat,
+slipped in.
+
+Her blue eyes opened wide, her face flushed up.  That face was not
+regular; its cheek-bones were rather prominent, the nose was flattish;
+there was about it an air, innocent, reflecting, quizzical, shy.
+
+"Oh!" she said.
+
+Harz smiled: "Good-morning!  This your dog?"
+
+She did not answer, but looked at him with soft bewilderment; then
+running to the dog seized him by the collar.
+
+"Scr-ruff!  Thou naughty dog--the baddest dog!"  The ends of her hair
+fell about him; she looked up at Harz, who said:
+
+"Not at all!  Let me give him some bread."
+
+"Oh no!  You must not--I will beat him--and tell him he is bad; then he
+shall not do such things again.  Now he is sulky; he looks so always when
+he is sulky.  Is this your home?"
+
+"For the present; I am a visitor."
+
+"But I think you are of this country, because you speak like it."
+
+"Certainly, I am a Tyroler."
+
+"I have to talk English this morning, but I do not like it very much
+--because, also I am half Austrian, and I like it best; but my sister,
+Christian, is all English.  Here is Miss Naylor; she shall be very angry
+with me."
+
+And pointing to the entrance with a rosy-tipped forefinger, she again
+looked ruefully at Harz.
+
+There came into the room with a walk like the hopping of a bird an
+elderly, small lady, in a grey serge dress, with narrow bands of
+claret-coloured velveteen; a large gold cross dangled from a steel chain
+on her chest; she nervously twisted her hands, clad in black kid gloves,
+rather white about the seams.
+
+Her hair was prematurely grey; her quick eyes brown; her mouth twisted at
+one corner; she held her face, kind-looking, but long and narrow, rather
+to one side, and wore on it a look of apology.  Her quick sentences
+sounded as if she kept them on strings, and wanted to draw them back as
+soon as she had let them forth.
+
+"Greta, how can, you do such things?  I don't know what your father would
+say!  I am sure I don't know how to--so extraordinary--"
+
+"Please!" said Harz.
+
+"You must come at once--so very sorry--so awkward!"  They were standing
+in a ring: Harz with his eyebrows working up and down; the little lady
+fidgeting her parasol; Greta, flushed and pouting, her eyes all dewy,
+twisting an end of fair hair round her finger.
+
+"Oh, look!"  The coffee had boiled over.  Little brown streams trickled
+spluttering from the pan; the dog, with ears laid back and tail tucked
+in, went scurrying round the room.  A feeling of fellowship fell on them
+at once.
+
+"Along the wall is our favourite walk, and Scruff--so awkward, so
+unfortunate--we did not think any one lived here--the shutters are
+cracked, the paint is peeling off so dreadfully.  Have you been long in
+Botzen?  Two months?  Fancy!  You are not English?  You are Tyrolese?  But
+you speak English so well--there for seven years?  Really?  So
+fortunate!--It is Greta's day for English."
+
+Miss Naylor's eyes darted bewildered glances at the roof where the
+crossing of the beams made such deep shadows; at the litter of brushes,
+tools, knives, and colours on a table made out of packing-cases; at the
+big window, innocent of glass, and flush with the floor, whence dangled a
+bit of rusty chain--relic of the time when the place had been a
+store-loft; her eyes were hastily averted from an unfnished figure of the
+nude.
+
+Greta, with feet crossed, sat on a coloured blanket, dabbling her fnger
+in a little pool of coffee, and gazing up at Harz.  And he thought: 'I
+should like to paint her like that.  "A forget-me-not."'
+
+He took out his chalks to make a sketch of her.
+
+"Shall you show me?" cried out Greta, scrambling to her feet.
+
+"'Will,' Greta--'will'; how often must I tell you?  I think we should be
+going--it is very late--your father--so very kind of you, but I think we
+should be going.  Scruff!"   Miss Naylor gave the floor two taps.  The
+terrier backed into a plaster cast which came down on his tail, and sent
+him flying through the doorway.  Greta followed swiftly, crying:
+
+"Ach! poor Scrufee!"
+
+Miss Naylor crossed the room; bowing, she murmured an apology, and also
+disappeared.
+
+Harz was left alone, his guests were gone; the little girl with the fair
+hair and the eyes like forget-me-nots, the little lady with kindly
+gestures and bird-like walk, the terrier.  He looked round him; the room
+seemed very empty.  Gnawing his moustache, he muttered at the fallen
+cast.
+
+Then taking up his brush, stood before his picture, smiling and frowning.
+Soon he had forgotten it all in his work.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+It was early morning four days later, and Harz was loitering homewards.
+The shadows of the clouds passing across the vines were vanishing over
+the jumbled roofs and green-topped spires of the town. A strong sweet
+wind was blowing from the mountains, there was a stir in the branches of
+the trees, and flakes of the late blossom were drifting down.  Amongst
+the soft green pods of a kind of poplar chafers buzzed, and numbers of
+their little brown bodies were strewn on the path.
+
+He passed a bench where a girl sat sketching.  A puff of wind whirled her
+drawing to the ground; Harz ran to pick it up.  She took it from him with
+a bow; but, as he turned away, she tore the sketch across.
+
+"Ah!" he said; "why did you do that?"
+
+This girl, who stood with a bit of the torn sketch in either hand, was
+slight and straight; and her face earnest and serene.  She gazed at Harz
+with large, clear, greenish eyes; her lips and chin were defiant, her
+forehead tranquil.
+
+"I don't like it."
+
+"Will you let me look at it?  I am a painter."
+
+"It isn't worth looking at, but--if you wish--"
+
+He put the two halves of the sketch together.
+
+"You see!" she said at last; "I told you."
+
+Harz did not answer, still looking at the sketch.  The girl frowned.
+
+Harz asked her suddenly:
+
+"Why do you paint?"
+
+She coloured, and said:
+
+"Show me what is wrong."
+
+"I cannot show you what is wrong, there is nothing wrong--but why do you
+paint?"
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+Harz shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"You've no business to do that," said the girl in a hurt voice; "I want
+to know."
+
+"Your heart is not in it," said Harz.
+
+She looked at him, startled; her eyes had grown thoughtful.
+
+"I suppose that is it.  There are so many other things--"
+
+"There should be nothing else," said Harz.
+
+She broke in: "I don't want always to be thinking of myself. Suppose--"
+
+"Ah!  When you begin supposing!"
+
+The girl confronted him; she had torn the sketch again.
+
+"You mean that if it does not matter enough, one had better not do it at
+all.  I don't know if you are right--I think you are."
+
+There was the sound of a nervous cough, and Harz saw behind him his three
+visitors--Miss Naylor offering him her hand; Greta, flushed, with a bunch
+of wild flowers, staring intently in his face; and the terrier, sniffing
+at his trousers.
+
+Miss Naylor broke an awkward silence.
+
+"We wondered if you would still be here, Christian.  I am sorry to
+interrupt you--I was not aware that you knew Mr. Herr--"
+
+"Harz is my name--we were just talking"
+
+"About my sketch.  Oh, Greta, you do tickle!  Will you come and have
+breakfast with us to-day, Herr Harz?  It's our turn, you know."
+
+Harz, glancing at his dusty clothes, excused himself.
+
+But Greta in a pleading voice said: "Oh! do come!  Scruff likes you. It
+is so dull when there is nobody for breakfast but ourselves."
+
+Miss Naylor's mouth began to twist.  Harz hurriedly broke in:
+
+"Thank you.  I will come with pleasure; you don't mind my being dirty?"
+
+"Oh no! we do not mind; then we shall none of us wash, and afterwards I
+shall show you my rabbits."
+
+Miss Naylor, moving from foot to foot, like a bird on its perch,
+exclaimed:
+
+"I hope you won't regret it, not a very good meal--the girls are so
+impulsive--such informal invitation; we shall be very glad."
+
+But Greta pulled softly at her sister's sleeve, and Christian, gathering
+her things, led the way.
+
+Harz followed in amazement; nothing of this kind had come into his life
+before.  He kept shyly glancing at the girls; and, noting the speculative
+innocence in Greta's eyes, he smiled.  They soon came to two great
+poplar-trees, which stood, like sentinels, one on either side of an
+unweeded gravel walk leading through lilac bushes to a house painted dull
+pink, with green-shuttered windows, and a roof of greenish slate.  Over
+the door in faded crimson letters were written the words, "Villa Rubein."
+
+"That is to the stables," said Greta, pointing down a path, where some
+pigeons were sunning themselves on a wall.  "Uncle Nic keeps his horses
+there: Countess and Cuckoo--his horses begin with C, because of
+Chris--they are quite beautiful.  He says he could drive them to
+Kingdom-Come and they would not turn their hair.  Bow, and say
+'Good-morning' to our house!"
+
+Harz bowed.
+
+"Father said all strangers should, and I think it brings good luck." From
+the doorstep she looked round at Harz, then ran into the house.
+
+A broad, thick-set man, with stiff, brushed-up hair, a short, brown,
+bushy beard parted at the chin, a fresh complexion, and blue glasses
+across a thick nose, came out, and called in a bluff voice:
+
+"Ha! my good dears, kiss me quick--prrt!  How goes it then this morning? 
+A good walk, hein?"  The sound of many loud rapid kisses followed.
+
+"Ha, Fraulein, good!"  He became aware of Harz's figure standing in the
+doorway: "Und der Herr?"
+
+Miss Naylor hurriedly explained.
+
+"Good!  An artist!  Kommen Sie herein, I am delight.  You will breakfast?
+I too--yes, yes, my dears--I too breakfast with you this morning.  I have
+the hunter's appetite."
+
+Harz, looking at him keenly, perceived him to be of middle height and
+age, stout, dressed in a loose holland jacket, a very white, starched
+shirt, and blue silk sash; that he looked particularly clean, had an air
+of belonging to Society, and exhaled a really fine aroma of excellent
+cigars and the best hairdresser's essences.
+
+The room they entered was long and rather bare; there was a huge map on
+the wall, and below it a pair of globes on crooked supports, resembling
+two inflated frogs erect on their hind legs.  In one corner was a cottage
+piano, close to a writing-table heaped with books and papers; this nook,
+sacred to Christian, was foreign to the rest of the room, which was
+arranged with supernatural neatness.  A table was laid for breakfast, and
+the sun-warmed air came in through French windows.
+
+The meal went merrily; Herr Paul von Morawitz was never in such spirits
+as at table.  Words streamed from him.  Conversing with Harz, he talked
+of Art as who should say: "One does not claim to be a connoisseur--pas si
+bete--still, one has a little knowledge, que diable!"  He recommended him
+a man in the town who sold cigars that were "not so very bad."  He
+consumed porridge, ate an omelette; and bending across to Greta gave her
+a sounding kiss, muttering: "Kiss me quick!"--an expression he had picked
+up in a London music-hall, long ago, and considered chic.  He asked his
+daughters' plans, and held out porridge to the terrier, who refused it
+with a sniff.
+
+"Well," he said suddenly, looking at Miss Naylor, "here is a gentleman
+who has not even heard our names!"
+
+The little lady began her introductions in a breathless voice.
+
+"Good!"  Herr Paul said, puffing out his lips: "Now we know each other!"
+and, brushing up the ends of his moustaches, he carried off Harz into
+another room, decorated with pipe-racks, prints of dancing-girls,
+spittoons, easy-chairs well-seasoned by cigar smoke, French novels, and
+newspapers.
+
+The household at Villa Rubein was indeed of a mixed and curious nature.
+Cut on both floors by corridors, the Villa was divided into four
+divisions; each of which had its separate inhabitants, an arrangement
+which had come about in the following way:
+
+When old Nicholas Treffry died, his estate, on the boundary of Cornwall,
+had been sold and divided up among his three surviving
+children--Nicholas, who was much the eldest, a partner in the well-known
+firm of Forsyte and Treffry, teamen, of the Strand; Constance, married to
+a man called Decie; and Margaret, at her father's death engaged to the
+curate of the parish, John Devorell, who shortly afterwards became its
+rector.  By his marriage with Margaret Treffry the rector had one child
+called Christian.  Soon after this he came into some property, and died,
+leaving it unfettered to his widow. Three years went by, and when the
+child was six years old, Mrs. Devorell, still young and pretty, came to
+live in London with her brother Nicholas.  It was there that she met Paul
+von Morawitz--the last of an old Czech family, who had lived for many
+hundred years on their estates near Budweiss.  Paul had been left an
+orphan at the age of ten, and without a solitary ancestral acre.  Instead
+of acres, he inherited the faith that nothing was too good for a von
+Morawitz.  In later years his savoir faire enabled him to laugh at faith,
+but it stayed quietly with him all the same.  The absence of acres was of
+no great consequence, for through his mother, the daughter of a banker in
+Vienna, he came into a well-nursed fortune.  It befitted a von Morawitz
+that he should go into the Cavalry, but, unshaped for soldiering, he soon
+left the Service; some said he had a difference with his Colonel over the
+quality of food provided during some manoeuvres; others that he had
+retired because his chargers did not fit his legs, which were, indeed,
+rather round.
+
+He had an admirable appetite for pleasure; a man-about-town's life suited
+him.  He went his genial, unreflecting, costly way in Vienna, Paris,
+London.  He loved exclusively those towns, and boasted that he was as
+much at home in one as in another.  He combined exuberant vitality with
+fastidiousness of palate, and devoted both to the acquisition of a
+special taste in women, weeds, and wines; above all he was blessed with a
+remarkable digestion.  He was thirty when he met Mrs. Devorell; and she
+married him because he was so very different from anybody she had ever
+seen.  People more dissimilar were never mated.  To Paul--accustomed to
+stage doors--freshness, serene tranquillity, and obvious purity were the
+baits; he had run through more than half his fortune, too, and the fact
+that she had money was possibly not overlooked.  Be that as it may, he
+was fond of her; his heart was soft, he developed a domestic side.
+
+Greta was born to them after a year of marriage.  The instinct of the
+"freeman" was, however, not dead in Paul; he became a gambler.  He lost
+the remainder of his fortune without being greatly disturbed. When he
+began to lose his wife's fortune too things naturally became more
+difficult.  Not too much remained when Nicholas Treffry stepped in, and
+caused his sister to settle what was left on her daughters, after
+providing a life-interest for herself and Paul.  Losing his supplies, the
+good man had given up his cards.  But the instinct of the "freeman" was
+still living in his breast; he took to drink.  He was never grossly
+drunk, and rarely very sober.  His wife sorrowed over this new passion;
+her health, already much enfeebled, soon broke down.  The doctors sent
+her to the Tyrol.  She seemed to benefit by this, and settled down at
+Botzen.  The following year, when Greta was just ten, she died.  It was a
+shock to Paul.  He gave up excessive drinking; became a constant smoker,
+and lent full rein to his natural domesticity.  He was fond of both the
+girls, but did not at all understand them; Greta, his own daughter, was
+his favourite.  Villa Rubein remained their home; it was cheap and roomy.
+Money, since Paul became housekeeper to himself, was scarce.
+
+About this time Mrs. Decie, his wife's sister, whose husband had died in
+the East, returned to England; Paul invited her to come and live with
+them.  She had her own rooms, her own servant; the arrangement suited
+Paul--it was economically sound, and there was some one always there to
+take care of the girls.  In truth he began to feel the instinct of the
+"freeman" rising again within him; it was pleasant to run over to Vienna
+now and then; to play piquet at a Club in Gries, of which he was the
+shining light; in a word, to go "on the tiles" a little.  One could not
+always mourn--even if a woman were an angel; moreover, his digestion was
+as good as ever.
+
+The fourth quarter of this Villa was occupied by Nicholas Treffry, whose
+annual sojourn out of England perpetually surprised himself. Between him
+and his young niece, Christian, there existed, however, a rare sympathy;
+one of those affections between the young and old, which, mysteriously
+born like everything in life, seems the only end and aim to both, till
+another feeling comes into the younger heart.
+
+Since a long and dangerous illness, he had been ordered to avoid the
+English winter, and at the commencement of each spring he would appear at
+Botzen, driving his own horses by easy stages from the Italian Riviera,
+where he spent the coldest months.  He always stayed till June before
+going back to his London Club, and during all that time he let no day
+pass without growling at foreigners, their habits, food, drink, and
+raiment, with a kind of big dog's growling that did nobody any harm.  The
+illness had broken him very much; he was seventy, but looked more.  He
+had a servant, a Luganese, named Dominique, devoted to him.  Nicholas
+Treffry had found him overworked in an hotel, and had engaged him with
+the caution: "Look--here, Dominique!  I swear!"  To which Dominique, dark
+of feature, saturnine and ironical, had only replied: "Tres biens,
+M'sieur!"
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+Harz and his host sat in leather chairs; Herr Paul's square back was
+wedged into a cushion, his round legs crossed.  Both were smoking, and
+they eyed each other furtively, as men of different stamp do when first
+thrown together.  The young artist found his host extremely new and
+disconcerting; in his presence he felt both shy and awkward. Herr Paul,
+on the other hand, very much at ease, was thinking indolently:
+
+'Good-looking young fellow--comes of the people, I expect, not at all the
+manner of the world; wonder what he talks about.'
+
+Presently noticing that Harz was looking at a photograph, he said: "Ah!
+yes! that was a woman!  They are not to be found in these days. She could
+dance, the little Coralie!  Did you ever see such arms?  Confess that she
+is beautiful, hein?"
+
+"She has individuality," said Harz.  "A fine type!"
+
+Herr Paul blew out a cloud of smoke.
+
+"Yes," he murmured, "she was fine all over!"  He had dropped his
+eyeglasses, and his full brown eyes, with little crow's-feet at the
+corners, wandered from his visitor to his cigar.
+
+'He'd be like a Satyr if he wasn't too clean,' thought Harz.  'Put vine
+leaves in his hair, paint him asleep, with his hands crossed, so!'
+
+"When I am told a person has individuality," Herr Paul was saying in a
+rich and husky voice, "I generally expect boots that bulge, an umbrella
+of improper colour; I expect a creature of 'bad form' as they say in
+England; who will shave some days and some days will not shave; who
+sometimes smells of India-rubber, and sometimes does not smell, which is
+discouraging!"
+
+"You do not approve of individuality?" said Harz shortly.
+
+"Not if it means doing, and thinking, as those who know better do not do,
+or think."
+
+"And who are those who know better?"
+
+"Ah! my dear, you are asking me a riddle?  Well, then--Society, men of
+birth, men of recognised position, men above eccentricity, in a word, of
+reputation."
+
+Harz looked at him fixedly.  "Men who haven't the courage of their own
+ideas, not even the courage to smell of India-rubber; men who have no
+desires, and so can spend all their time making themselves flat!"
+
+Herr Paul drew out a red silk handkerchief and wiped his beard.  "I
+assure you, my dear," he said, "it is easier to be flat; it is more
+respectable to be flat.  Himmel! why not, then, be flat?"
+
+"Like any common fellow?"
+
+"Certes; like any common fellow--like me, par exemple!"  Herr Paul waved
+his hand.  When he exercised unusual tact, he always made use of a French
+expression.
+
+Harz flushed.  Herr Paul followed up his victory.  "Come, come!" he said.
+"Pass me my men of repute! que diable! we are not anarchists."
+
+"Are you sure?" said Harz.
+
+Herr Paul twisted his moustache.  "I beg your pardon," he said slowly.
+But at this moment the door was opened; a rumbling voice remarked:
+"Morning, Paul.  Who's your visitor?"  Harz saw a tall, bulky figure in
+the doorway.
+
+"Come in,"' called out Herr Paul.  "Let me present to you a new
+acquaintance, an artist: Herr Harz--Mr. Nicholas Treffry.  Psumm bumm! 
+All this introducing is dry work."  And going to the sideboard he poured
+out three glasses of a light, foaming beer.
+
+Mr. Treffry waved it from him: "Not for me," he said: "Wish I could! 
+They won't let me look at it."  And walking over, to the window with a
+heavy tread, which trembled like his voice, he sat down.  There was
+something in his gait like the movements of an elephant's hind legs. He
+was very tall (it was said, with the customary exaggeration of family
+tradition, that there never had been a male Treffry under six feet in
+height), but now he stooped, and had grown stout.  There was something at
+once vast and unobtrusive about his personality.
+
+He wore a loose brown velvet jacket, and waistcoat, cut to show a soft
+frilled shirt and narrow black ribbon tie; a thin gold chain was looped
+round his neck and fastened to his fob.  His heavy cheeks had folds in
+them like those in a bloodhound's face.  He wore big, drooping,
+yellow-grey moustaches, which he had a habit of sucking, and a goatee
+beard.  He had long loose ears that might almost have been said to gap.
+On his head there was a soft black hat, large in the brim and low in the
+crown.  His grey eyes, heavy-lidded, twinkled under their bushy brows
+with a queer, kind cynicism.  As a young man he had sown many a wild oat;
+but he had also worked and made money in business; he had, in fact,
+burned the candle at both ends; but he had never been unready to do his
+fellows a good turn.  He had a passion for driving, and his reckless
+method of pursuing this art had caused him to be nicknamed: "The
+notorious Treffry."
+
+Once, when he was driving tandem down a hill with a loose rein, the
+friend beside him had said: "For all the good you're doing with those
+reins, Treffry, you might as well throw them on the horses' necks."
+
+"Just so," Treffry had answered.  At the bottom of the hill they had gone
+over a wall into a potato patch.  Treffry had broken several ribs; his
+friend had gone unharmed.
+
+He was a great sufferer now, but, constitutionally averse to being
+pitied, he had a disconcerting way of humming, and this, together with
+the shake in his voice, and his frequent use of peculiar phrases, made
+the understanding of his speech depend at times on intuition rather than
+intelligence.
+
+The clock began to strike eleven.  Harz muttered an excuse, shook hands
+with his host, and bowing to his new acquaintance, went away. He caught a
+glimpse of Greta's face against the window, and waved his hand to her. In
+the road he came on Dawney, who was turning in between the poplars, with
+thumbs as usual hooked in the armholes of his waistcoat.
+
+"Hallo!" the latter said.
+
+"Doctor!" Harz answered slyly; "the Fates outwitted me, it seems."
+
+"Serve you right," said Dawney, "for your confounded egoism!  Wait here
+till I come out, I shan't be many minutes."
+
+But Harz went on his way.  A cart drawn by cream-coloured oxen was
+passing slowly towards the bridge.  In front of the brushwood piled on it
+two peasant girls were sitting with their feet on a mat of grass--the
+picture of contentment.
+
+"I'm wasting my time!" he thought.  "I've done next to nothing in two
+months.  Better get back to London!  That girl will never make a
+painter!"  She would never make a painter, but there was something in her
+that he could not dismiss so rapidly.  She was not exactly beautiful, but
+she was sympathetic.  The brow was pleasing, with dark-brown hair softly
+turned back, and eyes so straight and shining. The two sisters were very
+different!  The little one was innocent, yet mysterious; the elder seemed
+as clear as crystal!
+
+He had entered the town, where the arcaded streets exuded their peculiar
+pungent smell of cows and leather, wood-smoke, wine-casks, and drains.
+The sound of rapid wheels over the stones made him turn his head.  A
+carriage drawn by red-roan horses was passing at a great pace.  People
+stared at it, standing still, and looking alarmed.  It swung from side to
+side and vanished round a corner.  Harz saw Mr. Nicholas Treffry in a
+long, whitish dust-coat; his Italian servant, perched behind, was holding
+to the seat-rail, with a nervous grin on his dark face.
+
+'Certainly,' Harz thought, 'there's no getting away from these people
+this morning--they are everywhere.'
+
+In his studio he began to sort his sketches, wash his brushes, and drag
+out things he had accumulated during his two months' stay.  He even began
+to fold his blanket door.  But suddenly he stopped.  Those two girls!  Why
+not try?  What a picture!  The two heads, the sky, and leaves!  Begin
+to-morrow!  Against that window--no, better at the Villa!  Call the
+picture--Spring...!
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+The wind, stirring among trees and bushes, flung the young leaves
+skywards.  The trembling of their silver linings was like the joyful
+flutter of a heart at good news.  It was one of those Spring mornings
+when everything seems full of a sweet restlessness--soft clouds chasing
+fast across the sky; soft scents floating forth and dying; the notes of
+birds, now shrill and sweet, now hushed in silences; all nature striving
+for something, nothing at peace.
+
+Villa Rubein withstood the influence of the day, and wore its usual look
+of rest and isolation.  Harz sent in his card, and asked to see "der
+Herr."  The servant, a grey-eyed, clever-looking Swiss with no hair on
+his face, came back saying:
+
+"Der Herr, mein Herr, is in the Garden gone."  Harz followed him.
+
+Herr Paul, a small white flannel cap on his head, gloves on his hands,
+and glasses on his nose, was watering a rosebush, and humming the
+serenade from Faust.
+
+This aspect of the house was very different from the other.  The sun fell
+on it, and over a veranda creepers clung and scrambled in long scrolls.
+There was a lawn, with freshly mown grass; flower-beds were laid out, and
+at the end of an avenue of young acacias stood an arbour covered with
+wisteria.
+
+In the east, mountain peaks--fingers of snow--glittered above the mist. 
+A grave simplicity lay on that scene, on the roofs and spires, the
+valleys and the dreamy hillsides, with their yellow scars and purple
+bloom, and white cascades, like tails of grey horses swishing in the
+wind.
+
+Herr Paul held out his hand: "What can we do for you?" he said.
+
+"I have to beg a favour," replied Harz.  "I wish to paint your daughters.
+I will bring the canvas here--they shall have no trouble. I would paint
+them in the garden when they have nothing else to do."
+
+Herr Paul looked at him dubiously--ever since the previous day he had
+been thinking: 'Queer bird, that painter--thinks himself the devil of a
+swell!  Looks a determined fellow too!'  Now--staring in the painter's
+face--it seemed to him, on the whole, best if some one else refused this
+permission.
+
+"With all the pleasure, my dear sir," he said.  "Come, let us ask these
+two young ladies!" and putting down his hose, he led the way towards the
+arbour, thinking: 'You'll be disappointed, my young conqueror, or I'm
+mistaken.'
+
+Miss Naylor and the girls were sitting in the shade, reading La
+Fontaine's fables.  Greta, with one eye on her governess, was stealthily
+cutting a pig out of orange peel.
+
+"Ah! my dear dears!" began Herr Paul, who in the presence of Miss Naylor
+always paraded his English.  "Here is our friend, who has a very
+flattering request to make; he would paint you, yes--both together,
+alfresco, in the air, in the sunshine, with the birds, the little birds!"
+
+Greta, gazing at Harz, gushed deep pink, and furtively showed him her
+pig.
+
+Christian said: "Paint us?  Oh no!"
+
+She saw Harz looking at her, and added, slowly: "If you really wish it, I
+suppose we could!" then dropped her eyes.
+
+"Ah!" said Herr Paul raising his brows till his glasses fell from his
+nose: "And what says Gretchen?  Does she want to be handed up to
+posterities a little peacock along with the other little birds?"
+
+Greta, who had continued staring at the painter, said: "Of--course
+--I--want--to--be."
+
+"Prrt!" said Herr Paul, looking at Miss Naylor.  The little lady indeed
+opened her mouth wide, but all that came forth was a tiny squeak, as
+sometimes happens when one is anxious to say something, and has not
+arranged beforehand what it shall be.
+
+The affair seemed ended; Harz heaved a sigh of satisfaction.  But Herr
+Paul had still a card to play.
+
+"There is your Aunt," he said; "there are things to be considered--one
+must certainly inquire--so, we shall see."  Kissing Greta loudly on both
+cheeks, he went towards the house.
+
+"What makes you want to paint us?" Christian asked, as soon as he was
+gone.
+
+"I think it very wrong," Miss Naylor blurted out.
+
+"Why?" said Harz, frowning.
+
+"Greta is so young--there are lessons--it is such a waste of time!"
+
+His eyebrows twitched: "Ah!  You think so!"
+
+"I don't see why it is a waste of time," said Christian quietly; "there
+are lots of hours when we sit here and do nothing."
+
+"And it is very dull," put in Greta, with a pout.
+
+"You are rude, Greta," said Miss Naylor in a little rage, pursing her
+lips, and taking up her knitting.
+
+"I think it seems always rude to speak the truth," said Greta.  Miss
+Naylor looked at her in that concentrated manner with which she was in
+the habit of expressing displeasure.
+
+But at this moment a servant came, and said that Mrs. Decie would be glad
+to see Herr Harz.  The painter made them a stiff bow, and followed the
+servant to the house.  Miss Naylor and the two girls watched his progress
+with apprehensive eyes; it was clear that he had been offended.
+
+Crossing the veranda, and passing through an open window hung with silk
+curtains, Hart entered a cool dark room.  This was Mrs. Decie's sanctum,
+where she conducted correspondence, received her visitors, read the
+latest literature, and sometimes, when she had bad headaches, lay for
+hours on the sofa, with a fan, and her eyes closed.  There was a scent of
+sandalwood, a suggestion of the East, a kind of mystery, in here, as if
+things like chairs and tables were not really what they seemed, but
+something much less commonplace.
+
+The visitor looked twice, to be quite sure of anything; there were many
+plants, bead curtains, and a deal of silverwork and china.
+
+Mrs. Decie came forward in the slightly rustling silk which--whether in
+or out of fashion--always accompanied her.  A tall woman, over fifty, she
+moved as if she had been tied together at the knees.  Her face was long,
+with broad brows, from which her sandy-grey hair was severely waved back;
+she had pale eyes, and a perpetual, pale, enigmatic smile. Her complexion
+had been ruined by long residence in India, and might unkindly have been
+called fawn-coloured.  She came close to Harz, keeping her eyes on his,
+with her head bent slightly forward.
+
+"We are so pleased to know you," she said, speaking in a voice which had
+lost all ring.  "It is charming to find some one in these parts who can
+help us to remember that there is such a thing as Art.  We had Mr.
+C---here last autumn, such a charming fellow.  He was so interested in
+the native customs and dresses.  You are a subject painter, too, I think? 
+Won't you sit down?"
+
+She went on for some time, introducing painters' names, asking questions,
+skating round the edge of what was personal.  And the young man stood
+before her with a curious little smile fixed on his lips.  'She wants to
+know whether I'm worth powder and shot,' he thought.
+
+"You wish to paint my nieces?" Mrs. Decie said at last, leaning back on
+her settee.
+
+"I wish to have that honour," Harz answered with a bow.
+
+"And what sort of picture did you think of?"
+
+"That," said Harz, "is in the future.  I couldn't tell you."  And he
+thought: 'Will she ask me if I get my tints in Paris, like the woman
+Tramper told me of?'
+
+The perpetual pale smile on Mrs. Decie's face seemed to invite his
+confidence, yet to warn him that his words would be sucked in somewhere
+behind those broad fine brows, and carefully sorted.  Mrs. Decie, indeed,
+was thinking: 'Interesting young man, regular Bohemian--no harm in that
+at his age; something Napoleonic in his face; probably has no dress
+clothes.  Yes, should like to see more of him!'  She had a fine eye for
+points of celebrity; his name was unfamiliar, would probably have been
+scouted by that famous artist Mr. C---, but she felt her instinct urging
+her on to know him.  She was, to do her justice, one of those "lion"
+finders who seek the animal for pleasure, not for the glory it brings
+them; she had the courage of her instincts--lion-entities were
+indispensable to her, but she trusted to divination to secure them;
+nobody could foist a "lion" on her.
+
+"It will be very nice.  You will stay and have some lunch?  The
+arrangements here are rather odd.  Such a mixed household--but there is
+always lunch at two o'clock for any one who likes, and we all dine at
+seven.  You would have your sittings in the afternoons, perhaps?  I
+should so like to see your sketches.  You are using the old house on the
+wall for studio; that is so original of you!"
+
+Harz would not stay to lunch, but asked if he might begin work that
+afternoon; he left a little suffocated by the sandalwood and sympathy of
+this sphinx-like woman.
+
+Walking home along the river wall, with the singing of the larks and
+thrushes, the rush of waters, the humming of the chafers in his ears, he
+felt that he would make something fine of this subject.  Before his eyes
+the faces of the two girls continually started up, framed by the sky,
+with young leaves guttering against their cheeks.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+Three days had passed since Harz began his picture, when early in the
+morning, Greta came from Villa Rubein along the river dyke and sat down
+on a bench from which the old house on the wall was visible. She had not
+been there long before Harz came out.
+
+"I did not knock," said Greta, "because you would not have heard, and it
+is so early, so I have been waiting for you a quarter of an hour."
+
+Selecting a rosebud, from some flowers in her hand, she handed it to him.
+"That is my first rosebud this year," she said; "it is for you because
+you are painting me.  To-day I am thirteen, Herr Harz; there is not to be
+a sitting, because it is my birthday; but, instead, we are all going to
+Meran to see the play of Andreas Hofer.  You are to come too, please; I
+am here to tell you, and the others shall be here directly."
+
+Harz bowed: "And who are the others?"
+
+"Christian, and Dr. Edmund, Miss Naylor, and Cousin Teresa.  Her husband
+is ill, so she is sad, but to-day she is going to forget that.  It is not
+good to be always sad, is it, Herr Harz?"
+
+He laughed: "You could not be."
+
+Greta answered gravely: "Oh yes, I could.  I too am often sad.  You are
+making fun.  You are not to make fun to-day, because it is my birthday.
+Do you think growing up is nice, Herr Harz?"
+
+"No, Fraulein Greta, it is better to have all the time before you."
+
+They walked on side by side.
+
+"I think," said Greta, "you are very much afraid of losing time. Chris
+says that time is nothing."
+
+"Time is everything," responded Harz.
+
+"She says that time is nothing, and thought is everything," Greta
+murmured, rubbing a rose against her cheek, "but I think you cannot have
+a thought unless you have the time to think it in.  There are the others!
+Look!"
+
+A cluster of sunshades on the bridge glowed for a moment and was lost in
+shadow.
+
+"Come," said Harz, "let's join them!"
+
+At Meran, under Schloss Tirol, people were streaming across the meadows
+into the open theatre.  Here were tall fellows in mountain dress, with
+leather breeches, bare knees, and hats with eagles' feathers; here were
+fruit-sellers, burghers and their wives, mountebanks, actors, and every
+kind of visitor.  The audience, packed into an enclosure of high boards,
+sweltered under the burning sun. Cousin Teresa, tall and thin, with hard,
+red cheeks, shaded her pleasant eyes with her hand.
+
+The play began.  It depicted the rising in the Tyrol of 1809: the village
+life, dances and yodelling; murmurings and exhortations, the warning beat
+of drums; then the gathering, with flintlocks, pitchforks, knives; the
+battle and victory; the homecoming, and festival.  Then the second
+gathering, the roar of cannon; betrayal, capture, death.  The impassive
+figure of the patriot Andreas Hofer always in front, black-bearded,
+leathern-girdled, under the blue sky, against a screen of mountains.
+
+Harz and Christian sat behind the others.  He seemed so intent on the
+play that she did not speak, but watched his face, rigid with a kind of
+cold excitement; he seemed to be transported by the life passing before
+them.  Something of his feeling seized on her; when the play was over she
+too was trembling.  In pushing their way out they became separated from
+the others.
+
+"There's a short cut to the station here," said Christian; "let's go this
+way."
+
+The path rose a little; a narrow stream crept alongside the meadow, and
+the hedge was spangled with wild roses.  Christian kept glancing shyly at
+the painter.  Since their meeting on the river wall her thoughts had
+never been at rest.  This stranger, with his keen face, insistent eyes,
+and ceaseless energy, had roused a strange feeling in her; his words had
+put shape to something in her not yet expressed. She stood aside at a
+stile to make way for some peasant boys, dusty and rough-haired, who sang
+and whistled as they went by.
+
+"I was like those boys once," said Harz.
+
+Christian turned to him quickly.  "Ah! that was why you felt the play, so
+much."
+
+"It's my country up there.  I was born amongst the mountains.  I looked
+after the cows, and slept in hay-cocks, and cut the trees in winter. They
+used to call me a 'black sheep,' a 'loafer' in my village."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Ah! why?  I worked as hard as any of them.  But I wanted to get away. Do
+you think I could have stayed there all my life?"
+
+Christian's eyes grew eager.
+
+"If people don't understand what it is you want to do, they always call
+you a loafer!" muttered Harz.
+
+"But you did what you meant to do in spite of them," Christian said.
+
+For herself it was so hard to finish or decide.  When in the old days she
+told Greta stories, the latter, whose instinct was always for the
+definite, would say: "And what came at the end, Chris?  Do finish it this
+morning!" but Christian never could.  Her thoughts were deep, vague,
+dreamy, invaded by both sides of every question.  Whatever she did, her
+needlework, her verse-making, her painting, all had its charm; but it was
+not always what it was intended for at the beginning.  Nicholas Treffry
+had once said of her: "When Chris starts out to make a hat, it may turn
+out an altar-cloth, but you may bet it won't be a hat."  It was her
+instinct to look for what things meant; and this took more than all her
+time.  She knew herself better than most girls of nineteen, but it was
+her reason that had informed her, not her feelings.  In her sheltered
+life, her heart had never been ruffled except by rare fits of
+passion--"tantrums" old Nicholas Treffry dubbed them--at what seemed to
+her mean or unjust.
+
+"If I were a man," she said, "and going to be great, I should have wanted
+to begin at the very bottom as you did."
+
+"Yes," said Harz quickly, "one should be able to feel everything."
+
+She did not notice how simply he assumed that he was going to be great.
+He went on, a smile twisting his mouth unpleasantly beneath its dark
+moustache--"Not many people think like you!  It's a crime not to have
+been born a gentleman."
+
+"That's a sneer," said Christian; "I didn't think you would have
+sneered!"
+
+"It is true.  What is the use of pretending that it isn't?"
+
+"It may be true, but it is finer not to say it!"
+
+"By Heavens!" said Harz, striking one hand into the other, "if more truth
+were spoken there would not be so many shams."
+
+Christian looked down at him from her seat on the stile.
+
+"You are right all the same, Fraulein Christian," he added suddenly;
+"that's a very little business.  Work is what matters, and trying to see
+the beauty in the world."
+
+Christian's face changed.  She understood, well enough, this craving
+after beauty.  Slipping down from the stile, she drew a slow deep breath.
+
+"Yes!" she said.  Neither spoke for some time, then Harz said shyly:
+
+"If you and Fraulein Greta would ever like to come and see my studio, I
+should be so happy.  I would try and clean it up for you!"
+
+"I should like to come.  I could learn something.  I want to learn."
+
+They were both silent till the path joined the road.
+
+"We must be in front of the others; it's nice to be in front--let's
+dawdle.  I forgot--you never dawdle, Herr Harz."
+
+"After a big fit of work, I can dawdle against any one; then I get
+another fit of work--it's like appetite."
+
+"I'm always dawdling," answered Christian.
+
+By the roadside a peasant woman screwed up her sun-dried face, saying in
+a low voice: "Please, gracious lady, help me to lift this basket!"
+
+Christian stooped, but before she could raise it, Harz hoisted it up on
+his back.
+
+"All right," he nodded; "this good lady doesn't mind."
+
+The woman, looking very much ashamed, walked along by Christian; she kept
+rubbing her brown hands together, and saying; "Gracious lady, I would not
+have wished.  It is heavy, but I would not have wished."
+
+"I'm sure he'd rather carry it," said Christian.
+
+They had not gone far along the road, however, before the others passed
+them in a carriage, and at the strange sight Miss Naylor could be seen
+pursing her lips; Cousin Teresa nodding pleasantly; a smile on Dawney's
+face; and beside him Greta, very demure.  Harz began to laugh.
+
+"What are you laughing at?" asked Christian.
+
+"You English are so funny.  You mustn't do this here, you mustn't do that
+there, it's like sitting in a field of nettles.  If I were to walk with
+you without my coat, that little lady would fall off her seat."  His
+laugh infected Christian; they reached the station feeling that they knew
+each other better.
+
+The sun had dipped behind the mountains when the little train steamed
+down the valley.  All were subdued, and Greta, with a nodding head, slept
+fitfully.  Christian, in her corner, was looking out of the window, and
+Harz kept studying her profile.
+
+He tried to see her eyes.  He had remarked indeed that, whatever their
+expression, the brows, arched and rather wide apart, gave them a peculiar
+look of understanding.  He thought of his picture.  There was nothing in
+her face to seize on, it was too sympathetic, too much like light.  Yet
+her chin was firm, almost obstinate.
+
+The train stopped with a jerk; she looked round at him.  It was as though
+she had said: "You are my friend."
+
+At Villa Rubein, Herr Paul had killed the fatted calf for Greta's Fest.
+When the whole party were assembled, he alone remained standing; and
+waving his arm above the cloth, cried: "My dears!  Your happiness!  There
+are good things here--Come!"  And with a sly look, the air of a conjurer
+producing rabbits, he whipped the cover off the soup tureen:
+
+"Soup-turtle, fat, green fat!"  He smacked his lips.
+
+No servants were allowed, because, as Greta said to Harz:
+
+"It is that we are to be glad this evening."
+
+Geniality radiated from Herr Paul's countenance, mellow as a bowl of
+wine.  He toasted everybody, exhorting them to pleasure.
+
+Harz passed a cracker secretly behind Greta's head, and Miss Naylor,
+moved by a mysterious impulse, pulled it with a sort of gleeful horror;
+it exploded, and Greta sprang off her chair.  Scruff, seeing this,
+appeared suddenly on the sideboard with his forelegs in a plate of soup;
+without moving them, he turned his head, and appeared to accuse the
+company of his false position.  It was the signal for shrieks of
+laughter.  Scruff made no attempt to free his forelegs; but sniffed the
+soup, and finding that nothing happened, began to lap it.
+
+"Take him out!  Oh! take him out!" wailed Greta, "he shall be ill!"
+
+"Allons!  Mon cher!" cried Herr Paul, "c'est magnifique, mais, vous
+savez, ce nest guere la guerre!"  Scruff, with a wild spring, leaped past
+him to the ground.
+
+"Ah!" cried Miss Naylor, "the carpet!"  Fresh moans of mirth shook the
+table; for having tasted the wine of laughter, all wanted as much more as
+they could get.  When Scruff and his traces were effaced, Herr Paul took
+a ladle in his hand.
+
+"I have a toast," he said, waving it for silence; "a toast we will drink
+all together from our hearts; the toast of my little daughter, who to-day
+has thirteen years become; and there is also in our hearts," he
+continued, putting down the ladle and suddenly becoming grave, "the
+thought of one who is not today with us to see this joyful occasion; to
+her, too, in this our happiness we turn our hearts and glasses because it
+is her joy that we should yet be joyful.  I drink to my little daughter;
+may God her shadow bless!"
+
+All stood up, clinking their glasses, and drank: then, in the hush that
+followed, Greta, according to custom, began to sing a German carol; at
+the end of the fourth line she stopped, abashed.
+
+Heir Paul blew his nose loudly, and, taking up a cap that had fallen from
+a cracker, put it on.
+
+Every one followed his example, Miss Naylor attaining the distinction of
+a pair of donkey's ears, which she wore, after another glass of wine,
+with an air of sacrificing to the public good.
+
+At the end of supper came the moment for the offering of gifts.  Herr
+Paul had tied a handkerchief over Greta's eyes, and one by one they
+brought her presents.  Greta, under forfeit of a kiss, was bound to tell
+the giver by the feel of the gift.  Her swift, supple little hands
+explored noiselessly; and in every case she guessed right.
+
+Dawney's present, a kitten, made a scene by clawing at her hair.
+
+"That is Dr. Edmund's," she cried at once.  Christian saw that Harz had
+disappeared, but suddenly he came back breathless, and took his place at
+the end of the rank of givers.
+
+Advancing on tiptoe, he put his present into Greta's hands.  It was a
+small bronze copy of a Donatello statue.
+
+"Oh, Herr Harz!" cried Greta; "I saw it in the studio that day.  It stood
+on the table, and it is lovely."
+
+Mrs. Decie, thrusting her pale eyes close to it, murmured: "Charming!"
+
+Mr. Treffry took it in his forgers.
+
+"Rum little toad!  Cost a pot of money, I expect!"  He eyed Harz
+doubtfully.
+
+They went into the next room now, and Herr Paul, taking Greta's bandage,
+transferred it to his own eyes.
+
+"Take care--take care, all!" he cried; "I am a devil of a catcher," and,
+feeling the air cautiously, he moved forward like a bear about to hug. 
+He caught no one.  Christian and Greta whisked under his arms and left
+him grasping at the air.  Mrs. Decie slipped past with astonishing
+agility.  Mr. Treffry, smoking his cigar, and barricaded in a corner,
+jeered: "Bravo, Paul!  The active beggar!  Can't he run!  Go it, Greta!"
+
+At last Herr Paul caught Cousin Teresa, who, fattened against the wall,
+lost her head, and stood uttering tiny shrieks.
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Decie started playing The Blue Danube.  Herr Paul dropped
+the handkerchief, twisted his moustache up fiercely, glared round the
+room, and seizing Greta by the waist, began dancing furiously, bobbing up
+and down like a cork in lumpy water.  Cousin Teresa followed suit with
+Miss Naylor, both very solemn, and dancing quite different steps.  Harz,
+went up to Christian.
+
+"I can't dance," he said, "that is, I have only danced once, but--if you
+would try with me!"
+
+She put her hand on his arm, and they began.  She danced, light as a
+feather, eyes shining, feet flying, her body bent a little forward. It
+was not a great success at first, but as soon as the time had got into
+Harz's feet, they went swinging on when all the rest had stopped.
+Sometimes one couple or another slipped through the window to dance on
+the veranda, and came whirling in again.  The lamplight glowed on the
+girls' white dresses; on Herr Paul's perspiring face. He constituted in
+himself a perfect orgy, and when the music stopped flung himself, full
+length, on the sofa gasping out:
+
+"My God!  But, my God!"
+
+Suddenly Christian felt Harz cling to her arm.
+
+Glowing and panting she looked at him.
+
+"Giddy!" he murmured: "I dance so badly; but I'll soon learn."
+
+Greta clapped her hands: "Every evening we will dance, every evening we
+will dance."
+
+Harz looked at Christian; the colour had deepened in her face.
+
+"I'll show you how they dance in my village, feet upon the ceiling!" And
+running to Dawney, he said:
+
+"Hold me here!  Lift me--so!  Now, on--two," he tried to swing his feet
+above his head, but, with an "Ouch!" from Dawney, they collapsed, and sat
+abruptly on the floor.  This untimely event brought the evening to an
+end.  Dawney left, escorting Cousin Teresa, and Harz strode home humming
+The Blue Danube, still feeling Christian's waist against his arm.
+
+In their room the two girls sat long at the window to cool themselves
+before undressing.
+
+"Ah!" sighed Greta, "this is the happiest birthday I have had."
+
+Cristian too thought: 'I have never been so happy in my life as I have
+been to-day.  I should like every day to be like this!'  And she leant
+out into the night, to let the air cool her cheeks.
+
+"Chris!" said Greta some days after this, "Miss Naylor danced last
+evening; I think she shall have a headache to-day.  There is my French
+and my history this morning."
+
+"Well, I can take them."
+
+"That is nice; then we can talk.  I am sorry about the headache.  I shall
+give her some of my Eau de Cologne."
+
+Miss Naylor's headaches after dancing were things on which to calculate.
+The girls carried their books into the arbour; it was a showery day, and
+they had to run for shelter through the raindrops and sunlight.
+
+"The French first, Chris!"  Greta liked her French, in which she was not
+far inferior to Christian; the lesson therefore proceeded in an admirable
+fashion.  After one hour exactly by her watch (Mr. Treffry's birthday
+present loved and admired at least once every hour) Greta rose.
+
+"Chris, I have not fed my rabbits."
+
+"Be quick! there's not much time for history."
+
+Greta vanished.  Christian watched the bright water dripping from the
+roof; her lips were parted in a smile.  She was thinking of something
+Harz had said the night before.  A discussion having been started as to
+whether average opinion did, or did not, safeguard Society, Harz, after
+sitting silent, had burst out: "I think one man in earnest is better than
+twenty half-hearted men who follow tamely; in the end he does Society
+most good."
+
+Dawney had answered: "If you had your way there would be no Society."
+
+"I hate Society because it lives upon the weak."
+
+"Bah!" Herr Paul chimed in; "the weak goes to the wall; that is as
+certain as that you and I are here."
+
+"Let them fall against the wall," cried Harz; "don't push them there...."
+
+Greta reappeared, walking pensively in the rain.
+
+"Bino," she said, sighing, "has eaten too much.  I remember now, I did
+feed them before.  Must we do the history, Chris?"
+
+"Of course!"
+
+Greta opened her book, and put a finger in the page.  "Herr Harz is very
+kind to me," she said.  "Yesterday he brought a bird which had. come into
+his studio with a hurt wing; he brought it very gently in his
+handkerchief--he is very kind, the bird was not even frightened of him. 
+You did not know about that, Chris?"
+
+Chris flushed a little, and said in a hurt voice
+
+"I don't see what it has to--do with me."
+
+"No," assented Greta.
+
+Christian's colour deepened.  "Go on with your history, Greta."
+
+"Only," pursued Greta, "that he always tells you all about things,
+Chris."
+
+"He doesn't!  How can you say that!"
+
+"I think he does, and it is because you do not make him angry.  It is
+very easy to make him angry; you have only to think differently, and he
+shall be angry at once."
+
+"You are a little cat!" said Christian; "it isn't true, at all.  He hates
+shams, and can't bear meanness; and it is mean to cover up dislikes and
+pretend that you agree with people."
+
+"Papa says that he thinks too much about himself."
+
+"Father!" began Christian hotly; biting her lips she stopped, and turned
+her wrathful eyes on Greta.
+
+"You do not always show your dislikes, Chris."
+
+"I?  What has that to do with it?  Because one is a coward that doesn't
+make it any better, does it?"
+
+"I think that he has a great many dislikes," murmured Greta.
+
+"I wish you would attend to your own faults, and not pry into other
+people's," and pushing the book aside, Christian gazed in front of her.
+
+Some minutes passed, then Greta leaning over, rubbed a cheek against her
+shoulder.
+
+"I am very sorry, Chris--I only wanted to be talking.  Shall I read some
+history?"
+
+"Yes," said Christian coldly.
+
+"Are you angry with me, Chris?"
+
+There was no answer.  The lingering raindrops pattered down on the roof.
+Greta pulled at her sister's sleeve.
+
+"Look, Chris!" she said.  "There is Herr Harz!"
+
+Christian looked up, dropped her eyes again, and said: "Will you go on
+with the history, Greta?"
+
+Greta sighed.
+
+"Yes, I will--but, oh!  Chris, there is the luncheon gong!" and she
+meekly closed the book.
+
+During the following weeks there was a "sitting" nearly every afternoon.
+Miss Naylor usually attended them; the little lady was, to a certain
+extent, carried past objection.  She had begun to take an interest in the
+picture, and to watch the process out of the corner of her eye; in the
+depths of her dear mind, however, she never quite got used to the vanity
+and waste of time; her lips would move and her knitting-needles click in
+suppressed remonstrances.
+
+What Harz did fast he did best; if he had leisure he "saw too much,"
+loving his work so passionately that he could never tell exactly when to
+stop.  He hated to lay things aside, always thinking: "I can get it
+better."  Greta was finished, but with Christian, try as he would, he was
+not satisfied; from day to day her face seemed to him to change, as if
+her soul were growing.
+
+There were things too in her eyes that he could neither read nor
+reproduce.
+
+Dawney would often stroll out to them after his daily visit, and lying on
+the grass, his arms crossed behind his head, and a big cigar between his
+lips, would gently banter everybody.  Tea came at five o'clock, and then
+Mrs. Decie appeared armed with a magazine or novel, for she was proud of
+her literary knowledge.  The sitting was suspended; Harz, with a
+cigarette, would move between the table and the picture, drinking his
+tea, putting a touch in here and there; he never sat down till it was all
+over for the day.  During these "rests" there was talk, usually ending in
+discussion.  Mrs. Decie was happiest in conversations of a literary
+order, making frequent use of such expressions as: "After all, it
+produces an illusion--does anything else matter?"  "Rather a poseur, is
+he not?"  "A question, that, of temperament," or "A matter of the
+definition of words"; and other charming generalities, which sound well,
+and seem to go far, and are pleasingly irrefutable.  Sometimes the
+discussion turned on Art--on points of colour or technique; whether
+realism was quite justified; and should we be pre-Raphaelites?  When
+these discussions started, Christian's eyes would grow bigger and
+clearer, with a sort of shining reasonableness; as though they were
+trying to see into the depths.  And Harz would stare at them.  But the
+look in those eyes eluded him, as if they had no more meaning than Mrs.
+Decie's, which, with their pale, watchful smile, always seemed saying:
+"Come, let us take a little intellectual exercise."
+
+Greta, pulling Scruff's ears, would gaze up at the speakers; when the
+talk was over, she always shook herself.  But if no one came to the
+"sittings," there would sometimes be very earnest, quick talk, sometimes
+long silences.
+
+One day Christian said: "What is your religion?"
+
+Harz finished the touch he was putting on the canvas, before he answered:
+"Roman Catholic, I suppose; I was baptised in that Church."
+
+"I didn't mean that.  Do you believe in a future life?"
+
+"Christian," murmured Greta, who was plaiting blades of grass, "shall
+always want to know what people think about a future life; that is so
+funny!"
+
+"How can I tell?" said Harz; "I've never really thought of it--never had
+the time."
+
+"How can you help thinking?" Christian said: "I have to--it seems to me
+so awful that we might come to an end."
+
+She closed her book, and it slipped off her lap.  She went on: "There
+must be a future life, we're so incomplete.  What's the good of your
+work, for instance?  What's the use of developing if you have to stop?"
+
+"I don't know," answered Harz.  "I don't much care.  All I know is, I've
+got to work."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"For happiness--the real happiness is fighting--the rest is nothing. If
+you have finished a thing, does it ever satisfy you?  You look forward to
+the next thing at once; to wait is wretched!"
+
+Christian clasped her hands behind her neck; sunlight flickered through
+the leaves on to the bosom of her dress.
+
+"Ah!  Stay like that!" cried Harz.
+
+She let her eyes rest on his face, swinging her foot a little.
+
+"You work because you must; but that's not enough.  Why do you feel you
+must?  I want to know what's behind.  When I was travelling with Aunt
+Constance the winter before last we often talked--I've heard her discuss
+it with her friends.  She says we move in circles till we reach Nirvana. 
+But last winter I found I couldn't talk to her; it seemed as if she never
+really meant anything.  Then I started reading--Kant and Hegel--"
+
+"Ah!" put in Harz, "if they would teach me to draw better, or to see a
+new colour in a flower, or an expression in a face, I would read them
+all."
+
+Christian leaned forward: "It must be right to get as near truth as
+possible; every step gained is something.  You believe in truth; truth is
+the same as beauty--that was what you said--you try to paint the truth,
+you always see the beauty.  But how can we know truth, unless we know
+what is at the root of it?"
+
+"I--think," murmured Greta, sotto voce, "you see one way--and he sees
+another--because--you are not one person."
+
+"Of course!" said Christian impatiently, "but why--"
+
+A sound of humming interrupted her.
+
+Nicholas Treffry was coming from the house, holding the Times in one
+hand, and a huge meerschaum pipe in the other.
+
+"Aha!" he said to Harz: "how goes the picture?" and he lowered himself
+into a chair.
+
+"Better to-day, Uncle?" said Christian softly.
+
+Mr. Treffry growled.  "Confounded humbugs, doctors!" he said.  "Your
+father used to swear by them; why, his doctor killed him--made him drink
+such a lot of stuff!"
+
+"Why then do you have a doctor, Uncle Nic?" asked Greta.
+
+Mr. Treffry looked at her; his eyes twinkled.  "I don't know, my dear. If
+they get half a chance, they won't let go of you!"
+
+There had been a gentle breeze all day, but now it had died away; not a
+leaf quivered, not a blade of grass was stirring; from the house were
+heard faint sounds as of some one playing on a pipe.  A blackbird came
+hopping down the path.
+
+"When you were a boy, did you go after birds' nests, Uncle Nic?" Greta
+whispered.
+
+"I believe you, Greta."  The blackbird hopped into the shrubbery.
+
+"You frightened him, Uncle Nic!  Papa says that at Schloss Konig, where
+he lived when he was young, he would always be after jackdaws' nests."
+
+"Gammon, Greta.  Your father never took a jackdaw's nest, his legs are
+much too round!"
+
+"Are you fond of birds, Uncle Nic?"
+
+"Ask me another, Greta!  Well, I s'pose so."
+
+"Then why did you go bird-nesting?  I think it is cruel"
+
+Mr. Treffry coughed behind his paper: "There you have me, Greta," he
+remarked.
+
+Harz began to gather his brushes: "Thank you," he said, "that's all I can
+do to-day."
+
+"Can I look?" Mr. Treffry inquired.
+
+"Certainly!"
+
+Uncle Nic got up slowly, and stood in front of the picture.  "When it's
+for sale," he said at last, "I'll buy it."
+
+Harz bowed; but for some reason he felt annoyed, as if he had been asked
+to part with something personal.
+
+"I thank you," he said.  A gong sounded.
+
+"You'll stay and have a snack with us?" said Mr. Treffry; "the doctor's
+stopping."  Gathering up his paper, he moved off to the house with his
+hand on Greta's shoulder, the terrier running in front.  Harz and
+Christian were left alone.  He was scraping his palette, and she was
+sitting with her elbows resting on her knees; between them, a gleam of
+sunlight dyed the path golden.  It was evening already; the bushes and
+the flowers, after the day's heat, were breathing out perfume; the birds
+had started their evensong.
+
+"Are you tired of sitting for your portrait, Fraulein Christian?"
+
+Christian shook her head.
+
+"I shall get something into it that everybody does not see--something
+behind the surface, that will last."
+
+Christian said slowly: "That's like a challenge.  You were right when you
+said fighting is happiness--for yourself, but not for me.  I'm a coward. 
+I hate to hurt people, I like them to like me.  If you had to do anything
+that would make them hate you, you would do it all the same, if it helped
+your work; that's fine--it's what I can't do. It's--it's everything.  Do
+you like Uncle Nic?"
+
+The young painter looked towards the house, where under the veranda old
+Nicholas Treffry was still in sight; a smile came on his lips.
+
+"If I were the finest painter in the world, he wouldn't think anything of
+me for it, I'm afraid; but if I could show him handfuls of big cheques
+for bad pictures I had painted, he would respect me."
+
+She smiled, and said: "I love him."
+
+"Then I shall like him," Harz answered simply.
+
+She put her hand out, and her fingers met his.  "We shall be late," she
+said, glowing, and catching up her book: "I'm always late!"
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+There was one other guest at dinner, a well-groomed person with pale,
+fattish face, dark eyes, and hair thin on the temples, whose clothes had
+a military cut.  He looked like a man fond of ease, who had gone out of
+his groove, and collided with life.  Herr Paul introduced him as Count
+Mario Sarelli.
+
+Two hanging lamps with crimson shades threw a rosy light over the table,
+where, in the centre stood a silver basket, full of irises. Through the
+open windows the garden was all clusters of black foliage in the dying
+light.  Moths fluttered round the lamps; Greta, following them with her
+eyes, gave quite audible sighs of pleasure when they escaped.  Both girls
+wore white, and Harz, who sat opposite Christian, kept looking at her,
+and wondering why he had not painted her in that dress.
+
+Mrs. Decie understood the art of dining--the dinner, ordered by Herr
+Paul, was admirable; the servants silent as their, shadows; there was
+always a hum of conversation.
+
+Sarelli, who sat on her right hand, seemed to partake of little except
+olives, which he dipped into a glass of sherry.  He turned his black,
+solemn eyes silently from face to face, now and then asking the meaning
+of an English word.  After a discussion on modern Rome, it was debated
+whether or no a criminal could be told by the expression of his face.
+
+"Crime," said Mrs. Decie, passing her hand across her brow--"crime is but
+the hallmark of strong individuality."
+
+Miss Naylor, gushing rather pink, stammered: "A great crime must show
+itself--a murder.  Why, of course!"
+
+"If that were so," said Dawney, "we should only have to look about us--no
+more detectives."
+
+Miss Naylor rejoined with slight severity: "I cannot conceive that such a
+thing can pass the human face by, leaving no impression!"
+
+Harz said abruptly: "There are worse things than murder."
+
+"Ah! par exemple!" said Sarelli.
+
+There was a slight stir all round the table.
+
+"Verry good," cried out Herr Paul, "a vot' sante, cher."
+
+Miss Naylor shivered, as if some one had put a penny down her back; and
+Mrs. Decie, leaning towards Harz, smiled like one who has made a pet dog
+do a trick.  Christian alone was motionless, looking thoughtfully at
+Harz.
+
+"I saw a man tried for murder once," he said, "a murder for revenge; I
+watched the judge, and I thought all the time: 'I'd rather be that
+murderer than you; I've never seen a meaner face; you crawl through life;
+you're not a criminal, simply because you haven't the courage.'"
+
+In the dubious silence following the painter's speech, Mr. Treffry could
+distinctly be heard humming.  Then Sarelli said: "What do you say to
+anarchists, who are not men, but savage beasts, whom I would tear to
+pieces!"
+
+"As to that," Harz answered defiantly, "it maybe wise to hang them, but
+then there are so many other men that it would be wise to hang."
+
+"How can we tell what they went through; what their lives were?" murmured
+Christian.
+
+Miss Naylor, who had been rolling a pellet of bread, concealed it
+hastily.  "They are--always given a chance to--repent--I believe," she
+said.
+
+"For what they are about to receive," drawled Dawney.
+
+Mrs. Decie signalled with her fan: "We are trying to express the
+inexpressible--shall we go into the garden?"
+
+All rose; Harz stood by the window, and in passing, Christian looked at
+him.
+
+He sat down again with a sudden sense of loss.  There was no white figure
+opposite now.  Raising his eyes he met Sarelli's.  The Italian was
+regarding him with a curious stare.
+
+Herr Paul began retailing apiece of scandal he had heard that afternoon.
+
+"Shocking affair!" he said; "I could never have believed it of her!
+B---is quite beside himself.  Yesterday there was a row, it seems!"
+
+"There has been one every day for months," muttered Dawney.
+
+"But to leave without a word, and go no one knows where!  B---is 'viveur'
+no doubt, mais, mon Dieu, que voulezvous?  She was always a poor, pale
+thing.  Why! when my---" he flourished his cigar; "I was not
+always---what I should have been---one lives in a world of flesh and
+blood---we are not all angels---que diable!  But this is a very vulgar
+business.  She goes off; leaves everything---without a word; and B---is
+very fond of her. These things are not done!" the starched bosom of his
+shirt seemed swollen by indignation.
+
+Mr. Treffry, with a heavy hand on the table, eyed him sideways. Dawney
+said slowly:
+
+"B---is a beast; I'm sorry for the poor woman; but what can she do
+alone?"
+
+"There is, no doubt, a man," put in Sarelli.
+
+Herr Paul muttered: "Who knows?"
+
+"What is B---going to do?" said Dawney.
+
+"Ah!" said Herr Paul.  "He is fond of her.  He is a chap of resolution,
+he will get her back.  He told me: 'Well, you know, I shall follow her
+wherever she goes till she comes back.'  He will do it, he is a
+determined chap; he will follow her wherever she goes."
+
+Mr. Treffry drank his wine off at a gulp, and sucked his moustache in
+sharply.
+
+"She was a fool to marry him," said Dawney; "they haven't a point in
+common; she hates him like poison, and she's the better of the two. But
+it doesn't pay a woman to run off like that.  B---had better hurry up,
+though.  What do you think, sir?" he said to Mr. Treffry.
+
+"Eh?" said Mr. Treffry; "how should I know?  Ask Paul there, he's one of
+your moral men, or Count Sarelli."
+
+The latter said impassively: "If I cared for her I should very likely
+kill her--if not--" he shrugged his shoulders.
+
+Harz, who was watching, was reminded of his other words at dinner, "wild
+beasts whom I would tear to pieces."  He looked with interest at this
+quiet man who said these extremely ferocious things, and thought: 'I
+should like to paint that fellow.'
+
+Herr Paul twirled his wine-glass in his fingers.  "There are family
+ties," he said, "there is society, there is decency; a wife should be
+with her husband.  B---will do quite right.  He must go after her; she
+will not perhaps come back at first; he will follow her; she will begin
+to think, 'I am helpless--I am ridiculous!'  A woman is soon beaten. 
+They will return.  She is once more with her husband--Society will
+forgive, it will be all right."
+
+"By Jove, Paul," growled Mr. Treffry, "wonderful power of argument!"
+
+"A wife is a wife," pursued Herr Paul; "a man has a right to her
+society."
+
+"What do you say to that, sir?" asked Dawney.
+
+Mr. Treffry tugged at his beard: "Make a woman live with you, if she
+don't want to?  I call it low."
+
+"But, my dear," exclaimed Herr Paul, "how should you know?  You have not
+been married."
+
+"No, thank the Lord!" Mr. Treffry replied.
+
+"But looking at the question broadly, sir," said Dawney; "if a husband
+always lets his wife do as she likes, how would the thing work out?  What
+becomes of the marriage tie?"
+
+"The marriage tie," growled Mr. Treffry, "is the biggest thing there is!
+But, by Jove, Doctor, I'm a Dutchman if hunting women ever helped the
+marriage tie!"
+
+"I am not thinking of myself," Herr Paul cried out, "I think of the
+community.  There are rights."
+
+"A decent community never yet asked a man to tread on his self-respect.
+If I get my fingers skinned over my marriage, which I undertake at my own
+risk, what's the community to do with it?  D'you think I'm going to whine
+to it to put the plaster on?  As to rights, it'd be a deuced sight better
+for us all if there wasn't such a fuss about 'em.  Leave that to women!  I
+don't give a tinker's damn for men who talk about their rights in such
+matters."
+
+Sarelli rose.  "But your honour," he said, "there is your honour!"
+
+Mr. Treffry stared at him.
+
+"Honour!  If huntin' women's your idea of honour, well--it isn't mine."
+
+"Then you'd forgive her, sir, whatever happened," Dawney said.
+
+"Forgiveness is another thing.  I leave that to your sanctimonious
+beggars.  But, hunt a woman!  Hang it, sir, I'm not a cad!" and bringing
+his hand down with a rattle, he added: "This is a subject that don't bear
+talking of."
+
+Sarelli fell back in his seat, twirling his moustaches fiercely. Harz,
+who had risen, looked at Christian's empty place.
+
+'If I were married!' he thought suddenly.
+
+Herr Paul, with a somewhat vinous glare, still muttered, "But your duty
+to the family!"
+
+Harz slipped through the window.  The moon was like a wonderful white
+lantern in the purple sky; there was but a smoulder of stars. Beneath the
+softness of the air was the iciness of the snow; it made him want to run
+and leap.  A sleepy beetle dropped on its back; he turned it over and
+watched it scurry across the grass.
+
+Someone was playing Schumann's Kinderscenen.  Harz stood still to listen.
+The notes came twining, weaving round his thoughts; the whole night
+seemed full of girlish voices, of hopes and fancies, soaring away to
+mountain heights--invisible, yet present.  Between the stems of the
+acacia-trees he could see the flicker of white dresses, where Christian
+and Greta were walking arm in arm.  He went towards them; the blood
+flushed up in his face, he felt almost surfeited by some sweet emotion.
+Then, in sudden horror, he stood still.  He was in love!  With nothing
+done with everything before him!  He was going to bow down to a face!  The
+flicker of the dresses was no longer visible.  He would not be fettered,
+he would stamp it out!  He turned away; but with each step, something
+seemed to jab at his heart.
+
+Round the corner of the house, in the shadow of the wall, Dominique, the
+Luganese, in embroidered slippers, was smoking a long cherry-wood pipe,
+leaning against a tree--Mephistopheles in evening clothes. Harz went up
+to him.
+
+"Lend me a pencil, Dominique."
+
+"Bien, M'sieu."
+
+Resting a card against the tree Harz wrote to Mrs. Decie: "Forgive me, I
+am obliged to go away.  In a few days I shall hope to return, and finish
+the picture of your nieces."
+
+He sent Dominique for his hat.  During the man's absence he was on the
+point of tearing up the card and going back into the house.
+
+When the Luganese returned he thrust the card into his hand, and walked
+out between the tall poplars, waiting, like ragged ghosts, silver with
+moonlight.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+Harz walked away along the road.  A dog was howling.  The sound seemed
+too appropriate.  He put his fingers to his ears, but the lugubrious
+noise passed those barriers, and made its way into his heart.  Was there
+nothing that would put an end to this emotion?  It was no better in the
+old house on the wall; he spent the night tramping up and down.
+
+Just before daybreak he slipped out with a knapsack, taking the road
+towards Meran.
+
+He had not quite passed through Gries when he overtook a man walking in
+the middle of the road and leaving a trail of cigar smoke behind him.
+
+"Ah! my friend," the smoker said, "you walk early; are you going my way?"
+
+It was Count Sarelli.  The raw light had imparted a grey tinge to his
+pale face, the growth of his beard showed black already beneath the skin;
+his thumbs were hooked in the pockets of a closely buttoned coat, he
+gesticulated with his fingers.
+
+"You are making a journey?" he said, nodding at the knapsack.  "You are
+early--I am late; our friend has admirable kummel--I have drunk too much. 
+You have not been to bed, I think?  If there is no sleep in one's bed it
+is no good going to look for it.  You find that?  It is better to drink
+kummel...!  Pardon!  You are doing the right thing: get away!  Get away
+as fast as possible!  Don't wait, and let it catch you!"
+
+Harz stared at him amazed.
+
+"Pardon!" Sarelli said again, raising his hat, "that girl--the white
+girl--I saw.  You do well to get away!" he swayed a little as he walked. 
+"That old fellow--what is his name-Trrreffr-ry!  What ideas of honour!" 
+He mumbled: "Honour is an abstraction!  If a man is not true to an
+abstraction, he is a low type; but wait a minute!"
+
+He put his hand to his side as though in pain.
+
+The hedges were brightening with a faint pinky glow; there was no sound
+on the long, deserted road, but that of their footsteps; suddenly a bird
+commenced to chirp, another answered--the world seemed full of these
+little voices.
+
+Sarelli stopped.
+
+"That white girl," he said, speaking with rapidity.  "Yes!  You do well!
+get away!  Don't let it catch you!  I waited, it caught me--what
+happened?  Everything horrible--and now--kummel!"  Laughing a thick
+laugh, he gave a twirl to his moustache, and swaggered on.
+
+"I was a fine fellow--nothing too big for Mario Sarelli; the regiment
+looked to me.  Then she came--with her eyes and her white dress, always
+white, like this one; the little mole on her chin, her hands for ever
+moving--their touch as warm as sunbeams.  Then, no longer Sarelli this,
+and that!  The little house close to the ramparts!  Two arms, two eyes,
+and nothing here," he tapped his breast, "but flames that made ashes
+quickly--in her, like this ash--!" he flicked the white flake off his
+cigar.  "It's droll!  You agree, hein?  Some day I shall go back and kill
+her.  In the meantime--kummel!"
+
+He stopped at a house close to the road, and stood still, his teeth bared
+in a grin.
+
+"But I bore you," he said.  His cigar, flung down, sputtered forth its
+sparks on the road in front of Harz.  "I live here--good-morning!  You are
+a man for work--your honour is your Art!  I know, and you are young!  The
+man who loves flesh better than his honour is a low type--I am a low
+type.  I!  Mario Sarelli, a low type!  I love flesh better than my
+honour!"
+
+He remained swaying at the gate with the grin fixed on his face; then
+staggered up the steps, and banged the door.  But before Harz had walked
+on, he again appeared, beckoning, in the doorway.  Obeying an impulse,
+Harz went in.
+
+"We will make a night of it," said Sarelli; "wine, brandy, kummel?  I am
+virtuous--kummel it must be for me!"
+
+He sat down at a piano, and began to touch the keys.  Harz poured out
+some wine.  Sarelli nodded.
+
+"You begin with that?  Allegro--piu--presto!
+
+"Wine--brandy--kummel!" he quickened the time of the tune: "it is not too
+long a passage, and this"--he took his hands off the keys--"comes after."
+
+Harz smiled.
+
+"Some men do not kill themselves," he said.
+
+Sarelli, who was bending and swaying to the music of a tarantella, broke
+off, and letting his eyes rest on the painter, began playing Schumann's
+Kinderscenen.  Harz leaped to his feet.
+
+"Stop that!" he cried.
+
+"It pricks you?" said Sarelli suavely; "what do you think of this?" he
+played again, crouching over the piano, and making the notes sound like
+the crying of a wounded animal.
+
+"For me!" he said, swinging round, and rising.
+
+"Your health!  And so you don't believe in suicide, but in murder?  The
+custom is the other way; but you don't believe in customs?  Customs are
+only for Society?"  He drank a glass of kummel.  "You do not love
+Society?"
+
+Harz looked at him intently; he did not want to quarrel.
+
+"I am not too fond of other people's thoughts," he said at last; "I
+prefer to think my own.
+
+"And is Society never right?  That poor Society!"
+
+"Society!  What is Society--a few men in good coats?  What has it done
+for me?"
+
+Sarelli bit the end off a cigar.
+
+"Ah!" he said; "now we are coming to it.  It is good to be an artist, a
+fine bantam of an artist; where other men have their dis-ci-pline, he has
+his, what shall we say--his mound of roses?"
+
+The painter started to his feet.
+
+"Yes," said Sarelli, with a hiccough, "you are a fine fellow!"
+
+"And you are drunk!" cried Harz.
+
+"A little drunk--not much, not enough to matter!"
+
+Harz broke into laughter.  It was crazy to stay there listening to this
+mad fellow.  What had brought him in?  He moved towards the door.
+
+"Ah!" said Sarelli, "but it is no good going to bed--let us talk.  I have
+a lot to say--it is pleasant to talk to anarchists at times."
+
+Full daylight was already coming through the chinks of the shutters.
+
+"You are all anarchists, you painters, you writing fellows.  You live by
+playing ball with facts.  Images--nothing solid--hein?  You're all for
+new things too, to tickle your nerves.  No discipline!  True anarchists,
+every one of you!"
+
+Harz poured out another glass of wine and drank it off.  The man's
+feverish excitement was catching.
+
+"Only fools," he replied, "take things for granted.  As for discipline,
+what do you aristocrats, or bourgeois know of discipline?  Have you ever
+been hungry?  Have you ever had your soul down on its back?"
+
+"Soul on its back?  That is good!"
+
+"A man's no use," cried Harz, "if he's always thinking of what others
+think; he must stand on his own legs."
+
+"He must not then consider other people?"
+
+"Not from cowardice anyway."
+
+Sarelli drank.
+
+"What would you do," he said, striking his chest, "if you had a
+devil-here?  Would you go to bed?"
+
+A sort of pity seized on Harz.  He wanted to say something that would be
+consoling but could find no words; and suddenly he felt disgusted. What
+link was there between him and this man; between his love and this man's
+love?
+
+"Harz!" muttered Sarelli; "Harz means 'tar,' hein?  Your family is not an
+old one?"
+
+Harz glared, and said: "My father is a peasant."
+
+Sarelli lifted the kummel bottle and emptied it into his glass, with a
+steady hand.
+
+"You're honest--and we both have devils.  I forgot; I brought you in to
+see a picture!"
+
+He threw wide the shutters; the windows were already open, and a rush of
+air came in.
+
+"Ah!" he said, sniffing, "smells of the earth, nicht wahr, Herr Artist?
+You should know--it belongs to your father....  Come, here's my picture;
+a Correggio!  What do you think of it?"
+
+"It is a copy."
+
+"You think?"
+
+"I know."
+
+"Then you have given me the lie, Signor," and drawing out his
+handkerchief Sarelli flicked it in the painter's face.
+
+Harz turned white.
+
+"Duelling is a good custom!" said Sarelli.  "I shall have the honour to
+teach you just this one, unless you are afraid.  Here are pistols--this
+room is twenty feet across at least, twenty feet is no bad distance."
+
+And pulling out a drawer he took two pistols from a case, and put them on
+the table.
+
+"The light is good--but perhaps you are afraid."
+
+"Give me one!" shouted the infuriated painter; "and go to the devil for a
+fool"
+
+"One moment!" Sarelli murmured: "I will load them, they are more useful
+loaded."
+
+Harz leaned out of the window; his head was in a whirl.  'What on earth
+is happening?' he thought.  'He's mad--or I am!  Confound him!  I'm not
+going to be killed!'  He turned and went towards the table. Sarelli's
+head was sunk on his arms, he was asleep.  Harz methodically took up the
+pistols, and put them back into the drawer. A sound made him turn his
+head; there stood a tall, strong young woman in a loose gown caught
+together on her chest.  Her grey eyes glanced from the painter to the
+bottles, from the bottles to the pistol-case.  A simple reasoning, which
+struck Harz as comic.
+
+"It is often like this," she said in the country patois; "der Herr must
+not be frightened."
+
+Lifting the motionless Sarelli as if he were a baby, she laid him on a
+couch.
+
+"Ah!" she said, sitting down and resting her elbow on the table; "he will
+not wake!"
+
+Harz bowed to her; her patient figure, in spite of its youth and
+strength, seemed to him pathetic.  Taking up his knapsack, he went out.
+
+The smoke of cottages rose straight; wisps of mist were wandering about
+the valley, and the songs of birds dropping like blessings. All over the
+grass the spiders had spun a sea of threads that bent and quivered to the
+pressure of the air, like fairy tight-ropes.
+
+All that day he tramped.
+
+Blacksmiths, tall stout men with knotted muscles, sleepy eyes, and great
+fair beards, came out of their forges to stretch and wipe their brows,
+and stare at him.
+
+Teams of white oxen, waiting to be harnessed, lashed their tails against
+their flanks, moving their heads slowly from side to side in the heat.
+Old women at chalet doors blinked and knitted.
+
+The white houses, with gaping caves of storage under the roofs, the red
+church spire, the clinking of hammers in the forges, the slow stamping of
+oxen-all spoke of sleepy toil, without ideas or ambition. Harz knew it
+all too well; like the earth's odour, it belonged to him, as Sarelli had
+said.
+
+Towards sunset coming to a copse of larches, he sat down to rest.  It was
+very still, but for the tinkle of cowbells, and, from somewhere in the
+distance, the sound of dropping logs.
+
+Two barefooted little boys came from the wood, marching earnestly along,
+and looking at Harz as if he were a monster.  Once past him, they began
+to run.
+
+'At their age,' he thought, 'I should have done the same.'  A hundred
+memories rushed into his mind.
+
+He looked down at the village straggling below--white houses with russet
+tiles and crowns of smoke, vineyards where the young leaves were
+beginning to unfold, the red-capped spire, a thread of bubbling stream,
+an old stone cross.  He had been fourteen years struggling up from all
+this; and now just as he had breathing space, and the time to give
+himself wholly to his work--this weakness was upon him!  Better, a
+thousand times, to give her up!
+
+In a house or two lights began to wink; the scent of wood smoke reached
+him, the distant chimes of bells, the burring of a stream.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+Next day his one thought was to get back to work.  He arrived at the
+studio in the afternoon, and, laying in provisions, barricaded the lower
+door.  For three days he did not go out; on the fourth day he went to
+Villa Rubein....
+
+Schloss Runkelstein--grey, blind, strengthless--still keeps the valley. 
+The windows which once, like eyes, watched men and horses creeping
+through the snow, braved the splutter of guns and the gleam of torches,
+are now holes for the birds to nest in.  Tangled creepers have spread to
+the very summits of the walls.  In the keep, instead of grim men in
+armour, there is a wooden board recording the history of the castle and
+instructing visitors on the subject of refreshments.  Only at night, when
+the cold moon blanches everything, the castle stands like the grim ghost
+of its old self, high above the river.
+
+After a long morning's sitting the girls had started forth with Harz and
+Dawney to spend the afternoon at the ruin; Miss Naylor, kept at home by
+headache, watched them depart with words of caution against sunstroke,
+stinging nettles, and strange dogs.
+
+Since the painter's return Christian and he had hardly spoken to each
+other.  Below the battlement on which they sat, in a railed gallery with
+little tables, Dawney and Greta were playing dominoes, two soldiers
+drinking beer, and at the top of a flight of stairs the Custodian's wife
+sewing at a garment.  Christian said suddenly: "I thought we were
+friends."
+
+"Well, Fraulein Christian, aren't we?"
+
+"You went away without a word; friends don't do that."
+
+Harz bit his lips.
+
+"I don't think you care," she went on with a sort of desperate haste,
+"whether you hurt people or not.  You have been here all this time
+without even going to see your father and mother."
+
+"Do you think they would want to see me?"
+
+Christian looked up.
+
+"It's all been so soft for you," he said bitterly; "you don't
+understand."
+
+He turned his head away, and then burst out: "I'm proud to come straight
+from the soil--I wouldn't have it otherwise; but they are of 'the
+people,' everything is narrow with them--they only understand what they
+can see and touch."
+
+"I'm sorry I spoke like that," said Christian softly; "you've never told
+me about yourself."
+
+There was something just a little cruel in the way the painter looked at
+her, then seeming to feel compunction, he said quickly: "I always
+hated--the peasant life--I wanted to get away into the world; I had a
+feeling in here--I wanted--I don't know what I wanted!  I did run away at
+last to a house-painter at Meran.  The priest wrote me a letter from my
+father--they threw me off; that's all."
+
+Christian's eyes were very bright, her lips moved, like the lips of a
+child listening to a story.
+
+"Go on," she said.
+
+"I stayed at Meran two years, till I'd learnt all I could there, then a
+brother of my mother's helped me to get to Vienna; I was lucky enough to
+find work with a man who used to decorate churches.  We went about the
+country together.  Once when he was ill I painted the roof of a church
+entirely by myself; I lay on my back on the scaffold boards all day for a
+week--I was proud of that roof."  He paused.
+
+"When did you begin painting pictures?"
+
+"A friend asked me why I didn't try for the Academie.  That started me
+going to the night schools; I worked every minute--I had to get my living
+as well, of course, so I worked at night.
+
+"Then when the examination came, I thought I could do nothing--it was
+just as if I had never had a brush or pencil in my hand.  But the second
+day a professor in passing me said, 'Good!  Quite good!'  That gave me
+courage.  I was sure I had failed though; but I was second out of sixty."
+
+Christian nodded.
+
+"To work in the schools after that I had to give up my business, of
+course.  There was only one teacher who ever taught me anything; the
+others all seemed fools.  This man would come and rub out what you'd done
+with his sleeve.  I used to cry with rage--but I told him I could only
+learn from him, and he was so astonished that he got me into his class."
+
+"But how did you live without money?" asked Christian.
+
+His face burned with a dark flush.  "I don't know how I lived; you must
+have been through these things to know, you would never understand."
+
+"But I want to understand, please."
+
+"What do you want me to tell you?  How I went twice a week to eat free
+dinners!  How I took charity!  How I was hungry!  There was a rich cousin
+of my mother's--I used to go to him.  I didn't like it. But if you're
+starving in the winter"
+
+Christian put out her hand.
+
+"I used to borrow apronsful of coals from other students who were as
+poor--but I never went to the rich students."
+
+The flush had died out of his face.
+
+"That sort of thing makes you hate the world!  You work till you stagger;
+you're cold and hungry; you see rich people in their carriages, wrapped
+in furs, and all the time you want to do something great.  You pray for a
+chance, any chance; nothing comes to the poor!  It makes you hate the
+world."
+
+Christian's eyes filled with tears.  He went on:
+
+"But I wasn't the only one in that condition; we used to meet. Garin, a
+Russian with a brown beard and patches of cheek showing through, and
+yellow teeth, who always looked hungry.  Paunitz, who came from sympathy!
+He had fat cheeks and little eyes, and a big gold chain--the swine!  And
+little Misek.  It was in his room we met, with the paper peeling off the
+walls, and two doors with cracks in them, so that there was always a
+draught.  We used to sit on his bed, and pull the dirty blankets over us
+for warmth; and smoke--tobacco was the last thing we ever went without. 
+Over the bed was a Virgin and Child--Misek was a very devout Catholic;
+but one day when he had had no dinner and a dealer had kept his picture
+without paying him, he took the image and threw it on the floor before
+our eyes; it broke, and he trampled on the bits. Lendorf was another, a
+heavy fellow who was always puffing out his white cheeks and smiting
+himself, and saying: 'Cursed society!'  And Schonborn, an aristocrat who
+had quarrelled with his family.  He was the poorest of us all; but only
+he and I would ever have dared to do anything--they all knew that!"
+
+Christian listened with awe.  "Do you mean?" she said, "do you mean, that
+you--?"
+
+"You see! you're afraid of me at once.  It's impossible even for you to
+understand.  It only makes you afraid.  A hungry man living on charity,
+sick with rage and shame, is a wolf even to you!"
+
+Christian looked straight into his eyes.
+
+"That's not true.  If I can't understand, I can feel.  Would you be the
+same now if it were to come again?"
+
+"Yes, it drives me mad even now to think of people fatted with
+prosperity, sneering and holding up their hands at poor devils who have
+suffered ten times more than the most those soft animals could bear.  I'm
+older; I've lived--I know things can't be put right by violence--nothing
+will put things right, but that doesn't stop my feeling."
+
+"Did you do anything?  You must tell me all now."
+
+"We talked--we were always talking."
+
+"No, tell me everything!"
+
+Unconsciously she claimed, and he seemed unconsciously to admit her right
+to this knowledge.
+
+"There's not much to tell.  One day we began talking in low voices
+--Garin began it; he had been in some affair in Russia.  We took an oath;
+after that we never raised our voices.  We had a plan.  It was all new to
+me, and I hated the whole thing--but I was always hungry, or sick from
+taking charity, and I would have done anything.  They knew that; they
+used to look at me and Schonborn; we knew that no one else had any
+courage.  He and I were great friends, but we never talked of that; we
+tried to keep our minds away from the thought of it.  If we had a good
+day and were not so hungry, it seemed unnatural; but when the day had not
+been good--then it seemed natural enough.  I wasn't afraid, but I used to
+wake up in the night; I hated the oath we had taken, I hated every one of
+those fellows; the thing was not what I was made for, it wasn't my work,
+it wasn't my nature, it was forced on me--I hated it, but sometimes I was
+like a madman."
+
+"Yes, yes," she murmured.
+
+"All this time I was working at the Academie, and learning all I
+could....  One evening that we met, Paunitz was not there.  Misek was
+telling us how the thing had been arranged.  Schonborn and I looked at
+each other--it was warm--perhaps we were not hungry--it was springtime,
+too, and in the Spring it's different.  There is something."
+
+Christian nodded.
+
+"While we were talking there came a knock at the door.  Lendorf put his
+eye to the keyhole, and made a sign.  The police were there. Nobody said
+anything, but Misek crawled under the bed; we all followed; and the
+knocking grew louder and louder.  In the wall at the back of the bed was
+a little door into an empty cellar.  We crept through.  There was a
+trap-door behind some cases, where they used to roll barrels in.  We
+crawled through that into the back street.  We went different ways."
+
+He paused, and Christian gasped.
+
+"I thought I would get my money, but there was a policeman before my
+door.  They had us finely.  It was Paunitz; if I met him even now I
+should wring his neck.  I swore I wouldn't be caught, but I had no idea
+where to go.  Then I thought of a little Italian barber who used to shave
+me when I had money for a shave; I knew he would help.  He belonged to
+some Italian Society; he often talked to me, under his breath, of course.
+I went to him.  He was shaving himself before going to a ball.  I told
+him what had happened; it was funny to see him put his back against the
+door.  He was very frightened, understanding this sort of thing better
+than I did--for I was only twenty then.  He shaved my head and moustache
+and put me on a fair wig.  Then he brought me macaroni, and some meat, to
+eat.  He gave me a big fair moustache, and a cap, and hid the moustache
+in the lining. He brought me a cloak of his own, and four gulden.  All
+the time he was extremely frightened, and kept listening, and saying:
+'Eat!'
+
+"When I had done, he just said: 'Go away, I refuse to know anything more
+of you.'
+
+"I thanked him and went out.  I walked about all that night; for I
+couldn't think of anything to do or anywhere to go.  In the morning I
+slept on a seat in one of the squares.  Then I thought I would go to the
+Gallerien; and I spent the whole day looking at the pictures. When the
+Galleries were shut I was very tired, so I went into a cafe, and had some
+beer.  When I came out I sat on the same seat in the Square.  I meant to
+wait till dark and then walk out of the city and take the train at some
+little station, but while I was sitting there I went to sleep.  A
+policeman woke me.  He had my wig in his hand.
+
+"'Why do you wear a wig?' he said.
+
+"I answered: 'Because I am bald.'
+
+"'No,' he said, 'you're not bald, you've been shaved.  I can feel the
+hair coming.'
+
+"He put his finger on my head.  I felt reckless and laughed.
+
+"'Ah!' he said, 'you'll come with me and explain all this; your nose and
+eyes are looked for.'
+
+"I went with him quietly to the police-station...."
+
+Harz seemed carried away by his story.  His quick dark face worked, his
+steel-grey eyes stared as though he were again passing through all these
+long-past emotions.
+
+The hot sun struck down; Christian drew herself together, sitting with
+her hands clasped round her knees.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+"I didn't care by then what came of it.  I didn't even think what I was
+going to say.  He led me down a passage to a room with bars across the
+windows and long seats, and maps on the walls.  We sat and waited.  He
+kept his eye on me all the time; and I saw no hope. Presently the
+Inspector came.  'Bring him in here,' he said; I remember feeling I could
+kill him for ordering me about!  We went into the next room.  It had a
+large clock, a writing-table, and a window, without bars, looking on a
+courtyard.  Long policemen's coats and caps were hanging from some pegs.
+The Inspector told me to take off my cap.  I took it off, wig and all. He
+asked me who I was, but I refused to answer.  Just then there was a loud
+sound of voices in the room we had come from.  The Inspector told the
+policeman to look after me, and went to see what it was.  I could hear
+him talking.  He called out: 'Come here, Becker!'  I stood very quiet,
+and Becker went towards the door.  I heard the Inspector say: 'Go and
+find Schwartz, I will see after this fellow.'  The policeman went, and
+the Inspector stood with his back to me in the half-open door, and began
+again to talk to the man in the other room.  Once or twice he looked
+round at me, but I stood quiet all the time.  They began to disagree, and
+their voices got angry.  The Inspector moved a little into the other
+room.  'Now!' I thought, and slipped off my cloak.  I hooked off a
+policeman's coat and cap, and put them on.  My heart beat till I felt
+sick.  I went on tiptoe to the window.  There was no one outside, but at
+the entrance a man was holding some horses.  I opened the window a little
+and held my breath.  I heard the Inspector say: 'I will report you for
+impertinence!' and slipped through the window.  The coat came down nearly
+to my heels, and the cap over my eyes.  I walked up to the man with the
+horses, and said: 'Good-evening.'  One of the horses had begun to kick,
+and he only grunted at me.  I got into a passing tram; it was five
+minutes to the West Bahnhof; I got out there. There was a train starting;
+they were shouting 'Einsteigen!'  I ran. The collector tried to stop me. 
+I shouted: 'Business--important!' He let me by.  I jumped into a
+carriage.  The train started."
+
+He paused, and Christian heaved a sigh.
+
+Harz went on, twisting a twig of ivy in his hands: "There was another man
+in the carriage reading a paper.  Presently I said to him, 'Where do we
+stop first?'  'St. Polten.'  Then I knew it was the Munich express--St.
+Polten, Amstetten, Linz, and Salzburg--four stops before the frontier. 
+The man put down his paper and looked at me; he had a big fair moustache
+and rather shabby clothes.  His looking at me disturbed me, for I thought
+every minute he would say: 'You're no policeman!'  And suddenly it came
+into my mind that if they looked for me in this train, it would be as a
+policeman!--they would know, of course, at the station that a policeman
+had run past at the last minute. I wanted to get rid of the coat and cap,
+but the man was there, and I didn't like to move out of the carriage for
+other people to notice.  So I sat on.  We came to St. Polten at last. 
+The man in my carriage took his bag, got out, and left his paper on the
+seat. We started again; I breathed at last, and as soon as I could took
+the cap and coat and threw them out into the darkness.  I thought: 'I
+shall get across the frontier now.'  I took my own cap out and found the
+moustache Luigi gave me; rubbed my clothes as clean as possible; stuck on
+the moustache, and with some little ends of chalk in my pocket made my
+eyebrows light; then drew some lines in my face to make it older, and
+pulled my cap well down above my wig.  I did it pretty well--I was quite
+like the man who had got out.  I sat in his corner, took up his
+newspaper, and waited for Amstetten.  It seemed a tremendous time before
+we got there.  From behind my paper I could see five or six policemen on
+the platform, one quite close.  He opened the door, looked at me, and
+walked through the carriage into the corridor.  I took some tobacco and
+rolled up a cigarette, but it shook, Harz lifted the ivy twig, like this. 
+In a minute the conductor and two more policemen came.  'He was here,'
+said the conductor, 'with this gentleman.'  One of them looked at me, and
+asked: 'Have you seen a policeman travelling on this train?'  'Yes,' I
+said.  'Where?'  'He got out at St.  Polten.'  The policeman asked the
+conductor: 'Did you see him get out there?'  The conductor shook his
+head.  I said: 'He got out as the train was moving.'  'Ah!' said the
+policeman, 'what was he like?' 'Rather short, and no moustache. Why?' 
+'Did you notice anything unusual?'  'No,' I said, 'only that he wore
+coloured trousers.  What's the matter?'  One policeman said to the other:
+'That's our man!  Send a telegram to St. Polten; he has more than an
+hour's start.'  He asked me where I was going.  I told him: 'Linz.' 
+'Ah!' he said, 'you'll have to give evidence; your name and address
+please?'  'Josef Reinhardt, 17 Donau Strasse.'  He wrote it down.  The
+conductor said: 'We are late, can we start?'  They shut the door.  I
+heard them say to the conductor: 'Search again at Linz, and report to the
+Inspector there.'  They hurried on to the platform, and we started.  At
+first I thought I would get out as soon as the train had left the
+station.  Then, that I should be too far from the frontier; better to go
+on to Linz and take my chance there.  I sat still and tried not to think.
+
+"After a long time, we began to run more slowly.  I put my head out and
+could see in the distance a ring of lights hanging in the blackness.  I
+loosened the carriage door and waited for the train to run slower still;
+I didn't mean to go into Linz like a rat into a trap.  At last I could
+wait no longer; I opened the door, jumped and fell into some bushes.  I
+was not much hurt, but bruised, and the breath knocked out of me.  As
+soon as I could, I crawled out.  It was very dark.  I felt heavy and
+sore, and for some time went stumbling in and out amongst trees.
+Presently I came to a clear space; on one side I could see the town's
+shape drawn in lighted lamps, and on the other a dark mass, which I think
+was forest; in the distance too was a thin chain of lights.  I thought:
+'They must be the lights of a bridge.'  Just then the moon came out, and
+I could see the river shining below.  It was cold and damp, and I walked
+quickly.  At last I came out on a road, past houses and barking dogs,
+down to the river bank; there I sat against a shed and went to sleep.  I
+woke very stiff.  It was darker than before; the moon was gone.  I could
+just see the river.  I stumbled on, to get through the town before dawn.
+It was all black shapes-houses and sheds, and the smell of the river, the
+smell of rotting hay, apples, tar, mud, fish; and here and there on a
+wharf a lantern.  I stumbled over casks and ropes and boxes; I saw I
+should never get clear--the dawn had begun already on the other side. 
+Some men came from a house behind me.  I bent, and crept behind some
+barrels.  They passed along the wharf; they seemed to drop into the
+river.  I heard one of them say: 'Passau before night.' I stood up and
+saw they had walked on board a steamer which was lying head up-stream,
+with some barges in tow.  There was a plank laid to the steamer, and a
+lantern at the other end.  I could hear the fellows moving below deck,
+getting up steam.  I ran across the plank and crept to the end of the
+steamer.  I meant to go with them to Passau!  The rope which towed the
+barges was nearly taut; and I knew if I could get on to the barges I
+should be safe.  I climbed down on this rope and crawled along.  I was
+desperate, I knew they'd soon be coming up, and it was getting light.  I
+thought I should fall into the water several times, but I got to the
+barge at last.  It was laden with straw.  There was nobody on board.  I
+was hungry and thirsty--I looked for something to eat; there was nothing
+but the ashes of a fire and a man's coat.  I crept into the straw.  Soon
+a boat brought men, one for each barge, and there were sounds of steam.
+As soon as we began moving through the water, I fell asleep.  When I woke
+we were creeping through a heavy mist.  I made a little hole in the straw
+and saw the bargeman.  He was sitting by a fire at the barge's edge, so
+that the sparks and smoke blew away over the water. He ate and drank with
+both hands, and funny enough he looked in the mist, like a big bird
+flapping its wings; there was a good smell of coffee, and I sneezed.  How
+the fellow started!  But presently he took a pitchfork and prodded the
+straw.  Then I stood up.  I couldn't help laughing, he was so
+surprised--a huge, dark man, with a great black beard.  I pointed to the
+fire and said 'Give me some, brother!' He pulled me out of the straw; I
+was so stiff, I couldn't move.  I sat by the fire, and ate black bread
+and turnips, and drank coffee; while he stood by, watching me and
+muttering.  I couldn't understand him well--he spoke a dialect from
+Hungary.  He asked me: How I got there--who I was--where I was from?  I
+looked up in his face, and he looked down at me, sucking his pipe.  He
+was a big man, he lived alone on the river, and I was tired of telling
+lies, so I told him the whole thing.  When I had done he just grunted.  I
+can see him now standing over me, with the mist hanging in his beard, and
+his great naked arms.  He drew me some water, and I washed and showed him
+my wig and moustache, and threw them overboard.  All that day we lay out
+on the barge in the mist, with our feet to the fire, smoking; now and
+then he would spit into the ashes and mutter into his beard.  I shall
+never forget that day.  The steamer was like a monster with fiery
+nostrils, and the other barges were dumb creatures with eyes, where the
+fires were; we couldn't see the bank, but now and then a bluff and high
+trees, or a castle, showed in the mist.  If I had only had paint and
+canvas that day!"  He sighed.
+
+"It was early Spring, and the river was in flood; they were going to
+Regensburg to unload there, take fresh cargo, and back to Linz.  As soon
+as the mist began to clear, the bargeman hid me in the straw. At Passau
+was the frontier; they lay there for the night, but nothing happened, and
+I slept in the straw.  The next day I lay out on the barge deck; there
+was no mist, but I was free--the sun shone gold on the straw and the
+green sacking; the water seemed to dance, and I laughed--I laughed all
+the time, and the barge man laughed with me. A fine fellow he was!  At
+Regensburg I helped them to unload; for more than a week we worked; they
+nicknamed me baldhead, and when it was all over I gave the money I earned
+for the unloading to the big bargeman.  We kissed each other at parting. 
+I had still three of the gulden that Luigi gave me, and I went to a
+house-painter and got work with him.  For six months I stayed there to
+save money; then I wrote to my mother's cousin in Vienna, and told him I
+was going to London. He gave me an introduction to some friends there. I
+went to Hamburg, and from there to London in a cargo steamer, and I've
+never been back till now."
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+After a minute's silence Christian said in a startled voice: "They could
+arrest you then!"
+
+Harz laughed.
+
+"If they knew; but it's seven years ago."
+
+"Why did you come here, when it's so dangerous?"
+
+"I had been working too hard, I wanted to see my country--after seven
+years, and when it's forbidden!  But I'm ready to go back now."  He
+looked down at her, frowning.
+
+"Had you a hard time in London, too?"
+
+"Harder, at first--I couldn't speak the language.  In my profession it's
+hard work to get recognised, it's hard work to make a living. There are
+too many whose interest it is to keep you down--I shan't forget them."
+
+"But every one is not like that?"
+
+"No; there are fine fellows, too.  I shan't forget them either.  I can
+sell my pictures now; I'm no longer weak, and I promise you I shan't
+forget.  If in the future I have power, and I shall have power--I shan't
+forget."
+
+A shower of fine gravel came rattling on the wall.  Dawney was standing
+below them with an amused expression on his upturned face.
+
+"Are you going to stay there all night?" he asked.  "Greta and I have
+bored each other."
+
+"We're coming," called Christian hastily.
+
+On the way back neither spoke a word, but when they reached the Villa,
+Harz took her hand, and said: "Fraulein Christian, I can't do any more
+with your picture.  I shan't touch it again after this."
+
+She made no answer, but they looked at each other, and both seemed to
+ask, to entreat, something more; then her eyes fell.  He dropped her
+hand, and saying, "Good-night," ran after Dawney.
+
+In the corridor, Dominique, carrying a dish of fruit, met the sisters; he
+informed them that Miss Naylor had retired to bed; that Herr Paul would
+not be home to dinner; his master was dining in his room; dinner would be
+served for Mrs. Decie and the two young ladies in a quarter of an hour:
+"And the fish is good to-night; little trouts! try them, Signorina!" He
+moved on quickly, softly, like a cat, the tails of his dress-coat
+flapping, and the heels of his white socks gleaming.
+
+Christian ran upstairs.  She flew about her room, feeling that if she
+once stood still it would all crystallise in hard painful thought, which
+motion alone kept away.  She washed, changed her dress and shoes, and ran
+down to her uncle's room.  Mr. Treffry had just finished dinner, pushed
+the little table back, and was sitting in his chair, with his glasses on
+his nose, reading the Tines.  Christian touched his forehead with her
+lips.
+
+"Glad to see you, Chris.  Your stepfather's out to dinner, and I can't
+stand your aunt when she's in one of her talking moods--bit of a humbug,
+Chris, between ourselves; eh, isn't she?" His eyes twinkled.
+
+Christian smiled.  There was a curious happy restlessness in her that
+would not let her keep still.
+
+"Picture finished?" Mr. Treffry asked suddenly, taking up the paper with
+a crackle.  "Don't go and fall in love with the painter, Chris."
+
+Christian was still enough now.
+
+'Why not?' she thought.  'What should you know about him?  Isn't he good
+enough for me?'  A gong sounded.
+
+"There's your dinner," Mr. Treffry remarked.
+
+With sudden contrition she bent and kissed him.
+
+But when she had left the room Mr. Treffry put down the Times and stared
+at the door, humming to himself, and thoughtfully fingering his chin.
+
+Christian could not eat; she sat, indifferent to the hoverings of
+Dominique, tormented by uneasy fear and longings.  She answered Mrs.
+Decie at random.  Greta kept stealing looks at her from under her lashes.
+
+"Decided characters are charming, don't you think so, Christian?" Mrs.
+Decie said, thrusting her chin a little forward, and modelling the words.
+"That is why I like Mr. Harz so much; such an immense advantage for a man
+to know his mind.  You have only to look at that young man to see that he
+knows what he wants, and means to have it."
+
+Christian pushed her plate away.  Greta, flushing, said abruptly: "Doctor
+Edmund is not a decided character, I think.  This afternoon he said:
+'Shall I have some beer-yes, I shall--no, I shall not'; then he ordered
+the beer, so, when it came, he gave it to the soldiers."
+
+Mrs. Decie turned her enigmatic smile from one girl to the other.
+
+When dinner was over they went into her room.  Greta stole at once to the
+piano, where her long hair fell almost to the keys; silently she sat
+there fingering the notes, smiling to herself, and looking at her aunt,
+who was reading Pater's essays.  Christian too had taken up a book, but
+soon put it down--of several pages she had not understood a word. She
+went into the garden and wandered about the lawn, clasping her hands
+behind her head.  The air was heavy; very distant thunder trembled among
+the mountains, flashes of summer lightning played over the trees; and two
+great moths were hovering about a rosebush. Christian watched their soft
+uncertain rushes.  Going to the little summer-house she flung herself
+down on a seat, and pressed her hands to her heart.
+
+There was a strange and sudden aching there.  Was he going from her?  If
+so, what would be left?  How little and how narrow seemed the outlook of
+her life--with the world waiting for her, the world of beauty, effort,
+self-sacrifice, fidelity!  It was as though a flash of that summer
+lightning had fled by, singeing her, taking from her all powers of
+flight, burning off her wings, as off one of those pale hovering moths.
+Tears started up, and trickled down her face. 'Blind!' she thought; 'how
+could I have been so blind?'
+
+Some one came down the path.
+
+"Who's there?" she cried.
+
+Harz stood in the doorway.
+
+"Why did you come out?" he said.  "Ah! why did you come out?"  He caught
+her hand; Christian tried to draw it from him, and to turn her eyes away,
+but she could not.  He flung himself down on his knees, and cried: "I
+love you!"
+
+In a rapture of soft terror Christian bent her forehead down to his hand.
+
+"What are you doing?" she heard him say.  "Is it possible that you love
+me?" and she felt his kisses on her hair.
+
+"My sweet! it will be so hard for you; you are so little, so little, and
+so weak."  Clasping his hand closer to her face, she murmured: "I don't
+care."
+
+There was a long, soft silence, that seemed to last for ever. Suddenly
+she threw her arms round his neck and kissed him.
+
+"Whatever comes!" she whispered, and gathering her dress, escaped from
+him into the darkness.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+Christian woke next morning with a smile.  In her attitudes, her voice,
+her eyes, there was a happy and sweet seriousness, as if she were hugging
+some holy thought.  After breakfast she took a book and sat in the open
+window, whence she could see the poplar-trees guarding the entrance.
+There was a breeze; the roses close by kept nodding to her; the cathedral
+bells were in full chime; bees hummed above the lavender; and in the sky
+soft clouds were floating like huge, white birds.
+
+The sounds of Miss Naylor's staccato dictation travelled across the room,
+and Greta's sighs as she took it down, one eye on her paper, one eye on
+Scruff, who lay with a black ear flapped across his paw, and his tan
+eyebrows quivering.  He was in disgrace, for Dominique, coming on him
+unawares, had seen him "say his prayers" before a pudding, and take the
+pudding for reward.
+
+Christian put her book down gently, and slipped through the window. Harz
+was coming in from the road.  "I am all yours!" she whispered. His
+fingers closed on hers, and he went into the house.
+
+She slipped back, took up her book, and waited.  It seemed long before he
+came out, but when he did he waved her back, and hurried on; she had a
+glimpse of his face, white to the lips.  Feeling faint and sick, she flew
+to her stepfather's room.
+
+Herr Paul was standing in a corner with the utterly disturbed appearance
+of an easy-going man, visited by the unexpected.  His fine shirt-front
+was crumpled as if his breast had heaved too suddenly under strong
+emotion; his smoked eyeglasses dangled down his back; his fingers were
+embedded in his beard.  He was fixing his eye on a spot in the floor as
+though he expected it to explode and blow them to fragments.  In another
+corner Mrs. Decie, with half-closed eyes, was running her finger-tips
+across her brow.
+
+"What have you said to him?" cried Christian.
+
+Herr Paul regarded her with glassy eyes.
+
+"Mein Gott!" he said.  "Your aunt and I!"
+
+"What have you said to him?" repeated Christian.
+
+"The impudence!  An anarchist!  A beggar!"
+
+"Paul!" murmured Mrs. Decie.
+
+"The outlaw!  The fellow!"  Herr Paul began to stride about the room.
+
+Quivering from head to foot, Christian cried: "How dared you?" and ran
+from the room, pushing aside Miss Naylor and Greta, who stood blanched
+and frightened in the doorway.
+
+Herr Paul stopped in his tramp, and, still with his eyes fixed on the
+floor, growled:
+
+"A fine thing-hein?  What's coming?  Will you please tell me?  An
+anarchist--a beggar!"
+
+"Paul!" murmured Mrs. Decie.
+
+"Paul!  Paul!  And you!" he pointed to Miss Naylor--"Two women with
+eyes!--hein!"
+
+"There is nothing to be gained by violence," Mrs. Decie murmured, passing
+her handkerchief across her lips.  Miss Naylor, whose thin brown cheeks
+had flushed, advanced towards him.
+
+"I hope you do not--" she said; "I am sure there was nothing that I could
+have prevented--I should be glad if that were understood." And, turning
+with some dignity, the little lady went away, closing the door behind
+her.
+
+"You hear!" Herr Paul said, violently sarcastic: "nothing she could have
+prevented!  Enfin!  Will you please tell me what I am to do?"
+
+"Men of the world"--whose philosophy is a creature of circumstance and
+accepted things--find any deviation from the path of their convictions
+dangerous, shocking, and an intolerable bore.  Herr Paul had spent his
+life laughing at convictions; the matter had but to touch him personally,
+and the tap of laughter was turned off.  That any one to whom he was the
+lawful guardian should marry other than a well-groomed man, properly
+endowed with goods, properly selected, was beyond expression horrid. 
+From his point of view he had great excuse for horror; and he was
+naturally unable to judge whether he had excuse for horror from other
+points of view.  His amazement had in it a spice of the pathetic; he was
+like a child in the presence of a thing that he absolutely could not
+understand.  The interview had left him with a sense of insecurity which
+he felt to be particularly unfair.
+
+The door was again opened, and Greta flew in, her cheeks flushed, her
+hair floating behind her, and tears streaming down her cheeks.
+
+"Papa!" she cried, "you have been cruel to Chris.  The door is locked; I
+can hear her crying--why have you been cruel?"  Without waiting to be
+answered, she flew out again.
+
+Herr Paul seized his hair with both his hands: "Good!  Very good!  My own
+child, please!  What next then?"
+
+Mrs. Decie rose from her chair languidly.  "My head is very bad," she
+said, shading her eyes and speaking in low tones: "It is no use making a
+fuss--nothing can come of this--he has not a penny. Christian will have
+nothing till you die, which will not be for a long time yet, if you can
+but avoid an apoplectic fit!"
+
+At these last words Herr Paul gave a start of real disgust.  "Hum!" he
+muttered; it was as if the world were bent on being brutal to him. Mrs.
+Decie continued:
+
+"If I know anything of this young man, he will not come here again, after
+the words you have spoken.  As for Christian--you had better talk to
+Nicholas.  I am going to lie down."
+
+Herr Paul nervously fingered the shirt-collar round his stout, short
+neck.
+
+"Nicholas!  Certainly--a good idea.  Quelle diable d'afaire!"
+
+'French!' thought Mrs. Decie; 'we shall soon have peace.  Poor Christian!
+I'm sorry!  After all, these things are a matter of time and
+opportunity.'  This consoled her a good deal.
+
+But for Christian the hours were a long nightmare of grief and shame,
+fear and anger.  Would he forgive?  Would he be true to her?  Or would he
+go away without a word?  Since yesterday it was as if she had stepped
+into another world, and lost it again.  In place of that new feeling,
+intoxicating as wine, what was coming?  What bitter; dreadful ending?
+
+A rude entrance this into the life of facts, and primitive emotions!
+
+She let Greta into her room after a time, for the child had begun
+sobbing; but she would not talk, and sat hour after hour at the window
+with the air fanning her face, and the pain in her eyes turned to the sky
+and trees.  After one or two attempts at consolation, Greta sank on the
+floor, and remained there, humbly gazing at her sister in a silence only
+broken when Christian cleared her throat of tears, and by the song of
+birds in the garden.  In the afternoon she slipped away and did not come
+back again.
+
+After his interview with Mr. Treffry, Herr Paul took a bath, perfumed
+himself with precision, and caused it to be clearly understood that,
+under circumstances such as these, a man's house was not suited for a pig
+to live in.  He shortly afterwards went out to the Kurbaus, and had not
+returned by dinner-time.
+
+Christian came down for dinner.  There were crimson spots in her cheeks,
+dark circles round her eyes; she behaved, however, as though nothing had
+happened.  Miss Naylor, affected by the kindness of her heart and the
+shock her system had sustained, rolled a number of bread pills, looking
+at each as it came, with an air of surprise, and concealing it with
+difficulty.  Mr. Treffry was coughing, and when he talked his voice
+seemed to rumble even more than usual.  Greta was dumb, trying to catch
+Christian's eye; Mrs. Decie alone seemed at ease.  After dinner Mr.
+Treffry went off to his room, leaning heavily on Christian's shoulder. As
+he sank into his chair, he said to her:
+
+"Pull yourself together, my dear!" Christian did not answer him.
+
+Outside his room Greta caught her by the sleeve.
+
+"Look!" she whispered, thrusting a piece of paper into Christian's hand.
+"It is to me from Dr. Edmund, but you must read it."
+
+Christian opened the note, which ran as follows:
+
+"MY PHILOSOPHER AND FRIEND,--I received your note, and went to our
+friend's studio; he was not in, but half an hour ago I stumbled on him in
+the Platz.  He is not quite himself; has had a touch of the sun--nothing
+serious: I took him to my hotel, where he is in bed. If he will stay
+there he will be all right in a day or two.  In any case he shall not
+elude my clutches for the present.
+
+"My warm respects to Mistress Christian.--Yours in friendship and
+philosophy, "EDMUND DAWNEY."
+
+Christian read and re-read this note, then turned to Greta.
+
+"What did you say to Dr. Dawney?"
+
+Greta took back the piece of paper, and replied: "I said:
+
+"'DEAR DR. EDMUND,--We are anxious about Herr Harz.  We think he is
+perhaps not very well to-day.  We (I and Christian) should like to know.
+You can tell us.  Please shall you?  GRETA.'
+
+"That is what I said."
+
+Christian dropped her eyes.  "What made you write?"
+
+Greta gazed at her mournfully: "I thought--O Chris! come into the garden. 
+I am so hot, and it is so dull without you!"
+
+Christian bent her head forward and rubbed her cheek against Greta's,
+then without another word ran upstairs and locked herself into her room.
+The child stood listening; hearing the key turn in the lock, she sank
+down on the bottom step and took Scruff in her arms.
+
+Half an hour later Miss Naylor, carrying a candle, found her there fast
+asleep, with her head resting on the terrier's back, and tear stains on
+her cheeks....
+
+Mrs. Decie presently came out, also carrying a candle, and went to her
+brother's room.  She stood before his chair, with folded hands.
+
+"Nicholas, what is to be done?"
+
+Mr. Treffry was pouring whisky into a glass.
+
+"Damn it, Con!" he answered; "how should I know?"
+
+"There's something in Christian that makes interference dangerous.  I
+know very well that I've no influence with her at all."
+
+"You're right there, Con," Mr. Treffry replied.
+
+Mrs. Decie's pale eyes, fastened on his face, forced him to look up.
+
+"I wish you would leave off drinking whisky and attend to me.  Paul is an
+element--"
+
+"Paul," Mr. Treffry growled, "is an ass!"
+
+"Paul," pursued Mrs. Decie, "is an element of danger in the situation;
+any ill-timed opposition of his might drive her to I don't know what.
+Christian is gentle, she is 'sympathetic' as they say; but thwart her,
+and she is as obstinate as....
+
+"You or I!  Leave her alone!"
+
+"I understand her character, but I confess that I am at a loss what to
+do."
+
+"Do nothing!"  He drank again.
+
+Mrs. Decie took up the candle.
+
+"Men!" she said with a mysterious intonation; shrugging her shoulders,
+she walked out.
+
+Mr. Treffry put down his glass.
+
+'Understand?' he thought; 'no, you don't, and I don't.  Who understands a
+young girl?  Vapourings, dreams, moonshine I....  What does she see in
+this painter fellow?  I wonder!'  He breathed heavily.  'By heavens!  I
+wouldn't have had this happen for a hundred thousand pounds!'
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+For many hours after Dawney had taken him to his hotel, Harz was
+prostrate with stunning pains in the head and neck.  He had been all day
+without food, exposed to burning sun, suffering violent emotion. Movement
+of any sort caused him such agony that he could only lie in stupor,
+counting the spots dancing before, his eyes.  Dawney did everything for
+him, and Harz resented in a listless way the intent scrutiny of the
+doctor's calm, black eyes.
+
+Towards the end of the second day he was able to get up; Dawney found him
+sitting on the bed in shirt and trousers.
+
+"My son," he said, "you had better tell me what the trouble is--it will
+do your stubborn carcase good."
+
+"I must go back to work," said Harz.
+
+"Work!" said Dawney deliberately: "you couldn't, if you tried."
+
+"I must."
+
+"My dear fellow, you couldn't tell one colour from another."
+
+"I must be doing something; I can't sit here and think."
+
+Dawney hooked his thumbs into his waistcoat: "You won't see the sun for
+three days yet, if I can help it."
+
+Harz got up.
+
+"I'm going to my studio to-morrow," he said.  "I promise not to go out. I
+must be where I can see my work.  If I can't paint, I can draw; I can
+feel my brushes, move my things about.  I shall go mad if I do nothing."
+
+Dawney took his arm, and walked him up and down.
+
+"I'll let you go," he said, "but give me a chance!  It's as much to me to
+put you straight as it is to you to paint a decent picture. Now go to
+bed; I'll have a carriage for you to-morrow morning."
+
+Harz sat down on the bed again, and for a long time stayed without
+moving, his eyes fixed on the floor.  The sight of him, so desperate and
+miserable, hurt the young doctor.
+
+"Can you get to bed by yourself?" he asked at last.
+
+Harz nodded.
+
+"Then, good-night, old chap!" and Dawney left the room.
+
+He took his hat and turned towards the Villa.  Between the poplars he
+stopped to think.  The farther trees were fret-worked black against the
+lingering gold of the sunset; a huge moth, attracted by the tip of his
+cigar, came fluttering in his face.  The music of a concertina rose and
+fell, like the sighing of some disillusioned spirit.  Dawney stood for
+several minutes staring at the house.
+
+He was shown to Mrs. Decie's room.  She was holding a magazine before her
+eyes, and received him with as much relief as philosophy permitted.
+
+"You are the very person I wanted to see," she said.
+
+He noticed that the magazine she held was uncut.
+
+"You are a young man," pursued Mrs. Decie, "but as my doctor I have a
+right to your discretion."
+
+Dawney smiled; the features of his broad, clean-shaven face looked
+ridiculously small on such occasions, but his eyes retained their air of
+calculation.
+
+"That is so," he answered.
+
+"It is about this unfortunate affair.  I understand that Mr. Harz is with
+you.  I want you to use your influence to dissuade him from attempting to
+see my niece."
+
+"Influence!" said Dawney; "you know Harz!"
+
+Mrs. Decie's voice hardened.
+
+"Everybody," she said, "has his weak points.  This young man is open to
+approach from at least two quarters--his pride is one, his work an other. 
+I am seldom wrong in gauging character; these are his vital spots, and
+they are of the essence of this matter.  I'm sorry for him, of
+course--but at his age, and living a man's life, these things--"  Her
+smile was extra pale.  "I wish you could give me something for my head. 
+It's foolish to worry.  Nerves of course!  But I can't help it!  You know
+my opinion, Dr. Dawney.  That young man will go far if he remains
+unfettered; he will make a name.  You will be doing him a great service
+if you could show him the affair as it really is--a drag on him, and
+quite unworthy of his pride!  Do help me!  You are just the man to do
+it!"
+
+Dawney threw up his head as if to shake off this impeachment; the curve
+of his chin thus displayed was imposing in its fulness; altogether he was
+imposing, having an air of capability.
+
+She struck him, indeed, as really scared; it was as if her mask of smile
+had become awry, and failed to cover her emotion; and he was puzzled,
+thinking, 'I wouldn't have believed she had it in her....' "It's not an
+easy business," he said; "I'll think it over."
+
+"Thank you!" murmured Mrs. Decie.  "You are most kind."
+
+Passing the schoolroom, he looked in through the open door. Christian was
+sitting there.  The sight of her face shocked him, it was so white, so
+resolutely dumb.  A book lay on her knees; she was not reading, but
+staring before her.  He thought suddenly: 'Poor thing!  If I don't say
+something to her, I shall be a brute!'
+
+"Miss Devorell," he said: "You can reckon on him."
+
+Christian tried to speak, but her lips trembled so that nothing came
+forth.
+
+"Good-night," said Dawney, and walked out....
+
+Three days later Harz was sitting in the window of his studio.  It was
+the first day he had found it possible to work, and now, tired out, he
+stared through the dusk at the slowly lengthening shadows of the rafters.
+A solitary mosquito hummed, and two house sparrows, who had built beneath
+the roof, chirruped sleepily.  Swallows darted by the window, dipping
+their blue wings towards the quiet water; a hush had stolen over
+everything.  He fell asleep.
+
+He woke, with a dim impression of some near presence.  In the pale
+glimmer from innumerable stars, the room was full of shadowy shapes. He
+lit his lantern.  The flame darted forth, bickered, then slowly lit up
+the great room.
+
+"Who's there?"
+
+A rustling seemed to answer.  He peered about, went to the doorway, and
+drew the curtain.  A woman's cloaked figure shrank against the wall.  Her
+face was buried in her hands; her arms, from which the cloak fell back,
+were alone visible.
+
+"Christian?"
+
+She ran past him, and when he had put the lantern down, was standing at
+the window.  She turned quickly to him.  "Take me away from here!  Let me
+come with you!"
+
+"Do you mean it?"
+
+"You said you wouldn't give me up!"
+
+"You know what you are doing?"
+
+She made a motion of assent.
+
+"But you don't grasp what this means.  Things to bear that you know
+nothing of--hunger perhaps!  Think, even hunger!  And your people won't
+forgive--you'll lose everything."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"I must choose--it's one thing or the other.  I can't give you up!  I
+should be afraid!"
+
+"But, dear; how can you come with me?  We can't be married here."
+
+"I am giving my life to you."
+
+"You are too good for me," said Harz.  "The life you're going into--may
+be dark, like that!" he pointed to the window.
+
+A sound of footsteps broke the hush.  They could see a figure on the path
+below.  It stopped, seemed to consider, vanished.  They heard the sounds
+of groping hands, of a creaking door, of uncertain feet on the stairs.
+
+Harz seized her hand.
+
+"Quick!" he whispered; "behind this canvas!"
+
+Christian was trembling violently.  She drew her hood across her face.
+The heavy breathing and ejaculations of the visitor were now plainly
+audible.
+
+"He's there!  Quick!  Hide!"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+With a thrill at his heart, Harz kissed her, then walked towards the
+entrance.  The curtain was pulled aside.
+
+It was Herr Paul, holding a cigar in one hand, his hat in the other, and
+breathing hard.
+
+"Pardon!" he said huskily, "your stairs are steep, and dark! mais en,
+fin! nous voila!  I have ventured to come for a talk."  His glance fell
+on the cloaked figure in the shadow.
+
+"Pardon!  A thousand pardons!  I had no idea!  I beg you to forgive this
+indiscretion!  I may take it you resign pretensions then?  You have a
+lady here--I have nothing more to say; I only beg a million pardons for
+intruding.  A thousand times forgive me!  Good-night!"
+
+He bowed and turned to go.  Christian stepped forward, and let the hood
+fall from her head.
+
+"It's I!"
+
+Herr Paul pirouetted.
+
+"Good God!" he stammered, dropping cigar and hat.  "Good God!"
+
+The lantern flared suddenly, revealing his crimson, shaking cheeks.
+
+"You came here, at night!  You, the daughter of my wife!"  His eyes
+wandered with a dull glare round the room.
+
+"Take care!" cried Harz: "If you say a word against her---"
+
+The two men stared at each other's eyes.  And without warning, the
+lantern flickered and went out.  Christian drew the cloak round her
+again.  Herr Paul's voice broke the silence; he had recovered his
+self-possession.
+
+"Ah! ah!" he said: "Darkness!  Tant mieux!  The right thing for what we
+have to say.  Since we do not esteem each other, it is well not to see
+too much."
+
+"Just so," said Harz.
+
+Christian had come close to them.  Her pale face and great shining eyes
+could just be seen through the gloom.
+
+Herr Paul waved his arm; the gesture was impressive, annihilating.
+
+"This is a matter, I believe, between two men," he said, addressing Harz.
+"Let us come to the point.  I will do you the credit to suppose that you
+have a marriage in view.  You know, perhaps, that Miss Devorell has no
+money till I die?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And I am passably young!  You have money, then?"
+
+"No."
+
+"In that case, you would propose to live on air?"
+
+"No, to work; it has been done before."
+
+"It is calculated to increase hunger!  You are prepared to take Miss
+Devorell, a young lady accustomed to luxury, into places like--this!" he
+peered about him, "into places that smell of paint, into the milieu of
+'the people,' into the society of Bohemians--who knows? of anarchists,
+perhaps?"
+
+Harz clenched his hands: "I will answer no more questions."
+
+"In that event, we reach the ultimatum," said Herr Paul.  "Listen, Herr
+Outlaw!  If you have not left the country by noon to-morrow, you shall be
+introduced to the police!"
+
+Christian uttered a cry.  For a minute in the gloom the only sound heard
+was the short, hard breathing of the two men.
+
+Suddenly Harz cried: "You coward, I defy you!"
+
+"Coward!" Herr Paul repeated.  "That is indeed the last word.  Look to
+yourself, my friend!"
+
+Stooping and fumbling on the floor, he picked up his hat.  Christian had
+already vanished; the sound of her hurrying footsteps was distinctly
+audible at the top of the dark stairs.  Herr Paul stood still a minute.
+
+"Look to yourself, my dear friend!" he said in a thick voice, groping for
+the wall.  Planting his hat askew on his head, he began slowly to descend
+the stairs.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+Nicholas Treffry sat reading the paper in his room by the light of a lamp
+with a green shade; on his sound foot the terrier Scruff was asleep and
+snoring lightly--the dog habitually came down when Greta was in bed, and
+remained till Mr. Treffry, always the latest member of the household,
+retired to rest.
+
+Through the long window a little river of light shone out on the veranda
+tiles, and, flowing past, cut the garden in two.
+
+There was the sound of hurried footsteps, a rustling of draperies;
+Christian, running through the window, stood before him.
+
+Mr. Treffry dropped his paper, such a fury of passion and alarm shone in
+the girl's eyes.
+
+"Chris!  What is it?"
+
+"Hateful!"
+
+"Chris!"
+
+"Oh!  Uncle!  He's insulted, threatened!  And I love his little finger
+more than all the, world!"
+
+Her passionate voice trembled, her eyes were shining.
+
+Mr. Treffry's profound discomfort found vent in the gruff words: "Sit
+down!"
+
+"I'll never speak to Father again!  Oh!  Uncle!  I love him!"
+
+Quiet in the extremity of his disturbance, Mr. Treffry leaned forward in
+his chair, rested his big hands on its arms, and stared at her.
+
+Chris!  Here was a woman he did not know!  His lips moved under the heavy
+droop of his moustache.  The girl's face had suddenly grown white.  She
+sank down on her knees, and laid her cheek against his hand.  He felt it
+wet; and a lump rose in his throat.  Drawing his hand away, he stared at
+it, and wiped it with his sleeve.
+
+"Don't cry!" he said.
+
+She seized it again and clung to it; that clutch seemed to fill him with
+sudden rage.
+
+"What's the matter?  How the devil can I do anything if you don't tell
+me?"
+
+She looked up at him.  The distress of the last days, the passion and
+fear of the last hour, the tide of that new life of the spirit and the
+flesh, stirring within her, flowed out in a stream of words.
+
+When she had finished, there was so dead a silence that the fluttering of
+a moth round the lamp could be heard plainly.
+
+Mr. Treffry raised himself, crossed the room, and touched the bell. "Tell
+the groom," he said to Dominique, "to put the horses to, and have 'em
+round at once; bring my old boots; we drive all night...."
+
+His bent figure looked huge, body and legs outlined by light, head and
+shoulders towering into shadow.  "He shall have a run for his money!" he
+said.  His eyes stared down sombrely at his niece.  "It's more than he
+deserves!--it's more than you deserve, Chris.  Sit down there and write
+to him; tell him to put himself entirely in my hands."  He turned his
+back on her, and went into his bedroom.
+
+Christian rose, and sat down at the writing-table.  A whisper startled
+her.  It came from Dominique, who was holding out a pair of boots.
+
+"M'mselle Chris, what is this?--to run about all night?"  But Christian
+did not answer.
+
+"M'mselle Chris, are you ill?"  Then seeing her face, he slipped away
+again.
+
+She finished her letter and went out to the carriage.  Mr. Treffry was
+seated under the hood.
+
+"Shan't want you," he called out to the groom, "Get up, Dominique."
+
+Christian thrust her letter into his hand.  "Give him that," she said,
+clinging to his arm with sudden terror.  "Oh!  Uncle! do take care!"
+
+"Chris, if I do this for you--"  They looked wistfully at one another. 
+Then, shaking his head, Mr. Treffry gathered up the reins.
+
+"Don't fret, my dear, don't fret!  Whoa, mare!"
+
+The carriage with a jerk plunged forward into darkness, curved with a
+crunch of wheels, and vanished, swinging between the black treepillars at
+the entrance....
+
+Christian stood, straining to catch the failing sound of the hoofs.
+
+Down the passage came a flutter of white garments; soft limbs were twined
+about her, some ends of hair fell on her face.
+
+"What is it, Chris?  Where have you been?  Where is Uncle Nic going? 
+Tell me!"
+
+Christian tore herself away.  "I don't know," she cried, "I know
+nothing!"
+
+Greta stroked her face.  "Poor Chris!" she murmured.  Her bare feet
+gleamed, her hair shone gold against her nightdress.  "Come to bed, poor
+Chris!"
+
+Christian laughed.  "You little white moth!  Feel how hot I am!  You'll
+burn your wings!"
+
+Harz had lain down, fully dressed.  He was no longer angry, but felt that
+he would rather die than yield.  Presently he heard footsteps coming up
+the stairs.
+
+"M'sieu!"
+
+It was the voice of Dominique, whose face, illumined by a match, wore an
+expression of ironical disgust.
+
+"My master," he said, "makes you his compliments; he says there is no
+time to waste.  You are to please come and drive with him!"
+
+"Your master is very kind.  Tell him I'm in bed."
+
+"Ah, M'sieu," said Dominique, grimacing, "I must not go back with such an
+answer.  If you would not come, I was to give you this."
+
+Harz broke the seal and read Christian's letter.
+
+"I will come," he said.
+
+A clock was striking as they went out through the gate.  From within the
+dark cave of the phaeton hood Mr. Treffry said gruffly: "Come along,
+sir!"
+
+Harz flung his knapsack in, and followed.
+
+His companion's figure swayed, the whiplash slid softly along the flank
+of the off horse, and, as the carriage rattled forward, Mr. Treffry
+called out, as if by afterthought: "Hallo, Dominique!" Dominque's voice,
+shaken and ironical, answered from behind: "M'v'la, M'sieu!"
+
+In the long street of silent houses, men sitting in the lighted cafes
+turned with glasses at their lips to stare after the carriage.  The
+narrow river of the sky spread suddenly to a vast, limpid ocean tremulous
+with stars.  They had turned into the road for Italy.
+
+Mr. Treffry took a pull at his horses.  "Whoa, mare!  Dogged does it!"
+and the near horse, throwing up her head, whinnied; a fleck of foam
+drifted into Harz's face.
+
+The painter had come on impulse; because Christian had told him to, not
+of his own free will.  He was angry with himself, wounded in self-esteem,
+for having allowed any one to render him this service. The smooth swift
+movement through velvet blackness splashed on either hand with the flying
+lamp-light; the strong sweet air blowing in his face-air that had kissed
+the tops of mountains and stolen their spirit; the snort and snuffle of
+the horses, and crisp rattling of their hoofs--all this soon roused in
+him another feeling.  He looked at Mr. Treffry's profile, with its tufted
+chin; at the grey road adventuring in darkness; at the purple mass of
+mountains piled above it.  All seemed utterly unreal.
+
+As if suddenly aware that he had a neighbour, Mr. Treffry turned his
+head.  "We shall do better than this presently," he said, "bit of a slope
+coming.  Haven't had 'em out for three days.  Whoa-mare!  Steady!"
+
+"Why are you taking this trouble for me?" asked Harz.
+
+"I'm an old chap, Mr. Harz, and an old chap may do a stupid thing once in
+a while!"
+
+"You are very good," said Harz, "but I want no favours."
+
+Mr. Treffry stared at him.
+
+"Just so," he said drily, "but you see there's my niece to be thought of.
+Look here!  We're not at the frontier yet, Mr. Harz, by forty miles; it's
+long odds we don't get there--so, don't spoil sport!"  He pointed to the
+left.
+
+Harz caught the glint of steel.  They were already crossing the railway.
+The sigh of the telegraph wires fluttered above them.
+
+"Hear 'em," said Mr. Treffry, "but if we get away up the mountains, we'll
+do yet!"  They had begun to rise, the speed slackened.  Mr. Treffry
+rummaged out a flask.
+
+"Not bad stuff, Mr. Harz--try it.  You won't?  Mother's milk!  Fine
+night, eh?"  Below them the valley was lit by webs of milky mist like the
+glimmer of dew on grass.
+
+These two men sitting side by side--unlike in face, age, stature,
+thought, and life--began to feel drawn towards each other, as if, in the
+rolling of the wheels, the snorting of the horses, the huge dark space,
+the huge uncertainty, they had found something they could enjoy in
+common.  The, steam from the horses' flanks and nostrils enveloped them
+with an odour as of glue.
+
+"You smoke, Mr. Harz?"
+
+Harz took the proffered weed, and lighted it from the glowing tip of Mr.
+Treffry's cigar, by light of which his head and hat looked like some
+giant mushroom.  Suddenly the wheels jolted on a rubble of loose stones;
+the carriage was swung sideways.  The scared horses, straining asunder,
+leaped forward, and sped downwards, in the darkness.
+
+Past rocks, trees, dwellings, past a lighted house that gleamed and
+vanished.  With a clink and clatter, a flirt of dust and pebbles, and the
+side lamps throwing out a frisky orange blink, the carriage dashed down,
+sinking and rising like a boat crossing billows.  The world seemed to
+rock and sway; to dance up, and be flung flat again. Only the stars stood
+still.
+
+Mr. Treffry, putting on the brake, muttered apologetically: "A little out
+o'hand!"
+
+Suddenly with a headlong dive, the carriage swayed as if it would fly in
+pieces, slithered along, and with a jerk steadied itself.  Harz lifted
+his voice in a shout of pure excitement.  Mr. Treffry let out a short
+shaky howl, and from behind there rose a wail.  But the hill was over and
+the startled horses were cantering with a free, smooth motion.  Mr.
+Treffry and Harz looked at each other.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+Mr. Treffry said with a sort of laugh: "Near go, eh?  You drive?  No?
+That's a pity!  Broken most of my bones at the game--nothing like it!" 
+Each felt a kind of admiration for the other that he had not felt before. 
+Presently Mr. Treffry began: "Look here, Mr. Harz, my niece is a slip of
+a thing, with all a young girl's notions!  What have you got to give her,
+eh?  Yourself?  That's surely not enough; mind this--six months after
+marriage we all turn out much the same--a selfish lot!  Not to mention
+this anarchist affair!
+
+"You're not of her blood, nor of her way of life, nor anything--it's
+taking chances--and--" his hand came down on the young man's knee, "I'm
+fond of her, you see."
+
+"If you were in my place," said Harz, "would you give her up?"
+
+Mr. Treffry groaned.  "Lord knows!"
+
+"Men have made themselves before now.  For those who don't believe in
+failure, there's no such thing.  Suppose she does suffer a little?  Will
+it do her any harm?  Fair weather love is no good."
+
+Mr. Treffry sighed.
+
+"Brave words, sir!  You'll pardon me if I'm too old to understand 'em
+when they're used about my niece."
+
+He pulled the horses up, and peered into the darkness.  "We're going
+through this bit quietly; if they lose track of us here so much the
+better.  Dominique! put out the lamps.  Soho, my beauties!"  The horses
+paced forward at a walk the muffled beat of their hoofs in the dust
+hardly broke the hush.  Mr. Treffry pointed to the left: "It'll be
+another thirty-five miles to the frontier."
+
+They passed the whitewashed houses, and village church with its sentinel
+cypress-trees.  A frog was croaking in a runlet; there was a faint spicy
+scent of lemons.  But nothing stirred.
+
+It was wood now on either side, the high pines, breathing their fragrance
+out into the darkness, and, like ghosts amongst them, the silver stems of
+birch-trees.
+
+Mr. Treffry said gruffly: "You won't give her up?  Her happiness means a
+lot to me."
+
+"To you!" said Harz: "to him!  And I am nothing!  Do you think I don't
+care for her happiness?  Is it a crime for me to love her?"
+
+"Almost, Mr. Harz--considering...."
+
+"Considering that I've no money!  Always money!"
+
+To this sneer Mr. Treffry made no answer, clucking to his horses.
+
+"My niece was born and bred a lady," he said at last.  "I ask you plainly
+What position have you got to give her?"
+
+"If she marries me," said Harz, "she comes into my world.  You think that
+I'm a common...."
+
+Mr. Treffry shook his head: "Answer my question, young man."
+
+But the painter did not answer it, and silence fell.
+
+A light breeze had sprung up; the whispering in the trees, the rolling of
+the wheels in this night progress, the pine-drugged air, sent Harz to
+sleep.  When he woke it was to the same tune, varied by Mr. Treffry's
+uneasy snoring; the reins were hanging loose, and, peering out, he saw
+Dominique shuffling along at the horses' heads. He joined him, and, one
+on each side, they plodded up and up.  A haze had begun to bathe the
+trees, the stars burnt dim, the air was colder.  Mr. Treffry woke
+coughing.  It was like some long nightmare, this interminable experience
+of muffled sounds and shapes, of perpetual motion, conceived, and carried
+out in darkness.  But suddenly the day broke.  Heralded by the snuffle of
+the horses, light began glimmering over a chaos of lines and shadows,
+pale as mother-o'-pearl.  The stars faded, and in a smouldering zigzag
+the dawn fled along the mountain tops, flinging out little isles of
+cloud.  From a lake, curled in a hollow like a patch of smoke, came the
+cry of a water-bird.  A cuckoo started a soft mocking; and close to the
+carriage a lark flew up.  Beasts and men alike stood still, drinking in
+the air-sweet with snows and dew, and vibrating faintly with the running
+of the water and the rustling of the leaves.
+
+The night had played sad tricks with Mr. Nicholas Treffry; his hat was
+grey with dust; his cheeks brownish-purple, there were heavy pouches
+beneath his eyes, which stared painfully.
+
+"We'll call a halt," he said, "and give the gees their grub, poor things.
+Can you find some water, Mr. Harz?  There's a rubber bucket in behind.
+
+"Can't get about myself this morning; make that lazy fellow of mine stir
+his stumps."
+
+Harz saw that he had drawn off one of his boots, and stretched the foot
+out on a cushion.
+
+"You're not fit to go farther," he said; "you're ill."
+
+"Ill!" replied Mr. Treffry; "not a bit of it!"
+
+Harz looked at him, then catching up the bucket, made off in search of
+water.  When he came back the horses were feeding from an india-rubber
+trough slung to the pole; they stretched their heads towards the bucket,
+pushing aside each other's noses.
+
+The flame in the east had died, but the tops of the larches were bathed
+in a gentle radiance; and the peaks ahead were like amber. Everywhere
+were threads of water, threads of snow, and little threads of dewy green,
+glistening like gossamer.
+
+Mr. Treffry called out: "Give me your arm, Mr. Harz; I'd like to shake
+the reefs out of me.  When one comes to stand over at the knees, it's no
+such easy matter, eh?"  He groaned as he put his foot down, and gripped
+the young man's shoulder as in a vise.  Presently he lowered himself on
+to a stone.
+
+"'All over now!' as Chris would say when she was little; nasty temper she
+had too--kick and scream on the floor!  Never lasted long though....
+'Kiss her! take her up! show her the pictures!'  Amazing fond of pictures
+Chris was!"  He looked dubiously at Harz; then took a long pull at his
+flask.  "What would the doctor say?  Whisky at four in the morning!  Well! 
+Thank the Lord Doctors aren't always with us."  Sitting on the stone,
+with one hand pressed against his side, and the other tilting up the
+flask, he was grey from head to foot.
+
+Harz had dropped on to another stone.  He, too, was worn out by the
+excitement and fatigue, coming so soon after his illness.  His head was
+whirling, and the next thing he remembered was a tree walking at him,
+turning round, yellow from the roots up; everything seemed yellow, even
+his own feet.  Somebody opposite to him was jumping up and down, a grey
+bear--with a hat--Mr. Treffry!  He cried: "Ha-alloo!"  And the figure
+seemed to fall and disappear....
+
+When Harz came to himself a hand was pouring liquor into his mouth, and a
+wet cloth was muffled round his brows; a noise of humming and hoofs
+seemed familiar.  Mr. Treffry loomed up alongside, smoking a cigar; he
+was muttering: "A low trick, Paul--bit of my mind!"  Then, as if a
+curtain had been snatched aside, the vision before Harz cleared again.
+The carriage was winding between uneven, black-eaved houses, past
+doorways from which goats and cows were coming out, with bells on their
+necks.  Black-eyed boys, and here and there a drowsy man with a long,
+cherry-stemmed pipe between his teeth, stood aside to stare.
+
+Mr. Treffry seemed to have taken a new lease of strength; like an angry
+old dog, he stared from side to side.  "My bone!" he seemed to say:
+"let's see who's going to touch it!"
+
+The last house vanished, glowing in the early sunshine, and the carriage
+with its trail of dust became entombed once more in the gloom of tall
+trees, along a road that cleft a wilderness of mossgrown rocks, and dewy
+stems, through which the sun had not yet driven paths.
+
+Dominique came round to them, bearing appearance of one who has seen
+better days, and a pot of coffee brewed on a spirit lamp.  Breakfast--he
+said--was served!
+
+The ears of the horses were twitching with fatigue.  Mr. Treffry said
+sadly: "If I can see this through, you can.  Get on, my beauties!"
+
+As soon as the sun struck through the trees, Mr. Treffry's strength ebbed
+again.  He seemed to suffer greatly; but did not complain. They had
+reached the pass at last, and the unchecked sunlight was streaming down
+with a blinding glare.
+
+"Jump up!" Mr. Treffry cried out.  "We'll make a finish of it!" and he
+gave the reins a jerk.  The horses flung up their heads, and the bleak
+pass with its circling crown of jagged peaks soon slipped away.
+
+Between the houses on the very top, they passed at a slow trot; and soon
+began slanting down the other side.  Mr. Treffry brought them to a halt
+where a mule track joined the road.
+
+"That's all I can do for you; you'd better leave me here," he said. "Keep
+this track down to the river--go south--you'll be in Italy in a couple of
+hours.  Get rail at Feltre.  Money?  Yes?  Well!"  He held out his hand;
+Harz gripped it.
+
+"Give her up, eh?"
+
+Harz shook his head.
+
+"No?  Then it's 'pull devil, pull baker,' between us.  Good-bye, and good
+luck to you!"  And mustering his strength for a last attempt at dignity,
+Mr. Treffry gathered up the reins.
+
+Harz watched his figure huddled again beneath the hood.  The carriage
+moved slowly away.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+At Villa Rubein people went about, avoiding each other as if detected in
+conspiracy.  Miss Naylor, who for an inscrutable reason had put on her
+best frock, a purple, relieved at the chest with bird's-eye blue,
+conveyed an impression of trying to count a chicken which ran about too
+fast.  When Greta asked what she had lost she was heard to mutter:
+"Mr.--Needlecase."
+
+Christian, with big circles round her eyes, sat silent at her little
+table.  She had had no sleep.  Herr Paul coming into the room about noon
+gave her a furtive look and went out again; after this he went to his
+bedroom, took off all his clothes, flung them passionately one by one
+into a footbath, and got into bed.
+
+"I might be a criminal!" he muttered to himself, while the buttons of his
+garments rattled on the bath.
+
+"Am I her father?  Have I authority?  Do I know the world?  Bssss!  I
+might be a frog!"
+
+Mrs. Decie, having caused herself to be announced, found him smoking a
+cigar, and counting the flies on the ceiling.
+
+"If you have really done this, Paul," she said in a restrained voice,
+"you have done a very unkind thing, and what is worse, you have made us
+all ridiculous.  But perhaps you have not done it?"
+
+"I have done it," cried Herr Paul, staring dreadfully: "I have done it, I
+tell you, I have done it--"
+
+"Very well, you have done it--and why, pray?  What conceivable good was
+there in it?  I suppose you know that Nicholas has driven him to the
+frontier?  Nicholas is probably more dead than alive by this time; you
+know his state of health."
+
+Herr Paul's fingers ploughed up his beard.
+
+"Nicholas is mad--and the girl is mad!  Leave me alone!  I will not be
+made angry; do you understand?  I will not be worried--I am not fit for
+it."  His prominent brown eyes stared round the room, as if looking for a
+way of escape.
+
+"If I may prophesy, you will be worried a good deal," said Mrs. Decie
+coldly, "before you have finished with this affair."
+
+The anxious, uncertain glance which Herr Paul gave her at these words
+roused an unwilling feeling of compunction in her.
+
+"You are not made for the outraged father of the family," she said. "You
+had better give up the attitude, Paul; it does not suit you."
+
+Herr Paul groaned.
+
+"I suppose it is not your fault," she added.
+
+Just then the door was opened, and Fritz, with an air of saying the right
+thing, announced:
+
+"A gentleman of the police to see you, sir."
+
+Herr Paul bounded.
+
+"Keep him out!" he cried.
+
+Mrs. Decie, covering her lips, disappeared with a rustling of silk; in
+her place stood a stiff man in blue....
+
+Thus the morning dragged itself away without any one being able to settle
+to anything, except Herr Paul, who was settled in bed.  As was fitting in
+a house that had lost its soul, meals were neglected, even by the dog.
+
+About three o'clock a telegram came for Christian, containing these
+words: "All right; self returns to-morrow.  Treffry."  After reading it
+she put on her hat and went out, followed closely by Greta, who, when she
+thought that she would not be sent away, ran up from behind and pulled
+her by the sleeve.
+
+"Let me come, Chris--I shall not talk."
+
+The two girls walked on together.  When they had gone some distance
+Christian said:
+
+"I'm going to get his pictures, and take charge of them!"
+
+"Oh!" said Greta timidly.
+
+"If you are afraid," said Christian, "you had better go back home."
+
+"I am not afraid, Chris," said Greta meekly.
+
+Neither girl spoke again till they had taken the path along the wall.
+Over the tops of the vines the heat was dancing.
+
+"The sun-fairies are on the vines!" murmured Greta to herself.
+
+At the old house they stopped, and Christian, breathing quickly, pushed
+the door; it was immovable.
+
+"Look!" said Greta, "they have screwed it!"  She pointed out three screws
+with a rosy-tipped forefinger.
+
+Christian stamped her foot.
+
+"We mustn't stand here," she said; "let's sit on that bench and think."
+
+"Yes," murmured Greta, "let us think."  Dangling an end of hair, she
+regarded Christian with her wide blue eyes.
+
+"I can't make any plan," Christian cried at last, "while you stare at me
+like that."
+
+"I was thinking," said Greta humbly, "if they have screwed it up, perhaps
+we shall screw it down again; there is the big screw-driver of Fritz."
+
+"It would take a long time; people are always passing."
+
+"People do not pass in the evening," murmured Greta, "because the gate at
+our end is always shut."
+
+Christian rose.
+
+"We will come this evening, just before the gate is shut."
+
+"But, Chris, how shall we get back again?"
+
+"I don't know; I mean to have the pictures."
+
+"It is not a high gate," murmured Greta.
+
+After dinner the girls went to their room, Greta bearing with her the big
+screw-driver of Fritz.  At dusk they slipped downstairs and out.
+
+They arrived at the old house, and stood, listening, in the shadow of the
+doorway.  The only sounds were those of distant barking dogs, and of the
+bugles at the barracks.
+
+"Quick!" whispered Christian; and Greta, with all the strength of her
+small hands, began to turn the screws.  It was some time before they
+yielded; the third was very obstinate, till Christian took the
+screw-driver and passionately gave the screw a starting twist.
+
+"It is like a pig--that one," said Greta, rubbing her wrists mournfully.
+
+The opened door revealed the gloom of the dank rooms and twisting
+staircase, then fell to behind them with a clatter.
+
+Greta gave a little scream, and caught her sister's dress.
+
+"It is dark," she gasped; "O Chris! it is dark!"
+
+Christian groped for the bottom stair, and Greta felt her arm shaking.
+
+"Suppose there is a man to keep guard!  O Chris! suppose there are bats!"
+
+"You are a baby!" Christian answered in a trembling voice.  "You had
+better go home!"
+
+Greta choked a little in the dark.
+
+"I am--not--going home, but I'm afraid of bats.  O Chris! aren't you
+afraid?"
+
+"Yes," said Christian, "but I'm going to have the pictures."
+
+Her cheeks were burning; she was trembling all over.  Having found the
+bottom step she began to mount with Greta clinging to her skirts.
+
+The haze above inspired a little courage in the child, who, of all
+things, hated darkness.  The blanket across the doorway of the loft had
+been taken down, there was nothing to veil the empty room.
+
+"Nobody here, you see," said Christian.
+
+"No-o," whispered Greta, running to the window, and clinging to the wall,
+like one of the bats she dreaded.
+
+"But they have been here!" cried Christian angrily.  "They have broken
+this."  She pointed to the fragments of a plaster cast that had been
+thrown down.
+
+Out of the corner she began to pull the canvases set in rough, wooden
+frames, dragging them with all her strength.
+
+"Help me!" she cried; "it will be dark directly."
+
+They collected a heap of sketches and three large pictures, piling them
+before the window, and peering at them in the failing light.
+
+Greta said ruefully:
+
+"O Chris! they are heavy ones; we shall never carry them, and the gate is
+shut now!"
+
+Christian took a pointed knife from the table.
+
+"I shall cut them out of the frames," she said.  "Listen!  What's that?"
+
+It was the sound of whistling, which stopped beneath the window.  The
+girls, clasping each other's hands, dropped on their knees.
+
+"Hallo!" cried a voice.
+
+Greta crept to the window, and, placing her face level with the floor,
+peered over.
+
+"It is only Dr. Edmund; he doesn't know, then," she whispered; "I shall
+call him; he is going away!" cried Christian catching her sister's 
+--"Don't!" cried Christian catching her sister's dress.
+
+"He would help us," Greta said reproachfully, "and it would not be so
+dark if he were here."
+
+Christian's cheeks were burning.
+
+"I don't choose," she said, and began handling the pictures, feeling
+their edges with her knife.
+
+"Chris!  Suppose anybody came?"
+
+"The door is screwed," Christian answered absently.
+
+"O Chris!  We screwed it unscrewed; anybody who wishes shall come!"
+
+Christian, leaning her chin in her hands, gazed at her thoughtfully.
+
+"It will take a long time to cut these pictures out carefully; or,
+perhaps I can get them out without cutting.  You must screw me up and go
+home.  In the morning you must come early, when the gate is open, unscrew
+me again, and help carry the pictures."
+
+Greta did not answer at once.  At last she shook her head violently.
+
+"I am afraid," she gasped.
+
+"We can't both stay here all night," said Christian; "if any one comes to
+our room there will be nobody to answer.  We can't lift these pictures
+over the gate.  One of us must go back; you can climb over the
+gate--there is nothing to be afraid of"
+
+Greta pressed her hands together.
+
+"Do you want the pictures badly, Chris?"
+
+Christian nodded.
+
+"Very badly?"
+
+"Yes--yes--yes!"
+
+Greta remained sitting where she was, shivering violently, as a little
+animal shivers when it scents danger.  At last she rose.
+
+"I am going," she said in a despairing voice.  At the doorway she turned.
+
+"If Miss Naylor shall ask me where you are, Chris, I shall be telling her
+a story."
+
+Christian started.
+
+"I forgot that--O Greta, I am sorry!  I will go instead."
+
+Greta took another step--a quick one.
+
+"I shall die if I stay here alone," she said; "I can tell her that you
+are in bed; you must go to bed here, Chris, so it shall be true after
+all."
+
+Christian threw her arms about her.
+
+"I am so sorry, darling; I wish I could go instead.  But if you have to
+tell a lie, I would tell a straight one."
+
+"Would you?" said Greta doubtfully.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I think," said Greta to herself, beginning to descend the stairs, "I
+think I will tell it in my way."  She shuddered and went on groping in
+the darkness.
+
+Christian listened for the sound of the screws.  It came slowly,
+threatening her with danger and solitude.
+
+Sinking on her knees she began to work at freeing the canvas of a
+picture.  Her heart throbbed distressfully; at the stir of wind-breath or
+any distant note of clamour she stopped, and held her breathing.  No
+sounds came near.  She toiled on, trying only to think that she was at
+the very spot where last night his arms had been round her.  How long ago
+it seemed!  She was full of vague terror, overmastered by the darkness,
+dreadfully alone.  The new glow of resolution seemed suddenly to have
+died down in her heart, and left her cold.
+
+She would never be fit to be his wife, if at the first test her courage
+failed!  She set her teeth; and suddenly she felt a kind of exultation,
+as if she too were entering into life, were knowing something within
+herself that she had never known before.  Her fingers hurt, and the pain
+even gave pleasure; her cheeks were burning; her breath came fast.  They
+could not stop her now!  This feverish task in darkness was her baptism
+into life.  She finished; and rolling the pictures very carefully, tied
+them with cord.  She had done something for him!  Nobody could take that
+from her!  She had a part of him!  This night had made him hers!  They
+might do their worst!  She lay down on his mattress and soon fell
+asleep....
+
+She was awakened by Scruff's tongue against her face.  Greta was standing
+by her side.
+
+"Wake up, Chris!  The gate is open!"
+
+In the cold early light the child seemed to glow with warmth and colour;
+her eyes were dancing.
+
+"I am not afraid now; Scruff and I sat up all night, to catch the
+morning--I--think it was fun; and O Chris!" she ended with a rueful gleam
+in her eyes, "I told it."
+
+Christian hugged her.
+
+"Come--quick!  There is nobody about.  Are those the pictures?"
+
+Each supporting an end, the girls carried the bundle downstairs, and set
+out with their corpse-like burden along the wall-path between the river
+and the vines.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+Hidden by the shade of rose-bushes Greta lay stretched at length, cheek
+on arm, sleeping the sleep of the unrighteous.  Through the flowers the
+sun flicked her parted lips with kisses, and spilled the withered petals
+on her.  In a denser islet of shade, Scruff lay snapping at a fly.  His
+head lolled drowsily in the middle of a snap, and snapped in the middle
+of a loll.
+
+At three o'clock Miss Naylor too came out, carrying a basket and pair of
+scissors.  Lifting her skirts to avoid the lakes of water left by the
+garden hose, she stopped in front of a rose-bush, and began to snip off
+the shrivelled flowers.  The little lady's silvered head and thin, brown
+face sustained the shower of sunlight unprotected, and had a gentle
+dignity in their freedom.
+
+Presently, as the scissors flittered in and out of the leaves, she, began
+talking to herself.
+
+"If girls were more like what they used to be, this would not have
+happened.  Perhaps we don't understand; it's very easy to forget."
+Burying her nose and lips in a rose, she sniffed.  "Poor dear girl!  It's
+such a pity his father is--a--"
+
+"A farmer," said a sleepy voice behind the rosebush.
+
+Miss Naylor leaped.  "Greta!  How you startled me!  A farmer--that is
+--an--an agriculturalist!"
+
+"A farmer with vineyards--he told us, and he is not ashamed.  Why is it a
+pity, Miss Naylor?"
+
+Miss Naylor's lips looked very thin.
+
+"For many reasons, of which you know nothing."
+
+"That is what you always say," pursued the sleepy voice; "and that is
+why, when I am to be married, there shall also be a pity."
+
+"Greta!" Miss Naylor cried, "it is not proper for a girl of your age to
+talk like that."
+
+"Why?" said Greta.  "Because it is the truth?"
+
+Miss Naylor made no reply to this, but vexedly cut off a sound rose,
+which she hastily picked up and regarded with contrition.  Greta spoke
+again:
+
+"Chris said: 'I have got the pictures, I shall tell her'; but I shall
+tell you instead, because it was I that told the story."
+
+Miss Naylor stared, wrinkling her nose, and holding the scissors wide
+apart....
+
+"Last night," said Greta slowly, "I and Chris went to his studio and took
+his pictures, and so, because the gate was shut, I came back to tell it;
+and when you asked me where Chris was, I told it; because she was in the
+studio all night, and I and Scruff sat up all night, and in the morning
+we brought the pictures, and hid them under our beds, and that is
+why--we--are--so--sleepy."
+
+Over the rose-bush Miss Naylor peered down at her; and though she was
+obliged to stand on tiptoe this did not altogether destroy her dignity.
+
+"I am surprised at you, Greta; I am surprised at Christian, more
+surprised at Christian.  The world seems upside down."
+
+Greta, a sunbeam entangled in her hair, regarded her with inscrutable,
+innocent eyes.
+
+"When you were a girl, I think you would be sure to be in love," she
+murmured drowsily.
+
+Miss Naylor, flushing deeply, snipped off a particularly healthy bud.
+
+"And so, because you are not married, I think--"
+
+The scissors hissed.
+
+Greta nestled down again.  "I think it is wicked to cut off all the good
+buds," she said, and shut her eyes.
+
+Miss Naylor continued to peer across the rosebush; but her thin face,
+close to the glistening leaves, had become oddly soft, pink, and girlish.
+At a deeper breath from Greta, the little lady put down her basket, and
+began to pace the lawn, followed dubiously by Scruff.  It was thus that
+Christian came on them.
+
+Miss Naylor slipped her arm into the girl's and though she made no sound,
+her lips kept opening and shutting, like the beak of a bird contemplating
+a worm.
+
+Christian spoke first:
+
+"Miss Naylor, I want to tell you please--"
+
+"Oh, my dear!  I know; Greta has been in the confessional before you."
+She gave the girl's arm a squeeze.  "Isn't it a lovely day?  Did you ever
+see 'Five Fingers' look so beautiful?"  And she pointed to the great
+peaks of the Funffingerspitze glittering in the sun like giant crystals.
+
+"I like them better with clouds about them."
+
+"Well," agreed Miss Naylor nervously, "they certainly are nicer with
+clouds about them.  They look almost hot and greasy, don't they.... My
+dear!" she went on, giving Christian's arm a dozen little squeezes, "we
+all of us--that is, we all of us--"
+
+Christian turned her eyes away.
+
+"My dear," Miss Naylor tried again, "I am far--that is, I mean, to all of
+us at some time or another--and then you see--well--it is hard!"
+
+Christian kissed the gloved hand resting on her arm.  Miss Naylor bobbed
+her head; a tear trickled off her nose.
+
+"Do let us wind your skein of woof!" she said with resounding gaiety.
+
+Some half-hour later Mrs. Decie called Christian to her room.
+
+"My dear!" she said; "come here a minute; I have a message for you."
+
+Christian went with an odd, set look about her mouth.
+
+Her aunt was sitting, back to the light, tapping a bowl of goldfish with
+the tip of a polished finger-nail; the room was very cool.  She held a
+letter out.  "Your uncle is not coming back tonight."
+
+Christian took the letter.  It was curtly worded, in a thin, toppling
+hand:
+
+"DEAR CON--Can't get back to-night.  Sending Dominique for things. Tell
+Christian to come over with him for night if possible.--Yr. aff. brother, 
+     NICLS. TREFFRY."
+
+"Dominique has a carriage here," said Mrs. Decie.  "You will have nice
+time to catch the train.  Give my love to your uncle.  You must take
+Barbi with you, I insist on that."  She rose from her chair and held
+Christian's hand: "My dear!  You look very tired--very!  Almost ill. I
+don't like to see you look like that.  Come!"  She thrust her pale lips
+forward, and kissed the girl's paler cheek.
+
+Then as Christian left the room she sank back in her chair, with creases
+in her forehead, and began languidly to cut a magazine. 'Poor Christian!'
+she thought, 'how hardly she does take it!  I am sorry for her; but
+perhaps it's just as well, as things are turning out.  Psychologically it
+is interesting!'
+
+Christian found her things packed, and the two servants waiting.  In a
+few minutes they were driving to the station.  She made Dominique take
+the seat opposite.
+
+"Well?" she asked him.
+
+Dominique's eyebrows twitched, he smiled deprecatingly.
+
+"M'mselle, Mr. Treffry told me to hold my tongue."
+
+"But you can tell me, Dominique; Barbi can't understand."
+
+"To you, then, M'mselle," said Dominique, as one who accepts his fate;
+"to you, then, who will doubtless forget all that I shall tell you--my
+master is not well; he has terrible pain here; he has a cough; he is not
+well at all; not well at all."
+
+A feeling of dismay seized on the girl.
+
+"We were a caravan for all that night," Dominique resumed.  "In the
+morning by noon we ceased to be a caravan; Signor Harz took a mule path;
+he will be in Italy--certainly in Italy.  As for us, we stayed at San
+Martino, and my master went to bed.  It was time; I had much trouble with
+his clothes, his legs were swollen.  In the afternoon came a signor of
+police, on horseback, red and hot; I persuaded him that we were at
+Paneveggio, but as we were not, he came back angry--Mon Die! as angry as
+a cat.  It was not good to meet him--when he was with my master I was
+outside.  There was much noise.  I do not know what passed, but at last
+the signor came out through the door, and went away in a hurry." 
+Dominique's features were fixed in a sardonic grin; he rubbed the palm of
+one hand with the finger of the other. "Mr. Treffry made me give him
+whisky afterwards, and he had no money to pay the bill--that I know
+because I paid it.  Well, M'mselle, to-day he would be dressed and very
+slowly we came as far as Auer; there he could do no more, so went to bed. 
+He is not well at all."
+
+Christian was overwhelmed by forebodings; the rest of the journey was
+made in silence, except when Barbi, a country girl, filled with the
+delirium of railway travel, sighed: "Ach! gnadige Fraulein!" looking at
+Christian with pleasant eyes.
+
+At once, on arriving at the little hostel, Christian went to see her
+uncle.  His room was darkened, and smelt of beeswax.
+
+"Ah!  Chris," he said, "glad to see you."
+
+In a blue flannel gown, with a rug over his feet, he was lying on a couch
+lengthened artificially by chairs; the arm he reached out issued many
+inches from its sleeve, and showed the corded veins of the wrist.
+Christian, settling his pillows, looked anxiously into his eyes.
+
+"I'm not quite the thing, Chris," said Mr. Treffry.  "Somehow, not quite
+the thing.  I'll come back with you to-morrow."
+
+"Let me send for Dr. Dawney, Uncle?"
+
+"No--no!  Plenty of him when I get home.  Very good young fellow, as
+doctors go, but I can't stand his puddin's--slops and puddin's, and all
+that trumpery medicine on the top.  Send me Dominique, my dear--I'll put
+myself to rights a bit!"  He fingered his unshaven cheek, and clutched
+the gown together on his chest.  "Got this from the landlord.  When you
+come back we'll have a little talk!"
+
+He was asleep when she came into the room an hour later.  Watching his
+uneasy breathing, she wondered what it was that he was going to say.
+
+He looked ill!  And suddenly she realised that her thoughts were not of
+him....  When she was little he would take her on his back; he had built
+cocked hats for her and paper boats; had taught her to ride; slid her
+between his knees; given her things without number; and taken his payment
+in kisses.  And now he was ill, and she was not thinking of him!  He had
+been all that was most dear to her, yet before her eyes would only come
+the vision of another.
+
+Mr. Treffry woke suddenly.  "Not been asleep, have I?  The beds here are
+infernal hard."
+
+"Uncle Nic, won't you give me news of him?"
+
+Mr. Treffry looked at her, and Christian could not bear that look.
+
+"He's safe into Italy; they aren't very keen after him, it's so long ago;
+I squared 'em pretty easily.  Now, look here, Chris!"
+
+Christian came close; he took her hand.
+
+"I'd like to see you pull yourself together.  'Tisn't so much the
+position; 'tisn't so much the money; because after all there's always
+mine--"  Christian shook her head.  "But," he went on with shaky
+emphasis, "there's the difference of blood, and that's a serious thing;
+and there's this anarch--this political affair; and there's the sort of
+life, an' that's a serious thing; but--what I'm coming to is this,
+Chris--there's the man!"
+
+Christian drew away her hand.  Mr. Treffry went on:
+
+"Ah! yes.  I'm an old chap and fond of you, but I must speak out what I
+think.  He's got pluck, he's strong, he's in earnest; but he's got a
+damned hot temper, he's an egotist, and--he's not the man for you. If you
+marry him, as sure as I lie here, you'll be sorry for it. You're not your
+father's child for nothing; nice fellow as ever lived, but soft as
+butter.  If you take this chap, it'll be like mixing earth and ironstone,
+and they don't blend!"  He dropped his head back on the pillows, and
+stretching out his hand, repeated wistfully: "Take my word for it, my
+dear, he's not the man for you."
+
+Christian, staring at the wall beyond, said quietly: "I can't take any
+one's word for that."
+
+"Ah!" muttered Mr. Treffry, "you're obstinate enough, but obstinacy isn't
+strength.
+
+"You'll give up everything to him, you'll lick his shoes; and you'll
+never play anything but second fiddle in his life.  He'll always be first
+with himself, he and his work, or whatever he calls painting pictures;
+and some day you'll find that out.  You won't like it, and I don't like
+it for you, Chris, and that's flat."
+
+He wiped his brow where the perspiration stood in beads.
+
+Christian said: "You don't understand; you don't believe in him; you
+don't see!  If I do come after his work--if I do give him everything, and
+he can't give all back--I don't care!  He'll give what he can; I don't
+want any more.  If you're afraid of the life for me, uncle, if you think
+it'll be too hard--"
+
+Mr. Treffry bowed his head.  "I do, Chris."
+
+"Well, then, I hate to be wrapped in cotton wool; I want to breathe. If I
+come to grief, it's my own affair; nobody need mind."
+
+Mr. Treffry's fingers sought his beard.  "Ah! yes.  Just so!"
+
+Christian sank on her knees.
+
+"Oh!  Uncle!  I'm a selfish beast!"
+
+Mr. Treffry laid his hand against her cheek.  "I think I could do with a
+nap," he said.
+
+Swallowing a lump in her throat, she stole out of the room.
+
+By a stroke of Fate Mr. Treffry's return to Villa Rubein befell at the
+psychological moment when Herr Paul, in a suit of rather too bright blue,
+was starting for Vienna.
+
+As soon as he saw the carriage appear between the poplars he became as
+pensive as a boy caught in the act of stealing cherries.  Pitching his
+hatbox to Fritz, he recovered himself, however, in time to whistle while
+Mr. Treffry was being assisted into the house.  Having forgotten his
+anger, he was only anxious now to smooth out its after effects; in the
+glances he cast at Christian and his brother-in-law there was a kind of
+shamed entreaty which seemed to say: "For goodness' sake, don't worry me
+about that business again!  Nothing's come of it, you see!"
+
+He came forward: "Ah!  Mon cher!  So you return; I put off my departure,
+then.  Vienna must wait for me--that poor Vienna!"
+
+But noticing the extreme feebleness of Mr. Treffry's advance, he
+exclaimed with genuine concern:
+
+"What is it?  You're ill?  My God!"  After disappearing for five minutes,
+he came back with a whitish liquid in a glass.
+
+"There!" he said, "good for the gout--for a cough--for everything!"
+
+Mr. Treffry sniffed, drained the glass, and sucked his moustache.
+
+"Ah!" he said.  "No doubt!  But it's uncommonly like gin, Paul." Then
+turning to Christian, he said: "Shake hands, you two!"
+
+Christian looked from one to the other, and at last held out her hand to
+Herr Paul, who brushed it with his moustache, gazing after her as she
+left the room with a queer expression.
+
+"My dear!" he began, "you support her in this execrable matter?  You
+forget my position, you make me ridiculous.  I have been obliged to go to
+bed in my own house, absolutely to go to bed, because I was in danger of
+becoming funny."
+
+"Look here, Paul!" Mr. Treffry said gruffly, "if any one's to bully
+Chris, it's I."
+
+"In that case," returned Herr Paul sarcastically, "I will go to Vienna."
+
+"You may go to the devil!" said Mr. Treffry; "and I'll tell you what--in
+my opinion it was low to set the police on that young chap; a low, dirty
+trick."
+
+Herr Paul divided his beard carefully in two, took his seat on the very
+edge of an arm-chair, and placing his hands on his parted knees, said:
+
+"I have regretted it since--mais, que diable!  He called me a coward--it
+is very hot weather!--there were drinks at the Kurhaus--I am her
+guardian--the affair is a very beastly one--there were more drinks--I was
+a little enfin!"  He shrugged his shoulders.  "Adieu, my dear; I shall be
+some time in Vienna; I need rest!"  He rose and went to the door; then he
+turned, and waved his cigar.  "Adieu!  Be good; get well!  I will buy you
+some cigars up there."  And going out, he shut the door on any
+possibility of answer.
+
+Mr. Treffry lay back amongst his cushions.  The clock ticked; pigeons
+cooed on the veranda; a door opened in the distance, and for a moment a
+treble voice was heard.  Mr. Treffry's head drooped forward; across his
+face, gloomy and rugged, fell a thin line of sunlight.
+
+The clock suddenly stopped ticking, and outside, in mysterious accord,
+the pigeons rose with a great fluttering of wings, and flew off'.  Mr.
+Treffry made a startled, heavy movement.  He tried to get on to his feet
+and reach the bell, but could not, and sat on the side of the couch with
+drops of sweat rolling off his forehead, and his hands clawing his chest.
+There was no sound at all throughout the house.  He looked about him, and
+tried to call, but again could not. He tried once more to reach the bell,
+and, failing, sat still, with a thought that made him cold.
+
+"I'm done for," he muttered.  "By George!  I believe I'm done for this
+time!"  A voice behind him said:
+
+"Can we have a look at you, sir?"
+
+"Ah!  Doctor, bear a hand, there's a good fellow."
+
+Dawney propped him against the cushions, and loosened his shirt.
+Receiving no answer to his questions, he stepped alarmed towards the
+bell.  Mr. Treffry stopped him with a sign.
+
+"Let's hear what you make of me," he said.
+
+When Dawney had examined him, he asked:
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well," answered Dawney slowly, "there's trouble, of course."
+
+Mr. Treffry broke out with a husky whisper: "Out with it, Doctor; don't
+humbug me."
+
+Dawney bent down, and took his wrist.
+
+"I don't know how you've got into this state, sir," he said with the
+brusqueness of emotion.  "You're in a bad way.  It's the old trouble; and
+you know what that means as well as I.  All I can tell you is, I'm going
+to have a big fight with it.  It shan't be my fault, there's my hand on
+that."
+
+Mr. Treffry lay with his eyes fixed on the ceiling; at last he said:
+
+"I want to live."
+
+"Yes--yes."
+
+"I feel better now; don't make a fuss about it.  It'll be very awkward if
+I die just now.  Patch me up, for the sake of my niece."
+
+Dawney nodded.  "One minute, there are a few things I want," and he went
+out.
+
+A moment later Greta stole in on tiptoe.  She bent over till her hair
+touched Mr. Treffry's face.
+
+"Uncle Nic!" she whispered.  He opened his eyes.
+
+"Hallo, Greta!"
+
+"I have come to bring you my love, Uncle Nic, and to say good-bye. Papa
+says that I and Scruff and Miss Naylor are going to Vienna with him; we
+have had to pack in half an hour; in five minutes we are going to Vienna,
+and it is my first visit there, Uncle Nic."
+
+"To Vienna!" Mr. Treffry repeated slowly.  "Don't have a guide, Greta;
+they're humbugs."
+
+"No, Uncle Nic," said Greta solemnly.
+
+"Draw the curtains, old girl, let's have a look at you.  Why, you're as
+smart as ninepence!"
+
+"Yes," said Greta with a sigh, touching the buttons of her cape, "because
+I am going to Vienna; but I am sorry to leave you, Uncle Nic."
+
+"Are you, Greta?"
+
+"But you will have Chris, and you are fonder of Chris than of me, Uncle
+Nic."
+
+"I've known her longer."
+
+"Perhaps when you've known me as long as Chris, you shall be as fond of
+me."
+
+"When I've known you as long--may be."
+
+"While I am gone, Uncle Nic, you are to get well, you are not very well,
+you know."
+
+"What put that into your head?"
+
+"If you were well you would be smoking a cigar--it is just three o'clock. 
+This kiss is for myself, this is for Scruff, and this is for Miss
+Naylor."
+
+She stood upright again; a tremulous, joyful gravity was in her eyes and
+on her lips.
+
+"Good-bye, my dear; take care of yourselves; and don't you have a guide,
+they're humbugs."
+
+"No, Uncle Nic.  There is the carriage!  To Vienna, Uncle Nic!"  The dead
+gold of her hair gleamed in the doorway.  Mr. Treffry raised himself upon
+his elbow.
+
+"Give us one more, for luck!"
+
+Greta ran back.
+
+"I love you very much!" she said, and kissing him, backed slowly, then,
+turning, flew out like a bird.
+
+Mr. Treffry fixed his eyes on the shut door.
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+After many days of hot, still weather, the wind had come, and whirled the
+dust along the parched roads.  The leaves were all astir, like tiny
+wings.  Round Villa Rubein the pigeons cooed uneasily, all the other
+birds were silent.  Late in the afternoon Christian came out on the
+veranda, reading a letter:
+
+"DEAR CHRIS,--We are here now six days, and it is a very large place with
+many churches.  In the first place then we have been to a great many, but
+the nicest of them is not St. Stephan's Kirche, it is another, but I do
+not remember the name.  Papa is out nearly all the night; he says he is
+resting here, so he is not able to come to the churches with us, but I do
+not think he rests very much.  The day before yesterday we, that is,
+Papa, I, and Miss Naylor, went to an exhibition of pictures.  It was
+quite beautiful and interesting (Miss Naylor says it is not right to say
+'quite' beautiful, but I do not know what other word could mean 'quite'
+except the word 'quite,' because it is not exceedingly and not
+extremely).  And O Chris! there was one picture painted by him; it was
+about a ship without masts--Miss Naylor says it is a barge, but I do not
+know what a barge is--on fire, and, floating down a river in a fog.  I
+think it is extremely beautiful.  Miss Naylor says it is very
+impressionistick--what is that? and Papa said 'Puh!' but he did not know
+it was painted by Herr Harz, so I did not tell him.
+
+"There has also been staying at our hotel that Count Sarelli who came one
+evening to dinner at our house, but he is gone away now.  He sat all day
+in the winter garden reading, and at night he went out with Papa.  Miss
+Naylor says he is unhappy, but I think he does not take enough exercise;
+and O Chris! one day he said to me, 'That is your sister, Mademoiselle,
+that young lady in the white dress?  Does she always wear white dresses?'
+and I said to him: 'It is not always a white dress; in the picture, it is
+green, because the picture is called "Spring.'  But I did not tell him
+the colours of all your dresses because he looked so tired.  Then he said
+to me: 'She is very charming.'  So I tell you this, Chris, because I
+think you shall like to know.  Scruff' has a sore toe; it is because he
+has eaten too much meat.
+
+"It is not nice without you, Chris, and Miss Naylor says I am improving
+my mind here, but I do not think it shall improve very much, because at
+night I like it always best, when the shops are lighted and the carriages
+are driving past; then I am wanting to dance.  The first night Papa said
+he would take me to the theatre, but yesterday he said it was not good
+for me; perhaps to-morrow he shall think it good for me again.
+
+"Yesterday we have been in the Prater, and saw many people, and some that
+Papa knew; and then came the most interesting part of all, sitting under
+the trees in the rain for two hours because we could not get a carriage
+(very exciting).
+
+"There is one young lady here, only she is not any longer very young, who
+knew Papa when he was a boy.  I like her very much; she shall soon know
+me quite to the bottom and is very kind.
+
+"The ill husband of Cousin Teresa who went with us to Meran and lost her
+umbrella and Dr. Edmund was so sorry about it, has been very much worse,
+so she is not here but in Baden.  I wrote to her but have no news, so I
+do not know whether he is still living or not, at any rate he can't get
+well again so soon (and I don't think he ever shall).  I think as the
+weather is very warm you and Uncle Nic are sitting much out of doors.  I
+am sending presents to you all in a wooden box and screwed very firm, so
+you shall have to use again the big screw-driver of Fritz.  For Aunt
+Constance, photographs; for Uncle Nic, a green bird on a stand with a
+hole in the back of the bird to put his ashes in; it is a good green and
+not expensif please tell him, because he does not like expensif presents
+(Miss Naylor says the bird has an inquiring eye--it is a parrat); for
+you, a little brooch of turquoise because I like them best; for Dr.
+Edmund a machine to weigh medicines in because he said he could not get a
+good one in Botzen; this is a very good one, the shopman told me so, and
+is the most expensif of all the presents--so that is all my money, except
+two gulden.  If Papa shall give me some more, I shall buy for Miss Naylor
+a parasol, because it is useful and the handle of hers is 'wobbley' (that
+is one of Dr. Edmund's words and I like it).
+
+"Good-bye for this time.  Greta sends you her kiss.
+
+"P. S.--Miss Naylor has read all this letter (except about the parasol)
+and there are several things she did not want me to put, so I have copied
+it without the things, but at the last I have kept that copy myself, so
+that is why this is smudgy and several words are not spelt well, but all
+the things are here."
+
+Christian read, smiling, but to finish it was like dropping a talisman,
+and her face clouded.  A sudden draught blew her hair about, and from
+within, Mr. Treffry's cough mingled with the soughing of the wind; the
+sky was fast blackening.  She went indoors, took a pen and began to
+write:
+
+"MY FRIEND,--Why haven't you written to me?  It is so, long to wait.
+Uncle says you are in Italy--it is dreadful not to know for certain. I
+feel you would have written if you could; and I can't help thinking of
+all the things that may have happened.  I am unhappy.  Uncle Nic is ill;
+he will not confess it, that is his way; but he is very ill. Though
+perhaps you will never see this, I must write down all my thoughts.
+Sometimes I feel that I am brutal to be always thinking about you,
+scheming how to be with you again, when he is lying there so ill.  How
+good he has always been to me; it is terrible that love should pull one
+apart so.  Surely love should be beautiful, and peaceful, instead of
+filling me with bitter, wicked thoughts.  I love you--and I love him; I
+feel as if I were torn in two.  Why should it be so?  Why should the
+beginning of one life mean the ending of another, one love the
+destruction of another?  I don't understand. The same spirit makes me
+love you and him, the same sympathy, the same trust--yet it sometimes
+seems as if I were a criminal in loving you.  You know what he thinks--he
+is too honest not to have shown you.  He has talked to me; he likes you
+in a way, but you are a foreigner--he says-your life is not my life.  'He
+is not the man for you!'  Those were his words. And now he doesn't talk
+to me, but when I am in the room he looks at me--that's worse--a thousand
+times; when he talks it rouses me to fight--when it's his eyes only, I'm
+a coward at once; I feel I would do anything, anything, only not to hurt
+him. Why can't he see?  Is it because he's old and we are young?  He may
+consent, but he will never, never see; it will always hurt him.
+
+"I want to tell you everything; I have had worse thoughts than these
+--sometimes I have thought that I should never have the courage to face
+the struggle which you have to face.  Then I feel quite broken; it is
+like something giving way in me.  Then I think of you, and it is over;
+but it has been there, and I am ashamed--I told you I was a coward. It's
+like the feeling one would have going out into a storm on a dark night,
+away from a warm fire--only of the spirit not the body--which makes it
+worse.  I had to tell you this; you mustn't think of it again, I mean to
+fight it away and forget that it has ever been there.  But Uncle
+Nic--what am I to do?  I hate myself because I am young, and he is old
+and weak--sometimes I seem even to hate him.  I have all sorts of
+thoughts, and always at the end of them, like a dark hole at the end of a
+passage, the thought that I ought to give you up.  Ought I?  Tell me.  I
+want to know, I want to do what is right; I still want to do that, though
+sometimes I think I am all made of evil.
+
+"Do you remember once when we were talking, you said: 'Nature always has
+an answer for every question; you cannot get an answer from laws,
+conventions, theories, words, only from Nature.'  What do you say to me
+now; do you tell me it is Nature to come to you in spite of everything,
+and so, that it must be right?  I think you would; but can it be Nature
+to do something which will hurt terribly one whom I love and who loves
+me?  If it is--Nature is cruel.  Is that one of the 'lessons of life'? 
+Is that what Aunt Constance means when she says: 'If life were not a
+paradox, we could not get on at all'?  I am beginning to see that
+everything has its dark side; I never believed that before.
+
+"Uncle Nic dreads the life for me; he doesn't understand (how should
+he?--he has always had money) how life can be tolerable without money--it
+is horrible that the accident of money should make such difference in our
+lives.  I am sometimes afraid myself, and I can't outface that fear in
+him; he sees the shadow of his fear in me--his eyes seem to see
+everything that is in me now; the eyes of old people are the saddest
+things in the world.  I am writing like a wretched coward, but you will
+never see this letter I suppose, and so it doesn't matter; but if you do,
+and I pray that you may--well, if I am only worth taking at my best, I am
+not worth taking at all.  I want you to know the worst of me--you, and no
+one else.
+
+"With Uncle Nic it is not as with my stepfather; his opposition only
+makes me angry, mad, ready to do anything, but with Uncle Nic I feel so
+bruised--so sore.  He said: 'It is not so much the money, because there
+is always mine.'  I could never do a thing he cannot bear, and take his
+money, and you would never let me.  One knows very little of anything in
+the world till trouble comes.  You know how it is with flowers and trees;
+in the early spring they look so quiet and self-contained; then all in a
+moment they change--I think it must be like that with the heart.  I used
+to think I knew a great deal, understood why and how things came about; I
+thought self-possession and reason so easy; now I know nothing.  And
+nothing in the world matters but to see you and hide away from that look
+in Uncle Nic's eyes.  Three months ago I did not know you, now I write
+like this.  Whatever I look at, I try to see as you would see; I feel,
+now you are away even more than when you were with me, what your thoughts
+would be, how you would feel about this or that.  Some things you have
+said seem always in my mind like lights--"
+
+A slanting drift of rain was striking the veranda tiles with a cold,
+ceaseless hissing.  Christian shut the window, and went into her uncle's
+room.
+
+He was lying with closed eyes, growling at Dominique, who moved about
+noiselessly, putting the room ready for the night.  When he had finished,
+and with a compassionate bow had left the room, Mr. Treffry opened his
+eyes, and said:
+
+"This is beastly stuff of the doctor's, Chris, it puts my monkey up; I
+can't help swearing after I've taken it; it's as beastly as a vulgar
+woman's laugh, and I don't know anything beastlier than that!"
+
+"I have a letter from Greta, Uncle Nic; shall I read it?"
+
+He nodded, and Christian read the letter, leaving out the mention of
+Harz, and for some undefined reason the part about Sarelli.
+
+"Ay!" said Mr. Treffry with a feeble laugh, "Greta and her money!  Send
+her some more, Chris.  Wish I were a youngster again; that's a beast of a
+proverb about a dog and his day.  I'd like to go fishing again in the
+West Country!  A fine time we had when we were youngsters.  You don't get
+such times these days.  'Twasn't often the fishing-smacks went out
+without us.  We'd watch their lights from our bedroom window; when they
+were swung aboard we were out and down to the quay before you could say
+'knife.'  They always waited for us; but your Uncle Dan was the
+favourite, he was the chap for luck.  When I get on my legs, we might go
+down there, you and I?  For a bit, just to see?  What d'you say, old
+girl?"
+
+Their eyes met.
+
+"I'd like to look at the smack lights going to sea on a dark night; pity
+you're such a duffer in a boat--we might go out with them.  Do you a
+power of good!  You're not looking the thing, my dear."
+
+His voice died wistfully, and his glance, sweeping her face, rested on
+her hands, which held and twisted Greta's letter.  After a minute or two
+of silence he boomed out again with sudden energy:
+
+"Your aunt'll want to come and sit with me, after dinner; don't let her,
+Chris, I can't stand it.  Tell her I'm asleep--the doctor'll be here
+directly; ask him to make up some humbug for you--it's his business."
+
+He was seized by a violent fit of pain which seemed to stab his breath
+away, and when it was over signed that he would be left alone. Christian
+went back to her letter in the other room, and had written these words,
+when the gong summoned her to dinner:
+
+"I'm like a leaf in the wind, I put out my hand to one thing, and it's
+seized and twisted and flung aside.  I want you--I want you; if I could
+see you I think I should know what to do--"
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+The rain drove with increasing fury.  The night was very black. Nicholas
+Treffry slept heavily.  By the side of his bed the night-lamp cast on to
+the opposite wall a bright disc festooned by the hanging shadow of the
+ceiling.  Christian was leaning over him.  For the moment he filled all
+her heart, lying there, so helpless. Fearful of waking him she slipped
+into the sitting-room.  Outside the window stood a man with his face
+pressed to the pane.  Her heart thumped; she went up and unlatched the
+window.  It was Harz, with the rain dripping off him.  He let fall his
+hat and cape.
+
+"You!" she said, touching his sleeve.  "You!  You!"
+
+He was sodden with wet, his face drawn and tired; a dark growth of beard
+covered his cheeks and chin.
+
+"Where is your uncle?" he said; "I want to see him."
+
+She put her hand up to his lips, but he caught it and covered it with
+kisses.
+
+"He's asleep--ill--speak gently!"
+
+"I came to him first," he muttered.
+
+Christian lit the lamp; and he looked at her hungrily without a word.
+
+"It's not possible to go on like this; I came to tell your uncle so. He
+is a man.  As for the other, I want to have nothing to do with him!  I
+came back on foot across the mountains.  It's not possible to go on like
+this, Christian."
+
+She handed him her letter.  He held it to the light, clearing his brow of
+raindrops.  When he had read to the last word he gave it her back, and
+whispered: "Come!"
+
+Her lips moved, but she did not speak.
+
+"While this goes on I can't work; I can do nothing.  I can't--I won't
+bargain with my work; if it's to be that, we had better end it. What are
+we waiting for?  Sooner or later we must come to this.  I'm sorry that
+he's ill, God knows!  But that changes nothing.  To wait is tying me hand
+and foot--it's making me afraid!  Fear kills!  It will kill you!  It
+kills work, and I must work, I can't waste time--I won't!  I will sooner
+give you up."  He put his hands on her shoulders. "I love you!  I want
+you!  Look in my eyes and see if you dare hold back!"
+
+Christian stood with the grip of his strong hands on her shoulders,
+without a movement or sign.  Her face was very white.  And suddenly he
+began to kiss that pale, still face, to kiss its eyes and lips, to kiss
+it from its chin up to its hair; and it stayed pale, as a white flower,
+beneath those kisses--as a white flower, whose stalk the fingers bend
+back a little.
+
+There was a sound of knocking on the wall; Mr. Treffry called feebly.
+Christian broke away from Harz.
+
+"To-morrow!" he whispered, and picking up his hat and cloak, went out
+again into the rain.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+It was not till morning that Christian fell into a troubled sleep. She
+dreamed that a voice was calling her, and she was filled with a helpless,
+dumb dream terror.
+
+When she woke the light was streaming in; it was Sunday, and the
+cathedral bells were chiming.  Her first thought was of Harz.  One step,
+one moment of courage!  Why had she not told her uncle?  If he had only
+asked!  But why--why should she tell him?  When it was over and she was
+gone, he would see that all was for the best.
+
+Her eyes fell on Greta's empty bed.  She sprang up, and bending over,
+kissed the pillow.  'She will mind at first; but she's so young!  Nobody
+will really miss me, except Uncle Nic!'  She stood along while in the
+window without moving.  When she was dressed she called out to her maid:
+
+"Bring me some milk, Barbi; I'm going to church."
+
+"Ach! gnadiges Fraulein, will you no breakfast have?"
+
+"No thank you, Barbi."
+
+"Liebes Fraulein, what a beautiful morning after the rain it has become!
+How cool!  It is for you good--for the colour in your cheeks; now they
+will bloom again!" and Barbi stroked her own well-coloured cheeks.
+
+Dominique, sunning himself outside with a cloth across his arm, bowed as
+she passed, and smiled affectionately:
+
+"He is better this morning, M'mselle.  We march--we are getting on. Good
+news will put the heart into you."
+
+Christian thought: 'How sweet every one is to-day!'
+
+Even the Villa seemed to greet her, with the sun aslant on it; and the
+trees, trembling and weeping golden tears.  At the cathedral she was
+early for the service, but here and there were figures on their knees;
+the faint, sickly odour of long-burnt incense clung in the air; a priest
+moved silently at the far end.  She knelt, and when at last she rose the
+service had begun.  With the sound of the intoning a sense of peace came
+to her--the peace of resolution.  For good or bad she felt that she had
+faced her fate.
+
+She went out with a look of quiet serenity and walked home along the
+dyke.  Close to Harz's studio she sat down.  Now--it was her own; all
+that had belonged to him, that had ever had a part in him.
+
+An old beggar, who had been watching her, came gently from behind.
+"Gracious lady!" he said, peering at her eyes, "this is the lucky day for
+you.  I have lost my luck."
+
+Christian opened her purse, there was only one coin in it, a gold piece;
+the beggar's eyes sparkled.
+
+She thought suddenly: 'It's no longer mine; I must begin to be careful,'
+but she felt ashamed when she looked at the old man.
+
+"I am sorry," she said; "yesterday I would have given you this, but--but
+now it's already given."
+
+He seemed so old and poor--what could she give him?  She unhooked a
+little silver brooch at her throat.  "You will get something for that,"
+she said; "it's better than nothing.  I am very sorry you are so old and
+poor."
+
+The beggar crossed himself.  "Gracious lady," he muttered, "may you never
+want!"
+
+Christian hurried on; the rustling of leaves soon carried the words away.
+She did not feel inclined to go in, and crossing the bridge began to
+climb the hill.  There was a gentle breeze, drifting the clouds across
+the sun; lizards darted out over the walls, looked at her, and whisked
+away.
+
+The sunshine, dappling through the tops of trees, gashed down on a
+torrent.  The earth smelt sweet, the vineyards round the white farms
+glistened; everything seemed to leap and dance with sap and life; it was
+a moment of Spring in midsummer.  Christian walked on, wondering at her
+own happiness.
+
+'Am I heartless?' she thought.  'I am going to leave him--I am going into
+life; I shall have to fight now, there'll be no looking back.'
+
+The path broke away and wound down to the level of the torrent; on the
+other side it rose again, and was lost among trees.  The woods were dank;
+she hastened home.
+
+In her room she began to pack, sorting and tearing up old letters. 'Only
+one thing matters,' she thought; 'singleness of heart; to see your way,
+and keep to it with all your might.'
+
+She looked up and saw Barbi standing before her with towels in her hands,
+and a scared face.
+
+"Are you going a journey, gnadiges Fraulein?"
+
+"I am going away to be married, Barbi," said Christian at last; "don't
+speak of it to any one, please."
+
+Barbi leant a little forward with the towels clasped to the blue cotton
+bosom of her dress.
+
+"No, no!  I will not speak.  But, dear Fraulein, that is a big matter;
+have you well thought?"
+
+"Thought, Barbi?  Have I not!"
+
+"But, dear Fraulein, will you be rich?"
+
+"No!  I shall be as poor as you."
+
+"Ach! dear God! that is terrible.  Katrina, my sister, she is married;
+she tells me all her life; she tells me it is very hard, and but for the
+money in her stocking it would be harder.  Dear Fraulein, think again!
+And is he good?  Sometimes they are not good."
+
+"He is good," said Christian, rising; "it is all settled!" and she kissed
+Barbi on the cheek.
+
+"You are crying, liebes Fraulein!  Think yet again, perhaps it is not
+quite all settled; it is not possible that a maiden should not a way out
+leave?"
+
+Christian smiled.  "I don't do things that way, Barbi."
+
+Barbi hung the towels on the horse, and crossed herself.
+
+Mr. Treffry's gaze was fixed on a tortoise-shell butterfly fluttering
+round the ceiling.  The insect seemed to fascinate him, as things which
+move quickly always fascinate the helpless.  Christian came softly in.
+
+"Couldn't stay in bed, Chris," he called out with an air of guilt. "The
+heat was something awful.  The doctor piped off in a huff, just because
+o' this."  He motioned towards a jug of claret-cup and a pipe on the
+table by his elbow.  "I was only looking at 'em."
+
+Christian, sitting down beside him, took up a fan.
+
+"If I could get out of this heat--" he said, and closed his eyes.
+
+'I must tell him,' she thought; 'I can't slink away.'
+
+"Pour me out some of that stuff, Chris."
+
+She reached for the jug.  Yes!  She must tell him!  Her heart sank.
+
+Mr. Treffry took a lengthy draught.  "Broken my promise; don't
+matter--won't hurt any one but me."  He took up the pipe and pressed
+tobacco into it.  "I've been lying here with this pain going right
+through me, and never a smoke!  D'you tell me anything the parsons say
+can do me half the good of this pipe?"  He leaned back, steeped in a
+luxury of satisfaction.  He went on, pursuing a private train of thought:
+"Things have changed a lot since my young days.  When I was a youngster,
+a young fellow had to look out for peck and perch--he put the future in
+his pocket.  He did well or not, according as he had stuff in him. Now
+he's not content with that, it seems--trades on his own opinion of
+himself; thinks he is what he says he's going to be."
+
+"You are unjust," said Christian.
+
+Mr. Treffry grunted.  "Ah, well!  I like to know where I am.  If I lend
+money to a man, I like to know whether he's going to pay it back; I may
+not care whether he does or not, but I like to know.  The same with other
+things.  I don't care what a man has--though, mind you, Chris, it's not a
+bad rule that measures men by the balance at their banks; but when it
+comes to marriage, there's a very simple rule, What's not enough for one
+is not enough for two.  You can't talk black white, or bread into your
+mouth.  I don't care to speak about myself, as you know, Chris, but I
+tell you this--when I came to London I wanted to marry--I hadn't any
+money, and I had to want. When I had the money--but that's neither here
+nor there!"  He frowned, fingering his pipe.
+
+"I didn't ask her, Chris; I didn't think it the square thing; it seems
+that's out of fashion!"
+
+Christian's cheeks were burning.
+
+"I think a lot while I lie here," Mr. Treffry went on; "nothing much else
+to do.  What I ask myself is this: What do you know about what's best for
+you?  What do you know of life?  Take it or leave it, life's not all you
+think; it's give and get all the way, a fair start is everything."
+
+Christian thought: 'Will he never see?'
+
+Mr. Treffry went on:
+
+"I get better every day, but I can't last for ever.  It's not pleasant to
+lie here and know that when I'm gone there'll be no one to keep a hand on
+the check string!"
+
+"Don't talk like that, dear!" Christian murmured.
+
+"It's no use blinking facts, Chris.  I've lived a long time in the world;
+I've seen things pretty well as they are; and now there's not much left
+for me to think about but you."
+
+"But, Uncle, if you loved him, as I do, you couldn't tell me to be
+afraid!  It's cowardly and mean to be afraid.  You must have forgotten!"
+
+Mr. Treffry closed his eyes.
+
+"Yes," he said; "I'm old."
+
+The fan had dropped into Christian's lap; it rested on her white frock
+like a large crimson leaf; her eyes were fixed on it.
+
+Mr. Treffry looked at her.  "Have you heard from him?" he asked with
+sudden intuition.
+
+"Last night, in that room, when you thought I was talking to Dominique--"
+
+The pipe fell from his hand.
+
+"What!" he stammered: "Back?"
+
+Christian, without looking up, said:
+
+"Yes, he's back; he wants me--I must go to him, Uncle."
+
+There was a long silence.
+
+"You must go to him?" he repeated.
+
+She longed to fling herself down at his knees, but he was so still, that
+to move seemed impossible; she remained silent, with folded hands.
+
+Mr. Treffry spoke:
+
+"You'll let me know--before--you--go.  Goodnight!"
+
+Christian stole out into the passage.  A bead curtain rustled in the
+draught; voices reached her.
+
+"My honour is involved, or I would give the case up."
+
+"He is very trying, poor Nicholas!  He always had that peculiar quality
+of opposition; it has brought him to grief a hundred times. There is
+opposition in our blood; my family all have it.  My eldest brother died
+of it; with my poor sister, who was as gentle as a lamb, it took the form
+of doing the right thing in the wrong place.  It is a matter of
+temperament, you see.  You must have patience."
+
+"Patience," repeated Dawney's voice, "is one thing; patience where there
+is responsibility is another.  I've not had a wink of sleep these last
+two nights."
+
+There was a faint, shrill swish of silk.
+
+"Is he so very ill?"
+
+Christian held her breath.  The answer came at last.
+
+"Has he made his will?  With this trouble in the side again, I tell you
+plainly, Mrs. Decie, there's little or no chance."
+
+Christian put her hands up to her ears, and ran out into the air. What
+was she about to do, then--to leave him dying!
+
+On the following day Harz was summoned to the Villa.  Mr. Treffry had
+just risen, and was garbed in a dressing-suit, old and worn, which had a
+certain air of magnificence.  His seamed cheeks were newly shaved.
+
+"I hope I see you well," he said majestically.
+
+Thinking of the drive and their last parting, Harz felt sorry and
+ashamed.  Suddenly Christian came into the room; she stood for a moment
+looking at him; then sat down.
+
+"Chris!" said Mr. Treffry reproachfully.  She shook her head, and did not
+move; mournful and intent, her eyes seemed full of secret knowledge.
+
+Mr. Treffry spoke:
+
+"I've no right to blame you, Mr. Harz, and Chris tells me you came to see
+me first, which is what I would have expected of you; but you shouldn't
+have come back."
+
+"I came back, sir, because I found I was obliged.  I must speak out."
+
+"I ask nothing better," Mr. Treffry replied.
+
+Harz looked again at Christian; but she made no sign, sitting with her
+chin resting on her hands.
+
+"I have come for her," he said; "I can make my living--enough for both of
+us.  But I can't wait."
+
+"Why?"
+
+Harz made no answer.
+
+Mr. Treffry boomed out again: "Why?  Isn't she worth waiting for?  Isn't
+she worth serving for?"
+
+"I can't expect you to understand me," the painter said.  "My art is my
+life to me.  Do you suppose that if it wasn't I should ever have left my
+village; or gone through all that I've gone through, to get as far even
+as I am?  You tell me to wait.  If my thoughts and my will aren't free,
+how can I work?  I shan't be worth my salt.  You tell me to go back to
+England--knowing she is here, amongst you who hate me, a thousand miles
+away.  I shall know that there's a death fight going on in her and
+outside her against me--you think that I can go on working under these
+conditions.  Others may be able, I am not.  That's the plain truth. If I
+loved her less--"
+
+There was a silence, then Mr. Treffry said:
+
+"It isn't fair to come here and ask what you're asking.  You don't know
+what's in the future for you, you don't know that you can keep a wife. It
+isn't pleasant, either, to think you can't hold up your head in your own
+country."
+
+Harz turned white.
+
+"Ah! you bring that up again!" he broke out.  "Seven years ago I was a
+boy and starving; if you had been in my place you would have done what I
+did.  My country is as much to me as your country is to you. I've been an
+exile seven years, I suppose I shall always be I've had punishment
+enough; but if you think I am a rascal, I'll go and give myself up."  He
+turned on his heel.
+
+"Stop!  I beg your pardon!  I never meant to hurt you.  It isn't easy for
+me to eat my words," Mr. Treffry said wistfully, "let that count for
+something."  He held out his hand.
+
+Harz came quickly back and took it.  Christian's gaze was never for a
+moment withdrawn; she seemed trying to store up the sight of him within
+her.  The light darting through the half-closed shutters gave her eyes a
+strange, bright intensity, and shone in the folds of her white dress like
+the sheen of birds' wings.
+
+Mr. Treffry glanced uneasily about him.  "God knows I don't want anything
+but her happiness," he said.  "What is it to me if you'd murdered your
+mother?  It's her I'm thinking of."
+
+"How can you tell what is happiness to her?  You have your own ideas of
+happiness--not hers, not mine.  You can't dare to stop us, sir!"
+
+"Dare?" said Mr. Treffry.  "Her father gave her over to me when she was a
+mite of a little thing; I've known her all her life.  I've--I've loved
+her--and you come here with your 'dare'!"  His hand dragged at his beard,
+and shook as though palsied.
+
+A look of terror came into Christian's face.
+
+"All right, Chris!  I don't ask for quarter, and I don't give it!"
+
+Harz made a gesture of despair.
+
+"I've acted squarely by you, sir," Mr. Treffry went on, "I ask the same
+of you.  I ask you to wait, and come like an honest man, when you can
+say, 'I see my way--here's this and that for her.'  What makes this art
+you talk of different from any other call in life?  It doesn't alter
+facts, or give you what other men have no right to expect.  It doesn't
+put grit into you, or keep your hands clean, or prove that two and two
+make five."
+
+Harz answered bitterly:
+
+"You know as much of art as I know of money.  If we live a thousand years
+we shall never understand each other.  I am doing what I feel is best for
+both of us."
+
+Mr. Treffry took hold of the painter's sleeve.
+
+"I make you an offer," he said.  "Your word not to see or write to her
+for a year!  Then, position or not, money or no money, if she'll have
+you, I'll make it right for you."
+
+"I could not take your money."
+
+A kind of despair seemed suddenly to seize on Mr. Nicholas Treffry. He
+rose, and stood towering over them.
+
+"All my life--" he said; but something seemed to click deep down in his
+throat, and he sank back in his seat.
+
+"Go!" whispered Christian, "go!" But Mr. Treffry found his voice again:
+"It's for the child to say.  Well, Chris!"
+
+Christian did not speak.
+
+It was Harz who broke the silence.  He pointed to Mr. Treffry.
+
+"You know I can't tell you to come with--that, there.  Why did you send
+for me?"  And, turning, he went out.
+
+Christian sank on her knees, burying her face in her hands.  Mr. Treffry
+pressed his handkerchief with a stealthy movement to his mouth.  It was
+dyed crimson with the price of his victory.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+A telegram had summoned Herr Paul from Vienna.  He had started forthwith,
+leaving several unpaid accounts to a more joyful opportunity, amongst
+them a chemist's bill, for a wonderful quack medicine of which he brought
+six bottles.
+
+He came from Mr. Treffry's room with tears rolling down his cheeks,
+saying:
+
+"Poor Nicholas!  Poor Nicholas!  Il n'a pas de chance!"
+
+It was difficult to find any one to listen; the women were scared and
+silent, waiting for the orders that were now and then whispered through
+the door.  Herr Paul could not bear this silence, and talked to his
+servant for half an hour, till Fritz also vanished to fetch something
+from the town.  Then in despair Herr Paul went to his room.
+
+It was hard not to be allowed to help--it was hard to wait!  When the
+heart was suffering, it was frightful!  He turned and, looking furtively
+about him, lighted a cigar.  Yes, it came to every one--at some time or
+other; and what was it, that death they talked of?  Was it any worse than
+life?  That frightful jumble people made for themselves!  Poor Nicholas! 
+After all, it was he that had the luck!
+
+His eyes filled with tears, and drawing a penknife from his pocket, he
+began to stab it into the stuffing of his chair.  Scruff, who sat
+watching the chink of light under the door, turned his head, blinked at
+him, and began feebly tapping with a claw.
+
+It was intolerable, this uncertainty--to be near, and yet so far, was not
+endurable!
+
+Herr Paul stepped across the room.  The dog, following, threw his
+black-marked muzzle upwards with a gruff noise, and went back to the
+door.  His master was holding in his hand a bottle of champagne.
+
+Poor Nicholas!  He had chosen it.  Herr Paul drained a glass.
+
+Poor Nicholas!  The prince of fellows, and of what use was one?  They
+kept him away from Nicholas!
+
+Herr Paul's eyes fell on the terrier.  "Ach! my dear," he said, "you and
+I, we alone are kept away!"
+
+He drained a second glass.
+
+What was it?  This life!  Froth-like that!  He tossed off a third glass.
+Forget!  If one could not help, it was better to forget!
+
+He put on his hat.  Yes.  There was no room for him there!  He was not
+wanted!
+
+He finished the bottle, and went out into the passage.  Scruff ran and
+lay down at Mr. Treffry's door.  Herr Paul looked at him.  "Ach!" he
+said, tapping his chest, "ungrateful hound!"  And opening the front door
+he went out on tiptoe....
+
+Late that afternoon Greta stole hatless through the lilac bushes; she
+looked tired after her night journey, and sat idly on a chair in the
+speckled shadow of a lime-tree.
+
+'It is not like home,' she thought; 'I am unhappy.  Even the birds are
+silent, but perhaps that is because it is so hot.  I have never been sad
+like this--for it is not fancy that I am sad this time, as it is
+sometimes.  It is in my heart like the sound the wind makes through a
+wood, it feels quite empty in my heart.  If it is always like this to be
+unhappy, then I am sorry for all the unhappy things in the world; I am
+sorrier than I ever was before.'
+
+A shadow fell on the grass, she raised her eyes, and saw Dawney.
+
+"Dr. Edmund!" she whispered.
+
+Dawney turned to her; a heavy furrow showed between his brows.  His eyes,
+always rather close together, stared painfully.
+
+"Dr. Edmund," Greta whispered, "is it true?"
+
+He took her hand, and spread his own palm over it.
+
+"Perhaps," he said; "perhaps not.  We must hope."
+
+Greta looked up, awed.
+
+"They say he is dying."
+
+"We have sent for the best man in Vienna."
+
+Greta shook her head.
+
+"But you are clever, Dr. Edmund; and you are afraid."
+
+"He is brave," said Dawney; "we must all be brave, you know.  You too!"
+
+"Brave?" repeated Greta; "what is it to be brave?  If it is not to cry
+and make a fuss--that I can do.  But if it is not to be sad in here," she
+touched her breast, "that I cannot do, and it shall not be any good for
+me to try."
+
+"To be brave is to hope; don't give up hope, dear."
+
+"No," said Greta, tracing the pattern of the sunlight on her skirt. "But
+I think that when we hope, we are not brave, because we are expecting
+something for ourselves.  Chris says that hope is prayer, and if it is
+prayer, then all the time we are hoping, we are asking for something, and
+it is not brave to ask for things."
+
+A smile curved Dawney's mouth.
+
+"Go on, Philosopher!" he said.  "Be brave in your own way, it will be
+just as good as anybody else's."
+
+"What are you going to do to be brave, Dr. Edmund?"
+
+"I?  Fight!  If only we had five years off his life!"
+
+Greta watched him as he walked away.
+
+"I shall never be brave," she mourned; "I shall always be wanting to be
+happy."  And, kneeling down, she began to disentangle a fly, imprisoned
+in a cobweb.  A plant of hemlock had sprung up in the long grass by her
+feet.  Greta thought, dismayed: 'There are weeds!'
+
+It seemed but another sign of the death of joy.
+
+'But it's very beautiful,' she thought, 'the blossoms are like stars. I
+am not going to pull it up.  I will leave it; perhaps it will spread all
+through the garden; and if it does I do not care, for now things are not
+like they used to be and I do not, think they ever shall be again.'
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+The days went by; those long, hot days, when the heat haze swims up about
+ten of the forenoon, and, as the sun sinks level with the mountains,
+melts into golden ether which sets the world quivering with sparkles.
+
+At the lighting of the stars those sparkles die, vanishing one by one off
+the hillsides; evening comes flying down the valleys, and life rests
+under her cool wings.  The night falls; and the hundred little voices of
+the night arise.
+
+It was near grape-gathering, and in the heat the fight for Nicholas
+Treffry's life went on, day in, day out, with gleams of hope and moments
+of despair.  Doctors came, but after the first he refused to see them.
+
+"No," he said to Dawney--"throwing away money.  If I pull through it
+won't be because of them."
+
+For days together he would allow no one but Dawney, Dominique, and the
+paid nurse in the room.
+
+"I can stand it better," he said to Christian, "when I don't see any of
+you; keep away, old girl, and let me get on with it!"
+
+To have been able to help would have eased the tension of her nerves, and
+the aching of her heart.  At his own request they had moved his bed into
+a corner so that he might face the wall.  There he would lie for hours
+together, not speaking a word, except to ask for drink.
+
+Sometimes Christian crept in unnoticed, and sat watching, with her arms
+tightly folded across her breast.  At night, after Greta was asleep, she
+would toss from side to side, muttering feverish prayers. She spent hours
+at her little table in the schoolroom, writing letters to Harz that were
+never sent.  Once she wrote these words: "I am the most wicked of all
+creatures--I have even wished that he may die!"  A few minutes afterwards
+Miss Naylor found her with her head buried on her arms. Christian sprang
+up; tears were streaming down her cheeks.  "Don't touch me!" she cried,
+and rushed away.  Later, she stole into her uncle's room, and sank down
+on the floor beside the bed.  She sat there silently, unnoticed all the
+evening.  When night came she could hardly be persuaded to leave the
+room.
+
+One day Mr. Treffry expressed a wish to see Herr Paul; it was a long
+while before the latter could summon courage to go in.
+
+"There's a few dozen of the Gordon sherry at my Chambers, in London,
+Paul," Mr. Treffry said; "I'd be glad to think you had 'em.  And my man,
+Dominique, I've made him all right in my will, but keep your eye on him;
+he's a good sort for a foreigner, and no chicken, but sooner or later,
+the women'll get hold of him.  That's all I had to say. Send Chris to
+me."
+
+Herr Paul stood by the bedside speechless.  Suddenly he blurted out.
+
+"Ah! my dear!  Courage!  We are all mortal.  You will get well!"  All the
+morning he walked about quite inconsolable.  "It was frightful to see
+him, you know, frightful!  An iron man could not have borne it."
+
+When Christian came to him, Mr. Treffry raised himself and looked at her
+a long while.
+
+His wistful face was like an accusation.  But that very afternoon the
+news came from the sickroom that he was better, having had no pain for
+several hours.
+
+Every one went about with smiles lurking in their eyes, and ready to
+break forth at a word.  In the kitchen Barbi burst out crying, and,
+forgetting to toss the pan, spoiled a Kaiser-Schmarn she was making.
+Dominique was observed draining a glass of Chianti, and solemnly casting
+forth the last drops in libation.  An order was given for tea to be taken
+out under the acacias, where it was always cool; it was felt that
+something in the nature of high festival was being held. Even Herr Paul
+was present; but Christian did not come.  Nobody spoke of illness; to
+mention it might break the spell.
+
+Miss Naylor, who had gone into the house, came back, saying:
+
+"There is a strange man standing over there by the corner of the house."
+
+"Really!" asked Mrs. Decie; "what does he want?"
+
+Miss Naylor reddened.  "I did not ask him. I--don't--know--whether he is
+quite respectable.  His coat is buttoned very close, and he--doesn't
+seem--to have a--collar."
+
+"Go and see what he wants, dear child," Mrs. Decie said to Greta.
+
+"I don't know--I really do not know--" began Miss Naylor; "he has
+very--high--boots," but Greta was already on her way, with hands clasped
+behind her, and demure eyes taking in the stranger's figure.
+
+"Please?" she said, when she was close to him.
+
+The stranger took his cap off with a jerk.
+
+"This house has no bells," he said in a nasal voice; "it has a tendency
+to discourage one."
+
+"Yes," said Greta gravely, "there is a bell, but it does not ring now,
+because my uncle is so ill."
+
+"I am very sorry to hear that.  I don't know the people here, but I am
+very sorry to hear that.
+
+"I would be glad to speak a few words to your sister, if it is your
+sister that I want."
+
+And the stranger's face grew very red.
+
+"Is it," said Greta, "that you are a friend of Herr Harz?  If you are a
+friend of his, you will please come and have some tea, and while you are
+having tea I will look for Chris."
+
+Perspiration bedewed the stranger's forehead.
+
+"Tea?  Excuse me!  I don't drink tea."
+
+"There is also coffee," Greta said.
+
+The stranger's progress towards the arbour was so slow that Greta arrived
+considerably before him.
+
+"It is a friend of Herr Harz," she whispered; "he will drink coffee. I am
+going to find Chris."
+
+"Greta!" gasped Miss Naylor.
+
+Mrs. Decie put up her hand.
+
+"Ah!" she said, "if it is so, we must be very nice to him for Christian's
+sake."
+
+Miss Naylor's face grew soft.
+
+"Ah, yes!" she said; "of course."
+
+"Bah!" muttered Herr Paul, "that recommences.'
+
+"Paul!" murmured Mrs. Decie, "you lack the elements of wisdom."
+
+Herr Paul glared at the approaching stranger.
+
+Mrs. Decie had risen, and smilingly held out her hand.
+
+"We are so glad to know you; you are an artist too, perhaps?  I take a
+great interest in art, and especially in that school which Mr. Harz
+represents."
+
+The stranger smiled.
+
+"He is the genuine article, ma'am," he said.  "He represents no school,
+he is one of that kind whose corpses make schools."
+
+"Ah!" murmured Mrs. Decie, "you are an American.  That is so nice. Do sit
+down!  My niece will soon be here."
+
+Greta came running back.
+
+"Will you come, please?" she said.  "Chris is ready."
+
+Gulping down his coffee, the stranger included them all in a single bow,
+and followed her.
+
+"Ach!" said Herr Paul, "garcon tres chic, celui-la!"
+
+Christian was standing by her little table.  The stranger began.
+
+"I am sending Mr. Harz's things to England; there are some pictures here.
+He would be glad to have them."
+
+A flood of crimson swept over her face.
+
+"I am sending them to London," the stranger repeated; "perhaps you could
+give them to me to-day."
+
+"They are ready; my sister will show you."
+
+Her eyes seemed to dart into his soul, and try to drag something from it.
+The words rushed from her lips:
+
+"Is there any message for me?"
+
+The stranger regarded her curiously.
+
+"No," he stammered, "no!  I guess not.  He is well....  I wish...." He
+stopped; her white face seemed to flash scorn, despair, and entreaty on
+him all at once.  And turning, she left him standing there.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+When Christian went that evening to her uncle's room he was sitting up in
+bed, and at once began to talk.  "Chris," he said, "I can't stand this
+dying by inches.  I'm going to try what a journey'll do for me.  I want
+to get back to the old country.  The doctor's promised.  There's a shot
+in the locker yet!  I believe in that young chap; he's stuck to me like a
+man....  It'll be your birthday, on Tuesday, old girl, and you'll be
+twenty.  Seventeen years since your father died.  You've been a lot to
+me....  A parson came here today. That's a bad sign.  Thought it his
+duty!  Very civil of him!  I wouldn't see him, though.  If there's
+anything in what they tell you, I'm not going to sneak in at this time o'
+day.  There's one thing that's rather badly on my mind.  I took advantage
+of Mr. Harz with this damned pitifulness of mine.  You've a right to look
+at me as I've seen you sometimes when you thought I was asleep.  If I
+hadn't been ill he'd never have left you.  I don't blame you, Chris--not
+I!  You love me?  I know that, my dear.  But one's alone when it comes to
+the run-in.  Don't cry!  Our minds aren't Sunday-school books; you're
+finding it out, that's all!"  He sighed and turned away.
+
+The noise of sun-blinds being raised vibrated through the house.  A
+feeling of terror seized on the girl; he lay so still, and yet the
+drawing of each breath was a fight.  If she could only suffer in his
+place!  She went close, and bent over him.
+
+"It's air we want, both you and I!" he muttered.  Christian beckoned to
+the nurse, and stole out through the window.
+
+A regiment was passing in the road; she stood half-hidden amongst the
+lilac bushes watching.  The poplar leaves drooped lifeless and almost
+black above her head, the dust raised by the soldiers' feet hung in the
+air; it seemed as if in all the world no freshness and no life were
+stirring.  The tramp of feet died away.  Suddenly within arm's length of
+her a man appeared, his stick shouldered like a sword.  He raised his
+hat.
+
+"Good-evening!  You do not remember me?  Sarelli.  Pardon!  You looked
+like a ghost standing there.  How badly those fellows marched!  We hang,
+you see, on the skirts of our profession and criticise; it is all we are
+fit for."  His black eyes, restless and malevolent like a swan's, seemed
+to stab her face.  "A fine evening!  Too hot.  The storm is wanted; you
+feel that?  It is weary waiting for the storm; but after the storm, my
+dear young lady, comes peace."  He smiled, gently, this time, and baring
+his head again, was lost to view in the shadow of the trees.
+
+His figure had seemed to Christian like the sudden vision of a
+threatening, hidden force.  She thrust out her hands, as though to keep
+it off.
+
+No use; it was within her, nothing could keep it away!  She went to Mrs.
+Decie's room, where her aunt and Miss Naylor were conversing in low
+tones.  To hear their voices brought back the touch of this world of
+everyday which had no part or lot in the terrifying powers within her.
+
+Dawney slept at the Villa now.  In the dead of night he was awakened by a
+light flashed in his eyes.  Christian was standing there, her face pale
+and wild with terror, her hair falling in dark masses on her shoulders.
+
+"Save him!  Save him!" she cried.  "Quick!  The bleeding!"
+
+He saw her muffle her face in her white sleeves, and seizing the candle,
+leaped out of bed and rushed away.
+
+The internal haemorrhage had come again, and Nicholas Treffry wavered
+between life and death.  When it had ceased, he sank into a sort of
+stupor.  About six o'clock he came back to consciousness; watching his
+eyes, they could see a mental struggle taking place within him. At last
+he singled Christian out from the others by a sign.
+
+"I'm beat, Chris," he whispered.  "Let him know, I want to see him."
+
+His voice grew a little stronger.  "I thought that I could see it
+through--but here's the end."  He lifted his hand ever so little, and let
+it fall again.  When told a little later that a telegram had been sent to
+Harz his eyes expressed satisfaction.
+
+Herr Paul came down in ignorance of the night's events.  He stopped in
+front of the barometer and tapped it, remarking to Miss Naylor: "The
+glass has gone downstairs; we shall have cool weather--it will still go
+well with him!"
+
+When, with her brown face twisted by pity and concern, she told him that
+it was a question of hours, Herr Paul turned first purple, then pale, and
+sitting down, trembled violently.  "I cannot believe it," he exclaimed
+almost angrily.  "Yesterday he was so well!  I cannot believe it!  Poor
+Nicholas!  Yesterday he spoke to me!"  Taking Miss Naylor's hand, he
+clutched it in his own.  "Ah!" he cried, letting it go suddenly, and
+striking at his forehead, "it is too terrible; only yesterday he spoke to
+me of sherry.  Is there nobody, then, who can do good?"
+
+"There is only God," replied Miss Naylor softly.
+
+"God?" said Herr Paul in a scared voice.
+
+"We--can--all--pray to Him," Miss Naylor murmured; little spots of colour
+came into her cheeks.  "I am going to do it now."
+
+Herr Paul raised her hand and kissed it.
+
+"Are you?" he said; "good!  I too."  He passed through his study door,
+closed it carefully behind him, then for some unknown reason set his back
+against it.  Ugh!  Death!  It came to all!  Some day it would come to
+him. It might come tomorrow!  One must pray!
+
+The day dragged to its end.  In the sky clouds had mustered, and,
+crowding close on one another, clung round the sun, soft, thick,
+greywhite, like the feathers on a pigeon's breast.  Towards evening faint
+tremblings were felt at intervals, as from the shock of immensely distant
+earthquakes.
+
+Nobody went to bed that night, but in the morning the report was the
+same: "Unconscious--a question of hours."  Once only did he recover
+consciousness, and then asked for Harz.  A telegram had come from him, he
+was on the way.  Towards seven of the evening the long-expected storm
+broke in a sky like ink.  Into the valleys and over the crests of
+mountains it seemed as though an unseen hand were spilling goblets of
+pale wine, darting a sword-blade zigzag over trees, roofs, spires, peaks,
+into the very firmament, which answered every thrust with great bursts of
+groaning.  Just beyond the veranda Greta saw a glowworm shining, as it
+might be a tiny bead of the fallen lightning.  Soon the rain covered
+everything.  Sometimes a jet of light brought the hilltops, towering,
+dark, and hard, over the house, to disappear again behind the raindrops
+and shaken leaves. Each breath drawn by the storm was like the clash of a
+thousand cymbals; and in his room Mr. Treffry lay unconscious of its
+fury.
+
+Greta had crept in unobserved; and sat curled in a corner, with Scruff in
+her arms, rocking slightly to and fro.  When Christian passed, she caught
+her skirt, and whispered: "It is your birthday, Chris!"
+
+Mr. Treffry stirred.
+
+"What's that?  Thunder?--it's cooler.  Where am I?  Chris!"
+
+Dawney signed for her to take his place.
+
+"Chris!" Mr. Treffry said.  "It's near now."  She bent across him, and
+her tears fell on his forehead.
+
+"Forgive!" she whispered; "love me!"
+
+He raised his finger, and touched her cheek.
+
+For an hour or more he did not speak, though once or twice he moaned, and
+faintly tightened his pressure on her fingers.  The storm had died away,
+but very far off the thunder was still muttering.
+
+His eyes opened once more, rested on her, and passed beyond, into that
+abyss dividing youth from age, conviction from conviction, life from
+death.
+
+At the foot of the bed Dawney stood covering his face; behind him
+Dominique knelt with hands held upwards; the sound of Greta's breathing,
+soft in sleep, rose and fell in the stillness.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+One afternoon in March, more than three years after Mr. Treffry's death,
+Christian was sitting at the window of a studio in St. John's Wood.  The
+sky was covered with soft, high clouds, through which shone little gleams
+of blue.  Now and then a bright shower fell, sprinkling the trees, where
+every twig was curling upwards as if waiting for the gift of its new
+leaves.  And it seemed to her that the boughs thickened and budded under
+her very eyes; a great concourse of sparrows had gathered on those
+boughs, and kept raising a shrill chatter.  Over at the far side of the
+room Harz was working at a picture.
+
+On Christian's face was the quiet smile of one who knows that she has
+only to turn her eyes to see what she wishes to see; of one whose
+possessions are safe under her hand.  She looked at Harz with that
+possessive smile.  But as into the brain of one turning in his bed grim
+fancies will suddenly leap up out of warm nothingness, so there leaped
+into her mind the memory of that long ago dawn, when he had found her
+kneeling by Mr. Treffry's body.  She seemed to see again the dead face,
+so gravely quiet, and furrowless.  She seemed to see her lover and
+herself setting forth silently along the river wall where they had first
+met; sitting down, still silent, beneath the poplar-tree where the little
+bodies of the chafers had lain strewn in the Spring.  To see the trees
+changing from black to grey, from grey to green, and in the dark sky long
+white lines of cloud, lighting to the south like birds; and, very far
+away, rosy peaks watching the awakening of the earth.  And now once
+again, after all that time, she felt her spirit shrink away from his; as
+it had shrunk in that hour, when she had seemed hateful to herself.  She
+remembered the words she had spoken: "I have no heart left.  You've torn
+it in two between you.  Love is all self--I wanted him to die."  She
+remembered too the raindrops on the vines like a million tiny lamps, and
+the throstle that began singing.  Then, as dreams die out into warm
+nothingness, recollection vanished, and the smile came back to her lips.
+
+She took out a letter.
+
+"....O Chris!  We are really coming; I seem to be always telling it to
+myself, and I have told Scruff many times, but he does not care, because
+he is getting old.  Miss Naylor says we shall arrive for breakfast, and
+that we shall be hungry, but perhaps she will not be very hungry, if it
+is rough.  Papa said to me: 'Je serai inconsolable, mais inconsolable!'
+But I think he will not be, because he is going to Vienna.  When we are
+come, there will be nobody at Villa Rubein; Aunt Constance has gone a
+fortnight ago to Florence.  There is a young man at her hotel; she says
+he will be one of the greatest playwriters in England, and she sent me a
+play of his to read; it was only a little about love, I did not like it
+very much....  O Chris!  I think I shall cry when I see you.  As I am
+quite grown up, Miss Naylor is not to come back with me; sometimes she is
+sad, but she will be glad to see you, Chris.  She seems always sadder
+when it is Spring.  Today I walked along the wall; the little green balls
+of wool are growing on the poplars already, and I saw one chafer; it will
+not be long before the cherry blossom comes; and I felt so funny, sad and
+happy together, and once I thought that I had wings and could fly away up
+the valley to Meran--but I had none, so I sat on the bench where we sat
+the day we took the pictures, and I thought and thought; there was
+nothing came to me in my thoughts, but all was sweet and a little noisy,
+and rather sad; it was like the buzzing of the chafer, in my head; and
+now I feel so tired and all my blood is running up and down me.  I do not
+mind, because I know it is the Spring.
+
+"Dominique came to see us the other day; he is very well, and is half the
+proprietor of the Adler Hotel, at Meran; he is not at all different, and
+he asked about you and about Alois--do you know, Chris, to myself I call
+him Herr Harz, but when I have seen him this time I shall call him Alois
+in my heart also.
+
+"I have a letter from Dr. Edmund; he is in London, so perhaps you have
+seen him, only he has a great many patients and some that he has 'hopes
+of killing soon'! especially one old lady, because she is always wanting
+him to do things for her, and he is never saying 'No,' so he does not
+like her.  He says that he is getting old.  When I have finished this
+letter I am going to write and tell him that perhaps he shall see me
+soon, and then I think he will be very sad. Now that the Spring is come
+there are more flowers to take to Uncle Nic's grave, and every day, when
+I am gone, Barbi is to take them so that he shall not miss you, Chris,
+because all the flowers I put there are for you.
+
+"I am buying some toys without paint on for my niece."
+
+"O Chris! this will be the first baby that I have known."
+
+"I am only to stay three weeks with you, but I think when I am once there
+I shall be staying longer.  I send a kiss for my niece, and to Herr Harz,
+my love--that is the last time I shall call him Herr Harz; and to you,
+Chris, all the joy that is in my heart.--Your loving "GRETA."
+
+Christian rose, and, turning very softly, stood, leaning her elbows on
+the back of a high seat, looking at her husband.
+
+In her eyes there was a slow, clear, faintly smiling, yet yearning look,
+as though this strenuous figure bent on its task were seen for a moment
+as something apart, and not all the world to her.
+
+"Tired?" asked Harz, putting his lips to her hand.
+
+"No, it's only--what Greta says about the Spring; it makes one want more
+than one has got."
+
+Slipping her hand away, she went back to the window.  Harz stood, looking
+after her; then, taking up his palette, again began painting.
+
+In the world, outside, the high soft clouds flew by; the trees seemed
+thickening and budding.
+
+And Christian thought:
+
+'Can we never have quite enough?'
+
+December 1890.
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+MY FATHER A MAN OF DEVON I
+
+"MOOR, 20th July.
+
+.......It is quiet here, sleepy, rather--a farm is never quiet; the sea,
+too, is only a quarter of a mile away, and when it's windy, the sound of
+it travels up the combe; for distraction, you must go four miles to
+Brixham or five to Kingswear, and you won't find much then. The farm lies
+in a sheltered spot, scooped, so to speak, high up the combe side--behind
+is a rise of fields, and beyond, a sweep of down. You have the feeling of
+being able to see quite far, which is misleading, as you soon find out if
+you walk.  It is true Devon country-hills, hollows, hedge-banks, lanes
+dipping down into the earth or going up like the sides of houses,
+coppices, cornfields, and little streams wherever there's a place for
+one; but the downs along the cliff, all gorse and ferns, are wild.  The
+combe ends in a sandy cove with black rock on one side, pinkish cliffs
+away to the headland on the other, and a coastguard station.  Just now,
+with the harvest coming on, everything looks its richest, the apples
+ripening, the trees almost too green.  It's very hot, still weather; the
+country and the sea seem to sleep in the sun.  In front of the farm are
+half-a-dozen pines that look as if they had stepped out of another land,
+but all round the back is orchard as lush, and gnarled, and orthodox as
+any one could wish.  The house, a long, white building with three levels
+of roof, and splashes of brown all over it, looks as if it might be
+growing down into the earth.  It was freshly thatched two years ago--and
+that's all the newness there is about it; they say the front door, oak,
+with iron knobs, is three hundred years old at least.  You can touch the
+ceilings with your hand.  The windows certainly might be larger--a
+heavenly old place, though, with a flavour of apples, smoke, sweetbriar,
+bacon, honeysuckle, and age, all over it.
+
+The owner is a man called John Ford, about seventy, and seventeen stone
+in weight--very big, on long legs, with a grey, stubbly beard, grey,
+watery eyes, short neck and purplish complexion; he is asthmatic, and has
+a very courteous, autocratic manner.  His clothes are made of Harris
+tweed--except on Sundays, when he puts on black--a seal ring, and a thick
+gold cable chain.  There's nothing mean or small about John Ford; I
+suspect him of a warm heart, but he doesn't let you know much about him. 
+He's a north-country man by birth, and has been out in New Zealand all
+his life.  This little Devonshire farm is all he has now.  He had a large
+"station" in the North Island, and was much looked up to, kept open
+house, did everything, as one would guess, in a narrow-minded,
+large-handed way.  He came to grief suddenly; I don't quite know how.  I
+believe his only son lost money on the turf, and then, unable to face his
+father, shot himself; if you had seen John Ford, you could imagine that.
+His wife died, too, that year.  He paid up to the last penny, and came
+home, to live on this farm.  He told me the other night that he had only
+one relation in the world, his granddaughter, who lives here with him.
+Pasiance Voisey--old spelling for Patience, but they pronounce, it
+Pash-yence--is sitting out here with me at this moment on a sort of
+rustic loggia that opens into the orchard.  Her sleeves are rolled up,
+and she's stripping currants, ready for black currant tea.  Now and then
+she rests her elbows on the table, eats a berry, pouts her lips, and,
+begins again.  She has a round, little face; a long, slender body; cheeks
+like poppies; a bushy mass of black-brown hair, and dark-brown, almost
+black, eyes; her nose is snub; her lips quick, red, rather full; all her
+motions quick and soft.  She loves bright colours.  She's rather like a
+little cat; sometimes she seems all sympathy, then in a moment as hard as
+tortoise-shell.  She's all impulse; yet she doesn't like to show her
+feelings; I sometimes wonder whether she has any.  She plays the violin.
+
+It's queer to see these two together, queer and rather sad.  The old man
+has a fierce tenderness for her that strikes into the very roots of him.
+I see him torn between it, and his cold north-country horror of his
+feelings; his life with her is an unconscious torture to him. She's a
+restless, chafing thing, demure enough one moment, then flashing out into
+mocking speeches or hard little laughs.  Yet she's fond of him in her
+fashion; I saw her kiss him once when he was asleep.  She obeys him
+generally--in a way as if she couldn't breathe while she was doing it. 
+She's had a queer sort of education--history, geography, elementary
+mathematics, and nothing else; never been to school; had a few lessons on
+the violin, but has taught herself most of what she knows. She is well up
+in the lore of birds, flowers, and insects; has three cats, who follow
+her about; and is full of pranks.  The other day she called out to me,
+"I've something for you.  Hold out your hand and shut your eyes!"  It was
+a large, black slug!  She's the child of the old fellow's only daughter,
+who was sent home for schooling at Torquay, and made a runaway match with
+one Richard Voisey, a yeoman farmer, whom she met in the hunting-field. 
+John Ford was furious--his ancestors, it appears, used to lead ruffians
+on the Cumberland side of the Border--he looked on "Squire" Rick Voisey
+as a cut below him.  He was called "Squire," as far as I can make out,
+because he used to play cards every evening with a parson in the
+neighbourhood who went by the name of "Devil" Hawkins.  Not that the
+Voisey stock is to be despised. They have had this farm since it was
+granted to one Richard Voysey by copy dated 8th September, 13 Henry VIII. 
+Mrs. Hopgood, the wife of the bailiff--a dear, quaint, serene old soul
+with cheeks like a rosy, withered apple, and an unbounded love of
+Pasiance--showed me the very document.
+
+"I kape it," she said.  "Mr. Ford be tu proud--but other folks be proud
+tu.  'Tis a pra-aper old fam'ly: all the women is Margery, Pasiance, or
+Mary; all the men's Richards an' Johns an' Rogers; old as they
+apple-trees."
+
+Rick Voisey was a rackety, hunting fellow, and "dipped" the old farm up
+to its thatched roof.  John Ford took his revenge by buying up the
+mortgages, foreclosing, and commanding his daughter and Voisey to go on
+living here rent free; this they dutifully did until they were both
+killed in a dog-cart accident, eight years ago.  Old Ford's financial
+smash came a year later, and since then he's lived here with Pasiance.  I
+fancy it's the cross in her blood that makes her so restless, and
+irresponsible: if she had been all a native she'd have been happy enough
+here, or all a stranger like John Ford himself, but the two strains
+struggling for mastery seem to give her no rest. You'll think this a
+far-fetched theory, but I believe it to be the true one.  She'll stand
+with lips pressed together, her arms folded tight across her narrow
+chest, staring as if she could see beyond the things round her; then
+something catches her attention, her eyes will grow laughing, soft, or
+scornful all in a minute!  She's eighteen, perfectly fearless in a boat,
+but you can't get her to mount a horse--a sore subject with her
+grandfather, who spends most of his day on a lean, half-bred pony, that
+carries him like a feather, for all his weight.
+
+They put me up here as a favour to Dan Treffry; there's an arrangement of
+L. s. d. with Mrs. Hopgood in the background.  They aren't at all well
+off; this is the largest farm about, but it doesn't bring them in much.
+To look at John Ford, it seems incredible he should be short of
+money--he's too large.
+
+We have family prayers at eight, then, breakfast--after that freedom for
+writing or anything else till supper and evening prayers.  At midday one
+forages for oneself.  On Sundays, two miles to church twice, or you get
+into John Ford's black books....  Dan Treffry himself is staying at
+Kingswear.  He says he's made his pile; it suits him down here--like a
+sleep after years of being too wide-awake; he had a rough time in New
+Zealand, until that mine made his fortune.  You'd hardly remember him; he
+reminds me of his uncle, old Nicholas Treffry; the same slow way of
+speaking, with a hesitation, and a trick of repeating your name with
+everything he says; left-handed too, and the same slow twinkle in his
+eyes.  He has a dark, short beard, and red-brown cheeks; is a little bald
+on the temples, and a bit grey, but hard as iron.  He rides over nearly
+every day, attended by a black spaniel with a wonderful nose and a horror
+of petticoats.  He has told me lots of good stories of John Ford in the
+early squatter's times; his feats with horses live to this day; and he
+was through the Maori wars; as Dan says, "a man after Uncle Nic's own
+heart."
+
+They are very good friends, and respect each other; Dan has a great
+admiration for the old man, but the attraction is Pasiance.  He talks
+very little when she's in the room, but looks at her in a sidelong,
+wistful sort of way.  Pasiance's conduct to him would be cruel in any one
+else, but in her, one takes it with a pinch of salt.  Dan goes off, but
+turns up again as quiet and dogged as you please.
+
+Last night, for instance, we were sitting in the loggia after supper.
+Pasiance was fingering the strings of her violin, and suddenly Dan (a
+bold thing for him) asked her to play.
+
+"What!" she said, "before men?  No, thank you!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because I hate them."
+
+Down came John Ford's hand on the wicker table: "You forget yourself!  Go
+to bed!"
+
+She gave Dan a look, and went; we could hear her playing in her bedroom;
+it sounded like a dance of spirits; and just when one thought she had
+finished, out it would break again like a burst of laughter.  Presently,
+John Ford begged our pardons ceremoniously, and stumped off indoors.  The
+violin ceased; we heard his voice growling at her; down he came again.
+Just as he was settled in his chair there was a soft swish, and something
+dark came falling through the apple boughs.  The violin!  You should have
+seen his face!  Dan would have picked the violin up, but the old man
+stopped him.  Later, from my bedroom window, I saw John Ford come out and
+stand looking at the violin.  He raised his foot as if to stamp on it. At
+last he picked it up, wiped it carefully, and took it in....
+
+My room is next to hers.  I kept hearing her laugh, a noise too as if she
+were dragging things about the room.  Then I fell asleep, but woke with a
+start, and went to the window for a breath of fresh air. Such a black,
+breathless night!  Nothing to be seen but the twisted, blacker branches;
+not the faintest stir of leaves, no sound but muffled grunting from the
+cowhouse, and now and then a faint sigh.  I had the queerest feeling of
+unrest and fear, the last thing to expect on such a night.  There is
+something here that's disturbing; a sort of suppressed struggle.  I've
+never in my life seen anything so irresponsible as this girl, or so
+uncompromising as the old man; I keep thinking of the way he wiped that
+violin.  It's just as if a spark would set everything in a blaze. There's
+a menace of tragedy--or--perhaps it's only the heat, and too much of
+Mother Hopgood's crame....
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+"Tuesday.
+
+......I've made a new acquaintance.  I was lying in the orchard, and
+presently, not seeing me, he came along--a man of middle height, with a
+singularly good balance, and no lumber--rather old blue clothes, a
+flannel shirt, a dull red necktie, brown shoes, a cap with a leather peak
+pushed up on the forehead.  Face long and narrow, bronzed with a kind of
+pale burnt-in brownness; a good forehead.  A brown moustache, beard
+rather pointed, blackening about the cheeks; his chin not visible, but
+from the beard's growth must be big; mouth I should judge sensuous.  Nose
+straight and blunt; eyes grey, with an upward look, not exactly frank,
+because defiant; two parallel furrows down each cheek, one from the inner
+corner of the eye, one from the nostril; age perhaps thirty-five.  About
+the face, attitude, movements, something immensely vital, adaptable,
+daring, and unprincipled.
+
+He stood in front of the loggia, biting his fingers, a kind of
+nineteenth-century buccaneer, and I wondered what he was doing in this
+galley. They say you can tell a man of Kent or a Somersetshire man;
+certainly you can tell a Yorkshire man, and this fellow could only have
+been a man of Devon, one of the two main types found in this county.  He
+whistled; and out came Pasiance in a geranium-coloured dress, looking
+like some tall poppy--you know the slight droop of a poppy's head, and
+the way the wind sways its stem.... She is a human poppy, her fuzzy dark
+hair is like a poppy's lustreless black heart, she has a poppy's
+tantalising attraction and repulsion, something fatal, or rather fateful.
+She came walking up to my new friend, then caught sight of me, and
+stopped dead.
+
+"That," she said to me, "is Zachary Pearse.  This," she said to him, "is
+our lodger."  She said it with a wonderful soft malice.  She wanted to
+scratch me, and she scratched.  Half an hour later I was in the yard,
+when up came this fellow Pearse.
+
+"Glad to know you," he said, looking thoughtfully at the pigs.
+
+"You're a writer, aren't you?"
+
+"A sort of one," I said.
+
+"If by any chance," he said suddenly, "you're looking for a job, I could
+put something in your way.  Walk down to the beach with me, and I'll tell
+you; my boat's at anchor, smartest little craft in these parts."
+
+It was very hot, and I had no desire whatever to go down to the beach--I
+went, all the same.  We had not gone far when John Ford and Dan Treffry
+came into the lane.  Our friend seemed a little disconcerted, but soon
+recovered himself.  We met in the middle of the lane, where there was
+hardly room to pass.  John Ford, who looked very haughty, put on his
+pince-nez and stared at Pearse.
+
+"Good-day!" said Pearse; "fine weather!  I've been up to ask Pasiance to
+come for a sail.  Wednesday we thought, weather permitting; this
+gentleman's coming.  Perhaps you'll come too, Mr. Treffry.  You've never
+seen my place.  I'll give you lunch, and show you my father. He's worth a
+couple of hours' sail any day."  It was said in such an odd way that one
+couldn't resent his impudence.  John Ford was seized with a fit of
+wheezing, and seemed on the eve of an explosion; he glanced at me, and
+checked himself.
+
+"You're very good," he said icily; "my granddaughter has other things to
+do.  You, gentlemen, will please yourselves"; and, with a very slight
+bow, he went stumping on to the house.  Dan looked at me, and I looked at
+him.
+
+"You'll come?" said Pearse, rather wistfully.  Dan stammered: "Thank you,
+Mr. Pearse; I'm a better man on a horse than in a boat, but--thank you." 
+Cornered in this way, he's a shy, soft-hearted being. Pearse smiled his
+thanks.  "Wednesday, then, at ten o'clock; you shan't regret it."
+
+"Pertinacious beggar!" I heard Dan mutter in his beard; and found myself
+marching down the lane again by Pearse's side.  I asked him what he was
+good enough to mean by saying I was coming, without having asked me.  He
+answered, unabashed:
+
+"You see, I'm not friends with the old man; but I knew he'd not be
+impolite to you, so I took the liberty."
+
+He has certainly a knack of turning one's anger to curiosity.  We were
+down in the combe now; the tide was running out, and the sand all little,
+wet, shining ridges.  About a quarter of a mile out lay a cutter, with
+her tan sail half down, swinging to the swell.  The sunlight was making
+the pink cliffs glow in the most wonderful way; and shifting in bright
+patches over the sea like moving shoals of goldfish.  Pearse perched
+himself on his dinghy, and looked out under his hand.  He seemed lost in
+admiration.
+
+"If we could only net some of those spangles," he said, "an' make gold of
+'em!  No more work then."
+
+"It's a big job I've got on," he said presently; "I'll tell you about it
+on Wednesday. I want a journalist."
+
+"But I don't write for the papers," I said; "I do other sort of work. My
+game is archaeology."
+
+"It doesn't matter," he said, "the more imagination the better.  It'd be
+a thundering good thing for you."
+
+His assurance was amazing, but it was past supper-time, and hunger
+getting the better of my curiosity, I bade him good-night. When I looked
+back, he was still there, on the edge of his boat, gazing at the sea.  A
+queer sort of bird altogether, but attractive somehow.
+
+Nobody mentioned him that evening; but once old Ford, after staring a
+long time at Pasiance, muttered a propos of nothing, "Undutiful
+children!"  She was softer than usual; listening quietly to our talk, and
+smiling when spoken to.  At bedtime she went up to her grand-father,
+without waiting for the usual command, "Come and kiss me, child."
+
+Dan did not stay to supper, and he has not been here since.  This morning
+I asked Mother Hopgood who Zachary Pearse was.  She's a true Devonian; if
+there's anything she hates, it is to be committed to a definite
+statement.  She ambled round her answer, and at last told me that he was
+"son of old Cap'en Jan Pearse to Black Mill.  'Tes an old family to
+Dartymouth an' Plymouth," she went on in a communicative outburst.  "They
+du say Francis Drake tuke five o' they Pearses with 'en to fight the
+Spaniards.  At least that's what I've heard Mr. Zachary zay; but
+Ha-apgood can tell yu."  Poor Hopgood, the amount of information she
+saddles him with in the course of the day!  Having given me thus to
+understand that she had run dry, she at once went on:
+
+"Cap'en Jan Pearse made a dale of ventures.  He's old now--they du say
+nigh an 'undred.  Ha-apgood can tell yu."
+
+"But the son, Mrs. Hopgood?"
+
+Her eyes twinkled with sudden shrewdness: She hugged herself placidly.
+
+"An' what would yu take for dinner to-day?  There's duck; or yu might
+like 'toad in the hole,' with an apple tart; or then, there's--Well!
+we'll see what we can du like."  And off she went, without waiting for my
+answer.
+
+To-morrow is Wednesday.  I shan't be sorry to get another look at this
+fellow Pearse....
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+"Friday, 29th July.
+
+.......Why do you ask me so many questions, and egg me on to write about
+these people instead of minding my business?  If you really want to hear,
+I'll tell you of Wednesday's doings.
+
+It was a splendid morning; and Dan turned up, to my surprise--though I
+might have known that when he says a thing, he does it.  John Ford came
+out to shake hands with him, then, remembering why he had come, breathed
+loudly, said nothing, and went in again.  Nothing was to be seen of
+Pasiance, and we went down to the beach together.
+
+"I don't like this fellow Pearse, George," Dan said to me on the way; "I
+was fool enough to say I'd go, and so I must, but what's he after?  Not
+the man to do things without a reason, mind you."
+
+I remarked that we should soon know.
+
+"I'm not so sure--queer beggar; I never look at him without thinking of a
+pirate."
+
+The cutter lay in the cove as if she had never moved.  There too was
+Zachary Pearse seated on the edge of his dinghy.
+
+"A five-knot breeze," he said, "I'll run you down in a couple of hours."
+He made no inquiry about Pasiance, but put us into his cockleshell and
+pulled for the cutter.  A lantern-Jawed fellow, named Prawle, with a
+spiky, prominent beard, long, clean-shaven upper lip, and tanned
+complexion--a regular hard-weather bird--received us.
+
+The cutter was beautifully clean; built for a Brixham trawler, she still
+had her number--DH 113--uneffaced.  We dived into a sort of cabin, airy,
+but dark, fitted with two bunks and a small table, on which stood some
+bottles of stout; there were lockers, too, and pegs for clothes.  Prawle,
+who showed us round, seemed very proud of a steam contrivance for
+hoisting sails.  It was some minutes before we came on deck again; and
+there, in the dinghy, being pulled towards the cutter, sat Pasiance.
+
+"If I'd known this," stammered Dan, getting red, "I wouldn't have come."
+She had outwitted us, and there was nothing to be done.
+
+It was a very pleasant sail.  The breeze was light from the south-east,
+the sun warm, the air soft.  Presently Pasiance began singing:
+
+"Columbus is dead and laid in his grave, Oh! heigh-ho! and laid in his
+grave; Over his head the apple-trees wave Oh! heigh-ho! the apple-trees
+wave....
+
+"The apples are ripe and ready to fall, Oh! heigh-ho! and ready to fall;
+There came an old woman and gathered them all, Oh! heigh-ho! and gathered
+them all....
+
+"The apples are gathered, and laid on the shelf, Oh! heigh-ho! and laid
+on the shelf; If you want any more, you must sing for yourself, Oh!
+heigh-ho! and sing for yourself."
+
+Her small, high voice came to us in trills and spurts, as the wind let
+it, like the singing of a skylark lost in the sky.  Pearse went up to her
+and whispered something.  I caught a glimpse of her face like a startled
+wild creature's; shrinking, tossing her hair, laughing, all in the same
+breath.  She wouldn't sing again, but crouched in the bows with her chin
+on her hands, and the sun falling on one cheek, round, velvety, red as a
+peach....
+
+We passed Dartmouth, and half an hour later put into a little wooded bay.
+On a low reddish cliff was a house hedged round by pine-trees. A bit of
+broken jetty ran out from the bottom of the cliff.  We hooked on to this,
+and landed.  An ancient, fish-like man came slouching down and took
+charge of the cutter.  Pearse led us towards the house, Pasiance
+following mortally shy all of a sudden.
+
+The house had a dark, overhanging thatch of the rush reeds that grow in
+the marshes hereabouts; I remember nothing else remarkable.  It was
+neither old, nor new; neither beautiful, nor exactly ugly; neither clean,
+nor entirely squalid; it perched there with all its windows over the sea,
+turning its back contemptuously on the land.
+
+Seated in a kind of porch, beside an immense telescope, was a very old
+man in a panama hat, with a rattan cane.  His pure-white beard and
+moustache, and almost black eyebrows, gave a very singular, piercing look
+to his little, restless, dark-grey eyes; all over his mahogany cheeks and
+neck was a network of fine wrinkles.  He sat quite upright, in the full
+sun, hardly blinking.
+
+"Dad!" said Zachary, "this is Pasiance Voisey."  The old man turned his
+eyes on her and muttered, "How do you do, ma'am?" then took no further
+notice.  And Pasiance, who seemed to resent this, soon slipped away and
+went wandering about amongst the pines.  An old woman brought some plates
+and bottles and laid them casually on a table; and we sat round the
+figure of old Captain Pearse without a word, as if we were all under a
+spell.
+
+Before lunch there was a little scene between Zachary Pearse and Dan, as
+to which of them should summon Pasiance.  It ended in both going, and
+coming back without her.  She did not want any lunch, would stay where
+she was amongst the pines.
+
+For lunch we had chops, wood-pigeons, mushrooms, and mulberry preserve,
+and drank wonderful Madeira out of common wine-glasses.  I asked the old
+man where he got it; he gave me a queer look, and answered with a little
+bow:
+
+"Stood me in tu shillin' the bottle, an' the country got nothing out of
+it, sir.  In the early Thirties; tu shillin' the bottle; there's no such
+wine nowadays and," he added, looking at Zachary, "no such men."
+
+Zachary smiled and said: "You did nothing so big, dad, as what I'm after,
+now!"
+
+The old man's eyes had a sort of disdain in them.
+
+"You're going far, then, in the Pied Witch, Zack?"
+
+"I am," said Zachary.
+
+"And where might yu be goin' in that old trampin' smut factory?"
+
+"Morocco."
+
+"Heu!" said the old man, "there's nothing there; I know that coast, as I
+know the back o' my hand."  He stretched out a hand covered with veins
+and hair.
+
+Zachary began suddenly to pour out a flood of words:
+
+"Below Mogador--a fellow there--friend of mine--two years ago now.
+Concessions--trade-gunpowder--cruisers--feuds--money&
+mdash;chiefs--Gatling guns--Sultan--rifles--rebellion--gold."  He
+detailed a reckless, sordid, bold scheme, which, on the pivot of a
+trading venture, was intended to spin a whole wheel of political
+convulsions.
+
+"They'll never let you get there," said old Pearse.
+
+"Won't they?" returned Zachary.  "Oh yes, they will, an' when I leave,
+there'll be another dynasty, and I'll be a rich man."
+
+"Yu'll never leave," answered the old man.
+
+Zachary took out a sheet of paper covered with figures.  He had worked
+the whole thing out.  So much--equipment, so much--trade, so
+much--concessions, so much--emergencies.  "My last mag!" he ended, "a
+thousand short; the ship's ready, and if I'm not there within a month my
+chance is as good as gone."
+
+This was the pith of his confidences--an appeal for money, and we all
+looked as men will when that crops up.
+
+"Mad!"  muttered the old man, looking at the sea.
+
+"No," said Zachary.  That one word was more eloquent than all the rest of
+his words put together.  This fellow is no visionary.  His scheme may be
+daring, and unprincipled, but--he knows very well what he's about.
+
+"Well!" said old Pearse, "you shall have five 'undred of my money, if
+it's only to learn what yu're made of.  Wheel me in!"  Zachary wheeled
+him into the house, but soon came back.
+
+"The old man's cheque for five hundred pounds!" he said, holding it up.
+"Mr. Treffry, give me another, and you shall have a third of the
+profits."
+
+I expected Dan to give a point-blank refusal.  But he only asked:
+
+"Would that clear you for starting?"
+
+"With that," said Zachary, "I can get to sea in a fortnight."
+
+"Good!" Dan said slowly.  "Give me a written promise!  To sea in fourteen
+days and my fair share on the five hundred pounds--no more--no less."
+
+Again I thought Pearse would have jumped at this, but he leaned his chin
+on his hand, and looked at Dan, and Dan looked at him.  While they were
+staring at each other like this, Pasiance came up with a kitten.
+
+"See!" she said, "isn't it a darling?"  The kitten crawled and clawed its
+way up behind her neck.  I saw both men's eyes as they looked at
+Pasiance, and suddenly understood what they were at.  The kitten rubbed
+itself against Pasiance's cheek, overbalanced, and fell, clawing, down
+her dress.  She caught it up and walked away.  Some one, I don't know
+which of us, sighed, and Pearse cried "Done!"
+
+The bargain had been driven.
+
+"Good-bye, Mr. Pearse," said Dan; "I guess that's all I'm wanted for.
+I'll find my pony waiting in the village.  George, you'll see Pasiance
+home?"
+
+We heard the hoofs of his pony galloping down the road; Pearse suddenly
+excused himself, and disappeared.
+
+This venture of his may sound romantic and absurd, but it's
+matter-of-fact enough.  He's after L. s. d.!  Shades of Drake, Raleigh,
+Hawkins, Oxenham!  The worm of suspicion gnaws at the rose of romance.
+What if those fellows, too, were only after L. s. d....?
+
+I strolled into the pine-wood.  The earth there was covered like a bee's
+body with black and gold stripes; there was the blue sea below, and
+white, sleepy clouds, and bumble-bees booming above the heather; it was
+all softness, a summer's day in Devon.  Suddenly I came on Pearse
+standing at the edge of the cliff with Pasiance sitting in a little
+hollow below, looking up at him.  I heard him say:
+
+"Pasiance--Pasiance!" The sound of his voice, and the sight of her soft,
+wondering face made me furious.  What business has she with love, at her
+age?  What business have they with each other?
+
+He told me presently that she had started off for home, and drove me to
+the ferry, behind an old grey pony.  On the way he came back to his offer
+of the other day.
+
+"Come with me," he said.  "It doesn't do to neglect the Press; you can
+see the possibilities.  It's one of the few countries left.  If I once
+get this business started you don't know where it's going to stop.  You'd
+have free passage everywhere, and whatever you like in reason."
+
+I answered as rudely as I could--but by no means as rudely as I
+wanted--that his scheme was mad.  As a matter of fact, it's much too sane
+for me; for, whatever the body of a scheme, its soul is the fibre of the
+schemer.
+
+"Think of it," he urged, as if he could see into me.  "You can make what
+you like of it.  Press paragraphs, of course.  But that's mechanical;
+why, even I could do it, if I had time.  As for the rest, you'll be as
+free--as free as a man."
+
+There, in five words of one syllable, is the kernel of this fellow
+Pearse--"As free as a man!"  No rule, no law, not even the mysterious
+shackles that bind men to their own self-respects!  "As free as a man!" 
+No ideals; no principles; no fixed star for his worship; no coil he can't
+slide out of!  But the fellow has the tenacity of one of the old Devon
+mastiffs, too.  He wouldn't take "No" for an answer.
+
+"Think of it," he said; "any day will do--I've got a fortnight.... Look!
+there she is!"  I thought that he meant Pasiance; but it was an old
+steamer, sluggish and black in the blazing sun of mid-stream, with a
+yellow-and-white funnel, and no sign of life on her decks.
+
+"That's her--the Pied Witch!  Do her twelve knots; you wouldn't think it! 
+Well! good-evening!  You'd better come.  A word to me at any time. I'm
+going aboard now."
+
+As I was being ferried across I saw him lolling in the stern-sheets of a
+little boat, the sun crowning his straw hat with glory.
+
+I came on Pasiance, about a mile up the road, sitting in the hedge. We
+walked on together between the banks--Devonshire banks, as high as
+houses, thick with ivy and ferns, bramble and hazel boughs, and
+honeysuckle.
+
+"Do you believe in a God?" she said suddenly.
+
+"Grandfather's God is simply awful.  When I'm playing the fiddle, I can
+feel God; but grandfather's is such a stuffy God--you know what I mean:
+the sea, the wind, the trees, colours too--they make one feel. But I
+don't believe that life was meant to 'be good' in.  Isn't there anything
+better than being good?  When I'm 'good,' I simply feel wicked." She
+reached up, caught a flower from the hedge, and slowly tore its petals.
+
+"What would you do," she muttered, "if you wanted a thing, but were
+afraid of it?  But I suppose you're never afraid!" she added, mocking me.
+I admitted that I was sometimes afraid, and often afraid of being afraid.
+
+"That's nice!  I'm not afraid of illness, nor of grandfather, nor of his
+God; but--I want to be free.  If you want a thing badly, you're afraid
+about it."
+
+I thought of Zachary Pearse's words, "free as a man."
+
+"Why are you looking at me like that?" she said.
+
+I stammered: "What do you mean by freedom?"
+
+"Do you know what I shall do to-night?" she answered.  "Get out of my
+window by the apple-tree, and go to the woods, and play!"
+
+We were going down a steep lane, along the side of a wood, where there's
+always a smell of sappy leaves, and the breath of the cows that come
+close to the hedge to get the shade.
+
+There was a cottage in the bottom, and a small boy sat outside playing
+with a heap of dust.
+
+"Hallo, Johnny!" said Pasiance.  "Hold your leg out and show this man
+your bad place!"  The small boy undid a bandage round his bare and dirty
+little leg, and proudly revealed a sore.
+
+"Isn't it nasty?" cried Pasiance ruefully, tying up the bandage again;
+"poor little feller!  Johnny, see what I've brought you!"  She produced
+from her pocket a stick of chocolate, the semblance of a soldier made of
+sealing-wax and worsted, and a crooked sixpence.
+
+It was a new glimpse of her.  All the way home she was telling me the
+story of little Johnny's family; when she came to his mother's death, she
+burst out: "A beastly shame, wasn't it, and they're so poor; it might
+just as well have been somebody else.  I like poor people, but I hate
+rich ones--stuck-up beasts."
+
+Mrs. Hopgood was looking over the gate, with her cap on one side, and one
+of Pasiance's cats rubbing itself against her skirts.  At the sight of us
+she hugged herself.
+
+"Where's grandfather?" asked Pasiance.  The old lady shook her head.
+
+"Is it a row?"  Mrs. Hopgood wriggled, and wriggled, and out came:
+
+"Did you get yure tay, my pretty?  No?  Well, that's a pity; yu'll be
+falin' low-like."
+
+Pasiance tossed her head, snatched up the cat, and ran indoors.  I
+remained staring at Mrs. Hopgood.
+
+"Dear-dear," she clucked, "poor lamb.  So to spake it's--" and she
+blurted out suddenly, "chuckin' full of wra-ath, he is.  Well, there!"
+
+My courage failed that evening.  I spent it at the coastguard station,
+where they gave me bread and cheese and some awful cider.  I passed the
+kitchen as I came back.  A fire was still burning there, and two figures,
+misty in the darkness, flitted about with stealthy laughter like spirits
+afraid of being detected in a carnal-meal. They were Pasiance and Mrs.
+Hopgood; and so charming was the smell of eggs and bacon, and they had
+such an air of tender enjoyment of this dark revel, that I stifled many
+pangs, as I crept hungry up to bed.
+
+In the middle of the night I woke and heard what I thought was screaming;
+then it sounded like wind in trees, then like the distant shaking of a
+tambourine, with the high singing of a human voice. Suddenly it
+stopped--two long notes came wailing out like sobs--then utter stillness;
+and though I listened for an hour or more there was no other sound ....
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+"4th August.
+
+......For three days after I wrote last, nothing at all happened here.  I
+spent the mornings on the cliff reading, and watching the sun-sparks
+raining on the sea.  It's grand up there with the gorse all round, the
+gulls basking on the rocks, the partridges calling in the corn, and now
+and then a young hawk overhead.  The afternoons I spent out in the
+orchard.  The usual routine goes on at the farm all the
+time--cow-milking, bread-baking, John Ford riding in and out, Pasiance in
+her garden stripping lavender, talking to the farm hands; and the smell
+of clover, and cows and hay; the sound of hens and pigs and pigeons, the
+soft drawl of voices, the dull thud of the farm carts; and day by day the
+apples getting redder.  Then, last Monday, Pasiance was away from sunrise
+till sunset--nobody saw her go--nobody knew where she had gone.  It was a
+wonderful, strange day, a sky of silver-grey and blue, with a drift of
+wind-clouds, all the trees sighing a little, the sea heaving in a long,
+low swell, the animals restless, the birds silent, except the gulls with
+their old man's laughter and kitten's mewing.
+
+A something wild was in the air; it seemed to sweep across the downs and
+combe, into the very house, like a passionate tune that comes drifting to
+your ears when you're sleepy.  But who would have thought the absence of
+that girl for a few hours could have wrought such havoc!  We were like
+uneasy spirits; Mrs. Hopgood's apple cheeks seemed positively to wither
+before one's eyes.  I came across a dairymaid and farm hand discussing it
+stolidly with very downcast faces.  Even Hopgood, a hard-bitten fellow
+with immense shoulders, forgot his imperturbability so far as to harness
+his horse, and depart on what he assured me was "just a wild-guse
+chaace."  It was long before John Ford gave signs of noticing that
+anything was wrong, but late in the afternoon I found him sitting with
+his hands on his knees, staring straight before him.  He rose heavily
+when he saw me, and stalked out.  In the evening, as I was starting for
+the coastguard station to ask for help to search the cliff, Pasiance
+appeared, walking as if she could hardly drag one leg after the other.
+Her cheeks were crimson; she was biting her lips to keep tears of sheer
+fatigue out of her eyes.  She passed me in the doorway without a word.
+The anxiety he had gone through seemed to forbid the old man from
+speaking.  He just came forward, took her face in his hands, gave it a
+great kiss, and walked away.  Pasiance dropped on the floor in the dark
+passage, and buried her face on her arms. "Leave me alone!" was all she
+would say.  After a bit she dragged herself upstairs.  Presently Mrs.
+Hopgood came to me.
+
+"Not a word out of her--an' not a bite will she ate, an' I had a pie all
+ready--scrumptious.  The good Lord knows the truth--she asked for brandy;
+have you any brandy, sir?  Ha-apgood'e don't drink it, an' Mister Ford 'e
+don't allaow for anything but caowslip wine."
+
+I had whisky.
+
+The good soul seized the flask, and went off hugging it.  She returned it
+to me half empty.
+
+"Lapped it like a kitten laps milk.  I misdaoubt it's straong, poor lamb,
+it lusened 'er tongue praaperly.  'I've a-done it,' she says to me,
+'Mums-I've a-done it,' an' she laughed like a mad thing; and then, sir,
+she cried, an' kissed me, an' pusshed me thru the door. Gude Lard!  What
+is 't she's a-done...?"
+
+It rained all the next day and the day after.  About five o'clock
+yesterday the rain ceased; I started off to Kingswear on Hopgood's nag to
+see Dan Treffry.  Every tree, bramble, and fern in the lanes was dripping
+water; and every bird singing from the bottom of his heart.  I thought of
+Pasiance all the time.  Her absence that day was still a mystery; one
+never ceased asking oneself what she had done. There are people who never
+grow up--they have no right to do things. Actions have consequences--and
+children have no business with consequences.
+
+Dan was out.  I had supper at the hotel, and rode slowly home.  In the
+twilight stretches of the road, where I could touch either bank of the
+lane with my whip, I thought of nothing but Pasiance and her grandfather;
+there was something in the half light suited to wonder and uncertainty.
+It had fallen dark before I rode into the straw-yard.  Two young bullocks
+snuffled at me, a sleepy hen got up and ran off with a tremendous
+shrieking.  I stabled the horse, and walked round to the back.  It was
+pitch black under the apple-trees, and the windows were all darkened.  I
+stood there a little, everything smelled so delicious after the rain;
+suddenly I had the uncomfortable feeling that I was being watched.  Have
+you ever felt like that on a dark night?  I called out at last: "Is any
+one there?"  Not a sound!  I walked to the gate-nothing!  The trees still
+dripped with tiny, soft, hissing sounds, but that was all.  I slipped
+round to the front, went in, barricaded the door, and groped up to bed.
+But I couldn't sleep.  I lay awake a long while; dozed at last, and woke
+with a jump.  A stealthy murmur of smothered voices was going on quite
+close somewhere.  It stopped.  A minute passed; suddenly came the soft
+thud as of something falling.  I sprang out of bed and rushed to the
+window.  Nothing--but in the distance something that sounded like
+footsteps.  An owl hooted; then clear as crystal, but quite low, I heard
+Pasiance singing in her room:
+
+"The apples are ripe and ready to fall. Oh! heigh-ho! and ready to fall."
+
+I ran to her door and knocked.
+
+"What is it?" she cried.
+
+"Is anything the matter?"
+
+"Matter?"
+
+"Is anything the matter?"
+
+"Ha-ha-ha-ha!  Good-night!" then quite low, I heard her catch her breath,
+hard, sharply.  No other answer, no other sound.
+
+I went to bed and lay awake for hours....
+
+This evening Dan came; during supper he handed Pasiance a roll of music;
+he had got it in Torquay.  The shopman, he said, had told him that it was
+a "corker."
+
+It was Bach's "Chaconne."  You should have seen her eyes shine, her
+fingers actually tremble while she turned over the pages.  Seems odd to
+think of her worshipping at the shrine of Bach as odd as to think of a
+wild colt running of its free will into the shafts; but that's just it
+with her you can never tell.  "Heavenly!" she kept saying.
+
+John Ford put down his knife and fork.
+
+"Heathenish stuff!" he muttered, and suddenly thundered out, "Pasiance!"
+
+She looked up with a start, threw the music from her, and resumed her
+place.
+
+During evening prayers, which follow every night immediately on food, her
+face was a study of mutiny.  She went to bed early.  It was rather late
+when we broke up--for once old Ford had been talking of his squatter's
+life.  As we came out, Dan held up his hand.  A dog was barking.  "It's
+Lass," he said.  "She'll wake Pasiance."
+
+The spaniel yelped furiously.  Dan ran out to stop her.  He was soon
+back.
+
+"Somebody's been in the orchard, and gone off down to the cove."  He ran
+on down the path.  I, too, ran, horribly uneasy.  In front, through the
+darkness, came the spaniel's bark; the lights of the coastguard station
+faintly showed.  I was first on the beach; the dog came to me at once,
+her tail almost in her mouth from apology.  There was the sound of oars
+working in rowlocks; nothing visible but the feathery edges of the waves.
+Dan said behind, "No use!  He's gone." His voice sounded hoarse, like
+that of a man choking with passion.
+
+"George," he stammered, "it's that blackguard.  I wish I'd put a bullet
+in him."  Suddenly a light burned up in the darkness on the sea, seemed
+to swing gently, and vanished.  Without another word we went back up the
+hill.  John Ford stood at the gate motionless, indifferent--nothing had
+dawned on him as yet.  I whispered to Dan, "Let it alone!"
+
+"No," he said, "I'm going to show you."  He struck a match, and slowly
+hunted the footsteps in the wet grass of the orchard.  "Look--here!"
+
+He stopped under Pasiance's window and swayed the match over the ground.
+Clear as daylight were the marks of some one who had jumped or fallen.
+Dan held the match over his head.
+
+"And look there!" he said.  The bough of an apple-tree below the window
+was broken.  He blew the match out.
+
+I could see the whites of his eyes, like an angry animal's.
+
+"Drop it, Dan!" I said.
+
+He turned on his heel suddenly, and stammered out, "You're right."
+
+But he had turned into John Ford's arms.
+
+The old man stood there like some great force, darker than the darkness,
+staring up at the window, as though stupefied.  We had not a word to say.
+He seemed unconscious of our presence.  He turned round, and left us
+standing there.
+
+"Follow him!" said Dan.  "Follow him--by God! it's not safe."
+
+We followed.  Bending, and treading heavily, he went upstairs.  He struck
+a blow on Pasiance's door.  "Let me in!" he said.  I drew Dan into my
+bedroom.  The key was slowly turned, her door was flung open, and there
+she stood in her dressing-gown, a candle in her hand, her face crimson,
+and oh! so young, with its short, crisp hair and round cheeks.  The old
+man--like a giant in front of her--raised his hands, and laid them on her
+shoulders.
+
+"What's this?  You--you've had a man in your room?"
+
+Her eyes did not drop.
+
+"Yes," she said.  Dan gave a groan.
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Zachary Pearse," she answered in a voice like a bell.
+
+He gave her one awful shake, dropped his hands, then raised them as
+though to strike her.  She looked him in the eyes; his hands dropped, and
+he too groaned.  As far as I could see, her face never moved.
+
+"I'm married to him," she said, "d' you hear?  Married to him.  Go out of
+my room!"  She dropped the candle on the floor at his feet, and slammed
+the door in his face.  The old man stood for a minute as though stunned,
+then groped his way downstairs.
+
+"Dan," I said, "is it true?"
+
+"Ah!" he answered, "it's true; didn't you hear her?"
+
+I was glad I couldn't see his face.
+
+"That ends it," he said at last; "there's the old man to think of."
+
+"What will he do?"
+
+"Go to the fellow this very night."  He seemed to have no doubt. Trust
+one man of action to know another.
+
+I muttered something about being an outsider--wondered if there was
+anything I could do to help.
+
+"Well," he said slowly, "I don't know that I'm anything but an outsider
+now; but I'll go along with him, if he'll have me."
+
+He went downstairs.  A few minutes later they rode out from the
+straw-yard.  I watched them past the line of hayricks, into the blacker
+shadows of the pines, then the tramp of hoofs began to fail in the
+darkness, and at last died away.
+
+I've been sitting here in my bedroom writing to you ever since, till my
+candle's almost gone.  I keep thinking what the end of it is to be; and
+reproaching myself for doing nothing.  And yet, what could I have done?
+I'm sorry for her--sorrier than I can say.  The night is so quiet--I
+haven't heard a sound; is she asleep, awake, crying, triumphant?
+
+It's four o'clock; I've been asleep.
+
+They're back.  Dan is lying on my bed.  I'll try and tell you his story
+as near as I can, in his own words.
+
+"We rode," he said, "round the upper way, keeping out of the lanes, and
+got to Kingswear by half-past eleven.  The horse-ferry had stopped
+running, and we had a job to find any one to put us over.  We hired the
+fellow to wait for us, and took a carriage at the 'Castle.' Before we got
+to Black Mill it was nearly one, pitch-dark.  With the breeze from the
+southeast, I made out he should have been in an hour or more.  The old
+man had never spoken to me once: and before we got there I had begun to
+hope we shouldn't find the fellow after all.  We made the driver pull up
+in the road, and walked round and round, trying to find the door.  Then
+some one cried, 'Who are you?'
+
+"'John Ford.'
+
+"'What do you want?' It was old Pearse.
+
+"'To see Zachary Pearse.'
+
+"The long window out of the porch where we sat the other day was open,
+and in we went.  There was a door at the end of the room, and a light
+coming through.  John Ford went towards it; I stayed out in the dark.
+
+"'Who's that with you?'
+
+"'Mr. Treffry.'
+
+"'Let him come in!' I went in.  The old fellow was in bed, quite still on
+his pillows, a candle by his side; to look at him you'd think nothing of
+him but his eyes were alive.  It was queer being there with those two old
+men!"
+
+Dan paused, seemed to listen, then went on doggedly.
+
+"'Sit down, gentleman,' said old Pearse.  'What may you want to see my
+son for?'  John Ford begged his pardon, he had something to say, he said,
+that wouldn't wait.
+
+"They were very polite to one another," muttered Dan ....
+
+"'Will you leave your message with me?' said Pearse.
+
+"'What I have to say to your son is private.'
+
+"'I'm his father.'
+
+"'I'm my girl's grandfather; and her only stand-by.'
+
+"'Ah!' muttered old Pearse, 'Rick Voisey's daughter?'
+
+"'I mean to see your son.'
+
+"Old Pearse smiled.  Queer smile he's got, sort of sneering sweet.
+
+"'You can never tell where Zack may be,' he said.  'You think I want to
+shield him.  You're wrong; Zack can take care of himself.'
+
+"'Your son's here!' said John Ford.  'I know.'  Old Pearse gave us a very
+queer look.
+
+"'You come into my house like thieves in the night,' he said, 'and give
+me the lie, do you?'
+
+"'Your son came to my child's room like a thief in the night; it's for
+that I want to see him,' and then," said Dan, "there was a long silence.
+At last Pearse said:
+
+"'I don't understand; has he played the blackguard?'
+
+"John Ford answered, 'He's married her, or, before God, I'd kill him.'
+
+"Old Pearse seemed to think this over, never moving on his pillows. 'You
+don't know Zack,' he said; 'I'm sorry for you, and I'm sorry for Rick
+Voisey's daughter; but you don't know Zack.'
+
+"'Sorry!' groaned out John Ford; 'he's stolen my child, and I'll punish
+him.'
+
+"'Punish!' cried old Pearse, 'we don't take punishment, not in my
+family.'
+
+"'Captain Jan Pearse, as sure as I stand here, you and your breed will
+get your punishment of God.'  Old Pearse smiled.
+
+"'Mr. John Ford, that's as may be; but sure as I lie here we won't take
+it of you.  You can't punish unless you make to feel, and that you can't
+du.'"
+
+And that is truth!
+
+Dan went on again:
+
+"'You won't tell me where your son is!' but old Pearse never blinked.
+
+"'I won't,' he said, 'and now you may get out.  I lie here an old man
+alone, with no use to my legs, night on night, an' the house open; any
+rapscallion could get in; d' ye think I'm afraid of you?'
+
+"We were beat; and walked out without a word.  But that old man; I've
+thought of him a lot--ninety-two, and lying there.  Whatever he's been,
+and they tell you rum things of him, whatever his son may be, he's a man. 
+It's not what he said, nor that there was anything to be afraid of just
+then, but somehow it's the idea of the old chap lying there.  I don't
+ever wish to see a better plucked one...."
+
+We sat silent after that; out of doors the light began to stir among the
+leaves.  There were all kinds of rustling sounds, as if the world were
+turning over in bed.
+
+Suddenly Dan said:
+
+"He's cheated me.  I paid him to clear out and leave her alone. D' you
+think she's asleep?"  He's made no appeal for sympathy, he'd take pity
+for an insult; but he feels it badly.
+
+"I'm tired as a cat," he said at last, and went to sleep on my bed.
+
+It's broad daylight now; I too am tired as a cat....
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+"Saturday, 6th August.
+
+.......I take up my tale where I left off yesterday....  Dan and I
+started as soon as we could get Mrs. Hopgood to give us coffee.  The old
+lady was more tentative, more undecided, more pouncing, than I had ever
+seen her.  She was manifestly uneasy: Ha-apgood--who "don't slape" don't
+he, if snores are any criterion--had called out in the night, "Hark to
+th' 'arses' 'oofs!"  Had we heard them?  And where might we be going
+then?  'Twas very earrly to start, an' no breakfast.  Haapgood had said
+it was goin' to shaowerr.  Miss Pasiance was not to 'er violin yet, an'
+Mister Ford 'e kept 'is room. Was it?--would there be--? "Well, an'
+therr's an 'arvest bug; 'tis some earrly for they!"  Wonderful how she
+pounces on all such creatures, when I can't even see them.  She pressed
+it absently between finger and thumb, and began manoeuvring round another
+way. Long before she had reached her point, we had gulped down our
+coffee, and departed.  But as we rode out she came at a run, holding her
+skirts high with either hand, raised her old eyes bright and anxious in
+their setting of fine wrinkles, and said:
+
+"'Tidden sorrow for her?"
+
+A shrug of the shoulders was all the answer she got.  We rode by the
+lanes; through sloping farmyards, all mud and pigs, and dirty straw, and
+farmers with clean-shaven upper lips and whiskers under the chin; past
+fields of corn, where larks were singing.  Up or down, we didn't draw
+rein till we came to Dan's hotel.
+
+There was the river gleaming before us under a rainbow mist that hallowed
+every shape.  There seemed affinity between the earth and the sky.  I've
+never seen that particular soft unity out of Devon. And every ship,
+however black or modern, on those pale waters, had the look of a dream
+ship.  The tall green woods, the red earth, the white houses, were all
+melted into one opal haze.  It was raining, but the sun was shining
+behind.  Gulls swooped by us--ghosts of the old greedy wanderers of the
+sea.
+
+We had told our two boatmen to pull us out to the Pied Witch!  They
+started with great resolution, then rested on their oars.
+
+"The Pied Witch, zurr?" asked one politely; "an' which may her be?"
+
+That's the West countryman all over!  Never say you "nay," never lose an
+opportunity, never own he doesn't know, or can't do anything
+--independence, amiability, and an eye to the main chance.  We mentioned
+Pearse's name.
+
+"Capt'n Zach'ry Pearse!"  They exchanged a look half-amused,
+half-admiring.
+
+"The Zunflaower, yu mane.  That's her.  Zunflaower, ahoy!"  As we mounted
+the steamer's black side I heard one say:
+
+"Pied Witch!  A pra-aper name that--a dandy name for her!"  They laughed
+as they made fast.
+
+The mate of the Sunflower, or Pied Witch, or whatever she was called, met
+us--a tall young fellow in his shirtsleeves, tanned to the roots of his
+hair, with sinewy, tattooed arms, and grey eyes, charred round the rims
+from staring at weather.
+
+"The skipper is on board," he said.  "We're rather busy, as you see. Get
+on with that, you sea-cooks," he bawled at two fellows who were doing
+nothing.  All over the ship, men were hauling, splicing, and stowing
+cargo.
+
+"To-day's Friday: we're off on Wednesday with any luck.  Will you come
+this way?"  He led us down the companion to a dark hole which he called
+the saloon.  "Names?  What! are you Mr. Treffry?  Then we're partners!" A
+schoolboy's glee came on his face.
+
+"Look here!" he said; "I can show you something," and he unlocked the
+door of a cabin.  There appeared to be nothing in it but a huge piece of
+tarpaulin, which depended, bulging, from the topmost bunk.  He pulled it
+up.  The lower bunk had been removed, and in its place was the ugly body
+of a dismounted Gatling gun.
+
+"Got six of them," he whispered, with unholy mystery, through which his
+native frankness gaped out.  "Worth their weight in gold out there just
+now, the skipper says.  Got a heap of rifles, too, and lots of
+ammunition.  He's given me a share.  This is better than the P. and O.,
+and playing deck cricket with the passengers.  I'd made up my mind
+already to chuck that, and go in for plantin' sugar, when I ran across
+the skipper.  Wonderful chap, the skipper!  I'll go and tell him.  He's
+been out all night; only came aboard at four bells; having a nap now, but
+he won't mind that for you."
+
+Off he went.  I wondered what there was in Zachary Pearse to attract a
+youngster of this sort; one of the customary twelve children of some
+country parson, no doubt-burning to shoot a few niggers, and for ever
+frank and youthful.
+
+He came back with his hands full of bottles.
+
+"What'll you drink?  The skipper'll be here in a jiffy.  Excuse my goin'
+on deck.  We're so busy."
+
+And in five minutes Zachary Pearse did come.  He made no attempt to shake
+hands, for which I respected him.  His face looked worn, and more defiant
+than usual.
+
+"Well, gentlemen?" he said.
+
+"We've come to ask what you're going to do?" said Dan.
+
+"I don't know," answered Pearse, "that that's any of your business."
+
+Dan's little eyes were like the eyes of an angry pig.
+
+"You've got five hundred pounds of mine," he said; "why do you think I
+gave it you?"
+
+Zachary bit his fingers.
+
+"That's no concern of mine," he said.  "I sail on Wednesday.  Your
+money's safe."
+
+"Do you know what I think of you?" said Dan.
+
+"No, and you'd better not tell me!"  Then, with one of his peculiar
+changes, he smiled: "As you like, though."
+
+Dan's face grew very dark.  "Give me a plain answer," he said: "What are
+you going to do about her?"
+
+Zachary looked up at him from under his brows.
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Are you cur enough to deny that you've married her?"
+
+Zachary looked at him coolly.  "Not at all," he said.
+
+"What in God's name did you do it for?"
+
+"You've no monopoly in the post of husband, Mr.  Treffry."
+
+"To put a child in that position!  Haven't you the heart of a man?  What
+d' ye come sneaking in at night for?  By Gad!  Don't you know you've done
+a beastly thing?"
+
+Zachary's face darkened, he clenched his fists.  Then he seemed to shut
+his anger into himself.
+
+"You wanted me to leave her to you," he sneered.  "I gave her my promise
+that I'd take her out there, and we'd have gone off on Wednesday quietly
+enough, if you hadn't come and nosed the whole thing out with your
+infernal dog.  The fat's in the fire!  There's no reason why I should
+take her now.  I'll come back to her a rich man, or not at all."
+
+"And in the meantime?" I slipped in.
+
+He turned to me, in an ingratiating way.
+
+"I would have taken her to save the fuss--I really would--it's not my
+fault the thing's come out.  I'm on a risky job.  To have her with me
+might ruin the whole thing; it would affect my nerve.  It isn't safe for
+her."
+
+"And what's her position to be," I said, "while you're away?  Do you
+think she'd have married you if she'd known you were going to leave her
+like this?  You ought to give up this business.
+
+"You stole her.  Her life's in your hands; she's only a child!"
+
+A quiver passed over his face; it showed that he was suffering.
+
+"Give it up!" I urged.
+
+"My last farthing's in it," he sighed; "the chance of a lifetime."
+
+He looked at me doubtfully, appealingly, as if for the first time in his
+life he had been given a glimpse of that dilemma of consequences which
+his nature never recognises.  I thought he was going to give in.
+Suddenly, to my horror, Dan growled, "Play the man!"
+
+Pearse turned his head.  "I don't want your advice anyway," he said;
+"I'll not be dictated to."
+
+"To your last day," said Dan, "you shall answer to me for the way you
+treat her."
+
+Zachary smiled.
+
+"Do you see that fly?" he said.  "Wel--I care for you as little as this,"
+and he flicked the fly off his white trousers. "Good-morning...!"
+
+The noble mariners who manned our boat pulled lustily for the shore, but
+we had hardly shoved off' when a storm of rain burst over the ship, and
+she seemed to vanish, leaving a picture on my eyes of the mate waving his
+cap above the rail, with his tanned young face bent down at us, smiling,
+keen, and friendly.
+
+...... We reached the shore drenched, angry with ourselves, and with each
+other; I started sulkily for home.
+
+As I rode past an orchard, an apple, loosened by the rainstorm, came down
+with a thud.
+
+"The apples were ripe and ready to fall, Oh! heigh-ho! and ready to
+fall."
+
+I made up my mind to pack, and go away.  But there's a strangeness, a
+sort of haunting fascination in it all.  To you, who don't know the
+people, it may only seem a piece of rather sordid folly.  But it isn't
+the good, the obvious, the useful that puts a spell on us in life.  It's
+the bizarre, the dimly seen, the mysterious for good or evil.
+
+The sun was out again when I rode up to the farm; its yellow thatch shone
+through the trees as if sheltering a store of gladness and good news.
+John Ford himself opened the door to me.
+
+He began with an apology, which made me feel more than ever an intruder;
+then he said:
+
+"I have not spoken to my granddaughter--I waited to see Dan Treffry."
+
+He was stern and sad-eyed, like a man with a great weight of grief on his
+shoulders.  He looked as if he had not slept; his dress was out of order,
+he had not taken his clothes off, I think.  He isn't a man whom you can
+pity.  I felt I had taken a liberty in knowing of the matter at all. When
+I told him where we had been, he said:
+
+"It was good of you to take this trouble.  That you should have had to!
+But since such things have come to pass--" He made a gesture full of
+horror.  He gave one the impression of a man whose pride was struggling
+against a mortal hurt.  Presently he asked:
+
+"You saw him, you say?  He admitted this marriage?  Did he give an
+explanation?"
+
+I tried to make Pearse's point of view clear.  Before this old man, with
+his inflexible will and sense of duty, I felt as if I held a brief for
+Zachary, and must try to do him justice.
+
+"Let me understand," he said at last.  "He stole her, you say, to make
+sure; and deserts her within a fortnight."
+
+"He says he meant to take her--"
+
+"Do you believe that?"
+
+Before I could answer, I saw Pasiance standing at the window.  How long
+she had been there I don't know.
+
+"Is it true that he is going to leave me behind?" she cried out.
+
+I could only nod.
+
+"Did you hear him your own self?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+She stamped her foot.
+
+"But he promised!  He promised!"
+
+John Ford went towards her.
+
+"Don't touch me, grandfather!  I hate every one!  Let him do what he
+likes, I don't care."
+
+John Ford's face turned quite grey.
+
+"Pasiance," he said, "did you want to leave me so much?"
+
+She looked straight at us, and said sharply:
+
+"What's the good of telling stories.  I can't help its hurting you."
+
+"What did you think you would find away from here?"
+
+She laughed.
+
+"Find?  I don't know--nothing; I wouldn't be stifled anyway.  Now I
+suppose you'll shut me up because I'm a weak girl, not strong like men!"
+
+"Silence!" said John Ford; "I will make him take you."
+
+"You shan't!" she cried; "I won't let you.  He's free to do as he likes.
+He's free--I tell you all, everybody--free!"
+
+She ran through the window, and vanished.
+
+John Ford made a movement as if the bottom had dropped out of his world.
+I left him there.
+
+I went to the kitchen, where Hopgood was sitting at the table, eating
+bread and cheese.  He got up on seeing me, and very kindly brought me
+some cold bacon and a pint of ale.
+
+"I thart I shude be seeing yu, zurr," he said between his bites; "Therr's
+no thart to 'atin' 'bout the 'ouse to-day.  The old wumman's puzzivantin'
+over Miss Pasiance.  Young girls are skeery critters"--he brushed his
+sleeve over his broad, hard jaws, and filled a pipe "specially when it's
+in the blood of 'em.  Squire Rick Voisey werr a dandy; an' Mistress
+Voisey--well, she werr a nice lady tu, but"--rolling the stem of his pipe
+from corner to corner of his mouth--"she werr a pra-aper vixen."
+
+Hopgood's a good fellow, and I believe as soft as he looks hard, but he's
+not quite the sort with whom one chooses to talk over a matter like this.
+I went upstairs, and began to pack, but after a bit dropped it for a
+book, and somehow or other fell asleep.
+
+I woke, and looked at my watch; it was five o'clock.  I had been asleep
+four hours.  A single sunbeam was slanting across from one of my windows
+to the other, and there was the cool sound of milk dropping into pails;
+then, all at once, a stir as of alarm, and heavy footsteps.
+
+I opened my door.  Hopgood and a coast-guardsman were carrying Pasiance
+slowly up the stairs.  She lay in their arms without moving, her face
+whiter than her dress, a scratch across the forehead, and two or three
+drops there of dried blood.  Her hands were clasped, and she slowly
+crooked and stiffened out her fingers.  When they turned with her at the
+stair top, she opened her lips, and gasped, "All right, don't put me
+down.  I can bear it."  They passed, and, with a half-smile in her eyes,
+she said something to me that I couldn't catch; the door was shut, and
+the excited whispering began again below.  I waited for the men to come
+out, and caught hold of Hopgood. He wiped the sweat off his forehead.
+
+"Poor young thing!" he said.  "She fell--down the cliffs--'tis her
+back--coastguard saw her 'twerr they fetched her in.  The Lord 'elp her
+mebbe she's not broken up much!  An' Mister Ford don't know!  I'm gwine
+for the doctor."
+
+There was an hour or more to wait before he came; a young fellow; almost
+a boy.  He looked very grave, when he came out of her room.
+
+"The old woman there fond of her? nurse her well...?  Fond as a
+dog!--good!  Don't know--can't tell for certain!  Afraid it's the spine,
+must have another opinion!  What a plucky girl!  Tell Mr. Ford to have
+the best man he can get in Torquay--there's C---.  I'll be round the
+first thing in the morning.  Keep her dead quiet.  I've left a sleeping
+draught; she'll have fever tonight."
+
+John Ford came in at last.  Poor old man!  What it must have cost him not
+to go to her for fear of the excitement!  How many times in the next few
+hours didn't I hear him come to the bottom of the stairs; his heavy
+wheezing, and sighing; and the forlorn tread of his feet going back!
+About eleven, just as I was going to bed, Mrs. Hopgood came to my door.
+
+"Will yu come, sir," she said; "she's asking for yu.  Naowt I can zay but
+what she will see yu; zeems crazy, don't it?"  A tear trickled down the
+old lady's cheek.  "Du 'ee come; 'twill du 'err 'arm mebbe, but I
+dunno--she'll fret else."
+
+I slipped into the room.  Lying back on her pillows, she was breathing
+quickly with half-closed eyes.  There was nothing to show that she had
+wanted me, or even knew that I was there.  The wick of the candle, set by
+the bedside, had been snuffed too short, and gave but a faint light; both
+window and door stood open, still there was no draught, and the feeble
+little flame burned quite still, casting a faint yellow stain on the
+ceiling like the refection from a buttercup held beneath a chin.  These
+ceilings are far too low!  Across the wide, squat window the apple
+branches fell in black stripes which never stirred.  It was too dark to
+see things clearly.  At the foot of the bed was a chest, and there Mrs.
+Hopgood had sat down, moving her lips as if in speech.  Mingled with the
+half-musty smell of age; there were other scents, of mignonette, apples,
+and some sweet-smelling soap.  The floor had no carpet, and there was not
+one single dark object except the violin, hanging from a nail over the
+bed.  A little, round clock ticked solemnly.
+
+"Why won't you give me that stuff, Mums?" Pasiance said in a faint, sharp
+voice.  "I want to sleep."
+
+"Have you much pain?" I asked.
+
+"Of course I have; it's everywhere."
+
+She turned her face towards me.
+
+"You thought I did it on purpose, but you're wrong.  If I had, I'd have
+done it better than this.  I wouldn't have this brutal pain." She put her
+fingers over her eyes.  "It's horrible to complain!  Only it's so bad!
+But I won't again--promise."
+
+She took the sleeping draught gratefully, making a face, like a child
+after a powder.
+
+"How long do you think it'll be before I can play again?  Oh!  I
+forgot--there are other things to think about."  She held out her hand to
+me.  "Look at my ring.  Married--isn't it funny?  Ha, ha!  Nobody will
+ever understand--that's funny too!  Poor Gran!  You see, there wasn't any
+reason--only me.  That's the only reason I'm telling you now; Mums is
+there--but she doesn't count; why don't you count, Mums?"
+
+The fever was fighting against the draught; she had tossed the clothes
+back from her throat, and now and then raised one thin arm a little, as
+if it eased her; her eyes had grown large, and innocent like a child's;
+the candle, too, had flared, and was burning clearly.
+
+"Nobody is to tell him--nobody at all; promise...!  If I hadn't slipped,
+it would have been different.  What would have happened then?  You can't
+tell; and I can't--that's funny!  Do you think I loved him?  Nobody
+marries without love, do they?  Not quite without love, I mean.  But you
+see I wanted to be free, he said he'd take me; and now he's left me after
+all!  I won't be left, I can't!  When I came to the cliff--that bit where
+the ivy grows right down--there was just the sea there, underneath; so I
+thought I would throw myself over and it would be all quiet; and I
+climbed on a ledge, it looked easier from there, but it was so high, I
+wanted to get back; and then my foot slipped; and now it's all pain.  You
+can't think much, when you're in pain."
+
+From her eyes I saw that she was dropping off.
+
+"Nobody can take you away from-yourself.  He's not to be told--not
+even--I don't--want you--to go away, because--"  But her eyes closed, and
+she dropped off to sleep.
+
+They don't seem to know this morning whether she is better or worse....
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+"Tuesday, 9th August.
+
+It seems more like three weeks than three days since I wrote.  The time
+passes slowly in a sickhouse...!  The doctors were here this morning,
+they give her forty hours.  Not a word of complaint has passed her lips
+since she knew.  To see her you would hardly think her ill; her cheeks
+have not had time to waste or lose their colour. There is not much pain,
+but a slow, creeping numbness....  It was John Ford's wish that she
+should be told.  She just turned her head to the wall and sighed; then to
+poor old Mrs. Hopgood, who was crying her heart out: "Don't cry, Mums, I
+don't care."
+
+When they had gone, she asked for her violin.  She made them hold it for
+her, and drew the bow across the strings; but the notes that came out
+were so trembling and uncertain that she dropped the bow and broke into a
+passion of sobbing.  Since then, no complaint or moan of any kind....
+
+But to go back.  On Sunday, the day after I wrote, as I was coming from a
+walk, I met a little boy making mournful sounds on a tin whistle.
+
+"Coom ahn!" he said, "the Miss wahnts t' zee yu."
+
+I went to her room.  In the morning she had seemed better, but now looked
+utterly exhausted.  She had a letter in her hand.
+
+"It's this," she said.  "I don't seem to understand it.  He wants me to
+do something--but I can't think, and my eyes feel funny.  Read it to me,
+please."
+
+The letter was from Zachary.  I read it to her in a low voice, for Mrs.
+Hopgood was in the room, her eyes always fixed on Pasiance above her
+knitting.  When I'd finished, she made me read it again, and yet again.
+At first she seemed pleased, almost excited, then came a weary, scornful
+look, and before I'd finished the third time she was asleep.  It was a
+remarkable letter, that seemed to bring the man right before one's eyes.
+I slipped it under her fingers on the bed-clothes, and went out.  Fancy
+took me to the cliff where she had fallen.  I found the point of rock
+where the cascade of ivy flows down the cliff; the ledge on which she had
+climbed was a little to my right--a mad place.  It showed plainly what
+wild emotions must have been driving her!  Behind was a half-cut
+cornfield with a fringe of poppies, and swarms of harvest insects
+creeping and flying; in the uncut corn a landrail kept up a continual
+charring.  The sky was blue to the very horizon, and the sea wonderful,
+under that black wild cliff stained here and there with red.  Over the
+dips and hollows of the fields great white clouds hung low down above the
+land.  There are no brassy, east-coast skies here; but always sleepy,
+soft-shaped clouds, full of subtle stir and change.  Passages of
+Zachary's Pearse's letter kept rising to my lips.  After all he's the man
+that his native place, and life, and blood have made him.  It is useless
+to expect idealists where the air is soft and things good to look on (the
+idealist grows where he must create beauty or comfort for himself);
+useless to expect a man of law and order, in one whose fathers have
+stared at the sea day and night for a thousand years--the sea, full of
+its promises of unknown things, never quite the same, a slave to its own
+impulses.  Man is an imitative animal....
+
+"Life's hard enough," he wrote, "without tying yourself down.  Don't
+think too hardly of me!  Shall I make you happier by taking you into
+danger?  If I succeed you'll be a rich woman; but I shall fail if you're
+with me.  To look at you makes me soft.  At sea a man dreams of all the
+good things on land, he'll dream of the heather, and honey--you're like
+that; and he'll dream of the apple-trees, and the grass of the
+orchards--you're like that; sometimes he only lies on his back and
+wishes--and you're like that, most of all like that...."
+
+When I was reading those words I remember a strange, soft, half-scornful
+look came over Pasiance's face; and once she said, "But that's all
+nonsense, isn't it...?"
+
+Then followed a long passage about what he would gain if he succeeded,
+about all that he was risking, the impossibility of failure, if he kept
+his wits about him.  "It's only a matter of two months or so," he went
+on; "stay where you are, dear, or go to my Dad.  He'll be glad to have
+you.  There's my mother's room.  There's no one to say 'No' to your
+fiddle there; you can play it by the sea; and on dark nights you'll have
+the stars dancing to you over the water as thick as bees.  I've looked at
+them often, thinking of you...."
+
+Pasiance had whispered to me, "Don't read that bit," and afterwards I
+left it out....  Then the sensuous side of him shows up: "When I've
+brought this off, there's the whole world before us.  There are places I
+can take you to.  There's one I know, not too warm and not too cold,
+where you can sit all day in the shade and watch the creepers, and the
+cocoa-palms, still as still; nothing to do or care about; all the fruits
+you can think of; no noise but the parrots and the streams, and a splash
+when a nigger dives into a water-hole. Pasiance, we'll go there!  With an
+eighty-ton craft there's no sea we couldn't know.  The world's a fine
+place for those who go out to take it; there's lots of unknown stuff' in
+it yet.  I'll fill your lap, my pretty, so full of treasures that you
+shan't know yourself.  A man wasn't meant to sit at home...."
+
+Throughout this letter--for all its real passion--one could feel how the
+man was holding to his purpose--the rather sordid purpose of this
+venture.  He's unconscious of it; for he is in love with her; but he must
+be furthering his own ends.  He is vital--horribly vital!  I wonder less
+now that she should have yielded.
+
+What visions hasn't he dangled before her.  There was physical
+attraction, too--I haven't forgotten the look I saw on her face at Black
+Mill.  But when all's said and done, she married him, because she's
+Pasiance Voisey, who does things and wants "to get back."  And she lies
+there dying; not he nor any other man will ever take her away.  It's
+pitiful to think of him tingling with passion, writing that letter to
+this doomed girl in that dark hole of a saloon.  "I've wanted money," he
+wrote, "ever since I was a little chap sitting in the fields among the
+cows....  I want it for you now, and I mean to have it.  I've studied the
+thing two years; I know what I know....
+
+"The moment this is in the post I leave for London.  There are a hundred
+things to look after still; I can't trust myself within reach of you
+again till the anchor's weighed.  When I re-christened her the Pied
+Witch, I thought of you--you witch to me...."
+
+There followed a solemn entreaty to her to be on the path leading to the
+cove at seven o'clock on Wednesday evening (that is, to-morrow) when he
+would come ashore and bid her good-bye.  It was signed, "Your loving
+husband, Zachary Pearse...."
+
+I lay at the edge of that cornfield a long time; it was very peaceful.
+The church bells had begun to ring.  The long shadows came stealing out
+from the sheaves; woodpigeons rose one by one, and flapped off to roost;
+the western sky was streaked with red, and all the downs and combe bathed
+in the last sunlight.  Perfect harvest weather; but oppressively still,
+the stillness of suspense....
+
+Life at the farm goes on as usual.  We have morning and evening prayers.
+John Ford reads them fiercely, as though he were on the eve of a revolt
+against his God.  Morning and evening he visits her, comes out wheezing
+heavily, and goes to his own room; I believe, to pray.  Since this
+morning I haven't dared meet him.  He is a strong old man--but this will
+break him up....
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+"KINGSWEAR, Saturday, 13th August.
+
+It's over--I leave here to-morrow, and go abroad.
+
+A quiet afternoon--not a breath up in the churchyard!  I was there quite
+half an hour before they came.  Some red cows had strayed into the
+adjoining orchard, and were rubbing their heads against the railing.
+While I stood there an old woman came and drove them away; afterwards,
+she stooped and picked up the apples that had fallen before their time.
+
+"The apples are ripe and ready to fall, Oh! heigh-ho! and ready to fall;
+There came an old woman and gathered them all, Oh! heigh-ho! and gathered
+them all."
+
+......They brought Pasiance very simply--no hideous funeral trappings,
+thank God--the farm hands carried her, and there was no one there but
+John Ford, the Hopgoods, myself, and that young doctor. They read the
+service over her grave.  I can hear John Ford's "Amen!" now.  When it was
+over he walked away bareheaded in the sun, without a word.  I went up
+there again this evening, and wandered amongst the tombstones.  "Richard
+Voisey," "John, the son of Richard and Constance Voisey," "Margery
+Voisey," so many generations of them in that corner; then "Richard Voisey
+and Agnes his wife," and next to it that new mound on which a sparrow was
+strutting and the shadows of the apple-trees already hovering.
+
+I will tell you the little left to tell....
+
+On Wednesday afternoon she asked for me again.
+
+"It's only till seven," she whispered.  "He's certain to come then. But
+if I--were to die first--then tell him--I'm sorry for him. They keep
+saying: 'Don't talk--don't talk!' Isn't it stupid?  As if I should have
+any other chance!  There'll be no more talking after to-night!  Make
+everybody come, please--I want to see them all. When you're dying you're
+freer than any other time--nobody wants you to do things, nobody cares
+what you say....  He promised me I should do what I liked if I married
+him--I never believed that really--but now I can do what I like; and say
+all the things I want to."  She lay back silent; she could not after all
+speak the inmost thoughts that are in each of us, so sacred that they
+melt away at the approach of words.
+
+I shall remember her like that--with the gleam of a smile in her
+half-closed eyes, her red lips parted--such a quaint look of mockery,
+pleasure, regret, on her little round, upturned face; the room white, and
+fresh with flowers, the breeze guttering the apple-leaves against the
+window.  In the night they had unhooked the violin and taken it away; she
+had not missed it....  When Dan came, I gave up my place to him.  He took
+her hand gently in his great paw, without speaking.
+
+"How small my hand looks there," she said, "too small."  Dan put it
+softly back on the bedclothes and wiped his forehead.  Pasiance cried in
+a sharp whisper: "Is it so hot in here?  I didn't know."  Dan bent down,
+put his lips to her fingers and left the room.
+
+The afternoon was long, the longest I've ever spent.  Sometimes she
+seemed to sleep, sometimes whispered to herself about her mother, her
+grandfather, the garden, or her cats--all sorts of inconsequent, trivial,
+even ludicrous memories seemed to throng her mind--never once, I think,
+did she speak of Zachary, but, now and then, she asked the time....  Each
+hour she grew visibly weaker.  John Ford sat by her without moving, his
+heavy breathing was often the only sound; sometimes she rubbed her
+fingers on his hand, without speaking.  It was a summary of their lives
+together.  Once he prayed aloud for her in a hoarse voice; then her
+pitiful, impatient eyes signed to me.
+
+"Quick," she whispered, "I want him; it's all so--cold."
+
+I went out and ran down the path towards the cove.
+
+Leaning on a gate stood Zachary, an hour before his time; dressed in the
+same old blue clothes and leather-peaked cap as on the day when I saw him
+first.  He knew nothing of what had happened.  But at a quarter of the
+truth, I'm sure he divined the whole, though he would not admit it to
+himself.  He kept saying, "It can't be.  She'll be well in a few days--a
+sprain!  D' you think the sea-voyage....  Is she strong enough to be
+moved now at once?"
+
+It was painful to see his face, so twisted by the struggle between his
+instinct and his vitality.  The sweat poured down his forehead. He turned
+round as we walked up the path, and pointed out to sea. There was his
+steamer.  "I could get her on board in no time. Impossible!  What is it,
+then?  Spine?  Good God!  The doctors.... Sometimes they'll do wonders!"
+It was pitiful to see his efforts to blind himself to the reality.
+
+"It can't be, she's too young.  We're walking very slow."  I told him she
+was dying.
+
+For a second I thought he was going to run away.  Then he jerked up his
+head, and rushed on towards the house.  At the foot of the staircase he
+gripped me by the shoulder.
+
+"It's not true!" he said; "she'll get better now I'm here.  I'll stay.
+Let everything go.  I'll stay."
+
+"Now's the time," I said, "to show you loved her.  Pull yourself
+together, man!"  He shook all over.
+
+"Yes!" was all he answered.  We went into her room.  It seemed impossible
+she was going to die; the colour was bright in her cheeks, her lips
+trembling and pouted as if she had just been kissed, her eyes gleaming,
+her hair so dark and crisp, her face so young....
+
+Half an hour later I stole to the open door of her room.  She was still
+and white as the sheets of her bed.  John Ford stood at the foot; and,
+bowed to the level of the pillows, his head on his clenched fists, sat
+Zachary.  It was utterly quiet.  The guttering of the leaves had ceased.
+When things have come to a crisis, how little one feels--no fear, no
+pity, no sorrow, rather the sense, as when a play is over, of anxiety to
+get away!
+
+Suddenly Zachary rose, brushed past me without seeing, and ran
+downstairs.
+
+Some hours later I went out on the path leading to the cove.  It was
+pitch-black; the riding light of the Pied Witch was still there, looking
+no bigger than a firefly.  Then from in front I heard sobbing--a man's
+sobs; no sound is quite so dreadful.  Zachary Pearse got up out of the
+bank not ten paces off.
+
+I had no heart to go after him, and sat down in the hedge.  There was
+something subtly akin to her in the fresh darkness of the young night;
+the soft bank, the scent of honeysuckle, the touch of the ferns and
+brambles.  Death comes to all of us, and when it's over it's over; but
+this blind business--of those left behind!
+
+A little later the ship whistled twice; her starboard light gleamed
+faintly--and that was all....
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+"TORQUAY, 30th October.
+
+....Do you remember the letters I wrote you from Moor Farm nearly three
+years ago?  To-day I rode over there.  I stopped at Brixham on the way
+for lunch, and walked down to the quay.  There had been a shower--but the
+sun was out again, shining on the sea, the brown-red sails, and the
+rampart of slate roofs.
+
+A trawler was lying there, which had evidently been in a collision. The
+spiky-bearded, thin-lipped fellow in torn blue jersey and sea-boots who
+was superintending the repairs, said to me a little proudly:
+
+"Bane in collision, zurr; like to zee over her?"  Then suddenly screwing
+up his little blue eyes, he added:
+
+"Why, I remembers yu.  Steered yu along o' the young lady in this yer
+very craft."
+
+It was Prawle, Zachary Pearse's henchman.
+
+"Yes," he went on, "that's the cutter."
+
+"And Captain Pearse?"
+
+He leant his back against the quay, and spat.  "He was a pra-aper man; I
+never zane none like 'en."
+
+"Did you do any good out there?"
+
+Prawle gave me a sharp glance.
+
+"Gude?  No, t'was arrm we done, vrom ztart to finish--had trouble all the
+time.  What a man cude du, the skipper did.  When yu caan't du right,
+zome calls it 'Providence'!  'Tis all my eye an' Betty Martin!  What I zay
+es, 'tis these times, there's such a dale o' folk, a dale of puzzivantin'
+fellers; the world's to small."
+
+With these words there flashed across me a vision of Drake crushed into
+our modern life by the shrinkage of the world; Drake caught in the meshes
+of red tape, electric wires, and all the lofty appliances of our
+civilization.  Does a type survive its age; live on into times that have
+no room for it?  The blood is there--and sometimes there's a
+throw-back....  All fancy!  Eh?
+
+"So," I said, "you failed?"
+
+Prawle wriggled.
+
+"I wudden' goo for to zay that, zurr--'tis an ugly word.  Da-am!" he
+added, staring at his boots, "'twas thru me tu.  We were along among the
+haythen, and I mus' nades goo for to break me leg.  The capt'n he wudden'
+lave me.  'One Devon man,' he says to me, 'don' lave anotherr.'  We werr
+six days where we shuld ha' been tu; when we got back to the ship a
+cruiser had got her for gun-runnin'."
+
+"And what has become of Captain Pearse?"
+
+Prawle answered, "Zurr, I belave 'e went to China, 'tis onsartin."
+
+"He's not dead?"
+
+Prawle looked at me with a kind of uneasy anger.
+
+"Yu cudden' kell 'en!  'Tis true, mun 'll die zome day.  But therr's not
+a one that'll show better zport than Capt'n Zach'ry Pearse."
+
+I believe that; he will be hard to kill.  The vision of him comes up,
+with his perfect balance, defiant eyes, and sweetish smile; the way the
+hair of his beard crisped a little, and got blacker on the cheeks; the
+sort of desperate feeling he gave, that one would never get the better of
+him, that he would never get the better of himself.
+
+I took leave of Prawle and half a crown.  Before I was off the quay I
+heard him saying to a lady, "Bane in collision, marm!  Like to zee over
+her?"
+
+After lunch I rode on to Moor.  The old place looked much the same; but
+the apple-trees were stripped of fruit, and their leaves beginning to go
+yellow and fall.  One of Pasiance's cats passed me in the orchard hunting
+a bird, still with a ribbon round its neck.  John Ford showed me all his
+latest improvements, but never by word or sign alluded to the past.  He
+inquired after Dan, back in New Zealand now, without much interest; his
+stubbly beard and hair have whitened; he has grown very stout, and I
+noticed that his legs are not well under control; he often stops to lean
+on his stick.  He was very ill last winter; and sometimes, they say, will
+go straight off to sleep in the middle of a sentence.
+
+I managed to get a few minutes with the Hopgoods.  We talked of Pasiance
+sitting in the kitchen under a row of plates, with that clinging smell of
+wood-smoke, bacon, and age bringing up memories, as nothing but scents
+can.  The dear old lady's hair, drawn so nicely down her forehead on each
+side from the centre of her cap, has a few thin silver lines; and her
+face is a thought more wrinkled.  The tears still come into her eyes when
+she talks of her "lamb."
+
+Of Zachary I heard nothing, but she told me of old Pearse's death.
+
+"Therr they found 'en, zo to spake, dead--in th' sun; but Ha-apgood can
+tell yu," and Hopgood, ever rolling his pipe, muttered something, and
+smiled his wooden smile.
+
+He came to see me off from the straw-yard.  "'Tis like death to the
+varrm, zurr," he said, putting all the play of his vast shoulders into
+the buckling of my girths.  "Mister Ford--well!  And not one of th' old
+stock to take it when 'e's garn....  Ah! it werr cruel; my old woman's
+never been hersel' since.  Tell 'ee what 'tis--don't du t' think to
+much."
+
+I went out of my way to pass the churchyard.  There were flowers, quite
+fresh, chrysanthemums, and asters; above them the white stone, already
+stained:
+
+        "PASIANCE
+
+        "WIFE OF ZACHARY PEARSE
+
+        "'The Lord hath given, and the Lord hath taken away.'"
+
+The red cows were there too; the sky full of great white clouds, some
+birds whistling a little mournfully, and in the air the scent of fallen
+leaves....
+
+May, 1900.
+
+
+
+
+A KNIGHT
+
+TO MY MOTHER
+
+
+
+
+A KNIGHT
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+At Monte Carlo, in the spring of the year 189-, I used to notice an old
+fellow in a grey suit and sunburnt straw hat with a black ribbon. Every
+morning at eleven o'clock, he would come down to the Place, followed by a
+brindled German boarhound, walk once or twice round it, and seat himself
+on a bench facing the casino.  There he would remain in the sun, with his
+straw hat tilted forward, his thin legs apart, his brown hands crossed
+between them, and the dog's nose resting on his knee.  After an hour or
+more he would get up, and, stooping a little from the waist, walk slowly
+round the Place and return up hill.  Just before three, he would come
+down again in the same clothes and go into the casino, leaving the dog
+outside.
+
+One afternoon, moved by curiosity, I followed him.  He passed through the
+hall without looking at the gambling-rooms, and went into the concert. It
+became my habit after that to watch for him.  When he sat in the Place I
+could see him from the window of my room.  The chief puzzle to me was the
+matter of his nationality.
+
+His lean, short face had a skin so burnt that it looked like leather; his
+jaw was long and prominent, his chin pointed, and he had hollows in his
+cheeks.  There were wrinkles across his forehead; his eyes were brown;
+and little white moustaches were brushed up from the corners of his lips.
+The back of his head bulged out above the lines of his lean neck and
+high, sharp shoulders; his grey hair was cropped quite close.  In the
+Marseilles buffet, on the journey out, I had met an Englishman, almost
+his counterpart in features--but somehow very different!  This old fellow
+had nothing of the other's alert, autocratic self-sufficiency.  He was
+quiet and undemonstrative, without looking, as it were, insulated against
+shocks and foreign substances.  He was certainly no Frenchman. His eyes,
+indeed, were brown, but hazel-brown, and gentle--not the red-brown
+sensual eye of the Frenchman.  An American?  But was ever an American so
+passive?  A German?  His moustache was certainly brushed up, but in a
+modest, almost pathetic way, not in the least Teutonic.  Nothing seemed
+to fit him.  I gave him up, and named him "the Cosmopolitan."
+
+Leaving at the end of April, I forgot him altogether.  In the same month,
+however, of the following year I was again at Monte Carlo, and going one
+day to the concert found myself seated next this same old fellow.  The
+orchestra was playing Meyerbeer's "Prophete," and my neighbour was
+asleep, snoring softly.  He was dressed in the same grey suit, with the
+same straw hat (or one exactly like it) on his knees, and his hands
+crossed above it.  Sleep had not disfigured him--his little white
+moustache was still brushed up, his lips closed; a very good and gentle
+expression hovered on his face.  A curved mark showed on his right
+temple, the scar of a cut on the side of his neck, and his left hand was
+covered by an old glove, the little forger of which was empty.  He woke
+up when the march was over and brisked up his moustache.
+
+The next thing on the programme was a little thing by Poise from Le joli
+Gilles, played by Mons. Corsanego on the violin.  Happening to glance at
+my old neighbour, I saw a tear caught in the hollow of his cheek, and
+another just leaving the corner of his eye; there was a faint smile on
+his lips.  Then came an interval; and while orchestra and audience were
+resting, I asked him if he were fond of music.  He looked up without
+distrust, bowed, and answered in a thin, gentle voice: "Certainly.  I
+know nothing about it, play no instrument, could never sing a note; but
+fond of it!  Who would not be?"  His English was correct enough, but with
+an emphasis not quite American nor quite foreign.  I ventured to remark
+that he did not care for Meyerbeer.  He smiled.
+
+"Ah!" he said, "I was asleep?  Too bad of me.  He is a little noisy--I
+know so little about music.  There is Bach, for instance.  Would you
+believe it, he gives me no pleasure?  A great misfortune to be no
+musician!"  He shook his head.
+
+I murmured, "Bach is too elevating for you perhaps."
+
+"To me," he answered, "any music I like is elevating.  People say some
+music has a bad effect on them.  I never found any music that gave me a
+bad thought--no--no--quite the opposite; only sometimes, as you see, I go
+to sleep.  But what a lovely instrument the violin!" A faint flush came
+on his parched cheeks.  "The human soul that has left the body.  A
+curious thing, distant bugles at night have given me the same feeling." 
+The orchestra was now coming back, and, folding his hands, my neighbour
+turned his eyes towards them.  When the concert was over we came out
+together.  Waiting at the entrance was his dog.
+
+"You have a beautiful dog!"
+
+"Ah! yes.  Freda.  mia cara, da su mano!"  The dog squatted on her
+haunches, and lifted her paw in the vague, bored way of big dogs when
+requested to perform civilities.  She was a lovely creature--the purest
+brindle, without a speck of white, and free from the unbalanced look of
+most dogs of her breed.
+
+"Basta! basta!"  He turned to me apologetically.  "We have agreed to
+speak Italian; in that way I keep up the language; astonishing the number
+of things that dog will understand!"  I was about to take my leave, when
+he asked if I would walk a little way with him--"If you are free, that
+is."  We went up the street with Freda on the far side of her master.
+
+"Do you never 'play' here?" I asked him.
+
+"Play?  No.  It must be very interesting; most exciting, but as a matter
+of fact, I can't afford it.  If one has very little, one is too nervous."
+
+He had stopped in front of a small hairdresser's shop.  "I live here," he
+said, raising his hat again.  "Au revoir!--unless I can offer you a glass
+of tea.  It's all ready.  Come!  I've brought you out of your way; give
+me the pleasure!"
+
+I have never met a man so free from all self-consciousness, and yet so
+delicate and diffident the combination is a rare one.  We went up a steep
+staircase to a room on the second floor.  My companion threw the shutters
+open, setting all the flies buzzing.  The top of a plane-tree was on a
+level with the window, and all its little brown balls were dancing, quite
+close, in the wind.  As he had promised, an urn was hissing on a table;
+there was also a small brown teapot, some sugar, slices of lemon, and
+glasses.  A bed, washstand, cupboard, tin trunk, two chairs, and a small
+rug were all the furniture.  Above the bed a sword in a leather sheath
+was suspended from two nails.  The photograph of a girl stood on the
+closed stove.  My host went to the cupboard and produced a bottle, a
+glass, and a second spoon.  When the cork was drawn, the scent of rum
+escaped into the air.  He sniffed at it and dropped a teaspoonful into
+both glasses.
+
+"This is a trick I learned from the Russians after Plevna; they had my
+little finger, so I deserved something in exchange."  He looked round;
+his eyes, his whole face, seemed to twinkle.  "I assure you it was worth
+it--makes all the difference.  Try!"  He poured off the tea.
+
+"Had you a sympathy with the Turks?"
+
+"The weaker side--"  He paused abruptly, then added: "But it was not
+that."  Over his face innumerable crow's-feet had suddenly appeared, his
+eyes twitched; he went on hurriedly, "I had to find something to do just
+then--it was necessary."  He stared into his glass; and it was some time
+before I ventured to ask if he had seen much fighting.
+
+"Yes," he replied gravely, "nearly twenty years altogether; I was one of
+Garibaldi's Mille in '60."
+
+"Surely you are not Italian?"
+
+He leaned forward with his hands on his knees.  "I was in Genoa at that
+time learning banking; Garibaldi was a wonderful man!  One could not help
+it."  He spoke quite simply.  "You might say it was like seeing a little
+man stand up to a ring of great hulking fellows; I went, just as you
+would have gone, if you'd been there.  I was not long with them--our war
+began; I had to go back home."  He said this as if there had been but one
+war since the world began.  "In '60," he mused, "till '65.  Just think of
+it!  The poor country.  Why, in my State, South Carolina--I was through
+it all--nobody could be spared there--we were one to three."
+
+"I suppose you have a love of fighting?"
+
+"H'm!" he said, as if considering the idea for the first time. "Sometimes
+I fought for a living, and sometimes--because I was obliged; one must try
+to be a gentleman.  But won't you have some more?"
+
+I refused more tea and took my leave, carrying away with me a picture of
+the old fellow looking down from the top of the steep staircase, one hand
+pressed to his back, the other twisting up those little white moustaches,
+and murmuring, "Take care, my dear sir, there's a step there at the
+corner."
+
+"To be a gentleman!"  I repeated in the street, causing an old French
+lady to drop her parasol, so that for about two minutes we stood bowing
+and smiling to each other, then separated full of the best feeling.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+A week later I found myself again seated next him at a concert.  In the
+meantime I had seen him now and then, but only in passing.  He seemed
+depressed.  The corners of his lips were tightened, his tanned cheeks had
+a greyish tinge, his eyes were restless; and, between two numbers of the
+programme, he murmured, tapping his fingers on his hat, "Do you ever have
+bad days?  Yes?  Not pleasant, are they?"
+
+Then something occurred from which all that I have to tell you followed.
+There came into the concert-hall the heroine of one of those romances,
+crimes, follies, or irregularities, call it what you will, which had just
+attracted the "world's" stare.  She passed us with her partner, and sat
+down in a chair a few rows to our right. She kept turning her head round,
+and at every turn I caught the gleam of her uneasy eyes.  Some one behind
+us said: "The brazen baggage!"
+
+My companion turned full round, and glared at whoever it was who had
+spoken.  The change in him was quite remarkable.  His lips were drawn
+back from his teeth; he frowned; the scar on his temple had reddened.
+
+"Ah!" he said to me.  "The hue and cry!  Contemptible!  How I hate it!
+But you wouldn't understand--!" he broke off, and slowly regained his
+usual air of self-obliteration; he even seemed ashamed, and began trying
+to brush his moustaches higher than ever, as if aware that his heat had
+robbed them of neatness.
+
+"I'm not myself, when I speak of such matters," he said suddenly; and
+began reading his programme, holding it upside down.  A minute later,
+however, he said in a peculiar voice: "There are people to be found who
+object to vivisecting animals; but the vivisection of a woman, who minds
+that?  Will you tell me it's right, that because of some tragedy like
+this--believe me, it is always a tragedy--we should hunt down a woman? 
+That her fellow-women should make an outcast of her?  That we, who are
+men, should make a prey of her?  If I thought that...."  Again he broke
+off, staring very hard in front of him. "It is we who make them what they
+are; and even if that is not so--why! if I thought there was a woman in
+the world I could not take my hat off to--I--I--couldn't sleep at night." 
+He got up from his seat, put on his old straw hat with trembling fingers,
+and, without a glance back, went out, stumbling over the chair-legs.
+
+I sat there, horribly disturbed; the words, "One must try to be a
+gentleman!" haunting me.  When I came out, he was standing by the
+entrance with one hand on his hip and the other on his dog.  In that
+attitude of waiting he was such a patient figure; the sun glared down and
+showed the threadbare nature of his clothes and the thinness of his brown
+hands, with their long forgers and nails yellow from tobacco.  Seeing me
+he came up the steps again, and raised his hat.
+
+"I am glad to have caught you; please forget all that."  I asked if he
+would do me the honour of dining at my hotel.
+
+"Dine?" he repeated with the sort of smile a child gives if you offer him
+a box of soldiers; "with the greatest pleasure.  I seldom dine out, but I
+think I can muster up a coat.  Yes--yes--and at what time shall I come? 
+At half-past seven, and your hotel is--?  Good!  I shall be there. 
+Freda, mia cara, you will be alone this evening. You do not smoke
+caporal, I fear.  I find it fairly good; though it has too much bite." He
+walked off with Freda, puffing at his thin roll of caporal.
+
+Once or twice he stopped, as if bewildered or beset by some sudden doubt
+or memory; and every time he stopped, Freda licked his hand. They
+disappeared round the corner of the street, and I went to my hotel to see
+about dinner.  On the way I met Jules le Ferrier, and asked him to come
+too.
+
+"My faith, yes!" he said, with the rosy pessimism characteristic of the
+French editor.  "Man must dine!"
+
+At half-past six we assembled.  My "Cosmopolitan" was in an old
+frock-coat braided round the edges, buttoned high and tight, defining
+more than ever the sharp lines of his shoulders and the slight kink of
+his back; he had brought with him, too, a dark-peaked cap of military
+shape, which he had evidently selected as more fitting to the coat than a
+straw hat.  He smelled slightly of some herb.
+
+We sat down to dinner, and did not rise for two hours.  He was a charming
+guest, praised everything he ate--not with commonplaces, but in words
+that made you feel it had given him real pleasure.  At first, whenever
+Jules made one of his caustic remarks, he looked quite pained, but
+suddenly seemed to make up his mind that it was bark, not bite; and then
+at each of them he would turn to me and say, "Aha! that's good--isn't
+it?"  With every glass of wine he became more gentle and more genial,
+sitting very upright, and tightly buttoned-in; while the little white
+wings of his moustache seemed about to leave him for a better world.
+
+In spite of the most leading questions, however, we could not get him to
+talk about himself, for even Jules, most cynical of men, had recognised
+that he was a hero of romance.  He would answer gently and precisely, and
+then sit twisting his moustaches, perfectly unconscious that we wanted
+more.  Presently, as the wine went a little to his head, his thin, high
+voice grew thinner, his cheeks became flushed, his eyes brighter; at the
+end of dinner he said: "I hope I have not been noisy."
+
+We assured him that he had not been noisy enough.  "You're laughing at
+me," he answered.  "Surely I've been talking all the time!"
+
+"Mon Dieu!" said Jules, "we have been looking for some fables of your
+wars; but nothing--nothing, not enough to feed a frog!"
+
+The old fellow looked troubled.
+
+"To be sure!" he mused.  "Let me think! there is that about Colhoun at
+Gettysburg; and there's the story of Garibaldi and the Miller." He
+plunged into a tale, not at all about himself, which would have been
+extremely dull, but for the conviction in his eyes, and the way he
+stopped and commented.  "So you see," he ended, "that's the sort of man
+Garibaldi was!  I could tell you another tale of him." Catching an
+introspective look in Jules's eye, however, I proposed taking our cigars
+over to the cafe opposite.
+
+"Delightful!" the old fellow said: "We shall have a band and the fresh
+air, and clear consciences for our cigars.  I cannot like this smoking in
+a room where there are ladies dining."
+
+He walked out in front of us, smoking with an air of great enjoyment.
+Jules, glowing above his candid shirt and waistcoat, whispered to me,
+"Mon cher Georges, how he is good!" then sighed, and added darkly: "The
+poor man!"
+
+We sat down at a little table.  Close by, the branches of a plane-tree
+rustled faintly; their leaves hung lifeless, speckled like the breasts of
+birds, or black against the sky; then, caught by the breeze, fluttered
+suddenly.
+
+The old fellow sat, with head thrown back, a smile on his face, coming
+now and then out of his enchanted dreams to drink coffee, answer our
+questions, or hum the tune that the band was playing.  The ash of his
+cigar grew very long.  One of those bizarre figures in Oriental garb,
+who, night after night, offer their doubtful wares at a great price,
+appeared in the white glare of a lamp, looked with a furtive smile at his
+face, and glided back, discomfited by its unconsciousness.  It was a
+night for dreams!  A faint, half-eastern scent in the air, of black
+tobacco and spice; few people as yet at the little tables, the waiters
+leisurely, the band soft!  What was he dreaming of, that old fellow,
+whose cigar-ash grew so long?  Of youth, of his battles, of those things
+that must be done by those who try to be gentlemen; perhaps only of his
+dinner; anyway of something gilded in vague fashion as the light was
+gilding the branches of the plane-tree.
+
+Jules pulled my sleeve: "He sleeps."  He had smilingly dropped off; the
+cigar-ash--that feathery tower of his dreams--had broken and fallen on
+his sleeve.  He awoke, and fell to dusting it.
+
+The little tables round us began to fill.  One of the bandsmen played a
+czardas on the czymbal.  Two young Frenchmen, talking loudly, sat down at
+the adjoining table.  They were discussing the lady who had been at the
+concert that afternoon.
+
+"It's a bet," said one of them, "but there's the present man.  I take
+three weeks, that's enough 'elle est declassee; ce n'est que le premier
+pas--'"
+
+My old friend's cigar fell on the table.  "Monsieur," he stammered, "you
+speak of a lady so, in a public place?"
+
+The young man stared at him.  "Who is this person?" he said to his
+companion.
+
+My guest took up Jules's glove that lay on the table; before either of us
+could raise a finger, he had swung it in the speaker's face. "Enough!" he
+said, and, dropping the glove, walked away.
+
+We all jumped to our feet.  I left Jules and hurried after him.  His face
+was grim, his eyes those of a creature who has been struck on a raw
+place.  He made a movement of his fingers which said plainly. "Leave me,
+if you please!"
+
+I went back to the cafe.  The two young men had disappeared, so had
+Jules, but everything else was going on just as before; the bandsman
+still twanging out his czardas; the waiters serving drinks; the orientals
+trying to sell their carpets.  I paid the bill, sought out the manager,
+and apologised.  He shrugged his shoulders, smiled and said: "An
+eccentric, your friend, nicht wahr?"  Could he tell me where M. Le
+Ferrier was?  He could not.  I left to look for Jules; could not find
+him, and returned to my hotel disgusted.  I was sorry for my old guest,
+but vexed with him too; what business had he to carry his Quixotism to
+such an unpleasant length?  I tried to read. Eleven o'clock struck; the
+casino disgorged a stream of people; the Place seemed fuller of life than
+ever; then slowly it grew empty and quite dark.  The whim seized me to go
+out.  It was a still night, very warm, very black.  On one of the seats a
+man and woman sat embraced, on another a girl was sobbing, on a
+third--strange sight--a priest dozed.  I became aware of some one at my
+side; it was my old guest.
+
+"If you are not too tired," he said, "can you give me ten minutes?"
+
+"Certainly; will you come in?"
+
+"No, no; let us go down to the Terrace.  I shan't keep you long."
+
+He did not speak again till we reached a seat above the pigeon-shooting
+grounds; there, in a darkness denser for the string of lights still
+burning in the town, we sat down.
+
+"I owe you an apology," he said; "first in the afternoon, then again this
+evening--your guest--your friend's glove!  I have behaved as no gentleman
+should."  He was leaning forward with his hands on the handle of a stick. 
+His voice sounded broken and disturbed.
+
+"Oh!" I muttered.  "It's nothing!"'
+
+"You are very good," he sighed; "but I feel that I must explain.  I
+consider I owe this to you, but I must tell you I should not have the
+courage if it were not for another reason.  You see I have no friend." He
+looked at me with an uncertain smile.  I bowed, and a minute or two later
+he began....
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+"You will excuse me if I go back rather far.  It was in '74, when I had
+been ill with Cuban fever.  To keep me alive they had put me on board a
+ship at Santiago, and at the end of the voyage I found myself in London.
+I had very little money; I knew nobody.  I tell you, sir, there are times
+when it's hard for a fighting man to get anything to do.  People would
+say to me: 'Afraid we've nothing for a man like you in our business.'  I
+tried people of all sorts; but it was true--I had been fighting here and
+there since '60, I wasn't fit for anything--"  He shook his head.  "In
+the South, before the war, they had a saying, I remember, about a dog and
+a soldier having the same value.  But all this has nothing to do with
+what I have to tell you." He sighed again and went on, moistening his
+lips: "I was walking along the Strand one day, very disheartened, when I
+heard my name called.  It's a queer thing, that, in a strange street.  By
+the way," he put in with dry ceremony, "you don't know my name, I think:
+it is Brune--Roger Brune.  At first I did not recognise the person who
+called me.  He had just got off an omnibus--a square-shouldered man with
+heavy moustaches, and round spectacles.  But when he shook my hand I knew
+him at once.  He was a man called Dalton, who was taken prisoner at
+Gettysburg; one of you Englishmen who came to fight with us--a major in
+the regiment where I was captain.  We were comrades during two campaigns. 
+If I had been his brother he couldn't have seemed more pleased to see me. 
+He took me into a bar for the sake of old times.  The drink went to my
+head, and by the time we reached Trafalgar Square I was quite unable to
+walk.  He made me sit down on a bench. I was in fact--drunk.  It's
+disgraceful to be drunk, but there was some excuse.  Now I tell you, sir"
+(all through his story he was always making use of that expression, it
+seemed to infuse fresh spirit into him, to help his memory in obscure
+places, to give him the mastery of his emotions; it was like the piece of
+paper a nervous man holds in his hand to help him through a speech),
+"there never was a man with a finer soul than my friend Dalton.  He was
+not clever, though he had read much; and sometimes perhaps he was too
+fond of talking.  But he was a gentleman; he listened to me as if I had
+been a child; he was not ashamed of me--and it takes a gentleman not to
+be ashamed of a drunken man in the streets of London; God knows what
+things I said to him while we were sitting there!  He took me to his home
+and put me to bed himself; for I was down again with fever."  He stopped,
+turned slightly from me, and put his hand up to his brow.  "Well, then it
+was, sir, that I first saw her.  I am not a poet and I cannot tell you
+what she seemed to me.  I was delirious, but I always knew when she was
+there.  I had dreams of sunshine and cornfields, of dancing waves at sea,
+young trees--never the same dreams, never anything for long together; and
+when I had my senses I was afraid to say so for fear she would go away.
+She'd be in the corner of the room, with her hair hanging about her neck,
+a bright gold colour; she never worked and never read, but sat and talked
+to herself in a whisper, or looked at me for a long time together out of
+her blue eyes, a little frown between them, and her upper lip closed firm
+on her lower lip, where she had an uneven tooth.  When her father came,
+she'd jump up and hang on to his neck until he groaned, then run away,
+but presently come stealing back on tiptoe.  I used to listen for her
+footsteps on the stairs, then the knock, the door flung back or opened
+quietly--you never could tell which; and her voice, with a little lisp,
+'Are you better today, Mr. Brune?  What funny things you say when you're
+delirious!  Father says you've been in heaps of battles!"'
+
+He got up, paced restlessly to and fro, and sat down again.  "I remember
+every word as if it were yesterday, all the things she said, and did;
+I've had a long time to think them over, you see.  Well, I must tell you,
+the first morning that I was able to get up, I missed her.  Dalton came
+in her place, and I asked him where she was.  'My dear fellow,' he
+answered, 'I've sent Eilie away to her old nurse's inn down on the river;
+she's better there at this time of year.'  We looked at each other, and I
+saw that he had sent her away because he didn't trust me.  I was hurt by
+this.  Illness spoils one.  He was right, he was quite right, for all he
+knew about me was that I could fight and had got drunk; but I am very
+quick-tempered.  I made up my mind at once to leave him.  But I was too
+weak--he had to put me to bed again.  The very next morning he came and
+proposed that I should go into partnership with him.  He kept a
+fencing-school and pistol-gallery.  It seemed like the finger of God; and
+perhaps it was--who knows?"  He fell into a reverie, and taking out his
+caporal, rolled himself a cigarette; having lighted it, he went on
+suddenly: "There, in the room above the school, we used to sit in the
+evenings, one on each side of the grate.  The room was on the second
+floor, I remember, with two windows, and a view of nothing but the houses
+opposite.  The furniture was covered up with chintz.  The things on the
+bookshelf were never disturbed, they were Eilie's--half-broken cases with
+butterflies, a dead frog in a bottle, a horse-shoe covered with tinfoil,
+some shells too, and a cardboard box with three speckled eggs in it, and
+these words written on the lid: 'Missel-thrush from Lucy's tree--second
+family, only one blown.'"  He smoked fiercely, with puffs that were like
+sharp sighs.
+
+"Dalton was wrapped up in her.  He was never tired of talking to me about
+her, and I was never tired of hearing.  We had a number of pupils; but in
+the evening when we sat there, smoking--our talk would sooner or
+later--come round to her.  Her bedroom opened out of that sitting--room;
+he took me in once and showed me a narrow little room the width of a
+passage, fresh and white, with a photograph of her mother above the bed,
+and an empty basket for a dog or cat."  He broke off with a vexed air,
+and resumed sternly, as if trying to bind himself to the narration of his
+more important facts: "She was then fifteen--her mother had been dead
+twelve years--a beautiful, face, her mother's; it had been her death that
+sent Dalton to fight with us.  Well, sir, one day in August, very hot
+weather, he proposed a run into the country, and who should meet us on
+the platform when we arrived but Eilie, in a blue sun-bonnet and
+frock-flax blue, her favourite colour.  I was angry with Dalton for not
+telling me that we should see her; my clothes were not quite--my hair
+wanted cutting. It was black then, sir," he added, tracing a pattern in
+the darkness with his stick.  "She had a little donkey-cart; she drove,
+and, while we walked one on each side, she kept looking at me from under
+her sunbonnet.  I must tell you that she never laughed--her eyes danced,
+her cheeks would go pink, and her hair shake about on her neck, but she
+never laughed. Her old nurse, Lucy, a very broad, good woman, had married
+the proprietor of the inn in the village there.  I have never seen
+anything like that inn: sweethriar up to the roof!  And the scent--I am
+very susceptible to scents!"  His head drooped, and the cigarette fell
+from his hand. A train passing beneath sent up a shower of sparks.  He
+started, and went on: "We had our lunch in the parlour--I remember that
+room very well, for I spent the happiest days of my life afterwards in
+that inn....  We went into a meadow after lunch, and my friend Dalton
+fell asleep.  A wonderful thing happened then.  Eilie whispered to me,
+'Let's have a jolly time.' She took me for the most glorious walk.  The
+river was close by. A lovely stream, your river Thames, so calm and
+broad; it is like the spirit of your people.  I was bewitched; I forgot
+my friend, I thought of nothing but how to keep her to myself.  It was
+such a day!  There are days that are the devil's, but that was truly one
+of God's. She took me to a little pond under an elm-tree, and we dragged
+it, we two, an hour, for a kind of tiny red worm to feed some creature
+that she had.  We found them in the mud, and while she was bending over,
+the curls got in her eyes.  If you could have seen her then, I think,
+sir, you would have said she was like the first sight of spring.... We
+had tea afterwards, all together, in the long grass under some
+fruit-trees.  If I had the knack of words, there are things that I could
+say."  He bent, as though in deference to those unspoken memories. 
+"Twilight came on while we were sitting there. A wonderful thing is
+twilight in the country!  It became time for us to go. There was an
+avenue of trees close by--like a church with a window at the end, where
+golden light came through.  I walked up and down it with her.  'Will you
+come again?' she whispered, and suddenly she lifted up her face to be
+kissed. I kissed her as if she were a little child. And when we said
+good-bye, her eyes were looking at me across her father's shoulder, with
+surprise and sorrow in them.  'Why do you go away?' they seemed to
+say....  But I must tell you," he went on hurriedly, "of a thing that
+happened before we had gone a hundred yards. We were smoking our pipes,
+and I, thinking of her--when out she sprang from the hedge and stood in
+front of us.  Dalton cried out, 'What are you here for again, you mad
+girl?'  She rushed up to him and hugged him; but when she looked at me,
+her face was quite different--careless, defiant, as one might say--it
+hurt me.  I couldn't understand it, and what one doesn't understand
+frightens one."
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+"Time went on.  There was no swordsman, or pistol-shot like me in London,
+they said.  We had as many pupils as we liked--it was the only part of my
+life when I have been able to save money.  I had no chance to spend it. 
+We gave lessons all day, and in the evening were too tired to go out. 
+That year I had the misfortune to lose my dear mother.  I became a rich
+man--yes, sir, at that time I must have had not less than six hundred a
+year.
+
+"It was a long time before I saw Eilie again.  She went abroad to Dresden
+with her father's sister to learn French and German.  It was in the
+autumn of 1875 when she came back to us.  She was seventeen then--a
+beautiful young creature."  He paused, as if to gather his forces for
+description, and went on.
+
+"Tall, as a young tree, with eyes like the sky.  I would not say she was
+perfect, but her imperfections were beautiful to me.  What is it makes
+you love--ah! sir, that is very hidden and mysterious.  She had never
+lost the trick of closing her lips tightly when she remembered her uneven
+tooth.  You may say that was vanity, but in a young girl--and which of
+us is not vain, eh?  'Old men and maidens, young men and children!'
+
+"As I said, she came back to London to her little room, and in the
+evenings was always ready with our tea.  You mustn't suppose she was
+housewifely; there is something in me that never admired
+housewifeliness--a fine quality, no doubt, still--" He sighed.
+
+"No," he resumed, "Eilie was not like that, for she was never quite the
+same two days together.  I told you her eyes were like the sky--that was
+true of all of her.  In one thing, however, at that time, she always
+seemed the same--in love for her father.  For me!  I don't know what I
+should have expected; but my presence seemed to have the effect of making
+her dumb; I would catch her looking at me with a frown, and then, as if
+to make up to her own nature--and a more loving nature never came into
+this world, that I shall maintain to my dying day--she would go to her
+father and kiss him.  When I talked with him she pretended not to notice,
+but I could see her face grow cold and stubborn.  I am not quick; and it
+was a long time before I understood that she was jealous, she wanted him
+all to herself.  I've often wondered how she could be his daughter, for
+he was the very soul of justice and a slow man too--and she was as quick
+as a bird. For a long time after I saw her dislike of me, I refused to
+believe it--if one does not want to believe a thing there are always
+reasons why it should not seem true, at least so it is with me, and I
+suppose with all selfish men.
+
+"I spent evening after evening there, when, if I had not thought only of
+myself, I should have kept away.  But one day I could no longer be blind.
+
+"It was a Sunday in February.  I always had an invitation on Sundays to
+dine with them in the middle of the day.  There was no one in the
+sitting-room; but the door of Eilie's bedroom was open.  I heard her
+voice: 'That man, always that man!'  It was enough for me, I went down
+again without coming in, and walked about all day.
+
+"For three weeks I kept away.  To the school of course I came as usual,
+but not upstairs.  I don't know what I told Dalton--it did not signify
+what you told him, he always had a theory of his own, and was persuaded
+of its truth--a very single-minded man, sir.
+
+"But now I come to the most wonderful days of my life.  It was an early
+spring that year.  I had fallen away already from my resolution, and used
+to slink up--seldom, it's true--and spend the evening with them as
+before.  One afternoon I came up to the sitting-room; the light was
+failing--it was warm, and the windows were open. In the air was that
+feeling which comes to you once a year, in the spring, no matter where
+you may be, in a crowded street, or alone in a forest; only once--a
+feeling like--but I cannot describe it.
+
+"Eilie was sitting there.  If you don't know, sir, I can't tell you what
+it means to be near the woman one loves.  She was leaning on the
+windowsill, staring down into the street.  It was as though she might be
+looking out for some one.  I stood, hardly breathing.  She turned her
+head, and saw me.  Her eyes were strange.  They seemed to ask me a
+question.  But I couldn't have spoken for the world.  I can't tell you
+what I felt--I dared not speak, or think, or hope.  I have been in
+nineteen battles--several times in positions of some danger, when the
+lifting of a finger perhaps meant death; but I have never felt what I was
+feeling at that moment.  I knew something was coming; and I was paralysed
+with terror lest it should not come!"  He drew a long breath.
+
+"The servant came in with a light and broke the spell.  All that night I
+lay awake and thought of how she had looked at me, with the colour coming
+slowly up in her cheeks--"It was three days before I plucked up courage
+to go again; and then I felt her eyes on me at once--she was making a
+'cat's cradle' with a bit of string, but I could see them stealing up
+from her hands to my face.  And she went wandering about the room,
+fingering at everything. When her father called out: 'What's the matter
+with you, Elie?' she stared at him like a child caught doing wrong.  I
+looked straight at her then, she tried to look at me, but she couldn't;
+and a minute later she went out of the room.  God knows what sort of
+nonsense I talked--I was too happy.
+
+"Then began our love.  I can't tell you of that time.  Often and often
+Dalton said to me: 'What's come to the child?  Nothing I can do pleases
+her.'  All the love she had given him was now for me; but he was too
+simple and straight to see what was going on.  How many times haven't I
+felt criminal towards him!  But when you're happy, with the tide in your
+favour, you become a coward at once...."
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+"Well, sir," he went on, "we were married on her eighteenth birthday. It
+was a long time before Dalton became aware of our love.  But one day he
+said to me with a very grave look:
+
+"'Eilie has told me, Brune; I forbid it.  She's too young, and
+you're--too old!' I was then forty-five, my hair as black and thick as a
+rook's feathers, and I was strong and active.  I answered him: 'We shall
+be married within a month!'  We parted in anger.  It was a May night, and
+I walked out far into the country.  There's no remedy for anger, or,
+indeed, for anything, so fine as walking.  Once I stopped--it was on a
+common, without a house or light, and the stars shining like jewels.  I
+was hot from walking, I could feel the blood boiling in my veins--I said
+to myself 'Old, are you?' And I laughed like a fool.  It was the thought
+of losing her--I wished to believe myself angry, but really I was afraid;
+fear and anger in me are very much the same.  A friend of mine, a bit of
+a poet, sir, once called them 'the two black wings of self.'  And so they
+are, so they are...!  The next morning I went to Dalton again, and
+somehow I made him yield.  I'm not a philosopher, but it has often seemed
+to me that no benefit can come to us in this life without an equal loss
+somewhere, but does that stop us?  No, sir, not often....
+
+"We were married on the 30th of June 1876, in the parish church.  The
+only people present were Dalton, Lucy, and Lucy's husband--a big,
+red-faced fellow, with blue eyes and a golden beard parted in two. It had
+been arranged that we should spend the honeymoon down at their inn on the
+river.  My wife, Dalton and I, went to a restaurant for lunch.  She was
+dressed in grey, the colour of a pigeon's feathers." He paused, leaning
+forward over the crutch handle of his stick; trying to conjure up, no
+doubt, that long-ago image of his young bride in her dress "the colour of
+a pigeon's feathers," with her blue eyes and yellow hair, the little
+frown between her brows, the firmly shut red lips, opening to speak the
+words, "For better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in
+health."
+
+"At that time, sir," he went on suddenly, "I was a bit of a dandy.  I
+wore, I remember, a blue frock-coat, with white trousers, and a grey top
+hat.  Even now I should always prefer to be well dressed....
+
+"We had an excellent lunch, and drank Veuve Clicquot, a wine that you
+cannot get in these days!  Dalton came with us to the railway station.  I
+can't bear partings; and yet, they must come.
+
+"That evening we walked out in the cool under the aspen-trees.  What
+should I remember in all my life if not that night--the young bullocks
+snuffling in the gateways--the campion flowers all lighted up along the
+hedges--the moon with a halo-bats, too, in and out among the stems, and
+the shadows of the cottages as black and soft as that sea down there. 
+For a long time we stood on the river-bank beneath a lime-tree.  The
+scent of the lime flowers!  A man can only endure about half his joy;
+about half his sorrow.  Lucy and her husband," he went on, presently,
+"his name was Frank Tor--a man like an old Viking, who ate nothing but
+milk, bread, and fruit--were very good to us!  It was like Paradise in
+that inn--though the commissariat, I am bound to say, was limited.  The
+sweethriar grew round our bedroom windows; when the breeze blew the
+leaves across the opening--it was like a bath of perfume.  Eilie grew as
+brown as a gipsy while we were there.  I don't think any man could have
+loved her more than I did. But there were times when my heart stood
+still; it didn't seem as if she understood how much I loved her.  One
+day, I remember, she coaxed me to take her camping.  We drifted
+down-stream all the afternoon, and in the evening pulled into the reeds
+under the willow-boughs and lit a fire for her to cook by--though, as a
+matter of fact, our provisions were cooked already--but you know how it
+is; all the romance was in having a real fire.  'We won't pretend,' she
+kept saying.  While we were eating our supper a hare came to our
+clearing--a big fellow--how surprised he looked!  'The tall hare,' Eilie
+called him.  After that we sat by the ashes and watched the shadows, till
+at last she roamed away from me.  The time went very slowly; I got up to
+look for her.  It was past sundown.  I called and called. It was a long
+time before I found her--and she was like a wild thing, hot and flushed,
+her pretty frock torn, her hands and face scratched, her hair down, like
+some beautiful creature of the woods.  If one loves, a little thing will
+scare one.  I didn't think she had noticed my fright; but when we got
+back to the boat she threw her arms round my neck, and said, 'I won't
+ever leave you again!'
+
+"Once in the night I woke--a water-hen was crying, and in the moonlight a
+kingfisher flew across.  The wonder on the river--the wonder of the moon
+and trees, the soft bright mist, the stillness!  It was like another
+world, peaceful, enchanted, far holier than ours. It seemed like a vision
+of the thoughts that come to one--how seldom! and go if one tries to
+grasp them.  Magic--poetry-sacred!"  He was silent a minute, then went on
+in a wistful voice: "I looked at her, sleeping like a child, with her
+hair loose, and her lips apart, and I thought: 'God do so to me, if ever
+I bring her pain!'  How was I to understand her? the mystery and
+innocence of her soul!  The river has had all my light and all my
+darkness, the happiest days, and the hours when I've despaired; and I
+like to think of it, for, you know, in time bitter memories fade, only
+the good remain....  Yet the good have their own pain, a different kind
+of aching, for we shall never get them back.  Sir," he said, turning to
+me with a faint smile, "it's no use crying over spilt milk....  In the
+neighbourhood of Lucy's inn, the Rose and Maybush--Can you imagine a
+prettier name?  I have been all over the world, and nowhere found names
+so pretty as in the English country.  There, too, every blade of grass;
+and flower, has a kind of pride about it; knows it will be cared for; and
+all the roads, trees, and cottages, seem to be certain that they will
+live for ever....  But I was going to tell you: Half a mile from the inn
+was a quiet old house which we used to call the 'Convent'--though I
+believe it was a farm.  We spent many afternoons there, trespassing in
+the orchard--Eilie was fond of trespassing; if there were a long way
+round across somebody else's property, she would always take it. We spent
+our last afternoon in that orchard, lying in the long grass. I was
+reading Childe Harold for the first time--a wonderful, a memorable poem! 
+I was at that passage--the bull-fight--you remember:
+
+     "'Thrice sounds the clarion; lo! the signal falls,
+       The din expands, and expectation mute'
+
+--"when suddenly Eilie said: 'Suppose I were to leave off loving you?' It
+was as if some one had struck me in the face.  I jumped up, and tried to
+take her in my arms, but she slipped away; then she turned, and began
+laughing softly.  I laughed too.  I don't know why...."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+"We went back to London the next day; we lived quite close to the school,
+and about five days a week Dalton came to dine with us.  He would have
+come every day, if he had not been the sort of man who refuses to consult
+his own pleasure.  We had more pupils than ever. In my leisure I taught
+my wife to fence.  I have never seen any one so lithe and quick; or so
+beautiful as she looked in her fencing dress, with embroidered shoes.
+
+"I was completely happy.  When a man has obtained his desire he becomes
+careless and self-satisfied; I was watchful, however, for I knew that I
+was naturally a selfish man.  I studied to arrange my time and save my
+money, to give her as much pleasure as I could. What she loved best in
+the world just then was riding.  I bought a horse for her, and in the
+evenings of the spring and summer we rode together; but when it was too
+dark to go out late, she would ride alone, great distances, sometimes
+spend the whole day in the saddle, and come back so tired she could
+hardly walk upstairs--I can't say that I liked that.  It made me nervous,
+she was so headlong--but I didn't think it right to interfere with her. 
+I had a good deal of anxiety about money, for though I worked hard and
+made more than ever, there never seemed enough.  I was anxious to save--I
+hoped, of course--but we had no child, and this was a trouble to me.  She
+grew more beautiful than ever, and I think was happy.  Has it ever struck
+you that each one of us lives on the edge of a volcano?  There is, I
+imagine, no one who has not some affection or interest so strong that he
+counts the rest for nothing, beside it.  No doubt a man may live his life
+through without discovering that.  But some of us--!  I am not
+complaining; what is--is."  He pulled the cap lower over his eyes, and
+clutched his hands firmly on the top of his stick.  He was like a man who
+rushes his horse at some hopeless fence, unwilling to give himself time,
+for fear of craning at the last moment. "In the spring of '78, a new
+pupil came to me, a young man of twenty-one who was destined for the
+army.  I took a fancy to him, and did my best to turn him into a good
+swordsman; but there was a kind of perverse recklessness in him; for a
+few minutes one would make a great impression, then he would grow utterly
+careless.  'Francis,' I would say, 'if I were you I should be ashamed.' 
+'Mr. Brune,' he would answer, 'why should I be ashamed?  I didn't make
+myself.'  God knows, I wish to do him justice, he had a heart--one day he
+drove up in a cab, and brought in his poor dog, who had been run over,
+and was dying: For half an hour he shut himself up with its body, we
+could hear him sobbing like a child; he came out with his eyes all red,
+and cried: 'I know where to find the brute who drove over him,' and off
+he rushed.  He had beautiful Italian eyes; a slight figure, not very
+tall; dark hair, a little dark moustache; and his lips were always a
+trifle parted--it was that, and his walk, and the way he drooped his
+eyelids, which gave him a peculiar, soft, proud look. I used to tell him
+that he'd never make a soldier!  'Oh!' he'd answer, 'that'll be all right
+when the time comes!  He believed in a kind of luck that was to do
+everything for him, when the time came.  One day he came in as I was
+giving Eilie her lesson.  This was the first time they saw each other. 
+After that he came more often, and sometimes stayed to dinner with us.  I
+won't deny, sir, that I was glad to welcome him; I thought it good for
+Eilie.  Can there be anything more odious," he burst out, "than such a
+self-complacent blindness?  There are people who say, 'Poor man, he had
+such faith!'  Faith, sir!  Conceit!  I was a fool--in this world one pays
+for folly....
+
+"The summer came; and one Saturday in early June, Eilie, I, and
+Francis--I won't tell you his other name--went riding.  The night had
+been wet; there was no dust, and presently the sun came out--a glorious
+day!  We rode a long way.  About seven o'clock we started back-slowly,
+for it was still hot, and there was all the cool of night before us.  It
+was nine o'clock when we came to Richmond Park. A grand place, Richmond
+Park; and in that half-light wonderful, the deer moving so softly, you
+might have thought they were spirits.  We were silent too--great trees
+have that effect on me....
+
+"Who can say when changes come?  Like a shift of the wind, the old
+passes, the new is on you.  I am telling you now of a change like that.
+Without a sign of warning, Eilie put her horse into a gallop. 'What are
+you doing?' I shouted.  She looked back with a smile, then he dashed past
+me too.  A hornet might have stung them both: they galloped over fallen
+trees, under low hanging branches, up hill and down.  I had to watch that
+madness!  My horse was not so fast.  I rode like a demon; but fell far
+behind.  I am not a man who takes things quietly.  When I came up with
+them at last, I could not speak for rage.  They were riding side by side,
+the reins on the horses' necks, looking in each other's faces.  'You
+should take care,' I said.  'Care!' she cried; 'life is not all taking
+care!'  My anger left me.  I dropped behind, as grooms ride behind their
+mistresses... Jealousy!  No torture is so ceaseless or so black....  In
+those minutes a hundred things came up in me--a hundred memories, true,
+untrue, what do I know?  My soul was poisoned.  I tried to reason with
+myself.  It was absurd to think such things!  It was unmanly.... Even if
+it were true, one should try to be a gentleman!  But I found myself
+laughing; yes, sir, laughing at that word."  He spoke faster, as if
+pouring his heart out not to a live listener, but to the night. "I could
+not sleep that night.  To lie near her with those thoughts in my brain
+was impossible!  I made an excuse, and sat up with some papers. The
+hardest thing in life is to see a thing coming and be able to do nothing
+to prevent it.  What could I do?  Have you noticed how people may become
+utter strangers without a word?  It only needs a thought....  The very
+next day she said: 'I want to go to Lucy's.' 'Alone?'  'Yes.'  I had made
+up my mind by then that she must do just as she wished.  Perhaps I acted
+wrongly; I do not know what one ought to do in such a case; but before
+she went I said to her: 'Eilie, what is it?'  'I don't know,' she
+answered; and I kissed her--that was all....  A month passed; I wrote to
+her nearly every day, and I had short letters from her, telling me very
+little of herself.  Dalton was a torture to me, for I could not tell him;
+he had a conviction that she was going to become a mother. 'Ah, Brune!'
+he said, 'my poor wife was just like that.'  Life, sir, is a somewhat
+ironical affair...!  He--I find it hard to speak his name--came to the
+school two or three times a week.  I used to think I saw a change, a
+purpose growing up through his recklessness; there seemed a violence in
+him as if he chafed against my blade.  I had a kind of joy in feeling I
+had the mastery, and could toss the iron out of his hand any minute like
+a straw.  I was ashamed, and yet I gloried in it. Jealousy is a low
+thing, sir--a low, base thing!  When he asked me where my wife was, I
+told him; I was too proud to hide it.  Soon after that he came no more to
+the school.
+
+"One morning, when I could bear it no longer, I wrote, and said I was
+coming down.  I would not force myself on her, but I asked her to meet me
+in the orchard of the old house we called the Convent.  I asked her to be
+there at four o'clock.  It has always been my, belief that a man must
+neither beg anything of a woman, nor force anything from her.  Women are
+generous--they will give you what they can.  I sealed my letter, and
+posted it myself.  All the way down I kept on saying to myself, 'She must
+come--surely she will come!'"
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+"I was in high spirits, but the next moment trembled like a man with
+ague.  I reached the orchard before my time.  She was not there.  You
+know what it is like to wait?  I stood still and listened; I went to the
+point whence I could see farthest; I said to myself, 'A watched pot never
+boils; if I don't look for her she will come.'  I walked up and down with
+my eyes on the ground.  The sickness of it!  A hundred times I took out
+my watch.... Perhaps it was fast, perhaps hers was slow--I can't tell you
+a thousandth part of my hopes and fears. There was a spring of water, in
+one corner.  I sat beside it, and thought of the last time I had been
+there--and something seemed to burst in me.  It was five o'clock before I
+lost all hope; there comes a time when you're glad that hope is dead, it
+means rest.  'That's over,' you say, 'now I can act.' But what was I to
+do?  I lay down with my face to the ground; when one's in trouble, it's
+the only thing that helps--something to press against and cling to that
+can't give way.  I lay there for two hours, knowing all the time that I
+should play the coward.  At seven o'clock I left the orchard and went
+towards the inn; I had broken my word, but I felt happy.... I should see
+her--and, sir, nothing--nothing seemed to matter beside that. Tor was in
+the garden snipping at his roses.  He came up, and I could see that he
+couldn't look me in the face. 'Where's my wife?' I said. He answered,
+'Let's get Lucy.'  I ran indoors. Lucy met me with two letters; the
+first--my own--unopened; and the second, this:
+
+"'I have left you.  You were good to me, but now--it is no use.
+          EILIE.'"
+
+"She told me that a boy had brought a letter for my wife the day before,
+from a young gentleman in a boat.  When Lucy delivered it she asked, 'Who
+is he, Miss Eilie?  What will Mr. Brune say?'  My wife looked at her
+angrily, but gave her no answer--and all that day she never spoke. In the
+evening she was gone, leaving this note on the bed....  Lucy cried as if
+her heart would break.  I took her by the shoulders and put her from the
+room; I couldn't bear the noise.  I sat down and tried to think. While I
+was sitting there Tor came in with a letter.  It was written on the
+notepaper of an inn twelve miles up the river: these were the words.
+
+"'Eilie is mine.  I am ready to meet you where you like.'"
+
+He went on with a painful evenness of speech.  "When I read those words,
+I had only one thought--to reach them; I ran down to the river, and chose
+out the lightest boat.  Just as I was starting, Tor came running. 'You
+dropped this letter, sir,' he said.  'Two pair of arms are better than
+one.'  He came into the boat.  I took the sculls and I pulled out into
+the stream.  I pulled like a madman; and that great man, with his bare
+arms crossed, was like a huge, tawny bull sitting there opposite me.
+Presently he took my place, and I took the rudder lines.  I could see his
+chest, covered with hair, heaving up and down, it gave me a sort of
+comfort--it meant that we were getting nearer.  Then it grew dark, there
+was no moon, I could barely see the bank; there's something in the dark
+which drives one into oneself.  People tell you there comes a moment when
+your nature is decided--'saved' or 'lost' as they call it--for good or
+evil.  That is not true, your self is always with you, and cannot be
+altered; but, sir, I believe that in a time of agony one finds out what
+are the things one can do, and what are those one cannot.  You get to
+know yourself, that's all.  And so it was with me. Every thought and
+memory and passion was so clear and strong!  I wanted to kill him.  I
+wanted to kill myself.  But her--no!  We are taught that we possess our
+wives, body and soul, we are brought up in that faith, we are commanded
+to believe it--but when I was face to face with it, those words had no
+meaning; that belief, those commands, they were without meaning to me,
+they were--vile.  Oh yes, I wanted to find comfort in them, I wanted to
+hold on to them--but I couldn't. You may force a body; how can you force
+a soul?  No, no--cowardly!  But I wanted to--I wanted to kill him and
+force her to come back to me!  And then, suddenly, I felt as if I were
+pressing right on the most secret nerve of my heart.  I seemed to see her
+face, white and quivering, as if I'd stamped my heel on it.  They say
+this world is ruled by force; it may be true--I know I have a weak spot
+in me....  I couldn't bear it. At last I Jumped to my feet and shouted
+out, 'Turn the boat round!' Tor looked up at me as if I had gone mad. 
+And I had gone mad.  I seized the boat-hook and threatened him; I called
+him fearful names. 'Sir,' he said, 'I don't take such names from any
+one!'  'You'll take them from me,' I shouted; 'turn the boat round, you
+idiot, you hound, you fish!...' I have a terrible temper, a perfect curse
+to me.  He seemed amazed, even frightened; he sat down again suddenly and
+pulled the boat round.  I fell on the seat, and hid my face.  I believe
+the moon came up; there must have been a mist too, for I was cold as
+death.  In this life, sir, we cannot hide our faces--but by degrees the
+pain of wounds grows less. Some will have it that such blows are mortal;
+it is not so.  Time is merciful.
+
+"In the early morning I went back to London.  I had fever on me--and was
+delirious.  I dare say I should have killed myself if I had not been so
+used to weapons--they and I were too old friends, I suppose--I can't
+explain.  It was a long while before I was up and about. Dalton nursed me
+through it; his great heavy moustache had grown quite white.  We never
+mentioned her; what was the good?  There were things to settle of course,
+the lawyer--this was unspeakably distasteful to me.  I told him it was to
+be as she wished, but the fellow would come to me, with his--there, I
+don't want to be unkind. I wished him to say it was my fault, but he
+said--I remember his smile now--he said, that was impossible, would be
+seen through, talked of collusion--I don't understand these things, and
+what's more, I can't bear them, they are--dirty.
+
+"Two years later, when I had come back to London, after the Russo-Turkish
+war, I received a letter from her.  I have it here."  He took an old,
+yellow sheet of paper out of a leathern pockethook, spread it in his
+fingers, and sat staring at it.  For some minutes he did not speak.
+
+"In the autumn of that same year she died in childbirth.  He had deserted
+her.  Fortunately for him, he was killed on the Indian frontier, that
+very year.  If she had lived she would have been thirty-two next June;
+not a great age....  I know I am what they call a crank; doctors will
+tell you that you can't be cured of a bad illness, and be the same man
+again.  If you are bent, to force yourself straight must leave you weak
+in another place.  I must and will think well of women--everything done,
+and everything said against them is a stone on her dead body. Could you
+sit, and listen to it?"  As though driven by his own question, he rose,
+and paced up and down.  He came back to the seat at last.
+
+"That, sir, is the reason of my behaviour this afternoon, and again this
+evening.  You have been so kind, I wanted!--wanted to tell you. She had a
+little daughter--Lucy has her now.  My friend Dalton is dead; there would
+have been no difficulty about money, but, I am sorry to say, that he was
+swindled--disgracefully.  It fell to me to administer his affairs--he
+never knew it, but he died penniless; he had trusted some wretched
+fellows--had an idea they would make his fortune.  As I very soon found,
+they had ruined him.  It was impossible to let Lucy--such a dear
+woman--bear that burden.  I have tried to make provision; but, you see,"
+he took hold of my sleeve, "I, too, have not been fortunate; in fact,
+it's difficult to save a great deal out of L 190 a year; but the capital
+is perfectly safe--and I get L 47, 10s. a quarter, paid on the nail.  I
+have often been tempted to reinvest at a greater rate of interest, but
+I've never dared.  Anyway, there are no debts--I've been obliged to make
+a rule not to buy what I couldn't pay for on the spot....  Now I am
+really plaguing you--but I wanted to tell you--in case-anything should
+happen to me."  He seemed to take a sudden scare, stiffened, twisted his
+moustache, and muttering, "Your great kindness!  Shall never forget!"
+turned hurriedly away.
+
+He vanished; his footsteps, and the tap of his stick grew fainter and
+fainter.  They died out.  He was gone.  Suddenly I got up and hastened
+after him.  I soon stopped--what was there to say?
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+The following day I was obliged to go to Nice, and did not return till
+midnight.  The porter told me that Jules le Ferrier had been to see me.
+The next morning, while I was still in bed, the door was opened, and
+Jules appeared.  His face was very pale; and the moment he stood still
+drops of perspiration began coursing down his cheeks.
+
+"Georges!" he said, "he is dead.  There, there!  How stupid you look!  My
+man is packing.  I have half an hour before the train; my evidence shall
+come from Italy.  I have done my part, the rest is for you. Why did you
+have that dinner?  The Don Quixote!  The idiot!  The poor man!  Don't
+move!  Have you a cigar?  Listen!  When you followed him, I followed the
+other two.  My infernal curiosity!  Can you conceive a greater folly?  How
+fast they walked, those two! feeling their cheeks, as if he had struck
+them both, you know; it was funny.  They soon saw me, for their eyes were
+all round about their heads; they had the mark of a glove on their
+cheeks."  The colour began to come back, into Jules's face; he
+gesticulated with his cigar and became more and more dramatic.  "They
+waited for me.  'Tiens!' said one, 'this gentleman was with him.  My
+friend's name is M. Le Baron de---. The man who struck him was an
+odd-looking person; kindly inform me whether it is possible for my friend
+to meet him?'  Eh!" commented Jules, "he was offensive!  Was it for me to
+give our dignity away? 'Perfectly, monsieur!'  I answered.  'In that
+case,' he said, 'please give me his name and ad dress....  I could not
+remember his name, and as for the address, I never knew it...!  I
+reflected. 'That,' I said, 'I am unable to do, for special reasons.'
+'Aha!' he said, 'reasons that will prevent our fighting him, I suppose?
+'On the contrary,' I said.  'I will convey your request to him; I may
+mention that I have heard he is the best swordsman and pistol-shot in
+Europe. Good-night!'  I wished to give them something to dream of, you
+understand....  Patience, my dear!  Patience!  I was, coming to you, but
+I thought I would let them sleep on it--there was plenty of time!  But
+yesterday morning I came into the Place, and there he was on the bench,
+with a big dog.  I declare to you he blushed like a young girl. 'Sir,' he
+said, 'I was hoping to meet you; last evening I made a great disturbance. 
+I took an unpardonable liberty'--and he put in my hand an envelope.  My
+friend, what do you suppose it contained--a pair of gloves!  Senor Don
+Punctilioso, hein?  He was the devil, this friend of yours; he fascinated
+me with his gentle eyes and his white moustachettes, his humility, his
+flames--poor man...!  I told him I had been asked to take him a
+challenge.  'If anything comes of it,' I said, 'make use of me!'  'Is
+that so?' he said.  'I am most grateful for your kind offer. Let me
+see--it is so long since I fought a duel.  The sooner it's over the
+better.  Could you arrange to-morrow morning?  Weapons?  Yes; let them
+choose.'  You see, my friend, there was no hanging back here; nous voila
+en train."
+
+Jules took out his watch.  "I have sixteen minutes.  It is lucky for you
+that you were away yesterday, or you would be in my shoes now.  I fixed
+the place, right hand of the road to Roquebrune, just by the railway
+cutting, and the time--five-thirty of the morning.  It was arranged that
+I should call for him.  Disgusting hour; I have not been up so early
+since I fought Jacques Tirbaut in '85.  At five o'clock I found him ready
+and drinking tea with rum in it--singular man! he made me have some too,
+brrr!  He was shaved, and dressed in that old frock-coat.  His great dog
+jumped into the carriage, but he bade her get out, took her paws on his
+shoulders, and whispered in her ear some Italian words; a charm, hein!
+and back she went, the tail between the legs.  We drove slowly, so as not
+to shake his arm. He was more gay than I.  All the way he talked to me of
+you: how kind you were! how good you had been to him!  'You do not speak
+of yourself!' I said.  'Have you no friends, nothing to say?  Sometimes an
+accident will happen!'  'Oh!' he answered, 'there is no danger; but if by
+any chance--well, there is a letter in my pocket.' 'And if you should
+kill him?' I said.  'But I shall not,' he answered slyly: 'do you think I
+am going to fire at him?  No, no; he is too young.' 'But,' I said, 'I--'I
+am not going to stand that!'  'Yes,' he replied, 'I owe him a shot; but
+there is no danger--not the least danger.'  We had arrived; already they
+were there.  Ah bah!  You know the preliminaries, the politeness--this
+duelling, you know, it is absurd, after all.  We placed them at twenty
+paces.  It is not a bad place.  There are pine-trees round, and rocks; at
+that hour it was cool and grey as a church.  I handed him the pistol. 
+How can I describe him to you, standing there, smoothing the barrel with
+his fingers!  'What a beautiful thing a good pistol!' he said.  'Only a
+fool or a madman throws away his life,' I said.  'Certainly,' he replied,
+'certainly; but there is no danger,' and he regarded me, raising his
+moustachette.
+
+"There they stood then, back to back, with the mouths of their pistols to
+the sky.  'Un!' I cried, 'deux! tirez!' They turned, I saw the smoke of
+his shot go straight up like a prayer; his pistol dropped.  I ran to him.
+He looked surprised, put out his hand, and fell into my arms.  He was
+dead.  Those fools came running up.  'What is it?' cried one.  I made him
+a bow.  'As you see,' I said; 'you have made a pretty shot.  My friend
+fired in the air.  Messieurs, you had better breakfast in Italy.'  We
+carried him to the carriage, and covered him with a rug; the others drove
+for the frontier.  I brought him to his room.  Here is his letter." Jules
+stopped; tears were running down his face.  "He is dead; I have closed
+his eyes.  Look here, you know, we are all of us cads--it is the rule;
+but this--this, perhaps, was the exception."  And without another word he
+rushed away....
+
+Outside the old fellow's lodging a dismounted cocher was standing
+disconsolate in the sun. "How was I to know they were going to fight a
+duel?" he burst out on seeing me.  "He had white hair--I call you to
+witness he had white hair.  This is bad for me: they will ravish my
+licence.  Aha! you will see--this is bad for me!"  I gave him the slip
+and found my way upstairs.  The old fellow was alone, lying on the bed,
+his feet covered with a rug as if he might feel cold; his eyes were
+closed, but in this sleep of death, he still had that air of faint
+surprise.  At full length, watching the bed intently, Freda lay, as she
+lay nightly when he was really asleep.  The shutters were half open; the
+room still smelt slightly of rum.  I stood for a long time looking at the
+face: the little white fans of moustache brushed upwards even in death,
+the hollows in his cheeks, the quiet of his figure; he was like some old
+knight....  The dog broke the spell. She sat up, and resting her paws on
+the bed, licked his face.  I went downstairs--I couldn't bear to hear her
+howl.  This was his letter to me, written in a pointed handwriting:
+
+"MY DEAR SIR,--Should you read this, I shall be gone.  I am ashamed to
+trouble you--a man should surely manage so as not to give trouble; and
+yet I believe you will not consider me importunate.  If, then, you will
+pick up the pieces of an old fellow, I ask you to have my sword, the
+letter enclosed in this, and the photograph that stands on the stove
+buried with me.  My will and the acknowledgments of my property are
+between the leaves of the Byron in my tin chest; they should go to Lucy
+Tor--address thereon.  Perhaps you will do me the honour to retain for
+yourself any of my books that may give you pleasure.  In the Pilgrim's
+Progress you will find some excellent recipes for Turkish coffee, Italian
+and Spanish dishes, and washing wounds.  The landlady's daughter speaks
+Italian, and she would, I know, like to have Freda; the poor dog will
+miss me.  I have read of old Indian warriors taking their horses and dogs
+with them to the happy hunting-grounds.  Freda would come--noble animals
+are dogs!  She eats once a day--a good large meal--and requires much
+salt.  If you have animals of your own, sir, don't forget--all animals
+require salt.  I have no debts, thank God!  The money in my pockets would
+bury me decently--not that there is any danger.  And I am ashamed to
+weary you with details--the least a man can do is not to make a fuss--and
+yet he must be found ready.--Sir, with profound gratitude, your servant,
+"ROGER BRUNE."
+
+Everything was as he had said.  The photograph on the stove was that of a
+young girl of nineteen or twenty, dressed in an old-fashioned style, with
+hair gathered backward in a knot.  The eyes gazed at you with a little
+frown, the lips were tightly closed; the expression of the face was
+eager, quick, wilful, and, above all, young.
+
+The tin trunk was scented with dry fragments of some herb, the history of
+which in that trunk man knoweth not....  There were a few clothes, but
+very few, all older than those he usually wore.  Besides the Byron and
+Pilgrim's Progress were Scott's Quentin Durward, Captain Marryat's
+Midshipman Easy, a pocket Testament, and a long and frightfully stiff
+book on the art of fortifying towns, much thumbed, and bearing date 1863.
+By far the most interesting thing I found, however, was a diary, kept
+down to the preceding Christmas.  It was a pathetic document, full of
+calculations of the price of meals; resolutions to be careful over this
+or that; doubts whether he must not give up smoking; sentences of fear
+that Freda had not enough to eat.  It appeared that he had tried to live
+on ninety pounds a year, and send the other hundred pounds home to Lucy
+for the child; in this struggle he was always failing, having to send
+less than the amount-the entries showed that this was a nightmare to him.
+The last words, written on Christmas Day, were these "What is the use of
+writing this, since it records nothing but failure!"
+
+The landlady's daughter and myself were at the funeral.  The same
+afternoon I went into the concert-room, where I had spoken to him first.
+When I came out Freda was lying at the entrance, looking into the faces
+of every one that passed, and sniffing idly at their heels. Close by the
+landlady's daughter hovered, a biscuit in her hand, and a puzzled, sorry
+look on her face.
+
+September 1900.
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+MY BROTHER HUBERT GALSWORTHY
+
+
+
+
+SALVATION OF A FORSYTE
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+Swithin Forsyte lay in bed.  The corners of his mouth under his white
+moustache drooped towards his double chin.  He panted:
+
+"My doctor says I'm in a bad way, James."
+
+His twin-brother placed his hand behind his ear.  "I can't hear you. They
+tell me I ought to take a cure.  There's always a cure wanted for
+something.  Emily had a cure."
+
+Swithin replied: "You mumble so.  I hear my man, Adolph.  I trained
+him....  You ought to have an ear-trumpet.  You're getting very shaky,
+James."
+
+There was silence; then James Forsyte, as if galvanised, remarked: "I
+s'pose you've made your will.  I s'pose you've left your money to the
+family; you've nobody else to leave it to.  There was Danson died the
+other day, and left his money to a hospital"
+
+The hairs of Swithin's white moustache bristled.  "My fool of a doctor
+told me to make my will," he said, "I hate a fellow who tells you to make
+your will.  My appetite's good; I ate a partridge last night.  I'm all
+the better for eating.  He told me to leave off champagne!  I eat a good
+breakfast.  I'm not eighty.  You're the same age, James.  You look very
+shaky."
+
+James Forsyte said: "You ought to have another opinion.  Have Blank; he's
+the first man now.  I had him for Emily; cost me two hundred guineas.  He
+sent her to Homburg; that's the first place now.  The Prince was
+there--everybody goes there."
+
+Swithin Forsyte answered: "I don't get any sleep at night, now I can't
+get out; and I've bought a new carriage--gave a pot of money for it. D'
+you ever have bronchitis?  They tell me champagne's dangerous; it's my
+belief I couldn't take a better thing."
+
+James Forsyte rose.
+
+"You ought to have another opinion.  Emily sent her love; she would have
+come in, but she had to go to Niagara.  Everybody goes there; it's the
+place now.  Rachel goes every morning: she overdoes it--she'll be laid up
+one of these days.  There's a fancy ball there to-night; the Duke gives
+the prizes."
+
+Swithin Forsyte said angrily: "I can't get things properly cooked here;
+at the club I get spinach decently done."  The bed-clothes jerked at the
+tremor of his legs.
+
+James Forsyte replied: "You must have done well with Tintos; you must
+have made a lot of money by them.  Your ground-rents must be falling in,
+too.  You must have any amount you don't know what to do with." He
+mouthed the words, as if his lips were watering.
+
+Swithin Forsyte glared.  "Money!" he said; "my doctor's bill's enormous."
+
+James Forsyte stretched out a cold, damp hand "Goodbye!  You ought to
+have another opinion.  I can't keep the horses waiting: they're a new
+pair--stood me in three hundred.  You ought to take care of yourself. I
+shall speak to Blank about you.  You ought to have him--everybody says
+he's the first man.  Good-bye!"
+
+Swithin Forsyte continued to stare at the ceiling.  He thought: 'A poor
+thing, James! a selfish beggar!  Must be worth a couple of hundred
+thousand!'  He wheezed, meditating on life....
+
+He was ill and lonely.  For many years he had been lonely, and for two
+years ill; but as he had smoked his first cigar, so he would live his
+life-stoutly, to its predestined end.  Every day he was driven to the
+club; sitting forward on the spring cushions of a single brougham, his
+hands on his knees, swaying a little, strangely solemn. He ascended the
+steps into that marble hall--the folds of his chin wedged into the
+aperture of his collar--walking squarely with a stick.  Later he would
+dine, eating majestically, and savouring his food, behind a bottle of
+champagne set in an ice-pail--his waistcoat defended by a napkin, his
+eyes rolling a little or glued in a stare on the waiter.  Never did he
+suffer his head or back to droop, for it was not distinguished so to do.
+
+Because he was old and deaf, he spoke to no one; and no one spoke to him.
+The club gossip, an Irishman, said to each newcomer: "Old Forsyte!  Look
+at 'um!  Must ha' had something in his life to sour 'um!"  But Swithin
+had had nothing in his life to sour him.
+
+For many days now he had lain in bed in a room exuding silver, crimson,
+and electric light, smelling of opopanax and of cigars.  The curtains
+were drawn, the firelight gleamed; on a table by his bed were a jug of
+barley-water and the Times.  He made an attempt to read, failed, and fell
+again to thinking.  His face with its square chin, looked like a block of
+pale leather bedded in the pillow.  It was lonely!  A woman in the room
+would have made all the difference!  Why had he never married?  He
+breathed hard, staring froglike at the ceiling; a memory had come into
+his mind.  It was a long time ago--forty odd years--but it seemed like
+yesterday....
+
+It happened when he was thirty-eight, for the first and only time in his
+life travelling on the Continent, with his twin-brother James and a man
+named Traquair.  On the way from Germany to Venice, he had found himself
+at the Hotel Goldene Alp at Salzburg.  It was late August, and weather
+for the gods: sunshine on the walls and the shadows of the vine-leaves,
+and at night, the moonlight, and again on the walls the shadows of the
+vine-leaves.  Averse to the suggestions of other people, Swithin had
+refused to visit the Citadel; he had spent the day alone in the window of
+his bedroom, smoking a succession of cigars, and disparaging the
+appearance of the passers-by.  After dinner he was driven by boredom into
+the streets.  His chest puffed out like a pigeon's, and with something of
+a pigeon's cold and inquiring eye, he strutted, annoyed at the frequency
+of uniforms, which seemed to him both needless and offensive.  His spleen
+rose at this crowd of foreigners, who spoke an unintelligible language,
+wore hair on their faces, and smoked bad tobacco.  'A queer lot!' he
+thought.  The sound of music from a cafe attracted him; he walked in,
+vaguely moved by a wish for the distinction of adventure, without the
+trouble which adventure usually brought with it; spurred too, perhaps, by
+an after-dinner demon.  The cafe was the bier-halle of the 'Fifties, with
+a door at either end, and lighted by a large wooden lantern.  On a small
+dais three musicians were fiddling. Solitary men, or groups, sat at some
+dozen tables, and the waiters hurried about replenishing glasses; the air
+was thick with smoke. Swithin sat down.  "Wine!" he said sternly.  The
+astonished waiter brought him wine.  Swithin pointed to a beer glass on
+the table. "Here!" he said, with the same ferocity.  The waiter poured
+out the wine.  'Ah!' thought Swithin, 'they can understand if they like.'
+A group of officers close by were laughing; Swithin stared at them
+uneasily.  A hollow cough sounded almost in his ear.  To his left a man
+sat reading, with his elbows on the corners of a journal, and his gaunt
+shoulders raised almost to his eyes.  He had a thin, long nose,
+broadening suddenly at the nostrils; a black-brown beard, spread in a
+savage fan over his chest; what was visible of the face was the colour of
+old parchment.  A strange, wild, haughty-looking creature!  Swithin
+observed his clothes with some displeasure--they were the clothes of a
+journalist or strolling actor.  And yet he was impressed.  This was
+singular.  How could he be impressed by a fellow in such clothes!  The
+man reached out a hand, covered with black hairs, and took up a tumbler
+that contained a dark-coloured fluid. 'Brandy!' thought Swithin.  The
+crash of a falling chair startled him--his neighbour had risen.  He was
+of immense height, and very thin; his great beard seemed to splash away
+from his mouth; he was glaring at the group of officers, and speaking. 
+Swithin made out two words: "Hunde!  Deutsche Hunde!" 'Hounds!  Dutch
+hounds!' he thought: 'Rather strong!'  One of the officers had jumped up,
+and now drew his sword.  The tall man swung his chair up, and brought it
+down with a thud.  Everybody round started up and closed on him.  The
+tall man cried out, "To me, Magyars!"
+
+Swithin grinned.  The tall man fighting such odds excited his unwilling
+admiration; he had a momentary impulse to go to his assistance.  'Only
+get a broken nose!' he thought, and looked for a safe corner.  But at
+that moment a thrown lemon struck him on the jaw.  He jumped out of his
+chair and rushed at the officers.  The Hungarian, swinging his chair,
+threw him a look of gratitude--Swithin glowed with momentary admiration
+of himself.  A sword blade grazed his--arm; he felt a sudden dislike of
+the Hungarian.  'This is too much,' he thought, and, catching up a chair,
+flung it at the wooden lantern.  There was a crash--faces and swords
+vanished.  He struck a match, and by the light of it bolted for the door. 
+A second later he was in the street.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+A voice said in English, "God bless you, brother!"
+
+Swithin looked round, and saw the tall Hungarian holding out his hand. He
+took it, thinking, 'What a fool I've been!'  There was something in the
+Hungarian's gesture which said, "You are worthy of me!"
+
+It was annoying, but rather impressive.  The man seemed even taller than
+before; there was a cut on his cheek, the blood from which was trickling
+down his beard.  "You English!" he said.  "I saw you stone Haynau--I saw
+you cheer Kossuth.  The free blood of your people cries out to us." He
+looked at Swithin.  "You are a big man, you have a big soul--and strong,
+how you flung them down!  Ha!"  Swithin had an impulse to take to his
+heels.  "My name," said the Hungarian, "is Boleskey.  You are my friend." 
+His English was good.
+
+'Bulsh-kai-ee, Burlsh-kai-ee,' thought Swithin; 'what a devil of a name!'
+"Mine," he said sulkily, "is Forsyte."
+
+The Hungarian repeated it.
+
+"You've had a nasty jab on the cheek," said Swithin; the sight of the
+matted beard was making him feel sick.  The Hungarian put his fingers to
+his cheek, brought them away wet, stared at them, then with an
+indifferent air gathered a wisp of his beard and crammed it against the
+cut.
+
+"Ugh!" said Swithin.  "Here!  Take my handkerchief!"
+
+The Hungarian bowed.  "Thank you!" he said; "I couldn't think of it!
+Thank you a thousand times!"
+
+"Take it!" growled Swithin; it seemed to him suddenly of the first
+importance.  He thrust the handkerchief into the Hungarian's hand, and
+felt a pain in his arm.  'There!' he thought, 'I've strained a muscle.'
+
+The Hungarian kept muttering, regardless of passers-by, "Swine!  How you
+threw them over!  Two or three cracked heads, anyway--the cowardly
+swine!"
+
+"Look here!" said Swithin suddenly; "which is my way to the Goldene Alp?"
+
+The Hungarian replied, "But you are coming with me, for a glass of wine?"
+
+Swithin looked at the ground.  'Not if I know it!' he thought.
+
+"Ah!" said the Hungarian with dignity, "you do not wish for my
+friendship!"
+
+'Touchy beggar!' thought Swithin.  "Of course," he stammered, "if you put
+it in that way--"
+
+The Hungarian bowed, murmuring, "Forgive me!"
+
+They had not gone a dozen steps before a youth, with a beardless face and
+hollow cheeks, accosted them.  "For the love of Christ, gentlemen," he
+said, "help me!"
+
+"Are you a German?" asked Boleskey.
+
+"Yes," said the youth.
+
+"Then you may rot!"
+
+"Master, look here!" Tearing open his coat, the youth displayed his skin,
+and a leather belt drawn tight round it.  Again Swithin felt that desire
+to take to his heels.  He was filled with horrid forebodings--a sense of
+perpending intimacy with things such as no gentleman had dealings with.
+
+The Hungarian crossed himself.  "Brother," he said to the youth, "come
+you in!"
+
+Swithin looked at them askance, and followed.  By a dim light they groped
+their way up some stairs into a large room, into which the moon was
+shining through a window bulging over the street.  A lamp burned low;
+there was a smell of spirits and tobacco, with a faint, peculiar scent,
+as of rose leaves.  In one corner stood a czymbal, in another a great
+pile of newspapers.  On the wall hung some old-fashioned pistols, and a
+rosary of yellow beads.  Everything was tidily arranged, but dusty.  Near
+an open fireplace was a table with the remains of a meal.  The ceiling,
+floor, and walls were all of dark wood.  In spite of the strange
+disharmony, the room had a sort of refinement.  The Hungarian took a
+bottle out of a cupboard and, filling some glasses, handed one to
+Swithin.  Swithin put it gingerly to his nose.  'You never know your
+luck!  Come!' he thought, tilting it slowly into his mouth.  It was
+thick, too sweet, but of a fine flavour.
+
+"Brothers!" said the Hungarian, refilling, "your healths!"
+
+The youth tossed off his wine.  And Swithin this time did the same; he
+pitied this poor devil of a youth now.  "Come round to-morrow!" he said,
+"I'll give you a shirt or two."  When the youth was gone, however, he
+remembered with relief that he had not given his address.
+
+'Better so,' he reflected.  'A humbug, no doubt.'
+
+"What was that you said to him?" he asked of the Hungarian.
+
+"I said," answered Boleskey, "'You have eaten and drunk; and now you are
+my enemy!'"
+
+"Quite right!" said Swithin, "quite right!  A beggar is every man's
+enemy."
+
+"You do not understand," the Hungarian replied politely.  "While he was a
+beggar--I, too, have had to beg" (Swithin thought, 'Good God! this is
+awful!'), "but now that he is no longer hungry, what is he but a German? 
+No Austrian dog soils my floors!"
+
+His nostrils, as it seemed to Swithin, had distended in an unpleasant
+fashion; and a wholly unnecessary raucousness invaded his voice.  "I am
+an exile--all of my blood are exiles.  Those Godless dogs!" Swithin
+hurriedly assented.
+
+As he spoke, a face peeped in at the door.
+
+"Rozsi!" said the Hungarian.  A young girl came in.  She was rather
+short, with a deliciously round figure and a thick plait of hair. She
+smiled, and showed her even teeth; her little, bright, wide-set grey eyes
+glanced from one man to the other.  Her face was round, too, high in the
+cheekbones, the colour of wild roses, with brows that had a twist-up at
+the corners.  With a gesture of alarm, she put her hand to her cheek, and
+called, "Margit!"  An older girl appeared, taller, with fine shoulders,
+large eyes, a pretty mouth, and what Swithin described to himself
+afterwards as a "pudding" nose.  Both girls, with little cooing sounds,
+began attending to their father's face.
+
+Swithin turned his back to them.  His arm pained him.
+
+'This is what comes of interfering,' he thought sulkily; 'I might have
+had my neck broken!' Suddenly a soft palm was placed in his, two eyes,
+half-fascinated, half-shy, looked at him; then a voice called, "Rozsi!"
+the door was slammed, he was alone again with the Hungarian, harassed by
+a sense of soft disturbance.
+
+"Your daughter's name is Rosy?" he said; "we have it in England--from
+rose, a flower."
+
+"Rozsi (Rozgi)," the Hungarian replied; "your English is a hard tongue,
+harder than French, German, or Czechish, harder than Russian, or
+Roumanian--I know no more."
+
+"What?" said Swithin, "six languages?"  Privately he thought, 'He knows
+how to lie, anyway.'
+
+"If you lived in a country like mine," muttered the Hungarian, "with all
+men's hands against you!  A free people--dying--but not dead!"
+
+Swithin could not imagine what he was talking of.  This man's face, with
+its linen bandage, gloomy eyes, and great black wisps of beard, his
+fierce mutterings, and hollow cough, were all most unpleasant. He seemed
+to be suffering from some kind of mental dog-bite.  His emotion indeed
+appeared so indecent, so uncontrolled and open, that its obvious
+sincerity produced a sort of awe in Swithin.  It was like being forced to
+look into a furnace.  Boleskey stopped roaming up and down.  "You think
+it's over?" he said; "I tell you, in the breast of each one of us Magyars
+there is a hell.  What is sweeter than life?  What is more sacred than
+each breath we draw?  Ah! my country!" These words were uttered so
+slowly, with such intense mournfulness, that Swithin's jaw relaxed; he
+converted the movement to a yawn.
+
+"Tell me," said Boleskey, "what would you do if the French conquered
+you?"
+
+Swithin smiled.  Then suddenly, as though something had hurt him, he
+grunted, "The 'Froggies'?  Let 'em try!"
+
+"Drink!" said Boleskey--"there is nothing like it"; he filled Swithin's
+glass.  "I will tell you my story."
+
+Swithin rose hurriedly.  "It's late," he said.  "This is good stuff,
+though; have you much of it?"
+
+"It is the last bottle."
+
+"What?" said Swithin; "and you gave it to a beggar?"
+
+"My name is Boleskey--Stefan," the Hungarian said, raising his head; "of
+the Komorn Boleskeys."  The simplicity of this phrase--as who shall say:
+What need of further description?--made an impression on Swithin; he
+stopped to listen.  Boleskey's story went on and on. "There were many
+abuses," boomed his deep voice, "much wrong done--much cowardice.  I
+could see clouds gathering--rolling over our plains. The Austrian wished
+to strangle the breath of our mouths--to take from us the shadow of our
+liberty--the shadow--all we had.  Two years ago--the year of '48, when
+every man and boy answered the great voice--brother, a dog's life!--to
+use a pen when all of your blood are fighting, but it was decreed for me! 
+My son was killed; my brothers taken--and myself was thrown out like a
+dog--I had written out my heart, I had written out all the blood that was
+in my body!" He seemed to tower, a gaunt shadow of a man, with gloomy,
+flickering eyes staring at the wall.
+
+Swithin rose, and stammered, "Much obliged--very interesting." Boleskey
+made no effort to detain him, but continued staring at the wall.
+"Good-night!" said Swithin, and stamped heavily downstairs.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+When at last Swithin reached the Goldene Alp, he found his brother and
+friend standing uneasily at the door.  Traquair, a prematurely dried-up
+man, with whiskers and a Scotch accent, remarked, "Ye're airly, man!"
+Swithin growled something unintelligible, and swung up to bed.  He
+discovered a slight cut on his arm.  He was in a savage temper--the
+elements had conspired to show him things he did not want to see; yet now
+and then a memory of Rozsi, of her soft palm in his, a sense of having
+been stroked and flattered, came over him.  During breakfast next morning
+his brother and Traquair announced their intention of moving on.  James
+Forsyte, indeed, remarked that it was no place for a "collector," since
+all the "old" shops were in the hands of Jews or very grasping
+persons--he had discovered this at once.  Swithin pushed his cup aside. 
+"You may do what you like," he said, "I'm staying here."
+
+James Forsyte replied, tumbling over his own words: "Why! what do you
+want to stay here for?  There's nothing for you to do here--there's
+nothing to see here, unless you go up the Citadel, an' you won't do
+that."
+
+Swithin growled, "Who says so?"  Having gratified his perversity, he felt
+in a better temper.  He had slung his arm in a silk sash, and accounted
+for it by saying he had slipped.  Later he went out and walked on to the
+bridge.  In the brilliant sunshine spires were glistening against the
+pearly background of the hills; the town had a clean, joyous air. Swithin
+glanced at the Citadel and thought, 'Looks a strong place!  Shouldn't
+wonder if it were impregnable!'  And this for some occult reason gave him
+pleasure.  It occurred to him suddenly to go and look for the Hungarian's
+house.
+
+About noon, after a hunt of two hours, he was gazing about him blankly,
+pale with heat, but more obstinate than ever, when a voice above him
+called, "Mister!" He looked up and saw Rozsi.  She was leaning her round
+chin on her round hand, gazing down at him with her deepset, clever eyes.
+When Swithin removed his hat, she clapped her hands.  Again he had the
+sense of being admired, caressed.  With a careless air, that sat
+grotesquely on his tall square person, he walked up to the door; both
+girls stood in the passage.  Swithin felt a confused desire to speak in
+some foreign tongue.  "Maam'selles," he began, "er--bong jour-er, your
+father--pare, comment?"
+
+"We also speak English," said the elder girl; "will you come in, please?"
+
+Swithin swallowed a misgiving, and entered.  The room had a worn
+appearance by daylight, as if it had always been the nest of tragic or
+vivid lives.  He sat down, and his eyes said: "I am a stranger, but don't
+try to get the better of me, please--that is impossible." The girls
+looked at him in silence.  Rozsi wore a rather short skirt of black
+stuff, a white shirt, and across her shoulders an embroidered yoke; her
+sister was dressed in dark green, with a coral necklace; both girls had
+their hair in plaits.  After a minute Rozsi touched the sleeve of his
+hurt arm.
+
+"It's nothing!" muttered Swithin.
+
+"Father fought with a chair, but you had no chair," she said in a
+wondering voice.
+
+He doubled the fist of his sound arm and struck a blow at space.  To his
+amazement she began to laugh.  Nettled at this, he put his hand beneath
+the heavy table and lifted it.  Rozsi clapped her hands.  "Ah I now I
+see--how strong you are!"  She made him a curtsey and whisked round to
+the window.  He found the quick intelligence of her eyes confusing;
+sometimes they seemed to look beyond him at something invisible--this,
+too, confused him.  From Margit he learned that they had been two years
+in England, where their father had made his living by teaching languages;
+they had now been a year in Salzburg.
+
+"We wait," suddenly said.  Rozsi; and Margit, with a solemn face,
+repeated, "We wait."
+
+Swithin's eyes swelled a little with his desire to see what they were
+waiting for.  How queer they were, with their eyes that gazed beyond him!
+He looked at their figures.  'She would pay for dressing,' he thought,
+and he tried to imagine Rozsi in a skirt with proper flounces, a thin
+waist, and hair drawn back over her ears.  She would pay for dressing,
+with that supple figure, fluffy hair, and little hands!  And instantly
+his own hands, face, and clothes disturbed him. He got up, examined the
+pistols on the wall, and felt resentment at the faded, dusty room.
+'Smells like a pot-house!' he thought.  He sat down again close to Rozsi.
+
+"Do you love to dance?" she asked; "to dance is to live.  First you hear
+the music--how your feet itch!  It is wonderful!  You begin slow,
+quick--quicker; you fly--you know nothing--your feet are in the air.  It
+is wonderful!"
+
+A slow flush had mounted into Swithin's face.
+
+"Ah!" continued Rozsi, her eyes fixed on him, "when I am dancing--out
+there I see the plains--your feet go one--two--three--quick, quick,
+quick, quicker--you fly."
+
+She stretched herself, a shiver seemed to pass all down her. "Margit!
+dance!" and, to Swithin's consternation, the two girls--their hands on
+each other's shoulders--began shuffling their feet and swaying to and
+fro.  Their heads were thrown back, their eyes half-closed; suddenly the
+step quickened, they swung to one side, then to the other, and began
+whirling round in front of him.  The sudden fragrance of rose leaves
+enveloped him.  Round they flew again. While they were still dancing,
+Boleskey came into the room.  He caught Swithin by both hands.
+
+"Brother, welcome!  Ah! your arm is hurt!  I do not forget."  His yellow
+face and deep-set eyes expressed a dignified gratitude.  "Let me
+introduce to you my friend Baron Kasteliz."
+
+Swithin bowed to a man with a small forehead, who had appeared softly,
+and stood with his gloved hands touching his waist.  Swithin conceived a
+sudden aversion for this catlike man.  About Boleskey there was that
+which made contempt impossible--the sense of comradeship begotten in the
+fight; the man's height; something lofty and savage in his face; and an
+obscure instinct that it would not pay to show distaste; but this
+Kasteliz, with his neat jaw, low brow, and velvety, volcanic look,
+excited his proper English animosity.  "Your friends are mine," murmured
+Kasteliz.  He spoke with suavity, and hissed his s's.  A long, vibrating
+twang quavered through the room. Swithin turned and saw Rozsi sitting at
+the czymbal; the notes rang under the little hammers in her hands,
+incessant, metallic, rising and falling with that strange melody.
+Kasteliz had fixed his glowing eyes on her; Boleskey, nodding his head,
+was staring at the floor; Margit, with a pale face, stood like a statue.
+
+'What can they see in it?' thought Swithin; 'it's not a tune.'  He took
+up his hat.  Rozsi saw him and stopped; her lips had parted with a
+faintly dismayed expression.  His sense of personal injury diminished; he
+even felt a little sorry for her.  She jumped up from her seat and
+twirled round with a pout.  An inspiration seized on Swithin.  "Come and
+dine with me," he said to Boleskey, "to-morrow--the Goldene Alp--bring
+your friend."  He felt the eyes of the whole room on him--the Hungarian's
+fine eyes; Margit's wide glance; the narrow, hot gaze of Kasteliz; and
+lastly--Rozsi's.  A glow of satisfaction ran down his spine.  When he
+emerged into the street he thought gloomily, 'Now I've done it!' And not
+for some paces did he look round; then, with a forced smile, turned and
+removed his hat to the faces at the window.
+
+Notwithstanding this moment of gloom, however, he was in an exalted state
+all day, and at dinner kept looking at his brother and Traquair
+enigmatically.  'What do they know of life?' he thought; 'they might be
+here a year and get no farther.'  He made jokes, and pinned the menu to
+the waiter's coat-tails.  "I like this place," he said, "I shall spend
+three weeks here."  James, whose lips were on the point of taking in a
+plum, looked at him uneasily.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+On the day of the dinner Swithin suffered a good deal.  He reflected
+gloomily on Boleskey's clothes.  He had fixed an early hour--there would
+be fewer people to see them.  When the time approached he attired himself
+with a certain neat splendour, and though his arm was still sore, left
+off the sling....
+
+Nearly three hours afterwards he left the Goldene Alp between his guests.
+It was sunset, and along the riverbank the houses stood out, unsoftened
+by the dusk; the streets were full of people hurrying home.  Swithin had
+a hazy vision of empty bottles, of the ground before his feet, and the
+accessibility of all the world.  Dim recollections of the good things he
+had said, of his brother and Traquair seated in the background eating
+ordinary meals with inquiring, acid visages, caused perpetual smiles to
+break out on his face, and he steered himself stubbornly, to prove that
+he was a better man than either' of his guests.  He knew, vaguely, that
+he was going somewhere with an object; Rozsi's face kept dancing before
+him, like a promise.  Once or twice he gave Kasteliz a glassy stare.
+Towards Boleskey, on the other hand, he felt quite warm, and recalled
+with admiration the way he had set his glass down empty, time after time.
+'I like to see him take his liquor,' he thought; 'the fellow's a
+gentleman, after all.'  Boleskey strode on, savagely inattentive to
+everything; and Kasteliz had become more like a cat than ever.  It was
+nearly dark when they reached a narrow street close to the cathedral.
+They stopped at a door held open by an old woman.  The change from the
+fresh air to a heated corridor, the noise of the door closed behind him,
+the old woman's anxious glances, sobered Swithin.
+
+"I tell her," said Boleskey, "that I reply for you as for my son."
+
+Swithin was angry.  What business had this man to reply for him!
+
+They passed into a large room, crowded with men all women; Swithin
+noticed that they all looked fit him.  He stared at them in turn--they
+seemed of all classes, some in black coats or silk dresses, others in the
+clothes of work-people; one man, a cobbler, still wore his leather apron,
+as if he had rushed there straight from his work. Laying his hand on
+Swithin's arm, Boleskey evidently began explaining who he was; hands were
+extended, people beyond reach bowed to him. Swithin acknowledged the
+greetings with a stiff motion of his head; then seeing other people
+dropping into seats, he, too, sat down. Some one whispered his
+name--Margit and Rozsi were just behind him.
+
+"Welcome!" said Margit; but Swithin was looking at Rozsi.  Her face was
+so alive and quivering!  'What's the excitement all about?' he thought.
+'How pretty she looks!'  She blushed, drew in her hands with a quick
+tense movement, and gazed again beyond him into the room.  'What is it?'
+thought Swithin; he had a longing to lean back and kiss her lips.  He
+tried angrily to see what she was seeing in those faces turned all one
+way.
+
+Boleskey rose to speak.  No one moved; not a sound could be heard but the
+tone of his deep voice.  On and on he went, fierce and solemn, and with
+the rise of his voice, all those faces-fair or swarthy--seemed to be
+glowing with one and the same feeling.  Swithin felt the white heat in
+those faces--it was not decent!  In that whole speech he only understood
+the one word--"Magyar" which came again and again. He almost dozed off at
+last.  The twang of a czymbal woke him. 'What?' he thought, 'more of that
+infernal music!' Margit, leaning over him, whispered: "Listen!  Racoczy! 
+It is forbidden!" Swithin saw that Rozsi was no longer in her seat; it
+was she who was striking those forbidden notes. He looked
+round--everywhere the same unmoving faces, the same entrancement, and
+fierce stillness.  The music sounded muffled, as if it, too, were
+bursting its heart in silence. Swithin felt within him a touch of panic. 
+Was this a den of tigers?  The way these people listened, the ferocity of
+their stillness, was frightful...!  He gripped his chair and broke into a
+perspiration; was there no chance to get away?  'When it stops,' he
+thought, 'there'll be a rush!'  But there was only a greater silence.  It
+flashed across him that any hostile person coming in then would be torn
+to pieces.  A woman sobbed.  The whole thing was beyond words unpleasant. 
+He rose, and edged his way furtively towards the doorway.  There was a
+cry of "Police!"  The whole crowd came pressing after him.  Swithin would
+soon have been out, but a little behind he caught sight of Rozsi swept
+off her feet.  Her frightened eyes angered him.  'She doesn't deserve
+it,' he thought sulkily; 'letting all this loose!' and forced his way
+back to her.  She clung to him, and a fever went stealing through his
+veins; he butted forward at the crowd, holding her tight.  When they were
+outside he let her go.
+
+"I was afraid," she said.
+
+"Afraid!" muttered Swithin; "I should think so."  No longer touching her,
+he felt his grievance revive.
+
+"But you are so strong," she murmured.
+
+"This is no place for you," growled Swithin, "I'm going to see you home."
+
+"Oh!" cried Rozsi; "but papa and--Margit!"
+
+"That's their look-out!" and he hurried her away.
+
+She slid her hand under his arm; the soft curves of her form brushed him
+gently, each touch only augmented his ill-humour.  He burned with a
+perverse rage, as if all the passions in him were simmering and ready to
+boil over; it was as if a poison were trying to work its way out of him,
+through the layers of his stolid flesh.  He maintained a dogged silence;
+Rozsi, too, said nothing, but when they reached the door, she drew her
+hand away.
+
+"You are angry!" she said.
+
+"Angry," muttered Swithin; "no!  How d'you make that out?"  He had a
+torturing desire to kiss her.
+
+"Yes, you are angry," she repeated; "I wait here for papa and Margit."
+
+Swithin also waited, wedged against the wall.  Once or twice, for his
+sight was sharp, he saw her steal a look at him, a beseeching look, and
+hardened his heart with a kind of pleasure.  After five minutes Boleskey,
+Margit, and Kasteliz appeared.  Seeing Rozsi they broke into exclamations
+of relief, and Kasteliz, with a glance at Swithin, put his lips to her
+hand.  Rozsi's look said, "Wouldn't you like to do that?"  Swithin turned
+short on his heel, and walked away.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+All night he hardly slept, suffering from fever, for the first time in
+his life.  Once he jumped out of bed, lighted a candle, and going to the
+glass, scrutinised himself long and anxiously.  After this he fell
+asleep, but had frightful dreams.  His first thought when he woke was,
+'My liver's out of order!' and, thrusting his head into cold water, he
+dressed hastily and went out.  He soon left the house behind.  Dew
+covered everything; blackbirds whistled in the bushes; the air was fresh
+and sweet.  He had not been up so early since he was a boy.  Why was he
+walking through a damp wood at this hour of the morning?  Something
+intolerable and unfamiliar must have sent him out.  No fellow in his
+senses would do such a thing!  He came to a dead stop, and began
+unsteadily to walk back.  Regaining the hotel, he went to bed again, and
+dreamed that in some wild country he was living in a room full of
+insects, where a housemaid--Rozsi--holding a broom, looked at him with
+mournful eyes.  There seemed an unexplained need for immediate departure;
+he begged her to forward his things; and shake them out carefully before
+she put them into the trunk.  He understood that the charge for sending
+would be twenty-two shillings, thought it a great deal, and had the
+horrors of indecision.  "No," he muttered, "pack, and take them myself." 
+The housemaid turned suddenly into a lean creature; and he awoke with a
+sore feeling in his heart.
+
+His eye fell on his wet boots.  The whole thing was scaring, and jumping
+up, he began to throw his clothes into his trunks.  It was twelve o'clock
+before he went down, and found his brother and Traquair still at the
+table arranging an itinerary; he surprised them by saying that he too was
+coming; and without further explanation set to work to eat.  James had
+heard that there were salt-mines in the neighbourhood--his proposal was
+to start, and halt an hour or so on the road for their inspection; he
+said: "Everybody'll ask you if you've seen the salt-mines: I shouldn't
+like to say I hadn't seen the salt-mines.  What's the good, they'd say,
+of your going there if you haven't seen the salt-mines?"  He wondered,
+too, if they need fee the second waiter--an idle chap!
+
+A discussion followed; but Swithin ate on glumly, conscious that his mind
+was set on larger affairs.  Suddenly on the far side of the street Rozsi
+and her sister passed, with little baskets on their arms.  He started up,
+and at that moment Rozsi looked round--her face was the incarnation of
+enticement, the chin tilted, the lower lip thrust a little forward, her
+round neck curving back over her shoulder.  Swithin muttered, "Make your
+own arrangements--leave me out!" and hurried from the room, leaving James
+beside himself with interest and alarm.
+
+When he reached the street, however, the girls had disappeared.  He
+hailed a carriage.  "Drive!" he called to the man, with a flourish of his
+stick, and as soon as the wheels had begun to clatter on the stones he
+leaned back, looking sharply to right and left.  He soon had to give up
+thought of finding them, but made the coachman turn round and round
+again.  All day he drove about, far into the country, and kept urging the
+driver to use greater speed.  He was in a strange state of hurry and
+elation.  Finally, he dined at a little country inn; and this gave the
+measure of his disturbance--the dinner was atrocious.
+
+Returning late in the evening he found a note written by Traquair. "Are
+you in your senses, man?" it asked; "we have no more time to waste idling
+about here.  If you want to rejoin us, come on to Danielli's Hotel,
+Venice."  Swithin chuckled when he read it, and feeling frightfully
+tired, went to bed and slept like a log.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+Three weeks later he was still in Salzburg, no longer at the Goldene Alp,
+but in rooms over a shop near the Boleskeys'.  He had spent a small
+fortune in the purchase of flowers.  Margit would croon over them, but
+Rozsi, with a sober "Many tanks!" as if they were her right, would look
+long at herself in the glass, and pin one into her hair.  Swithin ceased
+to wonder; he ceased to wonder at anything they did.  One evening he
+found Boleskey deep in conversation with a pale, dishevelled-looking
+person.
+
+"Our friend Mr. Forsyte--Count D....," said Boleskey.
+
+Swithin experienced a faint, unavoidable emotion; but looking at the
+Count's trousers, he thought: 'Doesn't look much like one!'  And with an
+ironic bow to the silent girls, he turned, and took his hat.  But when he
+had reached the bottom of the dark stairs he heard footsteps. Rozsi came
+running down, looked out at the door, and put her hands up to her breast
+as if disappointed; suddenly with a quick glance round she saw him.
+Swithin caught her arm.  She slipped away, and her face seemed to bubble
+with defiance or laughter; she ran up three steps, stopped, looked at him
+across her shoulder, and fled on up the stairs.  Swithin went out
+bewildered and annoyed.
+
+'What was she going to say to me?' he kept thinking.  During these three
+weeks he had asked himself all sorts of questions: whether he were being
+made a fool of; whether she were in love with him; what he was doing
+there, and sometimes at night, with all his candles burning as if he
+wanted light, the breeze blowing on him through the window, his cigar,
+half-smoked, in his hand, he sat, an hour or more, staring at the wall.
+'Enough of this!' he thought every morning.  Twice he packed fully--once
+he ordered his travelling carriage, but countermanded it the following
+day.  What definitely he hoped, intended, resolved, he could not have
+said.  He was always thinking of Rozsi, he could not read the riddle in
+her face--she held him in a vice, notwithstanding that everything about
+her threatened the very fetishes of his existence.  And Boleskey! 
+Whenever he looked at him he thought, 'If he were only clean?' and
+mechanically fingered his own well-tied cravatte.  To talk with the
+fellow, too, was like being forced to look at things which had no place
+in the light of day. Freedom, equality, self-sacrifice!
+
+'Why can't he settle down at some business,' he thought, 'instead of all
+this talk?' Boleskey's sudden diffidences, self-depreciation, fits of
+despair, irritated him.  "Morbid beggar!" he would mutter; "thank God I
+haven't a thin skin."  And proud too!  Extraordinary!  An impecunious
+fellow like that!  One evening, moreover, Boleskey had returned home
+drunk.  Swithin had hustled him away into his bedroom, helped him to
+undress, and stayed until he was asleep.  'Too much of a good thing!' he
+thought, 'before his own daughters, too!'  It was after this that he
+ordered his travelling carriage.  The other occasion on which he packed
+was one evening, when not only Boleskey, but Rozsi herself had picked
+chicken bones with her fingers.
+
+Often in the mornings he would go to the Mirabell Garden to smoke his
+cigar; there, in stolid contemplation of the statues--rows of half-heroic
+men carrying off half-distressful females--he would spend an hour
+pleasantly, his hat tilted to keep the sun off his nose. The day after
+Rozsi had fled from him on the stairs, he came there as usual.  It was a
+morning of blue sky and sunlight glowing on the old prim garden, on its
+yew-trees, and serio-comic statues, and walls covered with apricots and
+plums.  When Swithin approached his usual seat, who should be sitting
+there but Rozsi--"Good-morning," he stammered; "you knew this was my
+seat then?"
+
+Rozsi looked at the ground.  "Yes," she answered.
+
+Swithin felt bewildered.  "Do you know," he said, "you treat me very
+funnily?"
+
+To his surprise Rozsi put her little soft hand down and touched his;
+then, without a word, sprang up and rushed away.  It took him a minute to
+recover.  There were people present; he did not like to run, but overtook
+her on the bridge, and slipped her hand beneath his arm.
+
+"You shouldn't have done that," he said; "you shouldn't have run away
+from me, you know."
+
+Rozsi laughed.  Swithin withdrew his arm; a desire to shake her seized
+him.  He walked some way before he said, "Will you have the goodness to
+tell me what you came to that seat for?"
+
+Rozsi flashed a look at him.  "To-morrow is the fete," she answered.
+
+Swithin muttered, "Is that all?"
+
+"If you do not take us, we cannot go."
+
+"Suppose I refuse," he said sullenly, "there are plenty of others."
+
+Rozsi bent her head, scurrying along.  "No," she murmured, "if you do not
+go--I do not wish."
+
+Swithin drew her hand back within his arm.  How round and soft it was!  He
+tried to see her face.  When she was nearly home he said goodbye, not
+wishing, for some dark reason, to be seen with her.  He watched till she
+had disappeared; then slowly retraced his steps to the Mirabell Garden.
+When he came to where she had been sitting, he slowly lighted his cigar,
+and for a long time after it was smoked out remained there in the silent
+presence of the statues.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+A crowd of people wandered round the booths, and Swithin found himself
+obliged to give the girls his arms.  'Like a little Cockney clerk!' he
+thought.  His indignation passed unnoticed; they talked, they laughed,
+each sight and sound in all the hurly-burly seemed to go straight into
+their hearts.  He eyed them ironically--their eager voices, and little
+coos of sympathy seemed to him vulgar.  In the thick of the crowd he
+slipped his arm out of Margit's, but, just as he thought that he was
+free, the unwelcome hand slid up again.  He tried again, but again Margit
+reappeared, serene, and full of pleasant humour; and his failure this
+time appeared to him in a comic light.  But when Rozsi leaned across him,
+the glow of her round cheek, her curving lip, the inscrutable grey gleam
+of her eyes, sent a thrill of longing through him.  He was obliged to
+stand by while they parleyed with a gipsy, whose matted locks and skinny
+hands inspired him with a not unwarranted disgust.  "Folly!" he muttered,
+as Rozsi held out her palm.  The old woman mumbled, and shot a malignant
+look at him.  Rozsi drew back her hand, and crossed herself.  'Folly!'
+Swithin thought again; and seizing the girls' arms, he hurried them away.
+
+"What did the old hag say?" he asked.
+
+Rozsi shook her head.
+
+"You don't mean that you believe?"
+
+Her eyes were full of tears.  "The gipsies are wise," she murmured.
+
+"Come, what did she tell you?"
+
+This time Rozsi looked hurriedly round, and slipped away into the crowd.
+After a hunt they found her, and Swithin, who was scared, growled: "You
+shouldn't do such things--it's not respectable."
+
+On higher ground, in the centre of a clear space, a military band was
+playing.  For the privilege of entering this charmed circle Swithin paid
+three kronen, choosing naturally the best seats.  He ordered wine, too,
+watching Rozsi out of the corner of his eye as he poured it out.  The
+protecting tenderness of yesterday was all lost in this medley.  It was
+every man for himself, after all!  The colour had deepened again in her
+cheeks, she laughed, pouting her lips. Suddenly she put her glass aside.
+"Thank you, very much," she said, "it is enough!"
+
+Margit, whose pretty mouth was all smiles, cried, "Lieber Gott! is it not
+good-life?"  It was not a question Swithin could undertake to answer. The
+band began to play a waltz.  "Now they will dance. Lieber Gott! and are
+the lights not wonderful?"  Lamps were flickering beneath the trees like
+a swarm of fireflies.  There was a hum as from a gigantic beehive.
+Passers-by lifted their faces, then vanished into the crowd; Rozsi stood
+gazing at them spellbound, as if their very going and coming were a
+delight.
+
+The space was soon full of whirling couples.  Rozsi's head began to beat
+time.  "O Margit!" she whispered.
+
+Swithin's face had assumed a solemn, uneasy expression.  A man raising
+his hat, offered his arm to Margit.  She glanced back across her shoulder
+to reassure Swithin.  "It is a friend," she said.
+
+Swithin looked at Rozsi--her eyes were bright, her lips tremulous. He
+slipped his hand along the table and touched her fingers.  Then she
+flashed a look at him--appeal, reproach, tenderness, all were expressed
+in it.  Was she expecting him to dance?  Did she want to mix with the
+rift-raff there; wish him to make an exhibition of himself in this
+hurly-burly?  A voice said, "Good-evening!"  Before them stood Kasteliz,
+in a dark coat tightly buttoned at the waist.
+
+"You are not dancing, Rozsi Kozsanony?" (Miss Rozsi).  "Let me, then,
+have the pleasure."  He held out his arm.  Swithin stared in front of
+him.  In the very act of going she gave him a look that said as plain as
+words: "Will you not?"  But for answer he turned his eyes away, and when
+he looked again she was gone.  He paid the score and made his way into
+the crowd.  But as he went she danced by close to him, all flushed and
+panting.  She hung back as if to stop him, and he caught the glistening
+of tears.  Then he lost sight of her again.  To be deserted the first
+minute he was alone with her, and for that jackanapes with the small head
+and the volcanic glances!  It was too much!  And suddenly it occurred to
+him that she was alone with Kasteliz--alone at night, and far from home. 
+'Well,' he thought, 'what do I care?' and shouldered his way on through
+the crowd.  It served him right for mixing with such people here. He left
+the fair, but the further he went, the more he nursed his rage, the more
+heinous seemed her offence, the sharper grew his jealousy.  "A beggarly
+baron!" was his thought.
+
+A figure came alongside--it was Boleskey.  One look showed Swithin his
+condition.  Drunk again!  This was the last straw!
+
+Unfortunately Boleskey had recognised him.  He seemed violently excited.
+"Where--where are my daughters?" he began.
+
+Swithin brushed past, but Boleskey caught his arm.  "Listen--brother!"
+he said; "news of my country!  After to-morrow...."
+
+"Keep it to yourself!" growled Swithin, wrenching his arm free.  He went
+straight to his lodgings, and, lying on the hard sofa of his unlighted
+sitting-room, gave himself up to bitter thoughts.  But in spite of all
+his anger, Rozsi's supply-moving figure, with its pouting lips, and
+roguish appealing eyes, still haunted him.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+Next morning there was not a carriage to be had, and Swithin was
+compelled to put off his departure till the morrow.  The day was grey and
+misty; he wandered about with the strained, inquiring look of a lost dog
+in his eyes.
+
+Late in the afternoon he went back to his lodgings.  In a corner of the
+sitting-room stood Rozsi.  The thrill of triumph, the sense of
+appeasement, the emotion, that seized on him, crept through to his lips
+in a faint smile.  Rozsi made no sound, her face was hidden by her hands.
+And this silence of hers weighed on Swithin.  She was forcing him to
+break it.  What was behind her hands?  His own face was visible!  Why
+didn't she speak?  Why was she here?  Alone?  That was not right surely.
+
+Suddenly Rozsi dropped her hands; her flushed face was quivering--it
+seemed as though a word, a sign, even, might bring a burst of tears.
+
+He walked over to the window.  'I must give her time!' he thought; then
+seized by unreasoning terror at this silence, spun round, and caught her
+by the arms.  Rozsi held back from him, swayed forward and buried her
+face on his breast....
+
+Half an hour later Swithin was pacing up and down his room.  The scent of
+rose leaves had not yet died away.  A glove lay on the floor; he picked
+it up, and for a long time stood weighing it in his hand.  All sorts of
+confused thoughts and feelings haunted him.  It was the purest and least
+selfish moment of his life, this moment after she had yielded.  But that
+pure gratitude at her fiery, simple abnegation did not last; it was
+followed by a petty sense of triumph, and by uneasiness.  He was still
+weighing the little glove in his hand, when he had another visitor.  It
+was Kasteliz.
+
+"What can I do for you?" Swithin asked ironically.
+
+The Hungarian seemed suffering from excitement.  Why had Swithin left his
+charges the night before?  What excuse had he to make?  What sort of
+conduct did he call this?
+
+Swithin, very like a bull-dog at that moment, answered: What business was
+it of his?
+
+The business of a gentleman!  What right had the Englishman to pursue a
+young girl?
+
+"Pursue?" said Swithin; "you've been spying, then?"
+
+"Spying--I--Kasteliz--Maurus Johann--an insult!"
+
+"Insult!" sneered Swithin; "d'you mean to tell me you weren't in the
+street just now?"
+
+Kasteliz answered with a hiss, "If you do not leave the city I will make
+you, with my sword--do you understand?"
+
+"And if you do not leave my room I will throw you out of the window!"
+
+For some minutes Kasteliz spoke in pure Hungarian while Swithin waited,
+with a forced smile and a fixed look in his eye.  He did not understand
+Hungarian.
+
+"If you are still in the city to-morrow evening," said Kasteliz at last
+in English, "I will spit you in the street."
+
+Swithin turned to the window and watched his visitor's retiring back with
+a queer mixture of amusement, stubbornness, and anxiety. 'Well,' he
+thought, 'I suppose he'll run me through!'  The thought was unpleasant;
+and it kept recurring, but it only served to harden his determination.
+His head was busy with plans for seeing Rozsi; his blood on fire with the
+kisses she had given him.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+Swithin was long in deciding to go forth next day.  He had made up his
+mind not to go to Rozsi till five o'clock.  'Mustn't make myself too
+cheap,' he thought.  It was a little past that hour when he at last
+sallied out, and with a beating heart walked towards Boleskey's. He
+looked up at the window, more than half expecting to see Rozsi there; but
+she was not, and he noticed with faint surprise that the window was not
+open; the plants, too, outside, looked singularly arid.  He knocked.  No
+one came.  He beat a fierce tattoo.  At last the door was opened by a man
+with a reddish beard, and one of those sardonic faces only to be seen on
+shoemakers of Teutonic origin.
+
+"What do you want, making all this noise?" he asked in German.
+
+Swithin pointed up the stairs.  The man grinned, and shook his head.
+
+"I want to go up," said Swithin.
+
+The cobbler shrugged his shoulders, and Swithin rushed upstairs.  The
+rooms were empty.  The furniture remained, but all signs of life were
+gone.  One of his own bouquets, faded, stood in a glass; the ashes of a
+fire were barely cold; little scraps of paper strewed the hearth; already
+the room smelt musty.  He went into the bedrooms, and with a feeling of
+stupefaction stood staring at the girls' beds, side by side against the
+wall.  A bit of ribbon caught his eye; he picked it up and put it in his
+pocket--it was a piece of evidence that she had once existed.  By the
+mirror some pins were dropped about; a little powder had been spilled. 
+He looked at his own disquiet face and thought, 'I've been cheated!'
+
+The shoemaker's voice aroused him.  "Tausend Teufel!  Eilen Sie, nur!
+Zeit is Geld!  Kann nich' Langer warten!"  Slowly he descended.
+
+"Where have they gone?" asked Swithin painfully.  "A pound for every
+English word you speak.  A pound!" and he made an O with his fingers.
+
+The corners of the shoemaker's lips curled.  "Geld!  Mf!  Eilen Sie,
+nur!"
+
+But in Swithin a sullen anger had begun to burn.  "If you don't tell me,"
+he said, "it'll be the worse for you."
+
+"Sind ein komischer Kerl!" remarked the shoemaker.  "Hier ist meine
+Frau!"
+
+A battered-looking woman came hurrying down the passage, calling out in
+German, "Don't let him go!"
+
+With a snarling sound the shoemaker turned his back, and shambled off.
+
+The woman furtively thrust a letter into Swithin's hand, and furtively
+waited.
+
+The letter was from Rozsi.
+
+"Forgive me"--it ran--"that I leave you and do not say goodbye. To-day
+our father had the call from our dear Father-town so long awaited. In two
+hours we are ready.  I pray to the Virgin to keep you ever safe, and that
+you do not quite forget me.--Your unforgetting good friend, ROZSI"
+
+When Swithin read it his first sensation was that of a man sinking in a
+bog; then his obstinacy stiffened.  'I won't be done,' he thought. Taking
+out a sovereign he tried to make the woman comprehend that she could earn
+it, by telling him where they had gone.  He got her finally to write the
+words out in his pocket-book, gave her the sovereign, and hurried to the
+Goldene Alp, where there was a waiter who spoke English.  The translation
+given him was this:
+
+"At three o'clock they start in a carriage on the road to Linz--they have
+bad horses--the Herr also rides a white horse."
+
+Swithin at once hailed a carriage and started at full gallop on the road
+to Linz.  Outside the Mirabell Garden he caught sight of Kasteliz and
+grinned at him.  'I've sold him anyway,' he thought; 'for all their talk,
+they're no good, these foreigners!'
+
+His spirits rose, but soon fell again.  What chance had he of catching
+them?  They had three hours' start!  Still, the roads were heavy from the
+rain of the last two nights--they had luggage and bad horses; his own
+were good, his driver bribed--he might overtake them by ten o'clock!  But
+did he want to?  What a fool he had been not to bring his luggage; he
+would then have had a respectable position. What a brute he would look
+without a change of shirt, or anything to shave with!  He saw himself
+with horror, all bristly, and in soiled linen.  People would think him
+mad.  'I've given myself away,' flashed across him, 'what the devil can I
+say to them?' and he stared sullenly at the driver's back. He read
+Rozsi's letter again; it had a scent of her.  And in the growing
+darkness, jolted by the swinging of the carriage, he suffered tortures
+from his prudence, tortures from his passion.
+
+It grew colder and dark.  He turned the collar of his coat up to his
+ears.  He had visions of Piccadilly.  This wild-goose chase appeared
+suddenly a dangerous, unfathomable business.  Lights, fellowship,
+security!  'Never again!' he brooded; 'why won't they let me alone?' But
+it was not clear whether by 'they' he meant the conventions, the
+Boleskeys, his passions, or those haunting memories of Rozsi.  If he had
+only had a bag with him!  What was he going to say?  What was he going to
+get by this?  He received no answer to these questions.  The darkness
+itself was less obscure than his sensations.  From time to time he took
+out his watch.  At each village the driver made inquiries.  It was past
+ten when he stopped the carriage with a jerk. The stars were bright as
+steel, and by the side of the road a reedy lake showed in the moonlight.
+Swithin shivered.  A man on a horse had halted in the centre of the road.
+"Drive on!" called Swithin, with a stolid face.  It turned out to be
+Boleskey, who, on a gaunt white horse, looked like some winged creature.
+He stood where he could bar the progress of the carriage, holding out a
+pistol.
+
+'Theatrical beggar!' thought Swithin, with a nervous smile.  He made no
+sign of recognition.  Slowly Boleskey brought his lean horse up to the
+carriage.  When he saw who was within he showed astonishment and joy.
+
+"You?" he cried, slapping his hand on his attenuated thigh, and leaning
+over till his beard touched Swithin.  "You have come?  You followed us?"
+
+"It seems so," Swithin grunted out.
+
+"You throw in your lot with us.  Is it possible?  You--you are a
+knight-errant then!"
+
+"Good God!" said Swithin.  Boleskey, flogging his dejected steed,
+cantered forward in the moonlight.  He came back, bringing an old cloak,
+which he insisted on wrapping round Swithin's shoulders.  He handed him,
+too, a capacious flask.
+
+"How cold you look!" he said.  "Wonderful!  Wonderful! you English!" His
+grateful eyes never left Swithin for a moment.  They had come up to the
+heels of the other carriage now, but Swithin, hunched in the cloak, did
+not try to see what was in front of him.  To the bottom of his soul he
+resented the Hungarian's gratitude.  He remarked at last, with wasted
+irony:
+
+"You're in a hurry, it seems!"
+
+"If we had wings," Boleskey answered, "we would use them."
+
+"Wings!" muttered Swithin thickly; "legs are good enough for me."
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+Arrived at the inn where they were to pass the night, Swithin waited,
+hoping to get into the house without a "scene," but when at last he
+alighted the girls were in the doorway, and Margit greeted him with an
+admiring murmur, in which, however, he seemed to detect irony. Rozsi,
+pale and tremulous, with a half-scared look, gave him her hand, and,
+quickly withdrawing it, shrank behind her sister.  When they had gone up
+to their room Swithin sought Boleskey.  His spirits had risen remarkably.
+"Tell the landlord to get us supper," he said; "we'll crack a bottle to
+our luck."  He hurried on the landlord's preparations.  The window of
+the, room faced a wood, so near that he could almost touch the trees. The
+scent from the pines blew in on him.  He turned away from that scented
+darkness, and began to draw the corks of winebottles.  The sound seemed
+to conjure up Boleskey. He came in, splashed all over, smelling slightly
+of stables; soon after, Margit appeared, fresh and serene, but Rozsi did
+not come.
+
+"Where is your sister?" Swithin said.  Rozsi, it seemed, was tired. "It
+will do her good to eat," said Swithin.  And Boleskey, murmuring, "She
+must drink to our country," went out to summon her, Margit followed him,
+while Swithin cut up a chicken.  They came back without her.  She had "a
+megrim of the spirit."
+
+Swithin's face fell.  "Look here!" he said, "I'll go and try.  Don't wait
+for me."
+
+"Yes," answered Boleskey, sinking mournfully into a chair; "try, brother,
+try-by all means, try."
+
+Swithin walked down the corridor with an odd, sweet, sinking sensation in
+his chest; and tapped on Rozsi's door.  In a minute, she peeped forth,
+with her hair loose, and wondering eyes.
+
+"Rozsi," he stammered, "what makes you afraid of me, now?"
+
+She stared at him, but did not answer.
+
+"Why won't you come?"
+
+Still she did not speak, but suddenly stretched out to him her bare arm.
+Swithin pressed his face to it.  With a shiver, she whispered above him,
+"I will come," and gently shut the door.
+
+Swithin stealthily retraced his steps, and paused a minute outside the
+sitting-room to regain his self-control.
+
+The sight of Boleskey with a bottle in his hand steadied him.
+
+"She is coming," he said.  And very soon she did come, her thick hair
+roughly twisted in a plait.
+
+Swithin sat between the girls; but did not talk, for he was really
+hungry.  Boleskey too was silent, plunged in gloom; Rozsi was dumb;
+Margit alone chattered.
+
+"You will come to our Father-town?  We shall have things to show you.
+Rozsi, what things we will show him!"  Rozsi, with a little appealing
+movement of her hands, repeated, "What things we will show you!"  She
+seemed suddenly to find her voice, and with glowing cheeks, mouths full,
+and eyes bright as squirrels', they chattered reminiscences of the "dear
+Father-town," of "dear friends," of the "dear home."
+
+'A poor place!' Swithin could not help thinking.  This enthusiasm seemed
+to him common; but he was careful to assume a look of interest, feeding
+on the glances flashed at him from Rozsi's restless eyes.
+
+As the wine waned Boleskey grew more and more gloomy, but now and then a
+sort of gleaming flicker passed over his face.  He rose to his feet at
+last.
+
+"Let us not forget," he said, "that we go perhaps to ruin, to death; in
+the face of all this we go, because our country needs--in this there is
+no credit, neither to me nor to you, my daughters; but for this noble
+Englishman, what shall we say?  Give thanks to God for a great heart.  He
+comes--not for country, not for fame, not for money, but to help the weak
+and the oppressed.  Let us drink, then, to him; let us drink again and
+again to heroic Forsyte!"  In the midst of the dead silence, Swithin
+caught the look of suppliant mockery in Rozsi's eyes.  He glanced at the
+Hungarian.  Was he laughing at him?  But Boleskey, after drinking up his
+wine, had sunk again into his seat; and there suddenly, to the surprise
+of all, he began to snore. Margit rose and, bending over him like a
+mother, murmured: "He is tired--it is the ride!"  She raised him in her
+strong arms, and leaning on her shoulder Boleskey staggered from the
+room.  Swithin and Rozsi were left alone.  He slid his hand towards her
+hand that lay so close, on the rough table-cloth.  It seemed to await his
+touch.  Something gave way in him, and words came welling up; for the
+moment he forgot himself, forgot everything but that he was near her. Her
+head dropped on his shoulder, he breathed the perfume of her hair.
+"Good-night!" she whispered, and the whisper was like a kiss; yet before
+he could stop her she was gone.  Her footsteps died away in the passage,
+but Swithin sat gazing intently at a single bright drop of spilt wine
+quivering on the table's edge.  In that moment she, in her helplessness
+and emotion, was all in all to him--his life nothing; all the real
+things--his conventions, convictions, training, and himself--all seemed
+remote, behind a mist of passion and strange chivalry.  Carefully with a
+bit of bread he soaked up the bright drop; and suddenly he thought: 'This
+is tremendous!'  For a long time he stood there in the window, close to
+the dark pine-trees.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+In the early morning he awoke, full of the discomfort of this strange
+place and the medley of his dreams.  Lying, with his nose peeping over
+the quilt, he was visited by a horrible suspicion.  When he could bear it
+no longer, he started up in bed.  What if it were all a plot to get him
+to marry her?  The thought was treacherous, and inspired in him a faint
+disgust.  Still, she might be ignorant of it!  But was she so innocent?
+What innocent girl would have come to his room like that?  What innocent
+girl?  Her father, who pretended to be caring only for his country?  It
+was not probable that any man was such a fool; it was all part of the
+game-a scheming rascal!  Kasteliz, too--his threats!  They intended him
+to marry her!  And the horrid idea was strengthened by his reverence for
+marriage.  It was the proper, the respectable condition; he was genuinely
+afraid of this other sort of liaison--it was somehow too primitive!  And
+yet the thought of that marriage made his blood run cold. Considering
+that she had already yielded, it would be all the more monstrous!  With
+the cold, fatal clearness of the morning light he now for the first time
+saw his position in its full bearings.  And, like a fish pulled out of
+water, he gasped at what was disclosed.  Sullen resentment against this
+attempt to force him settled deep into his soul.
+
+He seated himself on the bed, holding his head in his hands, solemnly
+thinking out what such marriage meant.  In the first place it meant
+ridicule, in the next place ridicule, in the last place ridicule. She
+would eat chicken bones with her fingers--those fingers his lips still
+burned to kiss.  She would dance wildly with other men.  She would talk
+of her "dear Father-town," and all the time her eyes would look beyond
+him, some where or other into some d--d place he knew nothing of.  He
+sprang up and paced the room, and for a moment thought he would go mad.
+
+They meant him to marry her!  Even she--she meant him to marry her!  Her
+tantalising inscrutability; her sudden little tendernesses; her quick
+laughter; her swift, burning kisses; even the movements of her hands; her
+tears--all were evidence against her.  Not one of these things that
+Nature made her do counted on her side, but how they fanned his longing,
+his desire, and distress!  He went to the glass and tried to part his
+hair with his fingers, but being rather fine, it fell into lank streaks.
+There was no comfort to be got from it. He drew his muddy boots on.
+Suddenly he thought: 'If I could see her alone, I could arrive at some
+arrangement!'  Then, with a sense of stupefaction, he made the discovery
+that no arrangement could possibly be made that would not be dangerous,
+even desperate.  He seized his hat, and, like a rabbit that has been
+fired at, bolted from the room.  He plodded along amongst the damp woods
+with his head down, and resentment and dismay in his heart.  But, as the
+sun rose, and the air grew sweet with pine scent, he slowly regained a
+sort of equability.  After all, she had already yielded; it was not as
+if...!  And the tramp of his own footsteps lulled him into feeling that
+it would all come right.
+
+'Look at the thing practically,' he thought.  The faster he walked the
+firmer became his conviction that he could still see it through. He took
+out his watch--it was past seven--he began to hasten back. In the yard of
+the inn his driver was harnessing the horses; Swithin went up to him.
+
+"Who told you to put them in?" he asked.
+
+The driver answered, "Der Herr."
+
+Swithin turned away.  'In ten minutes,' he thought, 'I shall be in that
+carriage again, with this going on in my head!  Driving away from
+England, from all I'm used to-driving to-what?'  Could he face it?  Could
+he face all that he had been through that morning; face it day after day,
+night after night?  Looking up, he saw Rozsi at her open window gazing
+down at him; never had she looked sweeter, more roguish.  An inexplicable
+terror seized on him; he ran across the yard and jumped into his
+carriage.  "To Salzburg!" he cried; "drive on!"  And rattling out of the
+yard without a look behind, he flung a sovereign at the hostler.  Flying
+back along the road faster even than he had come, with pale face, and
+eyes blank and staring like a pug-dog's, Swithin spoke no single word;
+nor, till he had reached the door of his lodgings, did he suffer the
+driver to draw rein.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+Towards evening, five days later, Swithin, yellow and travel-worn, was
+ferried in a gondola to Danielli's Hotel.  His brother, who was on the
+steps, looked at him with an apprehensive curiosity.
+
+"Why, it's you!" he mumbled.  "So you've got here safe?"
+
+"Safe?" growled Swithin.
+
+James replied, "I thought you wouldn't leave your friends!"  Then, with a
+jerk of suspicion, "You haven't brought your friends?"
+
+"What friends?" growled Swithin.
+
+James changed the subject.  "You don't look the thing," he said.
+
+"Really!" muttered Swithin; "what's that to you?"
+
+He appeared at dinner that night, but fell asleep over his coffee.
+Neither Traquair nor James asked him any further question, nor did they
+allude to Salzburg; and during the four days which concluded the stay in
+Venice Swithin went about with his head up, but his eyes half-closed like
+a dazed man.  Only after they had taken ship at Genoa did he show signs
+of any healthy interest in life, when, finding that a man on board was
+perpetually strumming, he locked the piano up and pitched the key into
+the sea.
+
+That winter in London he behaved much as usual, but fits of moroseness
+would seize on him, during which he was not pleasant to approach.
+
+One evening when he was walking with a friend in Piccadilly, a girl
+coming from a side-street accosted him in German.  Swithin, after staring
+at her in silence for some seconds, handed her a five-pound note, to the
+great amazement of his friend; nor could he himself have explained the
+meaning of this freak of generosity.
+
+Of Rozsi he never heard again....
+
+This, then, was the substance of what he remembered as he lay ill in bed.
+Stretching out his hand he pressed the bell.  His valet appeared,
+crossing the room like a cat; a Swede, who had been with Swithin many
+years; a little man with a dried face and fierce moustache, morbidly
+sharp nerves, and a queer devotion to his master.
+
+Swithin made a feeble gesture.  "Adolf," he said, "I'm very bad."
+
+"Yes, sir!"
+
+"Why do you stand there like a cow?" asked Swithin; "can't you see I'm
+very bad?"
+
+"Yes, sir!"  The valet's face twitched as though it masked the dance of
+obscure emotions.
+
+"I shall feel better after dinner.  What time is it?"
+
+"Five o'clock."
+
+"I thought it was more.  The afternoons are very long."
+
+"Yes, sir!" Swithin sighed, as though he had expected the consolation of
+denial.
+
+"Very likely I shall have a nap.  Bring up hot water at half-past six and
+shave me before dinner."
+
+The valet moved towards the door.  Swithin raised himself.
+
+"What did Mr. James say to you?"
+
+"He said you ought to have another doctor; two doctors, he said, better
+than one.  He said, also, he would look in again on his way 'home.'"
+
+Swithin grunted, "Umph!  What else did he say?"
+
+"He said you didn't take care of yourself."
+
+Swithin glared.
+
+"Has anybody else been to see me?"
+
+The valet turned away his eyes.  "Mrs. Thomas Forsyte came last Monday
+fortnight."
+
+"How long have I been ill?"
+
+"Five weeks on Saturday."
+
+"Do you think I'm very bad?"
+
+Adolf's face was covered suddenly with crow's-feet.  "You have no
+business to ask me question like that!  I am not paid, sir, to answer
+question like that."
+
+Swithin said faintly: "You're a peppery fool!  Open a bottle of
+champagne!"
+
+Adolf took a bottle of champagne--from a cupboard and held nippers to it. 
+He fixed his eyes on Swithin.  "The doctor said--"
+
+"Open the bottle!"
+
+"It is not--"
+
+"Open the bottle--or I give you warning."
+
+Adolf removed the cork.  He wiped a glass elaborately, filled it, and
+bore it scrupulously to the bedside.  Suddenly twirling his moustaches,
+he wrung his hands, and burst out: "It is poison."
+
+Swithin grinned faintly.  "You foreign fool!" he said.  "Get out!"
+
+The valet vanished.
+
+'He forgot himself!' thought Swithin.  Slowly he raised the glass, slowly
+put it back, and sank gasping on his pillows.  Almost at once he fell
+asleep.
+
+He dreamed that he was at his club, sitting after dinner in the crowded
+smoking-room, with its bright walls and trefoils of light. It was there
+that he sat every evening, patient, solemn, lonely, and sometimes fell
+asleep, his square, pale old face nodding to one side. He dreamed that he
+was gazing at the picture over the fireplace, of an old statesman with a
+high collar, supremely finished face, and sceptical eyebrows--the
+picture, smooth, and reticent as sealing-wax, of one who seemed for ever
+exhaling the narrow wisdom of final judgments.  All round him, his fellow
+members were chattering.  Only he himself, the old sick member, was
+silent.  If fellows only knew what it was like to sit by yourself and
+feel ill all the time!  What they were saying he had heard a hundred
+times.  They were talking of investments, of cigars, horses, actresses,
+machinery.  What was that?  A foreign patent for cleaning boilers?  There
+was no such thing; boilers couldn't be cleaned, any fool knew that!  If
+an Englishman couldn't clean a boiler, no foreigner could clean one.  He
+appealed to the old statesman's eyes.  But for once those eyes seemed
+hesitating, blurred, wanting in finality.  They vanished.  In their place
+were Rozsi's little deep-set eyes, with their wide and far-off look; and
+as he gazed they seemed to grow bright as steel, and to speak to him.
+Slowly the whole face grew to be there, floating on the dark background
+of the picture; it was pink, aloof, unfathomable, enticing, with its
+fluffy hair and quick lips, just as he had last seen it.  "Are you
+looking for something?" she seemed to say: "I could show you."
+
+"I have everything safe enough," answered Swithin, and in his sleep he
+groaned.
+
+He felt the touch of fingers on his forehead.  'I'm dreaming,' he thought
+in his dream.
+
+She had vanished; and far away, from behind the picture, came a sound of
+footsteps.
+
+Aloud, in his sleep, Swithin muttered: "I've missed it."
+
+Again he heard the rustling of those light footsteps, and close in his
+ear a sound, like a sob.  He awoke; the sob was his own.  Great drops of
+perspiration stood on his forehead.  'What is it?' he thought; 'what have
+I lost?'  Slowly his mind travelled over his investments; he could not
+think of any single one that was unsafe. What was it, then, that he had
+lost?  Struggling on his pillows, he clutched the wine-glass.  His lips
+touched the wine.  'This isn't the "Heidseck"!' he thought angrily, and
+before the reality of that displeasure all the dim vision passed away.
+But as he bent to drink, something snapped, and, with a sigh, Swithin
+Forsyte died above the bubbles....
+
+When James Forsyte came in again on his way home, the valet, trembling
+took his hat and stick.
+
+"How's your master?"
+
+"My master is dead, sir!"
+
+"Dead!  He can't be!  I left him safe an hour ago."
+
+On the bed Swithin's body was doubled like a sack; his hand still grasped
+the glass.
+
+James Forsyte paused.  "Swithin!" he said, and with his hand to his ear
+he waited for an answer; but none came, and slowly in the glass a last
+bubble rose and burst.
+
+December 1900.
+
+
+
+
+To
+
+MY SISTER MABEL EDITH REYNOLDS
+
+
+
+
+THE SILENCE
+
+I
+
+In a car of the Naples express a mining expert was diving into a bag for
+papers.  The strong sunlight showed the fine wrinkles on his brown face
+and the shabbiness of his short, rough beard.  A newspaper cutting
+slipped from his fingers; he picked it up, thinking: 'How the dickens did
+that get in here?'  It was from a colonial print of three years back; and
+he sat staring, as if in that forlorn slip of yellow paper he had
+encountered some ghost from his past.
+
+These were the words he read: "We hope that the setback to civilisation,
+the check to commerce and development, in this promising centre of our
+colony may be but temporary; and that capital may again come to the
+rescue.  Where one man was successful, others should surely not fail?  We
+are convinced that it only needs...." And the last words: "For what can
+be sadder than to see the forest spreading its lengthening shadows, like
+symbols of defeat, over the untenanted dwellings of men; and where was
+once the merry chatter of human voices, to pass by in the silence...."
+
+On an afternoon, thirteen years before, he had been in the city of
+London, at one of those emporiums where mining experts perch, before
+fresh flights, like sea-gulls on some favourite rock.  A clerk said to
+him: "Mr. Scorrier, they are asking for you downstairs--Mr. Hemmings of
+the New Colliery Company."
+
+Scorrier took up the speaking tube.  "Is that you, Mr. Scorrier?  I hope
+you are very well, sir, I am--Hemmings--I am--coming up."
+
+In two minutes he appeared, Christopher Hemmings, secretary of the New
+Colliery Company, known in the City-behind his back--as
+"Down-by-the-starn" Hemmings.  He grasped Scorrier's hand--the gesture
+was deferential, yet distinguished.  Too handsome, too capable, too
+important, his figure, the cut of his iron-grey beard, and his
+intrusively fine eyes, conveyed a continual courteous invitation to
+inspect their infallibilities.  He stood, like a City "Atlas," with his
+legs apart, his coat-tails gathered in his hands, a whole globe of
+financial matters deftly balanced on his nose.  "Look at me!" he seemed
+to say.  "It's heavy, but how easily I carry it.  Not the man to let it
+down, Sir!"
+
+"I hope I see you well, Mr. Scorrier," he began.  "I have come round
+about our mine.  There is a question of a fresh field being opened
+up--between ourselves, not before it's wanted.  I find it difficult to
+get my Board to take a comprehensive view.  In short, the question is:
+Are you prepared to go out for us, and report on it?  The fees will be
+all right."  His left eye closed.  "Things have been very--er--dicky; we
+are going to change our superintendent.  I have got little Pippin--you
+know little Pippin?"
+
+Scorrier murmured, with a feeling of vague resentment: "Oh yes.  He's not
+a mining man!"
+
+Hemmings replied: "We think that he will do."  'Do you?' thought
+Scorrier; 'that's good of you!'
+
+He had not altogether shaken off a worship he had felt for Pippin
+--"King" Pippin he was always called, when they had been boys at the
+Camborne Grammar-school.  "King" Pippin! the boy with the bright colour,
+very bright hair, bright, subtle, elusive eyes, broad shoulders, little
+stoop in the neck, and a way of moving it quickly like a bird; the boy
+who was always at the top of everything, and held his head as if looking
+for something further to be the top of. He remembered how one day "King"
+Pippin had said to him in his soft way, "Young Scorrie, I'll do your sums
+for you"; and in answer to his dubious, "Is that all right?" had replied,
+"Of course--I don't want you to get behind that beast Blake, he's not a
+Cornishman" (the beast Blake was an Irishman not yet twelve).  He
+remembered, too, an occasion when "King" Pippin with two other boys
+fought six louts and got a licking, and how Pippin sat for half an hour
+afterwards, all bloody, his head in his hands, rocking to and fro, and
+weeping tears of mortification; and how the next day he had sneaked off
+by himself, and, attacking the same gang, got frightfully mauled a second
+time.
+
+Thinking of these things he answered curtly: "When shall I start?"
+
+"Down-by-the-starn" Hemmings replied with a sort of fearful
+sprightliness: "There's a good fellow!  I will send instructions; so glad
+to see you well."  Conferring on Scorrier a look--fine to the verge of
+vulgarity--he withdrew.  Scorrier remained, seated; heavy with
+insignificance and vague oppression, as if he had drunk a tumbler of
+sweet port.
+
+A week later, in company with Pippin, he was on board a liner.
+
+The "King" Pippin of his school-days was now a man of forty-four.  He
+awakened in Scorrier the uncertain wonder with which men look backward at
+their uncomplicated teens; and staggering up and down the decks in the
+long Atlantic roll, he would steal glances at his companion, as if he
+expected to find out from them something about himself.  Pippin had still
+"King" Pippin's bright, fine hair, and dazzling streaks in his short
+beard; he had still a bright colour and suave voice, and what there were
+of wrinkles suggested only subtleties of humour and ironic sympathy. From
+the first, and apparently without negotiation, he had his seat at the
+captain's table, to which on the second day Scorrier too found himself
+translated, and had to sit, as he expressed it ruefully, "among the
+big-wigs."
+
+During the voyage only one incident impressed itself on Scorrier's
+memory, and that for a disconcerting reason.  In the forecastle were the
+usual complement of emigrants.  One evening, leaning across the rail to
+watch them, he felt a touch on his arm; and, looking round, saw Pippin's
+face and beard quivering in the lamplight.  "Poor people!" he said.  The
+idea flashed on Scorrier that he was like some fine wire sound-recording
+instrument.
+
+'Suppose he were to snap!' he thought.  Impelled to justify this fancy,
+he blurted out: "You're a nervous chap.  The way you look at those poor
+devils!"
+
+Pippin hustled him along the deck.  "Come, come, you took me off my
+guard," he murmured, with a sly, gentle smile, "that's not fair."
+
+He found it a continual source of wonder that Pippin, at his age, should
+cut himself adrift from the associations and security of London life to
+begin a new career in a new country with dubious prospect of success.  'I
+always heard he was doing well all round,' he thought; 'thinks he'll
+better himself, perhaps.  He's a true Cornishman.'
+
+The morning of arrival at the mines was grey and cheerless; a cloud of
+smoke, beaten down by drizzle, clung above the forest; the wooden houses
+straggled dismally in the unkempt semblance of a street, against a
+background of endless, silent woods.  An air of blank discouragement
+brooded over everything; cranes jutted idly over empty trucks; the long
+jetty oozed black slime; miners with listless faces stood in the rain;
+dogs fought under their very legs.  On the way to the hotel they met no
+one busy or serene except a Chinee who was polishing a dish-cover.
+
+The late superintendent, a cowed man, regaled them at lunch with his
+forebodings; his attitude toward the situation was like the food, which
+was greasy and uninspiring.  Alone together once more, the two newcomers
+eyed each other sadly.
+
+"Oh dear!" sighed Pippin.  "We must change all this, Scorrier; it will
+never do to go back beaten.  I shall not go back beaten; you will have to
+carry me on my shield;" and slyly: "Too heavy, eh?  Poor fellow!"  Then
+for a long time he was silent, moving his lips as if adding up the cost.
+Suddenly he sighed, and grasping Scorrier's arm, said: "Dull, aren't I?
+What will you do?  Put me in your report, 'New Superintendent--sad, dull
+dog--not a word to throw at a cat!'" And as if the new task were too much
+for him, he sank back in thought.  The last words he said to Scorrier
+that night were: "Very silent here.  It's hard to believe one's here for
+life.  But I feel I am.  Mustn't be a coward, though!" and brushing his
+forehead, as though to clear from it a cobweb of faint thoughts, he
+hurried off.
+
+Scorrier stayed on the veranda smoking.  The rain had ceased, a few stars
+were burning dimly; even above the squalor of the township the scent of
+the forests, the interminable forests, brooded.  There sprang into his
+mind the memory of a picture from one of his children's fairy books--the
+picture of a little bearded man on tiptoe, with poised head and a great
+sword, slashing at the castle of a giant.  It reminded him of Pippin. 
+And suddenly, even to Scorrier--whose existence was one long encounter
+with strange places--the unseen presence of those woods, their heavy,
+healthy scent, the little sounds, like squeaks from tiny toys, issuing
+out of the gloomy silence, seemed intolerable, to be shunned, from the
+mere instinct of self-preservation.  He thought of the evening he had
+spent in the bosom of "Down-by-the-starn" Hemmings' family, receiving his
+last instructions--the security of that suburban villa, its discouraging
+gentility; the superior acidity of the Miss Hemmings; the noble names of
+large contractors, of company promoters, of a peer, dragged with the
+lightness of gun-carriages across the conversation; the autocracy of
+Hemmings, rasped up here and there, by some domestic contradiction.  It
+was all so nice and safe--as if the whole thing had been fastened to an
+anchor sunk beneath the pink cabbages of the drawing-room carpet! 
+Hemmings, seeing him off the premises, had said with secrecy: "Little
+Pippin will have a good thing.  We shall make his salary L----.  He'll be
+a great man-quite a king.  Ha-ha!"
+
+Scorrier shook the ashes from his pipe.  'Salary!' he thought, straining
+his ears; 'I wouldn't take the place for five thousand pounds a year. And
+yet it's a fine country,' and with ironic violence he repeated, 'a dashed
+fine country!'
+
+Ten days later, having finished his report on the new mine, he stood on
+the jetty waiting to go abroad the steamer for home.
+
+"God bless you!" said Pippin.  "Tell them they needn't be afraid; and
+sometimes when you're at home think of me, eh?"
+
+Scorrier, scrambling on board, had a confused memory of tears in his
+eyes, and a convulsive handshake.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+It was eight years before the wheels of life carried Scorrier back to
+that disenchanted spot, and this time not on the business of the New
+Colliery Company.  He went for another company with a mine some thirty
+miles away.  Before starting, however, he visited Hemmings. The secretary
+was surrounded by pigeon-holes and finer than ever; Scorrier blinked in
+the full radiance of his courtesy.  A little man with eyebrows full of
+questions, and a grizzled beard, was seated in an arm-chair by the fire.
+
+"You know Mr. Booker," said Hemmings--"one of my directors.  This is Mr.
+Scorrier, sir--who went out for us."
+
+These sentences were murmured in a way suggestive of their uncommon
+value.  The director uncrossed his legs, and bowed.  Scorrier also bowed,
+and Hemmings, leaning back, slowly developed the full resources of his
+waistcoat.
+
+"So you are going out again, Scorrier, for the other side?  I tell Mr.
+Scorrier, sir, that he is going out for the enemy.  Don't find them a
+mine as good as you found us, there's a good man."
+
+The little director asked explosively: "See our last dividend?  Twenty
+per cent; eh, what?"
+
+Hemmings moved a finger, as if reproving his director.  "I will not
+disguise from you," he murmured, "that there is friction between us
+and--the enemy; you know our position too well--just a little too well,
+eh?  'A nod's as good as a wink.'"
+
+His diplomatic eyes flattered Scorrier, who passed a hand over his
+brow--and said: "Of course."
+
+"Pippin doesn't hit it off with them.  Between ourselves, he's a leetle
+too big for his boots.  You know what it is when a man in his position
+gets a sudden rise!"
+
+Scorrier caught himself searching on the floor for a sight of Hemmings'
+boots; he raised his eyes guiltily.  The secretary continued: "We don't
+hear from him quite as often as we should like, in fact."
+
+To his own surprise Scorrier murmured: "It's a silent place!"
+
+The secretary smiled.  "Very good!  Mr. Scorrier says, sir, it's a silent
+place; ha-ha!  I call that very good!"  But suddenly a secret irritation
+seemed to bubble in him; he burst forth almost violently: "He's no
+business to let it affect him; now, has he?  I put it to you, Mr.
+Scorrier, I put it to you, sir!"
+
+But Scorrier made no reply, and soon after took his leave: he had been
+asked to convey a friendly hint to Pippin that more frequent letters
+would be welcomed.  Standing in the shadow of the Royal Exchange, waiting
+to thread his way across, he thought: 'So you must have noise, must
+you--you've got some here, and to spare....'
+
+On his arrival in the new world he wired to Pippin asking if he might
+stay with him on the way up country, and received the answer: "Be sure
+and come."
+
+A week later he arrived (there was now a railway) and found Pippin
+waiting for him in a phaeton.  Scorrier would not have known the place
+again; there was a glitter over everything, as if some one had touched it
+with a wand.  The tracks had given place to roads, running firm,
+straight, and black between the trees under brilliant sunshine; the
+wooden houses were all painted; out in the gleaming harbour amongst the
+green of islands lay three steamers, each with a fleet of busy boats; and
+here and there a tiny yacht floated, like a sea-bird on the water. Pippin
+drove his long-tailed horses furiously; his eyes brimmed with subtle
+kindness, as if according Scorrier a continual welcome.  During the two
+days of his stay Scorrier never lost that sense of glamour.  He had every
+opportunity for observing the grip Pippin had over everything. The wooden
+doors and walls of his bungalow kept out no sounds.  He listened to
+interviews between his host and all kinds and conditions of men.  The
+voices of the visitors would rise at first--angry, discontented,
+matter-of-fact, with nasal twang, or guttural drawl; then would come the
+soft patter of the superintendent's feet crossing and recrossing the
+room.  Then a pause, the sound of hard breathing, and quick
+questions--the visitor's voice again, again the patter, and Pippin's
+ingratiating but decisive murmurs.  Presently out would come the visitor
+with an expression on his face which Scorrier soon began to know by
+heart, a kind of pleased, puzzled, helpless look, which seemed to say,
+"I've been done, I know--I'll give it to myself when I'm round the
+corner."
+
+Pippin was full of wistful questions about "home."  He wanted to talk of
+music, pictures, plays, of how London looked, what new streets there
+were, and, above all, whether Scorrier had been lately in the West
+Country.  He talked of getting leave next winter, asked whether Scorrier
+thought they would "put up with him at home"; then, with the agitation
+which had alarmed Scorrier before, he added: "Ah! but I'm not fit for
+home now.  One gets spoiled; it's big and silent here. What should I go
+back to?  I don't seem to realise."
+
+Scorrier thought of Hemmings.  "'Tis a bit cramped there, certainly," he
+muttered.
+
+Pippin went on as if divining his thoughts.  "I suppose our friend
+Hemmings would call me foolish; he's above the little weaknesses of
+imagination, eh?  Yes; it's silent here.  Sometimes in the evening I
+would give my head for somebody to talk to--Hemmings would never give his
+head for anything, I think.  But all the same, I couldn't face them at
+home.  Spoiled!"  And slyly he murmured: "What would the Board say if
+they could hear that?"
+
+Scorrier blurted out: "To tell you the truth, they complain a little of
+not hearing from you."
+
+Pippin put out a hand, as if to push something away.  "Let them try the
+life here!" he broke out; "it's like sitting on a live volcano--what
+with our friends, 'the enemy,' over there; the men; the American
+competition.  I keep it going, Scorrier, but at what a cost--at what a
+cost!"
+
+"But surely--letters?"
+
+Pippin only answered: "I try--I try!"
+
+Scorrier felt with remorse and wonder that he had spoken the truth. The
+following day he left for his inspection, and while in the camp of "the
+enemy" much was the talk he heard of Pippin.
+
+"Why!" said his host, the superintendent, a little man with a face
+somewhat like an owl's, "d'you know the name they've given him down in
+the capital--'the King'--good, eh?  He's made them 'sit up' all along
+this coast.  I like him well enough--good--hearted man, shocking nervous;
+but my people down there can't stand him at any price. Sir, he runs this
+colony.  You'd think butter wouldn't melt in that mouth of his; but he
+always gets his way; that's what riles 'em so; that and the success he's
+making of his mine.  It puzzles me; you'd think he'd only be too glad of
+a quiet life, a man with his nerves.  But no, he's never happy unless
+he's fighting, something where he's got a chance to score a victory.  I
+won't say he likes it, but, by Jove, it seems he's got to do it.  Now
+that's funny!  I'll tell you one thing, though shouldn't be a bit
+surprised if he broke down some day; and I'll tell you another," he added
+darkly, "he's sailing very near the wind, with those large contracts that
+he makes. I wouldn't care to take his risks.  Just let them have a
+strike, or something that shuts them down for a spell--and mark my words,
+sir--it'll be all up with them. But," he concluded confidentially, "I
+wish I had his hold on the men; it's a great thing in this country. Not
+like home, where you can go round a corner and get another gang. You have
+to make the best you can out of the lot you have; you won't, get another
+man for love or money without you ship him a few hundred miles."  And
+with a frown he waved his arm over the forests to indicate the barrenness
+of the land.
+
+Scorrier finished his inspection and went on a shooting trip into the
+forest.  His host met him on his return.  "Just look at this!" he said,
+holding out a telegram.  "Awful, isn't it?" His face expressed a profound
+commiseration, almost ludicrously mixed with the ashamed contentment that
+men experience at the misfortunes of an enemy.
+
+The telegram, dated the day before, ran thus "Frightful explosion New
+Colliery this morning, great loss of life feared."
+
+Scorrier had the bewildered thought: 'Pippin will want me now.'
+
+He took leave of his host, who called after him: "You'd better wait for a
+steamer!  It's a beastly drive!"
+
+Scorrier shook his head.  All night, jolting along a rough track cut
+through the forest, he thought of Pippin.  The other miseries of this
+calamity at present left him cold; he barely thought of the smothered
+men; but Pippin's struggle, his lonely struggle with this hydra-headed
+monster, touched him very nearly.  He fell asleep and dreamed of watching
+Pippin slowly strangled by a snake; the agonised, kindly, ironic face
+peeping out between two gleaming coils was so horribly real, that he
+awoke.  It was the moment before dawn: pitch-black branches barred the
+sky; with every jolt of the wheels the gleams from the lamps danced,
+fantastic and intrusive, round ferns and tree-stems, into the cold heart
+of the forest.  For an hour or more Scorrier tried to feign sleep, and
+hide from the stillness, and overmastering gloom of these great woods.
+Then softly a whisper of noises stole forth, a stir of light, and the
+whole slow radiance of the morning glory.  But it brought no warmth; and
+Scorrier wrapped himself closer in his cloak, feeling as though old age
+had touched him.
+
+Close on noon he reached the township.  Glamour seemed still to hover
+over it.  He drove on to the mine.  The winding-engine was turning, the
+pulley at the top of the head-gear whizzing round; nothing looked
+unusual.  'Some mistake!' he thought.  He drove to the mine buildings,
+alighted, and climbed to the shaft head.  Instead of the usual rumbling
+of the trolleys, the rattle of coal discharged over the screens, there
+was silence.  Close by, Pippin himself was standing, smirched with dirt.
+The cage, coming swift and silent from below, shot open its doors with a
+sharp rattle.  Scorrier bent forward to look.  There lay a dead man, with
+a smile on his face.
+
+"How many?" he whispered.
+
+Pippin answered: "Eighty-four brought up--forty-seven still below," and
+entered the man's name in a pocket-book.
+
+An older man was taken out next; he too was smiling--there had been
+vouchsafed to him, it seemed, a taste of more than earthly joy.  The
+sight of those strange smiles affected Scorrier more than all the anguish
+or despair he had seen scored on the faces of other dead men. He asked an
+old miner how long Pippin had been at work.
+
+"Thirty hours.  Yesterday he wer' below; we had to nigh carry mun up at
+last.  He's for goin' down again, but the chaps won't lower mun;" the old
+man gave a sigh.  "I'm waiting for my boy to come up, I am."
+
+Scorrier waited too--there was fascination about those dead, smiling
+faces.  The rescuing of these men who would never again breathe went on
+and on.  Scorrier grew sleepy in the sun.  The old miner woke him,
+saying: "Rummy stuff this here chokedamp; see, they all dies drunk!" The
+very next to be brought up was the chief engineer.  Scorrier had known
+him quite well, one of those Scotsmen who are born at the age of forty
+and remain so all their lives.  His face--the only one that wore no
+smile--seemed grieving that duty had deprived it of that last luxury. 
+With wide eyes and drawn lips he had died protesting.
+
+Late in the afternoon the old miner touched Scorrier's arm, and said:
+"There he is--there's my boy!"  And he departed slowly, wheeling the body
+on a trolley.
+
+As the sun set, the gang below came up.  No further search was possible
+till the fumes had cleared.  Scorrier heard one man say: "There's some
+we'll never get; they've had sure burial"
+
+Another answered him: "'Tis a gude enough bag for me!"  They passed him,
+the whites of their eyes gleaming out of faces black as ink.
+
+Pippin drove him home at a furious pace, not uttering a single word. As
+they turned into the main street, a young woman starting out before the
+horses obliged Pippin to pull up.  The glance he bent on Scorrier was
+ludicrously prescient of suffering.  The woman asked for her husband.
+Several times they were stopped thus by women asking for their husbands
+or sons.  "This is what I have to go through," Pippin whispered.
+
+When they had eaten, he said to Scorrier: "It was kind of you to come and
+stand by me!  They take me for a god, poor creature that I am. But shall
+I ever get the men down again?  Their nerve's shaken.  I wish I were one
+of those poor lads, to die with a smile like that!"
+
+Scorrier felt the futility of his presence.  On Pippin alone must be the
+heat and burden.  Would he stand under it, or would the whole thing come
+crashing to the ground?  He urged him again and again to rest, but Pippin
+only gave him one of his queer smiles.  "You don't know how strong I am!"
+he said.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+He himself slept heavily; and, waking at dawn, went down.  Pippin was
+still at his desk; his pen had dropped; he was asleep.  The ink was wet;
+Scorrier's eye caught the opening words:
+
+"GENTLEMEN,--Since this happened I have not slept...."
+
+He stole away again with a sense of indignation that no one could be
+dragged in to share that fight.  The London Board-room rose before his
+mind.  He imagined the portentous gravity of Hemmings; his face and voice
+and manner conveying the impression that he alone could save the
+situation; the six directors, all men of commonsense and certainly
+humane, seated behind large turret-shaped inkpots; the concern and
+irritation in their voices, asking how it could have happened; their
+comments: "An awful thing!"  "I suppose Pippin is doing the best he can!"
+"Wire him on no account to leave the mine idle!"  "Poor devils!"  "A
+fund?  Of course, what ought we to give?" He had a strong conviction that
+nothing of all this would disturb the commonsense with which they would
+go home and eat their mutton.  A good thing too; the less it was taken to
+heart the better!  But Scorrier felt angry.  The fight was so unfair!  A
+fellow all nerves--with not a soul to help him!  Well, it was his own
+lookout!  He had chosen to centre it all in himself, to make himself its
+very soul. If he gave way now, the ship must go down!  By a thin thread,
+Scorrier's hero-worship still held.  'Man against nature,' he thought, 'I
+back the man.'  The struggle in which he was so powerless to give aid,
+became intensely personal to him, as if he had engaged his own good faith
+therein.
+
+The next day they went down again to the pit-head; and Scorrier himself
+descended.  The fumes had almost cleared, but there were some places
+which would never be reached.  At the end of the day all but four bodies
+had been recovered.  "In the day o' judgment," a miner said, "they
+four'll come out of here."  Those unclaimed bodies haunted Scorrier.  He
+came on sentences of writing, where men waiting to be suffocated had
+written down their feelings.  In one place, the hour, the word "Sleepy,"
+and a signature.  In another, "A. F.--done for."  When he came up at last
+Pippin was still waiting, pocket-book in hand; they again departed at a
+furious pace.
+
+Two days later Scorrier, visiting the shaft, found its neighbourhood
+deserted--not a living thing of any sort was there except one Chinaman
+poking his stick into the rubbish.  Pippin was away down the coast
+engaging an engineer; and on his return, Scorrier had not the heart to
+tell him of the desertion.  He was spared the effort, for Pippin said:
+"Don't be afraid--you've got bad news?  The men have gone on strike."
+
+Scorrier sighed.  "Lock, stock, and barrel"
+
+"I thought so--see what I have here!" He put before Scorrier a telegram:
+
+"At all costs keep working--fatal to stop--manage this somehow.
+--HEMMINGS."
+
+Breathing quickly, he added: "As if I didn't know! 'Manage this
+somehow'--a little hard!"
+
+"What's to be done?" asked Scorrier.
+
+"You see I am commanded!" Pippin answered bitterly.  "And they're quite
+right; we must keep working--our contracts!  Now I'm down--not a soul
+will spare me!"
+
+The miners' meeting was held the following day on the outskirts of the
+town.  Pippin had cleared the place to make a public recreation-ground--a
+sort of feather in the company's cap; it was now to be the spot whereon
+should be decided the question of the company's life or death.
+
+The sky to the west was crossed by a single line of cloud like a bar of
+beaten gold; tree shadows crept towards the groups of men; the evening
+savour, that strong fragrance of the forest, sweetened the air.  The
+miners stood all round amongst the burnt tree-stumps, cowed and sullen.
+They looked incapable of movement or expression.  It was this dumb
+paralysis that frightened Scorrier.  He watched Pippin speaking from his
+phaeton, the butt of all those sullen, restless eyes.  Would he last out?
+Would the wires hold?  It was like the finish of a race.  He caught a
+baffled look on Pippin's face, as if he despaired of piercing that
+terrible paralysis.  The men's eyes had begun to wander.  'He's lost his
+hold,' thought Scorrier; 'it's all up!'
+
+A miner close beside him muttered: "Look out!"
+
+Pippin was leaning forward, his voice had risen, the words fell like a
+whiplash on the faces of the crowd: "You shan't throw me over; do you
+think I'll give up all I've done for you?  I'll make you the first power
+in the colony!  Are you turning tail at the first shot?  You're a set of
+cowards, my lads!"
+
+Each man round Scorrier was listening with a different motion of the
+hands--one rubbed them, one clenched them, another moved his closed fist,
+as if stabbing some one in the back.  A grisly-bearded, beetle-browed,
+twinkling-eyed old Cornishman muttered: "A'hm not troublin' about that." 
+It seemed almost as if Pippin's object was to get the men to kill him;
+they had gathered closer, crouching for a rush. Suddenly Pippin's voice
+dropped to a whisper: "I'm disgraced Men, are you going back on me?"
+
+The old miner next Scorrier called out suddenly: "Anny that's Cornishmen
+here to stand by the superintendent?"  A group drew together, and with
+murmurs and gesticulation the meeting broke up.
+
+In the evening a deputation came to visit Pippin; and all night long
+their voices and the superintendent's footsteps could be heard.  In the
+morning, Pippin went early to the mine.  Before supper the deputation
+came again; and again Scorrier had to listen hour after hour to the sound
+of voices and footsteps till he fell asleep.  Just before dawn he was
+awakened by a light.  Pippin stood at his bedside. "The men go down
+to-morrow," he said: "What did I tell you?  Carry me home on my shield,
+eh?"
+
+In a week the mine was in full work.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+Two years later, Scorrier heard once more of Pippin.  A note from
+Hemmings reached him asking if he could make it convenient to attend
+their Board meeting the following Thursday.  He arrived rather before the
+appointed time.  The secretary received him, and, in answer to inquiry,
+said: "Thank you, we are doing well--between ourselves, we are doing very
+well."
+
+"And Pippin?"
+
+The secretary frowned.  "Ah, Pippin!  We asked you to come on his
+account. Pippin is giving us a lot of trouble.  We have not had a single
+line from him for just two years!"  He spoke with such a sense of
+personal grievance that Scorrier felt quite sorry for him.  "Not a single
+line," said Hemmings, "since that explosion--you were there at the time,
+I remember!  It makes it very awkward; I call it personal to me."
+
+"But how--" Scorrier began.
+
+"We get--telegrams.  He writes to no one, not even to his family. And
+why?  Just tell me why?  We hear of him; he's a great nob out there.
+Nothing's done in the colony without his finger being in the pie.  He
+turned out the last Government because they wouldn't grant us an
+extension for our railway--shows he can't be a fool.  Besides, look at
+our balance-sheet!"
+
+It turned out that the question on which Scorrier's opinion was desired
+was, whether Hemmings should be sent out to see what was the matter with
+the superintendent.  During the discussion which. ensued, he was an
+unwilling listener to strictures on Pippin's silence.  "The explosion,"
+he muttered at last, "a very trying time!"
+
+Mr. Booker pounced on him.  "A very trying time!  So it was--to all of
+us.  But what excuse is that--now, Mr. Scorrier, what excuse is that?"
+
+Scorrier was obliged to admit that it was none.
+
+"Business is business--eh, what?"
+
+Scorrier, gazing round that neat Board-room, nodded.  A deaf director,
+who had not spoken for some months, said with sudden fierceness: "It's
+disgraceful!"  He was obviously letting off the fume of long-unuttered
+disapprovals.  One perfectly neat, benevolent old fellow, however, who
+had kept his hat on, and had a single vice--that of coming to the
+Board-room with a brown paper parcel tied up with string--murmured: "We
+must make all allowances," and started an anecdote about his youth. He
+was gently called to order by his secretary.  Scorrier was asked for his
+opinion.  He looked at Hemmings.  "My importance is concerned," was
+written all over the secretary's face.  Moved by an impulse of loyalty to
+Pippin, Scorrier answered, as if it were all settled: "Well, let me know
+when you are starting, Hemmings--I should like the trip myself."
+
+As he was going out, the chairman, old Jolyon Forsyte, with a grave,
+twinkling look at Hemmings, took him aside.  "Glad to hear you say that
+about going too, Mr. Scorrier; we must be careful--Pippin's such a good
+fellow, and so sensitive; and our friend there--a bit heavy in the hand,
+um?"
+
+Scorrier did in fact go out with Hemmings.  The secretary was sea-sick,
+and his prostration, dignified but noisy, remained a memory for ever; it
+was sonorous and fine--the prostration of superiority; and the way in
+which he spoke of it, taking casual acquaintances into the caves of his
+experience, was truly interesting.
+
+Pippin came down to the capital to escort them, provided for their
+comforts as if they had been royalty, and had a special train to take
+them to the mines.
+
+He was a little stouter, brighter of colour, greyer of beard, more
+nervous perhaps in voice and breathing.  His manner to Hemmings was full
+of flattering courtesy; but his sly, ironical glances played on the
+secretary's armour like a fountain on a hippopotamus.  To Scorrier,
+however, he could not show enough affection:
+
+The first evening, when Hemmings had gone to his room, he jumped up like
+a boy out of school.  "So I'm going to get a wigging," he said; "I
+suppose I deserve it; but if you knew--if you only knew...!  Out here
+they've nicknamed me 'the King'--they say I rule the colony. It's myself
+that I can't rule"; and with a sudden burst of passion such as Scorrier
+had never seen in him: "Why did they send this man here?  What can he know
+about the things that I've been through?"  In a moment he calmed down
+again.  "There! this is very stupid; worrying you like this!" and with a
+long, kind look into Scorrier's face, he hustled him off to bed.
+
+Pippin did not break out again, though fire seemed to smoulder behind the
+bars of his courteous irony.  Intuition of danger had evidently smitten
+Hemmings, for he made no allusion to the object of his visit. There were
+moments when Scorrier's common-sense sided with Hemmings--these were
+moments when the secretary was not present.
+
+'After all,' he told himself, 'it's a little thing to ask--one letter a
+month.  I never heard of such a case.'  It was wonderful indeed how they
+stood it!  It showed how much they valued Pippin!  What was the matter
+with him?  What was the nature of his trouble?  One glimpse Scorrier had
+when even Hemmings, as he phrased it, received "quite a turn."  It was
+during a drive back from the most outlying of the company's trial mines,
+eight miles through the forest.  The track led through a belt of trees
+blackened by a forest fire.  Pippin was driving. The secretary seated
+beside him wore an expression of faint alarm, such as Pippin's driving
+was warranted to evoke from almost any face.  The sky had darkened
+strangely, but pale streaks of light, coming from one knew not where,
+filtered through the trees.  No breath was stirring; the wheels and
+horses' hoofs made no sound on the deep fern mould.  All around, the
+burnt tree-trunks, leafless and jagged, rose like withered giants, the
+passages between them were black, the sky black, and black the silence. 
+No one spoke, and literally the only sound was Pippin's breathing.  What
+was it that was so terrifying?  Scorrier had a feeling of entombment;
+that nobody could help him; the feeling of being face to face with
+Nature; a sensation as if all the comfort and security of words and rules
+had dropped away from him.  And-nothing happened.  They reached home and
+dined.
+
+During dinner he had again that old remembrance of a little man chopping
+at a castle with his sword.  It came at a moment when Pippin had raised
+his hand with the carving-knife grasped in it to answer some remark of
+Hemmings' about the future of the company.  The optimism in his uplifted
+chin, the strenuous energy in his whispering voice, gave Scorrier a more
+vivid glimpse of Pippin's nature than he had perhaps ever had before.
+This new country, where nothing but himself could help a man--that was
+the castle!  No wonder Pippin was impatient of control, no wonder he was
+out of hand, no wonder he was silent--chopping away at that!  And suddenly
+he thought: 'Yes, and all the time one knows, Nature must beat him in the
+end!'
+
+That very evening Hemmings delivered himself of his reproof.  He had sat
+unusually silent; Scorrier, indeed, had thought him a little drunk, so
+portentous was his gravity; suddenly, however he rose.  It was hard on a
+man, he said, in his position, with a Board (he spoke as of a family of
+small children), to be kept so short of information.  He was actually
+compelled to use his imagination to answer the shareholders' questions.
+This was painful and humiliating; he had never heard of any secretary
+having to use his imagination!  He went further--it was insulting!  He had
+grown grey in the service of the company.  Mr. Scorrier would bear him
+out when he said he had a position to maintain--his name in the City was
+a high one; and, by George! he was going to keep it a high one; he would
+allow nobody to drag it in the dust--that ought clearly to be understood. 
+His directors felt they were being treated like children; however that
+might be, it was absurd to suppose that he (Hemmings) could be treated
+like a child...!  The secretary paused; his eyes seemed to bully the
+room.
+
+"If there were no London office," murmured Pippin, "the shareholders
+would get the same dividends."
+
+Hemmings gasped.  "Come!" he said, "this is monstrous!"
+
+"What help did I get from London when I first came here?  What help have
+I ever had?"
+
+Hemmings swayed, recovered, and with a forced smile replied that, if this
+were true, he had been standing on his head for years; he did not believe
+the attitude possible for such a length of time; personally he would have
+thought that he too had had a little something to say to the company's
+position, but no matter...!  His irony was crushing....  It was possible
+that Mr. Pippin hoped to reverse the existing laws of the universe with
+regard to limited companies; he would merely say that he must not begin
+with a company of which he (Hemmings) happened to be secretary.  Mr.
+Scorrier had hinted at excuses; for his part, with the best intentions in
+the world, he had great difficulty in seeing them.  He would go further
+--he did not see them!  The explosion...!  Pippin shrank so visibly that
+Hemmings seemed troubled by a suspicion that he had gone too far.
+
+"We know," he said, "that it was trying for you...."
+
+"Trying!" "burst out Pippin.
+
+"No one can say," Hemmings resumed soothingly, "that we have not dealt
+liberally."  Pippin made a motion of the head.  "We think we have a good
+superintendent; I go further, an excellent superintendent.  What I say
+is: Let's be pleasant!  I am not making an unreasonable request!"  He
+ended on a fitting note of jocularity; and, as if by consent, all three
+withdrew, each to his own room, without another word.
+
+In the course of the next day Pippin said to Scorrier: "It seems I have
+been very wicked.  I must try to do better"; and with a touch of bitter
+humour, "They are kind enough to think me a good superintendent, you see!
+After that I must try hard."
+
+Scorrier broke in: "No man could have done so much for them;" and,
+carried away by an impulse to put things absolutely straight, went on
+"But, after all, a letter now and then--what does it amount to?"
+
+Pippin besieged him with a subtle glance.  "You too?" he said--"I must
+indeed have been a wicked man!" and turned away.
+
+Scorrier felt as if he had been guilty of brutality; sorry for Pippin,
+angry with himself; angry with Pippin, sorry for himself.  He earnestly
+desired to see the back of Hemmings.  The secretary gratified the wish a
+few days later, departing by steamer with ponderous expressions of regard
+and the assurance of his goodwill.
+
+Pippin gave vent to no outburst of relief, maintaining a courteous
+silence, making only one allusion to his late guest, in answer to a
+remark of Scorrier:
+
+"Ah! don't tempt me! mustn't speak behind his back."
+
+A month passed, and Scorrier still--remained Pippin's guest.  As each
+mail-day approached he experienced a queer suppressed excitement. On one
+of these occasions Pippin had withdrawn to his room; and when Scorrier
+went to fetch him to dinner he found him with his head leaning on his
+hands, amid a perfect fitter of torn paper.  He looked up at Scorrier.
+
+"I can't do it," he said, "I feel such a hypocrite; I can't put myself
+into leading-strings again.  Why should I ask these people, when I've
+settled everything already?  If it were a vital matter they wouldn't want
+to hear--they'd simply wire, 'Manage this somehow!'"
+
+Scorrier said nothing, but thought privately 'This is a mad business!'
+What was a letter?  Why make a fuss about a letter?  The approach of
+mail-day seemed like a nightmare to the superintendent; he became
+feverishly nervous like a man under a spell; and, when the mail had gone,
+behaved like a respited criminal.  And this had been going on two years!
+Ever since that explosion.  Why, it was monomania!
+
+One day, a month after Hemmings' departure, Pippin rose early from
+dinner; his face was flushed, he had been drinking wine.  "I won't be
+beaten this time," he said, as he passed Scorrier.  The latter could hear
+him writing in the next room, and looked in presently to say that he was
+going for a walk.  Pippin gave him a kindly nod.
+
+It was a cool, still evening: innumerable stars swarmed in clusters over
+the forests, forming bright hieroglyphics in the middle heavens,
+showering over the dark harbour into the sea.  Scorrier walked slowly.  A
+weight seemed lifted from his mind, so entangled had he become in that
+uncanny silence.  At last Pippin had broken through the spell.  To get
+that, letter sent would be the laying of a phantom, the rehabilitation of
+commonsense.  Now that this silence was in the throes of being broken, he
+felt curiously tender towards Pippin, without the hero-worship of old
+days, but with a queer protective feeling.  After all, he was different
+from other men.  In spite of his feverish, tenacious energy, in spite of
+his ironic humour, there was something of the woman in him!  And as for
+this silence, this horror of control--all geniuses had "bees in their
+bonnets," and Pippin was a genius in his way!
+
+He looked back at the town.  Brilliantly lighted it had a thriving
+air-difficult to believe of the place he remembered ten years back; the
+sounds of drinking, gambling, laughter, and dancing floated to his ears.
+'Quite a city!' he thought.
+
+With this queer elation on him he walked slowly back along the street,
+forgetting that he was simply an oldish mining expert, with a look of
+shabbiness, such as clings to men who are always travelling, as if their
+"nap" were for ever being rubbed off.  And he thought of Pippin, creator
+of this glory.
+
+He had passed the boundaries of the town, and had entered the forest. A
+feeling of discouragement instantly beset him.  The scents and silence,
+after the festive cries and odours of the town, were undefinably
+oppressive.  Notwithstanding, he walked a long time, saying to himself
+that he would give the letter every chance.  At last, when he thought
+that Pippin must have finished, he went back to the house.
+
+Pippin had finished.  His forehead rested on the table, his arms hung at
+his sides; he was stone-dead!  His face wore a smile, and by his side lay
+an empty laudanum bottle.
+
+The letter, closely, beautifully written, lay before him.  It was a fine
+document, clear, masterly, detailed, nothing slurred, nothing concealed,
+nothing omitted; a complete review of the company's position; it ended
+with the words: "Your humble servant, RICHARD PIPPIN."
+
+Scorrier took possession of it.  He dimly understood that with those last
+words a wire had snapped.  The border-line had been overpassed; the point
+reached where that sense of proportion, which alone makes life possible,
+is lost.  He was certain that at the moment of his death Pippin could
+have discussed bimetallism, or any intellectual problem, except the one
+problem of his own heart; that, for some mysterious reason, had been too
+much for him.  His death had been the work of a moment of supreme
+revolt--a single instant of madness on a single subject!  He found on the
+blotting-paper, scrawled across the impress of the signature, "Can't
+stand it!"  The completion of that letter had been to him a struggle
+ungraspable by Scorrier.  Slavery?  Defeat?  A violation of Nature?  The
+death of justice?  It were better not to think of it!  Pippin could have
+told--but he would never speak again.  Nature, at whom, unaided, he had
+dealt so many blows, had taken her revenge...!
+
+In the night Scorrier stole down, and, with an ashamed face, cut off a
+lock of the fine grey hair.  'His daughter might like it!' he thought....
+
+He waited till Pippin was buried, then, with the letter in his pocket,
+started for England.
+
+He arrived at Liverpool on a Thursday morning, and travelling to town,
+drove straight to the office of the company.  The Board were sitting.
+Pippin's successor was already being interviewed.  He passed out as
+Scorrier came in, a middle-aged man with a large, red beard, and a foxy,
+compromising face.  He also was a Cornishman. Scorrier wished him luck
+with a very heavy heart.
+
+As an unsentimental man, who had a proper horror of emotion, whose living
+depended on his good sense, to look back on that interview with the Board
+was painful.  It had excited in him a rage of which he was now heartily
+ashamed.  Old Jolyon Forsyte, the chairman, was not there for once,
+guessing perhaps that the Board's view of this death would be too small
+for him; and little Mr. Booker sat in his place. Every one had risen,
+shaken hands with Scorrier, and expressed themselves indebted for his
+coming.  Scorrier placed Pippin's letter on the table, and gravely the
+secretary read out to his Board the last words of their superintendent.
+When he had finished, a director said, "That's not the letter of a
+madman!"  Another answered: "Mad as a hatter; nobody but a madman would
+have thrown up such a post." Scorrier suddenly withdrew.  He heard
+Hemmings calling after him. "Aren't you well, Mr. Scorrier? aren't you
+well, sir?"
+
+He shouted back: "Quite sane, I thank you...."
+
+The Naples "express" rolled round the outskirts of the town. Vesuvius
+shone in the sun, uncrowned by smoke.  But even as Scorrier looked, a
+white puff went soaring up.  It was the footnote to his memories.
+
+February 1901. February 1901.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Villa Rubein et al, by John Galsworthy
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diff --git a/old/24092004.2639.zip b/old/24092004.2639.zip
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+Project Gutenberg's Etext Villa Rubein and Others, by Galsworthy
+#7 in our series by John Galsworthy
+#4 in our series of The Forsyte Saga [Just a Short Story]
+
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check
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+Title:  Villa Rubein and Other Stories
+Contents:
+Villa Rubein
+A Man of Devon
+A Knight
+Salvation of a Forsyte
+The Silence
+
+Author:  John Galsworthy
+
+March, 2001  [Etext #2639]
+
+
+Project Gutenberg's Etext Villa Rubein and Others, by Galsworthy
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+
+
+THE WORKS OF JOHN GALSWORTHY - VOLUME IV
+
+VILLA RUBEIN AND OTHER STORIES
+
+Contents:
+Villa Rubein
+A Man of Devon
+A Knight
+Salvation of a Forsyte
+The Silence
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+Writing not long ago to my oldest literary friend, I expressed in a
+moment of heedless sentiment the wish that we might have again one of
+our talks of long-past days, over the purposes and methods of our
+art.  And my friend, wiser than I, as he has always been, replied
+with this doubting phrase "Could we recapture the zest of that old
+time?"
+
+I would not like to believe that our faith in the value of
+imaginative art has diminished, that we think it less worth while to
+struggle for glimpses of truth and for the words which may pass them
+on to other eyes; or that we can no longer discern the star we tried
+to follow; but I do fear, with him, that half a lifetime of endeavour
+has dulled the exuberance which kept one up till morning discussing
+the ways and means of aesthetic achievement.  We have discovered,
+perhaps with a certain finality, that by no talk can a writer add a
+cubit to his stature, or change the temperament which moulds and
+colours the vision of life he sets before the few who will pause to
+look at it.  And so--the rest is silence, and what of work we may
+still do will be done in that dogged muteness which is the lot of
+advancing years.
+
+Other times, other men and modes, but not other truth.  Truth, though
+essentially relative, like Einstein's theory, will never lose its
+ever-new and unique quality-perfect proportion; for Truth, to the
+human consciousness at least, is but that vitally just relation of
+part to whole which is the very condition of life itself.  And the
+task before the imaginative writer, whether at the end of the last
+century or all these aeons later, is the presentation of a vision
+which to eye and ear and mind has the implicit proportions of Truth.
+
+I confess to have always looked for a certain flavour in the writings
+of others, and craved it for my own, believing that all true vision
+is so coloured by the temperament of the seer, as to have not only
+the just proportions but the essential novelty of a living thing for,
+after all, no two living things are alike.  A work of fiction should
+carry the hall mark of its author as surely as a Goya, a Daumier, a
+Velasquez, and a Mathew Maris, should be the unmistakable creations
+of those masters.  This is not to speak of tricks and manners which
+lend themselves to that facile elf, the caricaturist, but of a
+certain individual way of seeing and feeling.  A young poet once said
+of another and more popular poet: "Oh! yes, but be cuts no ice.
+"And, when one came to think of it, he did not; a certain flabbiness
+of spirit, a lack of temperament, an absence, perhaps, of the ironic,
+or passionate, view, insubstantiated his work; it had no edge--just a
+felicity which passed for distinction with the crowd.
+
+Let me not be understood to imply that a novel should be a sort of
+sandwich, in which the author's mood or philosophy is the slice of
+ham.  One's demand is for a far more subtle impregnation of flavour;
+just that, for instance, which makes De Maupassant a more poignant
+and fascinating writer than his master Flaubert, Dickens and
+Thackeray more living and permanent than George Eliot or Trollope.
+It once fell to my lot to be the preliminary critic of a book on
+painting, designed to prove that the artist's sole function was the
+impersonal elucidation of the truths of nature.  I was regretfully
+compelled to observe that there were no such things as the truths of
+Nature, for the purposes of art, apart from the individual vision of
+the artist.  Seer and thing seen, inextricably involved one with the
+other, form the texture of any masterpiece; and I, at least, demand
+therefrom a distinct impression of temperament.  I never saw, in the
+flesh, either De Maupassant or Tchekov--those masters of such
+different methods entirely devoid of didacticism--but their work
+leaves on me a strangely potent sense of personality.  Such subtle
+intermingling of seer with thing seen is the outcome only of long and
+intricate brooding, a process not too favoured by modern life, yet
+without which we achieve little but a fluent chaos of clever
+insignificant impressions, a kind of glorified journalism, holding
+much the same relation to the deeply-impregnated work of Turgenev,
+Hardy, and Conrad, as a film bears to a play.
+
+Speaking for myself, with the immodesty required of one who hazards
+an introduction to his own work, I was writing fiction for five years
+before I could master even its primary technique, much less achieve
+that union of seer with thing seen, which perhaps begins to show
+itself a little in this volume--binding up the scanty harvests of
+1899, 1900, and 1901--especially in the tales: "A Knight," and
+"Salvation of a Forsyte."  Men, women, trees, and works of fiction--
+very tiny are the seeds from which they spring.  I used really to see
+the "Knight"--in 1896, was it?--sitting in the "Place" in front of
+the Casino at Monte Carlo ; and because his dried-up elegance, his
+burnt straw hat, quiet courtesy of attitude, and big dog, used to
+fascinate and intrigue me, I began to imagine his life so as to
+answer my own questions and to satisfy, I suppose, the mood I was in.
+I never spoke to him, I never saw him again.  His real story, no
+doubt, was as different from that which I wove around his figure as
+night from day.
+
+As for Swithin, wild horses will not drag from me confession of where
+and when I first saw the prototype which became enlarged to his bulky
+stature.  I owe Swithin much, for he first released the satirist in
+me, and is, moreover, the only one of my characters whom I killed
+before I gave him life, for it is in "The Man of Property" that
+Swithin Forsyte more memorably lives.
+
+Ranging beyond this volume, I cannot recollect writing the first
+words of "The Island Pharisees"--but it would be about August, 1901.
+Like all the stories in "Villa Rubein," and, indeed, most of my
+tales, the book originated in the curiosity, philosophic reflections,
+and unphilosophic emotions roused in me by some single figure in real
+life.  In this case it was Ferrand, whose real name, of course, was
+not Ferrand, and who died in some "sacred institution" many years ago
+of a consumption brought on by the conditions of his wandering life.
+If not "a beloved," he was a true vagabond, and I first met him in
+the Champs Elysees, just as in "The Pigeon" he describes his meeting
+with Wellwyn.  Though drawn very much from life, he did not in the
+end turn out very like the Ferrand of real life--the, figures of
+fiction soon diverge from their prototypes.
+
+The first draft of "The Island Pharisees" was buried in a drawer;
+when retrieved the other day, after nineteen years, it disclosed a
+picaresque string of anecdotes told by Ferrand in the first person.
+These two-thirds of a book were laid to rest by Edward Garnett's
+dictum that its author was not sufficiently within Ferrand's skin;
+and, struggling heavily with laziness and pride, he started afresh in
+the skin of Shelton.  Three times be wrote that novel, and then it
+was long in finding the eye of Sydney Pawling, who accepted it for
+Heinemann's in 1904.  That was a period of ferment and transition
+with me, a kind of long awakening to the home truths of social
+existence and national character.  The liquor bubbled too furiously
+for clear bottling.  And the book, after all, became but an
+introduction to all those following novels which depict--somewhat
+satirically--the various sections of English "Society" with a more or
+less capital "S."
+
+Looking back on the long-stretched-out body of one's work, it is
+interesting to mark the endless duel fought within a man between the
+emotional and critical sides of his nature, first one, then the
+other, getting the upper hand, and too seldom fusing till the result
+has the mellowness of full achievement.  One can even tell the nature
+of one's readers, by their preference for the work which reveals more
+of this side than of that.  My early work was certainly more
+emotional than critical.  But from 1901 came nine years when the
+critical was, in the main, holding sway.  From 1910 to 1918 the
+emotional again struggled for the upper hand; and from that time on
+there seems to have been something of a "dead beat."  So the conflict
+goes, by what mysterious tides promoted, I know not.
+
+An author must ever wish to discover a hapless member of the Public
+who, never yet having read a word of his writing, would submit to the
+ordeal of reading him right through from beginning to end.  Probably
+the effect could only be judged through an autopsy, but in the remote
+case of survival, it would interest one so profoundly to see the
+differences, if any, produced in that reader's character or outlook
+over life.  This, however, is a consummation which will remain
+devoutly to be wished, for there is a limit to human complaisance.
+One will never know the exact measure of one's infecting power; or
+whether, indeed, one is not just a long soporific.
+
+A writer they say, should not favouritize among his creations; but
+then a writer should not do so many things that be does.  This
+writer, certainly, confesses to having favourites, and of his novels
+so far be likes best: The Forsyte Series; "The Country House";
+"Fraternity"; "The Dark Flower"; and "Five Tales"; believing these to
+be the works which most fully achieve fusion of seer with thing seen,
+most subtly disclose the individuality of their author, and best
+reveal such of truth as has been vouchsafed to him.
+
+JOHN GALSWORTHY.
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+MY SISTER
+
+BLANCHE LILIAN SAUTER
+
+
+
+
+VILLA RUBEIN
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+Walking along the river wall at Botzen, Edmund Dawney said to Alois
+Harz: "Would you care to know the family at that pink house, Villa
+Rubein?"
+
+Harz answered with a smile:
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"Come with me then this afternoon."
+
+They had stopped before an old house with a blind, deserted look,
+that stood by itself on the wall; Harz pushed the door open.
+
+"Come in, you don't want breakfast yet.  I'm going to paint the river
+to-day."
+
+He ran up the bare broad stairs, and Dawney followed leisurely, his
+thumbs hooked in the armholes of his waistcoat, and his head thrown
+back.
+
+In the attic which filled the whole top story, Harz had pulled a
+canvas to the window.  He was a young man of middle height, square
+shouldered, active, with an angular face, high cheek-bones, and a
+strong, sharp chin.  His eyes were piercing and steel-blue, his
+eyebrows very flexible, nose long and thin with a high bridge; and
+his dark, unparted hair fitted him like a cap.  His clothes looked as
+if he never gave them a second thought.
+
+This room, which served for studio, bedroom, and sitting-room, was
+bare and dusty.  Below the window the river in spring flood rushed
+down the valley, a stream, of molten bronze.  Harz dodged before the
+canvas like a fencer finding his distance; Dawney took his seat on a
+packingcase.
+
+"The snows have gone with a rush this year," he drawled.  "The Talfer
+comes down brown, the Eisack comes down blue; they flow into the
+Etsch and make it green; a parable of the Spring for you, my
+painter."
+
+Harz mixed his colours.
+
+"I've no time for parables," he said, "no time for anything.  If I
+could be guaranteed to live to ninety-nine, like Titian--he had a
+chance.  Look at that poor fellow who was killed the other day!  All
+that struggle, and then--just at the turn!"
+
+He spoke English with a foreign accent; his voice was rather harsh,
+but his smile very kindly.
+
+Dawney lit a cigarette.
+
+"You painters," he said, "are better off than most of us.  You can
+strike out your own line.  Now if I choose to treat a case out of the
+ordinary way and the patient dies, I'm ruined."
+
+"My dear Doctor--if I don't paint what the public likes, I starve;
+all the same I'm going to paint in my own way; in the end I shall
+come out on top."
+
+"It pays to work in the groove, my friend, until you've made your
+name; after that--do what you like, they'll lick your boots all the
+same."
+
+"Ah, you don't love your work."
+
+Dawney answered slowly: "Never so happy as when my hands are full.
+But I want to make money, to get known, to have a good time, good
+cigars, good wine.  I hate discomfort.  No, my boy, I must work it on
+the usual lines; I don't like it, but I must lump it.  One starts in
+life with some notion of the ideal--it's gone by the board with me.
+I've got to shove along until I've made my name, and then, my little
+man--then--"
+
+"Then you'll be soft!  "You pay dearly for that first period!"
+
+"Take my chance of that; there's no other way."
+
+"Make one!"
+
+"Humph!"
+
+Harz poised his brush, as though it were a spear:
+
+"A man must do the best in him.  If he has to suffer--let him!"
+
+Dawney stretched his large soft body; a calculating look had come
+into his eyes.
+
+"You're a tough little man!" he said.
+
+"I've had to be tough."
+
+Dawney rose; tobacco smoke was wreathed round his unruffled hair.
+
+"Touching Villa Rubein," he said, "shall I call for you?  It's a
+mixed household, English mostly--very decent people."
+
+"No, thank you.  I shall be painting all day.  Haven't time to know
+the sort of people who expect one to change one's clothes."
+
+"As you like; ta-to!"  And, puffing out his chest, Dawney vanished
+through a blanket looped across the doorway.
+
+Harz set a pot of coffee on a spirit-lamp, and cut himself some
+bread.  Through the window the freshness of the morning came; the
+scent of sap and blossom and young leaves; the scent of earth, and
+the mountains freed from winter; the new flights and songs of birds;
+all the odorous, enchanted, restless Spring.
+
+There suddenly appeared through the doorway a white rough-haired
+terrier dog, black-marked about the face, with shaggy tan eyebrows.
+He sniffed at Harz, showed the whites round his eyes, and uttered a
+sharp bark.  A young voice called:
+
+"Scruff! Thou naughty dog!"  Light footsteps were heard on the
+stairs; from the distance a thin, high voice called:
+
+"Greta! You mustn't go up there!"
+
+A little girl of twelve, with long fair hair under a wide-brimmed
+hat, slipped in.
+
+Her blue eyes opened wide, her face flushed up.  That face was not
+regular; its cheek-bones were rather prominent, the nose was
+flattish; there was about it an air, innocent, reflecting, quizzical,
+shy.
+
+"Oh!" she said.
+
+Harz smiled: "Good-morning!  This your dog?"
+
+She did not answer, but looked at him with soft bewilderment; then
+running to the dog seized him by the collar.
+
+"Scr-ruff! Thou naughty dog-the baddest dog!"  The ends of her hair
+fell about him; she looked up at Harz, who said:
+
+"Not at all!  Let me give him some bread."
+
+"Oh no! You must not--I will beat him--and tell him he is bad; then
+he shall not do such things again.  Now he is sulky; he looks so
+always when he is sulky.  Is this your home?"
+
+"For the present; I am a visitor."
+
+"But I think you are of this country, because you speak like it."
+
+"Certainly, I am a Tyroler."
+
+"I have to talk English this morning, but I do not like it very much-
+-because, also I am half Austrian, and I like it best; but my sister,
+Christian, is all English.  Here is Miss Naylor; she shall be very
+angry with me."
+
+And pointing to the entrance with a rosy-tipped forefinger, she again
+looked ruefully at Harz.
+
+There came into the room with a walk like the hopping of a bird an
+elderly, small lady, in a grey serge dress, with narrow bands of
+claret-coloured velveteen; a large gold cross dangled from a steel
+chain on her chest; she nervously twisted her hands, clad in black
+kid gloves, rather white about the seams.
+
+Her hair was prematurely grey; her quick eyes brown; her mouth
+twisted at one corner; she held her face, kind-looking, but long and
+narrow, rather to one side, and wore on it a look of apology.  Her
+quick sentences sounded as if she kept them on strings, and wanted to
+draw them back as soon as she had let them forth.
+
+"Greta, how can, you do such things?  I don't know what your father
+would say!  I am sure I don't know how to--so extraordinary--"
+
+"Please!" said Harz.
+
+"You must come at once--so very sorry--so awkward!"  They were
+standing in a ring: Harz with his eyebrows working up and down; the
+little lady fidgeting her parasol; Greta, flushed and pouting, her
+eyes all dewy, twisting an end of fair hair round her finger.
+
+"Oh, look!"  The coffee had boiled over.  Little brown streams
+trickled spluttering from the pan; the dog, with ears laid back and
+tail tucked in, went scurrying round the room.  A feeling of
+fellowship fell on them at once.
+
+"Along the wall is our favourite walk, and Scruff--so awkward, so
+unfortunate--we did not think any one lived here--the shutters are
+cracked, the paint is peeling off so dreadfully.  Have you been long
+in Botzen?  Two months?  Fancy!  You are not English?  You are
+Tyrolese?  But you speak English so well--there for seven years?
+Really?  So fortunate!--It is Greta's day for English."
+
+Miss Naylor's eyes darted bewildered glances at the roof where the
+crossing of the beams made such deep shadows; at the litter of
+brushes, tools, knives, and colours on a table made out of packing-
+cases; at the big window, innocent of glass, and flush with the
+floor, whence dangled a bit of rusty chain--relic of the time when
+the place had been a store-loft; her eyes were hastily averted from
+an unfnished figure of the nude.
+
+Greta, with feet crossed, sat on a coloured blanket, dabbling her
+fnger in a little pool of coffee, and gazing up at Harz.  And he
+thought: 'I should like to paint her like that.  "A forget-me-not."'
+
+He took out his chalks to make a sketch of her.
+
+"Shall you show me?" cried out Greta, scrambling to her feet.
+
+"'Will,' Greta--'will'; how often must I tell you?  I think we should
+be going--it is very late--your father--so very kind of you, but I
+think we should be going.  Scruff!"   Miss Naylor gave the floor two
+taps.  The terrier backed into a plaster cast which came down on his
+tail, and sent him flying through the doorway.  Greta followed
+swiftly, crying:
+
+"Ach! poor Scrufee!"
+
+Miss Naylor crossed the room; bowing, she murmured an apology, and
+also disappeared.
+
+Harz was left alone, his guests were gone; the little girl with the
+fair hair and the eyes like forget-me-nots, the little lady with
+kindly gestures and bird-like walk, the terrier.  He looked round
+him; the room seemed very empty.  Gnawing his moustache, he muttered
+at the fallen cast.
+
+Then taking up his brush, stood before his picture, smiling and
+frowning.  Soon he had forgotten it all in his work.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+It was early morning four days later, and Harz was loitering
+homewards.  The shadows of the clouds passing across the vines were
+vanishing over the jumbled roofs and green-topped spires of the town.
+A strong sweet wind was blowing from the mountains, there was a stir
+in the branches of the trees, and flakes of the late blossom were
+drifting down.  Amongst the soft green pods of a kind of poplar
+chafers buzzed, and numbers of their little brown bodies were strewn
+on the path.
+
+He passed a bench where a girl sat sketching.  A puff of wind whirled
+her drawing to the ground; Harz ran to pick it up.  She took it from
+him with a bow; but, as he turned away, she tore the sketch across.
+
+"Ah!" he said; "why did you do that?"
+
+This girl, who stood with a bit of the torn sketch in either hand,
+was slight and straight; and her face earnest and serene.  She gazed
+at Harz with large, clear, greenish eyes; her lips and chin were
+defiant, her forehead tranquil.
+
+"I don't like it."
+
+"Will you let me look at it?  I am a painter."
+
+"It isn't worth looking at, but--if you wish--"
+
+He put the two halves of the sketch together.
+
+"You see!" she said at last; "I told you."
+
+Harz did not answer, still looking at the sketch.  The girl frowned.
+
+Harz asked her suddenly:
+
+"Why do you paint?"
+
+She coloured, and said:
+
+"Show me what is wrong."
+
+"I cannot show you what is wrong, there is nothing wrong--but why do
+you paint?"
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+Harz shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"You've no business to do that," said the girl in a hurt voice; "I
+want to know."
+
+"Your heart is not in it," said Harz.
+
+She looked at him, startled; her eyes had grown thoughtful.
+
+"I suppose that is it.  There are so many other things--"
+
+"There should be nothing else," said Harz.
+
+She broke in: "I don't want always to be thinking of myself.
+Suppose--"
+
+"Ah! When you begin supposing!"
+
+The girl confronted him; she had torn the sketch again.
+
+"You mean that if it does not matter enough, one had better not do it
+at all.  I don't know if you are right--I think you are."
+
+There was the sound of a nervous cough, and Harz saw behind him his
+three visitors--Miss Naylor offering him her hand; Greta, flushed,
+with a bunch of wild flowers, staring intently in his face; and the
+terrier, sniffing at his trousers.
+
+Miss Naylor broke an awkward silence.
+
+"We wondered if you would still be here, Christian.  I am sorry to
+interrupt you--I was not aware that you knew Mr.Herr--"
+
+"Harz is my name--we were just talking"
+
+"About my sketch.  Oh, Greta, you do tickle!  Will you come and have
+breakfast with us to-day, Herr Harz?  It's our turn, you know."
+
+Harz, glancing at his dusty clothes, excused himself.
+
+But Greta in a pleading voice said: "Oh! do come!  Scruff likes you.
+It is so dull when there is nobody for breakfast but ourselves."
+
+Miss Naylor's mouth began to twist.  Harz hurriedly broke in:
+
+"Thank you.  I will come with pleasure; you don't mind my being
+dirty?"
+
+"Oh no! we do not mind; then we shall none of us wash, and afterwards
+I shall show you my rabbits."
+
+Miss Naylor, moving from foot to foot, like a bird on its perch,
+exclaimed:
+
+"I hope you won't regret it, not a very good meal--the girls are so
+impulsive--such informal invitation; we shall be very glad."
+
+But Greta pulled softly at her sister's sleeve, and Christian,
+gathering her things, led the way.
+
+Harz followed in amazement; nothing of this kind had come into his
+life before.  He kept shyly glancing at the girls; and, noting the
+speculative innocence in Greta's eyes, he smiled.  They soon came to
+two great poplar-trees, which stood, like sentinels, one on either
+side of an unweeded gravel walk leading through lilac bushes to a
+house painted dull pink, with green-shuttered windows, and a roof of
+greenish slate.  Over the door in faded crimson letters were written
+the words, "Villa Rubein."
+
+"That is to the stables," said Greta, pointing down a path, where
+some pigeons were sunning themselves on a wall.  "Uncle Nic keeps his
+horses there: Countess and Cuckoo--his horses begin with C, because
+of Chris--they are quite beautiful.  He says he could drive them to
+Kingdom-Come and they would not turn their hair.  Bow, and say 'Good-
+morning' to our house!"
+
+Harz bowed.
+
+"Father said all strangers should, and I think it brings good luck."
+>From the doorstep she looked round at Harz, then ran into the house.
+
+A broad, thick-set man, with stiff, brushed-up hair, a short, brown,
+bushy beard parted at the chin, a fresh complexion, and blue glasses
+across a thick nose, came out, and called in a bluff voice:
+
+"Ha! my good dears, kiss me quick--prrt!  How goes it then this
+morning?  A good walk, hein?"  The sound of many loud rapid kisses
+followed.
+
+"Ha, Fraulein, good!"  He became aware of Harz's figure standing in
+the doorway: "Und der Herr?"
+
+Miss Naylor hurriedly explained.
+
+"Good!  An artist!  Kommen Sie herein, I am delight.  You will
+breakfast?  I too--yes, yes, my dears--I too breakfast with you this
+morning.  I have the hunter's appetite."
+
+Harz, looking at him keenly, perceived him to be of middle height and
+age, stout, dressed in a loose holland jacket, a very white, starched
+shirt, and blue silk sash; that he looked particularly clean, had an
+air of belonging to Society, and exhaled a really fine aroma of
+excellent cigars and the best hairdresser's essences.
+
+The room they entered was long and rather bare; there was a huge map
+on the wall, and below it a pair of globes on crooked supports,
+resembling two inflated frogs erect on their hind legs.  In one
+corner was a cottage piano, close to a writing-table heaped with
+books and papers; this nook, sacred to Christian, was foreign to the
+rest of the room, which was arranged with supernatural neatness.  A
+table was laid for breakfast, and the sun-warmed air came in through
+French windows.
+
+The meal went merrily; Herr Paul von Morawitz was never in such
+spirits as at table.  Words streamed from him.  Conversing with Harz,
+he talked of Art as who should say: "One does not claim to be a
+connoisseur--pas si bete--still, one has a little knowledge, que
+diable!"  He recommended him a man in the town who sold cigars that
+were "not so very bad."  He consumed porridge, ate an omelette; and
+bending across to Greta gave her a sounding kiss, muttering: "Kiss me
+quick!"--an expression he had picked up in a London music-hall, long
+ago, and considered chic.  He asked his daughters' plans, and held
+out porridge to the terrier, who refused it with a sniff.
+
+"Well," he said suddenly, looking at Miss Naylor, "here is a
+gentleman who has not even heard our names!"
+
+The little lady began her introductions in a breathless voice.
+
+"Good!"  Herr Paul said, puffing out his lips: "Now we know each
+other!" and, brushing up the ends of his moustaches, he carried off
+Harz into another room, decorated with pipe-racks, prints of dancing-
+girls, spittoons, easy-chairs well-seasoned by cigar smoke, French
+novels, and newspapers.
+
+The household at Villa Rubein was indeed of a mixed and curious
+nature.  Cut on both floors by corridors, the Villa was divided into
+four divisions; each of which had its separate inhabitants, an
+arrangement which had come about in the following way:
+
+When old Nicholas Treffry died, his estate, on the boundary of
+Cornwall, had been sold and divided up among his three surviving
+children--Nicholas, who was much the eldest, a partner in the well-
+known firm of Forsyte and Treffry, teamen, of the Strand; Constance,
+married to a man called Decie; and Margaret, at her father's death
+engaged to the curate of the parish, John Devorell, who shortly
+afterwards became its rector.  By his marriage with Margaret Treffry
+the rector had one child called Christian.  Soon after this he came
+into some property, and died, leaving it unfettered to his widow.
+Three years went by, and when the child was six years old, Mrs.
+Devorell, still young and pretty, came to live in London with her
+brother Nicholas.  It was there that she met Paul von Morawitz--the
+last of an old Czech family, who had lived for many hundred years on
+their estates near Budweiss.  Paul had been left an orphan at the age
+of ten, and without a solitary ancestral acre.  Instead of acres, he
+inherited the faith that nothing was too good for a von Morawitz.  In
+later years his savoir faire enabled him to laugh at faith, but it
+stayed quietly with him all the same.  The absence of acres was of no
+great consequence, for through his mother, the daughter of a banker
+in Vienna, he came into a well-nursed fortune.  It befitted a von
+Morawitz that he should go into the Cavalry, but, unshaped for
+soldiering, he soon left the Service; some said he had a difference
+with his Colonel over the quality of food provided during some
+manoeuvres; others that he had retired because his chargers did not
+fit his legs, which were, indeed, rather round.
+
+He had an admirable appetite for pleasure; a man-about-town's life
+suited him.  He went his genial, unreflecting, costly way in Vienna,
+Paris, London.  He loved exclusively those towns, and boasted that he
+was as much at home in one as in another.  He combined exuberant
+vitality with fastidiousness of palate, and devoted both to the
+acquisition of a special taste in women, weeds, and wines; above all
+he was blessed with a remarkable digestion.  He was thirty when he
+met Mrs. Devorell; and she married him because he was so very
+different from anybody she had ever seen.  People more dissimilar
+were never mated.  To Paul--accustomed to stage doors--freshness,
+serene tranquillity, and obvious purity were the baits; he had run
+through more than half his fortune, too, and the fact that she had
+money was possibly not overlooked.  Be that as it may, he was fond of
+her; his heart was soft, he developed a domestic side.
+
+Greta was born to them after a year of marriage.  The instinct of the
+"freeman" was, however, not dead in Paul; he became a gambler.  He
+lost the remainder of his fortune without being greatly disturbed.
+When he began to lose his wife's fortune too things naturally became
+more difficult.  Not too much remained when Nicholas Treffry stepped
+in, and caused his sister to settle what was left on her daughters,
+after providing a life-interest for herself and Paul.  Losing his
+supplies, the good man had given up his cards.  But the instinct of
+the "freeman" was still living in his breast; he took to drink.  He
+was never grossly drunk, and rarely very sober.  His wife sorrowed
+over this new passion; her health, already much enfeebled, soon broke
+down.  The doctors sent her to the Tyrol.  She seemed to benefit by
+this, and settled down at Botzen.  The following year, when Greta was
+just ten, she died.  It was a shock to Paul.  He gave up excessive
+drinking; became a constant smoker, and lent full rein to his natural
+domesticity.  He was fond of both the girls, but did not at all
+understand them; Greta, his own daughter, was his favourite.  Villa
+Rubein remained their home; it was cheap and roomy.  Money, since
+Paul became housekeeper to himself, was scarce.
+
+About this time Mrs. Decie, his wife's sister, whose husband had died
+in the East, returned to England; Paul invited her to come and live
+with them.  She had her own rooms, her own servant; the arrangement
+suited Paul--it was economically sound, and there was some one always
+there to take care of the girls.  In truth he began to feel the
+instinct of the "freeman" rising again within him; it was pleasant to
+run over to Vienna now and then; to play piquet at a Club in Gries,
+of which he was the shining light; in a word, to go "on the tiles" a
+little.  One could not always mourn--even if a woman were an angel;
+moreover, his digestion was as good as ever.
+
+The fourth quarter of this Villa was occupied by Nicholas Treffry,
+whose annual sojourn out of England perpetually surprised himself.
+Between him and his young niece, Christian, there existed, however, a
+rare sympathy; one of those affections between the young and old,
+which, mysteriously born like everything in life, seems the only end
+and aim to both, till another feeling comes into the younger heart.
+
+Since a long and dangerous illness, he had been ordered to avoid the
+English winter, and at the commencement of each spring he would
+appear at Botzen, driving his own horses by easy stages from the
+Italian Riviera, where he spent the coldest months.  He always stayed
+till June before going back to his London Club, and during all that
+time he let no day pass without growling at foreigners, their habits,
+food, drink, and raiment, with a kind of big dog's growling that did
+nobody any harm.  The illness had broken him very much; he was
+seventy, but looked more.  He had a servant, a Luganese, named
+Dominique, devoted to him.  Nicholas Treffry had found him overworked
+in an hotel, and had engaged him with the caution: "Look--here,
+Dominique! I swear!"  To which Dominique, dark of feature, saturnine
+and ironical, had only replied: "Tres biens, M'sieur!"
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+Harz and his host sat in leather chairs; Herr Paul's square back was
+wedged into a cushion, his round legs crossed.  Both were smoking,
+and they eyed each other furtively, as men of different stamp do when
+first thrown together.  The young artist found his host extremely new
+and disconcerting; in his presence he felt both shy and awkward.
+Herr Paul, on the other hand, very much at ease, was thinking
+indolently:
+
+'Good-looking young fellow--comes of the people, I expect, not at all
+the manner of the world; wonder what he talks about.'
+
+Presently noticing that Harz was looking at a photograph, he said:
+"Ah! yes! that was a woman!  They are not to be found in these days.
+She could dance, the little Coralie!  Did you ever see such arms?
+Confess that she is beautiful, hein?"
+
+"She has individuality," said Harz.  "A fine type!"
+
+Herr Paul blew out a cloud of smoke.
+
+"Yes," he murmured, "she was fine all over!"  He had dropped his
+eyeglasses, and his full brown eyes, with little crow's-feet at the
+corners, wandered from his visitor to his cigar.
+
+'He'd be like a Satyr if he wasn't too clean,' thought Harz.  'Put
+vine leaves in his hair, paint him asleep, with his hands crossed,
+so!'
+
+"When I am told a person has individuality," Herr Paul was saying in
+a rich and husky voice, "I generally expect boots that bulge, an
+umbrella of improper colour; I expect a creature of 'bad form' as
+they say in England; who will shave some days and some days will not
+shave; who sometimes smells of India-rubber, and sometimes does not
+smell, which is discouraging!"
+
+"You do not approve of individuality?" said Harz shortly.
+
+"Not if it means doing, and thinking, as those who know better do not
+do, or think."
+
+"And who are those who know better?"
+
+"Ah! my dear, you are asking me a riddle?  Well, then--Society, men
+of birth, men of recognised position, men above eccentricity, in a
+word, of reputation."
+
+Harz looked at him fixedly.  "Men who haven't the courage of their
+own ideas, not even the courage to smell of India-rubber; men who
+have no desires, and so can spend all their time making themselves
+flat!"
+
+Herr Paul drew out a red silk handkerchief and wiped his beard.  "I
+assure you, my dear," he said, "it is easier to be flat; it is more
+respectable to be flat.  Himmel! why not, then, be flat?"
+
+"Like any common fellow?"
+
+"Certes; like any common fellow--like me, par exemple!"  Herr Paul
+waved his hand.  When he exercised unusual tact, he always made use
+of a French expression.
+
+Harz flushed.  Herr Paul followed up his victory.  "Come, come!" he
+said.  "Pass me my men of repute! que diable! we are not anarchists."
+
+"Are you sure?" said Harz.
+
+Herr Paul twisted his moustache.  "I beg your pardon," he said
+slowly.  But at this moment the door was opened; a rumbling voice
+remarked: "Morning, Paul.  Who's your visitor?"  Harz saw a tall,
+bulky figure in the doorway.
+
+"Come in,"' called out Herr Paul.  "Let me present to you a new
+acquaintance, an artist: Herr Harz--Mr. Nicholas Treffry.  Psumm
+bumm! All this introducing is dry work."  And going to the sideboard
+he poured out three glasses of a light, foaming beer.
+
+Mr. Treffry waved it from him: "Not for me," he said: "Wish I could!
+They won't let me look at it."  And walking over, to the window with
+a heavy tread, which trembled like his voice, he sat down.  There was
+something in his gait like the movements of an elephant's hind legs.
+He was very tall (it was said, with the customary exaggeration of
+family tradition, that there never had been a male Treffry under six
+feet in height), but now he stooped, and had grown stout.  There was
+something at once vast and unobtrusive about his personality.
+
+He wore a loose brown velvet jacket, and waistcoat, cut to show a
+soft frilled shirt and narrow black ribbon tie; a thin gold chain was
+looped round his neck and fastened to his fob.  His heavy cheeks had
+folds in them like those in a bloodhound's face.  He wore big,
+drooping, yellow-grey moustaches, which he had a habit of sucking,
+and a goatee beard.  He had long loose ears that might almost have
+been said to gap.  On his head there was a soft black hat, large in
+the brim and low in the crown.  His grey eyes, heavy-lidded, twinkled
+under their bushy brows with a queer, kind cynicism.  As a young man
+he had sown many a wild oat; but he had also worked and made money in
+business; he had, in fact, burned the candle at both ends; but he had
+never been unready to do his fellows a good turn.  He had a passion
+for driving, and his reckless method of pursuing this art had caused
+him to be nicknamed: "The notorious Treffry."
+
+Once, when he was driving tandem down a hill with a loose rein, the
+friend beside him had said: "For all the good you're doing with those
+reins, Treffry, you might as well throw them on the horses' necks."
+
+"Just so," Treffry had answered.  At the bottom of the hill they had
+gone over a wall into a potato patch.  Treffry had broken several
+ribs; his friend had gone unharmed.
+
+He was a great sufferer now, but, constitutionally averse to being
+pitied, he had a disconcerting way of humming, and this, together
+with the shake in his voice, and his frequent use of peculiar
+phrases, made the understanding of his speech depend at times on
+intuition rather than intelligence.
+
+The clock began to strike eleven.  Harz muttered an excuse, shook
+hands with his host, and bowing to his new acquaintance, went away.
+He caught a glimpse of Greta's face against the window, and waved his
+hand to her.  In the road he came on Dawney, who was turning in
+between the poplars, with thumbs as usual hooked in the armholes of
+his waistcoat.
+
+"Hallo!" the latter said.
+
+"Doctor!" Harz answered slyly; "the Fates outwitted me, it seems."
+
+"Serve you right," said Dawney, "for your confounded egoism! Wait
+here till I come out, I shan't be many minutes."
+
+But Harz went on his way.  A cart drawn by cream-coloured oxen was
+passing slowly towards the bridge.  In front of the brushwood piled
+on it two peasant girls were sitting with their feet on a mat of
+grass--the picture of contentment.
+
+"I'm wasting my time!" he thought.  "I've done next to nothing in two
+months.  Better get back to London!  That girl will never make a
+painter!"  She would never make a painter, but there was something in
+her that he could not dismiss so rapidly.  She was not exactly
+beautiful, but she was sympathetic.  The brow was pleasing, with
+dark-brown hair softly turned back, and eyes so straight and shining.
+The two sisters were very different!  The little one was innocent,
+yet mysterious; the elder seemed as clear as crystal!
+
+He had entered the town, where the arcaded streets exuded their
+peculiar pungent smell of cows and leather, wood-smoke, wine-casks,
+and drains.  The sound of rapid wheels over the stones made him turn
+his head.  A carriage drawn by red-roan horses was passing at a great
+pace.  People stared at it, standing still, and looking alarmed.  It
+swung from side to side and vanished round a corner.  Harz saw Mr.
+Nicholas Treffry in a long, whitish dust-coat; his Italian servant,
+perched behind, was holding to the seat-rail, with a nervous grin on
+his dark face.
+
+'Certainly,' Harz thought, 'there's no getting away from these people
+this morning--they are everywhere.'
+
+In his studio he began to sort his sketches, wash his brushes, and
+drag out things he had accumulated during his two months' stay.  He
+even began to fold his blanket door.  But suddenly he stopped.  Those
+two girls!  Why not try?  What a picture!  The two heads, the sky,
+and leaves!  Begin to-morrow!  Against that window--no, better at the
+Villa!  Call the picture--Spring...!
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+The wind, stirring among trees and bushes, flung the young leaves
+skywards.  The trembling of their silver linings was like the joyful
+flutter of a heart at good news.  It was one of those Spring mornings
+when everything seems full of a sweet restlessness--soft clouds
+chasing fast across the sky; soft scents floating forth and dying;
+the notes of birds, now shrill and sweet, now hushed in silences; all
+nature striving for something, nothing at peace.
+
+Villa Rubein withstood the influence of the day, and wore its usual
+look of rest and isolation.  Harz sent in his card, and asked to see
+"der Herr."  The servant, a grey-eyed, clever-looking Swiss with no
+hair on his face, came back saying:
+
+"Der Herr, mein Herr, is in the Garden gone."  Harz followed him.
+
+Herr Paul, a small white flannel cap on his head, gloves on his
+hands, and glasses on his nose, was watering a rosebush, and humming
+the serenade from Faust.
+
+This aspect of the house was very different from the other.  The sun
+fell on it, and over a veranda creepers clung and scrambled in long
+scrolls.  There was a lawn, with freshly mown grass; flower-beds were
+laid out, and at the end of an avenue of young acacias stood an
+arbour covered with wisteria.
+
+In the east, mountain peaks--fingers of snow--glittered above the
+mist.  A grave simplicity lay on that scene, on the roofs and spires,
+the valleys and the dreamy hillsides, with their yellow scars and
+purple bloom, and white cascades, like tails of grey horses swishing
+in the wind.
+
+Herr Paul held out his hand: "What can we do for you?" he said.
+
+"I have to beg a favour," replied Harz.  "I wish to paint your
+daughters.  I will bring the canvas here--they shall have no trouble.
+I would paint them in the garden when they have nothing else to do."
+
+Herr Paul looked at him dubiously--ever since the previous day he had
+been thinking: 'Queer bird, that painter--thinks himself the devil of
+a swell!  Looks a determined fellow too!'  Now--staring in the
+painter's face--it seemed to him, on the whole, best if some one else
+refused this permission.
+
+"With all the pleasure, my dear sir," he said.  "Come, let us ask
+these two young ladies!" and putting down his hose, he led the way
+towards the arbour, thinking: 'You'll be disappointed, my young
+conqueror, or I'm mistaken.'
+
+Miss Naylor and the girls were sitting in the shade, reading La
+Fontaine's fables.  Greta, with one eye on her governess, was
+stealthily cutting a pig out of orange peel.
+
+"Ah! my dear dears!" began Herr Paul, who in the presence of Miss
+Naylor always paraded his English.  "Here is our friend, who has a
+very flattering request to make; he would paint you, yes--both
+together, alfresco, in the air, in the sunshine, with the birds, the
+little birds!"
+
+Greta, gazing at Harz, gushed deep pink, and furtively showed him her
+pig.
+
+Christian said: "Paint us?  Oh no!"
+
+She saw Harz looking at her, and added, slowly: "If you really wish
+it, I suppose we could!" then dropped her eyes.
+
+"Ah!" said Herr Paul raising his brows till his glasses fell from his
+nose: "And what says Gretchen?  Does she want to be handed up to
+posterities a little peacock along with the other little birds?"
+
+Greta, who had continued staring at the painter, said: "Of--course--
+I--want--to--be."
+
+"Prrt!" said Herr Paul, looking at Miss Naylor.  The little lady
+indeed opened her mouth wide, but all that came forth was a tiny
+squeak, as sometimes happens when one is anxious to say something,
+and has not arranged beforehand what it shall be.
+
+The affair seemed ended; Harz heaved a sigh of satisfaction.  But
+Herr Paul had still a card to play.
+
+"There is your Aunt," he said; "there are things to be considered--
+one must certainly inquire--so, we shall see."  Kissing Greta loudly
+on both cheeks, he went towards the house.
+
+"What makes you want to paint us?" Christian asked, as soon as he was
+gone.
+
+"I think it very wrong," Miss Naylor blurted out.
+
+"Why?" said Harz, frowning.
+
+"Greta is so young--there are lessons--it is such a waste of time!"
+
+His eyebrows twitched: "Ah! You think so!"
+
+"I don't see why it is a waste of time," said Christian quietly;
+"there are lots of hours when we sit here and do nothing."
+
+"And it is very dull," put in Greta, with a pout.
+
+"You are rude, Greta," said Miss Naylor in a little rage, pursing her
+lips, and taking up her knitting.
+
+"I think it seems always rude to speak the truth," said Greta.  Miss
+Naylor looked at her in that concentrated manner with which she was
+in the habit of expressing displeasure.
+
+But at this moment a servant came, and said that Mrs. Decie would be
+glad to see Herr Harz.  The painter made them a stiff bow, and
+followed the servant to the house.  Miss Naylor and the two girls
+watched his progress with apprehensive eyes; it was clear that he had
+been offended.
+
+Crossing the veranda, and passing through an open window hung with
+silk curtains, Hart entered a cool dark room.  This was Mrs. Decie's
+sanctum, where she conducted correspondence, received her visitors,
+read the latest literature, and sometimes, when she had bad
+headaches, lay for hours on the sofa, with a fan, and her eyes
+closed.  There was a scent of sandalwood, a suggestion of the East, a
+kind of mystery, in here, as if things like chairs and tables were
+not really what they seemed, but something much less commonplace.
+
+The visitor looked twice, to be quite sure of anything; there were
+many plants, bead curtains, and a deal of silverwork and china.
+
+Mrs. Decie came forward in the slightly rustling silk which--whether
+in or out of fashion--always accompanied her.  A tall woman, over
+fifty, she moved as if she had been tied together at the knees.  Her
+face was long, with broad brows, from which her sandy-grey hair was
+severely waved back; she had pale eyes, and a perpetual, pale,
+enigmatic smile.  Her complexion had been ruined by long residence in
+India, and might unkindly have been called fawn-coloured.  She came
+close to Harz, keeping her eyes on his, with her head bent slightly
+forward.
+
+"We are so pleased to know you," she said, speaking in a voice which
+had lost all ring.  "It is charming to find some one in these parts
+who can help us to remember that there is such a thing as Art.  We
+had Mr. C--- here last autumn, such a charming fellow.  He was so
+interested in the native customs and dresses.  You are a subject
+painter, too, I think?  Won't you sit down?"
+
+She went on for some time, introducing painters' names, asking
+questions, skating round the edge of what was personal.  And the
+young man stood before her with a curious little smile fixed on his
+lips.  'She wants to know whether I'm worth powder and shot,' he
+thought.
+
+"You wish to paint my nieces?" Mrs. Decie said at last, leaning back
+on her settee.
+
+"I wish to have that honour," Harz answered with a bow.
+
+"And what sort of picture did you think of?"
+
+"That," said Harz, "is in the future.  I couldn't tell you."  And he
+thought: 'Will she ask me if I get my tints in Paris, like the woman
+Tramper told me of?'
+
+The perpetual pale smile on Mrs. Decie's face seemed to invite his
+confidence, yet to warn him that his words would be sucked in
+somewhere behind those broad fine brows, and carefully sorted.  Mrs.
+Decie, indeed, was thinking: 'Interesting young man, regular
+Bohemian--no harm in that at his age; something Napoleonic in his
+face; probably has no dress clothes.  Yes, should like to see more of
+him!'  She had a fine eye for points of celebrity; his name was
+unfamiliar, would probably have been scouted by that famous artist
+Mr. C---, but she felt her instinct urging her on to know him.  She
+was, to do her justice, one of those "lion" finders who seek the
+animal for pleasure, not for the glory it brings them; she had the
+courage of her instincts--lion-entities were indispensable to her,
+but she trusted to divination to secure them; nobody could foist a
+"lion" on her.
+
+"It will be very nice.  You will stay and have some lunch?  The
+arrangements here are rather odd.  Such a mixed household--but there
+is always lunch at two o'clock for any one who likes, and we all dine
+at seven.  You would have your sittings in the afternoons, perhaps?
+I should so like to see your sketches.  You are using the old house
+on the wall for studio; that is so original of you!"
+
+Harz would not stay to lunch, but asked if he might begin work that
+afternoon; he left a little suffocated by the sandalwood and sympathy
+of this sphinx-like woman.
+
+Walking home along the river wall, with the singing of the larks and
+thrushes, the rush of waters, the humming of the chafers in his ears,
+he felt that he would make something fine of this subject.  Before
+his eyes the faces of the two girls continually started up, framed by
+the sky, with young leaves guttering against their cheeks.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+Three days had passed since Harz began his picture, when early in the
+morning, Greta came from Villa Rubein along the river dyke and sat
+down on a bench from which the old house on the wall was visible.
+She had not been there long before Harz came out.
+
+"I did not knock," said Greta, "because you would not have heard, and
+it is so early, so I have been waiting for you a quarter of an hour."
+
+Selecting a rosebud, from some flowers in her hand, she handed it to
+him.  "That is my first rosebud this year," she said; "it is for you
+because you are painting me.  To-day I am thirteen, Herr Harz; there
+is not to be a sitting, because it is my birthday; but, instead, we
+are all going to Meran to see the play of Andreas Hofer.  You are to
+come too, please; I am here to tell you, and the others shall be here
+directly."
+
+Harz bowed: "And who are the others?"
+
+"Christian, and Dr. Edmund, Miss Naylor, and Cousin Teresa.  Her
+husband is ill, so she is sad, but to-day she is going to forget
+that.  It is not good to be always sad, is it, Herr Harz?"
+
+He laughed: "You could not be."
+
+Greta answered gravely: "Oh yes, I could.  I too am often sad.  You
+are making fun.  You are not to make fun to-day, because it is my
+birthday.  Do you think growing up is nice, Herr Harz ?"
+
+"No, Fraulein Greta, it is better to have all the time before you."
+
+They walked on side by side.
+
+"I think," said Greta, "you are very much afraid of losing time.
+Chris says that time is nothing."
+
+"Time is everything," responded Harz.
+
+"She says that time is nothing, and thought is everything," Greta
+murmured, rubbing a rose against her cheek, "but I think you cannot
+have a thought unless you have the time to think it in.  There are
+the others!  Look!"
+
+A cluster of sunshades on the bridge glowed for a moment and was lost
+in shadow.
+
+"Come," said Harz, "let's join them!"
+
+At Meran, under Schloss Tirol, people were streaming across the
+meadows into the open theatre.  Here were tall fellows in mountain
+dress, with leather breeches, bare knees, and hats with eagles'
+feathers; here were fruit-sellers, burghers and their wives,
+mountebanks, actors, and every kind of visitor.  The audience, packed
+into an enclosure of high boards, sweltered under the burning sun.
+Cousin Teresa, tall and thin, with hard, red cheeks, shaded her
+pleasant eyes with her hand.
+
+The play began.  It depicted the rising in the Tyrol of 1809: the
+village life, dances and yodelling; murmurings and exhortations, the
+warning beat of drums; then the gathering, with flintlocks,
+pitchforks, knives; the battle and victory; the homecoming, and
+festival.  Then the second gathering, the roar of cannon; betrayal,
+capture, death.  The impassive figure of the patriot Andreas Hofer
+always in front, black-bearded, leathern-girdled, under the blue sky,
+against a screen of mountains.
+
+Harz and Christian sat behind the others.  He seemed so intent on the
+play that she did not speak, but watched his face, rigid with a kind
+of cold excitement; he seemed to be transported by the life passing
+before them.  Something of his feeling seized on her; when the play
+was over she too was trembling.  In pushing their way out they became
+separated from the others.
+
+"There's a short cut to the station here," said Christian; "let's go
+this way."
+
+The path rose a little; a narrow stream crept alongside the meadow,
+and the hedge was spangled with wild roses.  Christian kept glancing
+shyly at the painter.  Since their meeting on the river wall her
+thoughts had never been at rest.  This stranger, with his keen face,
+insistent eyes, and ceaseless energy, had roused a strange feeling in
+her; his words had put shape to something in her not yet expressed.
+She stood aside at a stile to make way for some peasant boys, dusty
+and rough-haired, who sang and whistled as they went by.
+
+"I was like those boys once," said Harz.
+
+Christian turned to him quickly.  "Ah! that was why you felt the
+play, so much."
+
+"It's my country up there.  I was born amongst the mountains.  I
+looked after the cows, and slept in hay-cocks, and cut the trees in
+winter.  They used to call me a 'black sheep,' a 'loafer' in my
+village."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Ah! why?  I worked as hard as any of them.  But I wanted to get
+away.  Do you think I could have stayed there all my life?"
+
+Christian's eyes grew eager.
+
+"If people don't understand what it is you want to do, they always
+call you a loafer!" muttered Harz.
+
+"But you did what you meant to do in spite of them," Christian said.
+
+For herself it was so hard to finish or decide.  When in the old days
+she told Greta stories, the latter, whose instinct was always for the
+definite, would say: "And what came at the end, Chris?  Do finish it
+this morning!" but Christian never could.  Her thoughts were deep,
+vague, dreamy, invaded by both sides of every question.  Whatever she
+did, her needlework, her verse-making, her painting, all had its
+charm; but it was not always what it was intended for at the
+beginning.  Nicholas Treffry had once said of her: "When Chris starts
+out to make a hat, it may turn out an altar-cloth, but you may bet it
+won't be a hat."  It was her instinct to look for what things meant;
+and this took more than all her time.  She knew herself better than
+most girls of nineteen, but it was her reason that had informed her,
+not her feelings.  In her sheltered life, her heart had never been
+ruffled except by rare fits of passion--"tantrums" old Nicholas
+Treffry dubbed them--at what seemed to her mean or unjust.
+
+"If I were a man," she said, "and going to be great, I should have
+wanted to begin at the very bottom as you did."
+
+"Yes," said Harz quickly, "one should be able to feel everything."
+
+She did not notice how simply he assumed that he was going to be
+great.  He went on, a smile twisting his mouth unpleasantly beneath
+its dark moustache
+
+"Not many people think like you! It's a crime not to have been born a
+gentleman."
+
+"That's a sneer," said Christian; "I didn't think you would have
+sneered!"
+
+"It is true.  What is the use of pretending that it isn't?"
+
+"It may be true, but it is finer not to say it!"
+
+"By Heavens!" said Harz, striking one hand into the other, "if more
+truth were spoken there would not be so many shams."
+
+Christian looked down at him from her seat on the stile.
+
+"You are right all the same, Fraulein Christian," he added suddenly;
+"that's a very little business.  Work is what matters, and trying to
+see the beauty in the world."
+
+Christian's face changed.  She understood, well enough, this craving
+after beauty.  Slipping down from the stile, she drew a slow deep
+breath.
+
+"Yes!" she said.  Neither spoke for some time, then Harz said shyly:
+
+"If you and Fraulein Greta would ever like to come and see my studio,
+I should be so happy.  I would try and clean it up for you!"
+
+"I should like to come.  I could learn something.  I want to learn."
+
+They were both silent till the path joined the road.
+
+"We must be in front of the others; it's nice to be in front--let's
+dawdle.  I forgot--you never dawdle, Herr Harz."
+
+"After a big fit of work, I can dawdle against any one; then I get
+another fit of work--it's like appetite."
+
+"I'm always dawdling," answered Christian.
+
+By the roadside a peasant woman screwed up her sun-dried face, saying
+in a low voice: "Please, gracious lady, help me to lift this basket!"
+
+Christian stooped, but before she could raise it, Harz hoisted it up
+on his back.
+
+"All right," he nodded; "this good lady doesn't mind."
+
+The woman, looking very much ashamed, walked along by Christian; she
+kept rubbing her brown hands together, and saying; "Gracious lady, I
+would not have wished.  It is heavy, but I would not have wished."
+
+"I'm sure he'd rather carry it," said Christian.
+
+They had not gone far along the road, however, before the others
+passed them in a carriage, and at the strange sight Miss Naylor could
+be seen pursing her lips; Cousin Teresa nodding pleasantly; a smile
+on Dawney's face; and beside him Greta, very demure.  Harz began to
+laugh.
+
+"What are you laughing at?" asked Christian.
+
+"You English are so funny.  You mustn't do this here, you mustn't do
+that there, it's like sitting in a field of nettles.  If I were to
+walk with you without my coat, that little lady would fall off her
+seat."  His laugh infected Christian; they reached the station
+feeling that they knew each other better.
+
+The sun had dipped behind the mountains when the little train steamed
+down the valley.  All were subdued, and Greta, with a nodding head,
+slept fitfully.  Christian, in her corner, was looking out of the
+window, and Harz kept studying her profile.
+
+He tried to see her eyes.  He had remarked indeed that, whatever
+their expression, the brows, arched and rather wide apart, gave them
+a peculiar look of understanding.  He thought of his picture.  There
+was nothing in her face to seize on, it was too sympathetic, too much
+like light.  Yet her chin was firm, almost obstinate.
+
+The train stopped with a jerk; she looked round at him.  It was as
+though she had said: "You are my friend."
+
+At Villa Rubein, Herr Paul had killed the fatted calf for Greta's
+Fest.  When the whole party were assembled, he alone remained
+standing; and waving his arm above the cloth, cried: "My dears! Your
+happiness!  There are good things here--Come!"  And with a sly look,
+the air of a conjurer producing rabbits, he whipped the cover off the
+soup tureen:
+
+"Soup-turtle, fat, green fat!"  He smacked his lips.
+
+No servants were allowed, because, as Greta said to Harz:
+
+"It is that we are to be glad this evening."
+
+Geniality radiated from Herr Paul's countenance, mellow as a bowl of
+wine.  He toasted everybody, exhorting them to pleasure.
+
+Harz passed a cracker secretly behind Greta's head, and Miss Naylor,
+moved by a mysterious impulse, pulled it with a sort of gleeful
+horror; it exploded, and Greta sprang off her chair.  Scruff, seeing
+this, appeared suddenly on the sideboard with his forelegs in a plate
+of soup; without moving them, he turned his head, and appeared to
+accuse the company of his false position.  It was the signal for
+shrieks of laughter.  Scruff made no attempt to free his forelegs;
+but sniffed the soup, and finding that nothing happened, began to lap
+it.
+
+"Take him out! Oh! take him out!" wailed Greta, "he shall be ill!"
+
+"Allons! Mon cher!" cried Herr Paul, "c'est magnifique, mais, vous
+savez, ce nest guere la guerre!"  Scruff, with a wild spring, leaped
+past him to the ground.
+
+"Ah!" cried Miss Naylor, "the carpet!"  Fresh moans of mirth shook
+the table; for having tasted the wine of laughter, all wanted as much
+more as they could get.  When Scruff and his traces were effaced,
+Herr Paul took a ladle in his hand.
+
+"I have a toast," he said, waving it for silence; "a toast we will
+drink all together from our hearts; the toast of my little daughter,
+who to-day has thirteen years become; and there is also in our
+hearts," he continued, putting down the ladle and suddenly becoming
+grave, "the thought of one who is not today with us to see this
+joyful occasion; to her, too, in this our happiness we turn our
+hearts and glasses because it is her joy that we should yet be
+joyful.  I drink to my little daughter; may God her shadow bless!"
+
+All stood up, clinking their glasses, and drank: then, in the hush
+that followed, Greta, according to custom, began to sing a German
+carol; at the end of the fourth line she stopped, abashed.
+
+Heir Paul blew his nose loudly, and, taking up a cap that had fallen
+from a cracker, put it on.
+
+Every one followed his example, Miss Naylor attaining the distinction
+of a pair of donkey's ears, which she wore, after another glass of
+wine, with an air of sacrificing to the public good.
+
+At the end of supper came the moment for the offering of gifts.  Herr
+Paul had tied a handkerchief over Greta's eyes, and one by one they
+brought her presents.  Greta, under forfeit of a kiss, was bound to
+tell the giver by the feel of the gift.  Her swift, supple little
+hands explored noiselessly; and in every case she guessed right.
+
+Dawney's present, a kitten, made a scene by clawing at her hair.
+
+"That is Dr. Edmund's," she cried at once.  Christian saw that Harz
+had disappeared, but suddenly he came back breathless, and took his
+place at the end of the rank of givers.
+
+Advancing on tiptoe, he put his present into Greta's hands.  It was a
+small bronze copy of a Donatello statue.
+
+"Oh, Herr Harz!" cried Greta; "I saw it in the studio that day.  It
+stood on the table, and it is lovely."
+
+Mrs. Decie, thrusting her pale eyes close to it, murmured:
+"Charming!"
+
+Mr. Treffry took it in his forgers.
+
+"Rum little toad!  Cost a pot of money, I expect!"  He eyed Harz
+doubtfully.
+
+They went into the next room now, and Herr Paul, taking Greta's
+bandage, transferred it to his own eyes.
+
+"Take care--take care, all!" he cried; "I am a devil of a catcher,"
+and, feeling the air cautiously, he moved forward like a bear about
+to hug.  He caught no one.  Christian and Greta whisked under his
+arms and left him grasping at the air.  Mrs. Decie slipped past with
+astonishing agility.  Mr. Treffry, smoking his cigar, and barricaded
+in a corner, jeered: "Bravo, Paul!  The active beggar!  Can't he run!
+Go it, Greta!"
+
+At last Herr Paul caught Cousin Teresa, who, fattened against the
+wall, lost her head, and stood uttering tiny shrieks.
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Decie started playing The Blue Danube.  Herr Paul
+dropped the handkerchief, twisted his moustache up fiercely, glared
+round the room, and seizing Greta by the waist, began dancing
+furiously, bobbing up and down like a cork in lumpy water.  Cousin
+Teresa followed suit with Miss Naylor, both very solemn, and dancing
+quite different steps.  Harz, went up to Christian.
+
+"I can't dance," he said, "that is, I have only danced once, but--if
+you would try with me!"
+
+She put her hand on his arm, and they began.  She danced, light as a
+feather, eyes shining, feet flying, her body bent a little forward.
+It was not a great success at first, but as soon as the time had got
+into Harz's feet, they went swinging on when all the rest had
+stopped.  Sometimes one couple or another slipped through the window
+to dance on the veranda, and came whirling in again.  The lamplight
+glowed on the girls' white dresses; on Herr Paul's perspiring face.
+He constituted in himself a perfect orgy, and when the music stopped
+flung himself, full length, on the sofa gasping out:
+
+"My God!  But, my God!"
+
+Suddenly Christian felt Harz cling to her arm.
+
+Glowing and panting she looked at him.
+
+"Giddy!" he murmured: "I dance so badly; but I'll soon learn."
+
+Greta clapped her hands: "Every evening we will dance, every evening
+we will dance."
+
+Harz looked at Christian; the colour had deepened in her face.
+
+"I'll show you how they dance in my village, feet upon the ceiling!"
+And running to Dawney, he said:
+
+"Hold me here!  Lift me--so!  Now, on--two," he tried to swing his
+feet above his head, but, with an "Ouch!" from Dawney, they
+collapsed, and sat abruptly on the floor.  This untimely event
+brought the evening to an end.  Dawney left, escorting Cousin Teresa,
+and Harz strode home humming The Blue Danube, still feeling
+Christian's waist against his arm.
+
+In their room the two girls sat long at the window to cool themselves
+before undressing.
+
+"Ah!" sighed Greta, "this is the happiest birthday I have had."
+
+Cristian too thought: 'I have never been so happy in my life as I
+have been to-day.  I should like every day to be like this!'  And she
+leant out into the night, to let the air cool her cheeks.
+
+"Chris!" said Greta some days after this, "Miss Naylor danced last
+evening; I think she shall have a headache to-day.  There is my
+French and my history this morning."
+
+"Well, I can take them."
+
+"That is nice; then we can talk.  I am sorry about the headache.  I
+shall give her some of my Eau de Cologne."
+
+Miss Naylor's headaches after dancing were things on which to
+calculate.  The girls carried their books into the arbour; it was a
+showery day, and they had to run for shelter through the raindrops
+and sunlight.
+
+"The French first, Chris!"  Greta liked her French, in which she was
+not far inferior to Christian; the lesson therefore proceeded in an
+admirable fashion.  After one hour exactly by her watch
+(Mr. Treffry's birthday present loved and admired at least once every
+hour) Greta rose.
+
+"Chris, I have not fed my rabbits."
+
+"Be quick! there's not much time for history."
+
+Greta vanished.  Christian watched the bright water dripping from the
+roof; her lips were parted in a smile.  She was thinking of something
+Harz had said the night before.  A discussion having been started as
+to whether average opinion did, or did not, safeguard Society, Harz,
+after sitting silent, had burst out: "I think one man in earnest is
+better than twenty half-hearted men who follow tamely; in the end he
+does Society most good."
+
+Dawney had answered: "If you had your way there would be no Society."
+
+"I hate Society because it lives upon the weak."
+
+"Bah!" Herr Paul chimed in; "the weak goes to the wall; that is as
+certain as that you and I are here."
+
+"Let them fall against the wall," cried Harz; "don't push them
+there...."
+
+Greta reappeared, walking pensively in the rain.
+
+"Bino," she said, sighing, "has eaten too much.  I remember now, I
+did feed them before.  Must we do the history, Chris?"
+
+"Of course!"
+
+Greta opened her book, and put a finger in the page.  "Herr Harz is
+very kind to me," she said.  "Yesterday he brought a bird which had.
+come into his studio with a hurt wing; he brought it very gently in
+his handkerchief--he is very kind, the bird was not even frightened
+of him.  You did not know about that, Chris?"
+
+Chris flushed a little, and said in a hurt voice
+
+"I don't see what it has to--do with me."
+
+"No," assented Greta.
+
+Christian's colour deepened.  "Go on with your history, Greta."
+
+"Only," pursued Greta, "that he always tells you all about things,
+Chris."
+
+"He doesn't! How can you say that!"
+
+"I think he does, and it is because you do not make him angry.  It is
+very easy to make him angry; you have only to think differently, and
+he shall be angry at once."
+
+"You are a little cat!" said Christian; "it isn't true, at all.  He
+hates shams, and can't bear meanness; and it is mean to cover up
+dislikes and pretend that you agree with people."
+
+"Papa says that he thinks too much about himself."
+
+"Father!" began Christian hotly; biting her lips she stopped, and
+turned her wrathful eyes on Greta.
+
+"You do not always show your dislikes, Chris."
+
+"I?  What has that to do with it?  Because one is a coward that
+doesn't make it any better, does it?"
+
+"I think that he has a great many dislikes," murmured Greta.
+
+"I wish you would attend to your own faults, and not pry into other
+people's," and pushing the book aside, Christian gazed in front of
+her.
+
+Some minutes passed, then Greta leaning over, rubbed a cheek against
+her shoulder.
+
+"I am very sorry, Chris--I only wanted to be talking.  Shall I read
+some history?"
+
+"Yes," said Christian coldly.
+
+"Are you angry with me, Chris?"
+
+There was no answer.  The lingering raindrops pattered down on the
+roof.  Greta pulled at her sister's sleeve.
+
+"Look, Chris!" she said.  "There is Herr Harz!"
+
+Christian looked up, dropped her eyes again, and said: "Will you go
+on with the history, Greta?"
+
+Greta sighed.
+
+"Yes, I will--but, oh! Chris, there is the luncheon gong!" and she
+meekly closed the book.
+
+During the following weeks there was a "sitting" nearly every
+afternoon.  Miss Naylor usually attended them; the little lady was,
+to a certain extent, carried past objection.  She had begun to take
+an interest in the picture, and to watch the process out of the
+corner of her eye; in the depths of her dear mind, however, she never
+quite got used to the vanity and waste of time; her lips would move
+and her knitting-needles click in suppressed remonstrances.
+
+What Harz did fast he did best; if he had leisure he "saw too much,"
+loving his work so passionately that he could never tell exactly when
+to stop.  He hated to lay things aside, always thinking: "I can get
+it better."  Greta was finished, but with Christian, try as he would,
+he was not satisfied; from day to day her face seemed to him to
+change, as if her soul were growing.
+
+There were things too in her eyes that he could neither read nor
+reproduce.
+
+Dawney would often stroll out to them after his daily visit, and
+lying on the grass, his arms crossed behind his head, and a big cigar
+between his lips, would gently banter everybody.  Tea came at five
+o'clock, and then Mrs. Decie appeared armed with a magazine or novel,
+for she was proud of her literary knowledge.  The sitting was
+suspended; Harz, with a cigarette, would move between the table and
+the picture, drinking his tea, putting a touch in here and there; he
+never sat down till it was all over for the day.  During these
+"rests" there was talk, usually ending in discussion.  Mrs. Decie was
+happiest in conversations of a literary order, making frequent use of
+such expressions as: "After all, it produces an illusion--does
+anything else matter?"  "Rather a poseur, is he not?"  "A question,
+that, of temperament," or "A matter of the definition of words"; and
+other charming generalities, which sound well, and seem to go far,
+and are pleasingly irrefutable.  Sometimes the discussion turned on
+Art--on points of colour or technique; whether realism was quite
+justified; and should we be pre-Raphaelites?  When these discussions
+started, Christian's eyes would grow bigger and clearer, with a sort
+of shining reasonableness; as though they were trying to see into the
+depths.  And Harz would stare at them.  But the look in those eyes
+eluded him, as if they had no more meaning than Mrs. Decie's, which,
+with their pale, watchful smile, always seemed saying: "Come, let us
+take a little intellectual exercise."
+
+Greta, pulling Scruff's ears, would gaze up at the speakers; when the
+talk was over, she always shook herself.  But if no one came to the
+"sittings," there would sometimes be very earnest, quick talk,
+sometimes long silences.
+
+One day Christian said: "What is your religion?"
+
+Harz finished the touch he was putting on the canvas, before he
+answered: "Roman Catholic, I suppose; I was baptised in that Church."
+
+"I didn't mean that.  Do you believe in a future life?"
+
+"Christian," murmured Greta, who was plaiting blades of grass, "shall
+always want to know what people think about a future life; that is so
+funny!"
+
+"How can I tell?" said Harz; "I've never really thought of it--never
+had the time."
+
+"How can you help thinking?" Christian said: "I have to--it seems to
+me so awful that we might come to an end."
+
+She closed her book, and it slipped off her lap.  She went on: "There
+must be a future life, we're so incomplete.  What's the good of your
+work, for instance?  What's the use of developing if you have to
+stop?"
+
+"I don't know," answered Harz.  "I don't much care.  All I know is,
+I've got to work."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"For happiness--the real happiness is fighting--the rest is nothing.
+If you have finished a thing, does it ever satisfy you?  You look
+forward to the next thing at once; to wait is wretched!"
+
+Christian clasped her hands behind her neck; sunlight flickered
+through the leaves on to the bosom of her dress.
+
+"Ah! Stay like that!" cried Harz.
+
+She let her eyes rest on his face, swinging her foot a little.
+
+"You work because you must; but that's not enough.  Why do you feel
+you must?  I want to know what's behind.  When I was travelling with
+Aunt Constance the winter before last we often talked--I've heard her
+discuss it with her friends.  She says we move in circles till we
+reach Nirvana.  But last winter I found I couldn't talk to her; it
+seemed as if she never really meant anything.  Then I started
+reading--Kant and Hegel--"
+
+"Ah!" put in Harz, "if they would teach me to draw better, or to see
+a new colour in a flower, or an expression in a face, I would read
+them all."
+
+Christian leaned forward: "It must be right to get as near truth as
+possible; every step gained is something.  You believe in truth;
+truth is the same as beauty--that was what you said--you try to paint
+the truth, you always see the beauty.  But how can we know truth,
+unless we know what is at the root of it?"
+
+"I--think," murmured Greta, sotto voce, "you see one way--and he sees
+another--because--you are not one person."
+
+"Of course!" said Christian impatiently, "but why--"
+
+A sound of humming interrupted her.
+
+Nicholas Treffry was coming from the house, holding the Times in one
+hand, and a huge meerschaum pipe in the other.
+
+"Aha!" he said to Harz: "how goes the picture?" and he lowered
+himself into a chair.
+
+"Better to-day, Uncle?" said Christian softly.
+
+Mr. Treffry growled.  "Confounded humbugs, doctors!" he said.  "Your
+father used to swear by them; why, his doctor killed him--made him
+drink such a lot of stuff!"
+
+"Why then do you have a doctor, Uncle Nic?" asked Greta.
+
+Mr. Treffry looked at her; his eyes twinkled.  "I don't know, my
+dear.  If they get half a chance, they won't let go of you!"
+
+There had been a gentle breeze all day, but now it had died away; not
+a leaf quivered, not a blade of grass was stirring; from the house
+were heard faint sounds as of some one playing on a pipe.  A
+blackbird came hopping down the path.
+
+"When you were a boy, did you go after birds' nests, Uncle Nic?"
+Greta whispered.
+
+"I believe you, Greta."  The blackbird hopped into the shrubbery.
+
+"You frightened him, Uncle Nic!  Papa says that at Schloss Konig,
+where he lived when he was young, he would always be after jackdaws'
+nests."
+
+"Gammon, Greta.  Your father never took a jackdaw's nest, his legs
+are much too round!"
+
+"Are you fond of birds, Uncle Nic?"
+
+"Ask me another, Greta!  Well, I s'pose so."
+
+"Then why did you go bird-nesting?  I think it is cruel"
+
+Mr. Treffry coughed behind his paper: "There you have me, Greta," he
+remarked.
+
+Harz began to gather his brushes: "Thank you," he said, "that's all I
+can do to-day."
+
+"Can I look?" Mr. Treffry inquired.
+
+"Certainly!"
+
+Uncle Nic got up slowly, and stood in front of the picture.  "When
+it's for sale," he said at last, "I'll buy it."
+
+Harz bowed; but for some reason he felt annoyed, as if he had been
+asked to part with something personal.
+
+"I thank you," he said.  A gong sounded.
+
+"You'll stay and have a snack with us?" said Mr. Treffry; "the
+doctor's stopping."  Gathering up his paper, he moved off to the
+house with his hand on Greta's shoulder, the terrier running in
+front.  Harz and Christian were left alone.  He was scraping his
+palette, and she was sitting with her elbows resting on her knees;
+between them, a gleam of sunlight dyed the path golden.  It was
+evening already; the bushes and the flowers, after the day's heat,
+were breathing out perfume; the birds had started their evensong.
+
+"Are you tired of sitting for your portrait, Fraulein Christian?"
+
+Christian shook her head.
+
+"I shall get something into it that everybody does not see--something
+behind the surface, that will last."
+
+Christian said slowly: "That's like a challenge.  You were right when
+you said fighting is happiness--for yourself, but not for me.  I'm a
+coward.  I hate to hurt people, I like them to like me.  If you had
+to do anything that would make them hate you, you would do it all the
+same, if it helped your work; that's fine--it's what I can't do.
+It's--it's everything.  Do you like Uncle Nic?"
+
+The young painter looked towards the house, where under the veranda
+old Nicholas Treffry was still in sight; a smile came on his lips.
+
+"If I were the finest painter in the world, he wouldn't think
+anything of me for it, I'm afraid; but if I could show him handfuls
+of big cheques for bad pictures I had painted, he would respect me."
+
+She smiled, and said: "I love him."
+
+"Then I shall like him," Harz answered simply.
+
+She put her hand out, and her fingers met his.  "We shall be late,"
+she said, glowing, and catching up her book: "I'm always late!"
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+There was one other guest at dinner, a well-groomed person with pale,
+fattish face, dark eyes, and hair thin on the temples, whose clothes
+had a military cut.  He looked like a man fond of ease, who had gone
+out of his groove, and collided with life.  Herr Paul introduced him
+as Count Mario Sarelli.
+
+Two hanging lamps with crimson shades threw a rosy light over the
+table, where, in the centre stood a silver basket, full of irises.
+Through the open windows the garden was all clusters of black foliage
+in the dying light.  Moths fluttered round the lamps; Greta,
+following them with her eyes, gave quite audible sighs of pleasure
+when they escaped.  Both girls wore white, and Harz, who sat opposite
+Christian, kept looking at her, and wondering why he had not painted
+her in that dress.
+
+Mrs. Decie understood the art of dining--the dinner, ordered by Herr
+Paul, was admirable; the servants silent as their, shadows; there was
+always a hum of conversation.
+
+Sarelli, who sat on her right hand, seemed to partake of little
+except olives, which he dipped into a glass of sherry.  He turned his
+black, solemn eyes silently from face to face, now and then asking
+the meaning of an English word.  After a discussion on modern Rome,
+it was debated whether or no a criminal could be told by the
+expression of his face.
+
+"Crime," said Mrs. Decie, passing her hand across her brow--"crime is
+but the hallmark of strong individuality."
+
+Miss Naylor, gushing rather pink, stammered: "A great crime must show
+itself--a murder.  Why, of course!"
+
+"If that were so," said Dawney, "we should only have to look about
+us--no more detectives."
+
+Miss Naylor rejoined with slight severity: "I cannot conceive that
+such a thing can pass the human face by, leaving no impression!"
+
+Harz said abruptly: "There are worse things than murder."
+
+"Ah! par exemple!" said Sarelli.
+
+There was a slight stir all round the table.
+
+"Verry good," cried out Herr Paul, "a vot' sante, cher."
+
+Miss Naylor shivered, as if some one had put a penny down her back;
+and Mrs. Decie, leaning towards Harz, smiled like one who has made a
+pet dog do a trick.  Christian alone was motionless, looking
+thoughtfully at Harz.
+
+"I saw a man tried for murder once," he said, "a murder for revenge;
+I watched the judge, and I thought all the time: 'I'd rather be that
+murderer than you; I've never seen a meaner face; you crawl through
+life; you're not a criminal, simply because you haven't the
+courage.'"
+
+In the dubious silence following the painter's speech, Mr. Treffry
+could distinctly be heard humming.  Then Sarelli said: "What do you
+say to anarchists, who are not men, but savage beasts, whom I would
+tear to pieces!"
+
+"As to that," Harz answered defiantly, "it maybe wise to hang them,
+but then there are so many other men that it would be wise to hang."
+
+"How can we tell what they went through; what their lives were?"
+murmured Christian.
+
+Miss Naylor, who had been rolling a pellet of bread, concealed it
+hastily.  "They are--always given a chance to--repent--I believe,"
+she said.
+
+"For what they are about to receive," drawled Dawney.
+
+Mrs. Decie signalled with her fan: "We are trying to express the
+inexpressible--shall we go into the garden?"
+
+All rose; Harz stood by the window, and in passing, Christian looked
+at him.
+
+He sat down again with a sudden sense of loss.  There was no white
+figure opposite now.  Raising his eyes he met Sarelli's.  The Italian
+was regarding him with a curious stare.
+
+Herr Paul began retailing apiece of scandal he had heard that
+afternoon.
+
+"Shocking affair!" he said; "I could never have believed it of her!
+B--- is quite beside himself.  Yesterday there was a row, it seems!"
+
+"There has been one every day for months," muttered Dawney.
+
+"But to leave without a word, and go no one knows where!  B--- is
+'viveur' no doubt, mais, mon Dieu, que voulezvous?  She was always a
+poor, pale thing.  Why!, when my---" he flourished his cigar; "I was
+not always---what I should have been---one lives in a world of flesh
+and blood---we are not all angels---que diable!  But this is a very
+vulgar business.  She goes off; leaves everything---without a word;
+and B---is very fond of her.  These things are not done!" the
+starched bosom of his shirt seemed swollen by indignation.
+
+Mr. Treffry, with a heavy hand on the table, eyed him sideways.
+Dawney said slowly:
+
+"B--- is a beast; I'm sorry for the poor woman; but what can she do
+alone?"
+
+"There is, no doubt, a man," put in Sarelli.
+
+Herr Paul muttered: "Who knows?"
+
+"What is B--- going to do?" said Dawney.
+
+"Ah!" said Herr Paul.  "He is fond of her.  He is a chap of
+resolution, he will get her back.  He told me: 'Well, you know, I
+shall follow her wherever she goes till she comes back.'  He will do
+it, he is a determined chap; he will follow her wherever she goes."
+
+Mr. Treffry drank his wine off at a gulp, and sucked his moustache in
+sharply.
+
+"She was a fool to marry him," said Dawney; "they haven't a point in
+common; she hates him like poison, and she's the better of the two.
+But it doesn't pay a woman to run off like that.  B--- had better
+hurry up, though.  What do you think, sir?" he said to Mr. Treffry.
+
+"Eh?" said Mr. Treffry; "how should I know?  Ask Paul there, he's one
+of your moral men, or Count Sarelli."
+
+The latter said impassively: "If I cared for her I should very likely
+kill her--if not--" he shrugged his shoulders.
+
+Harz, who was watching, was reminded of his other words at dinner,
+"wild beasts whom I would tear to pieces."  He looked with interest
+at this quiet man who said these extremely ferocious things, and
+thought: 'I should like to paint that fellow.'
+
+Herr Paul twirled his wine-glass in his fingers.  "There are family
+ties," he said, "there is society, there is decency; a wife should be
+with her husband.  B--- will do quite right.  He must go after her;
+she will not perhaps come back at first; he will follow her; she will
+begin to think, 'I am helpless--I am ridiculous!'  A woman is soon
+beaten.  They will return.  She is once more with her husband--
+Society will forgive, it will be all right."
+
+"By Jove, Paul," growled Mr. Treffry, "wonderful power of argument!"
+
+"A wife is a wife," pursued Herr Paul; "a man has a right to her
+society."
+
+"What do you say to that, sir?" asked Dawney.
+
+Mr. Treffry tugged at his beard: "Make a woman live with you, if she
+don't want to?  I call it low."
+
+"But, my dear," exclaimed Herr Paul, "how should you know?  You have
+not been married."
+
+"No, thank the Lord!" Mr. Treffry replied.
+
+"But looking at the question broadly, sir," said Dawney; "if a
+husband always lets his wife do as she likes, how would the thing
+work out?  What becomes of the marriage tie?"
+
+"The marriage tie," growled Mr. Treffry, "is the biggest thing there
+is!  But, by Jove, Doctor, I'm a Dutchman if hunting women ever
+helped the marriage tie!"
+
+"I am not thinking of myself," Herr Paul cried out, "I think of the
+community.  There are rights."
+
+"A decent community never yet asked a man to tread on his self-
+respect.  If I get my fingers skinned over my marriage, which I
+undertake at my own risk, what's the community to do with it?  D'you
+think I'm going to whine to it to put the plaster on?  As to rights,
+it'd be a deuced sight better for us all if there wasn't such a fuss
+about 'em.  Leave that to women!  I don't give a tinker's damn for
+men who talk about their rights in such matters."
+
+Sarelli rose.  "But your honour," he said, "there is your honour!"
+
+Mr. Treffry stared at him.
+
+"Honour!  If huntin' women's your idea of honour, well--it isn't
+mine."
+
+"Then you'd forgive her, sir, whatever happened," Dawney said.
+
+"Forgiveness is another thing.  I leave that to your sanctimonious
+beggars.  But, hunt a woman!  Hang it, sir, I'm not a cad!" and
+bringing his hand down with a rattle, he added: "This is a subject
+that don't bear talking of."
+
+Sarelli fell back in his seat, twirling his moustaches fiercely.
+Harz, who had risen, looked at Christian's empty place.
+
+'If I were married!' he thought suddenly.
+
+Herr Paul, with a somewhat vinous glare, still muttered, "But your
+duty to the family!"
+
+Harz slipped through the window.  The moon was like a wonderful white
+lantern in the purple sky; there was but a smoulder of stars.
+Beneath the softness of the air was the iciness of the snow; it made
+him want to run and leap.  A sleepy beetle dropped on its back; he
+turned it over and watched it scurry across the grass.
+
+Someone was playing Schumann's Kinderscenen.  Harz stood still to
+listen.  The notes came twining, weaving round his thoughts; the
+whole night seemed full of girlish voices, of hopes and fancies,
+soaring away to mountain heights--invisible, yet present.  Between
+the stems of the acacia-trees he could see the flicker of white
+dresses, where Christian and Greta were walking arm in arm.  He went
+towards them; the blood flushed up in his face, he felt almost
+surfeited by some sweet emotion.  Then, in sudden horror, he stood
+still.  He was in love!  With nothing done with everything before
+him!  He was going to bow down to a face!  The flicker of the dresses
+was no longer visible.  He would not be fettered, he would stamp it
+out!  He turned away; but with each step, something seemed to jab at
+his heart.
+
+Round the corner of the house, in the shadow of the wall, Dominique,
+the Luganese, in embroidered slippers, was smoking a long cherry-wood
+pipe, leaning against a tree--Mephistopheles in evening clothes.
+Harz went up to him.
+
+"Lend me a pencil, Dominique."
+
+"Bien, M'sieu."
+
+Resting a card against the tree Harz wrote to Mrs. Decie: "Forgive
+me, I am obliged to go away.  In a few days I shall hope to return,
+and finish the picture of your nieces."
+
+He sent Dominique for his hat.  During the man's absence he was on
+the point of tearing up the card and going back into the house.
+
+When the Luganese returned he thrust the card into his hand, and
+walked out between the tall poplars, waiting, like ragged ghosts,
+silver with moonlight.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+Harz walked away along the road.  A dog was howling.  The sound
+seemed too appropriate.  He put his fingers to his ears, but the
+lugubrious noise passed those barriers, and made its way into his
+heart.  Was there nothing that would put an end to this emotion?  It
+was no better in the old house on the wall; he spent the night
+tramping up and down.
+
+Just before daybreak he slipped out with a knapsack, taking the road
+towards Meran.
+
+He had not quite passed through Gries when he overtook a man walking
+in the middle of the road and leaving a trail of cigar smoke behind
+him.
+
+"Ah! my friend," the smoker said, "you walk early; are you going my
+way?"
+
+It was Count Sarelli.  The raw light had imparted a grey tinge to his
+pale face, the growth of his beard showed black already beneath the
+skin; his thumbs were hooked in the pockets of a closely buttoned
+coat, he gesticulated with his fingers.
+
+"You are making a journey?" he said, nodding at the knapsack.  "You
+are early--I am late; our friend has admirable kummel--I have drunk
+too much.  You have not been to bed, I think?  If there is no sleep
+in one's bed it is no good going to look for it.  You find that?  It
+is better to drink kummel...!  Pardon!  You are doing the right
+thing: get away!  Get away as fast as possible!  Don't wait, and let
+it catch you!"
+
+Harz stared at him amazed.
+
+"Pardon!" Sarelli said again, raising his hat, "that girl--the white
+girl--I saw.  You do well to get away!" he swayed a little as he
+walked.  "That old fellow--what is his name-Trrreffr-ry!  What ideas
+of honour!"  He mumbled: "Honour is an abstraction!  If a man is not
+true to an abstraction, he is a low type; but wait a minute!"
+
+He put his hand to his side as though in pain.
+
+The hedges were brightening with a faint pinky glow; there was no
+sound on the long, deserted road, but that of their footsteps;
+suddenly a bird commenced to chirp, another answered--the world
+seemed full of these little voices.
+
+Sarelli stopped.
+
+"That white girl," he said, speaking with rapidity.  "Yes! You do
+well! get away!  Don't let it catch you!  I waited, it caught me--
+what happened?  Everything horrible--and now--kummel!"  Laughing a
+thick laugh, he gave a twirl to his moustache, and swaggered on.
+
+"I was a fine fellow--nothing too big for Mario Sarelli; the regiment
+looked to me.  Then she came--with her eyes and her white dress,
+always white, like this one; the little mole on her chin, her hands
+for ever moving--their touch as warm as sunbeams.  Then, no longer
+Sarelli this, and that!  The little house close to the ramparts!  Two
+arms, two eyes, and nothing here," he tapped his breast, "but flames
+that made ashes quickly--in her, like this ash--!" he flicked the
+white flake off his cigar.  "It's droll!  You agree, hein?  Some day
+I shall go back and kill her.  In the meantime--kummel!"
+
+He stopped at a house close to the road, and stood still, his teeth
+bared in a grin.
+
+"But I bore you," he said.  His cigar, flung down, sputtered forth
+its sparks on the road in front of Harz.  "I live here--good-morning!
+You are a man for work--your honour is your Art!  I know, and you are
+young!  The man who loves flesh better than his honour is a low type-
+-I am a low type.  I! Mario Sarelli, a low type! I love flesh better
+than my honour!"
+
+He remained swaying at the gate with the grin fixed on his face; then
+staggered up the steps, and banged the door.  But before Harz had
+walked on, he again appeared, beckoning, in the doorway.  Obeying an
+impulse, Harz went in.
+
+"We will make a night of it," said SareIIi; "wine, brandy, kummel?  I
+am virtuous--kummel it must be for me!"
+
+He sat down at a piano, and began to touch the keys.  Harz poured out
+some wine.  Sarelli nodded.
+
+"You begin with that?  Allegro--piu--presto!
+
+Wine--brandy--kummel!" he quickened the time of the tune: "it is not
+too long a passage, and this"--he took his hands off the keys--"comes
+after."
+
+Harz smiled.
+
+"Some men do not kill themselves," he said.
+
+Sarelli, who was bending and swaying to the music of a tarantella,
+broke off, and letting his eyes rest on the painter, began playing
+Schumann's Kinderscenen.  Harz leaped to his feet.
+
+"Stop that!" he cried.
+
+"It pricks you?" said Sarelli suavely; "what do you think of this?"
+he played again, crouching over the piano, and making the notes sound
+like the crying of a wounded animal.
+
+"For me!" he said, swinging round, and rising.
+
+"Your health!  And so you don't believe in suicide, but in murder?
+The custom is the other way; but you don't believe in customs?
+Customs are only for Society?"  He drank a glass of kummel.  "You do
+not love Society?"
+
+Harz looked at him intently; he did not want to quarrel.
+
+"I am not too fond of other people's thoughts," he said at last; "I
+prefer to think my own.
+
+"And is Society never right?  That poor Society!"
+
+"Society!  What is Society--a few men in good coats?  What has it
+done for me?"
+
+Sarelli bit the end off a cigar.
+
+"Ah!" he said; "now we are coming to it.  It is good to be an artist,
+a fine bantam of an artist; where other men have their dis-ci-pline,
+he has his, what shall we say--his mound of roses?"
+
+The painter started to his feet.
+
+"Yes," said Sarelli, with a hiccough, "you are a fine fellow!"
+
+"And you are drunk!" cried Harz.
+
+"A little drunk--not much, not enough to matter!"
+
+Harz broke into laughter.  It was crazy to stay there listening to
+this mad fellow.  What had brought him in?  He moved towards the
+door.
+
+"Ah!" said Sarelli, "but it is no good going to bed--let us talk.  I
+have a lot to say--it is pleasant to talk to anarchists at times."
+
+Full daylight was already coming through the chinks of the shutters.
+
+"You are all anarchists, you painters, you writing fellows.  You live
+by playing ball with facts.  Images--nothing solid- hein?  You're all
+for new things too, to tickle your nerves.  No discipline!  True
+anarchists, every one of you!"
+
+Harz poured out another glass of wine and drank it off.  The man's
+feverish excitement was catching.
+
+"Only fools," he replied, "take things for granted.  As for
+discipline, what do you aristocrats, or bourgeois know of discipline?
+Have you ever been hungry?  Have you ever had your soul down on its
+back?"
+
+"Soul on its back?  That is good!"
+
+"A man's no use," cried Harz, "if he's always thinking of what others
+think; he must stand on his own legs."
+
+"He must not then consider other people?"
+
+"Not from cowardice anyway."
+
+Sarelli drank.
+
+"What would you do," he said, striking his chest, "if you had a
+devil-here?  Would you go to bed?"
+
+A sort of pity seized on Harz.  He wanted to say something that would
+be consoling but could find no words; and suddenly he felt disgusted.
+What link was there between him and this man; between his love and
+this man's love?
+
+"Harz!" muttered Sarelli; "Harz means 'tar,' hein?  Your family is
+not an old one?"
+
+Harz glared, and said: "My father is a peasant."
+
+Sarelli lifted the kummel bottle and emptied it into his glass, with
+a steady hand.
+
+"You're honest--and we both have devils.  I forgot; I brought you in
+to see a picture!"
+
+He threw wide the shutters; the windows were already open, and a rush
+of air came in.
+
+"Ah!" he said, sniffing, "smells of the earth, nicht wahr, Herr
+Artist?  You should know--it belongs to your father....  Come, here's
+my picture; a Correggio!  What do you think of it?"
+
+"It is a copy."
+
+"You think?"
+
+"I know."
+
+"Then you have given me the lie, Signor," and drawing out his
+handkerchief SareIIi flicked it in the painter's face.
+
+Harz turned white.
+
+"Duelling is a good custom!" said Sarelli.  "I shall have the honour
+to teach you just this one, unless you are afraid.  Here are pistols-
+-this room is twenty feet across at least, twenty feet is no bad
+distance."
+
+And pulling out a drawer he took two pistols from a case, and put
+them on the table.
+
+"The light is good--but perhaps you are afraid."
+
+"Give me one!" shouted the infuriated painter; "and go to the devil
+for a fool"
+
+"One moment!" Sarelli murmured: "I will load them, they are more
+useful loaded."
+
+Harz leaned out of the window; his head was in a whirl.  'What on
+earth is happening?' he thought.  'He's mad--or I am!  Confound him!
+I'm not going to be killed!'  He turned and went towards the table.
+Sarelli's head was sunk on his arms, he was asleep.  Harz
+methodically took up the pistols, and put them back into the drawer.
+A sound made him turn his head; there stood a tall, strong young
+woman in a loose gown caught together on her chest.  Her grey eyes
+glanced from the painter to the bottles, from the bottles to the
+pistol-case.  A simple reasoning, which struck Harz as comic.
+
+"It is often like this," she said in the country patois; "der Herr
+must not be frightened."
+
+Lifting the motionless Sarelli as if he were a baby, she laid him on
+a couch.
+
+"Ah!" she said, sitting down and resting her elbow on the table; "he
+will not wake!"
+
+Harz bowed to her; her patient figure, in spite of its youth and
+strength, seemed to him pathetic.  Taking up his knapsack, he went
+out.
+
+The smoke of cottages rose straight; wisps of mist were wandering
+about the valley, and the songs of birds dropping like blessings.
+All over the grass the spiders had spun a sea of threads that bent
+and quivered to the pressure of the air, like fairy tight-ropes.
+
+All that day he tramped.
+
+Blacksmiths, tall stout men with knotted muscles, sleepy eyes, and
+great fair beards, came out of their forges to stretch and wipe their
+brows, and stare at him.
+
+Teams of white oxen, waiting to be harnessed, lashed their tails
+against their flanks, moving their heads slowly from side to side in
+the heat.  Old women at chalet doors blinked and knitted.
+
+The white houses, with gaping caves of storage under the roofs, the
+red church spire, the clinking of hammers in the forges, the slow
+stamping of oxen-all spoke of sleepy toil, without ideas or ambition.
+Harz knew it all too well; like the earth's odour, it belonged to
+him, as Sarelli had said.
+
+Towards sunset coming to a copse of larches, he sat down to rest.  It
+was very still, but for the tinkle of cowbells, and, from somewhere
+in the distance, the sound of dropping logs.
+
+Two barefooted little boys came from the wood, marching earnestly
+along, and looking at Harz as if he were a monster.  Once past him,
+they began to run.
+
+'At their age,' he thought, 'I should have done the same.'  A hundred
+memories rushed into his mind.
+
+He looked down at the village straggling below--white houses with
+russet tiles and crowns of smoke, vineyards where the young leaves
+were beginning to unfold, the red-capped spire, a thread of bubbling
+stream, an old stone cross.  He had been fourteen years struggling up
+from all this; and now just as he had breathing space, and the time
+to give himself wholly to his work--this weakness was upon him!
+Better, a thousand times, to give her up!
+
+In a house or two lights began to wink; the scent of wood smoke
+reached him, the distant chimes of bells, the burring of a stream.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+Next day his one thought was to get back to work.  He arrived at the
+studio in the afternoon, and, laying in provisions, barricaded the
+lower door.  For three days he did not go out; on the fourth day he
+went to Villa Rubein....
+
+Schloss Runkelstein--grey, blind, strengthless--still keeps the
+valley.  The windows which once, like eyes, watched men and horses
+creeping through the snow, braved the splutter of guns and the gleam
+of torches, are now holes for the birds to nest in.  Tangled creepers
+have spread to the very summits of the walls.  In the keep, instead
+of grim men in armour, there is a wooden board recording the history
+of the castle and instructing visitors on the subject of
+refreshments.  Only at night, when the cold moon blanches everything,
+the castle stands like the grim ghost of its old self, high above the
+river.
+
+After a long morning's sitting the girls had started forth with Harz
+and Dawney to spend the afternoon at the ruin; Miss Naylor, kept at
+home by headache, watched them depart with words of caution against
+sunstroke, stinging nettles, and strange dogs.
+
+Since the painter's return Christian and he had hardly spoken to each
+other.  Below the battlement on which they sat, in a railed gallery
+with little tables, Dawney and Greta were playing dominoes, two
+soldiers drinking beer, and at the top of a flight of stairs the
+Custodian's wife sewing at a garment.  Christian said suddenly: "I
+thought we were friends."
+
+"Well, Fraulein Christian, aren't we?"
+
+"You went away without a word; friends don't do that."
+
+Harz bit his lips.
+
+"I don't think you care," she went on with a sort of desperate haste,
+"whether you hurt people or not.  You have been here all this time
+without even going to see your father and mother."
+
+"Do you think they would want to see me?"
+
+Christian looked up.
+
+"It's all been so soft for you," he said bitterly; "you don't
+understand."
+
+He turned his head away, and then burst out: "I'm proud to come
+straight from the soil--I wouldn't have it otherwise; but they are of
+'the people,' everything is narrow with them--they only understand
+what they can see and touch."
+
+"I'm sorry I spoke like that," said Christian softly; "you've never
+told me about yourself."
+
+There was something just a little cruel in the way the painter looked
+at her, then seeming to feel compunction, he said quickly: "I always
+hated--the peasant life--I wanted to get away into the world; I had a
+feeling in here--I wanted--I don't know what I wanted!  I did run
+away at last to a house-painter at Meran.  The priest wrote me a
+letter from my father--they threw me off; that's all."
+
+Christian's eyes were very bright, her lips moved, like the lips of a
+child listening to a story.
+
+"Go on," she said.
+
+"I stayed at Meran two years, till I'd learnt all I could there, then
+a brother of my mother's helped me to get to Vienna; I was lucky
+enough to find work with a man who used to decorate churches.  We
+went about the country together.  Once when he was ill I painted the
+roof of a church entirely by myself; I lay on my back on the scaffold
+boards all day for a week--I was proud of that roof."  He paused.
+
+"When did you begin painting pictures?"
+
+"A friend asked me why I didn't try for the Academie.  That started
+me going to the night schools; I worked every minute--I had to get my
+living as well, of course, so I worked at night.
+
+Then when the examination came, I thought I could do nothing--it was
+just as if I had never had a brush or pencil in my hand.  But the
+second day a professor in passing me said, 'Good! Quite good!'  That
+gave me courage.  I was sure I had failed though; but I was second
+out of sixty."
+
+Christian nodded.
+
+"To work in the schools after that I had to give up my business, of
+course.  There was only one teacher who ever taught me anything; the
+others all seemed fools.  This man would come and rub out what you'd
+done with his sleeve.  I used to cry with rage--but I told him I
+could only learn from him, and he was so astonished that he got me
+into his class."
+
+"But how did you live without money?" asked Christian.
+
+His face burned with a dark flush.  "I don't know how I lived; you
+must have been through these things to know, you would never
+understand."
+
+"But I want to understand, please."
+
+"What do you want me to tell you?  How I went twice a week to eat
+free dinners!  How I took charity!  How I was hungry!  There was a
+rich cousin of my mother's--I used to go to him.  I didn't like it.
+But if you're starving in the winter"
+
+Christian put out her hand.
+
+"I used to borrow apronsful of coals from other students who were as
+poor--but I never went to the rich students."
+
+The flush had died out of his face.
+
+"That sort of thing makes you hate the world!  You work till you
+stagger; you're cold and hungry; you see rich people in their
+carriages, wrapped in furs, and all the time you want to do something
+great.  You pray for a chance, any chance; nothing comes to the poor!
+It makes you hate the world."
+
+Christian's eyes filled with tears.  He went on:
+
+"But I wasn't the only one in that condition; we used to meet.
+Garin, a Russian with a brown beard and patches of cheek showing
+through, and yellow teeth, who always looked hungry.  Paunitz, who
+came from sympathy!  He had fat cheeks and little eyes, and a big
+gold chain--the swine! And little Misek.  It was in his room we met,
+with the paper peeling off the walls, and two doors with cracks in
+them, so that there was always a draught.  We used to sit on his bed,
+and pull the dirty blankets over us for warmth; and smoke--tobacco
+was the last thing we ever went without.  Over the bed was a Virgin
+and Child--Misek was a very devout Catholic; but one day when he had
+had no dinner and a dealer had kept his picture without paying him,
+he took the image and threw it on the floor before our eyes; it
+broke, and he trampled on the bits.  Lendorf was another, a heavy
+fellow who was always puffing out his white cheeks and smiting
+himself, and saying: 'Cursed society!'  And Schonborn, an aristocrat
+who had quarrelled with his family.  He was the poorest of us all;
+but only he and I would ever have dared to do anything--they all knew
+that!"
+
+Christian listened with awe.  "Do you mean?" she said, "do you mean,
+that you--?"
+
+"You see! you're afraid of me at once.  It's impossible even for you
+to understand.  It only makes you afraid.  A hungry man living on
+charity, sick with rage and shame, is a wolf even to you!"
+
+Christian looked straight into his eyes.
+
+"That's not true.  If I can't understand, I can feel.  Would you be
+the same now if it were to come again?"
+
+"Yes, it drives me mad even now to think of people fatted with
+prosperity, sneering and holding up their hands at poor devils who
+have suffered ten times more than the most those soft animals could
+bear.  I'm older; I've lived--I know things can't be put right by
+violence--nothing will put things right, but that doesn't stop my
+feeling."
+
+"Did you do anything?  You must tell me all now."
+
+"We talked--we were always talking."
+
+"No, tell me everything!"
+
+Unconsciously she claimed, and he seemed unconsciously to admit her
+right to this knowledge.
+
+"There's not much to tell.  One day we began talking in low voices--
+Garin began it; he had been in some affair in Russia.  We took an
+oath; after that we never raised our voices.  We had a plan.  It was
+all new to me, and I hated the whole thing--but I was always hungry,
+or sick from taking charity, and I would have done anything.  They
+knew that; they used to look at me and Schonborn; we knew that no one
+else had any courage.  He and I were great friends, but we never
+talked of that; we tried to keep our minds away from the thought of
+it.  If we had a good day and were not so hungry, it seemed
+unnatural; but when the day had not been good--then it seemed natural
+enough.  I wasn't afraid, but I used to wake up in the night; I hated
+the oath we had taken, I hated every one of those fellows; the thing
+was not what I was made for, it wasn't my work, it wasn't my nature,
+it was forced on me--I hated it, but sometimes I was like a madman."
+
+"Yes, yes," she murmured.
+
+"All this time I was working at the Academie, and learning all I
+could....  One evening that we met, Paunitz was not there.  Misek was
+telling us how the thing had been arranged.  Schonborn and I looked
+at each other--it was warm--perhaps we were not hungry--it was
+springtime, too, and in the Spring it's different.  There is
+something."
+
+Christian nodded.
+
+"While we were talking there came a knock at the door.  Lendorf put
+his eye to the keyhole, and made a sign.  The police were there.
+Nobody said anything, but Misek crawled under the bed; we all
+followed; and the knocking grew louder and louder.  In the wall at
+the back of the bed was a little door into an empty cellar.  We crept
+through.  There was a trap-door behind some cases, where they used to
+roll barrels in.  We crawled through that into the back street.  We
+went different ways."
+
+He paused, and Christian gasped.
+
+"I thought I would get my money, but there was a policeman before my
+door.  They had us finely.  It was Paunitz; if I met him even now I
+should wring his neck.  I swore I wouldn't be caught, but I had no
+idea where to go.  Then I thought of a little Italian barber who used
+to shave me when I had money for a shave; I knew he would help.  He
+belonged to some Italian Society; he often talked to me, under his
+breath, of course.  I went to him.  He was shaving himself before
+going to a ball.  I told him what had happened; it was funny to see
+him put his back against the door.  He was very frightened,
+understanding this sort of thing better than I did--for I was only
+twenty then.  He shaved my head and moustache and put me on a fair
+wig.  Then he brought me macaroni, and some meat, to eat.  He gave me
+a big fair moustache, and a cap, and hid the moustache in the lining.
+He brought me a cloak of his own, and four gulden.  All the time he
+was extremely frightened, and kept listening, and saying: 'Eat!'
+
+"When I had done, he just said: 'Go away, I refuse to know anything
+more of you.'
+
+"I thanked him and went out.  I walked about all that night; for I
+couldn't think of anything to do or anywhere to go.  In the morning I
+slept on a seat in one of the squares.  Then I thought I would go to
+the Gallerien; and I spent the whole day looking at the pictures.
+When the Galleries were shut I was very tired, so I went into a cafe,
+and had some beer.  When I came out I sat on the same seat in the
+Square.  I meant to wait till dark and then walk out of the city and
+take the train at some little station, but while I was sitting there
+I went to sleep.  A policeman woke me.  He had my wig in his hand.
+
+"'Why do you wear a wig?' he said.
+
+"I answered: 'Because I am bald.'
+
+"'No,' he said, 'you're not bald, you've been shaved.  I can feel the
+hair coming.'
+
+"He put his finger on my head.  I felt reckless and laughed.
+
+"'Ah!' he said, 'you'll come with me and explain all this; your nose
+and eyes are looked for.'
+
+"I went with him quietly to the police-station...."
+
+Harz seemed carried away by his story.  His quick dark face worked,
+his steel-grey eyes stared as though he were again passing through
+all these long-past emotions.
+
+The hot sun struck down; Christian drew herself together, sitting
+with her hands clasped round her knees.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+"I didn't care by then what came of it.  I didn't even think what I
+was going to say.  He led me down a passage to a room with bars
+across the windows and long seats, and maps on the walls.  We sat and
+waited.  He kept his eye on me all the time; and I saw no hope.
+Presently the Inspector came.  'Bring him in here,' he said; I
+remember feeling I could kill him for ordering me about!  We went
+into the next room.  It had a large clock, a writing-table, and a
+window, without bars, looking on a courtyard.  Long policemen's coats
+and caps were hanging from some pegs.  The Inspector told me to take
+off my cap.  I took it off, wig and all.  He asked me who I was, but
+I refused to answer.  Just then there was a loud sound of voices in
+the room we had come from.  The Inspector told the policeman to look
+after me, and went to see what it was.  I could hear him talking.  He
+called out: 'Come here, Becker!'  I stood very quiet, and Becker went
+towards the door.  I heard the Inspector say: 'Go and find Schwartz,
+I will see after this fellow.'  The policeman went, and the Inspector
+stood with his back to me in the half-open door, and began again to
+talk to the man in the other room.  Once or twice he looked round at
+me, but I stood quiet all the time.  They began to disagree, and
+their voices got angry.  The Inspector moved a little into the other
+room.  'Now!' I thought, and slipped off my cloak.  I hooked off a
+policeman's coat and cap, and put them on.  My heart beat till I felt
+sick.  I went on tiptoe to the window.  There was no one outside, but
+at the entrance a man was holding some horses.  I opened the window a
+little and held my breath.  I heard the Inspector say: 'I will report
+you for impertinence!' and slipped through the window.  The coat came
+down nearly to my heels, and the cap over my eyes.  I walked up to
+the man with the horses, and said: 'Good-evening.'  One of the horses
+had begun to kick, and he only grunted at me.  I got into a passing
+tram; it was five minutes to the West Bahnhof; I got out there.
+There was a train starting; they were shouting 'Einsteigen!'  I ran.
+The collector tried to stop me.  I shouted: 'Business--important!'
+He let me by.  I jumped into a carriage.  The train started."
+
+He paused, and Christian heaved a sigh.
+
+Harz went on, twisting a twig of ivy in his hands: "There was another
+man in the carriage reading a paper.  Presently I said to him, 'Where
+do we stop first?'  'St. Polten.'  Then I knew it was the Munich
+express--St. Polten, Amstetten, Linz, and Salzburg--four stops before
+the frontier.  The man put down his paper and looked at me; he had a
+big fair moustache and rather shabby clothes.  His looking at me
+disturbed me, for I thought every minute he would say: 'You're no
+policeman!'  And suddenly it came into my mind that if they looked
+for me in this train, it would be as a policeman!--they would know,
+of course, at the station that a policeman had run past at the last
+minute.  I wanted to get rid of the coat and cap, but the man was
+there, and I didn't like to move out of the carriage for other people
+to notice.  So I sat on.  We came to St. Polten at last.  The man in
+my carriage took his bag, got out, and left his paper on the seat.
+We started again; I breathed at last, and as soon as I could took the
+cap and coat and threw them out into the darkness.  I thought: 'I
+shall get across the frontier now.'  I took my own cap out and found
+the moustache Luigi gave me; rubbed my clothes as clean as possible;
+stuck on the moustache, and with some little ends of chalk in my
+pocket made my eyebrows light; then drew some lines in my face to
+make it older, and pulled my cap well down above my wig.  I did it
+pretty well--I was quite like the man who had got out.  I sat in his
+corner, took up his newspaper, and waited for Amstetten.  It seemed a
+tremendous time before we got there.  From behind my paper I could
+see five or six policemen on the platform, one quite close.  He
+opened the door, looked at me, and walked through the carriage into
+the corridor.  I took some tobacco and rolled up a cigarette, but it
+shook, "Harz lifted the ivy twig, "like this.  In a minute the
+conductor and two more policemen came.  'He was here,' said the
+conductor, 'with this gentleman.'  One of them looked at me, and
+asked: 'Have you seen a policeman travelling on this train?'  'Yes,'
+I said.  'Where?'  'He got out at St.  Polten.'  The policeman asked
+the conductor: 'Did you see him get out there?'  The conductor shook
+his head.  I said: 'He got out as the train was moving.'  'Ah!' said
+the policeman, 'what was he like?'  'Rather short, and no moustache.
+Why?'  ' Did you notice anything unusual?'  'No,' I said, 'only that
+he wore coloured trousers.  What's the matter?'  One policeman said
+to the other: 'That's our man!  Send a telegram to St. Polten; he has
+more than an hour's start.'  He asked me where I was going.  I told
+him: 'Linz.'  'Ah!' he said, 'you'll have to give evidence; your name
+and address please?'  'Josef Reinhardt, 17 Donau Strasse.'  He wrote
+it down.  The conductor said: 'We are late, can we start?'  They shut
+the door.  I heard them say to the conductor: 'Search again at Linz,
+and report to the Inspector there.'  They hurried on to the platform,
+and we started.  At first I thought I would get out as soon as the
+train had left the station.  Then, that I should be too far from the
+frontier; better to go on to Linz and take my chance there.  I sat
+still and tried not to think.
+
+After a long time, we began to run more slowly.  I put my head out
+and could see in the distance a ring of lights hanging in the
+blackness.  I loosened the carriage door and waited for the train to
+run slower still; I didn't mean to go into Linz like a rat into a
+trap.  At last I could wait no longer; I opened the door, jumped and
+fell into some bushes.  I was not much hurt, but bruised, and the
+breath knocked out of me.  As soon as I could, I crawled out.  It was
+very dark.  I felt heavy and sore, and for some time went stumbling
+in and out amongst trees.  Presently I came to a clear space; on one
+side I could see the town's shape drawn in lighted lamps, and on the
+other a dark mass, which I think was forest; in the distance too was
+a thin chain of lights.  I thought: 'They must be the lights of a
+bridge.'  Just then the moon came out, and I could see the river
+shining below.  It was cold and damp, and I walked quickly.  At last
+I came out on a road, past houses and barking dogs, down to the river
+bank; there I sat against a shed and went to sleep.  I woke very
+stiff.  It was darker than before; the moon was gone.  I could just
+see the river.  I stumbled on, to get through the town before dawn.
+It was all black shapes-houses and sheds, and the smell of the river,
+the smell of rotting hay, apples, tar, mud, fish; and here and there
+on a wharf a lantern.  I stumbled over casks and ropes and boxes; I
+saw I should never get clear--the dawn had begun already on the other
+side.  Some men came from a house behind me.  I bent, and crept
+behind some barrels.  They passed along the wharf; they seemed to
+drop into the river.  I heard one of them say: 'Passau before night.'
+I stood up and saw they had walked on board a steamer which was lying
+head up-stream, with some barges in tow.  There was a plank laid to
+the steamer, and a lantern at the other end.  I could hear the
+fellows moving below deck, getting up steam.  I ran across the plank
+and crept to the end of the steamer.  I meant to go with them to
+Passau!  The rope which towed the barges was nearly taut; and I knew
+if I could get on to the barges I should be safe.  I climbed down on
+this rope and crawled along.  I was desperate, I knew they'd soon be
+coming up, and it was getting light.  I thought I should fall into
+the water several times, but I got to the barge at last.  It was
+laden with straw.  There was nobody on board.  I was hungry and
+thirsty--I looked for something to eat; there was nothing but the
+ashes of a fire and a man's coat.  I crept into the straw.  Soon a
+boat brought men, one for each barge, and there were sounds of steam.
+As soon as we began moving through the water, I fell asleep.  When I
+woke we were creeping through a heavy mist.  I made a little hole in
+the straw and saw the bargeman.  He was sitting by a fire at the
+barge's edge, so that the sparks and smoke blew away over the water.
+He ate and drank with both hands, and funny enough he looked in the
+mist, like a big bird flapping its wings; there was a good smell of
+coffee, and I sneezed.  How the fellow started!  But presently he
+took a pitchfork and prodded the straw.  Then I stood up.  I couldn't
+help laughing, he was so surprised--a huge, dark man, with a great
+black beard.  I pointed to the fire and said 'Give me some, brother!'
+He pulled me out of the straw; I was so stiff, I couldn't move.  I
+sat by the fire, and ate black bread and turnips, and drank coffee;
+while he stood by, watching me and muttering.  I couldn't understand
+him well--he spoke a dialect from Hungary.  He asked me: How I got
+there--who I was--where I was from?  I looked up in his face, and he
+looked down at me, sucking his pipe.  He was a big man, he lived
+alone on the river, and I was tired of telling lies, so I told him
+the whole thing.  When I had done he just grunted.  I can see him now
+standing over me, with the mist hanging in his beard, and his great
+naked arms.  He drew me some water, and I washed and showed him my
+wig and moustache, and threw them overboard.  All that day we lay out
+on the barge in the mist, with our feet to the fire, smoking; now and
+then he would spit into the ashes and mutter into his beard.  I shall
+never forget that day.  The steamer was like a monster with fiery
+nostrils, and the other barges were dumb creatures with eyes, where
+the fires were; we couldn't see the bank, but now and then a bluff
+and high trees, or a castle, showed in the mist.  If I had only had
+paint and canvas that day!"  He sighed.
+
+"It was early Spring, and the river was in flood; they were going to
+Regensburg to unload there, take fresh cargo, and back to Linz.  As
+soon as the mist began to clear, the bargeman hid me in the straw.
+At Passau was the frontier; they lay there for the night, but nothing
+happened, and I slept in the straw.  The next day I lay out on the
+barge deck; there was no mist, but I was free--the sun shone gold on
+the straw and the green sacking; the water seemed to dance, and I
+laughed--I laughed all the time, and the barge man laughed with me.
+A fine fellow he was!  At Regensburg I helped them to unload; for
+more than a week we worked; they nicknamed me baldhead, and when it
+was all over I gave the money I earned for the unloading to the big
+bargeman.  We kissed each other at parting.  I had still three of the
+gulden that Luigi gave me, and I went to a house-painter and got work
+with him.  For six months I stayed there to save money; then I wrote
+to my mother's cousin in Vienna, and told him I was going to London.
+He gave me an introduction to some friends there.  I went to Hamburg,
+and from there to London in a cargo steamer, and I've never been back
+till now."
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+After a minute's silence Christian said in a startled voice: "They
+could arrest you then!"
+
+Harz laughed.
+
+"If they knew; but it's seven years ago."
+
+"Why did you come here, when it's so dangerous?"
+
+"I had been working too hard, I wanted to see my country--after seven
+years, and when it's forbidden!  But I'm ready to go back now."  He
+looked down at her, frowning.
+
+"Had you a hard time in London, too?"
+
+"Harder, at first--I couldn't speak the language.  In my profession
+it's hard work to get recognised, it's hard work to make a living.
+There are too many whose interest it is to keep you down--I shan't
+forget them."
+
+"But every one is not like that?"
+
+"No; there are fine fellows, too.  I shan't forget them either.  I
+can sell my pictures now; I'm no longer weak, and I promise you I
+shan't forget.  If in the future I have power, and I shall have
+power--I shan't forget."
+
+A shower of fine gravel came rattling on the wall.  Dawney was
+standing below them with an amused expression on his upturned face.
+
+"Are you going to stay there all night?" he asked.  "Greta and I have
+bored each other."
+
+"We're coming," called Christian hastily.
+
+On the way back neither spoke a word, but when they reached the
+Villa, Harz took her hand, and said: "Fraulein Christian, I can't do
+any more with your picture.  I shan't touch it again after this."
+
+She made no answer, but they looked at each other, and both seemed to
+ask, to entreat, something more; then her eyes fell.  He dropped her
+hand, and saying, "Good-night," ran after Dawney.
+
+In the corridor, Dominique, carrying a dish of fruit, met the
+sisters; he informed them that Miss Naylor had retired to bed; that
+Herr Paul would not be home to dinner; his master was dining in his
+room; dinner would be served for Mrs. Decie and the two young ladies
+in a quarter of an hour: "And the fish is good to-night; little
+trouts! try them, Signorina!" He moved on quickly, softly, like a
+cat, the tails of his dress-coat flapping, and the heels of his white
+socks gleaming.
+
+Christian ran upstairs.  She flew about her room, feeling that if she
+once stood still it would all crystallise in hard painful thought,
+which motion alone kept away.  She washed, changed her dress and
+shoes, and ran down to her uncle's room.  Mr. Treffry had just
+finished dinner, pushed the little table back, and was sitting in his
+chair, with his glasses on his nose, reading the Tines.  Christian
+touched his forehead with her lips.
+
+"Glad to see you, Chris.  Your stepfather's out to dinner, and I
+can't stand your aunt when she's in one of her talking moods--bit of
+a humbug, Chris, between ourselves; eh, isn't she?" His eyes
+twinkled.
+
+Christian smiled.  There was a curious happy restlessness in her that
+would not let her keep still.
+
+"Picture finished?" Mr. Treffry asked suddenly, taking up the paper
+with a crackle.  "Don't go and fall in love with the painter, Chris."
+
+Christian was still enough now.
+
+'Why not?' she thought.  'What should you know about him?  Isn't he
+good enough for me?'  A gong sounded.
+
+"There's your dinner," Mr. Treffry remarked.
+
+With sudden contrition she bent and kissed him.
+
+But when she had left the room Mr. Treffry put down the Times and
+stared at the door, humming to himself, and thoughtfully fingering
+his chin.
+
+Christian could not eat; she sat, indifferent to the hoverings of
+Dominique, tormented by uneasy fear and longings.  She answered Mrs.
+Decie at random.  Greta kept stealing looks at her from under her
+lashes.
+
+"Decided characters are charming, don't you think so, Christian?"
+Mrs. Decie said, thrusting her chin a little forward, and modelling
+the words.  "That is why I like Mr. Harz so much; such an immense
+advantage for a man to know his mind.  You have only to look at that
+young man to see that he knows what he wants, and means to have it."
+
+Christian pushed her plate away.  Greta, flushing, said abruptly:
+"Doctor Edmund is not a decided character, I think.  This afternoon
+he said: 'Shall I have some beer-yes, I shall--no, I shall not'; then
+he ordered the beer, so, when it came, he gave it to the soldiers."
+
+Mrs. Decie turned her enigmatic smile from one girl to the other.
+
+When dinner was over they went into her room.  Greta stole at once to
+the piano, where her long hair fell almost to the keys; silently she
+sat there fingering the notes, smiling to herself, and looking at her
+aunt, who was reading Pater's essays.  Christian too had taken up a
+book, but soon put it down--of several pages she had not understood a
+word.  She went into the garden and wandered about the lawn, clasping
+her hands behind her head.  The air was heavy; very distant thunder
+trembled among the mountains, flashes of summer lightning played over
+the trees; and two great moths were hovering about a rosebush.
+Christian watched their soft uncertain rushes.  Going to the little
+summer-house she flung herself down on a seat, and pressed her hands
+to her heart.
+
+There was a strange and sudden aching there.  Was he going from her?
+If so, what would be left?  How little and how narrow seemed the
+outlook of her life--with the world waiting for her, the world of
+beauty, effort, self-sacrifice, fidelity!  It was as though a flash
+of that summer lightning had fled by, singeing her, taking from her
+all powers of flight, burning off her wings, as off one of those pale
+hovering moths.  Tears started up, and trickled down her face.
+'Blind!' she thought; 'how could I have been so blind?'
+
+Some one came down the path.
+
+"Who's there?" she cried.
+
+Harz stood in the doorway.
+
+"Why did you come out?" he said.  "Ah! why did you come out?"  He
+caught her hand; Christian tried to draw it from him, and to turn her
+eyes away, but she could not.  He flung himself down on his knees,
+and cried: "I love you!"
+
+In a rapture of soft terror Christian bent her forehead down to his
+hand.
+
+"What are you doing?" she heard him say.  "Is it possible that you
+love me?" and she felt his kisses on her hair.
+
+"My sweet! it will be so hard for you; you are so little, so little,
+and so weak."  Clasping his hand closer to her face, she murmured: "I
+don't care."
+
+There was a long, soft silence, that seemed to last for ever.
+Suddenly she threw her arms round his neck and kissed him.
+
+"Whatever comes!" she whispered, and gathering her dress, escaped
+from him into the darkness.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+Christian woke next morning with a smile.  In her attitudes, her
+voice, her eyes, there was a happy and sweet seriousness, as if she
+were hugging some holy thought.  After breakfast she took a book and
+sat in the open window, whence she could see the poplar-trees
+guarding the entrance.  There was a breeze; the roses close by kept
+nodding to her; the cathedral bells were in full chime; bees hummed
+above the lavender; and in the sky soft clouds were floating like
+huge, white birds.
+
+The sounds of Miss Naylor's staccato dictation travelled across the
+room, and Greta's sighs as she took it down, one eye on her paper,
+one eye on Scruff, who lay with a black ear flapped across his paw,
+and his tan eyebrows quivering.  He was in disgrace, for Dominique,
+coming on him unawares, had seen him "say his prayers" before a
+pudding, and take the pudding for reward.
+
+Christian put her book down gently, and slipped through the window.
+Harz was coming in from the road.  "I am all yours!" she whispered.
+His fingers closed on hers, and he went into the house.
+
+She slipped back, took up her book, and waited.  It seemed long
+before he came out, but when he did he waved her back, and hurried
+on; she had a glimpse of his face, white to the lips.  Feeling faint
+and sick, she flew to her stepfather's room.
+
+Herr Paul was standing in a corner with the utterly disturbed
+appearance of an easy-going man, visited by the unexpected.  His fine
+shirt-front was crumpled as if his breast had heaved too suddenly
+under strong emotion; his smoked eyeglasses dangled down his back;
+his fingers were embedded in his beard.  He was fixing his eye on a
+spot in the floor as though he expected it to explode and blow them
+to fragments.  In another corner Mrs. Decie, with half-closed eyes,
+was running her finger-tips across her brow.
+
+"What have you said to him?" cried Christian.
+
+Herr Paul regarded her with glassy eyes.
+
+"Mein Gott!" he said.  "Your aunt and I!"
+
+"What have you said to him?" repeated Christian.
+
+"The impudence!  An anarchist!.  A beggar!"
+
+"Paul!" murmured Mrs. Decie.
+
+"The outlaw!  The fellow!"  Herr Paul began to stride about the room.
+
+Quivering from head to foot, Christian cried: "How dared you?" and
+ran from the room, pushing aside Miss Naylor and Greta, who stood
+blanched and frightened in the doorway.
+
+Herr Paul stopped in his tramp, and, still with his eyes fixed on the
+floor, growled:
+
+"A fine thing-hein?  What's coming?  Will you please tell me?  An
+anarchist--a beggar!"
+
+"Paul!" murmured Mrs. Decie.
+
+"Paul!  Paul!  And you!" he pointed to Miss Naylor--"Two women with
+eyes!--hein!"
+
+"There is nothing to be gained by violence," Mrs. Decie murmured,
+passing her handkerchief across her lips.  Miss Naylor, whose thin
+brown cheeks had flushed, advanced towards him.
+
+"I hope you do not--"she said; "I am sure there was nothing that I
+could have prevented--I should be glad if that were understood."
+And, turning with some dignity, the little lady went away, closing
+the door behind her.
+
+"You hear!" Herr Paul said, violently sarcastic: "nothing she could
+have prevented!  Enfin,! Will you please tell me what I am to do?"
+
+"Men of the world"--whose philosophy is a creature of circumstance
+and accepted things--find any deviation from the path of their
+convictions dangerous, shocking, and an intolerable bore.  Herr Paul
+had spent his life laughing at convictions; the matter had but to
+touch him personally, and the tap of laughter was turned off.  That
+any one to whom he was the lawful guardian should marry other than a
+well-groomed man, properly endowed with goods, properly selected, was
+beyond expression horrid.  From his point of view he had great excuse
+for horror; and he was naturally unable to judge whether he had
+excuse for horror from other points of view.  His amazement had in it
+a spice of the pathetic; he was like a child in the presence of a
+thing that he absolutely could not understand.  The interview had
+left him with a sense of insecurity which he felt to be particularly
+unfair.
+
+The door was again opened, and Greta flew in, her cheeks flushed, her
+hair floating behind her, and tears streaming down her cheeks.
+
+"Papa!" she cried, "you have been cruel to Chris.  The door is
+locked; I can hear her crying--why have you been cruel?"  Without
+waiting to be answered, she flew out again.
+
+Herr Paul seized his hair with both his hands: "Good!  Very good!  My
+own child, please!  What next then?"
+
+Mrs. Decie rose from her chair languidly.  "My head is very bad," she
+said, shading her eyes and speaking in low tones: "It is no use
+making a fuss--nothing can come of this--he has not a penny.
+Christian will have nothing till you die, which will not be for a
+long time yet, if you can but avoid an apoplectic fit!"
+
+At these last words Herr Paul gave a start of real disgust.  "Hum!"
+he muttered; it was as if the world were bent on being brutal to him.
+Mrs. Decie continued:
+
+"If I know anything of this young man, he will not come here again,
+after the words you have spoken.  As for Christian--you had better
+talk to Nicholas.  I am going to lie down."
+
+Herr Paul nervously fingered the shirt-collar round his stout, short
+neck.
+
+"Nicholas!  Certainly--a good idea.  Quelle diable d'afaire!"
+
+'French!' thought Mrs. Decie; 'we shall soon have peace.  Poor
+Christian!  I'm sorry!  After all, these things are a matter of time
+and opportunity.'  This consoled her a good deal.
+
+But for Christian the hours were a long nightmare of grief and shame,
+fear and anger.  Would he forgive?  Would he be true to her?  Or
+would he go away without a word?  Since yesterday it was as if she
+had stepped into another world, and lost it again.  In place of that
+new feeling, intoxicating as wine, what was coming?  What bitter;
+dreadful ending?
+
+A rude entrance this into the life of facts, and primitive emotions!
+
+She let Greta into her room after a time, for the child had begun
+sobbing; but she would not talk, and sat hour after hour at the
+window with the air fanning her face, and the pain in her eyes turned
+to the sky and trees.  After one or two attempts at consolation,
+Greta sank on the floor, and remained there, humbly gazing at her
+sister in a silence only broken when Christian cleared her throat of
+tears, and by the song of birds in the garden.  In the afternoon she
+slipped away and did not come back again.
+
+After his interview with Mr. Treffry, Herr Paul took a bath, perfumed
+himself with precision, and caused it to be clearly understood that,
+under circumstances such as these, a man's house was not suited for a
+pig to live in.  He shortly afterwards went out to the Kurbaus, and
+had not returned by dinner-time.
+
+Christian came down for dinner.  There were crimson spots in her
+cheeks, dark circles round her eyes; she behaved, however, as though
+nothing had happened.  Miss Naylor, affected by the kindness of her
+heart and the shock her system had sustained, rolled a number of
+bread pills, looking at each as it came, with an air of surprise, and
+concealing it with difficulty.  Mr. Treffry was coughing, and when he
+talked his voice seemed to rumble even more than usual.  Greta was
+dumb, trying to catch Christian's eye; Mrs. Decie alone seemed at
+ease.  After dinner Mr. Treffry went off to his room, leaning heavily
+on Christian's shoulder.  As he sank into his chair, he said to her:
+
+"Pull yourself together, my dear!" Christian did not answer him.
+
+Outside his room Greta caught her by the sleeve.
+
+"Look!" she whispered, thrusting a piece of paper into Christian's
+hand.  "It is to me from Dr. Edmund, but you must read it."
+
+Christian opened the note, which ran as follows:
+
+
+"MY PHILOSOPHER AND FRIEND,--I received your note, and went to our
+friend's studio; he was not in, but half an hour ago I stumbled on
+him in the Platz.  He is not quite himself; has had a touch of the
+sun--nothing serious: I took him to my hotel, where he is in bed.  If
+he will stay there he will be all right in a day or two.  In any case
+he shall not elude my clutches for the present.
+
+"My warm respects to Mistress Christian.--Yours in friendship and
+philosophy,
+
+EDMUND DAWNEY."
+
+
+Christian read and re-read this note, then turned to Greta.
+
+"What did you say to Dr. Dawney?"
+
+Greta took back the piece of paper, and replied: " I said:
+
+"'DEAR DR. EDMUND,--We are anxious about Herr Harz.  We think he is
+perhaps not very well to-day.  We (I and Christian) should like to
+know.  You can tell us.  Please shall you?  GRETA.'
+
+"That is what I said."
+
+Christian dropped her eyes.  "What made you write?"
+
+Greta gazed at her mournfully: "I thought--O Chris! come into the
+garden.  I am so hot, and it is so dull without you!"
+
+Christian bent her head forward and rubbed her cheek against Greta's,
+then without another word ran upstairs and locked herself into her
+room.  The child stood listening; hearing the key turn in the lock,
+she sank down on the bottom step and took Scruff in her arms.
+
+Half an hour later Miss Naylor, carrying a candle, found her there
+fast asleep, with her head resting on the terrier's back, and tear
+stains on her cheeks....
+
+Mrs. Decie presently came out, also carrying a candle, and went to
+her brother's room.  She stood before his chair, with folded hands.
+
+"Nicholas, what is to be done?"
+
+Mr. Treffry was pouring whisky into a glass.
+
+"Damn it, Con!" he answered; "how should I know?"
+
+"There's something in Christian that makes interference dangerous.  I
+know very well that I've no influence with her at all."
+
+"You're right there, Con," Mr. Treffry replied.
+
+Mrs. Decie's pale eyes, fastened on his face, forced him to look up.
+
+"I wish you would leave off drinking whisky and attend to me.  Paul
+is an element--"
+
+"Paul," Mr. Treffry growled, "is an ass!"
+
+"Paul," pursued Mrs. Decie, "is an element of danger in the
+situation; any ill-timed opposition of his might drive her to I don't
+know what.  Christian is gentle, she is 'sympathetic' as they say;
+but thwart her, and she is as obstinate as....
+
+"You or I!  Leave her alone!"
+
+"I understand her character, but I confess that I am at a loss what
+to do."
+
+"Do nothing!"  He drank again.
+
+Mrs. Decie took up the candle.
+
+"Men!" she said with a mysterious intonation; shrugging her
+shoulders, she walked out.
+
+Mr. Treffry put down his glass.
+
+'Understand?' he thought; 'no, you don't, and I don't.  Who
+understands a young girl?  Vapourings, dreams, moonshine I....  What
+does she see in this painter fellow?  I wonder!'  He breathed
+heavily.  'By heavens! I wouldn't have had this happen for a hundred
+thousand pounds!'
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+For many hours after Dawney had taken him to his hotel, Harz was
+prostrate with stunning pains in the head and neck.  He had been all
+day without food, exposed to burning sun, suffering violent emotion.
+Movement of any sort caused him such agony that he could only lie in
+stupor, counting the spots dancing before, his eyes.  Dawney did
+everything for him, and Harz resented in a listless way the intent
+scrutiny of the doctor's calm, black eyes.
+
+Towards the end of the second day he was able to get up; Dawney found
+him sitting on the bed in shirt and trousers.
+
+"My son," he said, "you had better tell me what the trouble is--it
+will do your stubborn carcase good."
+
+"I must go back to work," said Harz.
+
+"Work!" said Dawney deliberately: "you couldn't, if you tried."
+
+"I must."
+
+"My dear fellow, you couldn't tell one colour from another."
+
+"I must be doing something; I can't sit here and think."
+
+Dawney hooked his thumbs into his waistcoat: "You won't see the sun
+for three days yet, if I can help it."
+
+Harz got up.
+
+"I'm going to my studio to-morrow," he said.  "I promise not to go
+out.  I must be where I can see my work.  If I can't paint, I can
+draw; I can feel my brushes, move my things about.  I shall go mad if
+I do nothing."
+
+Dawney took his arm, and walked him up and down.
+
+"I'll let you go," he said, "but give me a chance!  It's as much to
+me to put you straight as it is to you to paint a decent picture.
+Now go to bed; I'll have a carriage for you to-morrow morning."
+
+Harz sat down on the bed again, and for a long time stayed without
+moving, his eyes fixed on the floor.  The sight of him, so desperate
+and miserable, hurt the young doctor.
+
+"Can you get to bed by yourself?" he asked at last.
+
+Harz nodded.
+
+"Then, good-night, old chap!" and Dawney left the room.
+
+He took his hat and turned towards the Villa.  Between the poplars he
+stopped to think.  The farther trees were fret-worked black against
+the lingering gold of the sunset; a huge moth, attracted by the tip
+of his cigar, came fluttering in his face.  The music of a concertina
+rose and fell, like the sighing of some disillusioned spirit.  Dawney
+stood for several minutes staring at the house.
+
+He was shown to Mrs. Decie's room.  She was holding a magazine before
+her eyes, and received him with as much relief as philosophy
+permitted.
+
+"You are the very person I wanted to see," she said.
+
+He noticed that the magazine she held was uncut.
+
+"You are a young man," pursued Mrs. Decie, "but as my doctor I have a
+right to your discretion."
+
+Dawney smiled; the features of his broad, clean-shaven face looked
+ridiculously small on such occasions, but his eyes retained their air
+of calculation.
+
+"That is so," he answered.
+
+"It is about this unfortunate affair.  I understand that Mr. Harz is
+with you.  I want you to use your influence to dissuade him from
+attempting to see my niece."
+
+"Influence!" said Dawney; "you know Harz!"
+
+Mrs. Decie's voice hardened.
+
+"Everybody," she said, "has his weak points.  This young man is open
+to approach from at least two quarters--his pride is one, his work an
+other.  I am seldom wrong in gauging character; these are his vital
+spots, and they are of the essence of this matter.  I'm sorry for
+him, of course--but at his age, and living a man's life, these
+things--"  Her smile was extra pale.  "I wish you could give me
+something for my head.  It's foolish to worry.  Nerves of course!
+But I can't help it!  You know my opinion, Dr. Dawney.  That young
+man will go far if he remains unfettered; he will make a name.  You
+will be doing him a great service if you could show him the affair as
+it really is--a drag on him, and quite unworthy of his pride!  Do
+help me!  You are just the man to do it!"
+
+Dawney threw up his head as if to shake off this impeachment; the
+curve of his chin thus displayed was imposing in its fulness;
+altogether he was imposing, having an air of capability.
+
+She struck him, indeed, as really scared; it was as if her mask of
+smile had become awry, and failed to cover her emotion; and he was
+puzzled, thinking, 'I wouldn't have believed she had it in her....'
+"It's not an easy business," he said; "I'll think it over."
+
+"Thank you!" murmured Mrs. Decie.  "You are most kind."
+
+Passing the schoolroom, he looked in through the open door.
+Christian was sitting there.  The sight of her face shocked him, it
+was so white, so resolutely dumb.  A book lay on her knees; she was
+not reading, but staring before her.  He thought suddenly: 'Poor
+thing!  If I don't say something to her, I shall be a brute!'
+
+"Miss Devorell," he said: "You can reckon on him."
+
+Christian tried to speak, but her lips trembled so that nothing came
+forth.
+
+"Good-night," said Dawney, and walked out....
+
+Three days later Harz was sitting in the window of his studio.  It
+was the first day he had found it possible to work, and now, tired
+out, he stared through the dusk at the slowly lengthening shadows of
+the rafters.  A solitary mosquito hummed, and two house sparrows, who
+had built beneath the roof, chirruped sleepily.  Swallows darted by
+the window, dipping their blue wings towards the quiet water; a hush
+had stolen over everything.  He fell asleep.
+
+He woke, with a dim impression of some near presence.  In the pale
+glimmer from innumerable stars, the room was full of shadowy shapes.
+He lit his lantern.  The flame darted forth, bickered, then slowly
+lit up the great room.
+
+"Who's there?"
+
+A rustling seemed to answer.  He peered about, went to the doorway,
+and drew the curtain.  A woman's cloaked figure shrank against the
+wall.  Her face was buried in her hands; her arms, from which the
+cloak fell back, were alone visible.
+
+"Christian?"
+
+She ran past him, and when he had put the lantern down, was standing
+at the window.  She turned quickly to him.  "Take me away from here!
+Let me come with you!"
+
+"Do you mean it?"
+
+"You said you wouldn't give me up!"
+
+"You know what you are doing?"
+
+She made a motion of assent.
+
+"But you don't grasp what this means.  Things to bear that you know
+nothing of--hunger perhaps!  Think, even hunger!  And your people
+won't forgive--you'll lose everything."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"I must choose--it's one thing or the other.  I can't give you up!
+I should be afraid!"
+
+"But, dear; how can you come with me?  We can't be married here."
+
+"I am giving my life to you."
+
+"You are too good for me," said Harz.  "The life you're going into--
+may be dark, like that!" he pointed to the window.
+
+A sound of footsteps broke the hush.  They could see a figure on the
+path below.  It stopped, seemed to consider, vanished.  They heard
+the sounds of groping hands, of a creaking door, of uncertain feet on
+the stairs.
+
+Harz seized her hand.
+
+"Quick!" he whispered; "behind this canvas!"
+
+Christian was trembling violently.  She drew her hood across her
+face.  The heavy breathing and ejaculations of the visitor were now
+plainly audible.
+
+"He's there!  Quick!  Hide!"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+With a thrill at his heart, Harz kissed her, then walked towards the
+entrance.  The curtain was pulled aside.
+
+It was Herr Paul, holding a cigar in one hand, his hat in the other,
+and breathing hard.
+
+"Pardon!" he said huskily, "your stairs are steep, and dark! mais en,
+fin! nous voila!  I have ventured to come for a talk."  His glance
+fell on the cloaked figure in the shadow.
+
+"Pardon! A thousand pardons!  I had no idea!  I beg you to forgive
+this indiscretion!  I may take it you resign pretensions then?  You
+have a lady here--I have nothing more to say; I only beg a million
+pardons for intruding.  A thousand times forgive me!  Good-night!"
+
+He bowed and turned to go.  Christian stepped forward, and let the
+hood fall from her head.
+
+"It's I!"
+
+Herr Paul pirouetted.
+
+"Good God!" he stammered, dropping cigar and hat.  "Good God!"
+
+The lantern flared suddenly, revealing his crimson, shaking cheeks.
+
+"You came here, at night!  You, the daughter of my wife!"  His eyes
+wandered with a dull glare round the room.
+
+"Take care!" cried Harz: "If you say a word against her---"
+
+The two men stared at each other's eyes.  And without warning, the
+lantern flickered and went out.  Christian drew the cloak round her
+again.  Herr Paul's voice broke the silence; he had recovered his
+self-possession.
+
+"Ah! ah!" he said: "Darkness! Tant mieux!  The right thing for what
+we have to say.  Since we do not esteem each other, it is well not to
+see too much."
+
+"Just so," said Harz.
+
+Christian had come close to them.  Her pale face and great shining
+eyes could just be seen through the gloom.
+
+Herr Paul waved his arm; the gesture was impressive, annihilating.
+
+"This is a matter, I believe, between two men," he said, addressing
+Harz.  "Let us come to the point.  I will do you the credit to
+suppose that you have a marriage in view.  You know, perhaps, that
+Miss Devorell has no money till I die?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And I am passably young! You have money, then?"
+
+"No."
+
+"In that case, you would propose to live on air?"
+
+"No, to work; it has been done before."
+
+"It is calculated to increase hunger!  You are prepared to take Miss
+Devorell, a young lady accustomed to luxury, into places like--this!"
+he peered about him, "into places that smell of paint, into the
+milieu of 'the people,' into the society of Bohemians--who knows? of
+anarchists, perhaps?"
+
+Harz clenched his hands: "I will answer no more questions."
+
+"In that event, we reach the ultimatum," said Herr Paul.  "Listen,
+Herr Outlaw!  If you have not left the country by noon to-morrow, you
+shall be introduced to the police!"
+
+Christian uttered a cry.  For a minute in the gloom the only sound
+heard was the short, hard breathing of the two men.
+
+Suddenly Harz cried: "You coward, I defy you!"
+
+"Coward!" Herr Paul repeated.  "That is indeed the last word.  Look
+to yourself, my friend!"
+
+Stooping and fumbling on the floor, he picked up his hat.  Christian
+had already vanished; the sound of her hurrying footsteps was
+distinctly audible at the top of the dark stairs.  Herr Paul stood
+still a minute.
+
+"Look to yourself, my dear friend!" he said in a thick voice, groping
+for the wall.  Planting his hat askew on his head, he began slowly to
+descend the stairs.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+Nicholas Treffry sat reading the paper in his room by the light of a
+lamp with a green shade; on his sound foot the terrier Scruff was
+asleep and snoring lightly--the dog habitually came down when Greta
+was in bed, and remained till Mr. Treffry, always the latest member
+of the household, retired to rest.
+
+Through the long window a little river of light shone out on the
+veranda tiles, and, flowing past, cut the garden in two.
+
+There was the sound of hurried footsteps, a rustling of draperies;
+Christian, running through the window, stood before him.
+
+Mr. Treffry dropped his paper, such a fury of passion and alarm shone
+in the girl's eyes.
+
+"Chris! What is it?"
+
+"Hateful!"
+
+"Chris!"
+
+"Oh! Uncle!  He's insulted, threatened!  And I love his little finger
+more than all the, world!"
+
+Her passionate voice trembled, her eyes were shining.
+
+Mr. Treffry's profound discomfort found vent in the gruff words: "Sit
+down!"
+
+"I'll never speak to Father again!  Oh! Uncle! I love him!"
+
+Quiet in the extremity of his disturbance, Mr. Treffry leaned forward
+in his chair, rested his big hands on its arms, and stared at her.
+
+Chris!  Here was a woman he did not know!  His lips moved under the
+heavy droop of his moustache.  The girl's face had suddenly grown
+white.  She sank down on her knees, and laid her cheek against his
+hand.  He felt it wet; and a lump rose in his throat.  Drawing his
+hand away, he stared at it, and wiped it with his sleeve.
+
+"Don't cry!" he said.
+
+She seized it again and clung to it; that clutch seemed to fill him
+with sudden rage.
+
+"What's the matter?  How the devil can I do anything if you don't
+tell me?"
+
+She looked up at him.  The distress of the last days, the passion and
+fear of the last hour, the tide of that new life of the spirit and
+the flesh, stirring within her, flowed out in a stream of words.
+
+When she had finished, there was so dead a silence that the
+fluttering of a moth round the lamp could be heard plainly.
+
+Mr. Treffry raised himself, crossed the room, and touched the bell.
+"Tell the groom," he said to Dominique, "to put the horses to, and
+have 'em round at once; bring my old boots; we drive all night...."
+
+His bent figure looked huge, body and legs outlined by light, head
+and shoulders towering into shadow.  "He shall have a run for his
+money!" he said.  His eyes stared down sombrely at his niece.  "It's
+more than he deserves!--it's more than you deserve, Chris.  Sit down
+there and write to him; tell him to put himself entirely in my
+hands."  He turned his back on her, and went into his bedroom.
+
+Christian rose, and sat down at the writing-table.  A whisper
+startled her.  It came from Dominique, who was holding out a pair of
+boots.
+
+"M'mselle Chris, what is this?--to run about all night?"  But
+Christian did not answer.
+
+"M'mselle Chris, are you ill?"  Then seeing her face, he slipped away
+again.
+
+She finished her letter and went out to the carriage.  Mr. Treffry
+was seated under the hood.
+
+"Shan't want you," he called out to the groom, "Get up, Dominique."
+
+Christian thrust her letter into his hand.  "Give him that," she
+said, clinging to his arm with sudden terror.  "Oh! Uncle! do take
+care!"
+
+"Chris, if I do this for you--"  They looked wistfully at one
+another.  Then, shaking his head, Mr. Treffry gathered up the reins.
+
+"Don't fret, my dear, don't fret!  Whoa, mare!"
+
+The carriage with a jerk plunged forward into darkness, curved with a
+crunch of wheels, and vanished, swinging between the black
+treepillars at the entrance....
+
+Christian stood, straining to catch the failing sound of the hoofs.
+
+Down the passage came a flutter of white garments; soft limbs were
+twined about her, some ends of hair fell on her face.
+
+"What is it, Chris?  Where have you been?  Where is Uncle Nic going?
+Tell me!"
+
+Christian tore herself away.  "I don't know," she cried, "I know
+nothing!"
+
+Greta stroked her face.  "Poor Chris!" she murmured.  Her bare feet
+gleamed, her hair shone gold against her nightdress.  "Come to bed,
+poor Chris!"
+
+Christian laughed.  "You little white moth!  Feel how hot I am!
+You'll burn your wings!"
+
+Harz had lain down, fully dressed.  He was no longer angry, but felt
+that he would rather die than yield.  Presently he heard footsteps
+coming up the stairs.
+
+"M'sieu!"
+
+It was the voice of Dominique, whose face, illumined by a match, wore
+an expression of ironical disgust.
+
+"My master," he said, "makes you his compliments; he says there is no
+time to waste.  You are to please come and drive with him!"
+
+"Your master is very kind.  Tell him I'm in bed."
+
+"Ah, M'sieu," said Dominique, grimacing, "I must not go back with
+such an answer.  If you would not come, I was to give you this."
+
+Harz broke the seal and read Christian's letter.
+
+"I will come," he said.
+
+A clock was striking as they went out through the gate.  From within
+the dark cave of the phaeton hood Mr. Treffry said gruffly: "Come
+along, sir!"
+
+Harz flung his knapsack in, and followed.
+
+His companion's figure swayed, the whiplash slid softly along the
+flank of the off horse, and, as the carriage rattled forward, Mr.
+Treffry called out, as if by afterthought: "Hallo, Dominique!"
+Dominque's voice, shaken and ironical, answered from behind: "M'
+v'la, M'sieu!"
+
+In the long street of silent houses, men sitting in the lighted cafes
+turned with glasses at their lips to stare after the carriage.  The
+narrow river of the sky spread suddenly to a vast, limpid ocean
+tremulous with stars.  They had turned into the road for Italy.
+
+Mr. Treffry took a pull at his horses.  "Whoa, mare! Dogged does it!"
+and the near horse, throwing up her head, whinnied; a fleck of foam
+drifted into Harz's face.
+
+The painter had come on impulse; because Christian had told him to,
+not of his own free will.  He was angry with himself, wounded in
+self-esteem, for having allowed any one to render him this service.
+The smooth swift movement through velvet blackness splashed on either
+hand with the flying lamp-light; the strong sweet air blowing in his
+face-air that had kissed the tops of mountains and stolen their
+spirit; the snort and snuffle of the horses, and crisp rattling of
+their hoofs--all this soon roused in him another feeling.  He looked
+at Mr. Treffry's profile, with its tufted chin; at the grey road
+adventuring in darkness; at the purple mass of mountains piled above
+it.  All seemed utterly unreal.
+
+As if suddenly aware that he had a neighbour, Mr. Treffry turned his
+head.  "We shall do better than this presently," he said, "bit of a
+slope coming.  Haven't had 'em out for three days.  Whoa-mare!
+Steady!"
+
+"Why are you taking this trouble for me?" asked Harz.
+
+"I'm an old chap, Mr. Harz, and an old chap may do a stupid thing
+once in a while!"
+
+"You are very good," said Harz, "but I want no favours."
+
+Mr. Treffry stared at him.
+
+"Just so," he said drily, "but you see there's my niece to be thought
+of.  Look here!  We're not at the frontier yet, Mr. Harz, by forty
+miles; it's long odds we don't get there--so, don't spoil sport!"  He
+pointed to the left.
+
+Harz caught the glint of steel.  They were already crossing the
+railway.  The sigh of the telegraph wires fluttered above them.
+
+"Hear 'em," said Mr. Treffry, "but if we get away up the mountains,
+we'll do yet!"  They had begun to rise, the speed slackened.  Mr.
+Treffry rummaged out a flask.
+
+"Not bad stuff, Mr. Harz--try it.  You won't?  Mother's milk!  Fine
+night, eh?"  Below them the valley was lit by webs of milky mist like
+the glimmer of dew on grass.
+
+These two men sitting side by side--unlike in face, age, stature,
+thought, and life--began to feel drawn towards each other, as if, in
+the rolling of the wheels, the snorting of the horses, the huge dark
+space, the huge uncertainty, they had found something they could
+enjoy in common.  The, steam from the horses' flanks and nostrils
+enveloped them with an odour as of glue.
+
+"You smoke, Mr. Harz?"
+
+Harz took the proffered weed, and lighted it from the glowing tip of
+Mr. Treffry's cigar, by light of which his head and hat looked like
+some giant mushroom.  Suddenly the wheels jolted on a rubble of loose
+stones; the carriage was swung sideways.  The scared horses,
+straining asunder, leaped forward, and sped downwards, in the
+darkness.
+
+Past rocks, trees, dwellings, past a lighted house that gleamed and
+vanished.  With a clink and clatter, a flirt of dust and pebbles, and
+the side lamps throwing out a frisky orange blink, the carriage
+dashed down, sinking and rising like a boat crossing billows.  The
+world seemed to rock and sway; to dance up, and be flung flat again.
+Only the stars stood still.
+
+Mr. Treffry, putting on the brake, muttered apologetically: "A little
+out o'hand!"
+
+Suddenly with a headlong dive, the carriage swayed as if it would fly
+in pieces, slithered along, and with a jerk steadied itself.  Harz
+lifted his voice in a shout of pure excitement.  Mr. Treffry let out
+a short shaky howl, and from behind there rose a wail.  But the hill
+was over and the startled horses were cantering with a free, smooth
+motion.  Mr. Treffry and Harz looked at each other.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+Mr. Treffry said with a sort of laugh: "Near go, eh?  You drive?  No?
+That's a pity!  Broken most of my bones at the game--nothing like
+it!"  Each felt a kind of admiration for the other that he had not
+felt before.  Presently Mr. Treffry began: "Look here, Mr. Harz, my
+niece is a slip of a thing, with all a young girl's notions!  What
+have you got to give her, eh?  Yourself?  That's surely not enough;
+mind this--six months after marriage we all turn out much the same--a
+selfish lot!  Not to mention this anarchist affair!
+
+You're not of her blood, nor of her way of life, nor anything--it's
+taking chances--and--" his hand came down on the young man's knee,
+"I'm fond of her, you see."
+
+"If you were in my place," said Harz, "would you give her up?"
+
+Mr. Treffry groaned.  "Lord knows!"
+
+"Men have made themselves before now.  For those who don't believe in
+failure, there's no such thing.  Suppose she does suffer a little?
+Will it do her any harm?  Fair weather love is no good."
+
+Mr. Treffry sighed.
+
+"Brave words, sir!  You'll pardon me if I'm too old to understand 'em
+when they're used about my niece."
+
+He pulled the horses up, and peered into the darkness.  "We're going
+through this bit quietly; if they lose track of us here so much the
+better.  Dominique! put out the lamps.  Soho, my beauties!"  The
+horses paced forward at a walk the muffled beat of their hoofs in the
+dust hardly broke the hush.  Mr. Treffry pointed to the left: "It'll
+be another thirty-five miles to the frontier."
+
+They passed the whitewashed houses, and village church with its
+sentinel cypress-trees.  A frog was croaking in a runlet; there was a
+faint spicy scent of lemons.  But nothing stirred.
+
+It was wood now on either side, the high pines, breathing their
+fragrance out into the darkness, and, like ghosts amongst them, the
+silver stems of birch-trees.
+
+Mr. Treffry said gruffly: "You won't give her up?  Her happiness
+means a lot to me."
+
+"To you!" said Harz: "to him!  And I am nothing!  Do you think I
+don't care for her happiness?  Is it a crime for me to love her?"
+
+"Almost, Mr. Harz--considering...."
+
+"Considering that I've no money!  Always money!"
+
+To this sneer Mr. Treffry made no answer, clucking to his horses.
+
+"My niece was born and bred a lady," he said at last.  "I ask you
+plainly What position have you got to give her?"
+
+"If she marries me," said Harz, "she comes into my world.  You think
+that I'm a common...."
+
+Mr. Treffry shook his head: "Answer my question, young man."
+
+But the painter did not answer it, and silence fell.
+
+A light breeze had sprung up; the whispering in the trees, the
+rolling of the wheels in this night progress, the pine-drugged air,
+sent Harz to sleep.  When he woke it was to the same tune, varied by
+Mr. Treffry's uneasy snoring; the reins were hanging loose, and,
+peering out, he saw Dominique shuffling along at the horses' heads.
+He joined him, and, one on each side, they plodded up and up.  A haze
+had begun to bathe the trees, the stars burnt dim, the air was
+colder.  Mr. Treffry woke coughing.  It was like some long nightmare,
+this interminable experience of muffled sounds and shapes, of
+perpetual motion, conceived, and carried out in darkness.  But
+suddenly the day broke.  Heralded by the snuffle of the horses, light
+began glimmering over a chaos of lines and shadows, pale as mother-
+o'-pearl.  The stars faded, and in a smouldering zigzag the dawn fled
+along the mountain tops, flinging out little isles of cloud.  From a
+lake, curled in a hollow like a patch of smoke, came the cry of a
+water-bird.  A cuckoo started a soft mocking; and close to the
+carriage a lark flew up.  Beasts and men alike stood still, drinking
+in the air-sweet with snows and dew, and vibrating faintly with the
+running of the water and the rustling of the leaves.
+
+The night had played sad tricks with Mr. Nicholas Treffry; his hat
+was grey with dust; his cheeks brownish-purple, there were heavy
+pouches beneath his eyes, which stared painfully.
+
+"We'll call a halt," he said, "and give the gees their grub, poor
+things.  Can you find some water, Mr. Harz?  There's a rubber bucket
+in behind.
+
+Can't get about myself this morning; make that lazy fellow of mine
+stir his stumps."
+
+Harz saw that he had drawn off one of his boots, and stretched the
+foot out on a cushion.
+
+"You're not fit to go farther," he said; "you're ill."
+
+"Ill!" replied Mr. Treffry; "not a bit of it!"
+
+Harz looked at him, then catching up the bucket, made off in search
+of water.  When he came back the horses were feeding from an india-
+rubber trough slung to the pole; they stretched their heads towards
+the bucket, pushing aside each other's noses.
+
+The flame in the east had died, but the tops of the larches were
+bathed in a gentle radiance; and the peaks ahead were like amber.
+Everywhere were threads of water, threads of snow, and little threads
+of dewy green, glistening like gossamer.
+
+Mr. Treffry called out: "Give me your arm, Mr. Harz; I'd like to
+shake the reefs out of me.  When one comes to stand over at the
+knees, it's no such easy matter, eh?"  He groaned as he put his foot
+down, and gripped the young man's shoulder as in a vise.  Presently
+he lowered himself on to a stone.
+
+"'All over now!' as Chris would say when she was little; nasty temper
+she had too--kick and scream on the floor!  Never lasted long
+though....  'Kiss her! take her up! show her the pictures!'  Amazing
+fond of pictures Chris was!"  He looked dubiously at Harz; then took
+a long pull at his flask.  "What would the doctor say?  Whisky at
+four in the morning!  Well!  Thank the Lord Doctors aren't always
+with us."  Sitting on the stone, with one hand pressed against his
+side, and the other tilting up the flask, he was grey from head to
+foot.
+
+Harz had dropped on to another stone.  He, too, was worn out by the
+excitement and fatigue, coming so soon after his illness.  His head
+was whirling, and the next thing he remembered was a tree walking at
+him, turning round, yellow from the roots up; everything seemed
+yellow, even his own feet.  Somebody opposite to him was jumping up
+and down, a grey bear--with a hat--Mr. Treffry!  He cried: "Ha-
+alloo!"  And the figure seemed to fall and disappear....
+
+When Harz came to himself a hand was pouring liquor into his mouth,
+and a wet cloth was muffled round his brows; a noise of humming and
+hoofs seemed familiar.  Mr. Treffry loomed up alongside, smoking a
+cigar; he was muttering: "A low trick, Paul--bit of my mind!"  Then,
+as if a curtain had been snatched aside, the vision before Harz
+cleared again.  The carriage was winding between uneven, black-eaved
+houses, past doorways from which goats and cows were coming out, with
+bells on their necks.  Black-eyed boys, and here and there a drowsy
+man with a long, cherry-stemmed pipe betwen his teeth, stood aside to
+stare.
+
+Mr. Treffry seemed to have taken a new lease of strength; like an
+angry old dog, he stared from side to side.  "My bone!" he seemed to
+say: "let's see who's going to touch it!"
+
+The last house vanished, glowing in the early sunshine, and the
+carriage with its trail of dust became entombed once more in the
+gloom of tall trees, along a road that cleft a wilderness of
+mossgrown rocks, and dewy stems, through which the sun had not yet
+driven paths.
+
+Dominique came round to them, bearing appearance of one who has seen
+better days, and a pot of coffee brewed on a spirit lamp.  Breakfast
+--he said--was served!
+
+The ears of the horses were twitching with fatigue.  Mr. Treffry said
+sadly: "If I can see this through, you can.  Get on, my beauties!"
+
+As soon as the sun struck through the trees, Mr. Treffry's strength
+ebbed again.  He seemed to suffer greatly; but did not complain.
+They had reached the pass at last, and the unchecked sunlight was
+streaming down with a blinding glare.
+
+"Jump up!" Mr. Treffry cried out.  "We'll make a finish of it!" and
+he gave the reins a jerk.  The horses flung up their heads, and the
+bleak pass with its circling crown of jagged peaks soon slipped away.
+
+Between the houses on the very top, they passed at a slow trot; and
+soon began slanting down the other side.  Mr. Treffry brought them to
+a halt where a mule track joined the road.
+
+"That's all I can do for you; you'd better leave me here," he said.
+"Keep this track down to the river--go south--you'll be in Italy in a
+couple of hours.  Get rail at Feltre.  Money?  Yes?  Well!"  He held
+out his hand; Harz gripped it.
+
+"Give her up, eh?"
+
+Harz shook his head.
+
+"No?  Then it's 'pull devil, pull baker,' between us.  Good-bye, and
+good luck to you!"  And mustering his strength for a last attempt at
+dignity, Mr. Treffry gathered up the reins.
+
+Harz watched his figure huddled again beneath the hood.  The carriage
+moved slowly away.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+At Villa Rubein people went about, avoiding each other as if detected
+in conspiracy.  Miss Naylor, who for an inscrutable reason had put on
+her best frock, a purple, relieved at the chest with bird's-eye blue,
+conveyed an impression of trying to count a chicken which ran about
+too fast.  When Greta asked what she had lost she was heard to
+mutter: "Mr.--Needlecase.
+
+Christian, with big circles round her eyes, sat silent at her little
+table.  She had had no sleep.  Herr Paul coming into the room about
+noon gave her a furtive look and went out again; after this he went
+to his bedroom, took off all his clothes, flung them passionately one
+by one into a footbath, and got into bed.
+
+"I might be a criminal!" he muttered to himself, while the buttons of
+his garments rattled on the bath.
+
+"Am I her father?  Have I authority?  Do I know the world?  Bssss!  I
+might be a frog!"
+
+Mrs. Decie, having caused herself to be announced, found him smoking
+a cigar, and counting the flies on the ceiling.
+
+"If you have really done this, Paul," she said in a restrained voice,
+"you have done a very unkind thing, and what is worse, you have made
+us all ridiculous.  But perhaps you have not done it?"
+
+"I have done it," cried Herr Paul, staring dreadfully: "I have done
+it, I tell you, I have done it--"
+
+"Very well, you have done it--and why, pray?  What conceivable good
+was there in it?  I suppose you know that Nicholas has driven him to
+the frontier?  Nicholas is probably more dead than alive by this
+time; you know his state of health."
+
+Herr Paul's fingers ploughed up his beard.
+
+"Nicholas is mad--and the girl is mad!  Leave me alone!  I will not
+be made angry; do you understand?  I will not be worried--I am not
+fit for it."  His prominent brown eyes stared round the room, as if
+looking for a way of escape.
+
+"If I may prophesy, you will be worried a good deal," said Mrs. Decie
+coldly, "before you have finished with this affair."
+
+The anxious, uncertain glance which Herr Paul gave her at these words
+roused an unwilling feeling of compunction in her.
+
+"You are not made for the outraged father of the family," she said.
+"You had better give up the attitude, Paul; it does not suit you."
+
+Herr Paul groaned.
+
+"I suppose it is not your fault," she added.
+
+Just then the door was opened, and Fritz, with an air of saying the
+right thing, announced:
+
+"A gentleman of the police to see you, sir."
+
+Herr Paul bounded.
+
+"Keep him out!" he cried.
+
+Mrs. Decie, covering her lips, disappeared with a rustling of silk;
+in her place stood a stiff man in blue....
+
+Thus the morning dragged itself away without any one being able to
+settle to anything, except Herr Paul, who was settled in bed.  As was
+fitting in a house that had lost its soul, meals were neglected, even
+by the dog.
+
+About three o'clock a telegram came for Christian, containing these
+words: "All right; self returns to-morrow.  Treffry."  After reading
+it she put on her hat and went out, followed closely by Greta, who,
+when she thought that she would not be sent away, ran up from behind
+and pulled her by the sleeve.
+
+"Let me come, Chris--I shall not talk."
+
+The two girls walked on together.  When they had gone some distance
+Christian said:
+
+"I'm going to get his pictures, and take charge of them!"
+
+"Oh!" said Greta timidly.
+
+"If you are afraid," said Christian, "you had better go back home."
+
+"I am not afraid, Chris," said Greta meekly.
+
+Neither girl spoke again till they had taken the path along the wall.
+Over the tops of the vines the heat was dancing.
+
+"The sun-fairies are on the vines!" murmured Greta to herself.
+
+At the old house they stopped, and Christian, breathing quickly,
+pushed the door; it was immovable.
+
+"Look!" said Greta, "they have screwed it!"  She pointed out three
+screws with a rosy-tipped forefinger.
+
+Christian stamped her foot.
+
+"We mustn't stand here," she said; "let's sit on that bench and
+think."
+
+"Yes," murmured Greta, "let us think."  Dangling an end of hair, she
+regarded Christian with her wide blue eyes.
+
+"I can't make any plan," Christian cried at last, "while you stare at
+me like that."
+
+"I was thinking," said Greta humbly, "if they have screwed it up,
+perhaps we shall screw it down again; there is the big screw-driver
+of Fritz."
+
+"It would take a long time; people are always passing."
+
+"People do not pass in the evening," murmured Greta, "because the
+gate at our end is always shut."
+
+Christian rose.
+
+"We will come this evening, just before the gate is shut."
+
+"But, Chris, how shall we get back again?"
+
+"I don't know; I mean to have the pictures."
+
+"It is not a high gate," murmured Greta.
+
+After dinner the girls went to their room, Greta bearing with her the
+big screw-driver of Fritz.  At dusk they slipped downstairs and out.
+
+They arrived at the old house, and stood, listening, in the shadow of
+the doorway.  The only sounds were those of distant barking dogs, and
+of the bugles at the barracks.
+
+"Quick!" whispered Christian; and Greta, with all the strength of her
+small hands, began to turn the screws.  It was some time before they
+yielded; the third was very obstinate, till Christian took the screw-
+driver and passionately gave the screw a starting twist.
+
+"It is like a pig--that one," said Greta, rubbing her wrists
+mournfully.
+
+The opened door revealed the gloom of the dank rooms and twisting
+staircase, then fell to behind them with a clatter.
+
+Greta gave a little scream, and caught her sister's dress.
+
+"It is dark," she gasped; "O Chris! it is dark!"
+
+Christian groped for the bottom stair, and Greta felt her arm
+shaking.
+
+"Suppose there is a man to keep guard!  O Chris! suppose there are
+bats!"
+
+"You are a baby!" Christian answered in a trembling voice.  "You had
+better go home!"
+
+Greta choked a little in the dark.
+
+"I am--not--going home, but I'm afraid of bats.  O Chris! aren't you
+afraid?"
+
+"Yes," said Christian, "but I'm going to have the pictures."
+
+Her cheeks were burning; she was trembling all over.  Having found
+the bottom step she began to mount with Greta clinging to her skirts.
+
+The haze above inspired a little courage in the child, who, of all
+things, hated darkness.  The blanket across the doorway of the loft
+had been taken down, there was nothing to veil the empty room.
+
+"Nobody here, you see," said Christian.
+
+"No-o," whispered Greta, running to the window, and clinging to the
+wall, like one of the bats she dreaded.
+
+"But they have been here!" cried Christian angrily.  "They have
+broken this."  She pointed to the fragments of a plaster cast that
+had been thrown down.
+
+Out of the corner she began to pull the canvases set in rough, wooden
+frames, dragging them with all her strength.
+
+"Help me!" she cried; "it will be dark directly."
+
+They collected a heap of sketches and three large pictures, piling
+them before the window, and peering at them in the failing light.
+
+Greta said ruefully:
+
+"O Chris! they are heavy ones; we shall never carry them, and the
+gate is shut now!"
+
+Christian took a pointed knife from the table.
+
+"I shall cut them out of the frames," she said.  "Listen!  What's
+that?"
+
+It was the sound of whistling, which stopped beneath the window.  The
+girls, clasping each other's hands, dropped on their knees.
+
+"Hallo!" cried a voice.
+
+Greta crept to the window, and, placing her face level with the
+floor, peered over.
+
+"It is only Dr. Edmund; he doesn't know, then," she whispered; "I
+shall call him; he is going away!" cried Christian catching her
+sister's
+
+"Don't!" cried Christian catching her sister's dress.
+
+"He would help us," Greta said reproachfully, "and it would not be so
+dark if he were here."
+
+Christian's cheeks were burning.
+
+"I don't choose," she said, and began handling the pictures, feeling
+their edges with her knife.
+
+"Chris!  Suppose anybody came?"
+
+"The door is screwed," Christian answered absently.
+
+"O Chris!  We screwed it unscrewed; anybody who wishes shall come!"
+
+Christian, leaning her chin in her hands, gazed at her thoughtfully.
+
+"It will take a long time to cut these pictures out carefully; or,
+perhaps I can get them out without cutting.  You must screw me up and
+go home.  In the morning you must come early, when the gate is open,
+unscrew me again, and help carry the pictures."
+
+Greta did not answer at once.  At last she shook her head violently.
+
+"I am afraid," she gasped.
+
+"We can't both stay here all night," said Christian; "if any one
+comes to our room there will be nobody to answer.  We can't lift
+these pictures over the gate.  One of us must go back; you can climb
+over the gate--there is nothing to be afraid of"
+
+Greta pressed her hands together.
+
+"Do you want the pictures badly, Chris?"
+
+Christian nodded.
+
+"Very badly?"
+
+"Yes--yes--yes!"
+
+Greta remained sitting where she was, shivering violently, as a
+little animal shivers when it scents danger.  At last she rose.
+
+"I am going," she said in a despairing voice.  At the doorway she
+turned.
+
+"If Miss Naylor shall ask me where you are, Chris, I shall be telling
+her a story."
+
+Christian started.
+
+"I forgot that -O Greta, I am sorry! I will go instead."
+
+Greta took another step--a quick one.
+
+"I shall die if I stay here alone," she said; "I can tell her that
+you are in bed; you must go to bed here, Chris, so it shall be true
+after all."
+
+Christian threw her arms about her.
+
+"I am so sorry, darling; I wish I could go instead.  But if you have
+to tell a lie, I would tell a straight one."
+
+"Would you?" said Greta doubtfully.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I think," said Greta to herself, beginning to descend the stairs, "I
+think I will tell it in my way."  She shuddered and went on groping
+in the darkness.
+
+Christian listened for the sound of the screws.  It came slowly,
+threatening her with danger and solitude.
+
+Sinking on her knees she began to work at freeing the canvas of a
+picture.  Her heart throbbed distressfully; at the stir of wind-
+breath or any distant note of clamour she stopped, and held her
+breathing.  No sounds came near.  She toiled on, trying only to think
+that she was at the very spot where last night his arms had been
+round her.  How long ago it seemed!  She was full of vague terror,
+overmastered by the darkness, dreadfully alone.  The new glow of
+resolution seemed suddenly to have died down in her heart, and left
+her cold.
+
+She would never be fit to be his wife, if at the first test her
+courage failed! She set her teeth; and suddenly she felt a kind of
+exultation, as if she too were entering into life, were knowing
+something within herself that she had never known before.  Her
+fingers hurt, and the pain even gave pleasure; her cheeks were
+burning; her breath came fast.  They could not stop her now!  This
+feverish task in darkness was her baptism into life.  She finished;
+and rolling the pictures very carefully, tied them with cord.  She
+had done something for him!  Nobody could take that from her!  She
+had a part of him!  This night had made him hers!  They might do
+their worst!  She lay down on his mattress and soon fell asleep....
+
+She was awakened by Scruff's tongue against her face.  Greta was
+standing by her side.
+
+"Wake up, Chris!  The gate is open!"
+
+In the cold early light the child seemed to glow with warmth and
+colour; her eyes were dancing.
+
+"I am not afraid now; Scruff and I sat up all night, to catch the
+morning--I--think it was fun; and O Chris!" she ended with a rueful
+gleam in her eyes, "I told it."
+
+Christian hugged her.
+
+"Come--quick! There is nobody about.  Are those the pictures?"
+
+Each supporting an end, the girls carried the bundle downstairs, and
+set out with their corpse-like burden along the wall-path between the
+river and the vines.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+Hidden by the shade of rose-bushes Greta lay stretched at length,
+cheek on arm, sleeping the sleep of the unrighteous.  Through the
+flowers the sun flicked her parted lips with kisses, and spilled the
+withered petals on her.  In a denser islet of shade, Scruff lay
+snapping at a fly.  His head lolled drowsily in the middle of a snap,
+and snapped in the middle of a loll.
+
+At three o'clock Miss Naylor too came out, carrying a basket and pair
+of scissors.  Lifting her skirts to avoid the lakes of water left by
+the garden hose, she stopped in front of a rose-bush, and began to
+snip off the shrivelled flowers.  The little lady's silvered head and
+thin, brown face sustained the shower of sunlight unprotected, and
+had a gentle dignity in their freedom.
+
+Presently, as the scissors flittered in and out of the leaves, she,
+began talking to herself.
+
+"If girls were more like what they used to be, this would not have
+happened.  Perhaps we don't understand; it's very easy to forget."
+Burying her nose and lips in a rose, she sniffed.  "Poor dear girl!
+It's such a pity his father is--a--"
+
+"A farmer," said a sleepy voice behind the rosebush.
+
+Miss Naylor leaped.  "Greta! How you startled me!  A farmer--that is-
+-an--an agriculturalist!"
+
+"A farmer with vineyards--he told us, and he is not ashamed.  Why is
+it a pity, Miss Naylor?"
+
+Miss Naylor's lips looked very thin.
+
+"For many reasons, of which you know nothing."
+
+"That is what you always say," pursued the sleepy voice; "and that is
+why, when I am to be married, there shall also be a pity."
+
+"Greta!" Miss Naylor cried, "it is not proper for a girl of your age
+to talk like that."
+
+"Why?" said Greta.  "Because it is the truth?"
+
+Miss Naylor made no reply to this, but vexedly cut off a sound rose,
+which she hastily picked up and regarded with contrition.  Greta
+spoke again:
+
+"Chris said: 'I have got the pictures, I shall tell her'; but I shall
+tell you instead, because it was I that told the story."
+
+Miss Naylor stared, wrinkling her nose, and holding the scissors wide
+apart....
+
+"Last night," said Greta slowly, "I and Chris went to his studio and
+took his pictures, and so, because the gate was shut, I came back to
+tell it; and when you asked me where Chris was, I told it; because
+she was in the studio all night, and I and Scruff sat up all night,
+and in the morning we brought the pictures, and hid them under our
+beds, and that is why--we--are--so--sleepy."
+
+Over the rose-bush Miss Naylor peered down at her; and though she was
+obliged to stand on tiptoe this did not altogether destroy her
+dignity.
+
+"I am surprised at you, Greta; I am surprised at Christian, more
+surprised at Christian.  The world seems upside down."
+
+Greta, a sunbeam entangled in her hair, regarded her with
+inscrutable, innocent eyes.
+
+"When you were a girl, I think you would be sure to be in love," she
+murmured drowsily.
+
+Miss Naylor, flushing deeply, snipped off a particularly healthy bud.
+
+"And so, because you are not married, I think--"
+
+The scissors hissed.
+
+Greta nestled down again.  "I think it is wicked to cut off all the
+good buds," she said, and shut her eyes.
+
+Miss Naylor continued to peer across the rosebush; but her thin face,
+close to the glistening leaves, had become oddly soft, pink, and
+girlish.  At a deeper breath from Greta, the little lady put down her
+basket, and began to pace the lawn, followed dubiously by Scruff.  It
+was thus that Christian came on them.
+
+Miss Naylor slipped her arm into the girl's and though she made no
+sound, her lips kept opening and shutting, like the beak of a bird
+contemplating a worm.
+
+Christian spoke first:
+
+"Miss Naylor, I want to tell you please--"
+
+"Oh, my dear!  I know; Greta has been in the confessional before
+you."  She gave the girl's arm a squeeze.  "Isn't it a lovely day?
+Did you ever see 'Five Fingers' look so beautiful?"  And she pointed
+to the great peaks of the Funffingerspitze glittering in the sun like
+giant crystals.
+
+"I like them better with clouds about them."
+
+"Well," agreed Miss Naylor nervously, "they certainly are nicer with
+clouds about them.  They look almost hot and greasy, don't they....
+My dear!" she went on, giving Christian's arm a dozen little
+squeezes, "we all of us--that is, we all of us--"
+
+Christian turned her eyes away.
+
+"My dear," Miss Naylor tried again, "I am far--that is, I mean, to
+all of us at some time or another--and then you see--well--it is
+hard!"
+
+Christian kissed the gloved hand resting on her arm.  Miss Naylor
+bobbed her head; a tear trickled off her nose.
+
+"Do let us wind your skein of woof!" she said with resounding gaiety.
+
+Some half-hour later Mrs. Decie called Christian to her room.
+
+"My dear!" she said; "come here a minute; I have a message for you."
+
+Christian went with an odd, set look about her mouth.
+
+Her aunt was sitting, back to the light, tapping a bowl of goldfish
+with the tip of a polished finger-nail; the room was very cool.  She
+held a letter out.  "Your uncle is not coming back tonight."
+
+Christian took the letter.  It was curtly worded, in a thin, toppling
+hand:
+
+"DEAR CON--Can't get back to-night.  Sending Dominique for things.
+Tell Christian to come over with him for night if possible.--Yr.
+aff. brother,       NICLS. TREFFRY."
+
+"Dominique has a carriage here," said Mrs. Decie.  "You will have
+nice time to catch the train.  Give my love to your uncle.  You must
+take Barbi with you, I insist on that."  She rose from her chair and
+held Christian's hand: "My dear!  You look very tired--very!  Almost
+ill.  I don't like to see you look like that.  Come!"  She thrust her
+pale lips forward, and kissed the girl's paler cheek.
+
+Then as Christian left the room she sank back in her chair, with
+creases in her forehead, and began languidly to cut a magazine.
+'Poor Christian!' she thought, 'how hardly she does take it! I am
+sorry for her; but perhaps it's just as well, as things are turning
+out.  Psychologically it is interesting!'
+
+Christian found her things packed, and the two servants waiting.  In
+a few minutes they were driving to the station.  She made Dominique
+take the seat opposite.
+
+"Well?" she asked him.
+
+Dominique's eyebrows twitched, he smiled deprecatingly.
+
+"M'mselle, Mr. Treffry told me to hold my tongue."
+
+"But you can tell me, Dominique; Barbi can't understand."
+
+"To you, then, M'mselle," said Dominique, as one who accepts his
+fate; "to you, then, who will doubtless forget all that I shall tell
+you--my master is not well; he has terrible pain here; he has a
+cough; he is not well at all; not well at all."
+
+A feeling of dismay seized on the girl.
+
+"We were a caravan for all that night," Dominique resumed.  "In the
+morning by noon we ceased to be a caravan; Signor Harz took a mule
+path; he will be in Italy--certainly in Italy.  As for us, we stayed
+at San Martino, and my master went to bed.  It was time; I had much
+trouble with his clothes, his legs were swollen.  In the afternoon
+came a signor of police, on horseback, red and hot; I persuaded him
+that we were at Paneveggio, but as we were not, he came back angry--
+Mon Die! as angry as a cat.  It was not good to meet him--when he was
+with my master I was outside.  There was much noise.  I do not know
+what passed, but at last the signor came out through the door, and
+went away in a hurry."  Dominique's features were fixed in a sardonic
+grin; he rubbed the palm of one hand with the finger of the other.
+"Mr. Treffry made me give him whisky afterwards, and he had no money
+to pay the bill--that I know because I paid it.  Well, M'mselle, to-
+day he would be dressed and very slowly we came as far as Auer; there
+he could do no more, so went to bed.  He is not well at all."
+
+Christian was overwhelmed by forebodings; the rest of the journey was
+made in silence, except when Barbi, a country girl, filled with the
+delirium of railway travel, sighed: "Ach! gnadige Friiulein!" looking
+at Christian with pleasant eyes.
+
+At once, on arriving at the little hostel, Christian went to see her
+uncle.  His room was darkened, and smelt of beeswax.
+
+"Ah! Chris," he said, "glad to see you."
+
+In a blue flannel gown, with a rug over his feet, he was lying on a
+couch lengthened artificially by chairs; the arm he reached out
+issued many inches from its sleeve, and showed the corded veins of
+the wrist.  Christian, settling his pillows, looked anxiously into
+his eyes.
+
+"I'm not quite the thing, Chris," said Mr. Treffry.  "Somehow, not
+quite the thing.  I'll come back with you to-morrow."
+
+"Let me send for Dr. Dawney, Uncle?"
+
+"No--no!  Plenty of him when I get home.  Very good young fellow, as
+doctors go, but I can't stand his puddin's--slops and puddin's, and
+all that trumpery medicine on the top.  Send me Dominique, my dear--
+I'll put myself to rights a bit!"  He fingered his unshaven cheek,
+and clutched the gown together on his chest.  "Got this from the
+landlord.  When you come back we'll have a little talk!"
+
+He was asleep when she came into the room an hour later.  Watching
+his uneasy breathing, she wondered what it was that he was going to
+say.
+
+He looked ill!  And suddenly she realised that her thoughts were not
+of him....  When she was little he would take her on his back; he had
+built cocked hats for her and paper boats; had taught her to ride;
+slid her between his knees; given her things without number; and
+taken his payment in kisses.  And now he was ill, and she was not
+thinking of him!  He had been all that was most dear to her, yet
+before her eyes would only come the vision of another.
+
+Mr. Treffry woke suddenly.  "Not been asleep, have I?  The beds here
+are infernal hard."
+
+"Uncle Nic, won't you give me news of him?"
+
+Mr. Treffry looked at her, and Christian could not bear that look.
+
+"He's safe into Italy; they aren't very keen after him, it's so long
+ago; I squared 'em pretty easily.  Now, look here, Chris!"
+
+Christian came close; he took her hand.
+
+"I'd like to see you pull yourself together.  'Tisn't so much the
+position; 'tisn't so much the money; because after all there's always
+mine--"  Christian shook her head.  "But," he went on with shaky
+emphasis, "there's the difference of blood, and that's a serious
+thing; and there's this anarch--this political affair; and there's
+the sort of life, an' that's a serious thing; but--what I'm coming to
+is this, Chris--there's the man!"
+
+Christian drew away her hand.  Mr. Treffry went on:
+
+"Ah! yes.  I'm an old chap and fond of you, but I must speak out what
+I think.  He's got pluck, he's strong, he's in earnest; but he's got
+a damned hot temper, he's an egotist, and--he's not the man for you.
+If you marry him, as sure as I lie here, you'll be sorry for it.
+You're not your father's child for nothing; nice fellow as ever
+lived, but soft as butter.  If you take this chap, it'll be like
+mixing earth and ironstone, and they don't blend!"  He dropped his
+head back on the pillows, and stretching out his hand, repeated
+wistfully: "Take my word for it, my dear, he's not the man for you."
+
+Christian, staring at the wall beyond, said quietly: "I can't take
+any one's word for that."
+
+"Ah!" muttered Mr. Treffry, "you're obstinate enough, but obstinacy
+isn't strength.
+
+You'll give up everything to him, you'll lick his shoes; and you'll
+never play anything but second fiddle in his life.  He'll always be
+first with himself, he and his work, or whatever he calls painting
+pictures; and some day you'll find that out.  You won't like it, and
+I don't like it for you, Chris, and that's flat."
+
+He wiped his brow where the perspiration stood in beads.
+
+Christian said: "You don't understand; you don't believe in him; you
+don't see!  If I do come after his work--if I do give him everything,
+and he can't give all back--I don't care!  He'll give what he can; I
+don't want any more.  If you're afraid of the life for me, uncle, if
+you think it'll be too hard--"
+
+Mr. Treffry bowed his head.  "I do, Chris."
+
+"Well, then, I hate to be wrapped in cotton wool; I want to breathe.
+If I come to grief, it's my own affair; nobody need mind."
+
+Mr. Treffry's fngers sought his beard.  "Ah! yes.  Just so!"
+
+Christian sank on her knees.
+
+"Oh! Uncle! I'm a selfish beast!"
+
+Mr. Treffry laid his hand against her cheek.  "I think I could do
+with a nap," he said.
+
+Swallowing a lump in her throat, she stole out of the room.
+
+By a stroke of Fate Mr. Treffry's return to Villa Rubein befell at
+the psychological moment when Herr Paul, in a suit of rather too
+bright blue, was starting for Vienna.
+
+As soon as he saw the carriage appear between the poplars he became
+as pensive as a boy caught in the act of stealing cherries.  Pitching
+his hatbox to Fritz, he recovered himself, however, in time to
+whistle while Mr. Treffry was being assisted into the house.  Having
+forgotten his anger, he was only anxious now to smooth out its after
+effects; in the glances he cast at Christian and his brother-in-law
+there was a kind of shamed entreaty which seemed to say: "For
+goodness' sake, don't worry me about that business again! Nothing's
+come of it, you see!"
+
+He came forward: "Ah! Mon cher!  So you return; I put off my
+departure, then.  Vienna must wait for me--that poor Vienna!"
+
+But noticing the extreme feebleness of Mr. Treffry's advance, he
+exclaimed with genuine concern:
+
+"What is it?  You're ill?  My God!"  After disappearing for five
+minutes, he came back with a whitish liquid in a glass.
+
+"There!" he said, "good for the gout--for a cough--for everything!"
+
+Mr. Treffry sniffed, drained the glass, and sucked his moustache.
+
+"Ah!" he said.  "No doubt!  But it's uncommonly like gin, Paul."
+Then turning to Christian, he said: "Shake hands, you two!"
+
+Christian looked from one to the other, and at last held out her hand
+to Herr Paul, who brushed it with his moustache, gazing after her as
+she left the room with a queer expression.
+
+"My dear!" he began, "you support her in this execrable matter?  You
+forget my position, you make me ridiculous.  I have been obliged to
+go to bed in my own house, absolutely to go to bed, because I was in
+danger of becoming funny."
+
+"Look here, Paul!" Mr. Treffry said gruffly, "if any one's to bully
+Chris, it's I."
+
+"In that case," returned Herr Paul sarcastically, "I will go to
+Vienna."
+
+"You may go to the devil!" said Mr. Treffry; "and I'll tell you what-
+-in my opinion it was low to set the police on that young chap; a
+low, dirty trick."
+
+Herr Paul divided his beard carefully in two, took his seat on the
+very edge of an arm-chair, and placing his hands on his parted knees,
+said:
+
+"I have regretted it since--mais, que diable!  He called me a coward-
+-it is very hot weather!--there were drinks at the Kurhaus--I am her
+guardian--the affair is a very beastly one--there were more drinks--I
+was a little enfin!"  He shrugged his shoulders.  "Adieu, my dear; I
+shall be some time in Vienna; I need rest!"  He rose and went to the
+door; then he turned, and waved his cigar.  "Adieu! Be good; get
+well!  I will buy you some cigars up there."  And going out, he shut
+the door on any possibility of answer.
+
+Mr. Treffry lay back amongst his cushions.  The clock ticked; pigeons
+cooed on the veranda; a door opened in the distance, and for a moment
+a treble voice was heard.  Mr. Treffry's head drooped forward; across
+his face, gloomy and rugged, fell a thin line of sunlight.
+
+The clock suddenly stopped ticking, and outside, in mysterious
+accord, the pigeons rose with a great fluttering of wings, and flew
+off'.  Mr. Treffry made a startled, heavy movement.  He tried to get
+on to his feet and reach the bell, but could not, and sat on the side
+of the couch with drops of sweat rolling off his forehead, and his
+hands clawing his chest.  There was no sound at all throughout the
+house.  He looked about him, and tried to call, but again could not.
+He tried once more to reach the bell, and, failing, sat still, with a
+thought that made him cold.
+
+"I'm done for," he muttered.  "By George! I believe I'm done for this
+time!"  A voice behind him said:
+
+"Can we have a look at you, sir?"
+
+"Ah! Doctor, bear a hand, there's a good fellow."
+
+Dawney propped him against the cushions, and loosened his shirt.
+Receiving no answer to his questions, he stepped alarmed towards the
+bell.  Mr. Treffry stopped him with a sign.
+
+"Let's hear what you make of me," he said.
+
+When Dawney had examined him, he asked:
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well," answered Dawney slowly, "there's trouble, of course."
+
+Mr. Treffry broke out with a husky whisper: "Out with it, Doctor;
+don't humbug me."
+
+Dawney bent down, and took his wrist.
+
+"I don't know how you've got into this state, sir," he said with the
+brusqueness of emotion.  "You're in a bad way.  It's the old trouble;
+and you know what that means as well as I.  All I can tell you is,
+I'm going to have a big fight with it.  It shan't be my fault,
+there's my hand on that."
+
+Mr. Treffry lay with his eyes fixed on the ceiling; at last he said:
+
+"I want to live."
+
+"Yes--yes."
+
+"I feel better now; don't make a fuss about it.  It'll be very
+awkward if I die just now.  Patch me up, for the sake of my niece."
+
+Dawney nodded.  "One minute, there are a few things I want," and he
+went out.
+
+A moment later Greta stole in on tiptoe.  She bent over till her hair
+touched Mr. Treffry's face.
+
+"Uncle Nic!" she whispered.  He opened his eyes.
+
+"Hallo, Greta!"
+
+"I have come to bring you my love, Uncle Nic, and to say good-bye.
+Papa says that I and Scruff and Miss Naylor are going to Vienna with
+him; we have had to pack in half an hour; in five minutes we are
+going to Vienna, and it is my first visit there, Uncle Nic."
+
+"To Vienna!" Mr. Treffry repeated slowly.  "Don't have a guide,
+Greta; they're humbugs."
+
+"No, Uncle Nic," said Greta solemnly.
+
+"Draw the curtains, old girl, let's have a look at you.  Why, you're
+as smart as ninepence!"
+
+"Yes," said Greta with a sigh, touching the buttons of her cape,
+"because I am going to Vienna; but I am sorry to leave you, Uncle
+Nic."
+
+"Are you, Greta?"
+
+"But you will have Chris, and you are fonder of Chris than of me,
+Uncle Nic."
+
+"I've known her longer."
+
+"Perhaps when you've known me as long as Chris, you shall be as fond
+of me."
+
+"When I've known you as long--may be."
+
+"While I am gone, Uncle Nic, you are to get well, you are not very
+well, you know."
+
+"What put that into your head?"
+
+"If you were well you would be smoking a cigar--it is just three
+o'clock.  This kiss is for myself, this is for Scruff, and this is
+for Miss Naylor."
+
+She stood upright again; a tremulous, joyful gravity was in her eyes
+and on her lips.
+
+"Good-bye, my dear; take care of yourselves; and don't you have a
+guide, they're humbugs."
+
+"No, Uncle Nic.  There is the carriage!  To Vienna, Uncle Nic!"  The
+dead gold of her hair gleamed in the doorway.  Mr. Treffry raised
+himself upon his elbow.
+
+"Give us one more, for luck!"
+
+Greta ran back.
+
+"I love you very much!" she said, and kissing him, backed slowly,
+then, turning, flew out like a bird.
+
+Mr. Treffry fixed his eyes on the shut door.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+After many days of hot, still weather, the wind had come, and whirled
+the dust along the parched roads.  The leaves were all astir, like
+tiny wings.  Round Villa Rubein the pigeons cooed uneasily, all the
+other birds were silent.  Late in the afternoon Christian came out on
+the veranda, reading a letter:
+
+"DEAR CHRIS,--We are here now six days, and it is a very large place
+with many churches.  In the first place then we have been to a great
+many, but the nicest of them is not St. Stephan's Kirche, it is
+another, but I do not remember the name.  Papa is out nearly all the
+night; he says he is resting here, so he is not able to come to the
+churches with us, but I do not think he rests very much.  The day
+before yesterday we, that is, Papa, I, and Miss Naylor, went to an
+exhibition of pictures.  It was quite beautiful and interesting (Miss
+Naylor says it is not right to say 'quite' beautiful, but I do not
+know what other word could mean 'quite' except the word 'quite,'
+because it is not exceedingly and not extremely.  And O Chris! there
+was one picture painted by him; it was about a ship without masts--
+Miss Naylor says it is a barge, but I do not know what a barge is--on
+fire, and, floating down a river in a fog.  I think it is extremely
+beautiful.  Miss Naylor says it is very impressionistick--what is
+that?  and Papa said 'Puh!' but he did not know it was painted by
+Herr Harz, so I did not tell him.
+
+"There has also been staying at our hotel that Count Sarelli who came
+one evening to dinner at our house, but he is gone away now.  He sat
+all day in the winter garden reading, and at night he went out with
+Papa.  Miss Naylor says he is unhappy, but I think he does not take
+enough exercise; and O Chris! one day he said to me, 'That is your
+sister, Mademoiselle, that young lady in the white dress?  Does she
+always wear white dresses?' and I said to him: 'It is not always a
+white dress; in the picture, it is green, because the picture is
+called "Spring.'"  But I did not tell him the colours of all your
+dresses because he looked so tired.  Then he said to me: 'She is very
+charming.'  So I tell you this, Chris, because I think you shall like
+to know.  Scruff' has a sore toe; it is because he has eaten too much
+meat.
+
+"It is not nice without you, Chris, and Miss Naylor says I am
+improving my mind here, but I do not think it shall improve very
+much, because at night I like it always best, when the shops are
+lighted and the carriages are driving past; then I am wanting to
+dance.  The first night Papa said he would take me to the theatre,
+but yesterday he said it was not good for me; perhaps to-morrow he
+shall think it good for me again.
+
+"Yesterday we have been in the Prater, and saw many people, and some
+that Papa knew; and then came the most interesting part of all,
+sitting under the trees in the rain for two hours because we could
+not get a carriage (very exciting).
+
+"There is one young lady here, only she is not any longer very young,
+who knew Papa when he was a boy.  I like her very much; she shall
+soon know me quite to the bottom and is very kind.
+
+"The ill husband of Cousin Teresa who went with us to Meran and lost
+her umbrella and Dr. Edmund was so sorry about it, has been very much
+worse, so she is not here but in Baden.  I wrote to her but have no
+news, so I do not know whether he is still living or not, at any rate
+he can't get well again so soon (and I don't think he ever shall).  I
+think as the weather is very warm you and Uncle Nic are sitting much
+out of doors.  I am sending presents to you all in a wooden box and
+screwed very firm, so you shall have to use again the big screw-
+driver of Fritz.  For Aunt Constance, photographs; for Uncle Nic, a
+green bird on a stand with a hole in the back of the bird to put his
+ashes in; it is a good green and not expensif please tell him,
+because he does not like expensif presents (Miss Naylor says the bird
+has an inquiring eye--it is a parrat); for you, a little brooch of
+turquoise because I like them best; for Dr. Edmund a machine to weigh
+medicines in because he said he could not get a good one in Botzen;
+this is a very good one, the shopman told me so, and is the most
+expensif of all the presents--so that is all my money, except two
+gulden.  If Papa shall give me some more, I shall buy for Miss Naylor
+a parasol, because it is useful and the handle of hers is 'wobbley'
+(that is one of Dr. Edmund's words and I like it).
+
+"Good-bye for this time.  Greta sends you her kiss.
+
+"PS.--Miss Naylor has read all this letter (except about the parasol)
+and there are several things she did not want me to put, so I have
+copied it without the things, but at the last I have kept that copy
+myself, so that is why this is smudgy and several words are not spelt
+well, but all the things are here."
+
+Christian read, smiling, but to finish it was like dropping a
+talisman, and her face clouded.  A sudden draught blew her hair
+about, and from within, Mr. Treffry's cough mingled with the soughing
+of the wind; the sky was fast blackening.  She went indoors, took a
+pen and began to write:
+
+
+"MY FRIEND,--Why haven't you written to me?  It is so, long to wait.
+Uncle says you are in Italy--it is dreadful not to know for certain.
+I feel you would have written if you could; and I can't help thinking
+of all the things that may have happened.  I am unhappy.  Uncle Nic
+is ill; he will not confess it, that is his way; but he is very ill.
+Though perhaps you will never see this, I must write down all my
+thoughts.  Sometimes I feel that I am brutal to be always thinking
+about you, scheming how to be with you again, when he is lying there
+so ill.  How good he has always been to me; it is terrible that love
+should pull one apart so.  Surely love should be beautiful, and
+peaceful, instead of filling me with bitter, wicked thoughts.  I love
+you--and I love him; I feel as if I were torn in two.  Why should it
+be so?  Why should the beginning of one life mean the ending of
+another, one love the destruction of another?  I don't understand.
+The same spirit makes me love you and him, the same sympathy, the
+same trust--yet it sometimes seems as if I were a criminal in loving
+you.  You know what he thinks--he is too honest not to have shown
+you.  He has talked to me; he likes you in a way, but you are a
+foreigner--he says-your life is not my life.  'He is not the man for
+you!'  Those were his words.  And now he doesn't talk to me, but when
+I am in the room he looks at me--that's worse--a thousand times; when
+he talks it rouses me to fight--when it's his eyes only, I'm a coward
+at once; I feel I would do anything, anything, only not to hurt him.
+Why can't he see?  Is it because he's old and we are young?  He may
+consent, but he will never, never see; it will always hurt him.
+
+"I want to tell you everything; I have had worse thoughts than these-
+-sometimes I have thought that I should never have the courage to
+face the struggle which you have to face.  Then I feel quite broken;
+it is like something giving way in me.  Then I think of you, and it
+is over; but it has been there, and I am ashamed--I told you I was a
+coward.  It's like the feeling one would have going out into a storm
+on a dark night, away from a warm fire--only of the spirit not the
+body--which makes it worse.  I had to tell you this; you mustn't
+think of it again, I mean to fight it away and forget that it has
+ever been there.  But Uncle Nic--what am I to do?  I hate myself
+because I am young, and he is old and weak--sometimes I seem even to
+hate him.  I have all sorts of thoughts, and always at the end of
+them, like a dark hole at the end of a passage, the thought that I
+ought to give you up.  Ought I?  Tell me.  I want to know, I want to
+do what is right; I still want to do that, though sometimes I think I
+am all made of evil.
+
+"Do you remember once when we were talking, you said: 'Nature always
+has an answer for every question; you cannot get an answer from laws,
+conventions, theories, words, only from Nature.'  What do you say to
+me now; do you tell me it is Nature to come to you in spite of
+everything, and so, that it must be right?  I think you would; but
+can it be Nature to do something which will hurt terribly one whom I
+love and who loves me?  If it is--Nature is cruel.  Is that one of
+the 'lessons of life'?  Is that what Aunt Constance means when she
+says: 'If life were not a paradox, we could not get on at all'?  I am
+beginning to see that everything has its dark side; I never believed
+that before.
+
+"Uncle Nic dreads the life for me; he doesn't understand (how should
+he?--he has always had money) how life can be tolerable without money
+--it is horrible that the accident of money should make such
+difference in our lives.  I am sometimes afraid myself, and I can't
+outface that fear in him; he sees the shadow of his fear in me--his
+eyes seem to see everything that is in me now; the eyes of old people
+are the saddest things in the world.  I am writing like a wretched
+coward, but you will never see this letter I suppose, and so it
+doesn't matter; but if you do, and I pray that you may--well, if I am
+only worth taking at my best, I am not worth taking at all.  I want
+you to know the worst of me--you, and no one else.
+
+"With Uncle Nic it is not as with my stepfather; his opposition only
+makes me angry, mad, ready to do anything, but with Uncle Nic I feel
+so bruised--so sore.  He said: 'It is not so much the money, because
+there is always mine.'  I could never do a thing he cannot bear, and
+take his money, and you would never let me.  One knows very little of
+anything in the world till trouble comes.  You know how it is with
+flowers and trees; in the early spring they look so quiet and self-
+contained; then all in a moment they change--I think it must be like
+that with the heart.  I used to think I knew a great deal, understood
+why and how things came about; I thought self-possession and reason
+so easy; now I know nothing.  And nothing in the world matters but to
+see you and hide away from that look in Uncle Nic's eyes.  Three
+months ago I did not know you, now I write like this.  Whatever I
+look at, I try to see as you would see; I feel, now you are away even
+more than when you were with me, what your thoughts would be, how you
+would feel about this or that.  Some things you have said seem always
+in my mind like lights--"
+
+A slanting drift of rain was striking the veranda tiles with a cold,
+ceaseless hissing.  Christian shut the window, and went into her
+uncle's room.
+
+He was lying with closed eyes, growling at Dominique, who moved about
+noiselessly, putting the room ready for the night.  When he had
+finished, and with a compassionate bow had left the room, Mr. Treffry
+opened his eyes, and said:
+
+"This is beastly stuff of the doctor's, Chris, it puts my monkey up;
+I can't help swearing after I've taken it; it's as beastly as a
+vulgar woman's laugh, and I don't know anything beastlier than that!"
+
+"I have a letter from Greta, Uncle Nic; shall I read it?"
+
+He nodded, and Christian read the letter, leaving out the mention of
+Harz, and for some undefined reason the part about Sarelli.
+
+"Ay!" said Mr. Treffry with a feeble laugh, "Greta and her money!
+Send her some more, Chris.  Wish I were a youngster again; that's a
+beast of a proverb about a dog and his day.  I'd like to go fishing
+again in the West Country!  A fine time we had when we were
+youngsters.  You don't get such times these days.  'Twasn't often the
+fishing-smacks went out without us.  We'd watch their lights from our
+bedroom window; when they were swung aboard we were out and down to
+the quay before you could say 'knife.'  They always waited for us;
+but your Uncle Dan was the favourite, he was the chap for luck.  When
+I get on my legs, we might go down there, you and I?  For a bit, just
+to see?  What d'you say, old girl?"
+
+Their eyes met.
+
+"I'd like to look at the smack lights going to sea on a dark night;
+pity you're such a duffer in a boat--we might go out with them.  Do
+you a power of good!  You're not looking the thing, my dear."
+
+His voice died wistfully, and his glance, sweeping her face, rested
+on her hands, which held and twisted Greta's letter.  After a minute
+or two of silence he boomed out again with sudden energy:
+
+"Your aunt'll want to come and sit with me, after dinner; don't let
+her, Chris, I can't stand it.  Tell her I'm asleep--the doctor'll be
+here directly; ask him to make up some humbug for you--it's his
+business."
+
+He was seized by a violent fit of pain which seemed to stab his
+breath away, and when it was over signed that he would be left alone.
+Christian went back to her letter in the other room, and had written
+these words, when the gong summoned her to dinner:
+
+'I'm like a leaf in the wind, I put out my hand to one thing, and
+it's seized and twisted and flung aside.  I want you--I want you; if
+I could see you I think I should know what to do--"
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+The rain drove with increasing fury.  The night was very black.
+Nicholas Treffry slept heavily.  By the side of his bed the night-
+lamp cast on to the opposite wall a bright disc festooned by the
+hanging shadow of the ceiling.  Christian was leaning over him.  For
+the moment he filled all her heart, lying there, so helpless. Fearful
+of waking him she slipped into the sitting-room.  Outside the window
+stood a man with his face pressed to the pane.  Her heart thumped;
+she went up and unlatched the window.  It was Harz, with the rain
+dripping off him.  He let fall his hat and cape.
+
+"You!" she said, touching his sleeve.  "You!  You!"
+
+He was sodden with wet, his face drawn and tired; a dark growth of
+beard covered his cheeks and chin.
+
+"Where is your uncle?" he said; "I want to see him."
+
+She put her hand up to his lips, but he caught it and covered it with
+kisses.
+
+"He's asleep--ill--speak gently!"
+
+"I came to him first," he muttered.
+
+Christian lit the lamp; and he looked at her hungrily without a word.
+
+"It's not possible to go on like this; I came to tell your uncle so.
+He is a man.  As for the other, I want to have nothing to do with
+him!  I came back on foot across the mountains.  It's not possible to
+go on like this, Christian."
+
+She handed him her letter.  He held it to the light, clearing his
+brow of raindrops.  When he had read to the last word he gave it her
+back, and whispered: "Come!"
+
+Her lips moved, but she did not speak.
+
+"While this goes on I can't work; I can do nothing.  I can't--I won't
+bargain with my work; if it's to be that, we had better end it.  What
+are we waiting for?  Sooner or later we must come to this.  I'm sorry
+that he's ill, God knows!  But that changes nothing.  To wait is
+tying me hand and foot--it's making me afraid!  Fear kills!  It will
+kill you!  It kills work, and I must work, I can't waste time--I
+won't!  I will sooner give you up."  He put his hands on her
+shoulders.  "I love you!  I want you!  Look in my eyes and see if you
+dare hold back!"
+
+Christian stood with the grip of his strong hands on her shoulders,
+without a movement or sign.  Her face was very white.  And suddenly
+he began to kiss that pale, still face, to kiss its eyes and lips, to
+kiss it from its chin up to its hair; and it stayed pale, as a white
+flower, beneath those kisses--as a white flower, whose stalk the
+fingers bend back a little.
+
+There was a sound of knocking on the wall; Mr. Treffry called feebly.
+Christian broke away from Harz.
+
+"To-morrow!" he whispered, and picking up his hat and cloak, went out
+again into the rain.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+It was not till morning that Christian fell into a troubled sleep.
+She dreamed that a voice was calling her, and she was filled with a
+helpless, dumb dream terror.
+
+When she woke the light was streaming in; it was Sunday, and the
+cathedral bells were chiming.  Her first thought was of Harz.  One
+step, one moment of courage!  Why had she not told her uncle?  If he
+had only asked!  But why--why should she tell him?  When it was over
+and she was gone, he would see that all was for the best.
+
+Her eyes fell on Greta's empty bed.  She sprang up, and bending over,
+kissed the pillow.  'She will mind at first; but she's so young!
+Nobody will really miss me, except Uncle Nic!'  She stood along while
+in the window without moving.  When she was dressed she called out to
+her maid:
+
+"Bring me some milk, Barbi; I'm going to church."
+
+"Ach! gnadiges Frdulein, will you no breakfast have?"
+
+"No thank you, Barbi."
+
+"Liebes Fraulein, what a beautiful morning after the rain it has
+become!  How cool!  It is for you good--for the colour in your
+cheeks; now they will bloom again!" and Barbi stroked her own well-
+coloured cheeks.
+
+Dominique, sunning himself outside with a cloth across his arm, bowed
+as she passed, and smiled affectionately:
+
+"He is better this morning, M'mselle.  We march--we are getting on.
+Good news will put the heart into you."
+
+Christian thought: 'How sweet every one is to-day!'
+
+Even the Villa seemed to greet her, with the sun aslant on it; and
+the trees, trembling and weeping golden tears.  At the cathedral she
+was early for the service, but here and there were figures on their
+knees; the faint, sickly odour of long-burnt incense clung in the
+air; a priest moved silently at the far end.  She knelt, and when at
+last she rose the service had begun.  With the sound of the intoning
+a sense of peace came to her--the peace of resolution.  For good or
+bad she felt that she had faced her fate.
+
+She went out with a look of quiet serenity and walked home along the
+dyke.  Close to Harz's studio she sat down.  Now--it was her own; all
+that had belonged to him, that had ever had a part in him.
+
+An old beggar, who had been watching her, came gently from behind.
+"Gracious lady!" he said, peering at her eyes, "this is the lucky day
+for you.  I have lost my luck."
+
+Christian opened her purse, there was only one coin in it, a gold
+piece; the beggar's eyes sparkled.
+
+She thought suddenly: 'It's no longer mine; I must begin to be
+careful,' but she felt ashamed when she looked at the old man.
+
+"I am sorry," she said; "yesterday I would have given you this, but--
+but now it's already given."
+
+He seemed so old and poor--what could she give him?  She unhooked a
+little silver brooch at her throat.  "You will get something for
+that," she said; "it's better than nothing.  I am very sorry you are
+so old and poor."
+
+The beggar crossed himself.  "Gracious lady," he muttered, "may you
+never want!"
+
+Christian hurried on; the rustling of leaves soon carried the words
+away.  She did not feel inclined to go in, and crossing the bridge
+began to climb the hill.  There was a gentle breeze, drifting the
+clouds across the sun; lizards darted out over the walls, looked at
+her, and whisked away.
+
+The sunshine, dappling through the tops of trees, gashed down on a
+torrent.  The earth smelt sweet, the vineyards round the white farms
+glistened; everything seemed to leap and dance with sap and life; it
+was a moment of Spring in midsummer.  Christian walked on, wondering
+at her own happiness.
+
+'Am I heartless?' she thought.  'I am going to leave him--I am going
+into life; I shall have to fight now, there'll be no looking back.'
+
+The path broke away and wound down to the level of the torrent; on
+the other side it rose again, and was lost among trees.  The woods
+were dank; she hastened home.
+
+In her room she began to pack, sorting and tearing up old letters.
+'Only one thing matters,' she thought; 'singleness of heart; to see
+your way, and keep to it with all your might.'
+
+She looked up and saw Barbi standing before her with towels in her
+hands, and a scared face.
+
+"Are you going a journey, gnadiges Fraulein?"
+
+"I am going away to be married, Barbi," said Christian at last;
+"don't speak of it to any one, please."
+
+Barbi leant a little forward with the towels clasped to the blue
+cotton bosom of her dress.
+
+"No, no!  I will not speak.  But, dear Fraulein, that is a big
+matter; have you well thought?"
+
+"Thought, Barbi?  Have I not!"
+
+"But, dear FrauIein, will you be rich?"
+
+"No! I shall be as poor as you."
+
+"Ach! dear God! that is terrible.  Katrina, my sister, she is
+married; she tells me all her life; she tells me it is very hard, and
+but for the money in her stocking it would be harder.  Dear Fraulein,
+think again!  And is he good?  Sometimes they are not good."
+
+"He is good," said Christian, rising; "it is all settled!" and she
+kissed Barbi on the cheek.
+
+"You are crying, liebes Fraulein!  Think yet again, perhaps it is not
+quite all settled; it is not possible that a maiden should not a way
+out leave?"
+
+Christian smiled.  "I don't do things that way, Barbi."
+
+Barbi hung the towels on the horse, and crossed herself.
+
+Mr. Treffry's gaze was fixed on a tortoise-shell butterfly fluttering
+round the ceiling.  The insect seemed to fascinate him, as things
+which move quickly always fascinate the helpless.  Christian came
+softly in.
+
+"Couldn't stay in bed, Chris," he called out with an air of guilt.
+"The heat was something awful.  The doctor piped off in a huff, just
+because o' this."  He motioned towards a jug of claret-cup and a pipe
+on the table by his elbow.  "I was only looking at 'em."
+
+Christian, sitting down beside him, took up a fan.
+
+"If I could get out of this heat--" he said, and closed his eyes.
+
+'I must tell him,' she thought; 'I can't slink away.'
+
+"Pour me out some of that stuff, Chris."
+
+She reached for the jug.  Yes! She must tell him! Her heart sank.
+
+Mr. Treffry took a lengthy draught.  "Broken my promise; don't
+matter--won't hurt any one but me."  He took up the pipe and pressed
+tobacco into it.  "I've been lying here with this pain going right
+through me, and never a smoke!  D'you tell me anything the parsons
+say can do me half the good of this pipe?"  He leaned back, steeped
+in a luxury of satisfaction.  He went on, pursuing a private train of
+thought: "Things have changed a lot since my young days.  When I was
+a youngster, a young fellow had to look out for peck and perch--he
+put the future in his pocket.  He did well or not, according as he
+had stuff in him.  Now he's not content with that, it seems--trades
+on his own opinion of himself; thinks he is what he says he's going
+to be."
+
+"You are unjust," said Christian.
+
+Mr. Treffry grunted.  "Ah, well! I like to know where I am.  If I
+lend money to a man, I like to know whether he's going to pay it
+back; I may not care whether he does or not, but I like to know.  The
+same with other things.  I don't care what a man has--though, mind
+you, Chris, it's not a bad rule that measures men by the balance at
+their banks; but when it comes to marriage, there's a very simple
+rule, What's not enough for one is not enough for two.  You can't
+talk black white, or bread into your mouth.  I don't care to speak
+about myself, as you know, Chris, but I tell you this--when I came to
+London I wanted to marry--I hadn't any money, and I had to want.
+When I had the money--but that's neither here nor there!"  He
+frowned, fingering his pipe.
+
+"I didn't ask her, Chris; I didn't think it the square thing; it
+seems that's out of fashion!"
+
+Christian's cheeks were burning.
+
+"I think a lot while I lie here," Mr. Treffry went on; "nothing much
+else to do.  What I ask myself is this: What do you know about what's
+best for you?  What do you know of life?  Take it or leave it, life's
+not all you think; it's give and get all the way, a fair start is
+everything."
+
+Christian thought: 'Will he never see?'
+
+Mr. Treffry went on:
+
+"I get better every day, but I can't last for ever.  It's not
+pleasant to lie here and know that when I'm gone there'll be no one
+to keep a hand on the check string!"
+
+"Don't talk like that, dear!" Christian murmured.
+
+"It's no use blinking facts, Chris.  I've lived a long time in the
+world; I've seen things pretty well as they are; and now there's not
+much left for me to think about but you."
+
+"But, Uncle, if you loved him, as I do, you couldn't tell me to be
+afraid!  It's cowardly and mean to be afraid.  You must have
+forgotten!"
+
+Mr. Treffry closed his eyes.
+
+"Yes," he said; "I'm old."
+
+The fan had dropped into Christian's lap; it rested on her white
+frock like a large crimson leaf; her eyes were fixed on it.
+
+Mr. Treffry looked at her.  "Have you heard from him?" he asked with
+sudden intuition.
+
+"Last night, in that room, when you thought I was talking to
+Dominique--"
+
+The pipe fell from his hand.
+
+"What!" he stammered: "Back?"
+
+Christian, without looking up, said:
+
+"Yes, he's back; he wants me--I must go to him, Uncle."
+
+There was a long silence.
+
+"You must go to him?" he repeated.
+
+She longed to fling herself down at his knees, but he was so still,
+that to move seemed impossible; she remained silent, with folded
+hands.
+
+Mr. Treffry spoke:
+
+"You'll let me know--before--you--go.  Goodnight!"
+
+Christian stole out into the passage.  A bead curtain rustled in the
+draught; voices reached her.
+
+"My honour is involved, or I would give the case up."
+
+"He is very trying, poor Nicholas!  He always had that peculiar
+quality of opposition; it has brought him to grief a hundred times.
+There is opposition in our blood; my family all have it.  My eldest
+brother died of it; with my poor sister, who was as gentle as a lamb,
+it took the form of doing the right thing in the wrong place.  It is
+a matter of temperament, you see.  You must have patience."
+
+"Patience," repeated Dawney's voice, "is one thing; patience where
+there is responsibility is another.  I've not had a wink of sleep
+these last two nights."
+
+There was a faint, shrill swish of silk.
+
+"Is he so very ill?"
+
+Christian held her breath.  The answer came at last.
+
+"Has he made his will?  With this trouble in the side again, I tell
+you plainly, Mrs. Decie, there's little or no chance."
+
+Christian put her hands up to her ears, and ran out into the air.
+What was she about to do, then--to leave him dying!
+
+On the following day Harz was summoned to the Villa.  Mr. Treffry had
+just risen, and was garbed in a dressing-suit, old and worn, which
+had a certain air of magnificence.  His seamed cheeks were newly
+shaved.
+
+"I hope I see you well," he said majestically.
+
+Thinking of the drive and their last parting, Harz felt sorry and
+ashamed.  Suddenly Christian came into the room; she stood for a
+moment looking at him; then sat down.
+
+"Chris!" said Mr. Treffry reproachfully.  She shook her head, and did
+not move; mournful and intent, her eyes seemed full of secret
+knowledge.
+
+Mr. Treffry spoke:
+
+"I've no right to blame you, Mr. Harz, and Chris tells me you came to
+see me first, which is what I would have expected of you; but you
+shouldn't have come back."
+
+"I came back, sir, because I found I was obliged.  I must speak out."
+
+"I ask nothing better," Mr. Treffry replied.
+
+Harz looked again at Christian; but she made no sign, sitting with
+her chin resting on her hands.
+
+"I have come for her," he said; "I can make my living--enough for
+both of us.  But I can't wait."
+
+"Why?"
+
+Harz made no answer.
+
+Mr. Treffry boomed out again: " Why?  Isn't she worth waiting for?
+Isn't she worth serving for?"
+
+"I can't expect you to understand me," the painter said.  "My art is
+my life to me.  Do you suppose that if it wasn't I should ever have
+left my village; or gone through all that I've gone through, to get
+as far even as I am?  You tell me to wait.  If my thoughts and my
+will aren't free, how can I work?  I shan't be worth my salt.  You
+tell me to go back to England--knowing she is here, amongst you who
+hate me, a thousand miles away.  I shall know that there's a death
+fight going on in her and outside her against me--you think that I
+can go on working under these conditions.  Others may be able, I am
+not.  That's the plain truth.  If I loved her less--"
+
+There was a silence, then Mr. Treffry said:
+
+"It isn't fair to come here and ask what you're asking.  You don't
+know what's in the future for you, you don't know that you can keep a
+wife.  It isn't pleasant, either, to think you can't hold up your
+head in your own country."
+
+Harz turned white.
+
+"Ah! you bring that up again!" he broke out.  "Seven years ago I was
+a boy and starving; if you had been in my place you would have done
+what I did.  My country is as much to me as your country is to you.
+I've been an exile seven years, I suppose I shall always be I've had
+punishment enough; but if you think I am a rascal, I'll go and give
+myself up."  He turned on his heel.
+
+"Stop!  I beg your pardon!  I never meant to hurt you.  It isn't easy
+for me to eat my words," Mr. Treffry said wistfully, "let that count
+for something."  He held out his hand.
+
+Harz came quickly back and took it.  Christian's gaze was never for a
+moment withdrawn; she seemed trying to store up the sight of him
+within her.  The light darting through the half-closed shutters gave
+her eyes a strange, bright intensity, and shone in the folds of her
+white dress like the sheen of birds' wings.
+
+Mr. Treffry glanced uneasily about him.  "God knows I don't want
+anything but her happiness," he said.  "What is it to me if you'd
+murdered your mother?  It's her I'm thinking of."
+
+"How can you tell what is happiness to her?  You have your own ideas
+of happiness--not hers, not mine.  You can't dare to stop us, sir!"
+
+"Dare?" said Mr. Treffry.  "Her father gave her over to me when she
+was a mite of a little thing; I've known her all her life.  I've--
+I've loved her--and you come here with your 'dare'!  " His hand
+dragged at his beard, and shook as though palsied.
+
+A look of terror came into Christian's face.
+
+"All right, Chris! I don't ask for quarter, and I don't give it!"
+
+Harz made a gesture of despair.
+
+"I've acted squarely by you, sir," Mr. Treffry went on, "I ask the
+same of you.  I ask you to wait, and come like an honest man, when
+you can say, 'I see my way--here's this and that for her.'  What
+makes this art you talk of different from any other call in life?  It
+doesn't alter facts, or give you what other men have no right to
+expect.  It doesn't put grit into you, or keep your hands clean, or
+prove that two and two make five."
+
+Harz answered bitterly:
+
+"You know as much of art as I know of money.  If we live a thousand
+years we shall never understand each other.  I am doing what I feel
+is best for both of us."
+
+Mr. Treffry took hold of the painter's sleeve.
+
+"I make you an offer," he said.  "Your word not to see or write to
+her for a year!  Then, position or not, money or no money, if she'll
+have you, I'll make it right for you."
+
+"I could not take your money."
+
+A kind of despair seemed suddenly to seize on Mr. Nicholas Treffry.
+He rose, and stood towering over them.
+
+"All my life--" he said; but something seemed to click deep down in
+his throat, and he sank back in his seat.
+
+"Go!" whispered Christian, "go!" But Mr. Treffry found his voice
+again: "It's for the child to say.  Well, Chris!"
+
+Christian did not speak.
+
+It was Harz who broke the silence.  He pointed to Mr. Treffry.
+
+"You know I can't tell you to come with--that, there.  Why did you
+send for me?"  And, turning, he went out.
+
+Christian sank on her knees, burying her face in her hands.  Mr.
+Treffry pressed his handkerchief with a stealthy movement to his
+mouth.  It was dyed crimson with the price of his victory.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+A telegram had summoned Herr Paul from Vienna.  He had started
+forthwith, leaving several unpaid accounts to a more joyful
+opportunity, amongst them a chemist's bill, for a wonderful quack
+medicine of which he brought six bottles.
+
+He came from Mr. Treffry's room with tears rolling down his cheeks,
+saying:
+
+"Poor Nicholas!  Poor Nicholas!  Il n'a pas de chance!"
+
+It was difficult to find any one to listen; the women were scared and
+silent, waiting for the orders that were now and then whispered
+through the door.  Herr Paul could not bear this silence, and talked
+to his servant for half an hour, till Fritz also vanished to fetch
+something from the town.  Then in despair Herr Paul went to his room.
+
+It was hard not to be allowed to help--it was hard to wait!  When the
+heart was suffering, it was frightful!  He turned and, looking
+furtively about him, lighted a cigar.  Yes, it came to every one--at
+some time or other; and what was it, that death they talked of?  Was
+it any worse than life?  That frightful jumble people made for
+themselves!  Poor Nicholas!  After all, it was he that had the luck!
+
+His eyes filled with tears, and drawing a penknife from his pocket,
+he began to stab it into the stuffing of his chair.  Scruff, who sat
+watching the chink of light under the door, turned his head, blinked
+at him, and began feebly tapping with a claw.
+
+It was intolerable, this uncertainty--to be near, and yet so far, was
+not endurable!
+
+Herr Paul stepped across the room.  The dog, following, threw his
+black-marked muzzle upwards with a gruff noise, and went back to the
+door.  His master was holding in his hand a bottle of champagne.
+
+Poor Nicholas!  He had chosen it.  Herr Paul drained a glass.
+
+Poor Nicholas!  The prince of fellows, and of what use was one?  They
+kept him away from Nicholas!
+
+Herr Paul's eyes fell on the terrier.  "Ach! my dear," he said, "you
+and I, we alone are kept away!"
+
+He drained a second glass.
+
+What was it?  This life!  Froth-like that! He tossed off a third
+glass.  Forget!  If one could not help, it was better to forget!
+
+He put on his hat.  Yes.  There was no room for him there!  He was
+not wanted!
+
+He finished the bottle, and went out into the passage.  Scruff ran
+and lay down at Mr. Treffry's door.  Herr Paul looked at him.  "Ach!"
+he said, tapping his chest, "ungrateful hound!"  And opening the
+front door he went out on tiptoe....
+
+Late that afternoon Greta stole hatless through the lilac bushes; she
+looked tired after her night journey, and sat idly on a chair in the
+speckled shadow of a lime-tree.
+
+'It is not like home,' she thought; 'I am unhappy.  Even the birds
+are silent, but perhaps that is because it is so hot.  I have never
+been sad like this--for it is not fancy that I am sad this time, as
+it is sometimes.  It is in my heart like the sound the wind makes
+through a wood, it feels quite empty in my heart.  If it is always
+like this to be unhappy, then I am sorry for all the unhappy things
+in the world; I am sorrier than I ever was before.'
+
+A shadow fell on the grass, she raised her eyes, and saw Dawney.
+
+"Dr. Edmund!" she whispered.
+
+Dawney turned to her; a heavy furrow showed between his brows.  His
+eyes, always rather close together, stared painfully.
+
+"Dr. Edmund," Greta whispered, "is it true?"
+
+He took her hand, and spread his own palm over it.
+
+"Perhaps," he said; "perhaps not.  We must hope."
+
+Greta looked up, awed.
+
+"They say he is dying."
+
+"We have sent for the best man in Vienna."
+
+Greta shook her head.
+
+"But you are clever, Dr. Edmund; and you are afraid."
+
+"He is brave," said Dawney; "we must all be brave, you know.  You
+too!"
+
+"Brave?" repeated Greta; "what is it to be brave?  If it is not to
+cry and make a fuss--that I can do.  But if it is not to be sad in
+here," she touched her breast, "that I cannot do, and it shall not be
+any good for me to try."
+
+"To be brave is to hope; don't give up hope, dear."
+
+"No," said Greta, tracing the pattern of the sunlight on her skirt.
+"But I think that when we hope, we are not brave, because we are
+expecting something for ourselves.  Chris says that hope is prayer,
+and if it is prayer, then all the time we are hoping, we are asking
+for something, and it is not brave to ask for things."
+
+A smile curved Dawney's mouth.
+
+"Go on, Philosopher!" he said.  "Be brave in your own way, it will be
+just as good as anybody else's."
+
+"What are you going to do to be brave, Dr. Edmund?"
+
+"I?  Fight!  If only we had five years off his life!"
+
+Greta watched him as he walked away.
+
+"I shall never be brave," she mourned; "I shall always be wanting to
+be happy."  And, kneeling down, she began to disentangle a fly,
+imprisoned in a cobweb.  A plant of hemlock had sprung up in the long
+grass by her feet.  Greta thought, dismayed: 'There are weeds!'
+
+It seemed but another sign of the death of joy.
+
+'But it's very beautiful,' she thought, 'the blossoms are like stars.
+I am not going to pull it up.  I will leave it; perhaps it will
+spread all through the garden; and if it does I do not care, for now
+things are not like they used to be and I do not, think they ever
+shall be again.'
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+The days went by; those long, hot days, when the heat haze swims up
+about ten of the forenoon, and, as the sun sinks level with the
+mountains, melts into golden ether which sets the world quivering
+with sparkles.
+
+At the lighting of the stars those sparkles die, vanishing one by one
+off the hillsides; evening comes flying down the valleys, and life
+rests under her cool wings.  The night falls; and the hundred little
+voices of the night arise.
+
+It was near grape-gathering, and in the heat the fight for Nicholas
+Treffry's life went on, day in, day out, with gleams of hope and
+moments of despair.  Doctors came, but after the first he refused to
+see them.
+
+"No," he said to Dawney-- "throwing away money.  If I pull through it
+won't be because of them."
+
+For days together he would allow no one but Dawney, Dominique, and
+the paid nurse in the room.
+
+"I can stand it better," he said to Christian, "when I don't see any
+of you; keep away, old girl, and let me get on with it!"
+
+To have been able to help would have eased the tension of her nerves,
+and the aching of her heart.  At his own request they had moved his
+bed into a corner so that he might face the wall.  There he would lie
+for hours together, not speaking a word, except to ask for drink.
+
+Sometimes Christian crept in unnoticed, and sat watching, with her
+arms tightly folded across her breast.  At night, after Greta was
+asleep, she would toss from side to side, muttering feverish prayers.
+She spent hours at her little table in the schoolroom, writing
+letters to Harz that were never sent.  Once she wrote these words: "I
+am the most wicked of all creatures--I have even wished that he may
+die!"  A few minutes afterwards Miss Naylor found her with her head
+buried on her arms.  Christian sprang up; tears were streaming down
+her cheeks.  "Don't touch me!" she cried, and rushed away.  Later,
+she stole into her uncle's room, and sank down on the floor beside
+the bed.  She sat there silently, unnoticed all the evening.  When
+night came she could hardly be persuaded to leave the room.
+
+One day Mr. Treffry expressed a wish to see Herr Paul; it was a long
+while before the latter could summon courage to go in.
+
+"There's a few dozen of the Gordon sherry at my Chambers, in London,
+Paul," Mr. Treffry said; "I'd be glad to think you had 'em.  And my
+man, Dominique, I've made him all right in my will, but keep your eye
+on him; he's a good sort for a foreigner, and no chicken, but sooner
+or later, the women'll get hold of him.  That's all I had to say.
+Send Chris to me."
+
+Herr Paul stood by the bedside speechless.  Suddenly he blurted out.
+
+"Ah! my dear!  Courage!  We are all mortal.  You will get well!"  All
+the morning he walked about quite inconsolable.  "It was frightful to
+see him, you know, frightful!  An iron man could not have borne it."
+
+When Christian came to him, Mr. Treffry raised himself and looked at
+her a long while.
+
+His wistful face was like an accusation.  But that very afternoon the
+news came from the sickroom that he was better, having had no pain
+for several hours.
+
+Every one went about with smiles lurking in their eyes, and ready to
+break forth at a word.  In the kitchen Barbi burst out crying, and,
+forgetting to toss the pan, spoiled a Kaiser-Schmarn she was making.
+Dominique was observed draining a glass of Chianti, and solemnly
+casting forth the last drops in libation.  An order was given for tea
+to be taken out under the acacias, where it was always cool; it was
+felt that something in the nature of high festival was being held.
+Even Herr Paul was present; but Christian did not come.  Nobody spoke
+of illness; to mention it might break the spell.
+
+Miss Naylor, who had gone into the house, came back, saying:
+
+"There is a strange man standing over there by the corner of the
+house."
+
+"Really!" asked Mrs. Decie; "what does he want?"
+
+Miss Naylor reddened.  "I did not ask him.  I--don't--know--whether
+he is quite respectable.  His coat is buttoned very close, and he--
+doesn't seem--to have a--collar."
+
+"Go and see what he wants, dear child," Mrs. Decie said to Greta.
+
+"I don't know--I really do not know--" began Miss Naylor; "he has
+very--high--boots," but Greta was already on her way, with hands
+clasped behind her, and demure eyes taking in the stranger's figure.
+
+"Please?" she said, when she was close to him.
+
+The stranger took his cap off with a jerk.
+
+"This house has no bells," he said in a nasal voice; "it has a
+tendency to discourage one."
+
+"Yes," said Greta gravely, "there is a bell, but it does not ring
+now, because my uncle is so ill."
+
+"I am very sorry to hear that.  I don't know the people here, but I
+am very sorry to hear that.
+
+I would be glad to speak a few words to your sister, if it is your
+sister that I want."
+
+And the stranger's face grew very red.
+
+"Is it," said Greta, "that you are a friend of Herr Harz?  If you are
+a friend of his, you will please come and have some tea, and while
+you are having tea I will look for Chris."
+
+Perspiration bedewed the stranger's forehead.
+
+"Tea?  Excuse me!  I don't drink tea."
+
+"There is also coffee," Greta said.
+
+The stranger's progress towards the arbour was so slow that Greta
+arrived considerably before him.
+
+"It is a friend of Herr Harz," she whispered; "he will drink coffee.
+I am going to find Chris."
+
+"Greta!" gasped Miss Naylor.
+
+Mrs. Decie put up her hand.
+
+"Ah!" she said, "if it is so, we must be very nice to him for
+Christian's sake."
+
+Miss Naylor's face grew soft.      -
+
+"Ah, yes!" she said; "of course."
+
+"Bah!" muttered Herr Paul, "that recommences.'
+
+"Paul!" murmured Mrs. Decie, "you lack the elements of wisdom."
+
+Herr Paul glared at the approaching stranger.
+
+Mrs. Decie had risen, and smilingly held out her hand.
+
+"We are so glad to know you; you are an artist too, perhaps?  I take
+a great interest in art, and especially in that school which Mr. Harz
+represents."
+
+The stranger smiled.
+
+"He is the genuine article, ma'am," he said.  "He represents no
+school, he is one of that kind whose corpses make schools."
+
+"Ah!" murmured Mrs. Decie, "you are an American.  That is so nice.
+Do sit down!  My niece will soon be here."
+
+Greta came running back.
+
+"Will you come, please?" she said.  "Chris is ready."
+
+Gulping down his coffee, the stranger included them all in a single
+bow, and followed her.
+
+"Ach!" said Herr Paul, "garcon tres chic, celui-la!"
+
+Christian was standing by her little table.  The stranger began.
+
+"I am sending Mr. Harz's things to England; there are some pictures
+here.  He would be glad to have them."
+
+A flood of crimson swept over her face.
+
+"I am sending them to London," the stranger repeated; "perhaps you
+could give them to me to-day."
+
+"They are ready; my sister will show you."
+
+Her eyes seemed to dart into his soul, and try to drag something from
+it.  The words rushed from her lips
+
+"Is there any message for me?"
+
+The stranger regarded her curiously.
+
+"No," he stammered, "no! I guess not.  He is well....  I wish...." He
+stopped; her white face seemed to flash scorn, despair, and entreaty
+on him all at once.  And turning, she left him standing there.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+When Christian went that evening to her uncle's room he was sitting
+up in bed, and at once began to talk.  "Chris," he said, "I can't
+stand this dying by inches.  I'm going to try what a journey'll do
+for me.  I want to get back to the old country.  The doctor's
+promised.  There's a shot in the locker yet!  I believe in that young
+chap; he's stuck to me like a man....  It'll be your birthday, on
+Tuesday, old girl, and you'll be twenty.  Seventeen years since your
+father died.  You've been a lot to me....  A parson came here today.
+That's a bad sign.  Thought it his duty!  Very civil of him!
+I wouldn't see him, though.  If there's anything in what they tell
+you, I'm not going to sneak in at this time o' day.  There's one
+thing that's rather badly on my mind.  I took advantage of Mr. Harz
+with this damned pitifulness of mine.  You've a right to look at me
+as I've seen you sometimes when you thought I was asleep.  If I
+hadn't been ill he'd never have left you.  I don't blame you, Chris--
+not I!  You love me?  I know that, my dear.  But one's alone when it
+comes to the run-in.  Don't cry!  Our minds aren't Sunday-school
+books; you're finding it out, that's all!"  He sighed and turned
+away.
+
+The noise of sun-blinds being raised vibrated through the house.  A
+feeling of terror seized on the girl; he lay so still, and yet the
+drawing of each breath was a fight.  If she could only suffer in his
+place!  She went close, and bent over him.
+
+"It's air we want, both you and I!" he muttered.  Christian beckoned
+to the nurse, and stole out through the window.
+
+A regiment was passing in the road; she stood half-hidden amongst the
+lilac bushes watching.  The poplar leaves drooped lifeless and almost
+black above her head, the dust raised by the soldiers' feet hung in
+the air; it seemed as if in all the world no freshness and no life
+were stirring.  The tramp of feet died away.  Suddenly within arm's
+length of her a man appeared, his stick shouldered like a sword.  He
+raised his hat.
+
+"Good-evening!  You do not remember me?  Sarelli.  Pardon! You looked
+like a ghost standing there.  How badly those fellows marched!  We
+hang, you see, on the skirts of our profession and criticise; it is
+all we are fit for."  His black eyes, restless and malevolent like a
+swan's, seemed to stab her face.  "A fine evening!  Too hot.  The
+storm is wanted; you feel that?  It is weary waiting for the storm;
+but after the storm, my dear young lady, comes peace."  He smiled,
+gently, this time, and baring his head again, was lost to view in the
+shadow of the trees.
+
+His figure had seemed to Christian like the sudden vision of a
+threatening, hidden force.  She thrust out her hands, as though to
+keep it off.
+
+No use; it was within her, nothing could keep it away!  She went to
+Mrs. Decie's room, where her aunt and Miss Naylor were conversing in
+low tones.  To hear their voices brought back the touch of this world
+of everyday which had no part or lot in the terrifying powers within
+her.
+
+Dawney slept at the Villa now.  In the dead of night he was awakened
+by a light flashed in his eyes.  Christian was standing there, her
+face pale and wild with terror, her hair falling in dark masses on
+her shoulders.
+
+"Save him!  Save him!" she cried.  "Quick! The bleeding!"
+
+He saw her muffle her face in her white sleeves, and seizing the
+candle, leaped out of bed and rushed away.
+
+The internal haemorrhage had come again, and Nicholas Treffry wavered
+between life and death.  When it had ceased, he sank into a sort of
+stupor.  About six o'clock he came back to consciousness; watching
+his eyes, they could see a mental struggle taking place within him.
+At last he singled Christian out from the others by a sign.
+
+"I'm beat, Chris," he whispered.  "Let him know, I want to see him."
+
+His voice grew a little stronger.  "I thought that I could see it
+through--but here's the end."  He lifted his hand ever so little, and
+let it fall again.  When told a little later that a telegram had been
+sent to Harz his eyes expressed satisfaction.
+
+Herr Paul came down in ignorance of the night's events.  He stopped
+in front of the barometer and tapped it, remarking to Miss Naylor:
+"The glass has gone downstairs; we shall have cool weather--it will
+still go well with him!"
+
+When, with her brown face twisted by pity and concern, she told him
+that it was a question of hours, Herr Paul turned first purple, then
+pale, and sitting down, trembled violently.  "I cannot believe it,"
+he exclaimed almost angrily.  "Yesterday he was so well!  I cannot
+believe it!  Poor Nicholas!  Yesterday he spoke to me!"  Taking Miss
+Naylor's hand, he clutched it in his own.  "Ah!" he cried, letting it
+go suddenly, and striking at his forehead, "it is too terrible; only
+yesterday he spoke to me of sherry.  Is there nobody, then, who can
+do good?"
+
+"There is only God," replied Miss Naylor softly.
+
+"God?" said Herr Paul in a scared voice.
+
+"We--can--all--pray to Him," Miss Naylor murmured; little spots of
+colour came into her cheeks.  "I am going to do it now."
+
+Herr Paul raised her hand and kissed it.
+
+"Are you?" he said; "good! I too."  He passed through his study door,
+closed it carefully behind him, then for some unknown reason set his
+back against it.  Ugh! Death! It came to all! Some day it would come
+to him.  It might come tomorrow!  One must pray!
+
+The day dragged to its end.  In the sky clouds had mustered, and,
+crowding close on one another, clung round the sun, soft, thick,
+greywhite, like the feathers on a pigeon's breast.  Towards evening
+faint tremblings were felt at intervals, as from the shock of
+immensely distant earthquakes.
+
+Nobody went to bed that night, but in the morning the report was the
+same: "Unconscious--a question of hours."  Once only did he recover
+consciousness, and then asked for Harz.  A telegram had come from
+him, he was on the way.  Towards seven of the evening the long-
+expected storm broke in a sky like ink.  Into the valleys and over
+the crests of mountains it seemed as though an unseen hand were
+spilling goblets of pale wine, darting a sword-blade zigzag over
+trees, roofs, spires, peaks, into the very firmament, which answered
+every thrust with great bursts of groaning.  Just beyond the veranda
+Greta saw a glowworm shining, as it might be a tiny bead of the
+fallen lightning.  Soon the rain covered everything.  Sometimes a jet
+of light brought the hilltops, towering, dark, and hard, over the
+house, to disappear again behind the raindrops and shaken leaves.
+Each breath drawn by the storm was like the clash of a thousand
+cymbals; and in his room Mr. Treffry lay unconscious of its fury.
+
+Greta had crept in unobserved; and sat curled in a corner, with
+Scruff in her arms, rocking slightly to and fro.  When Christian
+passed, she caught her skirt, and whispered: "It is your birthday,
+Chris!"
+
+Mr. Treffry stirred.
+
+"What's that?  Thunder?--it's cooler.  Where am I?  Chris!"
+
+Dawney signed for her to take his place.
+
+"Chris!" Mr. Treffry said.  "It's near now."  She bent across him,
+and her tears fell on his forehead.
+
+"Forgive!" she whispered; "love me!"
+
+He raised his finger, and touched her cheek.
+
+For an hour or more he did not speak, though once or twice he moaned,
+and faintly tightened his pressure on her fingers.  The storm had
+died away, but very far off the thunder was still muttering.
+
+His eyes opened once more, rested on her, and passed beyond, into
+that abyss dividing youth from age, conviction from conviction, life
+from death.
+
+At the foot of the bed Dawney stood covering his face; behind him
+Dominique knelt with hands held upwards; the sound of Greta's
+breathing, soft in sleep, rose and fell in the stillness.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+One afternoon in March, more than three years after Mr. Treffry's
+death, Christian was sitting at the window of a studio in St. John's
+Wood.  The sky was covered with soft, high clouds, through which
+shone little gleams of blue.  Now and then a bright shower fell,
+sprinkling the trees, where every twig was curling upwards as if
+waiting for the gift of its new leaves.  And it seemed to her that
+the boughs thickened and budded under her very eyes; a great
+concourse of sparrows had gathered on those boughs, and kept raising
+a shrill chatter.  Over at the far side of the room Harz was working
+at a picture.
+
+On Christian's face was the quiet smile of one who knows that she has
+only to turn her eyes to see what she wishes to see; of one whose
+possessions are safe under her hand.  She looked at Harz with that
+possessive smile.  But as into the brain of one turning in his bed
+grim fancies will suddenly leap up out of warm nothingness, so there
+leaped into her mind the memory of that long ago dawn, when he had
+found her kneeling by Mr. Treffry's body.  She seemed to see again
+the dead face, so gravely quiet, and furrowless.  She seemed to see
+her lover and herself setting forth silently along the river wall
+where they had first met; sitting down, still silent, beneath the
+poplar-tree where the little bodies of the chafers had lain strewn in
+the Spring.  To see the trees changing from black to grey, from grey
+to green, and in the dark sky long white lines of cloud, lighting to
+the south like birds; and, very far away, rosy peaks watching the
+awakening of the earth.  And now once again, after all that time,
+she felt her spirit shrink away from his; as it had shrunk in that
+hour, when she had seemed hateful to herself.  She remembered the
+words she had spoken: "I have no heart left.  You've torn it in two
+between you.  Love is all self--I wanted him to die."  She remembered
+too the raindrops on the vines like a million tiny lamps, and the
+throstle that began singing.  Then, as dreams die out into warm
+nothingness, recollection vanished, and the smile came back to her
+lips.
+
+She took out a letter.
+
+"....O Chris!  We are really coming; I seem to be always telling it
+to myself, and I have told Scruff many times, but he does not care,
+because he is getting old.  Miss Naylor says we shall arrive for
+breakfast, and that we shall be hungry, but perhaps she will not be
+very hungry, if it is rough.  Papa said to me: 'Je serai
+inconsolable, mais inconsolable!'  But I think he will not be,
+because he is going to Vienna.  When we are come, there will be
+nobody at Villa Rubein; Aunt Constance has gone a fortnight ago to
+Florence.  There is a young man at her hotel; she says he will be one
+of the greatest playwriters in England, and she sent me a play of his
+to read; it was only a little about love, I did not like it very
+much....  O Chris! I think I shall cry when I see you.  As I am quite
+grown up, Miss Naylor is not to come back with me; sometimes she is
+sad, but she will be glad to see you, Chris.  She seems always sadder
+when it is Spring.  Today I walked along the wall; the little green
+balls of wool are growing on the poplars already, and I saw one
+chafer; it will not be long before the cherry blossom comes; and I
+felt so funny, sad and happy together, and once I thought that I had
+wings and could fly away up the valley to Meran--but I had none, so I
+sat on the bench where we sat the day we took the pictures, and I
+thought and thought; there was nothing came to me in my thoughts, but
+all was sweet and a little noisy, and rather sad; it was like the
+buzzing of the chafer, in my head; and now I feel so tired and all my
+blood is running up and down me.  I do not mind, because I know it is
+the Spring.
+
+"Dominique came to see us the other day; he is very well, and is half
+the proprietor of the Adler Hotel, at Meran; he is not at all
+different, and he asked about you and about Alois--do you know,
+Chris, to myself I call him Herr Harz, but when I have seen him this
+time I shall call him Alois in my heart also.
+
+"I have a letter from Dr. Edmund; he is in London, so perhaps you
+have seen him, only he has a great many patients and some that he has
+'hopes of killing soon'! especially one old lady, because she is
+always wanting him to do things for her, and he is never saying 'No,'
+so he does not like her.  He says that he is getting old.  When I
+have finished this letter I am going to write and tell him that
+perhaps he shall see me soon, and then I think he will be very sad.
+Now that the Spring is come there are more flowers to take to Uncle
+Nic's grave, and every day, when I am gone, Barbi is to take them so
+that he shall not miss you, Chris, because all the flowers I put
+there are for you.
+
+"I am buying some toys without paint on for my niece."
+
+"O Chris! this will be the first baby that I have known."
+
+"I am only to stay three weeks with you, but I think when I am once
+there I shall be staying longer.  I send a kiss for my niece, and to
+Herr Harz, my love--that is the last time I shall call him Herr Harz;
+and to you, Chris, all the joy that is in my heart.--Your loving
+
+"GRETA."
+
+
+Christian rose, and, turning very softly, stood, leaning her elbows
+on the back of a high seat, looking at her husband.
+
+In her eyes there was a slow, clear, faintly smiling, yet yearning
+look, as though this strenuous figure bent on its task were seen for
+a moment as something apart, and not all the world to her.
+
+"Tired?" asked Harz, putting his lips to her hand.
+
+"No, it's only--what Greta says about the Spring; it makes one want
+more than one has got.
+
+Slipping her hand away, she went back to the window.  Harz stood,
+looking after her; then, taking up his palette, again began painting.
+
+In the world, outside, the high soft clouds flew by; the trees seemed
+thickening and budding.
+
+And Christian thought:
+
+'Can we never have quite enough?'
+
+
+December l890.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+MY FATHER
+
+
+
+
+A MAN OF DEVON
+
+
+I
+
+"MOOR, 20th July .
+
+.......It is quiet here, sleepy, rather--a farm is never quiet; the
+sea, too, is only a quarter of a mile away, and when it's windy, the
+sound of it travels up the combe; for distraction, you must go four
+miles to Brixham or five to Kingswear, and you won't find much then.
+The farm lies in a sheltered spot, scooped, so to speak, high up the
+combe side--behind is a rise of fields, and beyond, a sweep of down.
+You have the feeling of being able to see quite far, which is
+misleading, as you soon find out if you walk.  It is true Devon
+country-hills, hollows, hedge-banks, lanes dipping down into the
+earth or going up like the sides of houses, coppices, cornfields, and
+little streams wherever there's a place for one; but the downs along
+the cliff, all gorse and ferns, are wild.  The combe ends in a sandy
+cove with black rock on one side, pinkish cliffs away to the headland
+on the other, and a coastguard station.  Just now, with the harvest
+coming on, everything looks its richest, the apples ripening, the
+trees almost too green.  It's very hot, still weather; the country
+and the sea seem to sleep in the sun.  In front of the farm are half-
+a-dozen pines that look as if they had stepped out of another land,
+but all round the back is orchard as lush, and gnarled, and orthodox
+as any one could wish.  The house, a long, white building with three
+levels of roof, and splashes of brown all over it, looks as if it
+might be growing down into the earth.  It was freshly thatched two
+years ago--and that's all the newness there is about it; they say the
+front door, oak, with iron knobs, is three hundred years old at
+least.  You can touch the ceilings with your hand.  The windows
+certainly might be larger--a heavenly old place, though, with a
+flavour of apples, smoke, sweetbriar, bacon, honeysuckle, and age,
+all over it.
+
+The owner is a man called John Ford, about seventy, and seventeen
+stone in weight--very big, on long legs, with a grey, stubbly beard,
+grey, watery eyes, short neck and purplish complexion; he is
+asthmatic, and has a very courteous, autocratic manner.  His clothes
+are made of Harris tweed--except on Sundays, when he puts on black--a
+seal ring, and a thick gold cable chain.  There's nothing mean or
+small about John Ford; I suspect him of a warm heart, but he doesn't
+let you know much about him.  He's a north-country man by birth, and
+has been out in New Zealand all his life.  This little Devonshire
+farm is all he has now.  He had a large "station" in the North
+Island, and was much looked up to, kept open house, did everything,
+as one would guess, in a narrow-minded, large-handed way.  He came to
+grief suddenly; I don't quite know how.  I believe his only son lost
+money on the turf, and then, unable to face his father, shot himself;
+if you had seen John Ford, you could imagine that.  His wife died,
+too, that year.  He paid up to the last penny, and came home, to live
+on this farm.  He told me the other night that he had only one
+relation in the world, his granddaughter, who lives here with him.
+Pasiance Voisey--old spelling for Patience, but they pronounce, it
+Pash-yence--is sitting out here with me at this moment on a sort of
+rustic loggia that opens into the orchard.  Her sleeves are rolled
+up, and she's stripping currants, ready for black currant tea.  Now
+and then she rests her elbows on the table, eats a berry, pouts her
+lips, and, begins again.  She has a round, little face; a long,
+slender body; cheeks like poppies; a bushy mass of black-brown hair,
+and dark-brown, almost black, eyes; her nose is snub; her lips quick,
+red, rather full; all her motions quick and soft.  She loves bright
+colours.  She's rather like a little cat; sometimes she seems all
+sympathy, then in a moment as hard as tortoise-shell.  She's all
+impulse; yet she doesn't like to show her feelings; I sometimes
+wonder whether she has any.  She plays the violin.
+
+It's queer to see these two together, queer and rather sad.  The old
+man has a fierce tenderness for her that strikes into the very roots
+of him.  I see him torn between it, and his cold north-country horror
+of his feelings; his life with her is an unconscious torture to him.
+She's a restless, chafing thing, demure enough one moment, then
+flashing out into mocking speeches or hard little laughs.  Yet she's
+fond of him in her fashion; I saw her kiss him once when he was
+asleep.  She obeys him generally--in a way as if she couldn't breathe
+while she was doing it.  She's had a queer sort of education--
+history, geography, elementary mathematics, and nothing else; never
+been to school; had a few lessons on the violin, but has taught
+herself most of what she knows.  She is well up in the lore of birds,
+flowers, and insects; has three cats, who follow her about; and is
+full of pranks.  The other day she called out to me, "I've something
+for you.  Hold out your hand and shut your eyes!"  It was a large,
+black slug!  She's the child of the old fellow's only daughter, who
+was sent home for schooling at Torquay, and made a runaway match with
+one Richard Voisey, a yeoman farmer, whom she met in the hunting-
+field.  John Ford was furious--his ancestors, it appears, used to
+lead ruffians on the Cumberland side of the Border--he looked on
+"Squire" Rick Voisey as a cut below him.  He was called "Squire," as
+far as I can make out, because he used to play cards every evening
+with a parson in the neighbourhood who went by the name of "Devil"
+Hawkins.  Not that the Voisey stock is to be despised.  They have had
+this farm since it was granted to one Richard Voysey by copy dated
+8th September, 13 Henry VIII.  Mrs. Hopgood, the wife of the bailiff-
+-a dear, quaint, serene old soul with cheeks like a rosy, withered
+apple, and an unbounded love of Pasiance--showed me the very
+document.
+
+"I kape it," she said.  "Mr. Ford be tu proud--but other folks be
+proud tu.  'Tis a pra-aper old fam'ly: all the women is Margery,
+Pasiance, or Mary; all the men's Richards an' Johns an' Rogers; old
+as they apple-trees."
+
+Rick Voisey was a rackety, hunting fellow, and "dipped" the old farm
+up to its thatched roof.  John Ford took his revenge by buying up the
+mortgages, foreclosing, and commanding his daughter and Voisey to go
+on living here rent free; this they dutifully did until they were
+both killed in a dog-cart accident, eight years ago.  Old Ford's
+financial smash came a year later, and since then he's lived here
+with Pasiance.  I fancy it's the cross in her blood that makes her so
+restless, and irresponsible: if she had been all a native she'd have
+been happy enough here, or all a stranger like John Ford himself, but
+the two strains struggling for mastery seem to give her no rest.
+You'll think this a far-fetched theory, but I believe it to be the
+true one.  She'll stand with lips pressed together, her arms folded
+tight across her narrow chest, staring as if she could see beyond the
+things round her; then something catches her attention, her eyes will
+grow laughing, soft, or scornful all in a minute! She's eighteen,
+perfectly fearless in a boat, but you can't get her to mount a horse-
+-a sore subject with her grandfather, who spends most of his day on a
+lean, half-bred pony, that carries him like a feather, for all his
+weight.
+
+They put me up here as a favour to Dan Treffry; there's an
+arrangement of L. s. d. with Mrs. Hopgood in the background.  They
+aren't at all well off; this is the largest farm about, but it
+doesn't bring them in much.  To look at John Ford, it seems
+incredible he should be short of money--he's too large.
+
+We have family prayers at eight, then, breakfast--after that freedom
+for writing or anything else till supper and evening prayers.  At
+midday one forages for oneself.  On Sundays, two miles to church
+twice, or you get into John Ford's black books....  Dan Treffry
+himself is staying at Kingswear.  He says he's made his pile; it
+suits him down here--like a sleep after years of being too wide-
+awake; he had a rough time in New Zealand, until that mine made his
+fortune.  You'd hardly remember him; he reminds me of his uncle, old
+Nicholas Treffry; the same slow way of speaking, with a hesitation,
+and a trick of repeating your name with everything he says; left-
+handed too, and the same slow twinkle in his eyes.  He has a dark,
+short beard, and red-brown cheeks; is a little bald on the temples,
+and a bit grey, but hard as iron.  He rides over nearly every day,
+attended by a black spaniel with a wonderful nose and a horror of
+petticoats.  He has told me lots of good stories of John Ford in the
+early squatter's times; his feats with horses live to this day; and
+he was through the Maori wars; as Dan says, "a man after Uncle Nic's
+own heart."
+
+They are very good friends, and respect each other; Dan has a great
+admiration for the old man, but the attraction is Pasiance.  He talks
+very little when she's in the room, but looks at her in a sidelong,
+wistful sort of way.  Pasiance's conduct to him would be cruel in any
+one else, but in her, one takes it with a pinch of salt.  Dan goes
+off, but turns up again as quiet and dogged as you please.
+
+Last night, for instance, we were sitting in the loggia after supper.
+Pasiance was fingering the strings of her violin, and suddenly Dan (a
+bold thing for him) asked her to play.
+
+"What!" she said, "before men?  No, thank you!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because I hate them."
+
+Down came John Ford's hand on the wicker table: "You forget yourself!
+Go to bed!"
+
+She gave Dan a look, and went; we could hear her playing in her
+bedroom; it sounded like a dance of spirits; and just when one
+thought she had finished, out it would break again like a burst of
+laughter.  Presently, John Ford begged our pardons ceremoniously, and
+stumped off indoors.  The violin ceased; we heard his voice growling
+at her; down he came again.  Just as he was settled in his chair
+there was a soft swish, and something dark came falling through the
+apple boughs.  The violin!  You should have seen his face!  Dan would
+have picked the violin up, but the old man stopped him.  Later, from
+my bedroom window, I saw John Ford come out and stand looking at the
+violin.  He raised his foot as if to stamp on it.  At last he picked
+it up, wiped it carefully, and took it in....
+
+My room is next to hers.  I kept hearing her laugh, a noise too as if
+she were dragging things about the room.  Then I fell asleep, but
+woke with a start, and went to the window for a breath of fresh air.
+Such a black, breathless night!  Nothing to be seen but the twisted,
+blacker branches; not the faintest stir of leaves, no sound but
+muffled grunting from the cowhouse, and now and then a faint sigh.  I
+had the queerest feeling of unrest and fear, the last thing to expect
+on such a night.  There is something here that's disturbing; a sort
+of suppressed struggle.  I've never in my life seen anything so
+irresponsible as this girl, or so uncompromising as the old man; I
+keep thinking of the way he wiped that violin.  It's just as if a
+spark would set everything in a blaze.  There's a menace of tragedy--
+or--perhaps it's only the heat, and too much of Mother Hopgood's
+crame....
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+"Tuesday .
+
+......I've made a new acquaintance.  I was lying in the orchard, and
+presently, not seeing me, he came along--a man of middle height, with
+a singularly good balance, and no lumber--rather old blue clothes, a
+flannel shirt, a dull red necktie, brown shoes, a cap with a leather
+peak pushed up on the forehead.  Face long and narrow, bronzed with a
+kind of pale burnt-in brownness; a good forehead.  A brown moustache,
+beard rather pointed, blackening about the cheeks; his chin not
+visible, but from the beard's growth must be big; mouth I should
+judge sensuous.  Nose straight and blunt; eyes grey, with an upward
+look, not exactly frank, because defiant; two parallel furrows down
+each cheek, one from the inner corner of the eye, one from the
+nostril; age perhaps thirty-five.  About the face, attitude,
+movements, something immensely vital, adaptable, daring, and
+unprincipled.
+
+He stood in front of the loggia, biting his fingers, a kind of
+nineteenth-century buccaneer, and I wondered what he was doing in
+this galley. They say you can tell a man of Kent or a Somersetshire
+man; certainly you can tell a Yorkshire man, and this fellow could
+only have been a man of Devon, one of the two main types found in
+this county.  He whistled; and out came Pasiance in a geranium-
+coloured dress, looking like some tall poppy--you know the slight
+droop of a poppy's head, and the way the wind sways its stem.... She
+is a human poppy, her fuzzy dark hair is like a poppy's lustreless
+black heart, she has a poppy's tantalising attraction and repulsion,
+something fatal, or rather fateful.  She came walking up to my new
+friend, then caught sight of me, and stopped dead.
+
+"That," she said to me, "is Zachary Pearse.  This," she said to him,
+"is our lodger."  She said it with a wonderful soft malice.  She
+wanted to scratch me, and she scratched.  Half an hour later I was in
+the yard, when up came this fellow Pearse.
+
+"Glad to know you," he said, looking thoughtfully at the pigs.
+
+"You're a writer, aren't you?"
+
+"A sort of one," I said.
+
+"If by any chance," he said suddenly, "you're looking for a job, I
+could put something in your way.  Walk down to the beach with me, and
+I'll tell you; my boat's at anchor, smartest little craft in these
+parts."
+
+It was very hot, and I had no desire whatever to go down to the
+beach--I went, all the same.  We had not gone far when John Ford and
+Dan Treffry came into the lane.  Our friend seemed a little
+disconcerted, but soon recovered himself.  We met in the middle of
+the lane, where there was hardly room to pass.  John Ford, who looked
+very haughty, put on his pince-nez and stared at Pearse.
+
+"Good-day!" said Pearse; "fine weather!  I've been up to ask Pasiance
+to come for a sail.  Wednesday we thought, weather permitting; this
+gentleman's coming.  Perhaps you'll come too, Mr. Treffry.  You've
+never seen my place.  I'll give you lunch, and show you my father.
+He's worth a couple of hours' sail any day."  It was said in such an
+odd way that one couldn't resent his impudence.  John Ford was seized
+with a fit of wheezing, and seemed on the eve of an explosion; he
+glanced at me, and checked himself.
+
+"You're very good," he said icily; "my granddaughter has other things
+to do.  You, gentlemen, will please yourselves"; and, with a very
+slight bow, he went stumping on to the house.  Dan looked at me, and
+I looked at him.
+
+"You'll come?" said Pearse, rather wistfully.  Dan stammered: "Thank
+you, Mr. Pearse; I'm a better man on a horse than in a boat, but--
+thank you."  Cornered in this way, he's a shy, soft-hearted being.
+Pearse smiled his thanks.  "Wednesday, then, at ten o'clock; you
+shan't regret it."
+
+"Pertinacious beggar!" I heard Dan mutter in his beard; and found
+myself marching down the lane again by Pearse's side.  I asked him
+what he was good enough to mean by saying I was coming, without
+having asked me.  He answered, unabashed:
+
+"You see, I'm not friends with the old man; but I knew he'd not be
+impolite to you, so I took the liberty."
+
+He has certainly a knack of turning one's anger to curiosity.  We
+were down in the combe now; the tide was running out, and the sand
+all little, wet, shining ridges.  About a quarter of a mile out lay a
+cutter, with her tan sail half down, swinging to the swell.  The
+sunlight was making the pink cliffs glow in the most wonderful way;
+and shifting in bright patches over the sea like moving shoals of
+goldfish.  Pearse perched himself on his dinghy, and looked out under
+his hand.  He seemed lost in admiration.
+
+"If we could only net some of those spangles," he said, "an' make
+gold of 'em!  No more work then."
+
+"It's a big job I've got on," he said presently; "I'll tell you about
+it on Wednesday. I want a journalist."
+
+"But I don't write for the papers," I said; "I do other sort of work.
+My game is archaeology."
+
+"It doesn't matter," he said, "the more imagination the better.  It'd
+be a thundering good thing for you."
+
+His assurance was amazing, but it was past supper-time, and hunger
+getting the better of my curiosity, I bade him good-night. When I
+looked back, he was still there, on the edge of his boat, gazing at
+the sea.  A queer sort of bird altogether, but attractive somehow.
+
+Nobody mentioned him that evening; but once old Ford, after staring a
+long time at Pasiance, muttered a propos of nothing, "Undutiful
+children!"  She was softer than usual; listening quietly to our talk,
+and smiling when spoken to.  At bedtime she went up to her grand-
+father, without waiting for the usual command, "Come and kiss me,
+child."
+
+Dan did not stay to supper, and he has not been here since.  This
+morning I asked Mother Hopgood who Zachary Pearse was.  She's a true
+Devonian; if there's anything she hates, it is to be committed to a
+definite statement.  She ambled round her answer, and at last told me
+that he was "son of old Cap'en Jan Pearse to Black Mill.  'Tes an old
+family to Dartymouth an' Plymouth," she went on in a communicative
+outburst.  "They du say Francis Drake tuke five o' they Pearses with
+'en to fight the Spaniards.  At least that's what I've heard Mr.
+Zachary zay; but Ha-apgood can tell yu."  Poor Hopgood, the amount of
+information she saddles him with in the course of the day!  Having
+given me thus to understand that she had run dry, she at once went
+on:
+
+"Cap'en Jan Pearse made a dale of ventures.  He's old now--they du
+say nigh an 'undred.  Ha-apgood can tell yu."
+
+"But the son, Mrs. Hopgood?"
+
+Her eyes twinkled with sudden shrewdness: She hugged herself
+placidly.
+
+"An' what would yu take for dinner to-day?  There's duck; or yu might
+like 'toad in the hole,' with an apple tart; or then, there's--Well!
+we'll see what we can du like."  And off she went, without waiting
+for my answer.
+
+To-morrow is Wednesday.  I shan't be sorry to get another look at
+this fellow Pearse....
+
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+"Friday, 29th July.
+
+.......Why do you ask me so many questions, and egg me on to write
+about these people instead of minding my business?  If you really
+want to hear, I'll tell you of Wednesday's doings.
+
+It was a splendid morning; and Dan turned up, to my surprise--though
+I might have known that when he says a thing, he does it.  John Ford
+came out to shake hands with him, then, remembering why he had come,
+breathed loudly, said nothing, and went in again.  Nothing was to be
+seen of Pasiance, and we went down to the beach together.
+
+"I don't like this fellow Pearse, George," Dan said to me on the way;
+"I was fool enough to say I'd go, and so I must, but what's he after?
+Not the man to do things without a reason, mind you.
+
+I remarked that we should soon know.
+
+"I'm not so sure--queer beggar; I never look at him without thinking
+of a pirate."
+
+The cutter lay in the cove as if she had never moved.  There too was
+Zachary Pearse seated on the edge of his dinghy.
+
+"A five-knot breeze," he said, "I'll run you down in a couple of
+hours."  He made no inquiry about Pasiance, but put us into his
+cockleshell and pulled for the cutter.  A lantern-Jawed fellow, named
+Prawle, with a spiky, prominent beard, long, clean-shaven upper lip,
+and tanned complexion--a regular hard-weather bird--received us.
+
+The cutter was beautifully clean; built for a Brixham trawler, she
+still had her number--DH 113--uneffaced.  We dived into a sort of
+cabin, airy, but dark, fitted with two bunks and a small table, on
+which stood some bottles of stout; there were lockers, too, and pegs
+for clothes.  Prawle, who showed us round, seemed very proud of a
+steam contrivance for hoisting sails.  It was some minutes before we
+came on deck again; and there, in the dinghy, being pulled towards
+the cutter, sat Pasiance.
+
+"If I'd known this," stammered Dan, getting red, "I wouldn't have
+come."  She had outwitted us, and there was nothing to be done.
+
+It was a very pleasant sail.  The breeze was light from the south-
+east, the sun warm, the air soft.  Presently Pasiance began singing:
+
+"Columbus is dead and laid in his grave,
+Oh! heigh-ho! and laid in his grave;
+Over his head the apple-trees wave
+Oh! heigh-ho! the apple-trees wave....
+
+The apples are ripe and ready to fall,
+Oh! heigh-ho! and ready to fall;
+There came an old woman and gathered them all,
+Oh! heigh-ho! and gathered them all....
+
+The apples are gathered, and laid on the shelf,
+Oh! heigh-ho! and laid on the shelf;
+If you want any more, you must sing for yourself,
+Oh! heigh-ho! and sing for yourself."
+
+
+Her small, high voice came to us in trills and spurts, as the wind
+let it, like the singing of a skylark lost in the sky.  Pearse went
+up to her and whispered something.  I caught a glimpse of her face
+like a startled wild creature's; shrinking, tossing her hair,
+laughing, all in the same breath.  She wouldn't sing again, but
+crouched in the bows with her chin on her hands, and the sun
+falling on one cheek, round, velvety, red as a peach....
+
+We passed Dartmouth, and half an hour later put into a little wooded
+bay.  On a low reddish cliff was a house hedged round by pine-trees.
+A bit of broken jetty ran out from the bottom of the cliff.  We
+hooked on to this, and landed.  An ancient, fish-like man came
+slouching down and took charge of the cutter.  Pearse led us towards
+the house, Pasiance following mortally shy all of a sudden.
+
+The house had a dark, overhanging thatch of the rush reeds that grow
+in the marshes hereabouts; I remember nothing else remarkable.  It
+was neither old, nor new; neither beautiful, nor exactly ugly;
+neither clean, nor entirely squalid; it perched there with all its
+windows over the sea, turning its back contemptuously on the land.
+
+Seated in a kind of porch, beside an immense telescope, was a very
+old man in a panama hat, with a rattan cane.  His pure-white beard
+and moustache, and almost black eyebrows, gave a very singular,
+piercing look to his little, restless, dark-grey eyes; all over his
+mahogany cheeks and neck was a network of fine wrinkles.  He sat
+quite upright, in the full sun, hardly blinking.
+
+"Dad!" said Zachary, "this is Pasiance Voisey."  The old man turned
+his eyes on her and muttered, "How do you do, ma'am?" then took no
+further notice.  And Pasiance, who seemed to resent this, soon
+slipped away and went wandering about amongst the pines.  An old
+woman brought some plates and bottles and laid them casually on a
+table; and we sat round the figure of old Captain Pearse without a
+word, as if we were all under a spell.
+
+Before lunch there was a little scene between Zachary Pearse and Dan,
+as to which of them should summon Pasiance.  It ended in both going,
+and coming back without her.  She did not want any lunch, would stay
+where she was amongst the pines.
+
+For lunch we had chops, wood-pigeons, mushrooms, and mulberry
+preserve, and drank wonderful Madeira out of common wine-glasses.  I
+asked the old man where he got it; he gave me a queer look, and
+answered with a little bow:
+
+"Stood me in tu shillin' the bottle, an' the country got nothing out
+of it, sir.  In the early Thirties; tu shillin' the bottle; there's
+no such wine nowadays and," he added, looking at Zachary, "no such
+men."
+
+Zachary smiled and said: "You did nothing so big, dad, as what I'm
+after, now!"
+
+The old man's eyes had a sort of disdain in them.
+
+"You're going far, then, in the Pied Witch, Zack?"
+
+"I am," said Zachary.
+
+"And where might yu be goin' in that old trampin' smut factory?"
+
+"Morocco."
+
+"Heu!" said the old man, "there's nothing there; I know that coast,
+as I know the back o' my hand."  He stretched out a hand covered with
+veins and hair.
+
+Zachary began suddenly to pour out a flood of words:
+
+"Below Mogador--a fellow there--friend of mine--two years ago now.
+Concessions--trade-gunpowder--cruisers--feuds--money--chiefs--Gatling
+guns--Sultan--rifles--rebellion--gold."  He detailed a reckless,
+sordid, bold scheme, which, on the pivot of a trading venture, was
+intended to spin a whole wheel of political convulsions.
+
+"They'll never let you get there," said old Pearse.
+
+"Won't they?" returned Zachary.  "Oh yes, they will, an' when I
+leave, there'll be another dynasty, and I'll be a rich man."
+
+"Yu'll never leave," answered the old man.
+
+Zachary took out a sheet of paper covered with figures.  He had
+worked the whole thing out.  So much--equipment, so much--trade, so
+much--concessions, so much--emergencies.  "My last mag!" he ended, "a
+thousand short; the ship's ready, and if I'm not there within a month
+my chance is as good as gone."
+
+This was the pith of his confidences--an appeal for money, and we all
+looked as men will when that crops up.
+
+"Mad!"  muttered the old man, looking at the sea.
+
+"No," said Zachary.  That one word was more eloquent than all the
+rest of his words put together.  This fellow is no visionary.  His
+scheme may be daring, and unprincipled, but--he knows very well what
+he's about.
+
+"Well!" said old Pearse, "you shall have five 'undred of my money, if
+it's only to learn what yu're made of.  Wheel me in!"  Zachary
+wheeled him into the house, but soon came back.
+
+"The old man's cheque for five hundred pounds!" he said, holding it
+up.  "Mr. Treffry, give me another, and you shall have a third of the
+profits."
+
+I expected Dan to give a point-blank refusal.  But he only asked:
+
+"Would that clear you for starting?"
+
+"With that," said Zachary, "I can get to sea in a fortnight."
+
+"Good!" Dan said slowly.  "Give me a written promise!  To sea in
+fourteen days and my fair share on the five hundred pounds--no more--
+no less."
+
+Again I thought Pearse would have jumped at this, but he leaned his
+chin on his hand, and looked at Dan, and Dan looked at him.  While
+they were staring at each other like this, Pasiance came up with a
+kitten.
+
+"See!" she said, "isn't it a darling?"  The kitten crawled and clawed
+its way up behind her neck.  I saw both men's eyes as they looked at
+Pasiance, and suddenly understood what they were at.  The kitten
+rubbed itself against Pasiance's cheek, overbalanced, and fell,
+clawing, down her dress.  She caught it up and walked away.  Some
+one, I don't know which of us, sighed, and Pearse cried "Done!"
+
+The bargain had been driven.
+
+"Good-bye, Mr. Pearse," said Dan; " I guess that's all I'm wanted
+for.  I'll find my pony waiting in the village.  George, you'll see
+Pasiance home?"
+
+We heard the hoofs of his pony galloping down the road; Pearse
+suddenly excused himself, and disappeared.
+
+This venture of his may sound romantic and absurd, but it's matter-
+of-fact enough.  He's after L. s. d.!  Shades of Drake, Raleigh,
+Hawkins, Oxenham!  The worm of suspicion gnaws at the rose of
+romance.  What if those fellows, too, were only after L. s. d....?
+
+I strolled into the pine-wood.  The earth there was covered like a
+bee's body with black and gold stripes; there was the blue sea below,
+and white, sleepy clouds, and bumble-bees booming above the heather;
+it was all softness, a summer's day in Devon.  Suddenly I came on
+Pearse standing at the edge of the cliff with Pasiance sitting in a
+little hollow below, looking up at him.  I heard him say:
+
+"Pasiance--Pasiance!" The sound of his voice, and the sight of her
+soft, wondering face made me furious.  What business has she with
+love, at her age?  What business have they with each other?
+
+He told me presently that she had started off for home, and drove me
+to the ferry, behind an old grey pony.  On the way he came back to
+his offer of the other day.
+
+"Come with me," he said.  "It doesn't do to neglect the Press; you
+can see the possibilities.  It's one of the few countries left.  If I
+once get this business started you don't know where it's going to
+stop.  You'd have free passage everywhere, and whatever you like in
+reason."
+
+I answered as rudely as I could--but by no means as rudely as I
+wanted--that his scheme was mad.  As a matter of fact, it's much too
+sane for me; for, whatever the body of a scheme, its soul is the
+fibre of the schemer.
+
+"Think of it," he urged, as if he could see into me.  "You can make
+what you like of it.  Press paragraphs, of course.  But that's
+mechanical; why, even I could do it, if I had time.  As for the rest,
+you'll be as free--as free as a man."
+
+There, in five words of one syllable, is the kernel of this fellow
+Pearse--"As free as a man!"  No rule, no law, not even the mysterious
+shackles that bind men to their own self-respects!  "As free as a
+man!"  No ideals; no principles; no fixed star for his worship; no
+coil he can't slide out of!  But the fellow has the tenacity of one
+of the old Devon mastiffs, too.  He wouldn't take "No" for an answer.
+
+"Think of it," he said; "any day will do--I've got a fortnight....
+Look! there she is!  "I thought that he meant Pasiance; but it was an
+old steamer, sluggish and black in the blazing sun of mid-stream,
+with a yellow-and-white funnel, and no sign of life on her decks.
+
+"That's her--the Pied Witcb! Do her twelve knots; you wouldn't think
+it!  Well! good-evening!  You'd better come.  A word to me at any
+time.  I'm going aboard now."
+
+As I was being ferried across I saw him lolling in the stern-sheets
+of a little boat, the sun crowning his straw hat with glory.
+
+I came on Pasiance, about a mile up the road, sitting in the hedge.
+We walked on together between the banks--Devonshire banks, as high as
+houses, thick with ivy and ferns, bramble and hazel boughs, and
+honeysuckle.
+
+"Do you believe in a God?" she said suddenly.
+
+"Grandfather's God is simply awful.  When I'm playing the fiddle, I
+can feel God; but grandfather's is such a stuffy God--you know what I
+mean: the sea, the wind, the trees, colours too--they make one feel.
+But I don't believe that life was meant to 'be good' in.  Isn't there
+anything better than being good?  When I'm 'good,' I simply feel
+wicked."  She reached up, caught a flower from the hedge, and slowly
+tore its petals.
+
+"What would you do," she muttered, "if you wanted a thing, but were
+afraid of it?  But I suppose you're never afraid!" she added, mocking
+me.  I admitted that I was sometimes afraid, and often afraid of
+being afraid.
+
+"That's nice!  I'm not afraid of illness, nor of grandfather, nor of
+his God; but--I want to be free.  If you want a thing badly, you're
+afraid about it."
+
+I thought of Zachary Pearse's words, "free as a man."
+
+"Why are you looking at me like that?" she said.
+
+I stammered: "What do you mean by freedom?"
+
+"Do you know what I shall do to-night?" she answered.  "Get out of my
+window by the apple-tree, and go to the woods, and play!"
+
+We were going down a steep lane, along the side of a wood, where
+there's always a smell of sappy leaves, and the breath of the cows
+that come close to the hedge to get the shade.
+
+There was a cottage in the bottom, and a small boy sat outside
+playing with a heap of dust.
+
+"Hallo, Johnny!" said Pasiance.  "Hold your leg out and show this man
+your bad place!"  The small boy undid a bandage round his bare and
+dirty little leg, and proudly revealed a sore.
+
+"Isn't it nasty?" cried Pasiance ruefully, tying up the bandage
+again; "poor little feller!  Johnny, see what I've brought you!"  She
+produced from her pocket a stick of chocolate, the semblance of a
+soldier made of sealing-wax and worsted, and a crooked sixpence.
+
+It was a new glimpse of her.  All the way home she was telling me the
+story of little Johnny's family; when she came to his mother's death,
+she burst out: "A beastly shame, wasn't it, and they're so poor; it
+might just as well have been somebody else.  I like poor people, but
+I hate rich ones--stuck-up beasts."
+
+Mrs. Hopgood was looking over the gate, with her cap on one side, and
+one of Pasiance's cats rubbing itself against her skirts.  At the
+sight of us she hugged herself.
+
+"Where's grandfather?" asked Pasiance.  The old lady shook her head.
+
+"Is it a row?"  Mrs. Hopgood wriggled, and wriggled, and out came:
+
+"Did you get yure tay, my pretty?  No?  Well, that's a pity; yu'll be
+falin' low-like."
+
+Pasiance tossed her head, snatched up the cat, and ran indoors.  I
+remained staring at Mrs. Hopgood.
+
+"Dear-dear," she clucked," poor lamb.  So to spake it's--" and she
+blurted out suddenly, "chuckin' full of wra-ath, he is.  Well,
+there!"
+
+My courage failed that evening.  I spent it at the coastguard
+station, where they gave me bread and cheese and some awful cider.  I
+passed the kitchen as I came back.  A fire was still burning there,
+and two figures, misty in the darkness, flitted about with stealthy
+laughter like spirits afraid of being detected in a carnal-meal.
+They were Pasiance and Mrs. Hopgood; and so charming was the smell of
+eggs and bacon, and they had such an air of tender enjoyment of this
+dark revel, that I stifled many pangs, as I crept hungry up to bed.
+
+In the middle of the night I woke and heard what I thought was
+screaming; then it sounded like wind in trees, then like the distant
+shaking of a tambourine, with the high singing of a human voice.
+Suddenly it stopped--two long notes came wailing out like sobs--then
+utter stillness; and though I listened for an hour or more there was
+no other sound ....
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+"4th August .
+
+......For three days after I wrote last, nothing at all happened
+here.  I spent the mornings on the cliff reading, and watching the
+sun-sparks raining on the sea.  It's grand up there with the gorse
+all round, the gulls basking on the rocks, the partridges calling in
+the corn, and now and then a young hawk overhead.  The afternoons I
+spent out in the orchard.  The usual routine goes on at the farm all
+the time--cow-milking, bread-baking, John Ford riding in and out,
+Pasiance in her garden stripping lavender, talking to the farm hands;
+and the smell of clover, and cows and hay; the sound of hens and pigs
+and pigeons, the soft drawl of voices, the dull thud of the farm
+carts; and day by day the apples getting redder.  Then, last Monday,
+Pasiance was away from sunrise till sunset--nobody saw her go--nobody
+knew where she had gone.  It was a wonderful, strange day, a sky of
+silver-grey and blue, with a drift of wind-clouds, all the trees
+sighing a little, the sea heaving in a long, low swell, the animals
+restless, the birds silent, except the gulls with their old man's
+laughter and kitten's mewing.
+
+A something wild was in the air; it seemed to sweep across the downs
+and combe, into the very house, like a passionate tune that comes
+drifting to your ears when you're sleepy.  But who would have thought
+the absence of that girl for a few hours could have wrought such
+havoc!  We were like uneasy spirits; Mrs. Hopgood's apple cheeks
+seemed positively to wither before one's eyes.  I came across a
+dairymaid and farm hand discussing it stolidly with very downcast
+faces.  Even Hopgood, a hard-bitten fellow with immense shoulders,
+forgot his imperturbability so far as to harness his horse, and
+depart on what he assured me was "just a wild-guse chaace."  It was
+long before John Ford gave signs of noticing that anything was wrong,
+but late in the afternoon I found him sitting with his hands on his
+knees, staring straight before him.  He rose heavily when he saw me,
+and stalked out.  In the evening, as I was starting for the
+coastguard station to ask for help to search the cliff, Pasiance
+appeared, walking as if she could hardly drag one leg after the
+other.  Her cheeks were crimson; she was biting her lips to keep
+tears of sheer fatigue out of her eyes.  She passed me in the doorway
+without a word.  The anxiety he had gone through seemed to forbid the
+old man from speaking.  He just came forward, took her face in his
+hands, gave it a great kiss, and walked away.  Pasiance dropped on
+the floor in the dark passage, and buried her face on her arms.
+"Leave me alone!" was all she would say.  After a bit she dragged
+herself upstairs.  Presently Mrs. Hopgood came to me.
+
+"Not a word out of her--an' not a bite will she ate, an' I had a pie
+all ready--scrumptious.  The good Lord knows the truth--she asked for
+brandy; have you any brandy, sir?  Ha-apgood'e don't drink it, an'
+Mister Ford 'e don't allaow for anything but caowslip wine."
+
+I had whisky.
+
+The good soul seized the flask, and went off hugging it.  She
+returned it to me half empty.
+
+"Lapped it like a kitten laps milk.  I misdaoubt it's straong, poor
+lamb, it lusened 'er tongue praaperly.  'I've a-done it,' she says to
+me, 'Mums-I've a-done it,' an' she laughed like a mad thing; and
+then, sir, she cried, an' kissed me, an' pusshed me thru the door.
+Gude Lard! What is 't she's a-done...?"
+
+It rained all the next day and the day after.  About five o'clock
+yesterday the rain ceased; I started off to Kingswear on Hopgood's
+nag to see Dan Treffry.  Every tree, bramble, and fern in the lanes
+was dripping water; and every bird singing from the bottom of his
+heart.  I thought of Pasiance all the time.  Her absence that day was
+still a mystery; one never ceased asking oneself what she had done.
+There are people who never grow up--they have no right to do things.
+Actions have consequences--and children have no business with
+consequences.
+
+Dan was out.  I had supper at the hotel, and rode slowly home.  In
+the twilight stretches of the road, where I could touch either bank
+of the lane with my whip, I thought of nothing but Pasiance and her
+grandfather; there was something in the half light suited to wonder
+and uncertainty.  It had fallen dark before I rode into the straw-
+yard.  Two young bullocks snuffled at me, a sleepy hen got up and ran
+off with a tremendous shrieking.  I stabled the horse, and walked
+round to the back.  It was pitch black under the apple-trees, and the
+windows were all darkened.  I stood there a little, everything
+smelled so delicious after the rain; suddenly I had the uncomfortable
+feeling that I was being watched.  Have you ever felt like that on a
+dark night?  I called out at last: "Is any one there?"  Not a sound!
+I walked to the gate-nothing!  The trees still dripped with tiny,
+soft, hissing sounds, but that was all.  I slipped round to the
+front, went in, barricaded the door, and groped up to bed.  But I
+couldn't sleep.  I lay awake a long while; dozed at last, and woke
+with a jump.  A stealthy murmur of smothered voices was going on
+quite close somewhere.  It stopped.  A minute passed; suddenly came
+the soft thud as of something falling.  I sprang out of bed and
+rushed to the window.  Nothing--but in the distance something that
+sounded like footsteps.  An owl hooted; then clear as crystal, but
+quite low, I heard Pasiance singing in her room:
+
+"The apples are ripe and ready to fall.
+Oh! heigh-ho! and ready to fall."
+
+I ran to her door and knocked.
+
+"What is it?" she cried.
+
+"Is anything the matter?"
+
+"Matter?"
+
+"Is anything the matter?"
+
+"Ha-ha-ha-ha!  Good-night!" then quite low, I heard her catch her
+breath, hard, sharply.  No other answer, no other sound.
+
+I went to bed and lay awake for hours....
+
+This evening Dan came; during supper he handed Pasiance a roll of
+music; he had got it in Torquay.  The shopman, he said, had told him
+that it was a "corker."
+
+It was Bach's "Chaconne."  You should have seen her eyes shine, her
+fingers actually tremble while she turned over the pages.  Seems odd
+to think of her worshipping at the shrine of Bach as odd as to think
+of a wild colt running of its free will into the shafts; but that's
+just it with her you can never tell.  "Heavenly!" she kept saying.
+
+John Ford put down his knife and fork.
+
+"Heathenish stuff!" he muttered, and suddenly thundered out,
+"Pasiance!"
+
+She looked up with a start, threw the music from her, and resumed her
+place.
+
+During evening prayers, which follow every night immediately on food,
+her face was a study of mutiny.  She went to bed early.  It was
+rather late when we broke up--for once old Ford had been talking of
+his squatter's life.  As we came out, Dan held up his hand.  A dog
+was barking.  "It's Lass," he said.  "She'll wake Pasiance."
+
+The spaniel yelped furiously.  Dan ran out to stop her.  He was soon
+back.
+
+"Somebody's been in the orchard, and gone off down to the cove."  He
+ran on down the path.  I, too, ran, horribly uneasy.  In front,
+through the darkness, came the spaniel's bark; the lights of the
+coastguard station faintly showed.  I was first on the beach; the dog
+came to me at once, her tail almost in her mouth from apology.  There
+was the sound of oars working in rowlocks; nothing visible but the
+feathery edges of the waves.  Dan said behind, "No use!  He's gone."
+His voice sounded hoarse, like that of a man choking with passion.
+
+"George," he stammered, "it's that blackguard.  I wish I'd put a
+bullet in him."  Suddenly a light burned up in the darkness on the
+sea, seemed to swing gently, and vanished.  Without another word we
+went back up the hill.  John Ford stood at the gate motionless,
+indifferent--nothing had dawned on him as yet.  I whispered to Dan,
+"Let it alone!"
+
+"No," he said, "I'm going to show you."  He struck a match, and
+slowly hunted the footsteps in the wet grass of the orchard.  "Look--
+here!"
+
+He stopped under Pasiance's window and swayed the match over the
+ground.  Clear as daylight were the marks of some one who had jumped
+or fallen.  Dan held the match over his head.
+
+"And look there!" he said.  The bough of an apple-tree below the
+window was broken.  He blew the match out.
+
+I could see the whites of his eyes, like an angry animal's.
+
+"Drop it, Dan!" I said.
+
+He turned on his heel suddenly, and stammered out, "You're right."
+
+But he had turned into John Ford's arms.
+
+The old man stood there like some great force, darker than the
+darkness, staring up at the window, as though stupefied.  We had not
+a word to say.  He seemed unconscious of our presence.  He turned
+round, and left us standing there.
+
+"Follow him!" said Dan.  "Follow him--by God! it's not safe."
+
+We followed.  Bending, and treading heavily, he went upstairs.  He
+struck a blow on Pasiance's door.  "Let me in!" he said.  I drew Dan
+into my bedroom.  The key was slowly turned, her door was flung open,
+and there she stood in her dressing-gown, a candle in her hand, her
+face crimson, and oh! so young, with its short, crisp hair and round
+cheeks.  The old man--like a giant in front of her--raised his hands,
+and laid them on her shoulders.
+
+"What's this?  You--you've had a man in your room?"
+
+Her eyes did not drop.
+
+"Yes," she said.  Dan gave a groan.
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Zachary Pearse," she answered in a voice like a bell.
+
+He gave her one awful shake, dropped his hands, then raised them as
+though to strike her.  She looked him in the eyes; his hands dropped,
+and he too groaned.  As far as I could see, her face never moved.
+
+"I'm married to him," she said, "d' you hear?  Married to him.  Go
+out of my room!"  She dropped the candle on the floor at his feet,
+and slammed the door in his face.  The old man stood for a minute as
+though stunned, then groped his way downstairs.
+
+"Dan," I said, "is it true?"
+
+"Ah!" he answered, "it's true; didn't you hear her?"
+
+I was glad I couldn't see his face.
+
+"That ends it," he said at last; "there's the old man to think of."
+
+"What will he do?"
+
+"Go to the fellow this very night."  He seemed to have no doubt.
+Trust one man of action to know another.
+
+I muttered something about being an outsider--wondered if there was
+anything I could do to help.
+
+"Well," he said slowly, "I don't know that I'm anything but an
+outsider now; but I'll go along with him, if he'll have me."
+
+He went downstairs.  A few minutes later they rode out from the
+straw-yard.  I watched them past the line of hayricks, into the
+blacker shadows of the pines, then the tramp of hoofs began to fail
+in the darkness, and at last died away.
+
+I've been sitting here in my bedroom writing to you ever since, till
+my candle's almost gone.  I keep thinking what the end of it is to
+be; and reproaching myself for doing nothing.  And yet, what could I
+have done?  I'm sorry for her--sorrier than I can say.  The night is
+so quiet--I haven't heard a sound; is she asleep, awake, crying,
+triumphant?
+
+It's four o'clock; I've been asleep.
+
+They're back.  Dan is lying on my bed.  I'll try and tell you his
+story as near as I can, in his own words.
+
+"We rode," he said, "round the upper way, keeping out of the lanes,
+and got to Kingswear by half-past eleven.  The horse-ferry had
+stopped running, and we had a job to find any one to put us over.  We
+hired the fellow to wait for us, and took a carriage at the 'Castle.'
+Before we got to Black Mill it was nearly one, pitch-dark.  With the
+breeze from the southeast, I made out he should have been in an hour
+or more.  The old man had never spoken to me once: and before we got
+there I had begun to hope we shouldn't find the fellow after all.  We
+made the driver pull up in the road, and walked round and round,
+trying to find the door.  Then some one cried, 'Who are you ?'
+
+"'John Ford.'
+
+"'What do you want?' It was old Pearse.
+
+"'To see Zachary Pearse.'
+
+"The long window out of the porch where we sat the other day was
+open, and in we went.  There was a door at the end of the room, and a
+light coming through.  John Ford went towards it; I stayed out in the
+dark.
+
+"'Who's that with you?'
+
+"'Mr. Treffry.'
+
+"'Let him come in!' I went in.  The old fellow was in bed, quite
+still on his pillows, a candle by his side; to look at him you'd
+think nothing of him but his eyes were alive.  It was queer being
+there with those two old men!"
+
+Dan paused, seemed to listen, then went on doggedly.
+
+"'Sit down, gentleman,' said old Pearse.  'What may you want to see
+my son for?'  John Ford begged his pardon, he had something to say,
+he said, that wouldn't wait.
+
+"They were very polite to one another," muttered Dan ....
+
+"'Will you leave your message with me?' said Pearse.
+
+"'What I have to say to your son is private.'
+
+"'I'm his father.'
+
+"'I'm my girl's grandfather; and her only stand-by.'
+
+"'Ah!' muttered old Pearse, 'Rick Voisey's daughter?'
+
+"'I mean to see your son.'
+
+"Old Pearse smiled.  Queer smile he's got, sort of sneering sweet.
+
+"'You can never tell where Zack may be,' he said.  'You think I want
+to shield him.  You're wrong; Zack can take care of himself.'
+
+"'Your son's here!' said John Ford.  'I know.'  Old Pearse gave us a
+very queer look.
+
+"'You come into my house like thieves in the night,' he said, 'and
+give me the lie, do you?'
+
+"'Your son came to my child's room like a thief in the night; it's
+for that I want to see him,' and then," said Dan, "there was a long
+silence.  At last Pearse said:
+
+"'I don't understand; has he played the blackguard?'
+
+"John Ford answered, 'He's married her, or, before God, I'd kill
+him.'
+
+"Old Pearse seemed to think this over, never moving on his pillows.
+'You don't know Zack,' he said; 'I'm sorry for you, and I'm sorry for
+Rick Voisey's daughter; but you don't know Zack.'
+
+'Sorry!' groaned out John Ford; 'he's stolen my child, and I'll
+punish him.'
+
+"'Punish!' cried old Pearse, 'we don't take punishment, not in my
+family.'
+
+"'Captain Jan Pearse, as sure as I stand here, you and your breed
+will get your punishment of God.'  Old Pearse smiled.
+
+"'Mr. John Ford, that's as may be; but sure as I lie here we won't
+take it of you.  You can't punish unless you make to feel, and that
+you can't du.'"
+
+And that is truth!
+
+Dan went on again:
+
+"'You won't tell me where your son is!' but old Pearse never blinked.
+
+"'I won't,' he said, 'and now you may get out.  I lie here an old man
+alone, with no use to my legs, night on night, an' the house open;
+any rapscallion could get in; d' ye think I'm afraid of you?'
+
+"We were beat; and walked out without a word.  But that old man; I've
+thought of him a lot--ninety-two, and lying there.  Whatever he's
+been, and they tell you rum things of him, whatever his son may be,
+he's a man.  It's not what he said, nor that there was anything to be
+afraid of just then, but somehow it's the idea of the old chap lying
+there.  I don't ever wish to see a better plucked one...."
+
+We sat silent after that; out of doors the light began to stir among
+the leaves.  There were all kinds of rustling sounds, as if the world
+were turning over in bed.
+
+Suddenly Dan said:
+
+"He's cheated me.  I paid him to clear out and leave her alone.
+D' you think she's asleep?"  He's made no appeal for sympathy, he'd
+take pity for an insult; but he feels it badly.
+
+"I'm tired as a cat," he said at last, and went to sleep on my bed.
+
+It's broad daylight now; I too am tired as a cat....
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+"Saturday, 6tb August .
+
+.......I take up my tale where I left off yesterday....  Dan and I
+started as soon as we could get Mrs. Hopgood to give us coffee.  The
+old lady was more tentative, more undecided, more pouncing, than I
+had ever seen her.  She was manifestly uneasy: Ha-apgood--who "don't
+slape "don't he, if snores are any criterion--had called out in the
+night, "Hark to th' 'arses' 'oofs!"  Had we heard them?  And where
+might we be going then?  'Twas very earrly to start, an' no
+breakfast.  Haapgood had said it was goin' to shaowerr.  Miss
+Pasiance was not to 'er violin yet, an' Mister Ford 'e kept 'is room.
+Was it?--would there be--?  "Well, an' therr's an 'arvest bug; 'tis
+some earrly for they!"  Wonderful how she pounces on all such
+creatures, when I can't even see them.  She pressed it absently
+between finger and thumb, and began manoeuvring round another way.
+Long before she had reached her point, we had gulped down our coffee,
+and departed.  But as we rode out she came at a run, holding her
+skirts high with either hand, raised her old eyes bright and anxious
+in their setting of fine wrinkles, and said:
+
+"'Tidden sorrow for her?"
+
+A shrug of the shoulders was all the answer she got.  We rode by the
+lanes; through sloping farmyards, all mud and pigs, and dirty straw,
+and farmers with clean-shaven upper lips and whiskers under the chin;
+past fields of corn, where larks were singing.  Up or down, we didn't
+draw rein till we came to Dan's hotel.
+
+There was the river gleaming before us under a rainbow mist that
+hallowed every shape.  There seemed affinity between the earth and
+the sky.  I've never seen that particular soft unity out of Devon.
+And every ship, however black or modern, on those pale waters, had
+the look of a dream ship.  The tall green woods, the red earth, the
+white houses, were all melted into one opal haze.  It was raining,
+but the sun was shining behind.  Gulls swooped by us--ghosts of the
+old greedy wanderers of the sea.
+
+We had told our two boatmen to pull us out to the Pied Witcb!  They
+started with great resolution, then rested on their oars.
+
+"The Pied Witch, zurr?" asked one politely; "an' which may her be?"
+
+That's the West countryman all over!  Never say you "nay," never lose
+an opportunity, never own he doesn't know, or can't do anything--
+independence, amiability, and an eye to the main chance.  We
+mentioned Pearse's name.
+
+"Capt'n Zach'ry Pearse!"  They exchanged a look half-amused, half-
+admiring.
+
+"The Zunflaower, yu mane.  That's her.  Zunflaower, ahoy!"  As we
+mounted the steamer's black side I heard one say:
+
+"Pied Witch!  A pra-aper name that--a dandy name for her!"  They
+laughed as they made fast.
+
+The mate of the Sunflower, or Pied Witcb, or whatever she was called,
+met us--a tall young fellow in his shirtsleeves, tanned to the roots
+of his hair, with sinewy, tattooed arms, and grey eyes, charred round
+the rims from staring at weather.
+
+"The skipper is on board," he said.  "We're rather busy, as you see.
+Get on with that, you sea-cooks," he bawled at two fellows who were
+doing nothing.  All over the ship, men were hauling, splicing, and
+stowing cargo.
+
+"To-day's Friday: we're off on Wednesday with any luck.  Will you
+come this way?"  He led us down the companion to a dark hole which he
+called the saloon.  "Names?  What! are you Mr. Treffry?  Then we're
+partners!"  A schoolboy's glee came on his face.
+
+"Look here!" he said; "I can show you something," and he unlocked the
+door of a cabin.  There appeared to be nothing in it but a huge piece
+of tarpaulin, which depended, bulging, from the topmost bunk.  He
+pulled it up.  The lower bunk had been removed, and in its place was
+the ugly body of a dismounted Gatling gun.
+
+"Got six of them," he whispered, with unholy mystery, through which
+his native frankness gaped out.  "Worth their weight in gold out
+there just now, the skipper says.  Got a heap of rifles, too, and
+lots of ammunition.  He's given me a share.  This is better than the
+P. and O., and playing deck cricket with the passengers.  I'd made up
+my mind already to chuck that, and go in for plantin' sugar, when I
+ran across the skipper.  Wonderful chap, the skipper!  I'll go and
+tell him.  He's been out all night; only came aboard at four bells;
+having a nap now, but he won't mind that for you."
+
+Off he went.  I wondered what there was in Zachary Pearse to attract
+a youngster of this sort; one of the customary twelve children of
+some country parson, no doubt-burning to shoot a few niggers, and for
+ever frank and youthful.
+
+He came back with his hands full of bottles.
+
+"What'll you drink?  The skipper'll be here in a jiffy.  Excuse my
+goin' on deck.  We're so busy."
+
+And in five minutes Zachary Pearse did come.  He made no attempt to
+shake hands, for which I respected him.  His face looked worn, and
+more defiant than usual.
+
+"Well, gentlemen?" he said.
+
+"We've come to ask what you're going to do?" said Dan.
+
+"I don't know," answered Pearse, "that that's any of your business."
+
+Dan's little eyes were like the eyes of an angry pig.
+
+"You've got five hundred pounds of mine," he said; "why do you think
+I gave it you?"
+
+Zachary bit his fingers.
+
+"That's no concern of mine," he said.  "I sail on Wednesday.  Your
+money's safe."
+
+"Do you know what I think of you?" said Dan.
+
+"No, and you'd better not tell me!"  Then, with one of his peculiar
+changes, he smiled: "As you like, though."
+
+Dan's face grew very dark.  "Give me a plain answer," he said: "What
+are you going to do about her?"
+
+Zachary looked up at him from under his brows.
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Are you cur enough to deny that you've married her?"
+
+Zachary looked at him coolly.  "Not at all," he said.
+
+"What in God's name did you do it for?"
+
+"You've no monopoly in the post of husband, Mr.  Treffry."
+
+"To put a child in that positionD!  Haven't you the heart of a man?
+What d' ye come sneaking in at night for?  By Gad!  Don't you know
+you've done a beastly thing?"
+
+Zachary's face darkened, he clenched his fists.  Then he seemed to
+shut his anger into himself.
+
+"You wanted me to leave her to you," he sneered.  "I gave her my
+promise that I'd take her out there, and we'd have gone off on
+Wednesday quietly enough, if you hadn't come and nosed the whole
+thing out with your infernal dog.  The fat's in the fire!  There's no
+reason why I should take her now.  I'll come back to her a rich man,
+or not at all."
+
+"And in the meantime?" I slipped in.
+
+He turned to me, in an ingratiating way.
+
+"I would have taken her to save the fuss--I really would--it's not my
+fault the thing's come out.  I'm on a risky job.  To have her with me
+might ruin the whole thing; it would affect my nerve.  It isn't safe
+for her."
+
+"And what's her position to be," I said, "while you're away?  Do you
+think she'd have married you if she'd known you were going to leave
+her like this?  You ought to give up this business.
+
+You stole her.  Her life's in your hands; she's only a child!"
+
+A quiver passed over his face; it showed that he was suffering.
+
+"Give it up!" I urged.
+
+"My last farthing's in it," he sighed; "the chance of a lifetime."
+
+He looked at me doubtfully, appealingly, as if for the first time in
+his life he had been given a glimpse of that dilemma of consequences
+which his nature never recognises.  I thought he was going to give
+in.  Suddenly, to my horror, Dan growled, "Play the man!"
+
+Pearse turned his head.  "I don't want your advice anyway," he said;
+"I'll not be dictated to."
+
+"To your last day," said Dan, "you shall answer to me for the way you
+treat her."
+
+Zachary smiled.
+
+"Do you see that fly?" he said.  "Wel--I care for you as little as
+this," and he flicked the fly off his white trousers.  "Good-
+morning...!"
+
+The noble mariners who manned our boat pulled lustily for the shore,
+but we had hardly shoved off' when a storm of rain burst over the
+ship, and she seemed to vanish, leaving a picture on my eyes of the
+mate waving his cap above the rail, with his tanned young face bent
+down at us, smiling, keen, and friendly.
+
+...... We reached the shore drenched, angry with ourselves, and with
+each other; I started sulkily for home.
+
+As I rode past an orchard, an apple, loosened by the rainstorm, came
+down with a thud.
+
+"The apples were ripe and ready to fall,
+Oh! heigh-ho! and ready to fall."
+
+I made up my mind to pack, and go away.  But there's a strangeness, a
+sort of haunting fascination in it all.  To you, who don't know the
+people, it may only seem a piece of rather sordid folly.  But it
+isn't the good, the obvious, the useful that puts a spell on us in
+life.  It's the bizarre, the dimly seen, the mysterious for good or
+evil.
+
+The sun was out again when I rode up to the farm; its yellow thatch
+shone through the trees as if sheltering a store of gladness and good
+news.  John Ford himself opened the door to me.
+
+He began with an apology, which made me feel more than ever an
+intruder; then he said:
+
+"I have not spoken to my granddaughter--I waited to see Dan Treffry."
+
+He was stern and sad-eyed, like a man with a great weight of grief on
+his shoulders.  He looked as if he had not slept; his dress was out
+of order, he had not taken his clothes off, I think.  He isn't a man
+whom you can pity.  I felt I had taken a liberty in knowing of the
+matter at all.  When I told him where we had been, he said:
+
+"It was good of you to take this trouble.  That you should have had
+to!  But since such things have come to pass--" He made a gesture
+full of horror.  He gave one the impression of a man whose pride was
+struggling against a mortal hurt.  Presently he asked:
+
+"You saw him, you say?  He admitted this marriage?  Did he give an
+explanation?"
+
+I tried to make Pearse's point of view clear.  Before this old man,
+with his inflexible will and sense of duty, I felt as if I held a
+brief for Zachary, and must try to do him justice.
+
+"Let me understand," he said at last.  "He stole her, you say, to
+make sure; and deserts her within a fortnight."
+
+"He says he meant to take her--"
+
+"Do you believe that?"
+
+Before I could answer, I saw Pasiance standing at the window.  How
+long she had been there I don't know.
+
+"Is it true that he is going to leave me behind?" she cried out.
+
+I could only nod.
+
+"Did you hear him your own self?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+She stamped her foot.
+
+"But he promised! He promised!"
+
+John Ford went towards her.
+
+"Don't touch me, grandfather!  I hate every one!  Let him do what he
+likes, I don't care."
+
+John Ford's face turned quite grey.
+
+"Pasiance," he said, "did you want to leave me so much?"
+
+She looked straight at us, and said sharply:
+
+"What's the good of telling stories.  I can't help its hurting you."
+
+"What did you think you would find away from here?"
+
+She laughed.
+
+"Find?  I don't know--nothing; I wouldn't be stifled anyway.  Now I
+suppose you'll shut me up because I'm a weak girl, not strong like
+men!"
+
+"Silence!" said John Ford; "I will make him take you."
+
+"You shan't!" she cried; "I won't let you.  He's free to do as he
+likes.  He's free--I tell you all, everybody--free!"
+
+She ran through the window, and vanished.
+
+John Ford made a movement as if the bottom had dropped out of his
+world.  I left him there.
+
+I went to the kitchen, where Hopgood was sitting at the table, eating
+bread and cheese.  He got up on seeing me, and very kindly brought me
+some cold bacon and a pint of ale.
+
+"I thart I shude be seeing yu, zurr," he said between his bites;
+"Therr's no thart to 'atin' 'bout the 'ouse to-day.  The old wumman's
+puzzivantin' over Miss Pasiance.  Young girls are skeery critters"--
+he brushed his sleeve over his broad, hard jaws, and filled a pipe
+"specially when it's in the blood of 'em.  Squire Rick Voisey werr a
+dandy; an' Mistress Voisey--well, she werr a nice lady tu, but"--
+rolling the stem of his pipe from corner to corner of his mouth--"she
+werr a pra-aper vixen."
+
+Hopgood's a good fellow, and I believe as soft as he looks hard, but
+he's not quite the sort with whom one chooses to talk over a matter
+like this.  I went upstairs, and began to pack, but after a bit
+dropped it for a book, and somehow or other fell asleep.
+
+I woke, and looked at my watch; it was five o'clock.  I had been
+asleep four hours.  A single sunbeam was slanting across from one of
+my windows to the other, and there was the cool sound of milk
+dropping into pails; then, all at once, a stir as of alarm, and heavy
+footsteps.
+
+I opened my door.  Hopgood and a coast-guardsman were carrying
+Pasiance slowly up the stairs.  She lay in their arms without moving,
+her face whiter than her dress, a scratch across the forehead, and
+two or three drops there of dried blood.  Her hands were clasped, and
+she slowly crooked and stiffened out her fingers.  When they turned
+with her at the stair top, she opened her lips, and gasped, "All
+right, don't put me down.  I can bear it."  They passed, and, with a
+half-smile in her eyes, she said something to me that I couldn't
+catch; the door was shut, and the excited whispering began again
+below.  I waited for the men to come out, and caught hold of Hopgood.
+He wiped the sweat off his forehead.
+
+"Poor young thing!" he said.  "She fell--down the cliffs--'tis her
+back--coastguard saw her 'twerr they fetched her in.  The Lord 'elp
+her mebbe she's not broken up much!  An' Mister Ford don't know!  I'm
+gwine for the doctor."
+
+There was an hour or more to wait before he came; a young fellow;
+almost a boy.  He looked very grave, when he came out of her room.
+
+"The old woman there fond of her?  nurse her well...?  Fond as a
+dog!--good!  Don't know--can't tell for certain!  Afraid it's the
+spine, must have another opinion!  What a plucky girl!  Tell Mr. Ford
+to have the best man he can get in Torquay--there's C---.  I'll be
+round the first thing in the morning.  Keep her dead quiet.  I've
+left a sleeping draught; she'll have fever tonight."
+
+John Ford came in at last.  Poor old man!  What it must have cost him
+not to go to her for fear of the excitement!  How many times in the
+next few hours didn't I hear him come to the bottom of the stairs;
+his heavy wheezing, and sighing; and the forlorn tread of his feet
+going back!  About eleven, just as I was going to bed, Mrs. Hopgood
+came to my door.
+
+"Will yu come, sir," she said; "she's asking for yu.  Naowt I can zay
+but what she will see yu; zeems crazy, don't it?"  A tear trickled
+down the old lady's cheek.  "Du 'ee come; 'twill du 'err 'arm mebbe,
+but I dunno--she'll fret else."
+
+I slipped into the room.  Lying back on her pillows, she was
+breathing quickly with half-closed eyes.  There was nothing to show
+that she had wanted me, or even knew that I was there.  The wick of
+the candle, set by the bedside, had been snuffed too short, and gave
+but a faint light; both window and door stood open, still there was
+no draught, and the feeble little flame burned quite still, casting a
+faint yellow stain on the ceiling like the refection from a buttercup
+held beneath a chin.  These ceilings are far too low!  Across the
+wide, squat window the apple branches fell in black stripes which
+never stirred.  It was too dark to see things clearly.  At the foot
+of the bed was a chest, and there Mrs. Hopgood had sat down, moving
+her lips as if in speech.  Mingled with the half-musty smell of age;
+there were other scents, of mignonette, apples, and some sweet-
+smelling soap.  The floor had no carpet, and there was not one single
+dark object except the violin, hanging from a nail over the bed.  A
+little, round clock ticked solemnly.
+
+"Why won't you give me that stuff, Mums?" Pasiance said in a faint,
+sharp voice.  "I want to sleep."
+
+"Have you much pain?" I asked.
+
+"Of course I have; it's everywhere."
+
+She turned her face towards me.
+
+"You thought I did it on purpose, but you're wrong.  If I had, I'd
+have done it better than this.  I wouldn't have this brutal pain."
+She put her fingers over her eyes.  "It's horrible to complain!  Only
+it's so bad!  But I won't again--promise.
+
+She took the sleeping draught gratefully, making a face, like a child
+after a powder.
+
+"How long do you think it'll be before I can play again?  Oh! I
+forgot--there are other things to think about."  She held out her
+hand to me.  "Look at my ring.  Married--isn't it funny?  Ha, ha!
+Nobody will ever understand--that's funny too!  Poor Gran!  You see,
+there wasn't any reason--only me.  That's the only reason I'm telling
+you now; Mums is there--but she doesn't count; why don't you count,
+Mums?"
+
+The fever was fighting against the draught; she had tossed the
+clothes back from her throat, and now and then raised one thin arm a
+little, as if it eased her; her eyes had grown large, and innocent
+like a child's; the candle, too, had flared, and was burning clearly.
+
+"Nobody is to tell him--nobody at all; promise...!  If I hadn't
+slipped, it would have been different.  What would have happened
+then?  You can't tell; and I can't--that's funny!  Do you think I
+loved him?  Nobody marries without love, do they?  Not quite without
+love, I mean.  But you see I wanted to be free, he said he'd take me;
+and now he's left me after all!  I won't be left, I can't!  When I
+came to the cliff--that bit where the ivy grows right down--there was
+just the sea there, underneath; so I thought I would throw myself
+over and it would be all quiet; and I climbed on a ledge, it looked
+easier from there, but it was so high, I wanted to get back; and then
+my foot slipped; and now it's all pain.  You can't think much, when
+you're in pain."
+
+>From her eyes I saw that she was dropping off.
+
+"Nobody can take you away from-yourself.  He's not to be told--not
+even--I don't--want you--to go away, because--"But her eyes closed,
+and she dropped off to sleep.
+
+They don't seem to know this morning whether she is better or
+worse....
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+"Tuesday, 9th August.
+
+It seems more like three weeks than three days since I wrote.  The
+time passes slowly in a sickhouse...!  The doctors were here this
+morning, they give her forty hours.  Not a word of complaint has
+passed her lips since she knew.  To see her you would hardly think
+her ill; her cheeks have not had time to waste or lose their colour.
+There is not much pain, but a slow, creeping numbness....  It was
+John Ford's wish that she should be told.  She just turned her head
+to the wall and sighed; then to poor old Mrs. Hopgood, who was crying
+her heart out: "Don't cry, Mums, I don't care."
+
+When they had gone, she asked for her violin.  She made them hold it
+for her, and drew the bow across the strings; but the notes that came
+out were so trembling and uncertain that she dropped the bow and
+broke into a passion of sobbing.  Since then, no complaint or moan of
+any kind....
+
+But to go back.  On Sunday, the day after I wrote, as I was coming
+from a walk, I met a little boy making mournful sounds on a tin
+whistle.
+
+"Coom ahn!" he said, "the Miss wahnts t' zee yu."
+
+I went to her room.  In the morning she had seemed better, but now
+looked utterly exhausted.  She had a letter in her hand.
+
+"It's this," she said.  "I don't seem to understand it.  He wants me
+to do something--but I can't think, and my eyes feel funny.  Read it
+to me, please."
+
+The letter was from Zachary.  I read it to her in a low voice, for
+Mrs. Hopgood was in the room, her eyes always fixed on Pasiance above
+her knitting.  When I'd finished, she made me read it again, and yet
+again.  At first she seemed pleased, almost excited, then came a
+weary, scornful look, and before I'd finished the third time she was
+asleep.  It was a remarkable letter, that seemed to bring the man
+right before one's eyes.  I slipped it under her fingers on the bed-
+clothes, and went out.  Fancy took me to the cliff where she had
+fallen.  I found the point of rock where the cascade of ivy flows
+down the cliff; the ledge on which she had climbed was a little to my
+right--a mad place.  It showed plainly what wild emotions must have
+been driving her!  Behind was a half-cut cornfield with a fringe of
+poppies, and swarms of harvest insects creeping and flying; in the
+uncut corn a landrail kept up a continual charring.  The sky was blue
+to the very horizon, and the sea wonderful, under that black wild
+cliff stained here and there with red.  Over the dips and hollows of
+the fields great white clouds hung low down above the land.  There
+are no brassy, east-coast skies here; but always sleepy, soft-shaped
+clouds, full of subtle stir and change.  Passages of Zachary's
+Pearse's letter kept rising to my lips.  After all he's the man that
+his native place, and life, and blood have made him.  It is useless
+to expect idealists where the air is soft and things good to look on
+(the idealist grows where he must create beauty or comfort for
+himself); useless to expect a man of law and order, in one whose
+fathers have stared at the sea day and night for a thousand years--
+the sea, full of its promises of unknown things, never quite the
+same, a slave to its own impulses.  Man is an imitative animal....
+
+"Life's hard enough," he wrote, "without tying yourself down.  Don't
+think too hardly of me!  Shall I make you happier by taking you into
+danger?  If I succeed you'll be a rich woman; but I shall fail if
+you're with me.  To look at you makes me soft.  At sea a man dreams
+of all the good things on land, he'll dream of the heather, and
+honey--you're like that; and he'll dream of the apple-trees, and the
+grass of the orchards--you're like that; sometimes he only lies on
+his back and wishes--and you're like that, most of all like that...."
+
+When I was reading those words I remember a strange, soft, half-
+scornful look came over Pasiance's face; and once she said, "But
+that's all nonsense, isn't it...?"
+
+Then followed a long passage about what he would gain if he
+succeeded, about all that he was risking, the impossibility of
+failure, if he kept his wits about him.  "It's only a matter of two
+months or so," he went on; "stay where you are, dear, or go to my
+Dad.  He'll be glad to have you.  There's my mother's room.  There's
+no one to say 'No' to your fiddle there; you can play it by the sea;
+and on dark nights you'll have the stars dancing to you over the
+water as thick as bees.  I've looked at them often, thinking of
+you...."
+
+Pasiance had whispered to me, "Don't read that bit," and afterwards I
+left it out....  Then the sensuous side of him shows up: "When I've
+brought this off, there's the whole world before us.  There are
+places I can take you to.  There's one I know, not too warm and not
+too cold, where you can sit all day in the shade and watch the
+creepers, and the cocoa-palms, still as still; nothing to do or care
+about; all the fruits you can think of; no noise but the parrots and
+the streams, and a splash when a nigger dives into a water-hole.
+Pasiance, we'll go there!  With an eighty-ton craft there's no sea we
+couldn't know.  The world's a fine place for those who go out to take
+it; there's lots of unknown stuff' in it yet.  I'll fill your lap, my
+pretty, so full of treasures that you shan't know yourself.  A man
+wasn't meant to sit at home...."
+
+Throughout this letter--for all its real passion--one could feel how
+the man was holding to his purpose--the rather sordid purpose of this
+venture.  He's unconscious of it; for he is in love with her; but he
+must be furthering his own ends.  He is vital--horribly vital!  I
+wonder less now that she should have yielded.
+
+What visions hasn't he dangled before her.  There was physical
+attraction, too--I haven't forgotten the look I saw on her face at
+Black Mill.  But when all's said and done, she married him, because
+she's Pasiance Voisey, who does things and wants "to get back."  And
+she lies there dying; not he nor any other man will ever take her
+away.  It's pitiful to think of him tingling with passion, writing
+that letter to this doomed girl in that dark hole of a saloon.  "I've
+wanted money," he wrote, "ever since I was a little chap sitting in
+the fields among the cows....  I want it for you now, and I mean to
+have it.  I've studied the thing two years; I know what I know....
+
+The moment this is in the post I leave for London.  There are a
+hundred things to look after still; I can't trust myself within reach
+of you again till the anchor's weighed.  When I re-christened her the
+Pied Witch, I thought of you--you witch to me...."
+
+There followed a solemn entreaty to her to be on the path leading to
+the cove at seven o'clock on Wednesday evening (that is, to-morrow)
+when he would come ashore and bid her good-bye.  It was signed, "Your
+loving husband, Zachary Pearse...."
+
+I lay at the edge of that cornfield a long time; it was very
+peaceful.  The church bells had begun to ring.  The long shadows came
+stealing out from the sheaves; woodpigeons rose one by one, and
+flapped off to roost; the western sky was streaked with red, and all
+the downs and combe bathed in the last sunlight.  Perfect harvest
+weather; but oppressively still, the stillness of suspense....
+
+Life at the farm goes on as usual.  We have morning and evening
+prayers.  John Ford reads them fiercely, as though he were on the eve
+of a revolt against his God.  Morning and evening he visits her,
+comes out wheezing heavily, and goes to his own room; I believe, to
+pray.  Since this morning I haven't dared meet him.  He is a strong
+old man--but this will break him up....
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+"KINGSWEAR, Saturday, i3tb August.
+
+It's over--I leave here to-morrow, and go abroad.
+
+A quiet afternoon--not a breath up in the churchyard!  I was there
+quite half an hour before they came.  Some red cows had strayed into
+the adjoining orchard, and were rubbing their heads against the
+railing.  While I stood there an old woman came and drove them away;
+afterwards, she stooped and picked up the apples that had fallen
+before their time.
+
+"The apples are ripe and ready to fall,
+Oh! heigh-ho! and ready to fall;
+There came an old woman and gathered them all,
+Oh! heigh-ho! and gathered them all."
+
+......They brought Pasiance very simply--no hideous funeral
+trappings, thank God--the farm hands carried her, and there was no
+one there but John Ford, the Hopgoods, myself, and that young doctor.
+They read the service over her grave.  I can hear John Ford's "Amen!"
+now.  When it was over he walked away bareheaded in the sun, without
+a word.  I went up there again this evening, and wandered amongst the
+tombstones.  "Richard Voisey," "John, the son of Richard and
+Constance Voisey," "Margery Voisey," so many generations of them in
+that corner; then "Richard Voisey and Agnes his wife," and next to it
+that new mound on which a sparrow was strutting and the shadows of
+the apple-trees already hovering.
+
+I will tell you the little left to tell....
+
+On Wednesday afternoon she asked for me again.
+
+"It's only till seven," she whispered.  "He's certain to come then.
+But if I--were to die first--then tell him--I'm sorry for him.  They
+keep saying: 'Don't talk--don't talk!' Isn't it stupid?  As if I
+should have any other chance!  There'll be no more talking after to-
+night!  Make everybody come, please--I want to see them all.  When
+you're dying you're freer than any other time--nobody wants you to do
+things, nobody cares what you say....  He promised me I should do
+what I liked if I married him--I never believed that really--but now
+I can do what I like; and say all the things I want to."  She lay
+back silent; she could not after all speak the inmost thoughts that
+are in each of us, so sacred that they melt away at the approach of
+words.
+
+I shall remember her like that--with the gleam of a smile in her
+half-closed eyes, her red lips parted--such a quaint look of mockery,
+pleasure, regret, on her little round, upturned face; the room white,
+and fresh with flowers, the breeze guttering the apple-leaves against
+the window.  In the night they had unhooked the violin and taken it
+away; she had not missed it....  When Dan came, I gave up my place to
+him.  He took her hand gently in his great paw, without speaking.
+
+"How small my hand looks there," she said, "too small."  Dan put it
+softly back on the bedclothes and wiped his forehead.  Pasiance cried
+in a sharp whisper: "Is it so hot in here?  I didn't know."  Dan bent
+down, put his lips to her fingers and left the room.
+
+The afternoon was long, the longest I've ever spent.  Sometimes she
+seemed to sleep, sometimes whispered to herself about her mother, her
+grandfather, the garden, or her cats--all sorts of inconsequent,
+trivial, even ludicrous memories seemed to throng her mind--never
+once, I think, did she speak of Zachary, but, now and then, she asked
+the time....  Each hour she grew visibly weaker.  John Ford sat by
+her without moving, his heavy breathing was often the only sound;
+sometimes she rubbed her fingers on his hand, without speaking.  It
+was a summary of their lives together.  Once he prayed aloud for her
+in a hoarse voice; then her pitiful, impatient eyes signed to me.
+
+"Quick," she whispered, "I want him; it's all so--cold."
+
+I went out and ran down the path towards the cove.
+
+Leaning on a gate stood Zachary, an hour before his time; dressed in
+the same old blue clothes and leather-peaked cap as on the day when I
+saw him first.  He knew nothing of what had happened.  But at a
+quarter of the truth, I'm sure he divined the whole, though he would
+not admit it to himself.  He kept saying, "It can't be.  She'll be
+well in a few days--a sprain! D' you think the sea-voyage....  Is she
+strong enough to be moved now at once?"
+
+It was painful to see his face, so twisted by the struggle between
+his instinct and his vitality.  The sweat poured down his forehead.
+He turned round as we walked up the path, and pointed out to sea.
+There was his steamer.  "I could get her on board in no time.
+Impossible!  What is it, then?  Spine?  Good God!  The doctors....
+Sometimes they'll do wonders!"  It was pitiful to see his efforts to
+blind himself to the reality.
+
+"It can't be, she's too young.  We're walking very slow."  I told him
+she was dying.
+
+For a second I thought he was going to run away.  Then he jerked up
+his head, and rushed on towards the house.  At the foot of the
+staircase he gripped me by the shoulder.
+
+"It's not true!" he said; "she'll get better now I'm here.  I'll
+stay.  Let everything go.  I'll stay."
+
+"Now's the time," I said, "to show you loved her.  Pull yourself
+together, man!"  He shook all over.
+
+"Yes!" was all he answered.  We went into her room.  It seemed
+impossible she was going to die; the colour was bright in her cheeks,
+her lips trembling and pouted as if she had just been kissed, her
+eyes gleaming, her hair so dark and crisp, her face so young....
+
+Half an hour later I stole to the open door of her room.  She was
+still and white as the sheets of her bed.  John Ford stood at the
+foot; and, bowed to the level of the pillows, his head on his
+clenched fists, sat Zachary.  It was utterly quiet.  The guttering of
+the leaves had ceased.  When things have come to a crisis, how little
+one feels--no fear, no pity, no sorrow, rather the sense, as when a
+play is over, of anxiety to get away!
+
+Suddenly Zachary rose, brushed past me without seeing, and ran
+downstairs.
+
+Some hours later I went out on the path leading to the cove.  It was
+pitch-black; the riding light of the Pied Witch was still there,
+looking no bigger than a firefly.  Then from in front I heard
+sobbing--a man's sobs; no sound is quite so dreadful.  Zachary Pearse
+got up out of the bank not ten paces off.
+
+I had no heart to go after him, and sat down in the hedge.  There was
+something subtly akin to her in the fresh darkness of the young
+night; the soft bank, the scent of honeysuckle, the touch of the
+ferns and brambles.  Death comes to all of us, and when it's over
+it's over; but this blind business--of those left behind
+
+A little later the ship whistled twice; her starboard light gleamed
+faintly--and that was all....
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+"TORQUAY, 30th October .
+
+....Do you remember the letters I wrote you from Moor Farm nearly
+three years ago?  To-day I rode over there.  I stopped at Brixham on
+the way for lunch, and walked down to the quay.  There had been a
+shower--but the sun was out again, shining on the sea, the brown-red
+sails, and the rampart of slate roofs.
+
+A trawler was lying there, which had evidently been in a collision.
+The spiky-bearded, thin-lipped fellow in torn blue jersey and sea-
+boots who was superintending the repairs, said to me a little
+proudly:
+
+"Bane in collision, zurr; like to zee over her?"  Then suddenly
+screwing up his little blue eyes, he added:
+
+"Why, I remembers yu.  Steered yu along o' the young lady in this yer
+very craft."
+
+It was Prawle, Zachary Pearse's henchman.
+
+"Yes," he went on, "that's the cutter."
+
+"And Captain Pearse?"
+
+He leant his back against the quay, and spat.  "He was a pra-aper
+man; I never zane none like 'en."
+
+"Did you do any good out there?"
+
+Prawle gave me a sharp glance.
+
+"Gude?  No, t'was arrm we done, vrom ztart to finish--had trouble all
+the time.  What a man cude du, the skipper did.  When yu caan't du
+right, zome calls it 'Providence'!  'Tis all my eye an' Betty Martin!
+What I zay es, 'tis these times, there's such a dale o' folk, a dale
+of puzzivantin' fellers; the world's to small."
+
+With these words there flashed across me a vision of Drake crushed
+into our modern life by the shrinkage of the world; Drake caught in
+the meshes of red tape, electric wires, and all the lofty appliances
+of our civilization.  Does a type survive its age; live on into times
+that have no room for it?  The blood is there--and sometimes there's
+a throw-back....  All fancy!  Eh?
+
+"So," I said, "you failed?"
+
+Prawle wriggled.
+
+"I wudden' goo for to zay that, zurr--'tis an ugly word.  Da-am!" he
+added, staring at his boots, "'twas thru me tu.  We were along among
+the haythen, and I mus' nades goo for to break me leg.  The capt'n he
+wudden' lave me.  'One Devon man,' he says to me, 'don' lave
+anotherr.'  We werr six days where we shuld ha' been tu; when we got
+back to the ship a cruiser had got her for gun-runnin'."
+
+"And what has become of Captain Pearse?"
+
+Prawle answered, "Zurr, I belave 'e went to China, 'tis onsartin."
+
+"He's not dead?"
+
+Prawle looked at me with a kind of uneasy anger.
+
+"Yu cudden' kell 'en!  'Tis true, mun 'll die zome day.  But therr's
+not a one that'll show better zport than Capt'n Zach'ry Pearse."
+
+I believe that; he will be hard to kill.  The vision of him comes up,
+with his perfect balance, defiant eyes, and sweetish smile; the way
+the hair of his beard crisped a little, and got blacker on the
+cheeks; the sort of desperate feeling he gave, that one would never
+get the better of him, that he would never get the better of himself.
+
+I took leave of Prawle and half a crown.  Before I was off the quay I
+heard him saying to a lady, "Bane in collision, marm!  Like to zee
+over her?"
+
+After lunch I rode on to Moor.  The old place looked much the same;
+but the apple-trees were stripped of fruit, and their leaves
+beginning to go yellow and fall.  One of Pasiance's cats passed me in
+the orchard hunting a bird, still with a ribbon round its neck.  John
+Ford showed me all his latest improvements, but never by word or sign
+alluded to the past.  He inquired after Dan, back in New Zealand now,
+without much interest; his stubbly beard and hair have whitened; he
+has grown very stout, and I noticed that his legs are not well under
+control; he often stops to lean on his stick.  He was very ill last
+winter; and sometimes, they say, will go straight off to sleep in the
+middle of a sentence.
+
+I managed to get a few minutes with the Hopgoods.  We talked of
+Pasiance sitting in the kitchen under a row of plates, with that
+clinging smell of wood-smoke, bacon, and age bringing up memories, as
+nothing but scents can.  The dear old lady's hair, drawn so nicely
+down her forehead on each side from the centre of her cap, has a few
+thin silver lines; and her face is a thought more wrinkled.  The
+tears still come into her eyes when she talks of her "lamb."
+
+Of Zachary I heard nothing, but she told me of old Pearse's death.
+
+"Therr they found 'en, zo to spake, dead--in th' sun; but Ha-apgood
+can tell yu," and Hopgood, ever rolling his pipe, muttered something,
+and smiled his wooden smile.
+
+He came to see me off from the straw-yard.  "'Tis like death to the
+varrm, zurr," he said, putting all the play of his vast shoulders
+into the buckling of my girths.  "Mister Ford--well!  And not one of
+th' old stock to take it when 'e's garn....  Ah! it werr cruel; my
+old woman's never been hersel' since.  Tell 'ee what 'tis--don't du
+t' think to much."
+
+I went out of my way to pass the churchyard.  There were flowers,
+quite fresh, chrysanthemums, and asters; above them the white stone,
+already stained:
+
+        "PASIANCE
+
+        WIFE OF ZACHARY PEARSE
+
+        'The Lord hatb given, and the Lord hatb taken away."'
+
+The red cows were there too; the sky full of great white clouds, some
+birds whistling a little mournfully, and in the air the scent of
+fallen leaves....
+
+May, 1900.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A KNIGHT
+
+
+
+TO
+
+MY MOTHER
+
+
+
+
+A KNIGHT
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+At Monte Carlo, in the spring of the year 189-, I used to notice an
+old fellow in a grey suit and sunburnt straw hat with a black ribbon.
+Every morning at eleven o'clock, he would come down to the Place,
+followed by a brindled German boarhound, walk once or twice round it,
+and seat himself on a bench facing the casino.  There he would remain
+in the sun, with his straw hat tilted forward, his thin legs apart,
+his brown hands crossed between them, and the dog's nose resting on
+his knee.  After an hour or more he would get up, and, stooping a
+little from the waist, walk slowly round the Place and return up
+hill.  Just before three, he would come down again in the same
+clothes and go into the casino, leaving the dog outside.
+
+One afternoon, moved by curiosity, I followed him.  He passed through
+the hall without looking at the gambling-rooms, and went into the
+concert.  It became my habit after that to watch for him.  When he
+sat in the Place I could see him from the window of my room.  The
+chief puzzle to me was the matter of his nationality.
+
+His lean, short face had a skin so burnt that it looked like leather;
+his jaw was long and prominent, his chin pointed, and he had hollows
+in his cheeks.  There were wrinkles across his forehead; his eyes
+were brown; and little white moustaches were brushed up from the
+corners of his lips.  The back of his head bulged out above the lines
+of his lean neck and high, sharp shoulders; his grey hair was cropped
+quite close.  In the Marseilles buffet, on the journey out, I had met
+an Englishman, almost his counterpart in features--but somehow very
+different!  This old fellow had nothing of the other's alert,
+autocratic self-sufficiency.  He was quiet and undemonstrative,
+without looking, as it were, insulated against shocks and foreign
+substances.  He was certainly no Frenchman.  His eyes, indeed, were
+brown, but hazel-brown, and gentle--not the red-brown sensual eye of
+the Frenchman.  An American?  But was ever an American so passive?  A
+German?  His moustache was certainly brushed up, but in a modest,
+almost pathetic way, not in the least Teutonic.  Nothing seemed to
+fit him.  I gave him up, and named him "the Cosmopolitan."
+
+Leaving at the end of April, I forgot him altogether.  In the same
+month, however, of the following year I was again at Monte Carlo, and
+going one day to the concert found myself seated next this same old
+fellow.  The orchestra was playing Meyerbeer's "Prophete," and my
+neighbour was asleep, snoring softly.  He was dressed in the same
+grey suit, with the same straw hat (or one exactly like it) on his
+knees, and his hands crossed above it.  Sleep had not disfigured
+him -his little white moustache was still brushed up, his lips
+closed; a very good and gentle expression hovered on his face.  A
+curved mark showed on his right temple, the scar of a cut on the side
+of his neck, and his left hand was covered by an old glove, the
+little forger of which was empty.  He woke up when the march was over
+and brisked up his moustache.
+
+The next thing on the programme was a little thing by Poise from Le
+joli Gilles, played by Mons. Corsanego on the violin.  Happening to
+glance at my old neighbour, I saw a tear caught in the hollow of his
+cheek, and another just leaving the corner of his eye; there was a
+faint smile on his lips.  Then came an interval; and while orchestra
+and audience were resting, I asked him if he were fond of music.  He
+looked up without distrust, bowed, and answered in a thin, gentle
+voice: "Certainly.  I know nothing about it, play no instrument,
+could never sing a note; but fond of it!  Who would not be?"  His
+English was correct enough, but with an emphasis not quite American
+nor quite foreign.  I ventured to remark that he did not care for
+Meyerbeer.  He smiled.
+
+"Ah!" he said, "I was asleep?  Too bad of me.  He is a little noisy--
+I know so little about music.  There is Bach, for instance.  Would
+you believe it, he gives me no pleasure?  A great misfortune to be no
+musician!"  He shook his head.
+
+I murmured, "Bach is too elevating for you perhaps."
+
+"To me," he answered, "any music I like is elevating.  People say
+some music has a bad effect on them.  I never found any music that
+gave me a bad thought--no--no--quite the opposite; only sometimes, as
+you see, I go to sleep.  But what a lovely instrument the violin!"
+A faint flush came on his parched cheeks.  "The human soul that has
+left the body.  A curious thing, distant bugles at night have given
+me the same feeling."  The orchestra was now coming back, and,
+folding his hands, my neighbour turned his eyes towards them.  When
+the concert was over we came out together.  Waiting at the entrance
+was his dog.
+
+"You have a beautiful dog!"
+
+"Ah! yes.  Freda.  mia cara, da su mano!"  The dog squatted on her
+haunches, and lifted her paw in the vague, bored way of big dogs when
+requested to perform civilities.  She was a lovely creature--the
+purest brindle, without a speck of white, and free from the
+unbalanced look of most dogs of her breed.
+
+"Basta! basta!"  He turned to me apologetically.  "We have agreed to
+speak Italian; in that way I keep up the language; astonishing the
+number of things that dog will understand!"  I was about to take my
+leave, when he asked if I would walk a little way with him--"If you
+are free, that is."  We went up the street with Freda on the far side
+of her master.
+
+"Do you never 'play' here?" I asked him.
+
+"Play?  No.  It must be very interesting; most exciting, but as a
+matter of fact, I can't afford it.  If one has very little, one is
+too nervous."
+
+He had stopped in front of a small hairdresser's shop.  "I live
+here," he said, raising his hat again.  "Au revoir!--unless I can
+offer you a glass of tea.  It's all ready.  Come! I've brought you
+out of your way; give me the pleasure!"
+
+I have never met a man so free from all self-consciousness, and yet
+so delicate and diffident the combination is a rare one.  We went up
+a steep staircase to a room on the second floor.  My companion threw
+the shutters open, setting all the flies buzzing.  The top of a
+plane-tree was on a level with the window, and all its little brown
+balls were dancing, quite close, in the wind.  As he had promised, an
+urn was hissing on a table; there was also a small brown teapot, some
+sugar, slices of lemon, and glasses.  A bed, washstand, cupboard, tin
+trunk, two chairs, and a small rug were all the furniture.  Above the
+bed a sword in a leather sheath was suspended from two nails.  The
+photograph of a girl stood on the closed stove.  My host went to the
+cupboard and produced a bottle, a glass, and a second spoon.  When
+the cork was drawn, the scent of rum escaped into the air.  He
+sniffed at it and dropped a teaspoonful into both glasses.
+
+"This is a trick I learned from the Russians after Plevna; they had
+my little finger, so I deserved something in exchange."  He looked
+round; his eyes, his whole face, seemed to twinkle.  "I assure you it
+was worth it--makes all the difference.  Try!"  He poured off the
+tea.
+
+"Had you a sympathy with the Turks?"
+
+"The weaker side--"  He paused abruptly, then added: "But it was not
+that."  Over his face innumerable crow's-feet had suddenly appeared,
+his eyes twitched; he went on hurriedly, "I had to find something to
+do just then--it was necessary."  He stared into his glass; and it
+was some time before I ventured to ask if he had seen much fighting.
+
+"Yes," he replied gravely, "nearly twenty years altogether; I was one
+of Garibaldi's Mille in '60."
+
+"Surely you are not Italian?"
+
+He leaned forward with his hands on his knees.  "I was in Genoa at
+that time learning banking; Garibaldi was a wonderful man!  One could
+not help it."  He spoke quite simply.  "You might say it was like
+seeing a little man stand up to a ring of great hulking fellows; I
+went, just as you would have gone, if you'd been there.  I was not
+long with them--our war began; I had to go back home."  He said this
+as if there had been but one war since the world began.  "In '60," he
+mused, "till '65.  Just think of it!  The poor country.  Why, in my
+State, South Carolina--I was through it all--nobody could be spared
+there--we were one to three."
+
+"I suppose you have a love of fighting?"
+
+"H'm!" he said, as if considering the idea for the first time.
+"Sometimes I fought for a living, and sometimes--because I was
+obliged; one must try to be a gentleman.  But won't you have some
+more?"
+
+I refused more tea and took my leave, carrying away with me a picture
+of the old fellow looking down from the top of the steep staircase,
+one hand pressed to his back, the other twisting up those little
+white moustaches, and murmuring, "Take care, my dear sir, there's a
+step there at the corner."
+
+"To be a gentleman!"  I repeated in the street, causing an old French
+lady to drop her parasol, so that for about two minutes we stood
+bowing and smiling to each other, then separated full of the best
+feeling.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+A week later I found myself again seated next him at a concert.  In
+the meantime I had seen him now and then, but only in passing.  He
+seemed depressed.  The corners of his lips were tightened, his tanned
+cheeks had a greyish tinge, his eyes were restless; and, between two
+numbers of the programme, he murmured, tapping his fingers on his
+hat, "Do you ever have bad days?  Yes?  Not pleasant, are they?"
+
+Then something occurred from which all that I have to tell you
+followed.  There came into the concert-hall the heroine of one of
+those romances, crimes, follies, or irregularities, call it what you
+will, which had just attracted the "world's" stare.  She passed us
+with her partner, and sat down in a chair a few rows to our right.
+She kept turning her head round, and at every turn I caught the gleam
+of her uneasy eyes.  Some one behind us said: "The brazen baggage!"
+
+My companion turned full round, and glared at whoever it was who had
+spoken.  The change in him was quite remarkable.  His lips were drawn
+back from his teeth; he frowned; the scar on his temple had reddened.
+
+"Ah!" he said to me.  "The hue and cry!  Contemptible!  How I hate
+it!  But you wouldn't understand--! "he broke off, and slowly
+regained his usual air of self-obliteration; he even seemed ashamed,
+and began trying to brush his moustaches higher than ever, as if
+aware that his heat had robbed them of neatness.
+
+"I'm not myself, when I speak of such matters," he said suddenly; and
+began reading his programme, holding it upside down.  A minute later,
+however, he said in a peculiar voice: "There are people to be found
+who object to vivisecting animals; but the vivisection of a woman,
+who minds that?  Will you tell me it's right, that because of some
+tragedy like this--believe me, it is always a tragedy--we should hunt
+down a woman?  That her fellow-women should make an outcast of her?
+That we, who are men, should make a prey of her?  If I thought
+that...."  Again he broke off, staring very hard in front of him.
+"It is we who make them what they are; and even if that is not so--
+why! if I thought there was a woman in the world I could not take my
+hat off to--I--I--couldn't sleep at night."  He got up from his seat,
+put on his old straw hat with trembling fingers, and, without a
+glance back, went out, stumbling over the chair-legs.
+
+I sat there, horribly disturbed; the words, "One must try to be a
+gentleman!" haunting me.  When I came out, he was standing by the
+entrance with one hand on his hip and the other on his dog.  In that
+attitude of waiting he was such a patient figure; the sun glared down
+and showed the threadbare nature of his clothes and the thinness of
+his brown hands, with their long forgers and nails yellow from
+tobacco.  Seeing me he came up the steps again, and raised his hat.
+
+"I am glad to have caught you; please forget all that."  I asked if
+he would do me the honour of dining at my hotel.
+
+"Dine?" he repeated with the sort of smile a child gives if you offer
+him a box of soldiers; "with the greatest pleasure.  I seldom dine
+out, but I think I can muster up a coat.  Yes--yes--and at what time
+shall I come?  At half-past seven, and your hotel is--?  Good! I
+shall be there.  Freda, mia cara, you will be alone this evening.
+You do not smoke caporal, I fear.  I find it fairly good; though it
+has too much bite."  He walked off with Freda, puffing at his thin
+roll of caporal.
+
+Once or twice he stopped, as if bewildered or beset by some sudden
+doubt or memory; and every time he stopped, Freda licked his hand.
+They disappeared round the corner of the street, and I went to my
+hotel to see about dinner.  On the way I met Jules le Ferrier, and
+asked him to come too.
+
+"My faith, yes!" he said, with the rosy pessimism characteristic of
+the French editor.  "Man must dine!"
+
+At half-past six we assembled.  My "Cosmopolitan" was in an old
+frock-coat braided round the edges, buttoned high and tight, defining
+more than ever the sharp lines of his shoulders and the slight kink
+of his back; he had brought with him, too, a dark-peaked cap of
+military shape, which he had evidently selected as more fitting to
+the coat than a straw hat.  He smelled slightly of some herb.
+
+We sat down to dinner, and did not rise for two hours.  He was a
+charming guest, praised everything he ate--not with commonplaces, but
+in words that made you feel it had given him real pleasure.  At
+first, whenever Jules made one of his caustic remarks, he looked
+quite pained, but suddenly seemed to make up his mind that it was
+bark, not bite; and then at each of them he would turn to me and say,
+"Aha! that's good--isn't it?"  With every glass of wine he became
+more gentle and more genial, sitting very upright, and tightly
+buttoned-in; while the little white wings of his moustache seemed
+about to leave him for a better world.
+
+In spite of the most leading questions, however, we could not get him
+to talk about himself, for even Jules, most cynical of men, had
+recognised that he was a hero of romance.  He would answer gently and
+precisely, and then sit twisting his moustaches, perfectly
+unconscious that we wanted more.  Presently, as the wine went a
+little to his head, his thin, high voice grew thinner, his cheeks
+became flushed, his eyes brighter; at the end of dinner he said: "I
+hope I have not been noisy."
+
+We assured him that he had not been noisy enough.  "You're laughing
+at me," he answered.  "Surely I've been talking all the time!"
+
+"Mon Dieu!" said Jules, "we have been looking for some fables of your
+wars; but nothing--nothing, not enough to feed a frog!"
+
+The old fellow looked troubled.
+
+"To be sure!" he mused.  "Let me think! there is that about Colhoun
+at Gettysburg; and there's the story of Garibaldi and the Miller."
+He plunged into a tale, not at all about himself, which would have
+been extremely dull, but for the conviction in his eyes, and the way
+he stopped and commented.  "So you see," he ended, "that's the sort
+of man Garibaldi was!  I could tell you another tale of him."
+Catching an introspective look in Jules's eye, however, I proposed
+taking our cigars over to the cafe opposite.
+
+"Delightful!" the old fellow said: "We shall have a band and the
+fresh air, and clear consciences for our cigars.  I cannot like this
+smoking in a room where there are ladies dining."
+
+He walked out in front of us, smoking with an air of great enjoyment.
+Jules, glowing above his candid shirt and waistcoat, whispered to me,
+"Mon cher Georges, how he is good!" then sighed, and added darkly:
+"The poor man!"
+
+We sat down at a little table.  Close by, the branches of a plane-
+tree rustled faintly; their leaves hung lifeless, speckled like the
+breasts of birds, or black against the sky; then, caught by the
+breeze, fluttered suddenly.
+
+The old fellow sat, with head thrown back, a smile on his face,
+coming now and then out of his enchanted dreams to drink coffee,
+answer our questions, or hum the tune that the band was playing.  The
+ash of his cigar grew very long.  One of those bizarre figures in
+Oriental garb, who, night after night, offer their doubtful wares at
+a great price, appeared in the white glare of a lamp, looked with a
+furtive smile at his face, and glided back, discomfited by its
+unconsciousness.  It was a night for dreams!  A faint, half-eastern
+scent in the air, of black tobacco and spice; few people as yet at
+the little tables, the waiters leisurely, the band soft!  What was he
+dreaming of, that old fellow, whose cigar-ash grew so long?  Of
+youth, of his battles, of those things that must be done by those who
+try to be gentlemen; perhaps only of his dinner; anyway of something
+gilded in vague fashion as the light was gilding the branches of the
+plane-tree.
+
+Jules pulled my sleeve: "He sleeps."  He had smilingly dropped off;
+the cigar-ash--that feathery tower of his dreams--had broken and
+fallen on his sleeve.  He awoke, and fell to dusting it.
+
+The little tables round us began to fill.  One of the bandsmen played
+a czardas on the czymbal.  Two young Frenchmen, talking loudly, sat
+down at the adjoining table.  They were discussing the lady who had
+been at the concert that afternoon.
+
+"It's a bet," said one of them, "but there's the present man.  I take
+three weeks, that's enough elle est declassee; ce n'est que le
+premier pas--'
+
+My old friend's cigar fell on the table.  "Monsieur," he stammered,
+"you speak of a lady so, in a public place?"
+
+The young man stared at him.  "Who is this person?" he said to his
+companion.
+
+My guest took up Jules's glove that lay on the table; before either
+of us could raise a finger, he had swung it in the speaker's face.
+"Enough!" he said, and, dropping the glove, walked away.
+
+We all jumped to our feet.  I left Jules and hurried after him.  His
+face was grim, his eyes those of a creature who has been struck on a
+raw place.  He made a movement of his fingers which said plainly.
+"Leave me, if you please!"
+
+I went back to the cafe.  The two young men had disappeared, so had
+Jules, but everything else was going on just as before; the bandsman
+still twanging out his czardas; the waiters serving drinks; the
+orientals trying to sell their carpets.  I paid the bill, sought out
+the manager, and apologised.  He shrugged his shoulders, smiled and
+said: "An eccentric, your friend, nicht wahr?"  Could he tell me
+where M. Le Ferrier was?  He could not.  I left to look for Jules;
+could not find him, and returned to my hotel disgusted.  I was sorry
+for my old guest, but vexed with him too; what business had he to
+carry his Quixotism to such an unpleasant length?  I tried to read.
+Eleven o'clock struck; the casino disgorged a stream of people; the
+Place seemed fuller of life than ever; then slowly it grew empty and
+quite dark.  The whim seized me to go out.  It was a still night,
+very warm, very black.  On one of the seats a man and woman sat
+embraced, on another a girl was sobbing, on a third--strange sight--a
+priest dozed.  I became aware of some one at my side; it was my old
+guest.
+
+"If you are not too tired," he said, "can you give me ten minutes?"
+
+"Certainly; will you come in?"
+
+"No, no; let us go down to the Terrace.  I shan't keep you long."
+
+He did not speak again till we reached a seat above the pigeon-
+shooting grounds; there, in a darkness denser for the string of
+lights still burning in the town, we sat down.
+
+"I owe you an apology," he said; "first in the afternoon, then again
+this evening--your guest--your friend's glove!  I have behaved as no
+gentleman should."  He was leaning forward with his hands on the
+handle of a stick.  His voice sounded broken and disturbed.
+
+"Oh!" I muttered.  "It's nothing!"'
+
+"You are very good," he sighed; "but I feel that I must explain.  I
+consider I owe this to you, but I must tell you I should not have the
+courage if it were not for another reason.  You see I have no
+friend."  He looked at me with an uncertain smile.  I bowed, and a
+minute or two later he began....
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+"You will excuse me if I go back rather far.  It was in '74, when I
+had been ill with Cuban fever.  To keep me alive they had put me on
+board a ship at Santiago, and at the end of the voyage I found myself
+in London.  I had very little money; I knew nobody.  I tell you, sir,
+there are times when it's hard for a fighting man to get anything to
+do.  People would say to me: 'Afraid we've nothing for a man like you
+in our business.'  I tried people of all sorts; but it was true--I
+had been fighting here and there since '60, I wasn't fit for
+anything--"  He shook his head.  "In the South, before the war, they
+had a saying, I remember, about a dog and a soldier having the same
+value.  But all this has nothing to do with what I have to tell you."
+He sighed again and went on, moistening his lips: "I was walking
+along the Strand one day, very disheartened, when I heard my name
+called.  It's a queer thing, that, in a strange street.  By the way,"
+he put in with dry ceremony, "you don't know my name, I think: it is
+Brune--Roger Brune.  At first I did not recognise the person who
+called me.  He had just got off an omnibus--a square-shouldered man
+with heavy moustaches, and round spectacles.  But when he shook my
+hand I knew him at once.  He was a man called Dalton, who was taken
+prisoner at Gettysburg; one of you Englishmen who came to fight with
+us--a major in the regiment where I was captain.  We were comrades
+during two campaigns.  If I had been his brother he couldn't have
+seemed more pleased to see me.  He took me into a bar for the sake of
+old times.  The drink went to my head, and by the time we reached
+Trafalgar Square I was quite unable to walk.  He made me sit down on
+a bench. I was in fact--drunk.  It's disgraceful to be drunk, but
+there was some excuse.  Now I tell you, sir" (all through his story
+he was always making use of that expression, it seemed to infuse
+fresh spirit into him, to help his memory in obscure places, to give
+him the mastery of his emotions; it was like the piece of paper a
+nervous man holds in his hand to help him through a speech), "there
+never was a man with a finer soul than my friend Dalton.  He was not
+clever, though he had read much; and sometimes perhaps he was too
+fond of talking.  But he was a gentleman; he listened to me as if I
+had been a child; he was not ashamed of me--and it takes a gentleman
+not to be ashamed of a drunken man in the streets of London; God
+knows what things I said to him while we were sitting there!  He took
+me to his home and put me to bed himself; for I was down again with
+fever."  He stopped, turned slightly from me, and put his hand up to
+his brow.  " Well, then it was, sir, that I first saw her.  I am not
+a poet and I cannot tell you what she seemed to me.  I was delirious,
+but I always knew when she was there.  I had dreams of sunshine and
+cornfields, of dancing waves at sea, young trees--never the same
+dreams, never anything for long together; and when I had my senses I
+was afraid to say so for fear she would go away.  She'd be in the
+corner of the room, with her hair hanging about her neck, a bright
+gold colour; she never worked and never read, but sat and talked to
+herself in a whisper, or looked at me for a long time together out of
+her blue eyes, a little frown between them, and her upper lip closed
+firm on her lower lip, where she had an uneven tooth.  When her
+father came, she'd jump up and hang on to his neck until he groaned,
+then run away, but presently come stealing back on tiptoe.  I used to
+listen for her footsteps on the stairs, then the knock, the door
+flung back or opened quietly--you never could tell which; and her
+voice, with a little lisp, 'Are you better today, Mr. Brune?  What
+funny things you say when you're delirious!  Father says you've been
+in heaps of battles!"'
+
+He got up, paced restlessly to and fro, and sat down again.  "I
+remember every word as if it were yesterday, all the things she said,
+and did; I've had a long time to think them over, you see.  Well, I
+must tell you, the first morning that I was able to get up, I missed
+her.  Dalton came in her place, and I asked him where she was.  'My
+dear fellow,' he answered, 'I've sent Eilie away to her old nurse's
+inn down on the river; she's better there at this time of year.'  We
+looked at each other, and I saw that he had sent her away because he
+didn't trust me.  I was hurt by this.  Illness spoils one.  He was
+right, he was quite right, for all he knew about me was that I could
+fight and had got drunk; but I am very quick-tempered.  I made up my
+mind at once to leave him.  But I was too weak--he had to put me to
+bed again.  The very next morning he came and proposed that I should
+go into partnership with him.  He kept a fencing-school and pistol-
+gallery.  It seemed like the finger of God; and perhaps it was--who
+knows?"  He fell into a reverie, and taking out his caporal, rolled
+himself a cigarette; having lighted it, he went on suddenly: "There,
+in the room above the school, we used to sit in the evenings, one on
+each side of the grate.  The room was on the second floor,
+I remember, with two windows, and a view of nothing but the houses
+opposite.  The furniture was covered up with chintz.  The things on
+the bookshelf were never disturbed, they were Eilie's--half-broken
+cases with butterflies, a dead frog in a bottle, a horse-shoe covered
+with tinfoil, some shells too, and a cardboard box with three
+speckled eggs in it, and these words written on the lid: 'Missel-
+thrush from Lucy's tree--second family, only one blown.'"  He smoked
+fiercely, with puffs that were like sharp sighs.
+
+"Dalton was wrapped up in her.  He was never tired of talking to me
+about her, and I was never tired of hearing.  We had a number of
+pupils; but in the evening when we sat there, smoking--our talk would
+sooner or later--come round to her.  Her bedroom opened out of that
+sitting--room; he took me in once and showed me a narrow little room
+the width of a passage, fresh and white, with a photograph of her
+mother above the bed, and an empty basket for a dog or cat."  He
+broke off with a vexed air, and resumed sternly, as if trying to bind
+himself to the narration of his more important facts: "She was then
+fifteen--her mother had been dead twelve years--a beautiful, face,
+her mother's; it had been her death that sent Dalton to fight with
+us.  Well, sir, one day in August, very hot weather, he proposed a
+run into the country, and who should meet us on the platform when we
+arrived but Eilie, in a blue sun-bonnet and frock-flax blue, her
+favourite colour.  I was angry with Dalton for not telling me that we
+should see her; my clothes were not quite--my hair wanted cutting.
+It was black then, sir," he added, tracing a pattern in the darkness
+with his stick.  "She had a little donkey-cart; she drove, and, while
+we walked one on each side, she kept looking at me from under her
+sunbonnet.  I must tell you that she never laughed--her eyes danced,
+her cheeks would go pink, and her hair shake about on her neck, but
+she never laughed. Her old nurse, Lucy, a very broad, good woman, had
+married the proprietor of the inn in the village there.  I have never
+seen anything like that inn: sweetbriar up to the roof!  And the
+scent--I am very susceptible to scents!"  His head drooped, and the
+cigarette fell from his hand. A train passing beneath sent up a
+shower of sparks.  He started, and went on: "We had our lunch in the
+parlour--I remember that room very well, for I spent the happiest
+days of my life afterwards in that inn....  We went into a meadow
+after lunch, and my friend Dalton fell asleep.  A wonderful thing
+happened then.  Eilie whispered to me, 'Let's have a jolly time.'
+She took me for the most glorious walk.  The river was close by.
+A lovely stream, your river Thames, so calm and broad; it is like the
+spirit of your people.  I was bewitched; I forgot my friend, I
+thought of nothing but how to keep her to myself.  It was such a day!
+There are days that are the devil's, but that was truly one of God's.
+She took me to a little pond under an elm-tree, and we dragged it, we
+two, an hour, for a kind of tiny red worm to feed some creature that
+she had.  We found them in the mud, and while she was bending over,
+the curls got in her eyes.  If you could have seen her then, I think,
+sir, you would have said she was like the first sight of spring....
+We had tea afterwards, all together, in the long grass under some
+fruit-trees.  If I had the knack of words, there are things that I
+could say."  He bent, as though in deference to those unspoken
+memories.  "Twilight came on while we were sitting there. A wonderful
+thing is twilight in the country!  It became time for us to go.
+There was an avenue of trees close by--like a church with a window at
+the end, where golden light came through.  I walked up and down it
+with her.  'Will you come again?' she whispered, and suddenly she
+lifted up her face to be kissed. I kissed her as if she were a little
+child.  And when we said good-bye, her eyes were looking at me across
+her father's shoulder, with surprise and sorrow in them.  'Why do you
+go away?' they seemed to say....  But I must tell you," he went on
+hurriedly, "of a thing that happened before we had gone a hundred
+yards.  We were smoking our pipes, and I, thinking of her--when out
+she sprang from the hedge and stood in front of us.  Dalton cried
+out, 'What are you here for again, you mad girl?'  She rushed up to
+him and hugged him; but when she looked at me, her face was quite
+different--careless, defiant, as one might say--it hurt me.  I
+couldn't understand it, and what one doesn't understand frightens
+one.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+"Time went on.  There was no swordsman, or pistol-shot like me in
+London, they said.  We had as many pupils as we liked--it was the
+only part of my life when I have been able to save money.  I had no
+chance to spend it.  We gave lessons all day, and in the evening were
+too tired to go out.  That year I had the misfortune to lose my dear
+mother.  I became a rich man--yes, sir, at that time I must have had
+not less than six hundred a year.
+
+"It was a long time before I saw Eilie again.  She went abroad to
+Dresden with her father's sister to learn French and German.  It was
+in the autumn of 1875 when she came back to us.  She was seventeen
+then--a beautiful young creature."  He paused, as if to gather his
+forces for description, and went on.
+
+"Tall, as a young tree, with eyes like the sky.  I would not say she
+was perfect, but her imperfections were beautiful to me.  What is it
+makes you love--ah! sir, that is very hidden and mysterious.  She had
+never lost the trick of closing her lips tightly when she remembered
+her uneven tooth.  You may say that was vanity, but in a young girl--
+and which of us is not vain, eh?  'Old men and maidens, young men and
+children!'
+
+"As I said, she came back to London to her little room, and in the
+evenings was always ready with our tea.  You mustn't suppose she was
+housewifely; there is something in me that never admired
+housewifeliness--a fine quality, no doubt, still--" He sighed.
+
+"No," he resumed, "Eilie was not like that, for she was never quite
+the same two days together.  I told you her eyes were like the sky--
+that was true of all of her.  In one thing, however, at that time,
+she always seemed the same--in love for her father.  For me!  I don't
+know what I should have expected; but my presence seemed to have the
+effect of making her dumb; I would catch her looking at me with a
+frown, and then, as if to make up to her own nature--and a more
+loving nature never came into this world, that I shall maintain to my
+dying day--she would go to her father and kiss him.  When I talked
+with him she pretended not to notice, but I could see her face grow
+cold and stubborn.  I am not quick; and it was a long time before I
+understood that she was jealous, she wanted him all to herself.  I've
+often wondered how she could be his daughter, for he was the very
+soul of justice and a slow man too--and she was as quick as a bird.
+For a long time after I saw her dislike of me, I refused to believe
+it--if one does not want to believe a thing there are always reasons
+why it should not seem true, at least so it is with me, and I suppose
+with all selfish men.
+
+"I spent evening after evening there, when, if I had not thought only
+of myself, I should have kept away.  But one day I could no longer be
+blind.
+
+"It was a Sunday in February.  I always had an invitation on Sundays
+to dine with them in the middle of the day.  There was no one in the
+sitting-room; but the door of Eilie's bedroom was open.  I heard her
+voice: 'That man, always that man!'  It was enough for me, I went
+down again without coming in, and walked about all day.
+
+"For three weeks I kept away.  To the school of course I came as
+usual, but not upstairs.  I don't know what I told Dalton--it did not
+signify what you told him, he always had a theory of his own, and was
+persuaded of its truth--a very single-minded man, sir.
+
+"But now I come to the most wonderful days of my life.  It was an
+early spring that year.  I had fallen away already from my
+resolution, and used to slink up--seldom, it's true--and spend the
+evening with them as before.  One afternoon I came up to the sitting-
+room; the light was failing--it was warm, and the windows were open.
+In the air was that feeling which comes to you once a year, in the
+spring, no matter where you may be, in a crowded street, or alone in
+a forest; only once--a feeling like--but I cannot describe it.
+
+"Eilie was sitting there.  If you don't know, sir, I can't tell you
+what it means to be near the woman one loves.  She was leaning on the
+windowsill, staring down into the street.  It was as though she might
+be looking out for some one.  I stood, hardly breathing.  She turned
+her head, and saw me.  Her eyes were strange.  They seemed to ask me
+a question.  But I couldn't have spoken for the world.  I can't tell
+you what I felt--I dared not speak, or think, or hope.  I have been
+in nineteen battles--several times in positions of some danger, when
+the lifting of a finger perhaps meant death; but I have never felt
+what I was feeling at that moment.  I knew something was coming; and
+I was paralysed with terror lest it should not come!"  He drew a long
+breath.
+
+"The servant came in with a light and broke the spell.  All that
+night I lay awake and thought of how she had looked at me, with the
+colour coming slowly up in her cheeks
+
+"It was three days before I plucked up courage to go again; and then
+I felt her eyes on me at once--she was making a 'cat's cradle' with a
+bit of string, but I could see them stealing up from her hands to my
+face.  And she went wandering about the room, fingering at
+everything.  When her father called out: 'What's the matter with you,
+Elie?' she stared at him like a child caught doing wrong.  I looked
+straight at her then, she tried to look at me, but she couldn't; and
+a minute later she went out of the room.  God knows what sort of
+nonsense I talked--I was too happy.
+
+"Then began our love.  I can't tell you of that time.  Often and
+often Dalton said to me: 'What's come to the child?  Nothing I can do
+pleases her.'  All the love she had given him was now for me; but he
+was too simple and straight to see what was going on.  How many times
+haven't I felt criminal towards him!  But when you're happy, with the
+tide in your favour, you become a coward at once....
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+"Well, sir," he went on, "we were married on her eighteenth birthday.
+It was a long time before Dalton became aware of our love.  But one
+day he said to me with a very grave look:
+
+"'Eilie has told me, Brune; I forbid it.  She's too young, and
+you're--too old!' I was then forty-five, my hair as black and thick
+as a rook's feathers, and I was strong and active.  I answered him:
+'We shall be married within a month!'  We parted in anger.  It was a
+May night, and I walked out far into the country.  There's no remedy
+for anger, or, indeed, for anything, so fine as walking.  Once I
+stopped--it was on a common, without a house or light, and the stars
+shining like jewels.  I was hot from walking, I could feel the blood
+boiling in my veins--I said to myself 'Old, are you?' And I laughed
+like a fool.  It was the thought of losing her--I wished to believe
+myself angry, but really I was afraid; fear and anger in me are very
+much the same.  A friend of mine, a bit of a poet, sir, once called
+them 'the two black wings of self.'  And so they are, so they are...!
+The next morning I went to Dalton again, and somehow I made him
+yield.  I'm not a philosopher, but it has often seemed to me that no
+benefit can come to us in this life without an equal loss somewhere,
+but does that stop us?  No, sir, not often....
+
+"We were married on the 3oth of June 1876, in the parish church.  The
+only people present were Dalton, Lucy, and Lucy's husband--a big,
+red-faced fellow, with blue eyes and a golden beard parted in two.
+It had been arranged that we should spend the honeymoon down at their
+inn on the river.  My wife, Dalton and I, went to a restaurant for
+lunch.  She was dressed in grey, the colour of a pigeon's feathers."
+He paused, leaning forward over the crutch handle of his stick;
+trying to conjure up, no doubt, that long-ago image of his young
+bride in her dress "the colour of a pigeon's feathers," with her blue
+eyes and yellow hair, the little frown between her brows, the firmly
+shut red lips, opening to speak the words, "For better, for worse,
+for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health."
+
+"At that time, sir," he went on suddenly, "I was a bit of a dandy.  I
+wore, I remember, a blue frock-coat, with white trousers, and a grey
+top hat.  Even now I should always prefer to be well dressed....
+
+"We had an excellent lunch, and drank Veuve Clicquot, a wine that you
+cannot get in these days!  Dalton came with us to the railway
+station.  I can't bear partings; and yet, they must come.
+
+"That evening we walked out in the cool under the aspen-trees.  What
+should I remember in all my life if not that night--the young
+bullocks snuffling in the gateways--the campion flowers all lighted
+up along the hedges--the moon with a halo-bats, too, in and out among
+the stems, and the shadows of the cottages as black and soft as that
+sea down there.  For a long time we stood on the river-bank beneath a
+lime-tree.  The scent of the lime flowers!  A man can only endure
+about half his joy; about half his sorrow.  Lucy and her husband," he
+went on, presently, "his name was Frank Tor--a man like an old
+Viking, who ate nothing but milk, bread, and fruit--were very good to
+us!  It was like Paradise in that inn--though the commissariat, I am
+bound to say, was limited.  The sweetbriar grew round our bedroom
+windows; when the breeze blew the leaves across the opening--it was
+like a bath of perfume.  Eilie grew as brown as a gipsy while we were
+there.  I don't think any man could have loved her more than I did.
+But there were times when my heart stood still; it didn't seem as if
+she understood how much I loved her.  One day, I remember, she coaxed
+me to take her camping.  We drifted down-stream all the afternoon,
+and in the evening pulled into the reeds under the willow-boughs and
+lit a fire for her to cook by--though, as a matter of fact, our
+provisions were cooked already--but you know how it is; all the
+romance was in having a real fire.  'We won't pretend,' she kept
+saying.  While we were eating our supper a hare came to our clearing-
+-a big fellow--how surprised he looked!  'The tall hare,' Eilie
+called him.  After that we sat by the ashes and watched the shadows,
+till at last she roamed away from me.  The time went very slowly; I
+got up to look for her.  It was past sundown.  I called and called.
+It was a long time before I found her--and she was like a wild thing,
+hot and flushed, her pretty frock torn, her hands and face scratched,
+her hair down, like some beautiful creature of the woods.  If one
+loves, a little thing will scare one.  I didn't think she had noticed
+my fright; but when we got back to the boat she threw her arms round
+my neck, and said, 'I won't ever leave you again!'
+
+"Once in the night I woke--a water-hen was crying, and in the
+moonlight a kingfisher flew across.  The wonder on the river--the
+wonder of the moon and trees, the soft bright mist, the stillness! It
+was like another world, peaceful, enchanted, far holier than ours.
+It seemed like a vision of the thoughts that come to one--how seldom!
+and go if one tries to grasp them.  Magic--poetry-sacred!"  He was
+silent a minute, then went on in a wistful voice: "I looked at her,
+sleeping like a child, with her hair loose, and her lips apart, and I
+thought: 'God do so to me, if ever I bring her pain!'  How was I to
+understand her? the mystery and innocence of her soul!  The river has
+had all my light and all my darkness, the happiest days, and the
+hours when I've despaired; and I like to think of it, for, you know,
+in time bitter memories fade, only the good remain....  Yet the good
+have their own pain, a different kind of aching, for we shall never
+get them back.  Sir," he said, turning to me with a faint smile,
+"it's no use crying over spilt milk....  In the neighbourhood of
+Lucy's inn, the Rose and Maybush--Can you imagine a prettier name?  I
+have been all over the world, and nowhere found names so pretty as in
+the English country.  There, too, every blade of grass; and flower,
+has a kind of pride about it; knows it will be cared for; and all the
+roads, trees, and cottages, seem to be certain that they will live
+for ever....  But I was going to tell you: Half a mile from the inn
+was a quiet old house which we used to call the 'Convent'--though I
+believe it was a farm.  We spent many afternoons there, trespassing
+in the orchard--Eilie was fond of trespassing; if there were a long
+way round across somebody else's property, she would always take it.
+We spent our last afternoon in that orchard, lying in the long grass.
+I was reading Childe Harold for the first time--a wonderful, a
+memorable poem!  I was at that passage--the bull-fight--you remember:
+
+"'Thrice sounds the clarion; lo! the signal falls,
+The din expands, and expectation mute'--
+
+when suddenly Eilie said: 'Suppose I were to leave off loving you?'
+It was as if some one had struck me in the face.  I jumped up, and
+tried to take her in my arms, but she slipped away; then she turned,
+and began laughing softly.  I laughed too.  I don't know why....
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+"We went back to London the next day; we lived quite close to the
+school, and about five days a week Dalton came to dine with us.  He
+would have come every day, if he had not been the sort of man who
+refuses to consult his own pleasure.  We had more pupils than ever.
+In my leisure I taught my wife to fence.  I have never seen any one
+so lithe and quick; or so beautiful as she looked in her fencing
+dress, with embroidered shoes.
+
+"I was completely happy.  When a man has obtained his desire he
+becomes careless and self-satisfied; I was watchful, however, for I
+knew that I was naturally a selfish man.  I studied to arrange my
+time and save my money, to give her as much pleasure as I could.
+What she loved best in the world just then was riding.  I bought a
+horse for her, and in the evenings of the spring and summer we rode
+together; but when it was too dark to go out late, she would ride
+alone, great distances, sometimes spend the whole day in the saddle,
+and come back so tired she could hardly walk upstairs--I can't say
+that I liked that.  It made me nervous, she was so headlong--but I
+didn't think it right to interfere with her.  I had a good deal of
+anxiety about money, for though I worked hard and made more than
+ever, there never seemed enough.  I was anxious to save--I hoped, of
+course--but we had no child, and this was a trouble to me.  She grew
+more beautiful than ever, and I think was happy.  Has it ever struck
+you that each one of us lives on the edge of a volcano?  There is, I
+imagine, no one who has not some affection or interest so strong that
+he counts the rest for nothing, beside it.  No doubt a man may live
+his life through without discovering that.  But some of us--!  I am
+not complaining; what is--is."  He pulled the cap lower over his
+eyes, and clutched his hands firmly on the top of his stick.  He was
+like a man who rushes his horse at some hopeless fence, unwilling to
+give himself time, for fear of craning at the last moment.  "In the
+spring of '78, a new pupil came to me, a young man of twenty-one who
+was destined for the army.  I took a fancy to him, and did my best to
+turn him into a good swordsman; but there was a kind of perverse
+recklessness in him; for a few minutes one would make a great
+impression, then he would grow utterly careless.  'Francis,' I would
+say, 'if I were you I should be ashamed.'  'Mr. Brune,' he would
+answer, 'why should I be ashamed?  I didn't make myself.'  God knows,
+I wish to do him justice, he had a heart--one day he drove up in a
+cab, and brought in his poor dog, who had been run over, and was
+dying: For half an hour he shut himself up with its body, we could
+hear him sobbing like a child; he came out with his eyes all red, and
+cried: 'I know where to find the brute who drove over him,' and off
+he rushed.  He had beautiful Italian eyes; a slight figure, not very
+tall; dark hair, a little dark moustache; and his lips were always a
+trifle parted--it was that, and his walk, and the way he drooped his
+eyelids, which gave him a peculiar, soft, proud look.  I used to tell
+him that he'd never make a soldier!  'Oh!' he'd answer, 'that'll be
+all right when the time comes!  He believed in a kind of luck that
+was to do everything for him, when the time came.  One day he came in
+as I was giving Eilie her lesson.  This was the first time they saw
+each other.  After that he came more often, and sometimes stayed to
+dinner with us.  I won't deny, sir, that I was glad to welcome him; I
+thought it good for Eilie.  Can there be anything more odious," he
+burst out, "than such a self-complacent blindness?  There are people
+who say, 'Poor man, he had such faith!'  Faith, sir!  Conceit!  I was
+a fool--in this world one pays for folly....
+
+"The summer came; and one Saturday in early June, Eilie, I, and
+Francis--I won't tell you his other name--went riding.  The night had
+been wet; there was no dust, and presently the sun came out--a
+glorious day!  We rode a long way.  About seven o'clock we started
+back-slowly, for it was still hot, and there was all the cool of
+night before us.  It was nine o'clock when we came to Richmond Park.
+A grand place, Richmond Park; and in that half-light wonderful, the
+deer moving so softly, you might have thought they were spirits.  We
+were silent too--great trees have that effect on me....
+
+"Who can say when changes come?  Like a shift of the wind, the old
+passes, the new is on you.  I am telling you now of a change like
+that.  Without a sign of warning, Eilie put her horse into a gallop.
+'What are you doing?' I shouted.  She looked back with a smile, then
+he dashed past me too.  A hornet might have stung them both: they
+galloped over fallen trees, under low hanging branches, up hill and
+down.  I had to watch that madness!  My horse was not so fast.  I
+rode like a demon; but fell far behind.  I am not a man who takes
+things quietly.  When I came up with them at last, I could not speak
+for rage.  They were riding side by side, the reins on the horses'
+necks, looking in each other's faces.  'You should take care,' I
+said.  'Care!' she cried; 'life is not all taking care!'  My anger
+left me.  I dropped behind, as grooms ride behind their mistresses...
+Jealousy!  No torture is so ceaseless or so black....  In those
+minutes a hundred things came up in me--a hundred memories, true,
+untrue, what do I know?  My soul was poisoned.  I tried to reason
+with myself.  It was absurd to think such things!  It was unmanly....
+Even if it were true, one should try to be a gentleman!  But I found
+myself laughing; yes, sir, laughing at that word."  He spoke faster,
+as if pouring his heart out not to a live listener, but to the night.
+"I could not sleep that night.  To lie near her with those thoughts
+in my brain was impossible!  I made an excuse, and sat up with some
+papers.  The hardest thing in life is to see a thing coming and be
+able to do nothing to prevent it.  What could I do?  Have you noticed
+how people may become utter strangers without a word?  It only needs
+a thought....  The very next day she said: 'I want to go to Lucy's.'
+'Alone?'  'Yes.'  I had made up my mind by then that she must do just
+as she wished.  Perhaps I acted wrongly; I do not know what one ought
+to do in such a case; but before she went I said to her: 'Eilie, what
+is it?'  'I don't know,' she answered; and I kissed her--that was
+all....  A month passed; I wrote to her nearly every day, and I had
+short letters from her, telling me very little of herself.  Dalton
+was a torture to me, for I could not tell him; he had a conviction
+that she was going to become a mother.  'Ah, Brune!' he said, 'my
+poor wife was just like that.'  Life, sir, is a somewhat ironical
+affair...!  He--I find it hard to speak his name--came to the school
+two or three times a week.  I used to think I saw a change, a purpose
+growing up through his recklessness; there seemed a violence in him
+as if he chafed against my blade.  I had a kind of joy in feeling I
+had the mastery, and could toss the iron out of his hand any minute
+like a straw.  I was ashamed, and yet I gloried in it.  Jealousy is a
+low thing, sir--a low, base thing!  When he asked me where my wife
+was, I told him; I was too proud to hide it.  Soon after that he came
+no more to the school.
+
+"One morning, when I could bear it no longer, I wrote, and said I was
+coming down.  I would not force myself on her, but I asked her to
+meet me in the orchard of the old house we called the Convent.  I
+asked her to be there at four o'clock.  It has always been my, belief
+that a man must neither beg anything of a woman, nor force anything
+from her.  Women are generous--they will give you what they can.  I
+sealed my letter, and posted it myself.  All the way down I kept on
+saying to myself, 'She must come--surely she will come!'
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+"I was in high spirits, but the next moment trembled like a man with
+ague.  I reached the orchard before my time.  She was not there.  You
+know what it is like to wait?  I stood still and listened; I went to
+the point whence I could see farthest; I said to myself, 'A watched
+pot never boils; if I don't look for her she will come.'  I walked up
+and down with my eyes on the ground.  The sickness of it!  A hundred
+times I took out my watch.... Perhaps it was fast, perhaps hers was
+slow--I can't tell you a thousandth part of my hopes and fears.
+There was a spring of water, in one corner.  I sat beside it, and
+thought of the last time I had been there--and something seemed to
+burst in me.  It was five o'clock before I lost all hope; there comes
+a time when you're glad that hope is dead, it means rest.  'That's
+over,' you say, 'now I can act.'  But what was I to do?  I lay down
+with my face to the ground; when one's in trouble, it's the only
+thing that helps--something to press against and cling to that can't
+give way.  I lay there for two hours, knowing all the time that I
+should play the coward.  At seven o'clock I left the orchard and went
+towards the inn; I had broken my word, but I felt happy.... I should
+see her--and, sir, nothing--nothing seemed to matter beside that.
+Tor was in the garden snipping at his roses.  He came up, and I could
+see that he couldn't look me in the face.  'Where's my wife?' I said.
+He answered, 'Let's get Lucy.'  I ran indoors.  Lucy met me with two
+letters; the first--my own--unopened; and the second, this:
+
+"'I have left you.  You were good to me, but now--it is no use.
+          EILIE.'"
+
+"She told me that a boy had brought a letter for my wife the day
+before, from a young gentleman in a boat.  When Lucy delivered it she
+asked, 'Who is he, Miss Eilie?  What will Mr. Brune say?'  My wife
+looked at her angrily, but gave her no answer--and all that day she
+never spoke.  In the evening she was gone, leaving this note on the
+bed....  Lucy cried as if her heart would break.  I took her by the
+shoulders and put her from the room; I couldn't bear the noise.  I
+sat down and tried to think.  While I was sitting there Tor came in
+with a letter.  It was written on the notepaper of an inn twelve
+miles up the river: these were the words.
+
+"'Eilie is mine.  I am ready to meet you where you like.'"
+
+He went on with a painful evenness of speech.  "When I read those
+words, I had only one thought--to reach them; I ran down to the
+river, and chose out the lightest boat.  Just as I was starting, Tor
+came running.  'You dropped this letter, sir,' be said.  'Two pair of
+arms are better than one.'  He came into the boat.  I took the sculls
+and I pulled out into the stream.  I pulled like a madman; and that
+great man, with his bare arms crossed, was like a huge, tawny bull
+sitting there opposite me.  Presently he took my place, and I took
+the rudder lines.  I could see his chest, covered with hair, heaving
+up and down, it gave me a sort of comfort--it meant that we were
+getting nearer.  Then it grew dark, there was no moon, I could barely
+see the bank; there's something in the dark which drives one into
+oneself.  People tell you there comes a moment when your nature is
+decided--'saved' or 'lost' as they call it--for good or evil.  That
+is not true, your self is always with you, and cannot be altered;
+but, sir, I believe that in a time of agony one finds out what are
+the things one can do, and what are those one cannot.  You get to
+know yourself, that's all.  And so it was with me.  Every thought and
+memory and passion was so clear and strong!  I wanted to kill him.  I
+wanted to kill myself.  But her--no!  We are taught that we possess
+our wives, body and soul, we are brought up in that faith, we are
+commanded to believe it--but when I was face to face with it, those
+words had no meaning; that belief, those commands, they were without
+meaning to me, they were--vile.  Oh yes, I wanted to find comfort in
+them, I wanted to hold on to them--but I couldn't.  You may force a
+body; how can you force a soul?  No, no--cowardly!  But I wanted to--
+I wanted to kill him and force her to come back to me!  And then,
+suddenly, I felt as if I were pressing right on the most secret nerve
+of my heart.  I seemed to see her face, white and quivering, as if
+I'd stamped my heel on it.  They say this world is ruled by force; it
+may be true--I know I have a weak spot in me....  I couldn't bear it.
+At last I Jumped to my feet and shouted out, 'Turn the boat round!'
+Tor looked up at me as if I had gone mad.  And I had gone mad.  I
+seized the boat-hook and threatened him; I called him fearful names.
+'Sir,' he said, 'I don't take such names from any one!'  'You'll take
+them from me,' I shouted; 'turn the boat round, you idiot, you hound,
+you fish!...'  I have a terrible temper, a perfect curse to me.  He
+seemed amazed, even frightened; he sat down again suddenly and pulled
+the boat round.  I fell on the seat, and hid my face.  I believe the
+moon came up; there must have been a mist too, for I was cold as
+death.  In this life, sir, we cannot hide our faces--but by degrees
+the pain of wounds grows less.  Some will have it that such blows are
+mortal; it is not so.  Time is merciful.
+
+"In the early morning I went back to London.  I had fever on me--and
+was delirious.  I dare say I should have killed myself if I had not
+been so used to weapons--they and I were too old friends, I suppose--
+I can't explain.  It was a long while before I was up and about.
+Dalton nursed me through it; his great heavy moustache had grown
+quite white.  We never mentioned her; what was the good?  There were
+things to settle of course, the lawyer--this was unspeakably
+distasteful to me.  I told him it was to be as she wished, but the
+fellow would come to me, with his--there, I don't want to be unkind.
+I wished him to say it was my fault, but he said--I remember his
+smile now--he said, that was impossible, would be seen through,
+talked of collusion--I don't understand these things, and what's
+more, I can't bear them, they are--dirty.
+
+"Two years later, when I had come back to London, after the Russo-
+Turkish war, I received a letter from her.  I have it here."  He took
+an old, yellow sheet of paper out of a leathern pocketbook, spread it
+in his fingers, and sat staring at it.  For some minutes he did not
+speak.
+
+"In the autumn of that same year she died in childbirth.  He had
+deserted her.  Fortunately for him, he was killed on the Indian
+frontier, that very year.  If she had lived she would have been
+thirty-two next June; not a great age....  I know I am what they call
+a crank; doctors will tell you that you can't be cured of a bad
+illness, and be the same man again.  If you are bent, to force
+yourself straight must leave you weak in another place.  I must and
+will think well of women--everything done, and everything said
+against them is a stone on her dead body.  Could you sit, and listen
+to it?"  As though driven by his own question, he rose, and paced up
+and down.  He came back to the seat at last.
+
+"That, sir, is the reason of my behaviour this afternoon, and again
+this evening.  You have been so kind, I wanted!--wanted to tell you.
+She had a little daughter--Lucy has her now.  My friend Dalton is
+dead; there would have been no difficulty about money, but, I am
+sorry to say, that he was swindled--disgracefully.  It fell to me to
+administer his affairs--he never knew it, but he died penniless; he
+had trusted some wretched fellows--had an idea they would make his
+fortune.  As I very soon found, they had ruined him.  It was
+impossible to let Lucy--such a dear woman--bear that burden.  I have
+tried to make provision; but, you see," he took hold of my sleeve,
+"I, too, have not been fortunate; in fact, it's difficult to save a
+great deal out of L 190 a year; but the capital is perfectly safe--
+and I get L 47, 10s. a quarter, paid on the nail.  I have often been
+tempted to reinvest at a greater rate of interest, but I've never
+dared.  Anyway, there are no debts--I've been obliged to make a rule
+not to buy what I couldn't pay for on the spot....  Now I am really
+plaguing you--but I wanted to tell you--in case-anything should
+happen to me."  He seemed to take a sudden scare, stiffened, twisted
+his moustache, and muttering, "Your great kindness! Shall never
+forget!" turned hurriedly away.
+
+He vanished; his footsteps, and the tap of his stick grew fainter and
+fainter.  They died out.  He was gone.  Suddenly I got up and
+hastened after him.  I soon stopped--what was there to say?
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+The following day I was obliged to go to Nice, and did not return
+till midnight.  The porter told me that Jules le Ferrier had been to
+see me.  The next morning, while I was still in bed, the door was
+opened, and Jules appeared.  His face was very pale; and the moment
+he stood still drops of perspiration began coursing down his cheeks.
+
+"Georges!" he said, "he is dead.  There, there!  How stupid you look!
+My man is packing.  I have half an hour before the train; my evidence
+shall come from Italy.  I have done my part, the rest is for you.
+Why did you have that dinner?  The Don Quixote!  The idiot!  The poor
+man!  Don't move!  Have you a cigar?  Listen!  When you followed him,
+I followed the other two.  My infernal curiosity!  Can you conceive a
+greater folly?  How fast they walked, those two! feeling their
+cheeks, as if he had struck them both, you know; it was funny.  They
+soon saw me, for their eyes were all round about their heads; they
+had the mark of a glove on their cheeks."  The colour began to come
+back, into Jules's face; he gesticulated with his cigar and became
+more and more dramatic.  "They waited for me.  'Tiens!' said one,
+'this gentleman was with him.  My friend's name is M. Le Baron de---.
+The man who struck him was an odd-looking person; kindly inform me
+whether it is possible for my friend to meet him?'  Eh!" commented
+Jules, "he was offensive!  Was it for me to give our dignity away?
+'Perfectly, monsieur!'  I answered.  'In that case,' he said, 'please
+give me his name and ad dress....  I could not remember his name, and
+as for the address, I never knew it...!  I reflected. 'That,' I said,
+'I am unable to do, for special reasons.'  'Aha!' he said, 'reasons
+that will prevent our fighting him, I suppose?  'On the contrary,' I
+said.  'I will convey your request to him; I may mention that I have
+heard he is the best swordsman and pistol-shot in Europe.  Good-
+night!'  I wished to give them something to dream of, you
+understand....  Patience, my dear!  Patience!  I was, coming to you,
+but I thought I would let them sleep on it--there was plenty of time!
+But yesterday morning I came into the Place, and there he was on the
+bench, with a big dog.  I declare to you he blushed like a young
+girl.  'Sir,' he said, 'I was hoping to meet you; last evening I made
+a great disturbance.  I took an unpardonable liberty'--and he put in
+my hand an envelope.  My friend, what do you suppose it contained--a
+pair of gloves!  Senor Don Punctilioso, hein?  He was the devil, this
+friend of yours; he fascinated me with his gentle eyes and his white
+moustachettes, his humility, his flames--poor man...!  I told him I
+had been asked to take him a challenge.  'If anything comes of it,' I
+said, 'make use of me!'  'Is that so?' he said.  'I am most grateful
+for your kind offer.  Let me see--it is so long since I fought a
+duel.  The sooner it's over the better.  Could you arrange to-morrow
+morning?  Weapons?  Yes; let them choose.'  You see, my friend, there
+was no hanging back here; nous voila en train."
+
+Jules took out his watch.  "I have sixteen minutes.  It is lucky for
+you that you were away yesterday, or you would be in my shoes now.  I
+fixed the place, right hand of the road to Roquebrune, just by the
+railway cutting, and the time--five-thirty of the morning.  It was
+arranged that I should call for him.  Disgusting hour; I have not
+been up so early since I fought Jacques Tirbaut in '85.  At five
+o'clock I found him ready and drinking tea with rum in it--singular
+man! he made me have some too, brrr!  He was shaved, and dressed in
+that old frock-coat.  His great dog jumped into the carriage, but he
+bade her get out, took her paws on his shoulders, and whispered in
+her ear some Italian words; a charm, hein! and back she went, the
+tail between the legs.  We drove slowly, so as not to shake his arm.
+He was more gay than I.  All the way he talked to me of you: how kind
+you were! how good you had been to him!  'You do not speak of
+yourself!' I said.  'Have you no friends, nothing to say?  Sometimes
+an accident will happen!'  'Oh!' he answered, 'there is no danger;
+but if by any chance--well, there is a letter in my pocket.'  'And if
+you should kill him?' I said.  'But I shall not,' he answered slyly:
+'do you think I am going to fire at him?  No, no; he is too young.'
+'But,' I said, 'I-- 'I am not going to stand that!'  'Yes,' he
+replied, 'I owe him a shot; but there is no danger--not the least
+danger.'  We had arrived; already they were there.  Ah bah!  You know
+the preliminaries, the politeness--this duelling, you know, it is
+absurd, after all.  We placed them at twenty paces.  It is not a bad
+place.  There are pine-trees round, and rocks; at that hour it was
+cool and grey as a church.  I handed him the pistol.  How can I
+describe him to you, standing there, smoothing the barrel with his
+fingers!  'What a beautiful thing a good pistol!' he said.  'Only a
+fool or a madman throws away his life,' I said.  'Certainly,' he
+replied, 'certainly; but there is no danger,' and he regarded me,
+raising his moustachette.
+
+"There they stood then, back to back, with the mouths of their
+pistols to the sky.  ' Un!' I cried, 'deux! tirez!' They turned, I
+saw the smoke of his shot go straight up like a prayer; his pistol
+dropped.  I ran to him.  He looked surprised, put out his hand, and
+fell into my arms.  He was dead.  Those fools came running up.  'What
+is it?' cried one.  I made him a bow.  'As you see,' I said; 'you
+have made a pretty shot.  My friend fired in the air.  Messieurs, you
+had better breakfast in Italy.'  We carried him to the carriage, and
+covered him with a rug; the others drove for the frontier.  I brought
+him to his room.  Here is his letter."  Jules stopped; tears were
+running down his face.  "He is dead; I have closed his eyes.  Look
+here, you know, we are all of us cads--it is the rule; but this--
+this, perhaps, was the exception."  And without another word he
+rushed away....
+
+Outside the old fellow's lodging a dismounted cocher was standing
+disconsolate in the sun. "How was I to know they were going to fight
+a duel?" he burst out on seeing me.  "He had white hair--I call you
+to witness he had white hair.  This is bad for me: they will ravish
+my licence.  Aha! you will see--this is bad for me!"  I gave him the
+slip and found my way upstairs.  The old fellow was alone, lying on
+the bed, his feet covered with a rug as if he might feel cold; his
+eyes were closed, but in this sleep of death, he still had that air
+of faint surprise.  At full length, watching the bed intently, Freda
+lay, as she lay nightly when he was really asleep.  The shutters were
+half open; the room still smelt slightly of rum.  I stood for a long
+time looking at the face: the little white fans of moustache brushed
+upwards even in death, the hollows in his cheeks, the quiet of his
+figure; he was like some old knight....  The dog broke the spell.
+She sat up, and resting her paws on the bed, licked his face.  I went
+downstairs--I couldn't bear to hear her howl.  This was his letter to
+me, written in a pointed handwriting:
+
+"MY DEAR SIR,--Should you read this, I shall be gone.  I am ashamed
+to trouble you--a man should surely manage so as not to give trouble;
+and yet I believe you will not consider me importunate.  If, then,
+you will pick up the pieces of an old fellow, I ask you to have my
+sword, the letter enclosed in this, and the photograph that stands on
+the stove buried with me.  My will and the acknowledgments of my
+property are between the leaves of the Byron in my tin chest; they
+should go to Lucy Tor--address thereon.  Perhaps you will do me the
+honour to retain for yourself any of my books that may give you
+pleasure.  In the Pilgrim's Progress you will find some excellent
+recipes for Turkish coffee, Italian and Spanish dishes, and washing
+wounds.  The landlady's daughter speaks Italian, and she would, I
+know, like to have Freda; the poor dog will miss me.  I have read of
+old Indian warriors taking their horses and dogs with them to the
+happy hunting-grounds.  Freda would come--noble animals are dogs! She
+eats once a day--a good large meal--and requires much salt.  If you
+have animals of your own, sir, don't forget--all animals require
+salt.  I have no debts, thank God!  The money in my pockets would
+bury me decently--not that there is any danger.  And I am ashamed to
+weary you with details--the least a man can do is not to make a fuss-
+-and yet he must be found ready.--Sir, with profound gratitude, your
+servant,
+
+"ROGER BRUNE."
+
+
+Everything was as he had said.  The photograph on the stove was that
+of a young girl of nineteen or twenty, dressed in an old-fashioned
+style, with hair gathered backward in a knot.  The eyes gazed at you
+with a little frown, the lips were tightly closed; the expression of
+the face was eager, quick, wilful, and, above all, young.
+
+The tin trunk was scented with dry fragments of some herb, the
+history of which in that trunk man knoweth not....  There were a few
+clothes, but very few, all older than those he usually wore.  Besides
+the Byron and Pilgrim's Progress were Scott's Quentin Durward,
+Captain Marryat's Midshipman Easy, a pocket Testament, and a long and
+frightfully stiff book on the art of fortifying towns, much thumbed,
+and bearing date 1863.  By far the most interesting thing I found,
+however, was a diary, kept down to the preceding Christmas.  It was a
+pathetic document, full of calculations of the price of meals;
+resolutions to be careful over this or that; doubts whether he must
+not give up smoking; sentences of fear that Freda had not enough to
+eat.  It appeared that he had tried to live on ninety pounds a year,
+and send the other hundred pounds home to Lucy for the child; in this
+struggle he was always failing, having to send less than the amount-
+the entries showed that this was a nightmare to him.  The last words,
+written on Christmas Day, were these "What is the use of writing
+this, since it records nothing but failure!"
+
+The landlady's daughter and myself were at the funeral.  The same
+afternoon I went into the concert-room, where I had spoken to him
+first.  When I came out Freda was lying at the entrance, looking into
+the faces of every one that passed, and sniffing idly at their heels.
+Close by the landlady's daughter hovered, a biscuit in her hand, and
+a puzzled, sorry look on her face.
+
+September 1900.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+MY BROTHER
+
+HUBERT GALSWORTHY
+
+
+
+
+SALVATION OF A FORSYTE
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+Swithin Forsyte lay in bed.  The corners of his mouth under his white
+moustache drooped towards his double chin.  He panted:
+
+"My doctor says I'm in a bad way, James."
+
+His twin-brother placed his hand behind his ear.  "I can't hear you.
+They tell me I ought to take a cure.  There's always a cure wanted
+for something.  Emily had a cure."
+
+Swithin replied: "You mumble so.  I hear my man, Adolph.  I trained
+him....  You ought to have an ear-trumpet.  You're getting very
+shaky, James."
+
+There was silence; then James Forsyte, as if galvanised, remarked: "I
+s'pose you've made your will.  I s'pose you've left your money to the
+family; you've nobody else to leave it to.  There was Danson died the
+other day, and left his money to a hospital"
+
+The hairs of Swithin's white moustache bristled.  "My fool of a
+doctor told me to make my will," he said, "I hate a fellow who tells
+you to make your will.  My appetite's good; I ate a partridge last
+night.  I'm all the better for eating.  He told me to leave off
+champagne!  I eat a good breakfast.  I'm not eighty.  You're the same
+age, James.  You look very shaky."
+
+James Forsyte said: "You ought to have another opinion.  Have Blank;
+he's the first man now.  I had him for Emily; cost me two hundred
+guineas.  He sent her to Homburg; that's the first place now.  The
+Prince was there--everybody goes there."
+
+Swithin Forsyte answered: "I don't get any sleep at night, now I
+can't get out; and I've bought a new carriage--gave a pot of money
+for it.  D' you ever have bronchitis?  They tell me champagne's
+dangerous; it's my belief I couldn't take a better thing."
+
+James Forsyte rose.
+
+"You ought to have another opinion.  Emily sent her love; she would
+have come in, but she had to go to Niagara.  Everybody goes there;
+it's the place now.  Rachel goes every morning: she overdoes it--
+she'll be laid up one of these days.  There's a fancy ball there to-
+night; the Duke gives the prizes."
+
+Swithin Forsyte said angrily: "I can't get things properly cooked
+here; at the club I get spinach decently done."  The bed-clothes
+jerked at the tremor of his legs.
+
+James Forsyte replied: "You must have done well with Tintos; you must
+have made a lot of money by them.  Your ground-rents must be falling
+in, too.  You must have any amount you don't know what to do with."
+He mouthed the words, as if his lips were watering.
+
+Swithin Forsyte glared.  "Money!" he said; "my doctor's bill's
+enormous."
+
+James Forsyte stretched out a cold, damp hand "Goodbye! You ought to
+have another opinion.  I can't keep the horses waiting: they're a new
+pair--stood me in three hundred.  You ought to take care of yourself.
+I shall speak to Blank about you.  You ought to have him--everybody
+says he's the first man.  Good-bye!"
+
+Swithin Forsyte continued to stare at the ceiling.  He thought: 'A
+poor thing, James! a selfish beggar!  Must be worth a couple of
+hundred thousand!'  He wheezed, meditating on life....
+
+He was ill and lonely.  For many years he had been lonely, and for
+two years ill; but as he had smoked his first cigar, so he would live
+his life-stoutly, to its predestined end.  Every day he was driven to
+the club; sitting forward on the spring cushions of a single
+brougham, his hands on his knees, swaying a little, strangely solemn.
+He ascended the steps into that marble hall--the folds of his chin
+wedged into the aperture of his collar--walking squarely with a
+stick.  Later he would dine, eating majestically, and savouring his
+food, behind a bottle of champagne set in an ice-pail--his waistcoat
+defended by a napkin, his eyes rolling a little or glued in a stare
+on the waiter.  Never did he suffer his head or back to droop, for it
+was not distinguished so to do.
+
+Because he was old and deaf, he spoke to no one; and no one spoke to
+him.  The club gossip, an Irishman, said to each newcomer: "Old
+Forsyte!  Look at 'um!  Must ha' had something in his life to sour
+'um!"  But Swithin had had nothing in his life to sour him.
+
+For many days now he had lain in bed in a room exuding silver,
+crimson, and electric light, smelling of opopanax and of cigars.  The
+curtains were drawn, the firelight gleamed; on a table by his bed
+were a jug of barley-water and the Times.  He made an attempt to
+read, failed, and fell again to thinking.  His face with its square
+chin, looked like a block of pale leather bedded in the pillow.  It
+was lonely!  A woman in the room would have made all the difference!
+Why had he never married?  He breathed hard, staring froglike at the
+ceiling; a memory had come into his mind.  It was a long time ago--
+forty odd years--but it seemed like yesterday....
+
+It happened when he was thirty-eight, for the first and only time in
+his life travelling on the Continent, with his twin-brother James and
+a man named Traquair.  On the way from Germany to Venice, he had
+found himself at the Hotel Goldene Alp at Salzburg.  It was late
+August, and weather for the gods: sunshine on the walls and the
+shadows of the vine-leaves, and at night, the moonlight, and again on
+the walls the shadows of the vine-leaves.  Averse to the suggestions
+of other people, Swithin had refused to visit the Citadel; he had
+spent the day alone in the window of his bedroom, smoking a
+succession of cigars, and disparaging the appearance of the passers-
+by.  After dinner he was driven by boredom into the streets.  His
+chest puffed out like a pigeon's, and with something of a pigeon's
+cold and inquiring eye, he strutted, annoyed at the frequency of
+uniforms, which seemed to him both needless and offensive.  His
+spleen rose at this crowd of foreigners, who spoke an unintelligible
+language, wore hair on their faces, and smoked bad tobacco.  'A queer
+lot!' he thought.  The sound of music from a cafe attracted him; he
+walked in, vaguely moved by a wish for the distinction of adventure,
+without the trouble which adventure usually brought with it; spurred
+too, perhaps, by an after-dinner demon.  The cafe was the bier-halle
+of the 'Fifties, with a door at either end, and lighted by a large
+wooden lantern.  On a small dais three musicians were fiddling.
+Solitary men, or groups, sat at some dozen tables, and the waiters
+hurried about replenishing glasses; the air was thick with smoke.
+Swithin sat down.  "Wine!" he said sternly.  The astonished waiter
+brought him wine.  Swithin pointed to a beer glass on the table.
+"Here!" he said, with the same ferocity.  The waiter poured out the
+wine.  'Ah!' thought Swithin, 'they can understand if they like.'  A
+group of officers close by were laughing; Swithin stared at them
+uneasily.  A hollow cough sounded almost in his ear.  To his left a
+man sat reading, with his elbows on the corners of a journal, and his
+gaunt shoulders raised almost to his eyes.  He had a thin, long nose,
+broadening suddenly at the nostrils; a black-brown beard, spread in a
+savage fan over his chest; what was visible of the face was the
+colour of old parchment.  A strange, wild, haughty-looking creature!
+Swithin observed his clothes with some displeasure--they were the
+clothes of a journalist or strolling actor.  And yet he was
+impressed.  This was singular.  How could he be impressed by a fellow
+in such clothes!  The man reached out a hand, covered with black
+hairs, and took up a tumbler that contained a dark-coloured fluid.
+'Brandy!' thought Swithin.  The crash of a falling chair startled
+him--his neighbour had risen.  He was of immense height, and very
+thin; his great beard seemed to splash away from his mouth; he was
+glaring at the group of officers, and speaking.  Swithin made out two
+words: "Hunde! Deutsche Hunde!" 'Hounds! Dutch hounds!' he thought:
+'Rather strong!'  One of the officers had jumped up, and now drew his
+sword.  The tall man swung his chair up, and brought it down with a
+thud.  Everybody round started up and closed on him.  The tall man
+cried out, "To me, Magyars!"
+
+Swithin grinned.  The tall man fighting such odds excited his
+unwilling admiration; he had a momentary impulse to go to his
+assistance.  'Only get a broken nose!' he thought, and looked for a
+safe corner.  But at that moment a thrown lemon struck him on the
+jaw.  He jumped out of his chair and rushed at the officers.  The
+Hungarian, swinging his chair, threw him a look of gratitude--Swithin
+glowed with momentary admiration of himself.  A sword blade grazed
+his--arm; he felt a sudden dislike of the Hungarian.  'This is too
+much,' he thought, and, catching up a chair, flung it at the wooden
+lantern.  There was a crash--faces and swords vanished.  He struck a
+match, and by the light of it bolted for the door.  A second later he
+was in the street.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+A voice said in English, "God bless you, brother!"
+
+Swithin looked round, and saw the tall Hungarian holding out his
+hand.  He took it, thinking, 'What a fool I've been!'  There was
+something in the Hungarian's gesture which said, "You are worthy of
+me!'
+
+It was annoying, but rather impressive.  The man seemed even taller
+than before; there was a cut on his cheek, the blood from which was
+trickling down his beard.  "You English!" he said.  "I saw you stone
+Haynau--I saw you cheer Kossuth.  The free blood of your people cries
+out to us."  He looked at Swithin.  "You are a big man, you have a
+big soul--and strong, how you flung them down! Ha!"  Swithin had an
+impulse to take to his heels.  "My name," said the Hungarian, "is
+Boleskey.  You are my friend."  His English was good.
+
+'Bulsh-kai-ee, Burlsh-kai-ee,' thought Swithin; 'what a devil of a
+name!'  "Mine," he said sulkily, "is Forsyte."
+
+The Hungarian repeated it.
+
+"You've had a nasty jab on the cheek," said Swithin; the sight of the
+matted beard was making him feel sick.  The Hungarian put his fingers
+to his cheek, brought them away wet, stared at them, then with an
+indifferent air gathered a wisp of his beard and crammed it against
+the cut.
+
+"Ugh!" said Swithin.  "Here! Take my handkerchief!"
+
+The Hungarian bowed.  "Thank you!" he said; "I couldn't think of it!
+Thank you a thousand times!"
+
+"Take it!" growled Swithin; it seemed to him suddenly of the first
+importance.  He thrust the handkerchief into the Hungarian's hand,
+and felt a pain in his arm.  'There!' he thought, 'I've strained a
+muscle.'
+
+The Hungarian kept muttering, regardless of passers-by, "Swine! How
+you threw them over!  Two or three cracked heads, anyway--the
+cowardly swine!"
+
+"Look here!" said Swithin suddenly; "which is my way to the Goldene
+Alp?"
+
+The Hungarian replied, "But you are coming with me, for a glass of
+wine?"
+
+Swithin looked at the ground.  'Not if I know it!' he thought.
+
+"Ah!" said the Hungarian with dignity, "you do not wish for my
+friendship!"
+
+'Touchy beggar!' thought Swithin.  "Of course," he stammered, "if you
+put it in that way--"
+
+The Hungarian bowed, murmuring, "Forgive me!"
+
+They had not gone a dozen steps before a youth, with a beardless face
+and hollow cheeks, accosted them.  "For the love of Christ,
+gentlemen," he said, "help me!"
+
+"Are you a German?" asked Boleskey.
+
+"Yes," said the youth.
+
+"Then you may rot!"
+
+"Master, look here!" Tearing open his coat, the youth displayed his
+skin, and a leather belt drawn tight round it.  Again Swithin felt
+that desire to take to his heels.  He was filled with horrid
+forebodings--a sense of perpending intimacy with things such as no
+gentleman had dealings with.
+
+The Hungarian crossed himself.  "Brother," he said to the youth,
+"come you in!"
+
+Swithin looked at them askance, and followed.  By a dim light they
+groped their way up some stairs into a large room, into which the
+moon was shining through a window bulging over the street.  A lamp
+burned low; there was a smell of spirits and tobacco, with a faint,
+peculiar scent, as of rose leaves.  In one corner stood a czymbal, in
+another a great pile of newspapers.  On the wall hung some old-
+fashioned pistols, and a rosary of yellow beads.  Everything was
+tidily arranged, but dusty.  Near an open fireplace was a table with
+the remains of a meal.  The ceiling, floor, and walls were all of
+dark wood.  In spite of the strange disharmony, the room had a sort
+of refinement.  The Hungarian took a bottle out of a cupboard and,
+filling some glasses, handed one to Swithin.  Swithin put it gingerly
+to his nose.  'You never know your luck! Come!' he thought, tilting
+it slowly into his mouth.  It was thick, too sweet, but of a fine
+flavour.
+
+"Brothers!" said the Hungarian, refilling, "your healths!"
+
+The youth tossed off his wine.  And Swithin this time did the same;
+he pitied this poor devil of a youth now.  "Come round to-morrow!" he
+said, "I'll give you a shirt or two."  When the youth was gone,
+however, he remembered with relief that he had not given his address.
+
+'Better so,' he reflected.  'A humbug, no doubt.'
+
+"What was that you said to him?" he asked of the Hungarian.
+
+"I said," answered BoLeskey, "'You have eaten and drunk; and now you
+are my enemy!'"
+
+"Quite right!" said Swithin, "quite right! A beggar is every man's
+enemy."
+
+"You do not understand," the Hungarian replied politely.  "While he
+was a beggar--I, too, have had to beg" (Swithin thought, 'Good God!
+this is awful!'), "but now that he is no longer hungry, what is he
+but a German?  No Austrian dog soils my floors!"
+
+His nostrils, as it seemed to Swithin, had distended in an unpleasant
+fashion; and a wholly unnecessary raucousness invaded his voice.  "I
+am an exile--all of my blood are exiles.  Those Godless dogs!"
+Swithin hurriedly assented.
+
+As he spoke, a face peeped in at the door.
+
+"Rozsi!" said the Hungarian.  A young girl came in.  She was rather
+short, with a deliciously round figure and a thick plait of hair.
+She smiled, and showed her even teeth; her little, bright, wide-set
+grey eyes glanced from one man to the other.  Her face was round,
+too, high in the cheekbones, the colour of wild roses, with brows
+that had a twist-up at the corners.  With a gesture of alarm, she put
+her hand to her cheek, and called, "Margit!"  An older girl appeared,
+taller, with fine shoulders, large eyes, a pretty mouth, and what
+Swithin described to himself afterwards as a "pudding" nose.  Both
+girls, with little cooing sounds, began attending to their father's
+face.
+
+Swithin turned his back to them.  His arm pained him.
+
+'This is what comes of interfering,' he thought sulkily; 'I might
+have had my neck broken!' Suddenly a soft palm was placed in his, two
+eyes, half-fascinated, half-shy, looked at him; then a voice called,
+"Rozsi!" the door was slammed, he was alone again with the Hungarian,
+harassed by a sense of soft disturbance.
+
+"Your daughter's name is Rosy?" he said; "we have it in England--from
+rose, a flower."
+
+"Rozsi (Rozgi)," the Hungarian replied; "your English is a hard
+tongue, harder than French, German, or Czechish, harder than Russian,
+or Roumanian--I know no more."
+
+"What?" said Swithin, "six languages?"  Privately he thought, 'He
+knows how to lie, anyway.'
+
+"If you lived in a country like mine," muttered the Hungarian, "with
+all men's hands against you!  A free people--dying--but not dead!"
+
+Swithin could not imagine what he was talking of.  This man's face,
+with its linen bandage, gloomy eyes, and great black wisps of beard,
+his fierce mutterings, and hollow cough, were all most unpleasant.
+He seemed to be suffering from some kind of mental dog-bite.  His
+emotion indeed appeared so indecent, so uncontrolled and open, that
+its obvious sincerity produced a sort of awe in Swithin.  It was like
+being forced to look into a furnace.  Boleskey stopped roaming up and
+down.  "You think it's over?" he said; "I tell you, in the breast of
+each one of us Magyars there is a hell.  What is sweeter than life?
+What is more sacred than each breath we draw?  Ah! my country!"
+These words were uttered so slowly, with such intense mournfulness,
+that Swithin's jaw relaxed; he converted the movement to a yawn.
+
+"Tell me," said Boleskey, "what would you do if the French conquered
+you?"
+
+Swithin smiled.  Then suddenly, as though something had hurt him, he
+grunted, "The 'Froggies'?  Let 'em try!"
+
+"Drink!" said Boleskey--"there is nothing like it"; he filled
+Swithin's glass.  "I will tell you my story."
+
+Swithin rose hurriedly.  "It's late," he said.  "This is good stuff,
+though; have you much of it?"
+
+"It is the last bottle."
+
+"What?" said Swithin; "and you gave it to a beggar?"
+
+"My name is Boleskey--Stefan," the Hungarian said, raising his head;
+"of the Komorn Boleskeys."  The simplicity of this phrase--as who
+shall say: What need of further description?--made an impression on
+Swithin; he stopped to listen.  Boleskey's story went on and on.
+"There were many abuses," boomed his deep voice, "much wrong done--
+much cowardice.  I could see clouds gathering--rolling over our
+plains.  The Austrian wished to strangle the breath of our mouths--to
+take from us the shadow of our liberty--the shadow--all we had.  Two
+years ago--the year of '48, when every man and boy answered the great
+voice--brother, a dog's life!--to use a pen when all of your blood
+are fighting, but it was decreed for me!  My son was killed; my
+brothers taken--and myself was thrown out like a dog--I had written
+out my heart, I had written out all the blood that was in my body!"
+He seemed to tower, a gaunt shadow of a man, with gloomy, flickering
+eyes staring at the wall.
+
+Swithin rose, and stammered, "Much obliged--very interesting."
+Boleskey made no effort to detain him, but continued staring at the
+wall.  "Good-night!" said Swithin, and stamped heavily downstairs.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+When at last Swithin reached the Goldene Alp, he found his brother
+and friend standing uneasily at the door.  Traquair, a prematurely
+dried-up man, with whiskers and a Scotch accent, remarked, "Ye're
+airly, man!"  Swithin growled something unintelligible, and swung up
+to bed.  He discovered a slight cut on his arm.  He was in a savage
+temper--the elements had conspired to show him things he did not want
+to see; yet now and then a memory of Rozsi, of her soft palm in his,
+a sense of having been stroked and flattered, came over him.  During
+breakfast next morning his brother and Traquair announced their
+intention of moving on.  James Forsyte, indeed, remarked that it was
+no place for a "collector," since all the "old" shops were in the
+hands of Jews or very grasping persons--he had discovered this at
+once.  Swithin pushed his cup aside.  "You may do what you like," he
+said, "I'm staying here."
+
+James Forsyte replied, tumbling over his own words: "Why! what do you
+want to stay here for?  There's nothing for you to do here--there's
+nothing to see here, unless you go up the Citadel, an' you won't do
+that."
+
+Swithin growled, "Who says so?"  Having gratified his perversity, he
+felt in a better temper.  He had slung his arm in a silk sash, and
+accounted for it by saying he had slipped.  Later he went out and
+walked on to the bridge.  In the brilliant sunshine spires were
+glistening against the pearly background of the hills; the town had a
+clean, joyous air.  Swithin glanced at the Citadel and thought,
+'Looks a strong place! Shouldn't wonder if it were impregnable!'  And
+this for some occult reason gave him pleasure.  It occurred to him
+suddenly to go and look for the Hungarian's house.
+
+About noon, after a hunt of two hours, he was gazing about him
+blankly, pale with heat, but more obstinate than ever, when a voice
+above him called, "Mister!" He looked up and saw Rozsi.  She was
+leaning her round chin on her round hand, gazing down at him with her
+deepset, clever eyes.  When Swithin removed his hat, she clapped her
+hands.  Again he had the sense of being admired, caressed.  With a
+careless air, that sat grotesquely on his tall square person, he
+walked up to the door; both girls stood in the passage.  Swithin felt
+a confused desire to speak in some foreign tongue.  "Maam'selles," he
+began, "er--bong jour-er, your father--pare, comment?"
+
+"We also speak English," said the elder girl; "will you come in,
+please?"
+
+Swithin swallowed a misgiving, and entered.  The room had a worn
+appearance by daylight, as if it had always been the nest of tragic
+or vivid lives.  He sat down, and his eyes said: "I am a stranger,
+but don't try to get the better of me, please--that is impossible."
+The girls looked at him in silence.  Rozsi wore a rather short skirt
+of black stuff, a white shirt, and across her shoulders an
+embroidered yoke; her sister was dressed in dark green, with a coral
+necklace; both girls had their hair in plaits.  After a minute Rozsi
+touched the sleeve of his hurt arm.
+
+"It's nothing!" muttered Swithin.
+
+"Father fought with a chair, but you had no chair," she said in a
+wondering voice.
+
+He doubled the fist of his sound arm and struck a blow at space.  To
+his amazement she began to laugh.  Nettled at this, he put his hand
+beneath the heavy table and lifted it.  Rozsi clapped her hands.  "Ah
+I now I see--how strong you are!"  She made him a curtsey and whisked
+round to the window.  He found the quick intelligence of her eyes
+confusing; sometimes they seemed to look beyond him at something
+invisible--this, too, confused him.  From Margit he learned that they
+had been two years in England, where their father had made his living
+by teaching languages; they had now been a year in Salzburg.
+
+"We wait," suddenly said.  Rozsi; and Margit, with a solemn face,
+repeated, "We wait."
+
+Swithin's eyes swelled a little with his desire to see what they were
+waiting for.  How queer they were, with their eyes that gazed beyond
+him!  He looked at their figures.  'She would pay for dressing,' he
+thought, and he tried to imagine Rozsi in a skirt with proper
+flounces, a thin waist, and hair drawn back over her ears.  She would
+pay for dressing, with that supple figure, fluffy hair, and little
+hands!  And instantly his own hands, face, and clothes disturbed him.
+He got up, examined the pistols on the wall, and felt resentment at
+the faded, dusty room.  'Smells like a pot-house!' he thought.  He
+sat down again close to Rozsi.
+
+"Do you love to dance?" she asked; "to dance is to live.  First you
+hear the music--how your feet itch!  It is wonderful!  You begin
+slow, quick--quicker; you fly--you know nothing--your feet are in the
+air.  It is wonderful!"
+
+A slow flush had mounted into Swithin's face.
+
+"Ah!" continued Rozsi, her eyes fixed on him, "when I am dancing--out
+there I see the plains--your feet go one--two--three--quick, quick,
+quick, quicker--you fly."
+
+She stretched herself, a shiver seemed to pass all down her.
+"Margit! dance!" and, to Swithin's consternation, the two girls--
+their hands on each other's shoulders--began shuffling their feet and
+swaying to and fro.  Their heads were thrown back, their eyes half-
+closed; suddenly the step quickened, they swung to one side, then to
+the other, and began whirling round in front of him.  The sudden
+fragrance of rose leaves enveloped him.  Round they flew again.
+While they were still dancing, Boleskey came into the room.  He
+caught Swithin by both hands.
+
+"Brother, welcome! Ah! your arm is hurt! I do not forget."  His
+yellow face and deep-set eyes expressed a dignified gratitude.  "Let
+me introduce to you my friend Baron Kasteliz."
+
+Swithin bowed to a man with a small forehead, who had appeared
+softly, and stood with his gloved hands touching his waist.  Swithin
+conceived a sudden aversion for this catlike man.  About Boleskey
+there was that which made contempt impossible--the sense of
+comradeship begotten in the fight; the man's height; something lofty
+and savage in his face; and an obscure instinct that it would not pay
+to show distaste; but this Kasteliz, with his neat jaw, low brow, and
+velvety, volcanic look, excited his proper English animosity.  "Your
+friends are mine," murmured Kasteliz.  He spoke with suavity, and
+hissed his s's.  A long, vibrating twang quavered through the room.
+Swithin turned and saw Rozsi sitting at the czymbal; the notes rang
+under the little hammers in her hands, incessant, metallic, rising
+and falling with that strange melody.  Kasteliz had fixed his glowing
+eyes on her; Boleskey, nodding his head, was staring at the floor;
+Margit, with a pale face, stood like a statue.
+
+'What can they see in it?' thought Swithin; 'it's not a tune.'  He
+took up his hat.  Rozsi saw him and stopped; her lips had parted with
+a faintly dismayed expression.  His sense of personal injury
+diminished; he even felt a little sorry for her.  She jumped up from
+her seat and twirled round with a pout.  An inspiration seized on
+Swithin.  "Come and dine with me," he said to Boleskey, "to-morrow--
+the Goldene Alp--bring your friend."  He felt the eyes of the whole
+room on him--the Hungarian's fine eyes; Margit's wide glance; the
+narrow, hot gaze of Kasteliz; and lastly--Rozsi's.  A glow of
+satisfaction ran down his spine.  When he emerged into the street
+he thought gloomily, 'Now I've done it!' And not for some paces did
+he look round; then, with a forced smile, turned and removed his hat
+to the faces at the window.
+
+Notwithstanding this moment of gloom, however, he was in an exalted
+state all day, and at dinner kept looking at his brother and Traquair
+enigmatically.  'What do they know of life?' he thought; 'they might
+be here a year and get no farther.'  He made jokes, and pinned the
+menu to the waiter's coat-tails.  "I like this place," he said, "I
+shall spend three weeks here."  James, whose lips were on the point
+of taking in a plum, looked at him uneasily.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+On the day of the dinner Swithin suffered a good deal.  He reflected
+gloomily on Boleskey's clothes.  He had fixed an early hour--there
+would be fewer people to see them.  When the time approached he
+attired himself with a certain neat splendour, and though his arm was
+still sore, left off the sling....
+
+Nearly three hours afterwards he left the Goldene Alp between his
+guests.  It was sunset, and along the riverbank the houses stood out,
+unsoftened by the dusk; the streets were full of people hurrying
+home.  Swithin had a hazy vision of empty bottles, of the ground
+before his feet, and the accessibility of all the world.  Dim
+recollections of the good things he had said, of his brother and
+Traquair seated in the background eating ordinary meals with
+inquiring, acid visages, caused perpetual smiles to break out on his
+face, and he steered himself stubbornly, to prove that he was a
+better man than either' of his guests.  He knew, vaguely, that he was
+going somewhere with an object; Rozsi's face kept dancing before him,
+like a promise.  Once or twice he gave Kasteliz a glassy stare.
+Towards Boleskey, on the other hand, he felt quite warm, and recalled
+with admiration the way he had set his glass down empty, time after
+time.  'I like to see him take his liquor,' he thought; 'the fellow's
+a gentleman, after all.'  Boleskey strode on, savagely inattentive to
+everything; and Kasteliz had become more like a cat than ever.  It
+was nearly dark when they reached a narrow street close to the
+cathedral.  They stopped at a door held open by an old woman.  The
+change from the fresh air to a heated corridor, the noise of the door
+closed behind him, the old woman's anxious glances, sobered Swithin.
+
+"I tell her," said Boleskey, "that I reply for you as for my son."
+
+Swithin was angry.  What business had this man to reply for him!
+
+They passed into a large room, crowded with men all women; Swithin
+noticed that they all looked fit him.  He stared at them in turn--
+they seemed of all classes, some in black coats or silk dresses,
+others in the clothes of work-people; one man, a cobbler, still wore
+his leather apron, as if he had rushed there straight from his work.
+Laying his hand on Swithin's arm, Boleskey evidently began explaining
+who he was; hands were extended, people beyond reach bowed to him.
+Swithin acknowledged the greetings with a stiff motion of his head;
+then seeing other people dropping into seats, he, too, sat down.
+Some one whispered his name--Margit and Rozsi were just behind him.
+
+"Welcome!" said Margit; but Swithin was looking at Rozsi.  Her face
+was so alive and quivering!  'What's the excitement all about?' he
+thought.  'How pretty she looks!'  She blushed, drew in her hands
+with a quick tense movement, and gazed again beyond him into the
+room.  'What is it?' thought Swithin; he had a longing to lean back
+and kiss her lips.  He tried angrily to see what she was seeing in
+those faces turned all one way.
+
+Boleskey rose to speak.  No one moved; not a sound could be heard but
+the tone of his deep voice.  On and on he went, fierce and solemn,
+and with the rise of his voice, all those faces-fair or swarthy--
+seemed to be glowing with one and the same feeling.  Swithin felt the
+white heat in those faces--it was not decent!  In that whole speech
+he only understood the one word--"Magyar" which came again and again.
+He almost dozed off at last.  The twang of a czymbal woke him.
+'What?' he thought, 'more of that infernal music!' Margit, leaning
+over him, whispered: "Listen! Racoczy! It is forbidden!" Swithin saw
+that Rozsi was no longer in her seat; it was she who was striking
+those forbidden notes.  He looked round--everywhere the same unmoving
+faces, the same entrancement, and fierce stillness.  The music
+sounded muffled, as if it, too, were bursting its heart in silence.
+Swithin felt within him a touch of panic.  Was this a den of tigers?
+The way these people listened, the ferocity of their stillness, was
+frightful...!  He gripped his chair and broke into a perspiration;
+was there no chance to get away?  'When it stops,' he thought,
+'there'll be a rush!'  But there was only a greater silence.  It
+flashed across him that any hostile person coming in then would be
+torn to pieces.  A woman sobbed.  The whole thing was beyond words
+unpleasant.  He rose, and edged his way furtively towards the
+doorway.  There was a cry of "Police!"  The whole crowd came pressing
+after him.  Swithin would soon have been out, but a little behind he
+caught sight of Rozsi swept off her feet.  Her frightened eyes
+angered him.  'She doesn't deserve it,' he thought sulkily; 'letting
+all this loose!' and forced his way back to her.  She clung to him,
+and a fever went stealing through his veins; he butted forward at the
+crowd, holding her tight.  When they were outside he let her go.
+
+"I was afraid," she said.
+
+"Afraid!" muttered Swithin; "I should think so."  No longer touching
+her, he felt his grievance revive.
+
+"But you are so strong," she murmured.
+
+"This is no place for you," growled Swithin, "I'm going to see you
+home."
+
+"Oh!" cried Rozsi; "but papa and--Margit!"
+
+"That's their look-out!" and he hurried her away.
+
+She slid her hand under his arm; the soft curves of her form brushed
+him gently, each touch only augmented his ill-humour.  He burned with
+a perverse rage, as if all the passions in him were simmering and
+ready to boil over; it was as if a poison were trying to work its way
+out of him, through the layers of his stolid flesh.  He maintained a
+dogged silence; Rozsi, too, said nothing, but when they reached the
+door, she drew her hand away.
+
+"You are angry!" she said.
+
+"Angry," muttered Swithin; "no! How d'you make that out?"  He had a
+torturing desire to kiss her.
+
+"Yes, you are angry," she repeated; " I wait here for papa and
+Margit."
+
+Swithin also waited, wedged against the wall.  Once or twice, for his
+sight was sharp, he saw her steal a look at him, a beseeching look,
+and hardened his heart with a kind of pleasure.  After five minutes
+Boleskey, Margit, and Kasteliz appeared.  Seeing Rozsi they broke
+into exclamations of relief, and Kasteliz, with a glance at Swithin,
+put his lips to her hand.  Rozsi's look said, "Wouldn't you like to
+do that?"  Swithin turned short on his heel, and walked away.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+All night he hardly slept, suffering from fever, for the first time
+in his life.  Once he jumped out of bed, lighted a candle, and going
+to the glass, scrutinised himself long and anxiously.  After this he
+fell asleep, but had frightful dreams.  His first thought when he
+woke was, 'My liver's out of order!' and, thrusting his head into
+cold water, he dressed hastily and went out.  He soon left the house
+behind.  Dew covered everything; blackbirds whistled in the bushes;
+the air was fresh and sweet.  He had not been up so early since he
+was a boy.  Why was he walking through a damp wood at this hour of
+the morning?  Something intolerable and unfamiliar must have sent him
+out.  No fellow in his senses would do such a thing!  He came to a
+dead stop, and began unsteadily to walk back.  Regaining the hotel,
+he went to bed again, and dreamed that in some wild country he was
+living in a room full of insects, where a housemaid--Rozsi--holding a
+broom, looked at him with mournful eyes.  There seemed an unexplained
+need for immediate departure; he begged her to forward his things;
+and shake them out carefully before she put them into the trunk.  He
+understood that the charge for sending would be twenty-two shillings,
+thought it a great deal, and had the horrors of indecision.  "No," he
+muttered, "pack, and take them myself."  The housemaid turned
+suddenly into a lean creature; and he awoke with a sore feeling in
+his heart.
+
+His eye fell on his wet boots.  The whole thing was scaring, and
+jumping up, he began to throw his clothes into his trunks.  It was
+twelve o'clock before he went down, and found his brother and
+Traquair still at the table arranging an itinerary; he surprised them
+by saying that he too was coming; and without further explanation set
+to work to eat.  James had heard that there were salt-mines in the
+neighbourhood--his proposal was to start, and halt an hour or so on
+the road for their inspection; he said: "Everybody'll ask you if
+you've seen the salt-mines: I shouldn't like to say I hadn't seen the
+salt-mines.  What's the good, they'd say, of your going there if you
+haven't seen the salt-mines?"  He wondered, too, if they need fee the
+second waiter--an idle chap!
+
+A discussion followed; but Swithin ate on glumly, conscious that his
+mind was set on larger affairs.  Suddenly on the far side of the
+street Rozsi and her sister passed, with little baskets on their
+arms.  He started up, and at that moment Rozsi looked round--her face
+was the incarnation of enticement, the chin tilted, the lower lip
+thrust a little forward, her round neck curving back over her
+shoulder.  Swithin muttered, "Make your own arrangements--leave me
+out!" and hurried from the room, leaving James beside himself with
+interest and alarm.
+
+When he reached the street, however, the girls had disappeared.  He
+hailed a carriage.  "Drive!" he called to the man, with a flourish of
+his stick, and as soon as the wheels had begun to clatter on the
+stones he leaned back, looking sharply to right and left.  He soon
+had to give up thought of finding them, but made the coachman turn
+round and round again.  All day he drove about, far into the country,
+and kept urging the driver to use greater speed.  He was in a strange
+state of hurry and elation.  Finally, he dined at a little country
+inn; and this gave the measure of his disturbance--the dinner was
+atrocious.
+
+Returning late in the evening he found a note written by Traquair.
+"Are you in your senses, man?" it asked; "we have no more time to
+waste idling about here.  If you want to rejoin us, come on to
+Danielli's Hotel, Venice."  Swithin chuckled when he read it, and
+feeling frightfully tired, went to bed and slept like a log.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+Three weeks later he was still in Salzburg, no longer at the Goldene
+Alp, but in rooms over a shop near the Boleskeys'.  He had spent a
+small fortune in the purchase of flowers.  Margit would croon over
+them, but Rozsi, with a sober "Many tanks!" as if they were her
+right, would look long at herself in the glass, and pin one into her
+hair.  Swithin ceased to wonder; he ceased to wonder at anything they
+did.  One evening he found Boleskey deep in conversation with a pale,
+dishevelled-looking person.
+
+"Our friend Mr. Forsyte--Count D....," said Boleskey.
+
+Swithin experienced a faint, unavoidable emotion; but looking at the
+Count's trousers, he thought: 'Doesn't look much like one!'  And with
+an ironic bow to the silent girls, he turned, and took his hat.  But
+when he had reached the bottom of the dark stairs he heard footsteps.
+Rozsi came running down, looked out at the door, and put her hands up
+to her breast as if disappointed; suddenly with a quick glance round
+she saw him.  Swithin caught her arm.  She slipped away, and her face
+seemed to bubble with defiance or laughter; she ran up three steps,
+stopped, looked at him across her shoulder, and fled on up the
+stairs.  Swithin went out bewildered and annoyed.
+
+'What was she going to say to me?' he kept thinking.  During these
+three weeks he had asked himself all sorts of questions: whether he
+were being made a fool of; whether she were in love with him; what he
+was doing there, and sometimes at night, with all his candles burning
+as if he wanted light, the breeze blowing on him through the window,
+his cigar, half-smoked, in his hand, he sat, an hour or more, staring
+at the wall.  'Enough of this!' he thought every morning.  Twice he
+packed fully--once he ordered his travelling carriage, but
+countermanded it the following day.  What definitely he hoped,
+intended, resolved, he could not have said.  He was always thinking
+of Rozsi, he could not read the riddle in her face--she held him in a
+vice, notwithstanding that everything about her threatened the very
+fetishes of his existence.  And Boleskey!  Whenever he looked at him
+he thought, 'If he were only clean?' and mechanically fingered his
+own well-tied cravatte.  To talk with the fellow, too, was like being
+forced to look at things which had no place in the light of day.
+Freedom, equality, self-sacrifice!
+
+'Why can't he settle down at some business,' he thought, 'instead of
+all this talk?' Boleskey's sudden diffidences, self-depreciation,
+fits of despair, irritated him.  "Morbid beggar!" he would mutter;
+"thank God I haven't a thin skin."  And proud too!  Extraordinary!
+An impecunious fellow like that!  One evening, moreover, Boleskey had
+returned home drunk.  Swithin had hustled him away into his bedroom,
+helped him to undress, and stayed until he was asleep.  'Too much of
+a good thing!' he thought, 'before his own daughters, too!'  It was
+after this that he ordered his travelling carriage.  The other
+occasion on which he packed was one evening, when not only Boleskey,
+but Rozsi herself had picked chicken bones with her fingers.
+
+Often in the mornings he would go to the Mirabell Garden to smoke his
+cigar; there, in stolid contemplation of the statues--rows of half-
+heroic men carrying off half-distressful females--he would spend an
+hour pleasantly, his hat tilted to keep the sun off his nose.  The
+day after Rozsi had fled from him on the stairs, he came there as
+usual.  It was a morning of blue sky and sunlight glowing on the old
+prim garden, on its yew-trees, and serio-comic statues, and walls
+covered with apricots and plums.  When Swithin approached his usual
+seat, who should be sitting there but Rozsi
+
+"Good-morning," he stammered; "you knew this was my seat then?"
+
+Rozsi looked at the ground.  "Yes," she answered.
+
+Swithin felt bewildered.  "Do you know," he said, "you treat me very
+funnily?"
+
+To his surprise Rozsi put her little soft hand down and touched his;
+then, without a word, sprang up and rushed away.  It took him a
+minute to recover.  There were people present; he did not like to
+run, but overtook her on the bridge, and slipped her hand beneath his
+arm.
+
+"You shouldn't have done that," he said; "you shouldn't have run away
+from me, you know."
+
+Rozsi laughed.  Swithin withdrew his arm; a desire to shake her
+seized him.  He walked some way before he said, "Will you have the
+goodness to tell me what you came to that seat for?"
+
+Rozsi flashed a look at him.  "To-morrow is the fete," she answered.
+
+Swithin muttered, "Is that all?"
+
+"If you do not take us, we cannot go."
+
+"Suppose I refuse," he said sullenly, "there are plenty of others."
+
+Rozsi bent her head, scurrying along.  "No," she murmured, "if you do
+not go--I do not wish."
+
+Swithin drew her hand back within his arm.  How round and soft it
+was!  He tried to see her face.  When she was nearly home he said
+goodbye, not wishing, for some dark reason, to be seen with her.  He
+watched till she had disappeared; then slowly retraced his steps to
+the Mirabell Garden.  When he came to where she had been sitting, he
+slowly lighted his cigar, and for a long time after it was smoked out
+remained there in the silent presence of the statues.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+A crowd of people wandered round the booths, and Swithin found
+himself obliged to give the girls his arms.  'Like a little Cockney
+clerk!' he thought.  His indignation passed unnoticed; they talked,
+they laughed, each sight and sound in all the hurly-burly seemed to
+go straight into their hearts.  He eyed them ironically--their eager
+voices, and little coos of sympathy seemed to him vulgar.  In the
+thick of the crowd he slipped his arm out of Margit's, but, just as
+he thought that he was free, the unwelcome hand slid up again.  He
+tried again, but again Margit reappeared, serene, and full of
+pleasant humour; and his failure this time appeared to him in a comic
+light.  But when Rozsi leaned across him, the glow of her round
+cheek, her curving lip, the inscrutable grey gleam of her eyes, sent
+a thrill of longing through him.  He was obliged to stand by while
+they parleyed with a gipsy, whose matted locks and skinny hands
+inspired him with a not unwarranted disgust.  "Folly!" he muttered,
+as Rozsi held out her palm.  The old woman mumbled, and shot a
+malignant look at him.  Rozsi drew back her hand, and crossed
+herself.  ' Folly!' Swithin thought again; and seizing the girls'
+arms, he hurried them away.
+
+"What did the old hag say?" he asked.
+
+Rozsi shook her head.
+
+"You don't mean that you believe?"
+
+Her eyes were full of tears.  "The gipsies are wise," she murmured.
+
+"Come, what did she tell you?"
+
+This time Rozsi looked hurriedly round, and slipped away into the
+crowd.  After a hunt they found her, and Swithin, who was scared,
+growled: "You shouldn't do such things--it's not respectable."
+
+On higher ground, in the centre of a clear space, a military band was
+playing.  For the privilege of entering this charmed circle Swithin
+paid three kronen, choosing naturally the best seats.  He ordered
+wine, too, watching Rozsi out of the corner of his eye as he poured
+it out.  The protecting tenderness of yesterday was all lost in this
+medley.  It was every man for himself, after all!  The colour had
+deepened again in her cheeks, she laughed, pouting her lips.
+Suddenly she put her glass aside.  "Thank you, very much," she said,
+"it is enough!"
+
+Margit, whose pretty mouth was all smiles, cried, "Lieber Gott! is it
+not good-life?"  It was not a question Swithin could undertake to
+answer.  The band began to play a waltz.  "Now they will dance.
+Lieber Gott! and are the lights not wonderful?"  Lamps were
+flickering beneath the trees like a swarm of fireflies.  There was a
+hum as from a gigantic beehive.  Passers-by lifted their faces, then
+vanished into the crowd; Rozsi stood gazing at them spellbound, as if
+their very going and coming were a delight.
+
+The space was soon full of whirling couples.  Rozsi's head began to
+beat time.  "O Margit!" she whispered.
+
+Swithin's face had assumed a solemn, uneasy expression.  A man
+raising his hat, offered his arm to Margit.  She glanced back across
+her shoulder to reassure Swithin.  "It is a friend," she said.
+
+Swithin looked at Rozsi--her eyes were bright, her lips tremulous.
+He slipped his hand along the table and touched her fingers.  Then
+she flashed a look at him--appeal, reproach, tenderness, all were
+expressed in it.  Was she expecting him to dance?  Did she want to
+mix with the rift-raff there; wish him to make an exhibition of
+himself in this hurly-burly?  A voice said, "Good-evening!"  Before
+them stood Kasteliz, in a dark coat tightly buttoned at the waist.
+
+"You are not dancing, Rozsi Kozsanony?" (Miss Rozsi).  "Let me, then,
+have the pleasure."  He held out his arm.  Swithin stared in front of
+him.  In the very act of going she gave him a look that said as plain
+as words: "Will you not?"  But for answer he turned his eyes away,
+and when he looked again she was gone.  He paid the score and made
+his way into the crowd.  But as he went she danced by close to him,
+all flushed and panting.  She hung back as if to stop him, and he
+caught the glistening of tears.  Then he lost sight of her again.  To
+be deserted the first minute he was alone with her, and for that
+jackanapes with the small head and the volcanic glances!  It was too
+much!  And suddenly it occurred to him that she was alone with
+Kasteliz--alone at night, and far from home.  ' Well,' he thought,
+'what do I care?' and shouldered his way on through the crowd.  It
+served him right for mixing with such people here.  He left the fair,
+but the further he went, the more he nursed his rage, the more
+heinous seemed her offence, the sharper grew his jealousy.  "A
+beggarly baron!" was his thought.
+
+A figure came alongside--it was Boleskey.  One look showed Swithin
+his condition.  Drunk again!  This was the last straw!
+
+Unfortunately Boleskey had recognised him.  He seemed violently
+excited.  "Where--where are my daughters?" he began.
+
+Swithin brushed past, but Boleskey caught his arm.  "Listen--
+brother!" he said; "news of my country!  After to-morrow...."
+
+"Keep it to yourself!" growled Swithin, wrenching his arm free.  He
+went straight to his lodgings, and, lying on the hard sofa of his
+unlighted sitting-room, gave himself up to bitter thoughts.  But in
+spite of all his anger, Rozsi's supply-moving figure, with its
+pouting lips, and roguish appealing eyes, still haunted him.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+Next morning there was not a carriage to be had, and Swithin was
+compelled to put off his departure till the morrow.  The day was grey
+and misty; he wandered about with the strained, inquiring look of a
+lost dog in his eyes.
+
+Late in the afternoon he went back to his lodgings.  In a corner of
+the sitting-room stood Rozsi.  The thrill of triumph, the sense of
+appeasement, the emotion, that seized on him, crept through to his
+lips in a faint smile.  Rozsi made no sound, her face was hidden by
+her hands.  And this silence of hers weighed on Swithin.  She was
+forcing him to break it.  What was behind her hands?  His own face
+was visible!  Why didn't she speak?  Why was she here?  Alone?  That
+was not right surely.
+
+Suddenly Rozsi dropped her hands; her flushed face was quivering--it
+seemed as though a word, a sign, even, might bring a burst of tears.
+
+He walked over to the window.  'I must give her time!' he thought;
+then seized by unreasoning terror at this silence, spun round, and
+caught her by the arms.  Rozsi held back from him, swayed forward and
+buried her face on his breast....
+
+Half an hour later Swithin was pacing up and down his room.  The
+scent of rose leaves had not yet died away.  A glove lay on the
+floor; he picked it up, and for a long time stood weighing it in his
+hand.  All sorts of confused thoughts and feelings haunted him.  It
+was the purest and least selfish moment of his life, this moment
+after she had yielded.  But that pure gratitude at her fiery, simple
+abnegation did not last; it was followed by a petty sense of triumph,
+and by uneasiness.  He was still weighing the little glove in his
+hand, when he had another visitor.  It was Kasteliz.
+
+"What can I do for you?" Swithin asked ironically.
+
+The Hungarian seemed suffering from excitement.  Why had Swithin left
+his charges the night before?  What excuse had he to make?  What sort
+of conduct did he call this?
+
+Swithin, very like a bull-dog at that moment, answered: What business
+was it of his?
+
+The business of a gentleman!  What right had the Englishman to pursue
+a young girl?
+
+"Pursue?" said Swithin; "you've been spying, then?"
+
+"Spying--I--Kasteliz--Maurus Johann--an insult!"
+
+"Insult!" sneered Swithin; d'you mean to tell me you weren't in the
+street just now?"
+
+Kasteliz answered with a hiss, "If you do not leave the city I will
+make you, with my sword--do you understand?"
+
+"And if you do not leave my room I will throw you out of the window!"
+
+For some minutes Kasteliz spoke in pure Hungarian while Swithin
+waited, with a forced smile and a fixed look in his eye.  He did not
+understand Hungarian.
+
+"If you are still in the city to-morrow evening," said Kasteliz at
+last in English, " I will spit you in the street."
+
+Swithin turned to the window and watched his visitor's retiring back
+with a queer mixture of amusement, stubbornness, and anxiety.
+'Well,' he thought, 'I suppose he'll run me through!'  The thought
+was unpleasant; and it kept recurring, but it only served to harden
+his determination.  His head was busy with plans for seeing Rozsi;
+his blood on fire with the kisses she had given him.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+Swithin was long in deciding to go forth next day.  He had made up
+his mind not to go to Rozsi till five o'clock.  'Mustn't make myself
+too cheap,' he thought.  It was a little past that hour when he at
+last sallied out, and with a beating heart walked towards Boleskey's.
+He looked up at the window, more than half expecting to see Rozsi
+there; but she was not, and he noticed with faint surprise that the
+window was not open; the plants, too, outside, looked singularly
+arid.  He knocked.  No one came.  He beat a fierce tatto.  At last
+the door was opened by a man with a reddish beard, and one of those
+sardonic faces only to be seen on shoemakers of Teutonic origin.
+
+"What do you want, making all this noise?" he asked in German.
+
+Swithin pointed up the stairs.  The man grinned, and shook his head.
+
+"I want to go up," said Swithin.
+
+The cobbler shrugged his shoulders, and Swithin rushed upstairs.  The
+rooms were empty.  The furniture remained, but all signs of life were
+gone.  One of his own bouquets, faded, stood in a glass; the ashes of
+a fire were barely cold; little scraps of paper strewed the hearth;
+already the room smelt musty.  He went into the bedrooms, and with a
+feeling of stupefaction stood staring at the girls' beds, side by
+side against the wall.  A bit of ribbon caught his eye; he picked it
+up and put it in his pocket--it was a piece of evidence that she had
+once existed.  By the mirror some pins were dropped about; a little
+powder had been spilled.  He looked at his own disquiet face and
+thought, 'I've been cheated!'
+
+The shoemaker's voice aroused him.  "Tausend Teufel!  Eilen Sie, nur!
+Zeit is Geld!  Kann nich' Langer warten!"  Slowly he descended.
+
+"Where have they gone?" asked Swithin painfully.  "A pound for every
+English word you speak.  A pound!" and he made an O with his fingers.
+
+The corners of the shoemaker's lips curled.  "Geld! Mf!  Eilen Sie,
+nur!"
+
+But in Swithin a sullen anger had begun to burn.  "If you don't tell
+me," he said, "it'll be the worse for you."
+
+"Sind ein komischer Kerl!" remarked the shoemaker.  "Hier ist meine
+Frau!"
+
+A battered-looking woman came hurrying down the passage, calling out
+in German, "Don't let him go!"
+
+With a snarling sound the shoemaker turned his back, and shambled
+off.
+
+The woman furtively thrust a letter into Swithin's hand, and
+furtively waited.
+
+The letter was from Rozsi.
+
+"Forgive me"--it ran--"that I leave you and do not say goodbye.  To-
+day our father had the call from our dear Father-town so long
+awaited.  In two hours we are ready.  I pray to the Virgin to keep
+you ever safe, and that you do not quite forget me.--Your
+unforgetting good friend,  ROZSI
+
+When Swithin read it his first sensation was that of a man sinking in
+a bog; then his obstinacy stiffened.  'I won't be done,' he thought.
+Taking out a sovereign he tried to make the woman comprehend that she
+could earn it, by telling him where they had gone.  He got her
+finally to write the words out in his pocket-book, gave her the
+sovereign, and hurried to the Goldene Alp, where there was a waiter
+who spoke English.  The translation given him was this:
+
+"At three o'clock they start in a carriage on the road to Linz--they
+have bad horses--the Herr also rides a white horse."
+
+Swithin at once hailed a carriage and started at full gallop on the
+road to Linz.  Outside the Mirabell Garden he caught sight of
+Kasteliz and grinned at him.  'I've sold him anyway,' he thought;
+'for all their talk, they're no good, these foreigners!'
+
+His spirits rose, but soon fell again.  What chance had he of
+catching them?  They had three hours' start!  Still, the roads were
+heavy from the rain of the last two nights--they had luggage and bad
+horses; his own were good, his driver bribed--he might overtake them
+by ten o'clock! But did he want to?  What a fool he had been not to
+bring his luggage; he would then have had a respectable position.
+What a brute he would look without a change of shirt, or anything to
+shave with!  He saw himself with horror, all bristly, and in soiled
+linen.  People would think him mad.  'I've given myself away,'
+flashed across him, 'what the devil can I say to them?' and he stared
+sullenly at the driver's back.  He read Rozsi's letter again; it had
+a scent of her.  And in the growing darkness, jolted by the swinging
+of the carriage, he suffered tortures from his prudence, tortures
+from his passion.
+
+It grew colder and dark.  He turned the collar of his coat up to his
+ears.  He had visions of Piccadilly.  This wild-goose chase appeared
+suddenly a dangerous, unfathomable business.  Lights, fellowship,
+security!  'Never again!' he brooded; 'why won't they let me alone?'
+But it was not clear whether by 'they' he meant the conventions, the
+Boleskeys, his passions, or those haunting memories of Rozsi.  If he
+had only had a bag with him!  What was he going to say?  What was he
+going to get by this?  He received no answer to these questions.  The
+darkness itself was less obscure than his sensations.  From time to
+time he took out his watch.  At each village the driver made
+inquiries.  It was past ten when he stopped the carriage with a jerk.
+The stars were bright as steel, and by the side of the road a reedy
+lake showed in the moonlight.  Swithin shivered.  A man on a horse
+had halted in the centre of the road.  "Drive on!" called Swithin,
+with a stolid face.  It turned out to be Boleskey, who, on a gaunt
+white horse, looked like some winged creature.  He stood where he
+could bar the progress of the carriage, holding out a pistol.
+
+'Theatrical beggar!' thought Swithin, with a nervous smile.  He made
+no sign of recognition.  Slowly Boleskey brought his lean horse up to
+the carriage.  When he saw who was within he showed astonishment and
+joy.
+
+"You?" he cried, slapping his hand on his attenuated thigh, and
+leaning over till his beard touched Swithin.  "You have come?  You
+followed us?"
+
+"It seems so," Swithin grunted out.
+
+"You throw in your lot with us.  Is it possible?  You--you are a
+knight-errant then!"
+
+"Good God!" said Swithin.  Boleskey, flogging his dejected steed,
+cantered forward in the moonlight.  He came back, bringing an old
+cloak, which he insisted on wrapping round Swithin's shoulders.  He
+handed him, too, a capacious flask.
+
+"How cold you look!" he said.  "Wonderful! Wonderful! you English!"
+His grateful eyes never left Swithin for a moment.  They had come up
+to the heels of the other carriage now, but Swithin, hunched in the
+cloak, did not try to see what was in front of him.  To the bottom of
+his soul he resented the Hungarian's gratitude.  He remarked at last,
+with wasted irony:
+
+"You're in a hurry, it seems!"
+
+"If we had wings," Boleskey answered, "we would use them."
+
+"Wings!" muttered Swithin thickly; "legs are good enough for me."
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+Arrived at the inn where they were to pass the night, Swithin waited,
+hoping to get into the house without a "scene," but when at last he
+alighted the girls were in the doorway, and Margit greeted him with
+an admiring murmur, in which, however, he seemed to detect irony.
+Rozsi, pale and tremulous, with a half-scared look, gave him her
+hand, and, quickly withdrawing it, shrank behind her sister.  When
+they had gone up to their room Swithin sought Boleskey.  His spirits
+had risen remarkably.  "Tell the landlord to get us supper," he said;
+"we'll crack a bottle to our luck."  He hurried on the landlord's
+preparations.  The window of the, room faced a wood, so near that he
+could almost touch the trees.  The scent from the pines blew in on
+him.  He turned away from that scented darkness, and began to draw
+the corks of winebottles.  The sound seemed to conjure up Boleskey.
+He came in, splashed all over, smelling slightly of stables; soon
+after, Margit appeared, fresh and serene, but Rozsi did not come.
+
+"Where is your sister?" Swithin said.  Rozsi, it seemed, was tired.
+"It will do her good to eat," said Swithin.  And Boleskey, murmuring,
+"She must drink to our country," went out to summon her, Margit
+followed him, while Swithin cut up a chicken.  They came back without
+her.  She had "a megrim of the spirit."
+
+Swithin's face fell.  "Look here!" he said, "I'll go and try.  Don't
+wait for me."
+
+"Yes," answered Boleskey, sinking mournfully into a chair; "try,
+brother, try-by all means, try."
+
+Swithin walked down the corridor with an odd, sweet, sinking
+sensation in his chest; and tapped on Rozsi's door.  In a minute, she
+peeped forth, with her hair loose, and wondering eyes.
+
+"Rozsi," he stammered, "what makes you afraid of me, now?"
+
+She stared at him, but did not answer.
+
+"Why won't you come?"
+
+Still she did not speak, but suddenly stretched out to him her bare
+arm.  Swithin pressed his face to it.  With a shiver, she whispered
+above him, "I will come," and gently shut the door.
+
+Swithin stealthily retraced his steps, and paused a minute outside
+the sitting-room to regain his self-control.
+
+The sight of Boleskey with a bottle in his hand steadied him.
+
+"She is coming," he said.  And very soon she did come, her thick hair
+roughly twisted in a plait.
+
+Swithin sat between the girls; but did not talk, for he was really
+hungry.  Boleskey too was silent, plunged in gloom; Rozsi was dumb;
+Margit alone chattered.
+
+"You will come to our Father-town?  We shall have things to show you.
+Rozsi, what things we will show him!"  Rozsi, with a little appealing
+movement of her hands, repeated, "What things we will show you!"  She
+seemed suddenly to find her voice, and with glowing cheeks, mouths
+full, and eyes bright as squirrels', they chattered reminiscences of
+the "dear Father-town," of "dear friends," of the "dear home."
+
+'A poor place!' Swithin could not help thinking.  This enthusiasm
+seemed to him common; but he was careful to assume a look of
+interest, feeding on the glances flashed at him from Rozsi's restless
+eyes.
+
+As the wine waned Boleskey grew more and more gloomy, but now and
+then a sort of gleaming flicker passed over his face.  He rose to his
+feet at last.
+
+"Let us not forget," he said, "that we go perhaps to ruin, to death;
+in the face of all this we go, because our country needs--in this
+there is no credit, neither to me nor to you, my daughters; but for
+this noble Englishman, what shall we say?  Give thanks to God for a
+great heart.  He comes--not for country, not for fame, not for money,
+but to help the weak and the oppressed.  Let us drink, then, to him;
+let us drink again and again to heroic Forsyte!"  In the midst of the
+dead silence, Swithin caught the look of suppliant mockery in Rozsi's
+eyes.  He glanced at the Hungarian.  Was he laughing at him?  But
+Boleskey, after drinking up his wine, had sunk again into his seat;
+and there suddenly, to the surprise of all, he began to snore.
+Margit rose and, bending over him like a mother, murmured: "He is
+tired--it is the ride!"  She raised him in her strong arms, and
+leaning on her shoulder Boleskey staggered from the room.  Swithin
+and Rozsi were left alone.  He slid his hand towards her hand that
+lay so close, on the rough table-cloth.  It seemed to await his
+touch.  Something gave way in him, and words came welling up; for the
+moment he forgot himself, forgot everything but that he was near her.
+Her head dropped on his shoulder, he breathed the perfume of her
+hair.  "Good-night!" she whispered, and the whisper was like a kiss;
+yet before he could stop her she was gone.  Her footsteps died away
+in the passage, but Swithin sat gazing intently at a single bright
+drop of spilt wine quivering on the table's edge.  In that moment
+she, in her helplessness and emotion, was all in all to him--his life
+nothing; all the real things--his conventions, convictions, training,
+and himself--all seemed remote, behind a mist of passion and strange
+chivalry.  Carefully with a bit of bread he soaked up the bright
+drop; and suddenly he thought: 'This is tremendous!'  For a long time
+he stood there in the window, close to the dark pine-trees.
+
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+In the early morning he awoke, full of the discomfort of this strange
+place and the medley of his dreams.  Lying, with his nose peeping
+over the quilt, he was visited by a horrible suspicion.  When he
+could bear it no longer, he started up in bed.  What if it were all a
+plot to get him to marry her?  The thought was treacherous, and
+inspired in him a faint disgust.  Still, she might be ignorant of it!
+But was she so innocent?  What innocent girl would have come to his
+room like that?  What innocent girl?  Her father, who pretended to be
+caring only for his country?  It was not probable that any man was
+such a fool; it was all part of the game-a scheming rascal!
+Kasteliz, too--his threats!  They intended him to marry her!  And the
+horrid idea was strengthened by his reverence for marriage.  It was
+the proper, the respectable condition; he was genuinely afraid of
+this other sort of liaison--it was somehow too primitive!  And yet
+the thought of that marriage made his blood run cold.  Considering
+that she had already yielded, it would be all the more monstrous!
+With the cold, fatal clearness of the morning light he now for the
+first time saw his position in its full bearings.  And, like a fish
+pulled out of water, he gasped at what was disclosed.  Sullen
+resentment against this attempt to force him settled deep into his
+soul.
+
+He seated himself on the bed, holding his head in his hands, solemnly
+thinking out what such marriage meant.  In the first place it meant
+ridicule, in the next place ridicule, in the last place ridicule.
+She would eat chicken bones with her fingers--those fingers his lips
+still burned to kiss.  She would dance wildly with other men.  She
+would talk of her "dear Father-town," and all the time her eyes would
+look beyond him, some where or other into some d--d place he knew
+nothing of.  He sprang up and paced the room, and for a moment
+thought he would go mad.
+
+They meant him to marry her!  Even she--she meant him to marry her!
+Her tantalising inscrutability; her sudden little tendernesses; her
+quick laughter; her swift, burning kisses; even the movements of her
+hands; her tears--all were evidence against her.  Not one of these
+things that Nature made her do counted on her side, but how they
+fanned his longing, his desire, and distress!  He went to the glass
+and tried to part his hair with his fingers, but being rather fine,
+it fell into lank streaks.  There was no comfort to be got from it.
+He drew his muddy boots on.  Suddenly he thought: 'If I could see her
+alone, I could arrive at some arrangement!'  Then, with a sense of
+stupefaction, he made the discovery that no arrangement could
+possibly be made that would not be dangerous, even desperate.  He
+seized his hat, and, like a rabbit that has been fired at, bolted
+from the room.  He plodded along amongst the damp woods with his head
+down, and resentment and dismay in his heart.  But, as the sun rose,
+and the air grew sweet with pine scent, he slowly regained a sort of
+equability.  After all, she had already yielded; it was not as if...!
+And the tramp of his own footsteps lulled him into feeling that it
+would all come right.
+
+'Look at the thing practically,' he thought.  The faster he walked
+the firmer became his conviction that he could still see it through.
+He took out his watch--it was past seven--he began to hasten back.
+In the yard of the inn his driver was harnessing the horses; Swithin
+went up to him.
+
+"Who told you to put them in?" he asked.
+
+The driver answered, "Der Herr."
+
+Swithin turned away.  'In ten minutes,' he thought, 'I shall be in
+that carriage again, with this going on in my head!  Driving away
+from England, from all I'm used to-driving to-what?'  Could he face
+it?  Could he face all that he had been through that morning; face it
+day after day, night after night?  Looking up, he saw Rozsi at her
+open window gazing down at him; never had she looked sweeter, more
+roguish.  An inexplicable terror seized on him; he ran across the
+yard and jumped into his carriage.  "To Salzburg!" he cried; "drive
+on!"  And rattling out of the yard without a look behind, he flung a
+sovereign at the hostler.  Flying back along the road faster even
+than he had come, with pale face, and eyes blank and staring like a
+pug-dog's, Swithin spoke no single word; nor, till he had reached the
+door of his lodgings, did he suffer the driver to draw rein.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+Towards evening, five days later, Swithin, yellow and travel-worn,
+was ferried in a gondola to Danielli's Hotel.  His brother, who was
+on the steps, looked at him with an apprehensive curiosity.
+
+"Why, it's you!" he mumbled.  "So you've got here safe?"
+
+"Safe?" growled Swithin.
+
+James replied, "I thought you wouldn't leave your friends!"  Then,
+with a jerk of suspicion, "You haven't brought your friends?"
+
+"What friends?" growled Swithin.
+
+James changed the subject.  "You don't look the thing," he said.
+
+"Really!" muttered Swithin; "what's that to you?"
+
+He appeared at dinner that night, but fell asleep over his coffee.
+Neither Traquair nor James asked him any further question, nor did
+they allude to Salzburg; and during the four days which concluded the
+stay in Venice Swithin went about with his head up, but his eyes
+half-closed like a dazed man.  Only after they had taken ship at
+Genoa did he show signs of any healthy interest in life, when,
+finding that a man on board was perpetually strumming, he locked the
+piano up and pitched the key into the sea.
+
+That winter in London he behaved much as usual, but fits of
+moroseness would seize on him, during which he was not pleasant to
+approach.
+
+One evening when he was walking with a friend in Piccadilly, a girl
+coming from a side-street accosted him in German.  Swithin, after
+staring at her in silence for some seconds, handed her a five-pound
+note, to the great amazement of his friend; nor could he himself have
+explained the meaning of this freak of generosity.
+
+Of Rozsi he never heard again....
+
+This, then, was the substance of what he remembered as he lay ill in
+bed.  Stretching out his hand he pressed the bell.  His valet
+appeared, crossing the room like a cat; a Swede, who had been with
+Swithin many years; a little man with a dried face and fierce
+moustache, morbidly sharp nerves, and a queer devotion to his master.
+
+Swithin made a feeble gesture.  "Adolf," he said, "I'm very bad."
+
+"Yes, sir!"
+
+"Why do you stand there like a cow?" asked Swithin; "can't you see
+I'm very bad?"
+
+"Yes, sir!"  The valet's face twitched as though it masked the dance
+of obscure emotions.
+
+"I shall feel better after dinner.  What time is it?"
+
+"Five o'clock."
+
+"I thought it was more.  The afternoons are very long."
+
+"Yes, sir!"Swithin sighed, as though he had expected the consolation
+of denial.
+
+"Very likely I shall have a nap.  Bring up hot water at half-past six
+and shave me before dinner."
+
+The valet moved towards the door.  Swithin raised himself.
+
+"What did Mr. James say to you?"
+
+"He said you ought to have another doctor; two doctors, he said,
+better than one.  He said, also, he would look in again on his way
+'home.'"
+
+Swithin grunted, "Umph! What else did he say?"
+
+"He said you didn't take care of yourself."
+
+Swithin glared.
+
+"Has anybody else been to see me?"
+
+The valet turned away his eyes.  "Mrs. Thomas Forsyte came last
+Monday fortnight."
+
+"How long have I been ill?"
+
+"Five weeks on Saturday."
+
+"Do you think I'm very bad?"
+
+Adolf's face was covered suddenly with crow's-feet.  "You have no
+business to ask me question like that!  I am not paid, sir, to answer
+question like that."
+
+Swithin said faintly: "You're a peppery fool!  Open a bottle of
+champagne!"
+
+Adolf took a bottle of champagne--from a cupboard and held nippers to
+it.  He fixed his eyes on Swithin.  "The doctor said--"
+
+"Open the bottle!"
+
+"It is not--"
+
+"Open the bottle--or I give you warning."
+
+Adolf removed the cork.  He wiped a glass elaborately, filled it, and
+bore it scrupulously to the bedside.  Suddenly twirling his
+moustaches, he wrung his hands, and burst out: "It is poison."
+
+Swithin grinned faintly.  "You foreign fool!" he said.  "Get out!"
+
+The valet vanished.
+
+'He forgot himself!' thought Swithin.  Slowly he raised the glass,
+slowly put it back, and sank gasping on his pillows.  Almost at once
+he fell asleep.
+
+He dreamed that he was at his club, sitting after dinner in the
+crowded smoking-room, with its bright walls and trefoils of light.
+It was there that he sat every evening, patient, solemn, lonely, and
+sometimes fell asleep, his square, pale old face nodding to one side.
+He dreamed that he was gazing at the picture over the fireplace, of
+an old statesman with a high collar, supremely finished face, and
+sceptical eyebrows--the picture, smooth, and reticent as sealing-wax,
+of one who seemed for ever exhaling the narrow wisdom of final
+judgments.  All round him, his fellow members were chattering.  Only
+he himself, the old sick member, was silent.  If fellows only knew
+what it was like to sit by yourself and feel ill all the time!  What
+they were saying he had heard a hundred times.  They were talking of
+investments, of cigars, horses, actresses, machinery.  What was that?
+A foreign patent for cleaning boilers?  There was no such thing;
+boilers couldn't be cleaned, any fool knew that!  If an Englishman
+couldn't clean a boiler, no foreigner could clean one.  He appealed
+to the old statesman's eyes.  But for once those eyes seemed
+hesitating, blurred, wanting in finality.  They vanished.  In their
+place were Rozsi's little deep-set eyes, with their wide and far-off
+look; and as he gazed they seemed to grow bright as steel, and to
+speak to him.  Slowly the whole face grew to be there, floating on
+the dark background of the picture; it was pink, aloof, unfathomable,
+enticing, with its fluffy hair and quick lips, just as he had last
+seen it.  "Are you looking for something?" she seemed to say: "I
+could show you."
+
+"I have everything safe enough," answered Swithin, and in his sleep
+he groaned.
+
+He felt the touch of fingers on his forehead.  'I'm dreaming,' he
+thought in his dream.
+
+She had vanished; and far away, from behind the picture, came a sound
+of footsteps.
+
+Aloud, in his sleep, Swithin muttered: "I've missed it."
+
+Again he heard the rustling of those light footsteps, and close in
+his ear a sound, like a sob.  He awoke; the sob was his own.  Great
+drops of perspiration stood on his forehead.  'What is it?' he
+thought; 'what have I lost?'  Slowly his mind travelled over his
+investments; he could not think of any single one that was unsafe.
+What was it, then, that he had lost?  Struggling on his pillows, he
+clutched the wine-glass.  His lips touched the wine.  'This isn't the
+"Heidseck"!' he thought angrily, and before the reality of that
+displeasure all the dim vision passed away.  But as he bent to drink,
+something snapped, and, with a sigh, Swithin Forsyte died above the
+bubbles....
+
+When James Forsyte came in again on his way home, the valet,
+trembling took his hat and stick.
+
+"How's your master?"
+
+"My master is dead, sir!"
+
+"Dead! He can't be!  I left him safe an hour ago.
+
+On the bed Swithin's body was doubled like a sack; his hand still
+grasped the glass.
+
+James Forsyte paused.  "Swithin!" he said, and with his hand to his
+ear he waited for an answer; but none came, and slowly in the glass a
+last bubble rose and burst.
+
+December 1900.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+To
+
+MY SISTER
+
+MABEL EDITH REYNOLDS
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SILENCE
+
+I
+
+In a car of the Naples express a mining expert was diving into a bag
+for papers.  The strong sunlight showed the fine wrinkles on his
+brown face and the shabbiness of his short, rough beard.  A newspaper
+cutting slipped from his fingers; he picked it up, thinking: 'How the
+dickens did that get in here?'  It was from a colonial print of three
+years back; and he sat staring, as if in that forlorn slip of yellow
+paper he had encountered some ghost from his past.
+
+These were the words he read: "We hope that the setback to
+civilisation, the check to commerce and development, in this
+promising centre of our colony may be but temporary; and that capital
+may again come to the rescue.  Where one man was successful, others
+should surely not fail?  We are convinced that it only needs...."
+And the last words: "For what can be sadder than to see the forest
+spreading its lengthening shadows, like symbols of defeat, over the
+untenanted dwellings of men; and where was once the merry chatter of
+human voices, to pass by in the silence...."
+
+On an afternoon, thirteen years before, he had been in the city of
+London, at one of those emporiums where mining experts perch, before
+fresh flights, like sea-gulls on some favourite rock.  A clerk said
+to him: "Mr. Scorrier, they are asking for you downstairs--Mr.
+Hemmings of the New Colliery Company."
+
+Scorrier took up the speaking tube.  "Is that you, Mr. Scorrier?  I
+hope you are very well, sir, I am--Hemmings--I am--coming up."
+
+In two minutes he appeared, Christopher Hemmings, secretary of the
+New Colliery Company, known in the City-behind his back--as "Down-by-
+the-starn" Hemmings.  He grasped Scorrier's hand--the gesture was
+deferential, yet distinguished.  Too handsome, too capable, too
+important, his figure, the cut of his iron-grey beard, and his
+intrusively fine eyes, conveyed a continual courteous invitation to
+inspect their infallibilities.  He stood, like a City "Atlas," with
+his legs apart, his coat-tails gathered in his hands, a whole globe
+of financial matters deftly balanced on his nose.  "Look at me!" he
+seemed to say.  "It's heavy, but how easily I carry it.  Not the man
+to let it down, Sir !"
+
+"I hope I see you well, Mr. Scorrier," he began.  "I have come round
+about our mine.  There is a question of a fresh field being opened
+up--between ourselves, not before it's wanted.  I find it difficult
+to get my Board to take a comprehensive view.  In short, the question
+is: Are you prepared to go out for us, and report on it?  The fees
+will be all right."  His left eye closed.  "Things have been very--
+er--dicky; we are going to change our superintendent.  I have got
+little Pippin--you know little Pippin?"
+
+Scorrier murmured, with a feeling of vague resentment: "Oh yes.  He's
+not a mining man!"
+
+Hemmings replied: "We think that he will do."  'Do you?' thought
+Scorrier; 'that's good of you!'
+
+He had not altogether shaken off a worship he had felt for Pippin--
+"King" Pippin he was always called, when they had been boys at the
+Camborne Grammar-school.  "King" Pippin! the boy with the bright
+colour, very bright hair, bright, subtle, elusive eyes, broad
+shoulders, little stoop in the neck, and a way of moving it quickly
+like a bird; the boy who was always at the top of everything, and
+held his head as if looking for something further to be the top of.
+He remembered how one day "King" Pippin had said to him in his soft
+way, "Young Scorrie, I'll do your sums for you"; and in answer to his
+dubious, "Is that all right?" had replied, "Of course--I don't want
+you to get behind that beast Blake, he's not a Cornishman" (the beast
+Blake was an Irishman not yet twelve).  He remembered, too, an
+occasion when "King" Pippin with two other boys fought six louts and
+got a licking, and how Pippin sat for half an hour afterwards, all
+bloody, his head in his hands, rocking to and fro, and weeping tears
+of mortification; and how the next day he had sneaked off by himself,
+and, attacking the same gang, got frightfully mauled a second time.
+
+Thinking of these things he answered curtly: "When shall I start?"
+
+"Down-by-the-starn" Hemmings replied with a sort of fearful
+sprightliness: "There's a good fellow!  I will send instructions; so
+glad to see you well."  Conferring on Scorrier a look--fine to the
+verge of vulgarity--he withdrew.  Scorrier remained, seated; heavy
+with insignificance and vague oppression, as if he had drunk a
+tumbler of sweet port.
+
+A week later, in company with Pippin, he was on board a liner.
+
+The "King" Pippin of his school-days was now a man of forty-four.  He
+awakened in Scorrier the uncertain wonder with which men look
+backward at their uncomplicated teens; and staggering up and down the
+decks in the long Atlantic roll, he would steal glances at his
+companion, as if he expected to find out from them something about
+himself.  Pippin had still "King" Pippin's bright, fine hair, and
+dazzling streaks in his short beard; he had still a bright colour and
+suave voice, and what there were of wrinkles suggested only
+subtleties of humour and ironic sympathy.  From the first, and
+apparently without negotiation, he had his seat at the captain's
+table, to which on the second day Scorrier too found himself
+translated, and had to sit, as he expressed it ruefully, "among the
+big-wigs."
+
+During the voyage only one incident impressed itself on Scorrier's
+memory, and that for a disconcerting reason.  In the forecastle were
+the usual complement of emigrants.  One evening, leaning across the
+rail to watch them, he felt a touch on his arm; and, looking round,
+saw Pippin's face and beard quivering in the lamplight.  "Poor
+people!" he said.  The idea flashed on Scorrier that he was like some
+fine wire sound-recording instrument.
+
+'Suppose he were to snap!' he thought.  Impelled to justify this
+fancy, he blurted out: "You're a nervous chap.  The way you look at
+those poor devils!"
+
+Pippin hustled him along the deck.  "Come, come, you took me off my
+guard," he murmured, with a sly, gentle smile, "that's not fair."
+
+He found it a continual source of wonder that Pippin, at his age,
+should cut himself adrift from the associations and security of
+London life to begin a new career in a new country with dubious
+prospect of success.  'I always heard he was doing well all round,'
+he thought; 'thinks he'll better himself, perhaps.  He's a true
+Cornishman.'
+
+The morning of arrival at the mines was grey and cheerless; a cloud
+of smoke, beaten down by drizzle, clung above the forest; the wooden
+houses straggled dismally in the unkempt semblance of a street,
+against a background of endless, silent woods.  An air of blank
+discouragement brooded over everything; cranes jutted idly over empty
+trucks; the long jetty oozed black slime; miners with listless faces
+stood in the rain; dogs fought under their very legs.  On the way to
+the hotel they met no one busy or serene except a Chinee who was
+polishing a dish-cover.
+
+The late superintendent, a cowed man, regaled them at lunch with his
+forebodings; his attitude toward the situation was like the food,
+which was greasy and uninspiring.  Alone together once more, the two
+newcomers eyed each other sadly.
+
+"Oh dear!" sighed Pippin.  "We must change all this, Scorrier; it
+will never do to go back beaten.  I shall not go back beaten; you
+will have to carry me on my shield;" and slyly: "Too heavy, eh?  Poor
+fellow!"  Then for a long time he was silent, moving his lips as if
+adding up the cost.  Suddenly he sighed, and grasping Scorrier's arm,
+said: "Dull, aren't I?  What will you do?  Put me in your report,
+'New Superintendent--sad, dull dog--not a word to throw at a cat!'"
+And as if the new task were too much for him, he sank back in
+thought.  The last words he said to Scorrier that night were: "Very
+silent here.  It's hard to believe one's here for life.  But I feel I
+am.  Mustn't be a coward, though!" and brushing his forehead, as
+though to clear from it a cobweb of faint thoughts, he hurried off.
+
+Scorrier stayed on the veranda smoking.  The rain had ceased, a few
+stars were burning dimly; even above the squalor of the township the
+scent of the forests, the interminable forests, brooded.  There
+sprang into his mind the memory of a picture from one of his
+children's fairy books--the picture of a little bearded man on
+tiptoe, with poised head and a great sword, slashing at the castle of
+a giant.  It reminded him of Pippin.  And suddenly, even to Scorrier-
+-whose existence was one long encounter with strange places--the
+unseen presence of those woods, their heavy, healthy scent, the
+little sounds, like squeaks from tiny toys, issuing out of the gloomy
+silence, seemed intolerable, to be shunned, from the mere instinct of
+self-preservation.  He thought of the evening he had spent in the
+bosom of "Down-by-the-starn" Hemmings' family, receiving his last
+instructions--the security of that suburban villa, its discouraging
+gentility; the superior acidity of the Miss Hemmings; the noble names
+of large contractors, of company promoters, of a peer, dragged with
+the lightness of gun-carriages across the conversation; the autocracy
+of Hemmings, rasped up here and there, by some domestic
+contradiction.  It was all so nice and safe--as if the whole thing
+had been fastened to an anchor sunk beneath the pink cabbages of the
+drawing-room carpet!  Hemmings, seeing him off the premises, had said
+with secrecy: "Little Pippin will have a good thing.  We shall make
+his salary L----.  He'll be a great man-quite a king.  Ha-ha!"
+
+Scorrier shook the ashes from his pipe.  'Salary!' he thought,
+straining his ears; 'I wouldn't take the place for five thousand
+pounds a year.  And yet it's a fine country,' and with ironic
+violence he repeated, 'a dashed fine country!'
+
+Ten days later, having finished his report on the new mine, he stood
+on the jetty waiting to go abroad the steamer for home.
+
+"God bless you!" said Pippin.  "Tell them they needn't be afraid; and
+sometimes when you're at home think of me, eh?"
+
+Scorrier, scrambling on board, had a confused memory of tears in his
+eyes, and a convulsive handshake.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+It was eight years before the wheels of life carried Scorrier back to
+that disenchanted spot, and this time not on the business of the New
+Colliery Company.  He went for another company with a mine some
+thirty miles away.  Before starting, however, he visited Hemmings.
+The secretary was surrounded by pigeon-holes and finer than ever;
+Scorrier blinked in the full radiance of his courtesy.  A little man
+with eyebrows full of questions, and a grizzled beard, was seated in
+an arm-chair by the fire.
+
+"You know Mr. Booker," said Hemmings--"one of my directors.  This is
+Mr. Scorrier, sir--who went out for us."
+
+These sentences were murmured in a way suggestive of their uncommon
+value.  The director uncrossed his legs, and bowed.  Scorrier also
+bowed, and Hemmings, leaning back, slowly developed the full
+resources of his waistcoat.
+
+"So you are going out again, Scorrier, for the other side?  I tell
+Mr. Scorrier, sir, that he is going out for the enemy.  Don't find
+them a mine as good as you found us, there's a good man."
+
+The little director asked explosively: "See our last dividend?
+Twenty per cent; eh, what?"
+
+Hemmings moved a finger, as if reproving his director.  "I will not
+disguise from you," he murmured, "that there is friction between us
+and--the enemy; you know our position too well--just a little too
+well, eh?  'A nod's as good as a wink.'"
+
+His diplomatic eyes flattered Scorrier, who passed a hand over his
+brow--and said: "Of course."
+
+"Pippin doesn't hit it off with them.  Between ourselves, he's a
+leetle too big for his boots.  You know what it is when a man in his
+position gets a sudden rise!"
+
+Scorrier caught himself searching on the floor for a sight of
+Hemmings' boots; he raised his eyes guiltily.  The secretary
+continued: "We don't hear from him quite as often as we should like,
+in fact."
+
+To his own surprise Scorrier murmured: "It's a silent place!"
+
+The secretary smiled.  "Very good!  Mr. Scorrier says, sir, it's a
+silent place; ha-ha! I call that very good!"  But suddenly a secret
+irritation seemed to bubble in him; he burst forth almost violently:
+"He's no business to let it affect him; now, has he?  I put it to
+you, Mr. Scorrier, I put it to you, sir!"
+
+But Scorrier made no reply, and soon after took his leave: he had
+been asked to convey a friendly hint to Pippin that more frequent
+letters would be welcomed.  Standing in the shadow of the Royal
+Exchange, waiting to thread his way across, he thought: 'So you must
+have noise, must you--you've got some here, and to spare....'
+
+On his arrival in the new world he wired to Pippin asking if he might
+stay with him on the way up country, and received the answer: "Be
+sure and come."
+
+A week later he arrived (there was now a railway) and found Pippin
+waiting for him in a phaeton.  Scorrier would not have known the
+place again; there was a glitter over everything, as if some one had
+touched it with a wand.  The tracks had given place to roads, running
+firm, straight, and black between the trees under brilliant sunshine;
+the wooden houses were all painted; out in the gleaming harbour
+amongst the green of islands lay three steamers, each with a fleet of
+busy boats; and here and there a tiny yacht floated, like a sea-bird
+on the water.  Pippin drove his long-tailed horses furiously; his
+eyes brimmed with subtle kindness, as if according Scorrier a
+continual welcome.  During the two days of his stay Scorrier never
+lost that sense of glamour.  He had every opportunity for observing
+the grip Pippin had over everything.  The wooden doors and walls of
+his bungalow kept out no sounds.  He listened to interviews between
+his host and all kinds and conditions of men.  The voices of the
+visitors would rise at first--angry, discontented, matter-of-fact,
+with nasal twang, or guttural drawl; then would come the soft patter
+of the superintendent's feet crossing and recrossing the room.  Then
+a pause, the sound of hard breathing, and quick questions--the
+visitor's voice again, again the patter, and Pippin's ingratiating
+but decisive murmurs.  Presently out would come the visitor with an
+expression on his face which Scorrier soon began to know by heart, a
+kind of pleased, puzzled, helpless look, which seemed to say, "I've
+been done, I know--I'll give it to myself when I'm round the corner."
+
+Pippin was full of wistful questions about "home."  He wanted to talk
+of music, pictures, plays, of how London looked, what new streets
+there were, and, above all, whether Scorrier had been lately in the
+West Country.  He talked of getting leave next winter, asked whether
+Scorrier thought they would "put up with him at home"; then, with the
+agitation which had alarmed Scorrier before, he added: "Ah! but I'm
+not fit for home now.  One gets spoiled; it's big and silent here.
+What should I go back to?  I don't seem to realise."
+
+Scorrier thought of Hemmings.  "'Tis a bit cramped there, certainly,"
+he muttered.
+
+Pippin went on as if divining his thoughts.  "I suppose our friend
+Hemmings would call me foolish; he's above the little weaknesses of
+imagination, eh?  Yes; it's silent here.  Sometimes in the evening I
+would give my head for somebody to talk to--Hemmings would never give
+his head for anything, I think.  But all the same, I couldn't face
+them at home.  Spoiled!"  And slyly he murmured: "What would the
+Board say if they could hear that?"
+
+Scorrier blurted out: "To tell you the truth, they complain a little
+of not hearing from you."
+
+Pippin put out a hand, as if to push something away.  "Let them try
+the life here!" he broke out; "it's like sitting on a live volcano--
+what with our friends, 'the enemy,' over there; the men; the American
+competition.  I keep it going, Scorrier, but at what a cost--at what
+a cost!"
+
+"But surely--letters?"
+
+Pippin only answered: " I try--I try!"
+
+Scorrier felt with remorse and wonder that he had spoken the truth.
+The following day he left for his inspection, and while in the camp
+of "the enemy" much was the talk he heard of Pippin.
+
+"Why!" said his host, the superintendent, a little man with a face
+somewhat like an owl's, "d'you know the name they've given him down
+in the capital--'the King'--good, eh?  He's made them 'sit up' all
+along this coast.  I like him well enough--good--hearted man,
+shocking nervous; but my people down there can't stand him at any
+price.  Sir, he runs this colony.  You'd think butter wouldn't melt
+in that mouth of his; but he always gets his way; that's what riles
+'em so; that and the success he's making of his mine.  It puzzles me;
+you'd think he'd only be too glad of a quiet life, a man with his
+nerves.  But no, he's never happy unless he's fighting, something
+where he's got a chance to score a victory.  I won't say he likes it,
+but, by Jove, it seems he's got to do it.  Now that's funny!  I'll
+tell you one thing, though shouldn't be a bit surprised if he broke
+down some day; and I'll tell you another," he added darkly, "he's
+sailing very near the wind, with those large contracts that he makes.
+I wouldn't care to take his risks.  Just let them have a strike, or
+something that shuts them down for a spell--and mark my words, sir--
+it'll be all up with them.  But," he concluded confidentially, "I
+wish I had his hold on the men; it's a great thing in this country.
+Not like home, where you can go round a corner and get another gang.
+You have to make the best you can out of the lot you have; you won't,
+get another man for love or money without you ship him a few hundred
+miles."  And with a frown he waved his arm over the forests to
+indicate the barrenness of the land.
+
+Scorrier finished his inspection and went on a shooting trip into the
+forest.  His host met him on his return.  "Just look at this!" he
+said, holding out a telegram.  "Awful, isn't it?" His face expressed
+a profound commiseration, almost ludicrously mixed with the ashamed
+contentment that men experience at the misfortunes of an enemy.
+
+The telegram, dated the day before, ran thus "Frightful explosion New
+Colliery this morning, great loss of life feared."
+
+Scorrier had the bewildered thought: 'Pippin will want me now.'
+
+He took leave of his host, who called after him: "You'd better wait
+for a steamer!  It's a beastly drive!"
+
+Scorrier shook his head.  All night, jolting along a rough track cut
+through the forest, he thought of Pippin.  The other miseries of this
+calamity at present left him cold; he barely thought of the smothered
+men; but Pippin's struggle, his lonely struggle with this hydra-
+headed monster, touched him very nearly.  He fell asleep and dreamed
+of watching Pippin slowly strangled by a snake; the agonised, kindly,
+ironic face peeping out between two gleaming coils was so horribly
+real, that he awoke.  It was the moment before dawn: pitch-black
+branches barred the sky; with every jolt of the wheels the gleams
+from the lamps danced, fantastic and intrusive, round ferns and tree-
+stems, into the cold heart of the forest.  For an hour or more
+Scorrier tried to feign sleep, and hide from the stillness, and
+overmastering gloom of these great woods.  Then softly a whisper of
+noises stole forth, a stir of light, and the whole slow radiance of
+the morning glory.  But it brought no warmth; and Scorrier wrapped
+himself closer in his cloak, feeling as though old age had touched
+him.
+
+Close on noon he reached the township.  Glamour seemed still to hover
+over it.  He drove on to the mine.  The winding-engine was turning,
+the pulley at the top of the head-gear whizzing round; nothing looked
+unusual.  'Some mistake!' he thought.  He drove to the mine
+buildings, alighted, and climbed to the shaft head.  Instead of the
+usual rumbling of the trolleys, the rattle of coal discharged over
+the screens, there was silence.  Close by, Pippin himself was
+standing, smirched with dirt.  The cage, coming swift and silent from
+below, shot open its doors with a sharp rattle.  Scorrier bent
+forward to look.  There lay a dead man, with a smile on his face.
+
+"How many?" he whispered.
+
+Pippin answered: "Eighty-four brought up--forty-seven still below,"
+and entered the man's name in a pocket-book.
+
+An older man was taken out next; he too was smiling--there had been
+vouchsafed to him, it seemed, a taste of more than earthly joy.  The
+sight of those strange smiles affected Scorrier more than all the
+anguish or despair he had seen scored on the faces of other dead men.
+He asked an old miner how long Pippin had been at work.
+
+"Thirty hours.  Yesterday he wer' below; we had to nigh carry mun up
+at last.  He's for goin' down again, but the chaps won't lower mun;"
+the old man gave a sigh.  "I'm waiting for my boy to come up, I am."
+
+Scorrier waited too--there was fascination about those dead, smiling
+faces.  The rescuing of these men who would never again breathe went
+on and on.  Scorrier grew sleepy in the sun.  The old miner woke him,
+saying: "Rummy stuff this here chokedamp; see, they all dies drunk!"
+The very next to be brought up was the chief engineer.  Scorrier had
+known him quite well, one of those Scotsmen who are born at the age
+of forty and remain so all their lives.  His face--the only one that
+wore no smile--seemed grieving that duty had deprived it of that last
+luxury.  With wide eyes and drawn lips he had died protesting.
+
+Late in the afternoon the old miner touched Scorrier's arm, and said:
+"There he is--there's my boy!"  And he departed slowly, wheeling the
+body on a trolley.
+
+As the sun set, the gang below came up.  No further search was
+possible till the fumes had cleared.  Scorrier heard one man say:
+"There's some we'll never get; they've had sure burial"
+
+Another answered him: "'Tis a gude enough bag for me!"  They passed
+him, the whites of their eyes gleaming out of faces black as ink.
+
+Pippin drove him home at a furious pace, not uttering a single word.
+As they turned into the main street, a young woman starting out
+before the horses obliged Pippin to pull up.  The glance he bent on
+Scorrier was ludicrously prescient of suffering.  The woman asked for
+her husband.  Several times they were stopped thus by women asking
+for their husbands or sons.  "This is what I have to go through,"
+Pippin whispered.
+
+When they had eaten, he said to Scorrier: "It was kind of you to come
+and stand by me!  They take me for a god, poor creature that I am.
+But shall I ever get the men down again?  Their nerve's shaken.  I
+wish I were one of those poor lads, to die with a smile like that!"
+
+Scorrier felt the futility of his presence.  On Pippin alone must be
+the heat and burden.  Would he stand under it, or would the whole
+thing come crashing to the ground?  He urged him again and again to
+rest, but Pippin only gave him one of his queer smiles.  "You don't
+know how strong I am!" he said.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+He himself slept heavily; and, waking at dawn, went down.  Pippin was
+still at his desk; his pen had dropped; he was asleep.  The ink was
+wet; Scorrier's eye caught the opening words:
+
+"GENTLEMEN,--Since this happened I have not slept...."
+
+He stole away again with a sense of indignation that no one could be
+dragged in to share that fight.  The London Board-room rose before
+his mind.  He imagined the portentous gravity of Hemmings; his face
+and voice and manner conveying the impression that he alone could
+save the situation; the six directors, all men of commonsense and
+certainly humane, seated behind large turret-shaped inkpots; the
+concern and irritation in their voices, asking how it could have
+happened; their comments: "An awful thing!"  "I suppose Pippin is
+doing the best he can!"  "Wire him on no account to leave the mine
+idle!"  "Poor devils!"  "A fund?  Of course, what ought we to give?"
+He had a strong conviction that nothing of all this would disturb the
+commonsense with which they would go home and eat their mutton.  A
+good thing too; the less it was taken to heart the better!  But
+Scorrier felt angry.  The fight was so unfair!  A fellow all nerves--
+with not a soul to help him!  Well, it was his own lookout!  He had
+chosen to centre it all in himself, to make himself its very soul.
+If he gave way now, the ship must go down!  By a thin thread,
+Scorrier's hero-worship still held.  'Man against nature,' he
+thought, 'I back the man.'  The struggle in which he was so powerless
+to give aid, became intensely personal to him, as if he had engaged
+his own good faith therein.
+
+The next day they went down again to the pit-head; and Scorrier
+himself descended.  The fumes had almost cleared, but there were some
+places which would never be reached.  At the end of the day all but
+four bodies had been recovered.  "In the day o' judgment," a miner
+said, "they four'll come out of here."  Those unclaimed bodies
+haunted Scorrier.  He came on sentences of writing, where men waiting
+to be suffocated had written down their feelings.  In one place, the
+hour, the word "Sleepy," and a signature.  In another, "A. F.--done
+for."  When he came up at last Pippin was still waiting, pocket-book
+in hand; they again departed at a furious pace.
+
+Two days later Scorrier, visiting the shaft, found its neighbourhood
+deserted--not a living thing of any sort was there except one
+Chinaman poking his stick into the rubbish.  Pippin was away down the
+coast engaging an engineer; and on his return, Scorrier had not the
+heart to tell him of the desertion.  He was spared the effort, for
+Pippin said: "Don't be afraid--you've got bad news?  The men have
+gone on strike."
+
+Scorrier sighed.  "Lock, stock, and barrel"
+
+"I thought so--see what I have here!" He put before Scorrier a
+telegram:
+
+"At all costs keep working--fatal to stop--manage this somehow.--
+HEMMINGS."
+
+Breathing quickly, he added: "As if I didn't know! 'Manage this
+somehow'--a little hard!"
+
+"What's to be done?" asked Scorrier.
+
+"You see I am commanded!" Pippin answered bitterly.  "And they're
+quite right; we must keep working--our contracts!  Now I'm down--not
+a soul will spare me!"
+
+The miners' meeting was held the following day on the outskirts of
+the town.  Pippin had cleared the place to make a public recreation-
+ground--a sort of feather in the company's cap; it was now to be the
+spot whereon should be decided the question of the company's life or
+death.
+
+The sky to the west was crossed by a single line of cloud like a bar
+of beaten gold; tree shadows crept towards the groups of men; the
+evening savour, that strong fragrance of the forest, sweetened the
+air.  The miners stood all round amongst the burnt tree-stumps, cowed
+and sullen.  They looked incapable of movement or expression.  It was
+this dumb paralysis that frightened Scorrier.  He watched Pippin
+speaking from his phaeton, the butt of all those sullen, restless
+eyes.  Would he last out?  Would the wires hold?  It was like the
+finish of a race.  He caught a baffled look on Pippin's face, as if
+he despaired of piercing that terrible paralysis.  The men's eyes had
+begun to wander.  'He's lost his hold,' thought Scorrier; 'it's all
+up!'
+
+A miner close beside him muttered: "Look out!"
+
+Pippin was leaning forward, his voice had risen, the words fell like
+a whiplash on the faces of the crowd: "You shan't throw me over; do
+you think I'll give up all I've done for you?  I'll make you the
+first power in the colony!  Are you turning tail at the first shot?
+You're a set of cowards, my lads!"
+
+Each man round Scorrier was listening with a different motion of the
+hands--one rubbed them, one clenched them, another moved his closed
+fist, as if stabbing some one in the back.  A grisly-bearded, beetle-
+browed, twinkling-eyed old Cornishman muttered: "A'hm not troublin'
+about that."  It seemed almost as if Pippin's object was to get the
+men to kill him; they had gathered closer, crouching for a rush.
+Suddenly Pippin's voice dropped to a whisper: "I'm disgraced
+Men, are you going back on me?"
+
+The old miner next Scorrier called out suddenly: "Anny that's
+Cornishmen here to stand by the superintendent?"  A group drew
+together, and with murmurs and gesticulation the meeting broke up.
+
+In the evening a deputation came to visit Pippin; and all night long
+their voices and the superintendent's footsteps could be heard.  In
+the morning, Pippin went early to the mine.  Before supper the
+deputation came again; and again Scorrier had to listen hour after
+hour to the sound of voices and footsteps till he fell asleep.  Just
+before dawn he was awakened by a light.  Pippin stood at his bedside.
+"The men go down to-morrow," he said: "What did I tell you?  Carry me
+home on my shield, eh?"
+
+In a week the mine was in full work.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+Two years later, Scorrier heard once more of Pippin.  A note from
+Hemmings reached him asking if he could make it convenient to attend
+their Board meeting the following Thursday.  He arrived rather before
+the appointed time.  The secretary received him, and, in answer to
+inquiry, said: "Thank you, we are doing well--between ourselves, we
+are doing very well."
+
+"And Pippin?"
+
+The secretary frowned.  "Ah, Pippin! We asked you to come on his
+account.  Pippin is giving us a lot of trouble.  We have not had a
+single line from him for just two years!"  He spoke with such a sense
+of personal grievance that Scorrier felt quite sorry for him.  "Not a
+single line," said Hemmings, "since that explosion--you were there at
+the time, I remember!  It makes it very awkward; I call it personal
+to me."
+
+"But how--" Scorrier began.
+
+"We get--telegrams.  He writes to no one, not even to his family.
+And why?  Just tell me why?  We hear of him; he's a great nob out
+there.  Nothing's done in the colony without his finger being in the
+pie.  He turned out the last Government because they wouldn't grant
+us an extension for our railway--shows he can't be a fool.  Besides,
+look at our balance-sheet!"
+
+It turned out that the question on which Scorrier's opinion was
+desired was, whether Hemmings should be sent out to see what was the
+matter with the superintendent.  During the discussion which.
+ensued, he was an unwilling listener to strictures on Pippin's
+silence.  "The explosion," he muttered at last, "a very trying time!"
+
+Mr. Booker pounced on him.  "A very trying time!  So it was--to all
+of us.  But what excuse is that--now, Mr. Scorrier, what excuse is
+that?"
+
+Scorrier was obliged to admit that it was none.
+
+"Business is business--eh, what?"
+
+Scorrier, gazing round that neat Board-room, nodded.  A deaf
+director, who had not spoken for some months, said with sudden
+fierceness: "It's disgraceful!"  He was obviously letting off the
+fume of long-unuttered disapprovals.  One perfectly neat, benevolent
+old fellow, however, who had kept his hat on, and had a single vice--
+that of coming to the Board-room with a brown paper parcel tied up
+with string--murmured: "We must make all allowances," and started an
+anecdote about his youth.  He was gently called to order by his
+secretary.  Scorrier was asked for his opinion.  He looked at
+Hemmings.  "My importance is concerned," was written all over the
+secretary's face.  Moved by an impulse of loyalty to Pippin, Scorrier
+answered, as if it were all settled: " Well, let me know when you are
+starting, Hemmings--I should like the trip myself."
+
+As he was going out, the chairman, old Jolyon Forsyte, with a grave,
+twinkling look at Hemmings, took him aside.  "Glad to hear you say
+that about going too, Mr. Scorrier; we must be careful--Pippin's such
+a good fellow, and so sensitive; and our friend there--a bit heavy in
+the hand, um?"
+
+Scorrier did in fact go out with Hemmings.  The secretary was sea-
+sick, and his prostration, dignified but noisy, remained a memory for
+ever; it was sonorous and fine--the prostration of superiority; and
+the way in which he spoke of it, taking casual acquaintances into the
+caves of his experience, was truly interesting.
+
+Pippin came down to the capital to escort them, provided for their
+comforts as if they had been royalty, and had a special train to take
+them to the mines.
+
+He was a little stouter, brighter of colour, greyer of beard, more
+nervous perhaps in voice and breathing.  His manner to Hemmings was
+full of flattering courtesy; but his sly, ironical glances played on
+the secretary's armour like a fountain on a hippopotamus.  To
+Scorrier, however, he could not show enough affection:
+
+The first evening, when Hemmings had gone to his room, he jumped up
+like a boy out of school.  "So I'm going to get a wigging," he said;
+"I suppose I deserve it; but if you knew--if you only knew...! Out
+here they've nicknamed me 'the King'--they say I rule the colony.
+It's myself that I can't rule"; and with a sudden burst of passion
+such as Scorrier had never seen in him: "Why did they send this man
+here?  What can he know about the things that I've been through?"  In
+a moment he calmed down again.  "There! this is very stupid; worrying
+you like this!" and with a long, kind look into Scorrier's face, he
+hustled him off to bed.
+
+Pippin did not break out again, though fire seemed to smoulder behind
+the bars of his courteous irony.  Intuition of danger had evidently
+smitten Hemmings, for he made no allusion to the object of his visit.
+There were moments when Scorrier's common-sense sided with Hemmings--
+these were moments when the secretary was not present.
+
+'After all,' he told himself, 'it's a little thing to ask--one letter
+a month.  I never heard of such a case.'  It was wonderful indeed how
+they stood it!  It showed how much they valued Pippin!  What was the
+matter with him?  What was the nature of his trouble?  One glimpse
+Scorrier had when even Hemmings, as he phrased it, received "quite a
+turn."  It was during a drive back from the most outlying of the
+company's trial mines, eight miles through the forest.  The track led
+through a belt of trees blackened by a forest fire.  Pippin was
+driving.  The secretary seated beside him wore an expression of faint
+alarm, such as Pippin's driving was warranted to evoke from almost
+any face.  The sky had darkened strangely, but pale streaks of light,
+coming from one knew not where, filtered through the trees.  No
+breath was stirring; the wheels and horses' hoofs made no sound on
+the deep fern mould.  All around, the burnt tree-trunks, leafless and
+jagged, rose like withered giants, the passages between them were
+black, the sky black, and black the silence.  No one spoke, and
+literally the only sound was Pippin's breathing.  What was it that
+was so terrifying?  Scorrier had a feeling of entombment; that nobody
+could help him; the feeling of being face to face with Nature; a
+sensation as if all the comfort and security of words and rules had
+dropped away from him.  And-nothing happened.  They reached home and
+dined.
+
+During dinner he had again that old remembrance of a little man
+chopping at a castle with his sword.  It came at a moment when Pippin
+had raised his hand with the carving-knife grasped in it to answer
+some remark of Hemmings' about the future of the company.  The
+optimism in his uplifted chin, the strenuous energy in his whispering
+voice, gave Scorrier a more vivid glimpse of Pippin's nature than he
+had perhaps ever had before.  This new country, where nothing but
+himself could help a man--that was the castle!  No wonder Pippin was
+impatient of control, no wonder he was out of hand, no wonder he was
+silent--chopping away at that!  And suddenly he thought: 'Yes, and
+all the time one knows, Nature must beat him in the end!'
+
+That very evening Hemmings delivered himself of his reproof.  He had
+sat unusually silent; Scorrier, indeed, had thought him a little
+drunk, so portentous was his gravity; suddenly, however he rose.  It
+was hard on a man, he said, in his position, with a Board (he spoke
+as of a family of small children), to be kept so short of
+information.  He was actually compelled to use his imagination to
+answer the shareholders' questions.  This was painful and
+humiliating; he had never heard of any secretary having to use his
+imagination!  He went further--it was insulting!  He had grown grey
+in the service of the company.  Mr. Scorrier would bear him out when
+he said he had a position to maintain--his name in the City was a
+high one; and, by George! he was going to keep it a high one; he
+would allow nobody to drag it in the dust--that ought clearly to be
+understood.  His directors felt they were being treated like
+children; however that might be, it was absurd to suppose that he
+(Hemmings) could be treated like a child...!  The secretary paused;
+his eyes seemed to bully the room.
+
+"If there were no London office," murmured Pippin, "the shareholders
+would get the same dividends."
+
+Hemmings gasped.  "Come!" he said, "this is monstrous!"
+
+"What help did I get from London when I first came here?  What help
+have I ever had?"
+
+Hemmings swayed, recovered, and with a forced smile replied that, if
+this were true, he had been standing on his head for years; he did
+not believe the attitude possible for such a length of time;
+personally he would have thought that he too had had a little
+something to say to the company's position, but no matter...!  His
+irony was crushing....  It was possible that Mr. Pippin hoped to
+reverse the existing laws of the universe with regard to limited
+companies; he would merely say that he must not begin with a company
+of which he (Hemmings) happened to be secretary.  Mr. Scorrier had
+hinted at excuses; for his part, with the best intentions in the
+world, he had great difficulty in seeing them.  He would go further--
+he did not see them!  The explosion...!  Pippin shrank so visibly
+that Hemmings seemed troubled by a suspicion that he had gone too
+far.
+
+"We know," he said, "that it was trying for you...."
+
+"Trying!" "burst out Pippin.
+
+"No one can say," Hemmings resumed soothingly, "that we have not
+dealt liberally."  Pippin made a motion of the head.  "We think we
+have a good superintendent; I go further, an excellent
+superintendent.  What I say is: Let's be pleasant!  I am not making
+an unreasonable request!"  He ended on a fitting note of jocularity;
+and, as if by consent, all three withdrew, each to his own room,
+without another word.
+
+In the course of the next day Pippin said to Scorrier: "It seems I
+have been very wicked.  I must try to do better"; and with a touch of
+bitter humour, "They are kind enough to think me a good
+superintendent, you see!  After that I must try hard."
+
+Scorrier broke in: "No man could have done so much for them;" and,
+carried away by an impulse to put things absolutely straight, went on
+"But, after all, a letter now and then--what does it amount to?"
+
+Pippin besieged him with a subtle glance.  "You too?" he said--
+"I must indeed have been a wicked man!" and turned away.
+
+Scorrier felt as if he had been guilty of brutality; sorry for
+Pippin, angry with himself; angry with Pippin, sorry for himself.  He
+earnestly desired to see the back of Hemmings.  The secretary
+gratified the wish a few days later, departing by steamer with
+ponderous expressions of regard and the assurance of his goodwill.
+
+Pippin gave vent to no outburst of relief, maintaining a courteous
+silence, making only one allusion to his late guest, in answer to a
+remark of Scorrier:
+
+"Ah! don't tempt me! mustn't speak behind his back."
+
+A month passed, and Scorrier still--remained Pippin's guest.  As each
+mail-day approached he experienced a queer suppressed excitement.  On
+one of these occasions Pippin had withdrawn to his room; and when
+Scorrier went to fetch him to dinner he found him with his head
+leaning on his hands, amid a perfect fitter of torn paper.  He looked
+up at Scorrier.
+
+"I can't do it," he said, "I feel such a hypocrite; I can't put
+myself into leading-strings again.  Why should I ask these people,
+when I've settled everything already?  If it were a vital matter they
+wouldn't want to hear--they'd simply wire, 'Manage this somehow!'"
+
+Scorrier said nothing, but thought privately 'This is a mad
+business!'  What was a letter?  Why make a fuss about a letter?  The
+approach of mail-day seemed like a nightmare to the superintendent;
+he became feverishly nervous like a man under a spell; and, when the
+mail had gone, behaved like a respited criminal.  And this had been
+going on two years!  Ever since that explosion.  Why, it was
+monomania!
+
+One day, a month after Hemmings' departure, Pippin rose early from
+dinner; his face was flushed, he had been drinking wine.  "I won't be
+beaten this time," he said, as he passed Scorrier.  The latter could
+hear him writing in the next room, and looked in presently to say
+that he was going for a walk.  Pippin gave him a kindly nod.
+
+It was a cool, still evening: innumerable stars swarmed in clusters
+over the forests, forming bright hieroglyphics in the middle heavens,
+showering over the dark harbour into the sea.  Scorrier walked
+slowly.  A weight seemed lifted from his mind, so entangled had he
+become in that uncanny silence.  At last Pippin had broken through
+the spell.  To get that, letter sent would be the laying of a
+phantom, the rehabilitation of commonsense.  Now that this silence
+was in the throes of being broken, he felt curiously tender towards
+Pippin, without the hero-worship of old days, but with a queer
+protective feeling.  After all, he was different from other men.  In
+spite of his feverish, tenacious energy, in spite of his ironic
+humour, there was something of the woman in him!  And as for this
+silence, this horror of control--all geniuses had "bees in their
+bonnets," and Pippin was a genius in his way!
+
+He looked back at the town.  Brilliantly lighted it had a thriving
+air-difficult to believe of the place he remembered ten years back;
+the sounds of drinking, gambling, laughter, and dancing floated to
+his ears.  'Quite a city!' he thought.
+
+With this queer elation on him he walked slowly back along the
+street, forgetting that he was simply an oldish mining expert, with a
+look of shabbiness, such as clings to men who are always travelling,
+as if their "nap" were for ever being rubbed off.  And he thought of
+Pippin, creator of this glory.
+
+He had passed the boundaries of the town, and had entered the forest.
+A feeling of discouragement instantly beset him.  The scents and
+silence, after the festive cries and odours of the town, were
+undefinably oppressive.  Notwithstanding, he walked a long time,
+saying to himself that he would give the letter every chance.  At
+last, when he thought that Pippin must have finished, he went back to
+the house.
+
+Pippin had finished.  His forehead rested on the table, his arms hung
+at his sides; he was stone-dead!  His face wore a smile, and by his
+side lay an empty laudanum bottle.
+
+The letter, closely, beautifully written, lay before him.  It was a
+fine document, clear, masterly, detailed, nothing slurred, nothing
+concealed, nothing omitted; a complete review of the company's
+position; it ended with the words: "Your humble servant, RICHARD
+PIPPIN."
+
+Scorrier took possession of it.  He dimly understood that with those
+last words a wire had snapped.  The border-line had been overpassed;
+the point reached where that sense of proportion, which alone makes
+life possible, is lost.  He was certain that at the moment of his
+death Pippin could have discussed bimetallism, or any intellectual
+problem, except the one problem of his own heart; that, for some
+mysterious reason, had been too much for him.  His death had been the
+work of a moment of supreme revolt--a single instant of madness on a
+single subject!  He found on the blotting-paper, scrawled across the
+impress of the signature, "Can't stand it!"  The completion of that
+letter had been to him a struggle ungraspable by Scorrier.  Slavery?
+Defeat?  A violation of Nature?  The death of justice?  It were
+better not to think of it!  Pippin could have told--but he would
+never speak again.  Nature, at whom, unaided, he had dealt so many
+blows, had taken her revenge...!
+
+In the night Scorrier stole down, and, with an ashamed face, cut off
+a lock of the fine grey hair.  'His daughter might like it!' he
+thought....
+
+He waited till Pippin was buried, then, with the letter in his
+pocket, started for England.
+
+He arrived at Liverpool on a Thursday morning, and travelling to
+town, drove straight to the office of the company.  The Board were
+sitting.  Pippin's successor was already being interviewed.  He
+passed out as Scorrier came in, a middle-aged man with a large, red
+beard, and a foxy, compromising face.  He also was a Cornishman.
+Scorrier wished him luck with a very heavy heart.
+
+As an unsentimental man, who had a proper horror of emotion, whose
+living depended on his good sense, to look back on that interview
+with the Board was painful.  It had excited in him a rage of which he
+was now heartily ashamed.  Old Jolyon Forsyte, the chairman, was not
+there for once, guessing perhaps that the Board's view of this death
+would be too small for him; and little Mr. Booker sat in his place.
+Every one had risen, shaken hands with Scorrier, and expressed
+themselves indebted for his coming.  Scorrier placed Pippin's letter
+on the table, and gravely the secretary read out to his Board the
+last words of their superintendent.  When he had finished, a director
+said, "That's not the letter of a madman!"  Another answered: "Mad as
+a hatter; nobody but a madman would have thrown up such a post."
+Scorrier suddenly withdrew.  He heard Hemmings calling after him.
+"Aren't you well, Mr. Scorrier?  aren't you well, sir?"
+
+He shouted back: "Quite sane, I thank you....
+
+The Naples "express" rolled round the outskirts of the town.
+Vesuvius shone in the sun, uncrowned by smoke.  But even as Scorrier
+looked, a white puff went soaring up.  It was the footnote to his
+memories.
+
+February 1901.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of VILLA RUBEIN AND OTHER STORIES
+by John Galsworthy.
+
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+Project Gutenberg Etext of Villa Rubein et al, by John Galsworthy
+#7 in our series by John Galsworthy
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+Title: Villa Rubein et al
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+Author: John Galsworthy
+
+Release Date: May, 2001 [Etext #2639]
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+[Most recently updated: December 9, 2001]
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+Project Gutenberg Etext of Villa Rubein et al, by John Galsworthy
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+
+
+
+
+
+This etext was produced by David Widger  <widger@cecomet.net>
+
+
+
+
+
+[Spelling conforms to the original: "s's" instead of our "z's"; and
+"c's" where we would have "s's"; and "...our" as in colour and
+flavour; many interesting double consonants; etc.]
+
+
+
+
+THE WORKS OF JOHN GALSWORTHY
+
+VILLA RUBEIN AND OTHER STORIES
+
+Contents:
+Villa Rubein
+A Man of Devon
+A Knight
+Salvation of a Forsyte
+The Silence
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+Writing not long ago to my oldest literary friend, I expressed in a
+moment of heedless sentiment the wish that we might have again one of
+our talks of long-past days, over the purposes and methods of our
+art.  And my friend, wiser than I, as he has always been, replied
+with this doubting phrase "Could we recapture the zest of that old
+time?"
+
+I would not like to believe that our faith in the value of
+imaginative art has diminished, that we think it less worth while to
+struggle for glimpses of truth and for the words which may pass them
+on to other eyes; or that we can no longer discern the star we tried
+to follow; but I do fear, with him, that half a lifetime of endeavour
+has dulled the exuberance which kept one up till morning discussing
+the ways and means of aesthetic achievement.  We have discovered,
+perhaps with a certain finality, that by no talk can a writer add a
+cubit to his stature, or change the temperament which moulds and
+colours the vision of life he sets before the few who will pause to
+look at it.  And so--the rest is silence, and what of work we may
+still do will be done in that dogged muteness which is the lot of
+advancing years.
+
+Other times, other men and modes, but not other truth.  Truth, though
+essentially relative, like Einstein's theory, will never lose its
+ever-new and unique quality-perfect proportion; for Truth, to the
+human consciousness at least, is but that vitally just relation of
+part to whole which is the very condition of life itself.  And the
+task before the imaginative writer, whether at the end of the last
+century or all these aeons later, is the presentation of a vision
+which to eye and ear and mind has the implicit proportions of Truth.
+
+I confess to have always looked for a certain flavour in the writings
+of others, and craved it for my own, believing that all true vision
+is so coloured by the temperament of the seer, as to have not only
+the just proportions but the essential novelty of a living thing for,
+after all, no two living things are alike.  A work of fiction should
+carry the hall mark of its author as surely as a Goya, a Daumier, a
+Velasquez, and a Mathew Maris, should be the unmistakable creations
+of those masters.  This is not to speak of tricks and manners which
+lend themselves to that facile elf, the caricaturist, but of a
+certain individual way of seeing and feeling.  A young poet once said
+of another and more popular poet: "Oh! yes, but be cuts no ice.
+"And, when one came to think of it, he did not; a certain flabbiness
+of spirit, a lack of temperament, an absence, perhaps, of the ironic,
+or passionate, view, insubstantiated his work; it had no edge--just a
+felicity which passed for distinction with the crowd.
+
+Let me not be understood to imply that a novel should be a sort of
+sandwich, in which the author's mood or philosophy is the slice of
+ham.  One's demand is for a far more subtle impregnation of flavour;
+just that, for instance, which makes De Maupassant a more poignant
+and fascinating writer than his master Flaubert, Dickens and
+Thackeray more living and permanent than George Eliot or Trollope.
+It once fell to my lot to be the preliminary critic of a book on
+painting, designed to prove that the artist's sole function was the
+impersonal elucidation of the truths of nature.  I was regretfully
+compelled to observe that there were no such things as the truths of
+Nature, for the purposes of art, apart from the individual vision of
+the artist.  Seer and thing seen, inextricably involved one with the
+other, form the texture of any masterpiece; and I, at least, demand
+therefrom a distinct impression of temperament.  I never saw, in the
+flesh, either De Maupassant or Tchekov--those masters of such
+different methods entirely devoid of didacticism--but their work
+leaves on me a strangely potent sense of personality.  Such subtle
+intermingling of seer with thing seen is the outcome only of long and
+intricate brooding, a process not too favoured by modern life, yet
+without which we achieve little but a fluent chaos of clever
+insignificant impressions, a kind of glorified journalism, holding
+much the same relation to the deeply-impregnated work of Turgenev,
+Hardy, and Conrad, as a film bears to a play.
+
+Speaking for myself, with the immodesty required of one who hazards
+an introduction to his own work, I was writing fiction for five years
+before I could master even its primary technique, much less achieve
+that union of seer with thing seen, which perhaps begins to show
+itself a little in this volume--binding up the scanty harvests of
+1899, 1900, and 1901--especially in the tales: "A Knight," and
+"Salvation of a Forsyte."  Men, women, trees, and works of fiction--
+very tiny are the seeds from which they spring.  I used really to see
+the "Knight"--in 1896, was it?--sitting in the "Place" in front of
+the Casino at Monte Carlo; and because his dried-up elegance, his
+burnt straw hat, quiet courtesy of attitude, and big dog, used to
+fascinate and intrigue me, I began to imagine his life so as to
+answer my own questions and to satisfy, I suppose, the mood I was in.
+I never spoke to him, I never saw him again.  His real story, no
+doubt, was as different from that which I wove around his figure as
+night from day.
+
+As for Swithin, wild horses will not drag from me confession of where
+and when I first saw the prototype which became enlarged to his bulky
+stature.  I owe Swithin much, for he first released the satirist in
+me, and is, moreover, the only one of my characters whom I killed
+before I gave him life, for it is in "The Man of Property" that
+Swithin Forsyte more memorably lives.
+
+Ranging beyond this volume, I cannot recollect writing the first
+words of "The Island Pharisees"--but it would be about August, 1901.
+Like all the stories in "Villa Rubein," and, indeed, most of my
+tales, the book originated in the curiosity, philosophic reflections,
+and unphilosophic emotions roused in me by some single figure in real
+life.  In this case it was Ferrand, whose real name, of course, was
+not Ferrand, and who died in some "sacred institution" many years ago
+of a consumption brought on by the conditions of his wandering life.
+If not "a beloved," he was a true vagabond, and I first met him in
+the Champs Elysees, just as in "The Pigeon" he describes his meeting
+with Wellwyn.  Though drawn very much from life, he did not in the
+end turn out very like the Ferrand of real life--the, figures of
+fiction soon diverge from their prototypes.
+
+The first draft of "The Island Pharisees" was buried in a drawer;
+when retrieved the other day, after nineteen years, it disclosed a
+picaresque string of anecdotes told by Ferrand in the first person.
+These two-thirds of a book were laid to rest by Edward Garnett's
+dictum that its author was not sufficiently within Ferrand's skin;
+and, struggling heavily with laziness and pride, he started afresh in
+the skin of Shelton.  Three times be wrote that novel, and then it
+was long in finding the eye of Sydney Pawling, who accepted it for
+Heinemann's in 1904.  That was a period of ferment and transition
+with me, a kind of long awakening to the home truths of social
+existence and national character.  The liquor bubbled too furiously
+for clear bottling.  And the book, after all, became but an
+introduction to all those following novels which depict--somewhat
+satirically--the various sections of English "Society" with a more or
+less capital "S."
+
+Looking back on the long-stretched-out body of one's work, it is
+interesting to mark the endless duel fought within a man between the
+emotional and critical sides of his nature, first one, then the
+other, getting the upper hand, and too seldom fusing till the result
+has the mellowness of full achievement.  One can even tell the nature
+of one's readers, by their preference for the work which reveals more
+of this side than of that.  My early work was certainly more
+emotional than critical.  But from 1901 came nine years when the
+critical was, in the main, holding sway.  From 1910 to 1918 the
+emotional again struggled for the upper hand; and from that time on
+there seems to have been something of a "dead beat."  So the conflict
+goes, by what mysterious tides promoted, I know not.
+
+An author must ever wish to discover a hapless member of the Public
+who, never yet having read a word of his writing, would submit to the
+ordeal of reading him right through from beginning to end.  Probably
+the effect could only be judged through an autopsy, but in the remote
+case of survival, it would interest one so profoundly to see the
+differences, if any, produced in that reader's character or outlook
+over life.  This, however, is a consummation which will remain
+devoutly to be wished, for there is a limit to human complaisance.
+One will never know the exact measure of one's infecting power; or
+whether, indeed, one is not just a long soporific.
+
+A writer they say, should not favouritize among his creations; but
+then a writer should not do so many things that be does.  This
+writer, certainly, confesses to having favourites, and of his novels
+so far be likes best: The Forsyte Series; "The Country House";
+"Fraternity"; "The Dark Flower"; and "Five Tales"; believing these to
+be the works which most fully achieve fusion of seer with thing seen,
+most subtly disclose the individuality of their author, and best
+reveal such of truth as has been vouchsafed to him.
+
+JOHN GALSWORTHY.
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+MY SISTER
+
+BLANCHE LILIAN SAUTER
+
+
+
+
+VILLA RUBEIN
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+Walking along the river wall at Botzen, Edmund Dawney said to Alois
+Harz: "Would you care to know the family at that pink house, Villa
+Rubein?"
+
+Harz answered with a smile:
+
+"Perhaps."
+
+"Come with me then this afternoon."
+
+They had stopped before an old house with a blind, deserted look,
+that stood by itself on the wall; Harz pushed the door open.
+
+"Come in, you don't want breakfast yet.  I'm going to paint the river
+to-day."
+
+He ran up the bare broad stairs, and Dawney followed leisurely, his
+thumbs hooked in the armholes of his waistcoat, and his head thrown
+back.
+
+In the attic which filled the whole top story, Harz had pulled a
+canvas to the window.  He was a young man of middle height, square
+shouldered, active, with an angular face, high cheek-bones, and a
+strong, sharp chin.  His eyes were piercing and steel-blue, his
+eyebrows very flexible, nose long and thin with a high bridge; and
+his dark, unparted hair fitted him like a cap.  His clothes looked as
+if he never gave them a second thought.
+
+This room, which served for studio, bedroom, and sitting-room, was
+bare and dusty.  Below the window the river in spring flood rushed
+down the valley, a stream, of molten bronze.  Harz dodged before the
+canvas like a fencer finding his distance; Dawney took his seat on a
+packingcase.
+
+"The snows have gone with a rush this year," he drawled.  "The Talfer
+comes down brown, the Eisack comes down blue; they flow into the
+Etsch and make it green; a parable of the Spring for you, my
+painter."
+
+Harz mixed his colours.
+
+"I've no time for parables," he said, "no time for anything.  If I
+could be guaranteed to live to ninety-nine, like Titian--he had a
+chance.  Look at that poor fellow who was killed the other day!  All
+that struggle, and then--just at the turn!"
+
+He spoke English with a foreign accent; his voice was rather harsh,
+but his smile very kindly.
+
+Dawney lit a cigarette.
+
+"You painters," he said, "are better off than most of us.  You can
+strike out your own line.  Now if I choose to treat a case out of the
+ordinary way and the patient dies, I'm ruined."
+
+"My dear Doctor--if I don't paint what the public likes, I starve;
+all the same I'm going to paint in my own way; in the end I shall
+come out on top."
+
+"It pays to work in the groove, my friend, until you've made your
+name; after that--do what you like, they'll lick your boots all the
+same."
+
+"Ah, you don't love your work."
+
+Dawney answered slowly: "Never so happy as when my hands are full.
+But I want to make money, to get known, to have a good time, good
+cigars, good wine.  I hate discomfort.  No, my boy, I must work it on
+the usual lines; I don't like it, but I must lump it.  One starts in
+life with some notion of the ideal--it's gone by the board with me.
+I've got to shove along until I've made my name, and then, my little
+man--then--"
+
+"Then you'll be soft!  "You pay dearly for that first period!"
+
+"Take my chance of that; there's no other way."
+
+"Make one!"
+
+"Humph!"
+
+Harz poised his brush, as though it were a spear:
+
+"A man must do the best in him.  If he has to suffer--let him!"
+
+Dawney stretched his large soft body; a calculating look had come
+into his eyes.
+
+"You're a tough little man!" he said.
+
+"I've had to be tough."
+
+Dawney rose; tobacco smoke was wreathed round his unruffled hair.
+
+"Touching Villa Rubein," he said, "shall I call for you?  It's a
+mixed household, English mostly--very decent people."
+
+"No, thank you.  I shall be painting all day.  Haven't time to know
+the sort of people who expect one to change one's clothes."
+
+"As you like; ta-to!"  And, puffing out his chest, Dawney vanished
+through a blanket looped across the doorway.
+
+Harz set a pot of coffee on a spirit-lamp, and cut himself some
+bread.  Through the window the freshness of the morning came; the
+scent of sap and blossom and young leaves; the scent of earth, and
+the mountains freed from winter; the new flights and songs of birds;
+all the odorous, enchanted, restless Spring.
+
+There suddenly appeared through the doorway a white rough-haired
+terrier dog, black-marked about the face, with shaggy tan eyebrows.
+He sniffed at Harz, showed the whites round his eyes, and uttered a
+sharp bark.  A young voice called:
+
+"Scruff! Thou naughty dog!"  Light footsteps were heard on the
+stairs; from the distance a thin, high voice called:
+
+"Greta! You mustn't go up there!"
+
+A little girl of twelve, with long fair hair under a wide-brimmed
+hat, slipped in.
+
+Her blue eyes opened wide, her face flushed up.  That face was not
+regular; its cheek-bones were rather prominent, the nose was
+flattish; there was about it an air, innocent, reflecting, quizzical,
+shy.
+
+"Oh!" she said.
+
+Harz smiled: "Good-morning!  This your dog?"
+
+She did not answer, but looked at him with soft bewilderment; then
+running to the dog seized him by the collar.
+
+"Scr-ruff! Thou naughty dog-the baddest dog!"  The ends of her hair
+fell about him; she looked up at Harz, who said:
+
+"Not at all!  Let me give him some bread."
+
+"Oh no! You must not--I will beat him--and tell him he is bad; then
+he shall not do such things again.  Now he is sulky; he looks so
+always when he is sulky.  Is this your home?"
+
+"For the present; I am a visitor."
+
+"But I think you are of this country, because you speak like it."
+
+"Certainly, I am a Tyroler."
+
+"I have to talk English this morning, but I do not like it very much-
+-because, also I am half Austrian, and I like it best; but my sister,
+Christian, is all English.  Here is Miss Naylor; she shall be very
+angry with me."
+
+And pointing to the entrance with a rosy-tipped forefinger, she again
+looked ruefully at Harz.
+
+There came into the room with a walk like the hopping of a bird an
+elderly, small lady, in a grey serge dress, with narrow bands of
+claret-coloured velveteen; a large gold cross dangled from a steel
+chain on her chest; she nervously twisted her hands, clad in black
+kid gloves, rather white about the seams.
+
+Her hair was prematurely grey; her quick eyes brown; her mouth
+twisted at one corner; she held her face, kind-looking, but long and
+narrow, rather to one side, and wore on it a look of apology.  Her
+quick sentences sounded as if she kept them on strings, and wanted to
+draw them back as soon as she had let them forth.
+
+"Greta, how can, you do such things?  I don't know what your father
+would say!  I am sure I don't know how to--so extraordinary--"
+
+"Please!" said Harz.
+
+"You must come at once--so very sorry--so awkward!"  They were
+standing in a ring: Harz with his eyebrows working up and down; the
+little lady fidgeting her parasol; Greta, flushed and pouting, her
+eyes all dewy, twisting an end of fair hair round her finger.
+
+"Oh, look!"  The coffee had boiled over.  Little brown streams
+trickled spluttering from the pan; the dog, with ears laid back and
+tail tucked in, went scurrying round the room.  A feeling of
+fellowship fell on them at once.
+
+"Along the wall is our favourite walk, and Scruff--so awkward, so
+unfortunate--we did not think any one lived here--the shutters are
+cracked, the paint is peeling off so dreadfully.  Have you been long
+in Botzen?  Two months?  Fancy!  You are not English?  You are
+Tyrolese?  But you speak English so well--there for seven years?
+Really?  So fortunate!--It is Greta's day for English."
+
+Miss Naylor's eyes darted bewildered glances at the roof where the
+crossing of the beams made such deep shadows; at the litter of
+brushes, tools, knives, and colours on a table made out of packing-
+cases; at the big window, innocent of glass, and flush with the
+floor, whence dangled a bit of rusty chain--relic of the time when
+the place had been a store-loft; her eyes were hastily averted from
+an unfnished figure of the nude.
+
+Greta, with feet crossed, sat on a coloured blanket, dabbling her
+fnger in a little pool of coffee, and gazing up at Harz.  And he
+thought: 'I should like to paint her like that.  "A forget-me-not."'
+
+He took out his chalks to make a sketch of her.
+
+"Shall you show me?" cried out Greta, scrambling to her feet.
+
+"'Will,' Greta--'will'; how often must I tell you?  I think we should
+be going--it is very late--your father--so very kind of you, but I
+think we should be going.  Scruff!"   Miss Naylor gave the floor two
+taps.  The terrier backed into a plaster cast which came down on his
+tail, and sent him flying through the doorway.  Greta followed
+swiftly, crying:
+
+"Ach! poor Scrufee!"
+
+Miss Naylor crossed the room; bowing, she murmured an apology, and
+also disappeared.
+
+Harz was left alone, his guests were gone; the little girl with the
+fair hair and the eyes like forget-me-nots, the little lady with
+kindly gestures and bird-like walk, the terrier.  He looked round
+him; the room seemed very empty.  Gnawing his moustache, he muttered
+at the fallen cast.
+
+Then taking up his brush, stood before his picture, smiling and
+frowning.  Soon he had forgotten it all in his work.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+It was early morning four days later, and Harz was loitering
+homewards.  The shadows of the clouds passing across the vines were
+vanishing over the jumbled roofs and green-topped spires of the town.
+A strong sweet wind was blowing from the mountains, there was a stir
+in the branches of the trees, and flakes of the late blossom were
+drifting down.  Amongst the soft green pods of a kind of poplar
+chafers buzzed, and numbers of their little brown bodies were strewn
+on the path.
+
+He passed a bench where a girl sat sketching.  A puff of wind whirled
+her drawing to the ground; Harz ran to pick it up.  She took it from
+him with a bow; but, as he turned away, she tore the sketch across.
+
+"Ah!" he said; "why did you do that?"
+
+This girl, who stood with a bit of the torn sketch in either hand,
+was slight and straight; and her face earnest and serene.  She gazed
+at Harz with large, clear, greenish eyes; her lips and chin were
+defiant, her forehead tranquil.
+
+"I don't like it."
+
+"Will you let me look at it?  I am a painter."
+
+"It isn't worth looking at, but--if you wish--"
+
+He put the two halves of the sketch together.
+
+"You see!" she said at last; "I told you."
+
+Harz did not answer, still looking at the sketch.  The girl frowned.
+
+Harz asked her suddenly:
+
+"Why do you paint?"
+
+She coloured, and said:
+
+"Show me what is wrong."
+
+"I cannot show you what is wrong, there is nothing wrong--but why do
+you paint?"
+
+"I don't understand."
+
+Harz shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"You've no business to do that," said the girl in a hurt voice; "I
+want to know."
+
+"Your heart is not in it," said Harz.
+
+She looked at him, startled; her eyes had grown thoughtful.
+
+"I suppose that is it.  There are so many other things--"
+
+"There should be nothing else," said Harz.
+
+She broke in: "I don't want always to be thinking of myself.
+Suppose--"
+
+"Ah! When you begin supposing!"
+
+The girl confronted him; she had torn the sketch again.
+
+"You mean that if it does not matter enough, one had better not do it
+at all.  I don't know if you are right--I think you are."
+
+There was the sound of a nervous cough, and Harz saw behind him his
+three visitors--Miss Naylor offering him her hand; Greta, flushed,
+with a bunch of wild flowers, staring intently in his face; and the
+terrier, sniffing at his trousers.
+
+Miss Naylor broke an awkward silence.
+
+"We wondered if you would still be here, Christian.  I am sorry to
+interrupt you--I was not aware that you knew Mr. Herr--"
+
+"Harz is my name--we were just talking"
+
+"About my sketch.  Oh, Greta, you do tickle!  Will you come and have
+breakfast with us to-day, Herr Harz?  It's our turn, you know."
+
+Harz, glancing at his dusty clothes, excused himself.
+
+But Greta in a pleading voice said: "Oh! do come!  Scruff likes you.
+It is so dull when there is nobody for breakfast but ourselves."
+
+Miss Naylor's mouth began to twist.  Harz hurriedly broke in:
+
+"Thank you.  I will come with pleasure; you don't mind my being
+dirty?"
+
+"Oh no! we do not mind; then we shall none of us wash, and afterwards
+I shall show you my rabbits."
+
+Miss Naylor, moving from foot to foot, like a bird on its perch,
+exclaimed:
+
+"I hope you won't regret it, not a very good meal--the girls are so
+impulsive--such informal invitation; we shall be very glad."
+
+But Greta pulled softly at her sister's sleeve, and Christian,
+gathering her things, led the way.
+
+Harz followed in amazement; nothing of this kind had come into his
+life before.  He kept shyly glancing at the girls; and, noting the
+speculative innocence in Greta's eyes, he smiled.  They soon came to
+two great poplar-trees, which stood, like sentinels, one on either
+side of an unweeded gravel walk leading through lilac bushes to a
+house painted dull pink, with green-shuttered windows, and a roof of
+greenish slate.  Over the door in faded crimson letters were written
+the words, "Villa Rubein."
+
+"That is to the stables," said Greta, pointing down a path, where
+some pigeons were sunning themselves on a wall.  "Uncle Nic keeps his
+horses there: Countess and Cuckoo--his horses begin with C, because
+of Chris--they are quite beautiful.  He says he could drive them to
+Kingdom-Come and they would not turn their hair.  Bow, and say 'Good-
+morning' to our house!"
+
+Harz bowed.
+
+"Father said all strangers should, and I think it brings good luck."
+>From the doorstep she looked round at Harz, then ran into the house.
+
+A broad, thick-set man, with stiff, brushed-up hair, a short, brown,
+bushy beard parted at the chin, a fresh complexion, and blue glasses
+across a thick nose, came out, and called in a bluff voice:
+
+"Ha! my good dears, kiss me quick--prrt!  How goes it then this
+morning?  A good walk, hein?"  The sound of many loud rapid kisses
+followed.
+
+"Ha, Fraulein, good!"  He became aware of Harz's figure standing in
+the doorway: "Und der Herr?"
+
+Miss Naylor hurriedly explained.
+
+"Good!  An artist!  Kommen Sie herein, I am delight.  You will
+breakfast?  I too--yes, yes, my dears--I too breakfast with you this
+morning.  I have the hunter's appetite."
+
+Harz, looking at him keenly, perceived him to be of middle height and
+age, stout, dressed in a loose holland jacket, a very white, starched
+shirt, and blue silk sash; that he looked particularly clean, had an
+air of belonging to Society, and exhaled a really fine aroma of
+excellent cigars and the best hairdresser's essences.
+
+The room they entered was long and rather bare; there was a huge map
+on the wall, and below it a pair of globes on crooked supports,
+resembling two inflated frogs erect on their hind legs.  In one
+corner was a cottage piano, close to a writing-table heaped with
+books and papers; this nook, sacred to Christian, was foreign to the
+rest of the room, which was arranged with supernatural neatness.  A
+table was laid for breakfast, and the sun-warmed air came in through
+French windows.
+
+The meal went merrily; Herr Paul von Morawitz was never in such
+spirits as at table.  Words streamed from him.  Conversing with Harz,
+he talked of Art as who should say: "One does not claim to be a
+connoisseur--pas si bete--still, one has a little knowledge, que
+diable!"  He recommended him a man in the town who sold cigars that
+were "not so very bad."  He consumed porridge, ate an omelette; and
+bending across to Greta gave her a sounding kiss, muttering: "Kiss me
+quick!"--an expression he had picked up in a London music-hall, long
+ago, and considered chic.  He asked his daughters' plans, and held
+out porridge to the terrier, who refused it with a sniff.
+
+"Well," he said suddenly, looking at Miss Naylor, "here is a
+gentleman who has not even heard our names!"
+
+The little lady began her introductions in a breathless voice.
+
+"Good!"  Herr Paul said, puffing out his lips: "Now we know each
+other!" and, brushing up the ends of his moustaches, he carried off
+Harz into another room, decorated with pipe-racks, prints of dancing-
+girls, spittoons, easy-chairs well-seasoned by cigar smoke, French
+novels, and newspapers.
+
+The household at Villa Rubein was indeed of a mixed and curious
+nature.  Cut on both floors by corridors, the Villa was divided into
+four divisions; each of which had its separate inhabitants, an
+arrangement which had come about in the following way:
+
+When old Nicholas Treffry died, his estate, on the boundary of
+Cornwall, had been sold and divided up among his three surviving
+children--Nicholas, who was much the eldest, a partner in the well-
+known firm of Forsyte and Treffry, teamen, of the Strand; Constance,
+married to a man called Decie; and Margaret, at her father's death
+engaged to the curate of the parish, John Devorell, who shortly
+afterwards became its rector.  By his marriage with Margaret Treffry
+the rector had one child called Christian.  Soon after this he came
+into some property, and died, leaving it unfettered to his widow.
+Three years went by, and when the child was six years old, Mrs.
+Devorell, still young and pretty, came to live in London with her
+brother Nicholas.  It was there that she met Paul von Morawitz--the
+last of an old Czech family, who had lived for many hundred years on
+their estates near Budweiss.  Paul had been left an orphan at the age
+of ten, and without a solitary ancestral acre.  Instead of acres, he
+inherited the faith that nothing was too good for a von Morawitz.  In
+later years his savoir faire enabled him to laugh at faith, but it
+stayed quietly with him all the same.  The absence of acres was of no
+great consequence, for through his mother, the daughter of a banker
+in Vienna, he came into a well-nursed fortune.  It befitted a von
+Morawitz that he should go into the Cavalry, but, unshaped for
+soldiering, he soon left the Service; some said he had a difference
+with his Colonel over the quality of food provided during some
+manoeuvres; others that he had retired because his chargers did not
+fit his legs, which were, indeed, rather round.
+
+He had an admirable appetite for pleasure; a man-about-town's life
+suited him.  He went his genial, unreflecting, costly way in Vienna,
+Paris, London.  He loved exclusively those towns, and boasted that he
+was as much at home in one as in another.  He combined exuberant
+vitality with fastidiousness of palate, and devoted both to the
+acquisition of a special taste in women, weeds, and wines; above all
+he was blessed with a remarkable digestion.  He was thirty when he
+met Mrs. Devorell; and she married him because he was so very
+different from anybody she had ever seen.  People more dissimilar
+were never mated.  To Paul--accustomed to stage doors--freshness,
+serene tranquillity, and obvious purity were the baits; he had run
+through more than half his fortune, too, and the fact that she had
+money was possibly not overlooked.  Be that as it may, he was fond of
+her; his heart was soft, he developed a domestic side.
+
+Greta was born to them after a year of marriage.  The instinct of the
+"freeman" was, however, not dead in Paul; he became a gambler.  He
+lost the remainder of his fortune without being greatly disturbed.
+When he began to lose his wife's fortune too things naturally became
+more difficult.  Not too much remained when Nicholas Treffry stepped
+in, and caused his sister to settle what was left on her daughters,
+after providing a life-interest for herself and Paul.  Losing his
+supplies, the good man had given up his cards.  But the instinct of
+the "freeman" was still living in his breast; he took to drink.  He
+was never grossly drunk, and rarely very sober.  His wife sorrowed
+over this new passion; her health, already much enfeebled, soon broke
+down.  The doctors sent her to the Tyrol.  She seemed to benefit by
+this, and settled down at Botzen.  The following year, when Greta was
+just ten, she died.  It was a shock to Paul.  He gave up excessive
+drinking; became a constant smoker, and lent full rein to his natural
+domesticity.  He was fond of both the girls, but did not at all
+understand them; Greta, his own daughter, was his favourite.  Villa
+Rubein remained their home; it was cheap and roomy.  Money, since
+Paul became housekeeper to himself, was scarce.
+
+About this time Mrs. Decie, his wife's sister, whose husband had died
+in the East, returned to England; Paul invited her to come and live
+with them.  She had her own rooms, her own servant; the arrangement
+suited Paul--it was economically sound, and there was some one always
+there to take care of the girls.  In truth he began to feel the
+instinct of the "freeman" rising again within him; it was pleasant to
+run over to Vienna now and then; to play piquet at a Club in Gries,
+of which he was the shining light; in a word, to go "on the tiles" a
+little.  One could not always mourn--even if a woman were an angel;
+moreover, his digestion was as good as ever.
+
+The fourth quarter of this Villa was occupied by Nicholas Treffry,
+whose annual sojourn out of England perpetually surprised himself.
+Between him and his young niece, Christian, there existed, however, a
+rare sympathy; one of those affections between the young and old,
+which, mysteriously born like everything in life, seems the only end
+and aim to both, till another feeling comes into the younger heart.
+
+Since a long and dangerous illness, he had been ordered to avoid the
+English winter, and at the commencement of each spring he would
+appear at Botzen, driving his own horses by easy stages from the
+Italian Riviera, where he spent the coldest months.  He always stayed
+till June before going back to his London Club, and during all that
+time he let no day pass without growling at foreigners, their habits,
+food, drink, and raiment, with a kind of big dog's growling that did
+nobody any harm.  The illness had broken him very much; he was
+seventy, but looked more.  He had a servant, a Luganese, named
+Dominique, devoted to him.  Nicholas Treffry had found him overworked
+in an hotel, and had engaged him with the caution: "Look--here,
+Dominique! I swear!"  To which Dominique, dark of feature, saturnine
+and ironical, had only replied: "Tres biens, M'sieur!"
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+Harz and his host sat in leather chairs; Herr Paul's square back was
+wedged into a cushion, his round legs crossed.  Both were smoking,
+and they eyed each other furtively, as men of different stamp do when
+first thrown together.  The young artist found his host extremely new
+and disconcerting; in his presence he felt both shy and awkward.
+Herr Paul, on the other hand, very much at ease, was thinking
+indolently:
+
+'Good-looking young fellow--comes of the people, I expect, not at all
+the manner of the world; wonder what he talks about.'
+
+Presently noticing that Harz was looking at a photograph, he said:
+"Ah! yes! that was a woman!  They are not to be found in these days.
+She could dance, the little Coralie!  Did you ever see such arms?
+Confess that she is beautiful, hein?"
+
+"She has individuality," said Harz.  "A fine type!"
+
+Herr Paul blew out a cloud of smoke.
+
+"Yes," he murmured, "she was fine all over!"  He had dropped his
+eyeglasses, and his full brown eyes, with little crow's-feet at the
+corners, wandered from his visitor to his cigar.
+
+'He'd be like a Satyr if he wasn't too clean,' thought Harz.  'Put
+vine leaves in his hair, paint him asleep, with his hands crossed,
+so!'
+
+"When I am told a person has individuality," Herr Paul was saying in
+a rich and husky voice, "I generally expect boots that bulge, an
+umbrella of improper colour; I expect a creature of 'bad form' as
+they say in England; who will shave some days and some days will not
+shave; who sometimes smells of India-rubber, and sometimes does not
+smell, which is discouraging!"
+
+"You do not approve of individuality?" said Harz shortly.
+
+"Not if it means doing, and thinking, as those who know better do not
+do, or think."
+
+"And who are those who know better?"
+
+"Ah! my dear, you are asking me a riddle?  Well, then--Society, men
+of birth, men of recognised position, men above eccentricity, in a
+word, of reputation."
+
+Harz looked at him fixedly.  "Men who haven't the courage of their
+own ideas, not even the courage to smell of India-rubber; men who
+have no desires, and so can spend all their time making themselves
+flat!"
+
+Herr Paul drew out a red silk handkerchief and wiped his beard.  "I
+assure you, my dear," he said, "it is easier to be flat; it is more
+respectable to be flat.  Himmel! why not, then, be flat?"
+
+"Like any common fellow?"
+
+"Certes; like any common fellow--like me, par exemple!"  Herr Paul
+waved his hand.  When he exercised unusual tact, he always made use
+of a French expression.
+
+Harz flushed.  Herr Paul followed up his victory.  "Come, come!" he
+said.  "Pass me my men of repute! que diable! we are not anarchists."
+
+"Are you sure?" said Harz.
+
+Herr Paul twisted his moustache.  "I beg your pardon," he said
+slowly.  But at this moment the door was opened; a rumbling voice
+remarked: "Morning, Paul.  Who's your visitor?"  Harz saw a tall,
+bulky figure in the doorway.
+
+"Come in,"' called out Herr Paul.  "Let me present to you a new
+acquaintance, an artist: Herr Harz--Mr. Nicholas Treffry.  Psumm
+bumm! All this introducing is dry work."  And going to the sideboard
+he poured out three glasses of a light, foaming beer.
+
+Mr. Treffry waved it from him: "Not for me," he said: "Wish I could!
+They won't let me look at it."  And walking over, to the window with
+a heavy tread, which trembled like his voice, he sat down.  There was
+something in his gait like the movements of an elephant's hind legs.
+He was very tall (it was said, with the customary exaggeration of
+family tradition, that there never had been a male Treffry under six
+feet in height), but now he stooped, and had grown stout.  There was
+something at once vast and unobtrusive about his personality.
+
+He wore a loose brown velvet jacket, and waistcoat, cut to show a
+soft frilled shirt and narrow black ribbon tie; a thin gold chain was
+looped round his neck and fastened to his fob.  His heavy cheeks had
+folds in them like those in a bloodhound's face.  He wore big,
+drooping, yellow-grey moustaches, which he had a habit of sucking,
+and a goatee beard.  He had long loose ears that might almost have
+been said to gap.  On his head there was a soft black hat, large in
+the brim and low in the crown.  His grey eyes, heavy-lidded, twinkled
+under their bushy brows with a queer, kind cynicism.  As a young man
+he had sown many a wild oat; but he had also worked and made money in
+business; he had, in fact, burned the candle at both ends; but he had
+never been unready to do his fellows a good turn.  He had a passion
+for driving, and his reckless method of pursuing this art had caused
+him to be nicknamed: "The notorious Treffry."
+
+Once, when he was driving tandem down a hill with a loose rein, the
+friend beside him had said: "For all the good you're doing with those
+reins, Treffry, you might as well throw them on the horses' necks."
+
+"Just so," Treffry had answered.  At the bottom of the hill they had
+gone over a wall into a potato patch.  Treffry had broken several
+ribs; his friend had gone unharmed.
+
+He was a great sufferer now, but, constitutionally averse to being
+pitied, he had a disconcerting way of humming, and this, together
+with the shake in his voice, and his frequent use of peculiar
+phrases, made the understanding of his speech depend at times on
+intuition rather than intelligence.
+
+The clock began to strike eleven.  Harz muttered an excuse, shook
+hands with his host, and bowing to his new acquaintance, went away.
+He caught a glimpse of Greta's face against the window, and waved his
+hand to her.  In the road he came on Dawney, who was turning in
+between the poplars, with thumbs as usual hooked in the armholes of
+his waistcoat.
+
+"Hallo!" the latter said.
+
+"Doctor!" Harz answered slyly; "the Fates outwitted me, it seems."
+
+"Serve you right," said Dawney, "for your confounded egoism! Wait
+here till I come out, I shan't be many minutes."
+
+But Harz went on his way.  A cart drawn by cream-coloured oxen was
+passing slowly towards the bridge.  In front of the brushwood piled
+on it two peasant girls were sitting with their feet on a mat of
+grass--the picture of contentment.
+
+"I'm wasting my time!" he thought.  "I've done next to nothing in two
+months.  Better get back to London!  That girl will never make a
+painter!"  She would never make a painter, but there was something in
+her that he could not dismiss so rapidly.  She was not exactly
+beautiful, but she was sympathetic.  The brow was pleasing, with
+dark-brown hair softly turned back, and eyes so straight and shining.
+The two sisters were very different!  The little one was innocent,
+yet mysterious; the elder seemed as clear as crystal!
+
+He had entered the town, where the arcaded streets exuded their
+peculiar pungent smell of cows and leather, wood-smoke, wine-casks,
+and drains.  The sound of rapid wheels over the stones made him turn
+his head.  A carriage drawn by red-roan horses was passing at a great
+pace.  People stared at it, standing still, and looking alarmed.  It
+swung from side to side and vanished round a corner.  Harz saw Mr.
+Nicholas Treffry in a long, whitish dust-coat; his Italian servant,
+perched behind, was holding to the seat-rail, with a nervous grin on
+his dark face.
+
+'Certainly,' Harz thought, 'there's no getting away from these people
+this morning--they are everywhere.'
+
+In his studio he began to sort his sketches, wash his brushes, and
+drag out things he had accumulated during his two months' stay.  He
+even began to fold his blanket door.  But suddenly he stopped.  Those
+two girls!  Why not try?  What a picture!  The two heads, the sky,
+and leaves!  Begin to-morrow!  Against that window--no, better at the
+Villa!  Call the picture--Spring...!
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+The wind, stirring among trees and bushes, flung the young leaves
+skywards.  The trembling of their silver linings was like the joyful
+flutter of a heart at good news.  It was one of those Spring mornings
+when everything seems full of a sweet restlessness--soft clouds
+chasing fast across the sky; soft scents floating forth and dying;
+the notes of birds, now shrill and sweet, now hushed in silences; all
+nature striving for something, nothing at peace.
+
+Villa Rubein withstood the influence of the day, and wore its usual
+look of rest and isolation.  Harz sent in his card, and asked to see
+"der Herr."  The servant, a grey-eyed, clever-looking Swiss with no
+hair on his face, came back saying:
+
+"Der Herr, mein Herr, is in the Garden gone."  Harz followed him.
+
+Herr Paul, a small white flannel cap on his head, gloves on his
+hands, and glasses on his nose, was watering a rosebush, and humming
+the serenade from Faust.
+
+This aspect of the house was very different from the other.  The sun
+fell on it, and over a veranda creepers clung and scrambled in long
+scrolls.  There was a lawn, with freshly mown grass; flower-beds were
+laid out, and at the end of an avenue of young acacias stood an
+arbour covered with wisteria.
+
+In the east, mountain peaks--fingers of snow--glittered above the
+mist.  A grave simplicity lay on that scene, on the roofs and spires,
+the valleys and the dreamy hillsides, with their yellow scars and
+purple bloom, and white cascades, like tails of grey horses swishing
+in the wind.
+
+Herr Paul held out his hand: "What can we do for you?" he said.
+
+"I have to beg a favour," replied Harz.  "I wish to paint your
+daughters.  I will bring the canvas here--they shall have no trouble.
+I would paint them in the garden when they have nothing else to do."
+
+Herr Paul looked at him dubiously--ever since the previous day he had
+been thinking: 'Queer bird, that painter--thinks himself the devil of
+a swell!  Looks a determined fellow too!'  Now--staring in the
+painter's face--it seemed to him, on the whole, best if some one else
+refused this permission.
+
+"With all the pleasure, my dear sir," he said.  "Come, let us ask
+these two young ladies!" and putting down his hose, he led the way
+towards the arbour, thinking: 'You'll be disappointed, my young
+conqueror, or I'm mistaken.'
+
+Miss Naylor and the girls were sitting in the shade, reading La
+Fontaine's fables.  Greta, with one eye on her governess, was
+stealthily cutting a pig out of orange peel.
+
+"Ah! my dear dears!" began Herr Paul, who in the presence of Miss
+Naylor always paraded his English.  "Here is our friend, who has a
+very flattering request to make; he would paint you, yes--both
+together, alfresco, in the air, in the sunshine, with the birds, the
+little birds!"
+
+Greta, gazing at Harz, gushed deep pink, and furtively showed him her
+pig.
+
+Christian said: "Paint us?  Oh no!"
+
+She saw Harz looking at her, and added, slowly: "If you really wish
+it, I suppose we could!" then dropped her eyes.
+
+"Ah!" said Herr Paul raising his brows till his glasses fell from his
+nose: "And what says Gretchen?  Does she want to be handed up to
+posterities a little peacock along with the other little birds?"
+
+Greta, who had continued staring at the painter, said: "Of--course--
+I--want--to--be."
+
+"Prrt!" said Herr Paul, looking at Miss Naylor.  The little lady
+indeed opened her mouth wide, but all that came forth was a tiny
+squeak, as sometimes happens when one is anxious to say something,
+and has not arranged beforehand what it shall be.
+
+The affair seemed ended; Harz heaved a sigh of satisfaction.  But
+Herr Paul had still a card to play.
+
+"There is your Aunt," he said; "there are things to be considered--
+one must certainly inquire--so, we shall see."  Kissing Greta loudly
+on both cheeks, he went towards the house.
+
+"What makes you want to paint us?" Christian asked, as soon as he was
+gone.
+
+"I think it very wrong," Miss Naylor blurted out.
+
+"Why?" said Harz, frowning.
+
+"Greta is so young--there are lessons--it is such a waste of time!"
+
+His eyebrows twitched: "Ah! You think so!"
+
+"I don't see why it is a waste of time," said Christian quietly;
+"there are lots of hours when we sit here and do nothing."
+
+"And it is very dull," put in Greta, with a pout.
+
+"You are rude, Greta," said Miss Naylor in a little rage, pursing her
+lips, and taking up her knitting.
+
+"I think it seems always rude to speak the truth," said Greta.  Miss
+Naylor looked at her in that concentrated manner with which she was
+in the habit of expressing displeasure.
+
+But at this moment a servant came, and said that Mrs. Decie would be
+glad to see Herr Harz.  The painter made them a stiff bow, and
+followed the servant to the house.  Miss Naylor and the two girls
+watched his progress with apprehensive eyes; it was clear that he had
+been offended.
+
+Crossing the veranda, and passing through an open window hung with
+silk curtains, Hart entered a cool dark room.  This was Mrs. Decie's
+sanctum, where she conducted correspondence, received her visitors,
+read the latest literature, and sometimes, when she had bad
+headaches, lay for hours on the sofa, with a fan, and her eyes
+closed.  There was a scent of sandalwood, a suggestion of the East, a
+kind of mystery, in here, as if things like chairs and tables were
+not really what they seemed, but something much less commonplace.
+
+The visitor looked twice, to be quite sure of anything; there were
+many plants, bead curtains, and a deal of silverwork and china.
+
+Mrs. Decie came forward in the slightly rustling silk which--whether
+in or out of fashion--always accompanied her.  A tall woman, over
+fifty, she moved as if she had been tied together at the knees.  Her
+face was long, with broad brows, from which her sandy-grey hair was
+severely waved back; she had pale eyes, and a perpetual, pale,
+enigmatic smile.  Her complexion had been ruined by long residence in
+India, and might unkindly have been called fawn-coloured.  She came
+close to Harz, keeping her eyes on his, with her head bent slightly
+forward.
+
+"We are so pleased to know you," she said, speaking in a voice which
+had lost all ring.  "It is charming to find some one in these parts
+who can help us to remember that there is such a thing as Art.  We
+had Mr. C--- here last autumn, such a charming fellow.  He was so
+interested in the native customs and dresses.  You are a subject
+painter, too, I think?  Won't you sit down?"
+
+She went on for some time, introducing painters' names, asking
+questions, skating round the edge of what was personal.  And the
+young man stood before her with a curious little smile fixed on his
+lips.  'She wants to know whether I'm worth powder and shot,' he
+thought.
+
+"You wish to paint my nieces?" Mrs. Decie said at last, leaning back
+on her settee.
+
+"I wish to have that honour," Harz answered with a bow.
+
+"And what sort of picture did you think of?"
+
+"That," said Harz, "is in the future.  I couldn't tell you."  And he
+thought: 'Will she ask me if I get my tints in Paris, like the woman
+Tramper told me of?'
+
+The perpetual pale smile on Mrs. Decie's face seemed to invite his
+confidence, yet to warn him that his words would be sucked in
+somewhere behind those broad fine brows, and carefully sorted.  Mrs.
+Decie, indeed, was thinking: 'Interesting young man, regular
+Bohemian--no harm in that at his age; something Napoleonic in his
+face; probably has no dress clothes.  Yes, should like to see more of
+him!'  She had a fine eye for points of celebrity; his name was
+unfamiliar, would probably have been scouted by that famous artist
+Mr. C---, but she felt her instinct urging her on to know him.  She
+was, to do her justice, one of those "lion" finders who seek the
+animal for pleasure, not for the glory it brings them; she had the
+courage of her instincts--lion-entities were indispensable to her,
+but she trusted to divination to secure them; nobody could foist a
+"lion" on her.
+
+"It will be very nice.  You will stay and have some lunch?  The
+arrangements here are rather odd.  Such a mixed household--but there
+is always lunch at two o'clock for any one who likes, and we all dine
+at seven.  You would have your sittings in the afternoons, perhaps?
+I should so like to see your sketches.  You are using the old house
+on the wall for studio; that is so original of you!"
+
+Harz would not stay to lunch, but asked if he might begin work that
+afternoon; he left a little suffocated by the sandalwood and sympathy
+of this sphinx-like woman.
+
+Walking home along the river wall, with the singing of the larks and
+thrushes, the rush of waters, the humming of the chafers in his ears,
+he felt that he would make something fine of this subject.  Before
+his eyes the faces of the two girls continually started up, framed by
+the sky, with young leaves guttering against their cheeks.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+Three days had passed since Harz began his picture, when early in the
+morning, Greta came from Villa Rubein along the river dyke and sat
+down on a bench from which the old house on the wall was visible.
+She had not been there long before Harz came out.
+
+"I did not knock," said Greta, "because you would not have heard, and
+it is so early, so I have been waiting for you a quarter of an hour."
+
+Selecting a rosebud, from some flowers in her hand, she handed it to
+him.  "That is my first rosebud this year," she said; "it is for you
+because you are painting me.  To-day I am thirteen, Herr Harz; there
+is not to be a sitting, because it is my birthday; but, instead, we
+are all going to Meran to see the play of Andreas Hofer.  You are to
+come too, please; I am here to tell you, and the others shall be here
+directly."
+
+Harz bowed: "And who are the others?"
+
+"Christian, and Dr. Edmund, Miss Naylor, and Cousin Teresa.  Her
+husband is ill, so she is sad, but to-day she is going to forget
+that.  It is not good to be always sad, is it, Herr Harz?"
+
+He laughed: "You could not be."
+
+Greta answered gravely: "Oh yes, I could.  I too am often sad.  You
+are making fun.  You are not to make fun to-day, because it is my
+birthday.  Do you think growing up is nice, Herr Harz ?"
+
+"No, Fraulein Greta, it is better to have all the time before you."
+
+They walked on side by side.
+
+"I think," said Greta, "you are very much afraid of losing time.
+Chris says that time is nothing."
+
+"Time is everything," responded Harz.
+
+"She says that time is nothing, and thought is everything," Greta
+murmured, rubbing a rose against her cheek, "but I think you cannot
+have a thought unless you have the time to think it in.  There are
+the others!  Look!"
+
+A cluster of sunshades on the bridge glowed for a moment and was lost
+in shadow.
+
+"Come," said Harz, "let's join them!"
+
+At Meran, under Schloss Tirol, people were streaming across the
+meadows into the open theatre.  Here were tall fellows in mountain
+dress, with leather breeches, bare knees, and hats with eagles'
+feathers; here were fruit-sellers, burghers and their wives,
+mountebanks, actors, and every kind of visitor.  The audience, packed
+into an enclosure of high boards, sweltered under the burning sun.
+Cousin Teresa, tall and thin, with hard, red cheeks, shaded her
+pleasant eyes with her hand.
+
+The play began.  It depicted the rising in the Tyrol of 1809: the
+village life, dances and yodelling; murmurings and exhortations, the
+warning beat of drums; then the gathering, with flintlocks,
+pitchforks, knives; the battle and victory; the homecoming, and
+festival.  Then the second gathering, the roar of cannon; betrayal,
+capture, death.  The impassive figure of the patriot Andreas Hofer
+always in front, black-bearded, leathern-girdled, under the blue sky,
+against a screen of mountains.
+
+Harz and Christian sat behind the others.  He seemed so intent on the
+play that she did not speak, but watched his face, rigid with a kind
+of cold excitement; he seemed to be transported by the life passing
+before them.  Something of his feeling seized on her; when the play
+was over she too was trembling.  In pushing their way out they became
+separated from the others.
+
+"There's a short cut to the station here," said Christian; "let's go
+this way."
+
+The path rose a little; a narrow stream crept alongside the meadow,
+and the hedge was spangled with wild roses.  Christian kept glancing
+shyly at the painter.  Since their meeting on the river wall her
+thoughts had never been at rest.  This stranger, with his keen face,
+insistent eyes, and ceaseless energy, had roused a strange feeling in
+her; his words had put shape to something in her not yet expressed.
+She stood aside at a stile to make way for some peasant boys, dusty
+and rough-haired, who sang and whistled as they went by.
+
+"I was like those boys once," said Harz.
+
+Christian turned to him quickly.  "Ah! that was why you felt the
+play, so much."
+
+"It's my country up there.  I was born amongst the mountains.  I
+looked after the cows, and slept in hay-cocks, and cut the trees in
+winter.  They used to call me a 'black sheep,' a 'loafer' in my
+village."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Ah! why?  I worked as hard as any of them.  But I wanted to get
+away.  Do you think I could have stayed there all my life?"
+
+Christian's eyes grew eager.
+
+"If people don't understand what it is you want to do, they always
+call you a loafer!" muttered Harz.
+
+"But you did what you meant to do in spite of them," Christian said.
+
+For herself it was so hard to finish or decide.  When in the old days
+she told Greta stories, the latter, whose instinct was always for the
+definite, would say: "And what came at the end, Chris?  Do finish it
+this morning!" but Christian never could.  Her thoughts were deep,
+vague, dreamy, invaded by both sides of every question.  Whatever she
+did, her needlework, her verse-making, her painting, all had its
+charm; but it was not always what it was intended for at the
+beginning.  Nicholas Treffry had once said of her: "When Chris starts
+out to make a hat, it may turn out an altar-cloth, but you may bet it
+won't be a hat."  It was her instinct to look for what things meant;
+and this took more than all her time.  She knew herself better than
+most girls of nineteen, but it was her reason that had informed her,
+not her feelings.  In her sheltered life, her heart had never been
+ruffled except by rare fits of passion--"tantrums" old Nicholas
+Treffry dubbed them--at what seemed to her mean or unjust.
+
+"If I were a man," she said, "and going to be great, I should have
+wanted to begin at the very bottom as you did."
+
+"Yes," said Harz quickly, "one should be able to feel everything."
+
+She did not notice how simply he assumed that he was going to be
+great.  He went on, a smile twisting his mouth unpleasantly beneath
+its dark moustache
+
+"Not many people think like you! It's a crime not to have been born a
+gentleman."
+
+"That's a sneer," said Christian; "I didn't think you would have
+sneered!"
+
+"It is true.  What is the use of pretending that it isn't?"
+
+"It may be true, but it is finer not to say it!"
+
+"By Heavens!" said Harz, striking one hand into the other, "if more
+truth were spoken there would not be so many shams."
+
+Christian looked down at him from her seat on the stile.
+
+"You are right all the same, Fraulein Christian," he added suddenly;
+"that's a very little business.  Work is what matters, and trying to
+see the beauty in the world."
+
+Christian's face changed.  She understood, well enough, this craving
+after beauty.  Slipping down from the stile, she drew a slow deep
+breath.
+
+"Yes!" she said.  Neither spoke for some time, then Harz said shyly:
+
+"If you and Fraulein Greta would ever like to come and see my studio,
+I should be so happy.  I would try and clean it up for you!"
+
+"I should like to come.  I could learn something.  I want to learn."
+
+They were both silent till the path joined the road.
+
+"We must be in front of the others; it's nice to be in front--let's
+dawdle.  I forgot--you never dawdle, Herr Harz."
+
+"After a big fit of work, I can dawdle against any one; then I get
+another fit of work--it's like appetite."
+
+"I'm always dawdling," answered Christian.
+
+By the roadside a peasant woman screwed up her sun-dried face, saying
+in a low voice: "Please, gracious lady, help me to lift this basket!"
+
+Christian stooped, but before she could raise it, Harz hoisted it up
+on his back.
+
+"All right," he nodded; "this good lady doesn't mind."
+
+The woman, looking very much ashamed, walked along by Christian; she
+kept rubbing her brown hands together, and saying; "Gracious lady, I
+would not have wished.  It is heavy, but I would not have wished."
+
+"I'm sure he'd rather carry it," said Christian.
+
+They had not gone far along the road, however, before the others
+passed them in a carriage, and at the strange sight Miss Naylor could
+be seen pursing her lips; Cousin Teresa nodding pleasantly; a smile
+on Dawney's face; and beside him Greta, very demure.  Harz began to
+laugh.
+
+"What are you laughing at?" asked Christian.
+
+"You English are so funny.  You mustn't do this here, you mustn't do
+that there, it's like sitting in a field of nettles.  If I were to
+walk with you without my coat, that little lady would fall off her
+seat."  His laugh infected Christian; they reached the station
+feeling that they knew each other better.
+
+The sun had dipped behind the mountains when the little train steamed
+down the valley.  All were subdued, and Greta, with a nodding head,
+slept fitfully.  Christian, in her corner, was looking out of the
+window, and Harz kept studying her profile.
+
+He tried to see her eyes.  He had remarked indeed that, whatever
+their expression, the brows, arched and rather wide apart, gave them
+a peculiar look of understanding.  He thought of his picture.  There
+was nothing in her face to seize on, it was too sympathetic, too much
+like light.  Yet her chin was firm, almost obstinate.
+
+The train stopped with a jerk; she looked round at him.  It was as
+though she had said: "You are my friend."
+
+At Villa Rubein, Herr Paul had killed the fatted calf for Greta's
+Fest.  When the whole party were assembled, he alone remained
+standing; and waving his arm above the cloth, cried: "My dears! Your
+happiness!  There are good things here--Come!"  And with a sly look,
+the air of a conjurer producing rabbits, he whipped the cover off the
+soup tureen:
+
+"Soup-turtle, fat, green fat!"  He smacked his lips.
+
+No servants were allowed, because, as Greta said to Harz:
+
+"It is that we are to be glad this evening."
+
+Geniality radiated from Herr Paul's countenance, mellow as a bowl of
+wine.  He toasted everybody, exhorting them to pleasure.
+
+Harz passed a cracker secretly behind Greta's head, and Miss Naylor,
+moved by a mysterious impulse, pulled it with a sort of gleeful
+horror; it exploded, and Greta sprang off her chair.  Scruff, seeing
+this, appeared suddenly on the sideboard with his forelegs in a plate
+of soup; without moving them, he turned his head, and appeared to
+accuse the company of his false position.  It was the signal for
+shrieks of laughter.  Scruff made no attempt to free his forelegs;
+but sniffed the soup, and finding that nothing happened, began to lap
+it.
+
+"Take him out! Oh! take him out!" wailed Greta, "he shall be ill!"
+
+"Allons! Mon cher!" cried Herr Paul, "c'est magnifique, mais, vous
+savez, ce nest guere la guerre!"  Scruff, with a wild spring, leaped
+past him to the ground.
+
+"Ah!" cried Miss Naylor, "the carpet!"  Fresh moans of mirth shook
+the table; for having tasted the wine of laughter, all wanted as much
+more as they could get.  When Scruff and his traces were effaced,
+Herr Paul took a ladle in his hand.
+
+"I have a toast," he said, waving it for silence; "a toast we will
+drink all together from our hearts; the toast of my little daughter,
+who to-day has thirteen years become; and there is also in our
+hearts," he continued, putting down the ladle and suddenly becoming
+grave, "the thought of one who is not today with us to see this
+joyful occasion; to her, too, in this our happiness we turn our
+hearts and glasses because it is her joy that we should yet be
+joyful.  I drink to my little daughter; may God her shadow bless!"
+
+All stood up, clinking their glasses, and drank: then, in the hush
+that followed, Greta, according to custom, began to sing a German
+carol; at the end of the fourth line she stopped, abashed.
+
+Heir Paul blew his nose loudly, and, taking up a cap that had fallen
+from a cracker, put it on.
+
+Every one followed his example, Miss Naylor attaining the distinction
+of a pair of donkey's ears, which she wore, after another glass of
+wine, with an air of sacrificing to the public good.
+
+At the end of supper came the moment for the offering of gifts.  Herr
+Paul had tied a handkerchief over Greta's eyes, and one by one they
+brought her presents.  Greta, under forfeit of a kiss, was bound to
+tell the giver by the feel of the gift.  Her swift, supple little
+hands explored noiselessly; and in every case she guessed right.
+
+Dawney's present, a kitten, made a scene by clawing at her hair.
+
+"That is Dr. Edmund's," she cried at once.  Christian saw that Harz
+had disappeared, but suddenly he came back breathless, and took his
+place at the end of the rank of givers.
+
+Advancing on tiptoe, he put his present into Greta's hands.  It was a
+small bronze copy of a Donatello statue.
+
+"Oh, Herr Harz!" cried Greta; "I saw it in the studio that day.  It
+stood on the table, and it is lovely."
+
+Mrs. Decie, thrusting her pale eyes close to it, murmured:
+"Charming!"
+
+Mr. Treffry took it in his forgers.
+
+"Rum little toad!  Cost a pot of money, I expect!"  He eyed Harz
+doubtfully.
+
+They went into the next room now, and Herr Paul, taking Greta's
+bandage, transferred it to his own eyes.
+
+"Take care--take care, all!" he cried; "I am a devil of a catcher,"
+and, feeling the air cautiously, he moved forward like a bear about
+to hug.  He caught no one.  Christian and Greta whisked under his
+arms and left him grasping at the air.  Mrs. Decie slipped past with
+astonishing agility.  Mr. Treffry, smoking his cigar, and barricaded
+in a corner, jeered: "Bravo, Paul!  The active beggar!  Can't he run!
+Go it, Greta!"
+
+At last Herr Paul caught Cousin Teresa, who, fattened against the
+wall, lost her head, and stood uttering tiny shrieks.
+
+Suddenly Mrs. Decie started playing The Blue Danube.  Herr Paul
+dropped the handkerchief, twisted his moustache up fiercely, glared
+round the room, and seizing Greta by the waist, began dancing
+furiously, bobbing up and down like a cork in lumpy water.  Cousin
+Teresa followed suit with Miss Naylor, both very solemn, and dancing
+quite different steps.  Harz, went up to Christian.
+
+"I can't dance," he said, "that is, I have only danced once, but--if
+you would try with me!"
+
+She put her hand on his arm, and they began.  She danced, light as a
+feather, eyes shining, feet flying, her body bent a little forward.
+It was not a great success at first, but as soon as the time had got
+into Harz's feet, they went swinging on when all the rest had
+stopped.  Sometimes one couple or another slipped through the window
+to dance on the veranda, and came whirling in again.  The lamplight
+glowed on the girls' white dresses; on Herr Paul's perspiring face.
+He constituted in himself a perfect orgy, and when the music stopped
+flung himself, full length, on the sofa gasping out:
+
+"My God!  But, my God!"
+
+Suddenly Christian felt Harz cling to her arm.
+
+Glowing and panting she looked at him.
+
+"Giddy!" he murmured: "I dance so badly; but I'll soon learn."
+
+Greta clapped her hands: "Every evening we will dance, every evening
+we will dance."
+
+Harz looked at Christian; the colour had deepened in her face.
+
+"I'll show you how they dance in my village, feet upon the ceiling!"
+And running to Dawney, he said:
+
+"Hold me here!  Lift me--so!  Now, on--two," he tried to swing his
+feet above his head, but, with an "Ouch!" from Dawney, they
+collapsed, and sat abruptly on the floor.  This untimely event
+brought the evening to an end.  Dawney left, escorting Cousin Teresa,
+and Harz strode home humming The Blue Danube, still feeling
+Christian's waist against his arm.
+
+In their room the two girls sat long at the window to cool themselves
+before undressing.
+
+"Ah!" sighed Greta, "this is the happiest birthday I have had."
+
+Cristian too thought: 'I have never been so happy in my life as I
+have been to-day.  I should like every day to be like this!'  And she
+leant out into the night, to let the air cool her cheeks.
+
+"Chris!" said Greta some days after this, "Miss Naylor danced last
+evening; I think she shall have a headache to-day.  There is my
+French and my history this morning."
+
+"Well, I can take them."
+
+"That is nice; then we can talk.  I am sorry about the headache.  I
+shall give her some of my Eau de Cologne."
+
+Miss Naylor's headaches after dancing were things on which to
+calculate.  The girls carried their books into the arbour; it was a
+showery day, and they had to run for shelter through the raindrops
+and sunlight.
+
+"The French first, Chris!"  Greta liked her French, in which she was
+not far inferior to Christian; the lesson therefore proceeded in an
+admirable fashion.  After one hour exactly by her watch
+(Mr. Treffry's birthday present loved and admired at least once every
+hour) Greta rose.
+
+"Chris, I have not fed my rabbits."
+
+"Be quick! there's not much time for history."
+
+Greta vanished.  Christian watched the bright water dripping from the
+roof; her lips were parted in a smile.  She was thinking of something
+Harz had said the night before.  A discussion having been started as
+to whether average opinion did, or did not, safeguard Society, Harz,
+after sitting silent, had burst out: "I think one man in earnest is
+better than twenty half-hearted men who follow tamely; in the end he
+does Society most good."
+
+Dawney had answered: "If you had your way there would be no Society."
+
+"I hate Society because it lives upon the weak."
+
+"Bah!" Herr Paul chimed in; "the weak goes to the wall; that is as
+certain as that you and I are here."
+
+"Let them fall against the wall," cried Harz; "don't push them
+there...."
+
+Greta reappeared, walking pensively in the rain.
+
+"Bino," she said, sighing, "has eaten too much.  I remember now, I
+did feed them before.  Must we do the history, Chris?"
+
+"Of course!"
+
+Greta opened her book, and put a finger in the page.  "Herr Harz is
+very kind to me," she said.  "Yesterday he brought a bird which had.
+come into his studio with a hurt wing; he brought it very gently in
+his handkerchief--he is very kind, the bird was not even frightened
+of him.  You did not know about that, Chris?"
+
+Chris flushed a little, and said in a hurt voice
+
+"I don't see what it has to--do with me."
+
+"No," assented Greta.
+
+Christian's colour deepened.  "Go on with your history, Greta."
+
+"Only," pursued Greta, "that he always tells you all about things,
+Chris."
+
+"He doesn't! How can you say that!"
+
+"I think he does, and it is because you do not make him angry.  It is
+very easy to make him angry; you have only to think differently, and
+he shall be angry at once."
+
+"You are a little cat!" said Christian; "it isn't true, at all.  He
+hates shams, and can't bear meanness; and it is mean to cover up
+dislikes and pretend that you agree with people."
+
+"Papa says that he thinks too much about himself."
+
+"Father!" began Christian hotly; biting her lips she stopped, and
+turned her wrathful eyes on Greta.
+
+"You do not always show your dislikes, Chris."
+
+"I?  What has that to do with it?  Because one is a coward that
+doesn't make it any better, does it?"
+
+"I think that he has a great many dislikes," murmured Greta.
+
+"I wish you would attend to your own faults, and not pry into other
+people's," and pushing the book aside, Christian gazed in front of
+her.
+
+Some minutes passed, then Greta leaning over, rubbed a cheek against
+her shoulder.
+
+"I am very sorry, Chris--I only wanted to be talking.  Shall I read
+some history?"
+
+"Yes," said Christian coldly.
+
+"Are you angry with me, Chris?"
+
+There was no answer.  The lingering raindrops pattered down on the
+roof.  Greta pulled at her sister's sleeve.
+
+"Look, Chris!" she said.  "There is Herr Harz!"
+
+Christian looked up, dropped her eyes again, and said: "Will you go
+on with the history, Greta?"
+
+Greta sighed.
+
+"Yes, I will--but, oh! Chris, there is the luncheon gong!" and she
+meekly closed the book.
+
+During the following weeks there was a "sitting" nearly every
+afternoon.  Miss Naylor usually attended them; the little lady was,
+to a certain extent, carried past objection.  She had begun to take
+an interest in the picture, and to watch the process out of the
+corner of her eye; in the depths of her dear mind, however, she never
+quite got used to the vanity and waste of time; her lips would move
+and her knitting-needles click in suppressed remonstrances.
+
+What Harz did fast he did best; if he had leisure he "saw too much,"
+loving his work so passionately that he could never tell exactly when
+to stop.  He hated to lay things aside, always thinking: "I can get
+it better."  Greta was finished, but with Christian, try as he would,
+he was not satisfied; from day to day her face seemed to him to
+change, as if her soul were growing.
+
+There were things too in her eyes that he could neither read nor
+reproduce.
+
+Dawney would often stroll out to them after his daily visit, and
+lying on the grass, his arms crossed behind his head, and a big cigar
+between his lips, would gently banter everybody.  Tea came at five
+o'clock, and then Mrs. Decie appeared armed with a magazine or novel,
+for she was proud of her literary knowledge.  The sitting was
+suspended; Harz, with a cigarette, would move between the table and
+the picture, drinking his tea, putting a touch in here and there; he
+never sat down till it was all over for the day.  During these
+"rests" there was talk, usually ending in discussion.  Mrs. Decie was
+happiest in conversations of a literary order, making frequent use of
+such expressions as: "After all, it produces an illusion--does
+anything else matter?"  "Rather a poseur, is he not?"  "A question,
+that, of temperament," or "A matter of the definition of words"; and
+other charming generalities, which sound well, and seem to go far,
+and are pleasingly irrefutable.  Sometimes the discussion turned on
+Art--on points of colour or technique; whether realism was quite
+justified; and should we be pre-Raphaelites?  When these discussions
+started, Christian's eyes would grow bigger and clearer, with a sort
+of shining reasonableness; as though they were trying to see into the
+depths.  And Harz would stare at them.  But the look in those eyes
+eluded him, as if they had no more meaning than Mrs. Decie's, which,
+with their pale, watchful smile, always seemed saying: "Come, let us
+take a little intellectual exercise."
+
+Greta, pulling Scruff's ears, would gaze up at the speakers; when the
+talk was over, she always shook herself.  But if no one came to the
+"sittings," there would sometimes be very earnest, quick talk,
+sometimes long silences.
+
+One day Christian said: "What is your religion?"
+
+Harz finished the touch he was putting on the canvas, before he
+answered: "Roman Catholic, I suppose; I was baptised in that Church."
+
+"I didn't mean that.  Do you believe in a future life?"
+
+"Christian," murmured Greta, who was plaiting blades of grass, "shall
+always want to know what people think about a future life; that is so
+funny!"
+
+"How can I tell?" said Harz; "I've never really thought of it--never
+had the time."
+
+"How can you help thinking?" Christian said: "I have to--it seems to
+me so awful that we might come to an end."
+
+She closed her book, and it slipped off her lap.  She went on: "There
+must be a future life, we're so incomplete.  What's the good of your
+work, for instance?  What's the use of developing if you have to
+stop?"
+
+"I don't know," answered Harz.  "I don't much care.  All I know is,
+I've got to work."
+
+"But why?"
+
+"For happiness--the real happiness is fighting--the rest is nothing.
+If you have finished a thing, does it ever satisfy you?  You look
+forward to the next thing at once; to wait is wretched!"
+
+Christian clasped her hands behind her neck; sunlight flickered
+through the leaves on to the bosom of her dress.
+
+"Ah! Stay like that!" cried Harz.
+
+She let her eyes rest on his face, swinging her foot a little.
+
+"You work because you must; but that's not enough.  Why do you feel
+you must?  I want to know what's behind.  When I was travelling with
+Aunt Constance the winter before last we often talked--I've heard her
+discuss it with her friends.  She says we move in circles till we
+reach Nirvana.  But last winter I found I couldn't talk to her; it
+seemed as if she never really meant anything.  Then I started
+reading--Kant and Hegel--"
+
+"Ah!" put in Harz, "if they would teach me to draw better, or to see
+a new colour in a flower, or an expression in a face, I would read
+them all."
+
+Christian leaned forward: "It must be right to get as near truth as
+possible; every step gained is something.  You believe in truth;
+truth is the same as beauty--that was what you said--you try to paint
+the truth, you always see the beauty.  But how can we know truth,
+unless we know what is at the root of it?"
+
+"I--think," murmured Greta, sotto voce, "you see one way--and he sees
+another--because--you are not one person."
+
+"Of course!" said Christian impatiently, "but why--"
+
+A sound of humming interrupted her.
+
+Nicholas Treffry was coming from the house, holding the Times in one
+hand, and a huge meerschaum pipe in the other.
+
+"Aha!" he said to Harz: "how goes the picture?" and he lowered
+himself into a chair.
+
+"Better to-day, Uncle?" said Christian softly.
+
+Mr. Treffry growled.  "Confounded humbugs, doctors!" he said.  "Your
+father used to swear by them; why, his doctor killed him--made him
+drink such a lot of stuff!"
+
+"Why then do you have a doctor, Uncle Nic?" asked Greta.
+
+Mr. Treffry looked at her; his eyes twinkled.  "I don't know, my
+dear.  If they get half a chance, they won't let go of you!"
+
+There had been a gentle breeze all day, but now it had died away; not
+a leaf quivered, not a blade of grass was stirring; from the house
+were heard faint sounds as of some one playing on a pipe.  A
+blackbird came hopping down the path.
+
+"When you were a boy, did you go after birds' nests, Uncle Nic?"
+Greta whispered.
+
+"I believe you, Greta."  The blackbird hopped into the shrubbery.
+
+"You frightened him, Uncle Nic!  Papa says that at Schloss Konig,
+where he lived when he was young, he would always be after jackdaws'
+nests."
+
+"Gammon, Greta.  Your father never took a jackdaw's nest, his legs
+are much too round!"
+
+"Are you fond of birds, Uncle Nic?"
+
+"Ask me another, Greta!  Well, I s'pose so."
+
+"Then why did you go bird-nesting?  I think it is cruel"
+
+Mr. Treffry coughed behind his paper: "There you have me, Greta," he
+remarked.
+
+Harz began to gather his brushes: "Thank you," he said, "that's all I
+can do to-day."
+
+"Can I look?" Mr. Treffry inquired.
+
+"Certainly!"
+
+Uncle Nic got up slowly, and stood in front of the picture.  "When
+it's for sale," he said at last, "I'll buy it."
+
+Harz bowed; but for some reason he felt annoyed, as if he had been
+asked to part with something personal.
+
+"I thank you," he said.  A gong sounded.
+
+"You'll stay and have a snack with us?" said Mr. Treffry; "the
+doctor's stopping."  Gathering up his paper, he moved off to the
+house with his hand on Greta's shoulder, the terrier running in
+front.  Harz and Christian were left alone.  He was scraping his
+palette, and she was sitting with her elbows resting on her knees;
+between them, a gleam of sunlight dyed the path golden.  It was
+evening already; the bushes and the flowers, after the day's heat,
+were breathing out perfume; the birds had started their evensong.
+
+"Are you tired of sitting for your portrait, Fraulein Christian?"
+
+Christian shook her head.
+
+"I shall get something into it that everybody does not see--something
+behind the surface, that will last."
+
+Christian said slowly: "That's like a challenge.  You were right when
+you said fighting is happiness--for yourself, but not for me.  I'm a
+coward.  I hate to hurt people, I like them to like me.  If you had
+to do anything that would make them hate you, you would do it all the
+same, if it helped your work; that's fine--it's what I can't do.
+It's--it's everything.  Do you like Uncle Nic?"
+
+The young painter looked towards the house, where under the veranda
+old Nicholas Treffry was still in sight; a smile came on his lips.
+
+"If I were the finest painter in the world, he wouldn't think
+anything of me for it, I'm afraid; but if I could show him handfuls
+of big cheques for bad pictures I had painted, he would respect me."
+
+She smiled, and said: "I love him."
+
+"Then I shall like him," Harz answered simply.
+
+She put her hand out, and her fingers met his.  "We shall be late,"
+she said, glowing, and catching up her book: "I'm always late!"
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+There was one other guest at dinner, a well-groomed person with pale,
+fattish face, dark eyes, and hair thin on the temples, whose clothes
+had a military cut.  He looked like a man fond of ease, who had gone
+out of his groove, and collided with life.  Herr Paul introduced him
+as Count Mario Sarelli.
+
+Two hanging lamps with crimson shades threw a rosy light over the
+table, where, in the centre stood a silver basket, full of irises.
+Through the open windows the garden was all clusters of black foliage
+in the dying light.  Moths fluttered round the lamps; Greta,
+following them with her eyes, gave quite audible sighs of pleasure
+when they escaped.  Both girls wore white, and Harz, who sat opposite
+Christian, kept looking at her, and wondering why he had not painted
+her in that dress.
+
+Mrs. Decie understood the art of dining--the dinner, ordered by Herr
+Paul, was admirable; the servants silent as their, shadows; there was
+always a hum of conversation.
+
+Sarelli, who sat on her right hand, seemed to partake of little
+except olives, which he dipped into a glass of sherry.  He turned his
+black, solemn eyes silently from face to face, now and then asking
+the meaning of an English word.  After a discussion on modern Rome,
+it was debated whether or no a criminal could be told by the
+expression of his face.
+
+"Crime," said Mrs. Decie, passing her hand across her brow--"crime is
+but the hallmark of strong individuality."
+
+Miss Naylor, gushing rather pink, stammered: "A great crime must show
+itself--a murder.  Why, of course!"
+
+"If that were so," said Dawney, "we should only have to look about
+us--no more detectives."
+
+Miss Naylor rejoined with slight severity: "I cannot conceive that
+such a thing can pass the human face by, leaving no impression!"
+
+Harz said abruptly: "There are worse things than murder."
+
+"Ah! par exemple!" said Sarelli.
+
+There was a slight stir all round the table.
+
+"Verry good," cried out Herr Paul, "a vot' sante, cher."
+
+Miss Naylor shivered, as if some one had put a penny down her back;
+and Mrs. Decie, leaning towards Harz, smiled like one who has made a
+pet dog do a trick.  Christian alone was motionless, looking
+thoughtfully at Harz.
+
+"I saw a man tried for murder once," he said, "a murder for revenge;
+I watched the judge, and I thought all the time: 'I'd rather be that
+murderer than you; I've never seen a meaner face; you crawl through
+life; you're not a criminal, simply because you haven't the
+courage.'"
+
+In the dubious silence following the painter's speech, Mr. Treffry
+could distinctly be heard humming.  Then Sarelli said: "What do you
+say to anarchists, who are not men, but savage beasts, whom I would
+tear to pieces!"
+
+"As to that," Harz answered defiantly, "it maybe wise to hang them,
+but then there are so many other men that it would be wise to hang."
+
+"How can we tell what they went through; what their lives were?"
+murmured Christian.
+
+Miss Naylor, who had been rolling a pellet of bread, concealed it
+hastily.  "They are--always given a chance to--repent--I believe,"
+she said.
+
+"For what they are about to receive," drawled Dawney.
+
+Mrs. Decie signalled with her fan: "We are trying to express the
+inexpressible--shall we go into the garden?"
+
+All rose; Harz stood by the window, and in passing, Christian looked
+at him.
+
+He sat down again with a sudden sense of loss.  There was no white
+figure opposite now.  Raising his eyes he met Sarelli's.  The Italian
+was regarding him with a curious stare.
+
+Herr Paul began retailing apiece of scandal he had heard that
+afternoon.
+
+"Shocking affair!" he said; "I could never have believed it of her!
+B--- is quite beside himself.  Yesterday there was a row, it seems!"
+
+"There has been one every day for months," muttered Dawney.
+
+"But to leave without a word, and go no one knows where!  B--- is
+'viveur' no doubt, mais, mon Dieu, que voulezvous?  She was always a
+poor, pale thing.  Why! when my---" he flourished his cigar; "I was
+not always---what I should have been---one lives in a world of flesh
+and blood---we are not all angels---que diable!  But this is a very
+vulgar business.  She goes off; leaves everything---without a word;
+and B---is very fond of her.  These things are not done!" the
+starched bosom of his shirt seemed swollen by indignation.
+
+Mr. Treffry, with a heavy hand on the table, eyed him sideways.
+Dawney said slowly:
+
+"B--- is a beast; I'm sorry for the poor woman; but what can she do
+alone?"
+
+"There is, no doubt, a man," put in Sarelli.
+
+Herr Paul muttered: "Who knows?"
+
+"What is B--- going to do?" said Dawney.
+
+"Ah!" said Herr Paul.  "He is fond of her.  He is a chap of
+resolution, he will get her back.  He told me: 'Well, you know, I
+shall follow her wherever she goes till she comes back.'  He will do
+it, he is a determined chap; he will follow her wherever she goes."
+
+Mr. Treffry drank his wine off at a gulp, and sucked his moustache in
+sharply.
+
+"She was a fool to marry him," said Dawney; "they haven't a point in
+common; she hates him like poison, and she's the better of the two.
+But it doesn't pay a woman to run off like that.  B--- had better
+hurry up, though.  What do you think, sir?" he said to Mr. Treffry.
+
+"Eh?" said Mr. Treffry; "how should I know?  Ask Paul there, he's one
+of your moral men, or Count Sarelli."
+
+The latter said impassively: "If I cared for her I should very likely
+kill her--if not--" he shrugged his shoulders.
+
+Harz, who was watching, was reminded of his other words at dinner,
+"wild beasts whom I would tear to pieces."  He looked with interest
+at this quiet man who said these extremely ferocious things, and
+thought: 'I should like to paint that fellow.'
+
+Herr Paul twirled his wine-glass in his fingers.  "There are family
+ties," he said, "there is society, there is decency; a wife should be
+with her husband.  B--- will do quite right.  He must go after her;
+she will not perhaps come back at first; he will follow her; she will
+begin to think, 'I am helpless--I am ridiculous!'  A woman is soon
+beaten.  They will return.  She is once more with her husband--
+Society will forgive, it will be all right."
+
+"By Jove, Paul," growled Mr. Treffry, "wonderful power of argument!"
+
+"A wife is a wife," pursued Herr Paul; "a man has a right to her
+society."
+
+"What do you say to that, sir?" asked Dawney.
+
+Mr. Treffry tugged at his beard: "Make a woman live with you, if she
+don't want to?  I call it low."
+
+"But, my dear," exclaimed Herr Paul, "how should you know?  You have
+not been married."
+
+"No, thank the Lord!" Mr. Treffry replied.
+
+"But looking at the question broadly, sir," said Dawney; "if a
+husband always lets his wife do as she likes, how would the thing
+work out?  What becomes of the marriage tie?"
+
+"The marriage tie," growled Mr. Treffry, "is the biggest thing there
+is!  But, by Jove, Doctor, I'm a Dutchman if hunting women ever
+helped the marriage tie!"
+
+"I am not thinking of myself," Herr Paul cried out, "I think of the
+community.  There are rights."
+
+"A decent community never yet asked a man to tread on his self-
+respect.  If I get my fingers skinned over my marriage, which I
+undertake at my own risk, what's the community to do with it?  D'you
+think I'm going to whine to it to put the plaster on?  As to rights,
+it'd be a deuced sight better for us all if there wasn't such a fuss
+about 'em.  Leave that to women!  I don't give a tinker's damn for
+men who talk about their rights in such matters."
+
+Sarelli rose.  "But your honour," he said, "there is your honour!"
+
+Mr. Treffry stared at him.
+
+"Honour!  If huntin' women's your idea of honour, well--it isn't
+mine."
+
+"Then you'd forgive her, sir, whatever happened," Dawney said.
+
+"Forgiveness is another thing.  I leave that to your sanctimonious
+beggars.  But, hunt a woman!  Hang it, sir, I'm not a cad!" and
+bringing his hand down with a rattle, he added: "This is a subject
+that don't bear talking of."
+
+Sarelli fell back in his seat, twirling his moustaches fiercely.
+Harz, who had risen, looked at Christian's empty place.
+
+'If I were married!' he thought suddenly.
+
+Herr Paul, with a somewhat vinous glare, still muttered, "But your
+duty to the family!"
+
+Harz slipped through the window.  The moon was like a wonderful white
+lantern in the purple sky; there was but a smoulder of stars.
+Beneath the softness of the air was the iciness of the snow; it made
+him want to run and leap.  A sleepy beetle dropped on its back; he
+turned it over and watched it scurry across the grass.
+
+Someone was playing Schumann's Kinderscenen.  Harz stood still to
+listen.  The notes came twining, weaving round his thoughts; the
+whole night seemed full of girlish voices, of hopes and fancies,
+soaring away to mountain heights--invisible, yet present.  Between
+the stems of the acacia-trees he could see the flicker of white
+dresses, where Christian and Greta were walking arm in arm.  He went
+towards them; the blood flushed up in his face, he felt almost
+surfeited by some sweet emotion.  Then, in sudden horror, he stood
+still.  He was in love!  With nothing done with everything before
+him!  He was going to bow down to a face!  The flicker of the dresses
+was no longer visible.  He would not be fettered, he would stamp it
+out!  He turned away; but with each step, something seemed to jab at
+his heart.
+
+Round the corner of the house, in the shadow of the wall, Dominique,
+the Luganese, in embroidered slippers, was smoking a long cherry-wood
+pipe, leaning against a tree--Mephistopheles in evening clothes.
+Harz went up to him.
+
+"Lend me a pencil, Dominique."
+
+"Bien, M'sieu."
+
+Resting a card against the tree Harz wrote to Mrs. Decie: "Forgive
+me, I am obliged to go away.  In a few days I shall hope to return,
+and finish the picture of your nieces."
+
+He sent Dominique for his hat.  During the man's absence he was on
+the point of tearing up the card and going back into the house.
+
+When the Luganese returned he thrust the card into his hand, and
+walked out between the tall poplars, waiting, like ragged ghosts,
+silver with moonlight.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+Harz walked away along the road.  A dog was howling.  The sound
+seemed too appropriate.  He put his fingers to his ears, but the
+lugubrious noise passed those barriers, and made its way into his
+heart.  Was there nothing that would put an end to this emotion?  It
+was no better in the old house on the wall; he spent the night
+tramping up and down.
+
+Just before daybreak he slipped out with a knapsack, taking the road
+towards Meran.
+
+He had not quite passed through Gries when he overtook a man walking
+in the middle of the road and leaving a trail of cigar smoke behind
+him.
+
+"Ah! my friend," the smoker said, "you walk early; are you going my
+way?"
+
+It was Count Sarelli.  The raw light had imparted a grey tinge to his
+pale face, the growth of his beard showed black already beneath the
+skin; his thumbs were hooked in the pockets of a closely buttoned
+coat, he gesticulated with his fingers.
+
+"You are making a journey?" he said, nodding at the knapsack.  "You
+are early--I am late; our friend has admirable kummel--I have drunk
+too much.  You have not been to bed, I think?  If there is no sleep
+in one's bed it is no good going to look for it.  You find that?  It
+is better to drink kummel...!  Pardon!  You are doing the right
+thing: get away!  Get away as fast as possible!  Don't wait, and let
+it catch you!"
+
+Harz stared at him amazed.
+
+"Pardon!" Sarelli said again, raising his hat, "that girl--the white
+girl--I saw.  You do well to get away!" he swayed a little as he
+walked.  "That old fellow--what is his name-Trrreffr-ry!  What ideas
+of honour!"  He mumbled: "Honour is an abstraction!  If a man is not
+true to an abstraction, he is a low type; but wait a minute!"
+
+He put his hand to his side as though in pain.
+
+The hedges were brightening with a faint pinky glow; there was no
+sound on the long, deserted road, but that of their footsteps;
+suddenly a bird commenced to chirp, another answered--the world
+seemed full of these little voices.
+
+Sarelli stopped.
+
+"That white girl," he said, speaking with rapidity.  "Yes! You do
+well! get away!  Don't let it catch you!  I waited, it caught me--
+what happened?  Everything horrible--and now--kummel!"  Laughing a
+thick laugh, he gave a twirl to his moustache, and swaggered on.
+
+"I was a fine fellow--nothing too big for Mario Sarelli; the regiment
+looked to me.  Then she came--with her eyes and her white dress,
+always white, like this one; the little mole on her chin, her hands
+for ever moving--their touch as warm as sunbeams.  Then, no longer
+Sarelli this, and that!  The little house close to the ramparts!  Two
+arms, two eyes, and nothing here," he tapped his breast, "but flames
+that made ashes quickly--in her, like this ash--!" he flicked the
+white flake off his cigar.  "It's droll!  You agree, hein?  Some day
+I shall go back and kill her.  In the meantime--kummel!"
+
+He stopped at a house close to the road, and stood still, his teeth
+bared in a grin.
+
+"But I bore you," he said.  His cigar, flung down, sputtered forth
+its sparks on the road in front of Harz.  "I live here--good-morning!
+You are a man for work--your honour is your Art!  I know, and you are
+young!  The man who loves flesh better than his honour is a low type
+--I am a low type.  I! Mario Sarelli, a low type! I love flesh better
+than my honour!"
+
+He remained swaying at the gate with the grin fixed on his face; then
+staggered up the steps, and banged the door.  But before Harz had
+walked on, he again appeared, beckoning, in the doorway.  Obeying an
+impulse, Harz went in.
+
+"We will make a night of it," said Sarelli; "wine, brandy, kummel?  I
+am virtuous--kummel it must be for me!"
+
+He sat down at a piano, and began to touch the keys.  Harz poured out
+some wine.  Sarelli nodded.
+
+"You begin with that?  Allegro--piu--presto!
+
+"Wine--brandy--kummel!" he quickened the time of the tune: "it is not
+too long a passage, and this"--he took his hands off the keys--"comes
+after."
+
+Harz smiled.
+
+"Some men do not kill themselves," he said.
+
+Sarelli, who was bending and swaying to the music of a tarantella,
+broke off, and letting his eyes rest on the painter, began playing
+Schumann's Kinderscenen.  Harz leaped to his feet.
+
+"Stop that!" he cried.
+
+"It pricks you?" said Sarelli suavely; "what do you think of this?"
+he played again, crouching over the piano, and making the notes sound
+like the crying of a wounded animal.
+
+"For me!" he said, swinging round, and rising.
+
+"Your health!  And so you don't believe in suicide, but in murder?
+The custom is the other way; but you don't believe in customs?
+Customs are only for Society?"  He drank a glass of kummel.  "You do
+not love Society?"
+
+Harz looked at him intently; he did not want to quarrel.
+
+"I am not too fond of other people's thoughts," he said at last; "I
+prefer to think my own.
+
+"And is Society never right?  That poor Society!"
+
+"Society!  What is Society--a few men in good coats?  What has it
+done for me?"
+
+Sarelli bit the end off a cigar.
+
+"Ah!" he said; "now we are coming to it.  It is good to be an artist,
+a fine bantam of an artist; where other men have their dis-ci-pline,
+he has his, what shall we say--his mound of roses?"
+
+The painter started to his feet.
+
+"Yes," said Sarelli, with a hiccough, "you are a fine fellow!"
+
+"And you are drunk!" cried Harz.
+
+"A little drunk--not much, not enough to matter!"
+
+Harz broke into laughter.  It was crazy to stay there listening to
+this mad fellow.  What had brought him in?  He moved towards the
+door.
+
+"Ah!" said Sarelli, "but it is no good going to bed--let us talk.  I
+have a lot to say--it is pleasant to talk to anarchists at times."
+
+Full daylight was already coming through the chinks of the shutters.
+
+"You are all anarchists, you painters, you writing fellows.  You live
+by playing ball with facts.  Images--nothing solid--hein?  You're all
+for new things too, to tickle your nerves.  No discipline!  True
+anarchists, every one of you!"
+
+Harz poured out another glass of wine and drank it off.  The man's
+feverish excitement was catching.
+
+"Only fools," he replied, "take things for granted.  As for
+discipline, what do you aristocrats, or bourgeois know of discipline?
+Have you ever been hungry?  Have you ever had your soul down on its
+back?"
+
+"Soul on its back?  That is good!"
+
+"A man's no use," cried Harz, "if he's always thinking of what others
+think; he must stand on his own legs."
+
+"He must not then consider other people?"
+
+"Not from cowardice anyway."
+
+Sarelli drank.
+
+"What would you do," he said, striking his chest, "if you had a
+devil-here?  Would you go to bed?"
+
+A sort of pity seized on Harz.  He wanted to say something that would
+be consoling but could find no words; and suddenly he felt disgusted.
+What link was there between him and this man; between his love and
+this man's love?
+
+"Harz!" muttered Sarelli; "Harz means 'tar,' hein?  Your family is
+not an old one?"
+
+Harz glared, and said: "My father is a peasant."
+
+Sarelli lifted the kummel bottle and emptied it into his glass, with
+a steady hand.
+
+"You're honest--and we both have devils.  I forgot; I brought you in
+to see a picture!"
+
+He threw wide the shutters; the windows were already open, and a rush
+of air came in.
+
+"Ah!" he said, sniffing, "smells of the earth, nicht wahr, Herr
+Artist?  You should know--it belongs to your father....  Come, here's
+my picture; a Correggio!  What do you think of it?"
+
+"It is a copy."
+
+"You think?"
+
+"I know."
+
+"Then you have given me the lie, Signor," and drawing out his
+handkerchief Sarelli flicked it in the painter's face.
+
+Harz turned white.
+
+"Duelling is a good custom!" said Sarelli.  "I shall have the honour
+to teach you just this one, unless you are afraid.  Here are pistols-
+-this room is twenty feet across at least, twenty feet is no bad
+distance."
+
+And pulling out a drawer he took two pistols from a case, and put
+them on the table.
+
+"The light is good--but perhaps you are afraid."
+
+"Give me one!" shouted the infuriated painter; "and go to the devil
+for a fool"
+
+"One moment!" Sarelli murmured: "I will load them, they are more
+useful loaded."
+
+Harz leaned out of the window; his head was in a whirl.  'What on
+earth is happening?' he thought.  'He's mad--or I am!  Confound him!
+I'm not going to be killed!'  He turned and went towards the table.
+Sarelli's head was sunk on his arms, he was asleep.  Harz
+methodically took up the pistols, and put them back into the drawer.
+A sound made him turn his head; there stood a tall, strong young
+woman in a loose gown caught together on her chest.  Her grey eyes
+glanced from the painter to the bottles, from the bottles to the
+pistol-case.  A simple reasoning, which struck Harz as comic.
+
+"It is often like this," she said in the country patois; "der Herr
+must not be frightened."
+
+Lifting the motionless Sarelli as if he were a baby, she laid him on
+a couch.
+
+"Ah!" she said, sitting down and resting her elbow on the table; "he
+will not wake!"
+
+Harz bowed to her; her patient figure, in spite of its youth and
+strength, seemed to him pathetic.  Taking up his knapsack, he went
+out.
+
+The smoke of cottages rose straight; wisps of mist were wandering
+about the valley, and the songs of birds dropping like blessings.
+All over the grass the spiders had spun a sea of threads that bent
+and quivered to the pressure of the air, like fairy tight-ropes.
+
+All that day he tramped.
+
+Blacksmiths, tall stout men with knotted muscles, sleepy eyes, and
+great fair beards, came out of their forges to stretch and wipe their
+brows, and stare at him.
+
+Teams of white oxen, waiting to be harnessed, lashed their tails
+against their flanks, moving their heads slowly from side to side in
+the heat.  Old women at chalet doors blinked and knitted.
+
+The white houses, with gaping caves of storage under the roofs, the
+red church spire, the clinking of hammers in the forges, the slow
+stamping of oxen-all spoke of sleepy toil, without ideas or ambition.
+Harz knew it all too well; like the earth's odour, it belonged to
+him, as Sarelli had said.
+
+Towards sunset coming to a copse of larches, he sat down to rest.  It
+was very still, but for the tinkle of cowbells, and, from somewhere
+in the distance, the sound of dropping logs.
+
+Two barefooted little boys came from the wood, marching earnestly
+along, and looking at Harz as if he were a monster.  Once past him,
+they began to run.
+
+'At their age,' he thought, 'I should have done the same.'  A hundred
+memories rushed into his mind.
+
+He looked down at the village straggling below--white houses with
+russet tiles and crowns of smoke, vineyards where the young leaves
+were beginning to unfold, the red-capped spire, a thread of bubbling
+stream, an old stone cross.  He had been fourteen years struggling up
+from all this; and now just as he had breathing space, and the time
+to give himself wholly to his work--this weakness was upon him!
+Better, a thousand times, to give her up!
+
+In a house or two lights began to wink; the scent of wood smoke
+reached him, the distant chimes of bells, the burring of a stream.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+Next day his one thought was to get back to work.  He arrived at the
+studio in the afternoon, and, laying in provisions, barricaded the
+lower door.  For three days he did not go out; on the fourth day he
+went to Villa Rubein....
+
+Schloss Runkelstein--grey, blind, strengthless--still keeps the
+valley.  The windows which once, like eyes, watched men and horses
+creeping through the snow, braved the splutter of guns and the gleam
+of torches, are now holes for the birds to nest in.  Tangled creepers
+have spread to the very summits of the walls.  In the keep, instead
+of grim men in armour, there is a wooden board recording the history
+of the castle and instructing visitors on the subject of
+refreshments.  Only at night, when the cold moon blanches everything,
+the castle stands like the grim ghost of its old self, high above the
+river.
+
+After a long morning's sitting the girls had started forth with Harz
+and Dawney to spend the afternoon at the ruin; Miss Naylor, kept at
+home by headache, watched them depart with words of caution against
+sunstroke, stinging nettles, and strange dogs.
+
+Since the painter's return Christian and he had hardly spoken to each
+other.  Below the battlement on which they sat, in a railed gallery
+with little tables, Dawney and Greta were playing dominoes, two
+soldiers drinking beer, and at the top of a flight of stairs the
+Custodian's wife sewing at a garment.  Christian said suddenly: "I
+thought we were friends."
+
+"Well, Fraulein Christian, aren't we?"
+
+"You went away without a word; friends don't do that."
+
+Harz bit his lips.
+
+"I don't think you care," she went on with a sort of desperate haste,
+"whether you hurt people or not.  You have been here all this time
+without even going to see your father and mother."
+
+"Do you think they would want to see me?"
+
+Christian looked up.
+
+"It's all been so soft for you," he said bitterly; "you don't
+understand."
+
+He turned his head away, and then burst out: "I'm proud to come
+straight from the soil--I wouldn't have it otherwise; but they are of
+'the people,' everything is narrow with them--they only understand
+what they can see and touch."
+
+"I'm sorry I spoke like that," said Christian softly; "you've never
+told me about yourself."
+
+There was something just a little cruel in the way the painter looked
+at her, then seeming to feel compunction, he said quickly: "I always
+hated--the peasant life--I wanted to get away into the world; I had a
+feeling in here--I wanted--I don't know what I wanted!  I did run
+away at last to a house-painter at Meran.  The priest wrote me a
+letter from my father--they threw me off; that's all."
+
+Christian's eyes were very bright, her lips moved, like the lips of a
+child listening to a story.
+
+"Go on," she said.
+
+"I stayed at Meran two years, till I'd learnt all I could there, then
+a brother of my mother's helped me to get to Vienna; I was lucky
+enough to find work with a man who used to decorate churches.  We
+went about the country together.  Once when he was ill I painted the
+roof of a church entirely by myself; I lay on my back on the scaffold
+boards all day for a week--I was proud of that roof."  He paused.
+
+"When did you begin painting pictures?"
+
+"A friend asked me why I didn't try for the Academie.  That started
+me going to the night schools; I worked every minute--I had to get my
+living as well, of course, so I worked at night.
+
+"Then when the examination came, I thought I could do nothing--it was
+just as if I had never had a brush or pencil in my hand.  But the
+second day a professor in passing me said, 'Good! Quite good!'  That
+gave me courage.  I was sure I had failed though; but I was second
+out of sixty."
+
+Christian nodded.
+
+"To work in the schools after that I had to give up my business, of
+course.  There was only one teacher who ever taught me anything; the
+others all seemed fools.  This man would come and rub out what you'd
+done with his sleeve.  I used to cry with rage--but I told him I
+could only learn from him, and he was so astonished that he got me
+into his class."
+
+"But how did you live without money?" asked Christian.
+
+His face burned with a dark flush.  "I don't know how I lived; you
+must have been through these things to know, you would never
+understand."
+
+"But I want to understand, please."
+
+"What do you want me to tell you?  How I went twice a week to eat
+free dinners!  How I took charity!  How I was hungry!  There was a
+rich cousin of my mother's--I used to go to him.  I didn't like it.
+But if you're starving in the winter"
+
+Christian put out her hand.
+
+"I used to borrow apronsful of coals from other students who were as
+poor--but I never went to the rich students."
+
+The flush had died out of his face.
+
+"That sort of thing makes you hate the world!  You work till you
+stagger; you're cold and hungry; you see rich people in their
+carriages, wrapped in furs, and all the time you want to do something
+great.  You pray for a chance, any chance; nothing comes to the poor!
+It makes you hate the world."
+
+Christian's eyes filled with tears.  He went on:
+
+"But I wasn't the only one in that condition; we used to meet.
+Garin, a Russian with a brown beard and patches of cheek showing
+through, and yellow teeth, who always looked hungry.  Paunitz, who
+came from sympathy!  He had fat cheeks and little eyes, and a big
+gold chain--the swine! And little Misek.  It was in his room we met,
+with the paper peeling off the walls, and two doors with cracks in
+them, so that there was always a draught.  We used to sit on his bed,
+and pull the dirty blankets over us for warmth; and smoke--tobacco
+was the last thing we ever went without.  Over the bed was a Virgin
+and Child--Misek was a very devout Catholic; but one day when he had
+had no dinner and a dealer had kept his picture without paying him,
+he took the image and threw it on the floor before our eyes; it
+broke, and he trampled on the bits.  Lendorf was another, a heavy
+fellow who was always puffing out his white cheeks and smiting
+himself, and saying: 'Cursed society!'  And Schonborn, an aristocrat
+who had quarrelled with his family.  He was the poorest of us all;
+but only he and I would ever have dared to do anything--they all knew
+that!"
+
+Christian listened with awe.  "Do you mean?" she said, "do you mean,
+that you--?"
+
+"You see! you're afraid of me at once.  It's impossible even for you
+to understand.  It only makes you afraid.  A hungry man living on
+charity, sick with rage and shame, is a wolf even to you!"
+
+Christian looked straight into his eyes.
+
+"That's not true.  If I can't understand, I can feel.  Would you be
+the same now if it were to come again?"
+
+"Yes, it drives me mad even now to think of people fatted with
+prosperity, sneering and holding up their hands at poor devils who
+have suffered ten times more than the most those soft animals could
+bear.  I'm older; I've lived--I know things can't be put right by
+violence--nothing will put things right, but that doesn't stop my
+feeling."
+
+"Did you do anything?  You must tell me all now."
+
+"We talked--we were always talking."
+
+"No, tell me everything!"
+
+Unconsciously she claimed, and he seemed unconsciously to admit her
+right to this knowledge.
+
+"There's not much to tell.  One day we began talking in low voices--
+Garin began it; he had been in some affair in Russia.  We took an
+oath; after that we never raised our voices.  We had a plan.  It was
+all new to me, and I hated the whole thing--but I was always hungry,
+or sick from taking charity, and I would have done anything.  They
+knew that; they used to look at me and Schonborn; we knew that no one
+else had any courage.  He and I were great friends, but we never
+talked of that; we tried to keep our minds away from the thought of
+it.  If we had a good day and were not so hungry, it seemed
+unnatural; but when the day had not been good--then it seemed natural
+enough.  I wasn't afraid, but I used to wake up in the night; I hated
+the oath we had taken, I hated every one of those fellows; the thing
+was not what I was made for, it wasn't my work, it wasn't my nature,
+it was forced on me--I hated it, but sometimes I was like a madman."
+
+"Yes, yes," she murmured.
+
+"All this time I was working at the Academie, and learning all I
+could....  One evening that we met, Paunitz was not there.  Misek was
+telling us how the thing had been arranged.  Schonborn and I looked
+at each other--it was warm--perhaps we were not hungry--it was
+springtime, too, and in the Spring it's different.  There is
+something."
+
+Christian nodded.
+
+"While we were talking there came a knock at the door.  Lendorf put
+his eye to the keyhole, and made a sign.  The police were there.
+Nobody said anything, but Misek crawled under the bed; we all
+followed; and the knocking grew louder and louder.  In the wall at
+the back of the bed was a little door into an empty cellar.  We crept
+through.  There was a trap-door behind some cases, where they used to
+roll barrels in.  We crawled through that into the back street.  We
+went different ways."
+
+He paused, and Christian gasped.
+
+"I thought I would get my money, but there was a policeman before my
+door.  They had us finely.  It was Paunitz; if I met him even now I
+should wring his neck.  I swore I wouldn't be caught, but I had no
+idea where to go.  Then I thought of a little Italian barber who used
+to shave me when I had money for a shave; I knew he would help.  He
+belonged to some Italian Society; he often talked to me, under his
+breath, of course.  I went to him.  He was shaving himself before
+going to a ball.  I told him what had happened; it was funny to see
+him put his back against the door.  He was very frightened,
+understanding this sort of thing better than I did--for I was only
+twenty then.  He shaved my head and moustache and put me on a fair
+wig.  Then he brought me macaroni, and some meat, to eat.  He gave me
+a big fair moustache, and a cap, and hid the moustache in the lining.
+He brought me a cloak of his own, and four gulden.  All the time he
+was extremely frightened, and kept listening, and saying: 'Eat!'
+
+"When I had done, he just said: 'Go away, I refuse to know anything
+more of you.'
+
+"I thanked him and went out.  I walked about all that night; for I
+couldn't think of anything to do or anywhere to go.  In the morning I
+slept on a seat in one of the squares.  Then I thought I would go to
+the Gallerien; and I spent the whole day looking at the pictures.
+When the Galleries were shut I was very tired, so I went into a cafe,
+and had some beer.  When I came out I sat on the same seat in the
+Square.  I meant to wait till dark and then walk out of the city and
+take the train at some little station, but while I was sitting there
+I went to sleep.  A policeman woke me.  He had my wig in his hand.
+
+"'Why do you wear a wig?' he said.
+
+"I answered: 'Because I am bald.'
+
+"'No,' he said, 'you're not bald, you've been shaved.  I can feel the
+hair coming.'
+
+"He put his finger on my head.  I felt reckless and laughed.
+
+"'Ah!' he said, 'you'll come with me and explain all this; your nose
+and eyes are looked for.'
+
+"I went with him quietly to the police-station...."
+
+Harz seemed carried away by his story.  His quick dark face worked,
+his steel-grey eyes stared as though he were again passing through
+all these long-past emotions.
+
+The hot sun struck down; Christian drew herself together, sitting
+with her hands clasped round her knees.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+"I didn't care by then what came of it.  I didn't even think what I
+was going to say.  He led me down a passage to a room with bars
+across the windows and long seats, and maps on the walls.  We sat and
+waited.  He kept his eye on me all the time; and I saw no hope.
+Presently the Inspector came.  'Bring him in here,' he said; I
+remember feeling I could kill him for ordering me about!  We went
+into the next room.  It had a large clock, a writing-table, and a
+window, without bars, looking on a courtyard.  Long policemen's coats
+and caps were hanging from some pegs.  The Inspector told me to take
+off my cap.  I took it off, wig and all.  He asked me who I was, but
+I refused to answer.  Just then there was a loud sound of voices in
+the room we had come from.  The Inspector told the policeman to look
+after me, and went to see what it was.  I could hear him talking.  He
+called out: 'Come here, Becker!'  I stood very quiet, and Becker went
+towards the door.  I heard the Inspector say: 'Go and find Schwartz,
+I will see after this fellow.'  The policeman went, and the Inspector
+stood with his back to me in the half-open door, and began again to
+talk to the man in the other room.  Once or twice he looked round at
+me, but I stood quiet all the time.  They began to disagree, and
+their voices got angry.  The Inspector moved a little into the other
+room.  'Now!' I thought, and slipped off my cloak.  I hooked off a
+policeman's coat and cap, and put them on.  My heart beat till I felt
+sick.  I went on tiptoe to the window.  There was no one outside, but
+at the entrance a man was holding some horses.  I opened the window a
+little and held my breath.  I heard the Inspector say: 'I will report
+you for impertinence!' and slipped through the window.  The coat came
+down nearly to my heels, and the cap over my eyes.  I walked up to
+the man with the horses, and said: 'Good-evening.'  One of the horses
+had begun to kick, and he only grunted at me.  I got into a passing
+tram; it was five minutes to the West Bahnhof; I got out there.
+There was a train starting; they were shouting 'Einsteigen!'  I ran.
+The collector tried to stop me.  I shouted: 'Business--important!'
+He let me by.  I jumped into a carriage.  The train started."
+
+He paused, and Christian heaved a sigh.
+
+Harz went on, twisting a twig of ivy in his hands: "There was another
+man in the carriage reading a paper.  Presently I said to him, 'Where
+do we stop first?'  'St. Polten.'  Then I knew it was the Munich
+express--St. Polten, Amstetten, Linz, and Salzburg--four stops before
+the frontier.  The man put down his paper and looked at me; he had a
+big fair moustache and rather shabby clothes.  His looking at me
+disturbed me, for I thought every minute he would say: 'You're no
+policeman!'  And suddenly it came into my mind that if they looked
+for me in this train, it would be as a policeman!--they would know,
+of course, at the station that a policeman had run past at the last
+minute.  I wanted to get rid of the coat and cap, but the man was
+there, and I didn't like to move out of the carriage for other people
+to notice.  So I sat on.  We came to St. Polten at last.  The man in
+my carriage took his bag, got out, and left his paper on the seat.
+We started again; I breathed at last, and as soon as I could took the
+cap and coat and threw them out into the darkness.  I thought: 'I
+shall get across the frontier now.'  I took my own cap out and found
+the moustache Luigi gave me; rubbed my clothes as clean as possible;
+stuck on the moustache, and with some little ends of chalk in my
+pocket made my eyebrows light; then drew some lines in my face to
+make it older, and pulled my cap well down above my wig.  I did it
+pretty well--I was quite like the man who had got out.  I sat in his
+corner, took up his newspaper, and waited for Amstetten.  It seemed a
+tremendous time before we got there.  From behind my paper I could
+see five or six policemen on the platform, one quite close.  He
+opened the door, looked at me, and walked through the carriage into
+the corridor.  I took some tobacco and rolled up a cigarette, but it
+shook, "Harz lifted the ivy twig, "like this.  In a minute the
+conductor and two more policemen came.  'He was here,' said the
+conductor, 'with this gentleman.'  One of them looked at me, and
+asked: 'Have you seen a policeman travelling on this train?'  'Yes,'
+I said.  'Where?'  'He got out at St.  Polten.'  The policeman asked
+the conductor: 'Did you see him get out there?'  The conductor shook
+his head.  I said: 'He got out as the train was moving.'  'Ah!' said
+the policeman, 'what was he like?'  'Rather short, and no moustache.
+Why?'  'Did you notice anything unusual?'  'No,' I said, 'only that
+he wore coloured trousers.  What's the matter?'  One policeman said
+to the other: 'That's our man!  Send a telegram to St. Polten; he has
+more than an hour's start.'  He asked me where I was going.  I told
+him: 'Linz.'  'Ah!' he said, 'you'll have to give evidence; your name
+and address please?'  'Josef Reinhardt, 17 Donau Strasse.'  He wrote
+it down.  The conductor said: 'We are late, can we start?'  They shut
+the door.  I heard them say to the conductor: 'Search again at Linz,
+and report to the Inspector there.'  They hurried on to the platform,
+and we started.  At first I thought I would get out as soon as the
+train had left the station.  Then, that I should be too far from the
+frontier; better to go on to Linz and take my chance there.  I sat
+still and tried not to think.
+
+"After a long time, we began to run more slowly.  I put my head out
+and could see in the distance a ring of lights hanging in the
+blackness.  I loosened the carriage door and waited for the train to
+run slower still; I didn't mean to go into Linz like a rat into a
+trap.  At last I could wait no longer; I opened the door, jumped and
+fell into some bushes.  I was not much hurt, but bruised, and the
+breath knocked out of me.  As soon as I could, I crawled out.  It was
+very dark.  I felt heavy and sore, and for some time went stumbling
+in and out amongst trees.  Presently I came to a clear space; on one
+side I could see the town's shape drawn in lighted lamps, and on the
+other a dark mass, which I think was forest; in the distance too was
+a thin chain of lights.  I thought: 'They must be the lights of a
+bridge.'  Just then the moon came out, and I could see the river
+shining below.  It was cold and damp, and I walked quickly.  At last
+I came out on a road, past houses and barking dogs, down to the river
+bank; there I sat against a shed and went to sleep.  I woke very
+stiff.  It was darker than before; the moon was gone.  I could just
+see the river.  I stumbled on, to get through the town before dawn.
+It was all black shapes-houses and sheds, and the smell of the river,
+the smell of rotting hay, apples, tar, mud, fish; and here and there
+on a wharf a lantern.  I stumbled over casks and ropes and boxes; I
+saw I should never get clear--the dawn had begun already on the other
+side.  Some men came from a house behind me.  I bent, and crept
+behind some barrels.  They passed along the wharf; they seemed to
+drop into the river.  I heard one of them say: 'Passau before night.'
+I stood up and saw they had walked on board a steamer which was lying
+head up-stream, with some barges in tow.  There was a plank laid to
+the steamer, and a lantern at the other end.  I could hear the
+fellows moving below deck, getting up steam.  I ran across the plank
+and crept to the end of the steamer.  I meant to go with them to
+Passau!  The rope which towed the barges was nearly taut; and I knew
+if I could get on to the barges I should be safe.  I climbed down on
+this rope and crawled along.  I was desperate, I knew they'd soon be
+coming up, and it was getting light.  I thought I should fall into
+the water several times, but I got to the barge at last.  It was
+laden with straw.  There was nobody on board.  I was hungry and
+thirsty--I looked for something to eat; there was nothing but the
+ashes of a fire and a man's coat.  I crept into the straw.  Soon a
+boat brought men, one for each barge, and there were sounds of steam.
+As soon as we began moving through the water, I fell asleep.  When I
+woke we were creeping through a heavy mist.  I made a little hole in
+the straw and saw the bargeman.  He was sitting by a fire at the
+barge's edge, so that the sparks and smoke blew away over the water.
+He ate and drank with both hands, and funny enough he looked in the
+mist, like a big bird flapping its wings; there was a good smell of
+coffee, and I sneezed.  How the fellow started!  But presently he
+took a pitchfork and prodded the straw.  Then I stood up.  I couldn't
+help laughing, he was so surprised--a huge, dark man, with a great
+black beard.  I pointed to the fire and said 'Give me some, brother!'
+He pulled me out of the straw; I was so stiff, I couldn't move.  I
+sat by the fire, and ate black bread and turnips, and drank coffee;
+while he stood by, watching me and muttering.  I couldn't understand
+him well--he spoke a dialect from Hungary.  He asked me: How I got
+there--who I was--where I was from?  I looked up in his face, and he
+looked down at me, sucking his pipe.  He was a big man, he lived
+alone on the river, and I was tired of telling lies, so I told him
+the whole thing.  When I had done he just grunted.  I can see him now
+standing over me, with the mist hanging in his beard, and his great
+naked arms.  He drew me some water, and I washed and showed him my
+wig and moustache, and threw them overboard.  All that day we lay out
+on the barge in the mist, with our feet to the fire, smoking; now and
+then he would spit into the ashes and mutter into his beard.  I shall
+never forget that day.  The steamer was like a monster with fiery
+nostrils, and the other barges were dumb creatures with eyes, where
+the fires were; we couldn't see the bank, but now and then a bluff
+and high trees, or a castle, showed in the mist.  If I had only had
+paint and canvas that day!"  He sighed.
+
+"It was early Spring, and the river was in flood; they were going to
+Regensburg to unload there, take fresh cargo, and back to Linz.  As
+soon as the mist began to clear, the bargeman hid me in the straw.
+At Passau was the frontier; they lay there for the night, but nothing
+happened, and I slept in the straw.  The next day I lay out on the
+barge deck; there was no mist, but I was free--the sun shone gold on
+the straw and the green sacking; the water seemed to dance, and I
+laughed--I laughed all the time, and the barge man laughed with me.
+A fine fellow he was!  At Regensburg I helped them to unload; for
+more than a week we worked; they nicknamed me baldhead, and when it
+was all over I gave the money I earned for the unloading to the big
+bargeman.  We kissed each other at parting.  I had still three of the
+gulden that Luigi gave me, and I went to a house-painter and got work
+with him.  For six months I stayed there to save money; then I wrote
+to my mother's cousin in Vienna, and told him I was going to London.
+He gave me an introduction to some friends there.  I went to Hamburg,
+and from there to London in a cargo steamer, and I've never been back
+till now."
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+After a minute's silence Christian said in a startled voice: "They
+could arrest you then!"
+
+Harz laughed.
+
+"If they knew; but it's seven years ago."
+
+"Why did you come here, when it's so dangerous?"
+
+"I had been working too hard, I wanted to see my country--after seven
+years, and when it's forbidden!  But I'm ready to go back now."  He
+looked down at her, frowning.
+
+"Had you a hard time in London, too?"
+
+"Harder, at first--I couldn't speak the language.  In my profession
+it's hard work to get recognised, it's hard work to make a living.
+There are too many whose interest it is to keep you down--I shan't
+forget them."
+
+"But every one is not like that?"
+
+"No; there are fine fellows, too.  I shan't forget them either.  I
+can sell my pictures now; I'm no longer weak, and I promise you I
+shan't forget.  If in the future I have power, and I shall have
+power--I shan't forget."
+
+A shower of fine gravel came rattling on the wall.  Dawney was
+standing below them with an amused expression on his upturned face.
+
+"Are you going to stay there all night?" he asked.  "Greta and I have
+bored each other."
+
+"We're coming," called Christian hastily.
+
+On the way back neither spoke a word, but when they reached the
+Villa, Harz took her hand, and said: "Fraulein Christian, I can't do
+any more with your picture.  I shan't touch it again after this."
+
+She made no answer, but they looked at each other, and both seemed to
+ask, to entreat, something more; then her eyes fell.  He dropped her
+hand, and saying, "Good-night," ran after Dawney.
+
+In the corridor, Dominique, carrying a dish of fruit, met the
+sisters; he informed them that Miss Naylor had retired to bed; that
+Herr Paul would not be home to dinner; his master was dining in his
+room; dinner would be served for Mrs. Decie and the two young ladies
+in a quarter of an hour: "And the fish is good to-night; little
+trouts! try them, Signorina!" He moved on quickly, softly, like a
+cat, the tails of his dress-coat flapping, and the heels of his white
+socks gleaming.
+
+Christian ran upstairs.  She flew about her room, feeling that if she
+once stood still it would all crystallise in hard painful thought,
+which motion alone kept away.  She washed, changed her dress and
+shoes, and ran down to her uncle's room.  Mr. Treffry had just
+finished dinner, pushed the little table back, and was sitting in his
+chair, with his glasses on his nose, reading the Tines.  Christian
+touched his forehead with her lips.
+
+"Glad to see you, Chris.  Your stepfather's out to dinner, and I
+can't stand your aunt when she's in one of her talking moods--bit of
+a humbug, Chris, between ourselves; eh, isn't she?" His eyes
+twinkled.
+
+Christian smiled.  There was a curious happy restlessness in her that
+would not let her keep still.
+
+"Picture finished?" Mr. Treffry asked suddenly, taking up the paper
+with a crackle.  "Don't go and fall in love with the painter, Chris."
+
+Christian was still enough now.
+
+'Why not?' she thought.  'What should you know about him?  Isn't he
+good enough for me?'  A gong sounded.
+
+"There's your dinner," Mr. Treffry remarked.
+
+With sudden contrition she bent and kissed him.
+
+But when she had left the room Mr. Treffry put down the Times and
+stared at the door, humming to himself, and thoughtfully fingering
+his chin.
+
+Christian could not eat; she sat, indifferent to the hoverings of
+Dominique, tormented by uneasy fear and longings.  She answered Mrs.
+Decie at random.  Greta kept stealing looks at her from under her
+lashes.
+
+"Decided characters are charming, don't you think so, Christian?"
+Mrs. Decie said, thrusting her chin a little forward, and modelling
+the words.  "That is why I like Mr. Harz so much; such an immense
+advantage for a man to know his mind.  You have only to look at that
+young man to see that he knows what he wants, and means to have it."
+
+Christian pushed her plate away.  Greta, flushing, said abruptly:
+"Doctor Edmund is not a decided character, I think.  This afternoon
+he said: 'Shall I have some beer-yes, I shall--no, I shall not'; then
+he ordered the beer, so, when it came, he gave it to the soldiers."
+
+Mrs. Decie turned her enigmatic smile from one girl to the other.
+
+When dinner was over they went into her room.  Greta stole at once to
+the piano, where her long hair fell almost to the keys; silently she
+sat there fingering the notes, smiling to herself, and looking at her
+aunt, who was reading Pater's essays.  Christian too had taken up a
+book, but soon put it down--of several pages she had not understood a
+word.  She went into the garden and wandered about the lawn, clasping
+her hands behind her head.  The air was heavy; very distant thunder
+trembled among the mountains, flashes of summer lightning played over
+the trees; and two great moths were hovering about a rosebush.
+Christian watched their soft uncertain rushes.  Going to the little
+summer-house she flung herself down on a seat, and pressed her hands
+to her heart.
+
+There was a strange and sudden aching there.  Was he going from her?
+If so, what would be left?  How little and how narrow seemed the
+outlook of her life--with the world waiting for her, the world of
+beauty, effort, self-sacrifice, fidelity!  It was as though a flash
+of that summer lightning had fled by, singeing her, taking from her
+all powers of flight, burning off her wings, as off one of those pale
+hovering moths.  Tears started up, and trickled down her face.
+'Blind!' she thought; 'how could I have been so blind?'
+
+Some one came down the path.
+
+"Who's there?" she cried.
+
+Harz stood in the doorway.
+
+"Why did you come out?" he said.  "Ah! why did you come out?"  He
+caught her hand; Christian tried to draw it from him, and to turn her
+eyes away, but she could not.  He flung himself down on his knees,
+and cried: "I love you!"
+
+In a rapture of soft terror Christian bent her forehead down to his
+hand.
+
+"What are you doing?" she heard him say.  "Is it possible that you
+love me?" and she felt his kisses on her hair.
+
+"My sweet! it will be so hard for you; you are so little, so little,
+and so weak."  Clasping his hand closer to her face, she murmured: "I
+don't care."
+
+There was a long, soft silence, that seemed to last for ever.
+Suddenly she threw her arms round his neck and kissed him.
+
+"Whatever comes!" she whispered, and gathering her dress, escaped
+from him into the darkness.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+Christian woke next morning with a smile.  In her attitudes, her
+voice, her eyes, there was a happy and sweet seriousness, as if she
+were hugging some holy thought.  After breakfast she took a book and
+sat in the open window, whence she could see the poplar-trees
+guarding the entrance.  There was a breeze; the roses close by kept
+nodding to her; the cathedral bells were in full chime; bees hummed
+above the lavender; and in the sky soft clouds were floating like
+huge, white birds.
+
+The sounds of Miss Naylor's staccato dictation travelled across the
+room, and Greta's sighs as she took it down, one eye on her paper,
+one eye on Scruff, who lay with a black ear flapped across his paw,
+and his tan eyebrows quivering.  He was in disgrace, for Dominique,
+coming on him unawares, had seen him "say his prayers" before a
+pudding, and take the pudding for reward.
+
+Christian put her book down gently, and slipped through the window.
+Harz was coming in from the road.  "I am all yours!" she whispered.
+His fingers closed on hers, and he went into the house.
+
+She slipped back, took up her book, and waited.  It seemed long
+before he came out, but when he did he waved her back, and hurried
+on; she had a glimpse of his face, white to the lips.  Feeling faint
+and sick, she flew to her stepfather's room.
+
+Herr Paul was standing in a corner with the utterly disturbed
+appearance of an easy-going man, visited by the unexpected.  His fine
+shirt-front was crumpled as if his breast had heaved too suddenly
+under strong emotion; his smoked eyeglasses dangled down his back;
+his fingers were embedded in his beard.  He was fixing his eye on a
+spot in the floor as though he expected it to explode and blow them
+to fragments.  In another corner Mrs. Decie, with half-closed eyes,
+was running her finger-tips across her brow.
+
+"What have you said to him?" cried Christian.
+
+Herr Paul regarded her with glassy eyes.
+
+"Mein Gott!" he said.  "Your aunt and I!"
+
+"What have you said to him?" repeated Christian.
+
+"The impudence!  An anarchist!  A beggar!"
+
+"Paul!" murmured Mrs. Decie.
+
+"The outlaw!  The fellow!"  Herr Paul began to stride about the room.
+
+Quivering from head to foot, Christian cried: "How dared you?" and
+ran from the room, pushing aside Miss Naylor and Greta, who stood
+blanched and frightened in the doorway.
+
+Herr Paul stopped in his tramp, and, still with his eyes fixed on the
+floor, growled:
+
+"A fine thing-hein?  What's coming?  Will you please tell me?  An
+anarchist--a beggar!"
+
+"Paul!" murmured Mrs. Decie.
+
+"Paul!  Paul!  And you!" he pointed to Miss Naylor--"Two women with
+eyes!--hein!"
+
+"There is nothing to be gained by violence," Mrs. Decie murmured,
+passing her handkerchief across her lips.  Miss Naylor, whose thin
+brown cheeks had flushed, advanced towards him.
+
+"I hope you do not--"she said; "I am sure there was nothing that I
+could have prevented--I should be glad if that were understood."
+And, turning with some dignity, the little lady went away, closing
+the door behind her.
+
+"You hear!" Herr Paul said, violently sarcastic: "nothing she could
+have prevented!  Enfin! Will you please tell me what I am to do?"
+
+"Men of the world"--whose philosophy is a creature of circumstance
+and accepted things--find any deviation from the path of their
+convictions dangerous, shocking, and an intolerable bore.  Herr Paul
+had spent his life laughing at convictions; the matter had but to
+touch him personally, and the tap of laughter was turned off.  That
+any one to whom he was the lawful guardian should marry other than a
+well-groomed man, properly endowed with goods, properly selected, was
+beyond expression horrid.  From his point of view he had great excuse
+for horror; and he was naturally unable to judge whether he had
+excuse for horror from other points of view.  His amazement had in it
+a spice of the pathetic; he was like a child in the presence of a
+thing that he absolutely could not understand.  The interview had
+left him with a sense of insecurity which he felt to be particularly
+unfair.
+
+The door was again opened, and Greta flew in, her cheeks flushed, her
+hair floating behind her, and tears streaming down her cheeks.
+
+"Papa!" she cried, "you have been cruel to Chris.  The door is
+locked; I can hear her crying--why have you been cruel?"  Without
+waiting to be answered, she flew out again.
+
+Herr Paul seized his hair with both his hands: "Good!  Very good!  My
+own child, please!  What next then?"
+
+Mrs. Decie rose from her chair languidly.  "My head is very bad," she
+said, shading her eyes and speaking in low tones: "It is no use
+making a fuss--nothing can come of this--he has not a penny.
+Christian will have nothing till you die, which will not be for a
+long time yet, if you can but avoid an apoplectic fit!"
+
+At these last words Herr Paul gave a start of real disgust.  "Hum!"
+he muttered; it was as if the world were bent on being brutal to him.
+Mrs. Decie continued:
+
+"If I know anything of this young man, he will not come here again,
+after the words you have spoken.  As for Christian--you had better
+talk to Nicholas.  I am going to lie down."
+
+Herr Paul nervously fingered the shirt-collar round his stout, short
+neck.
+
+"Nicholas!  Certainly--a good idea.  Quelle diable d'afaire!"
+
+'French!' thought Mrs. Decie; 'we shall soon have peace.  Poor
+Christian!  I'm sorry!  After all, these things are a matter of time
+and opportunity.'  This consoled her a good deal.
+
+But for Christian the hours were a long nightmare of grief and shame,
+fear and anger.  Would he forgive?  Would he be true to her?  Or
+would he go away without a word?  Since yesterday it was as if she
+had stepped into another world, and lost it again.  In place of that
+new feeling, intoxicating as wine, what was coming?  What bitter;
+dreadful ending?
+
+A rude entrance this into the life of facts, and primitive emotions!
+
+She let Greta into her room after a time, for the child had begun
+sobbing; but she would not talk, and sat hour after hour at the
+window with the air fanning her face, and the pain in her eyes turned
+to the sky and trees.  After one or two attempts at consolation,
+Greta sank on the floor, and remained there, humbly gazing at her
+sister in a silence only broken when Christian cleared her throat of
+tears, and by the song of birds in the garden.  In the afternoon she
+slipped away and did not come back again.
+
+After his interview with Mr. Treffry, Herr Paul took a bath, perfumed
+himself with precision, and caused it to be clearly understood that,
+under circumstances such as these, a man's house was not suited for a
+pig to live in.  He shortly afterwards went out to the Kurbaus, and
+had not returned by dinner-time.
+
+Christian came down for dinner.  There were crimson spots in her
+cheeks, dark circles round her eyes; she behaved, however, as though
+nothing had happened.  Miss Naylor, affected by the kindness of her
+heart and the shock her system had sustained, rolled a number of
+bread pills, looking at each as it came, with an air of surprise, and
+concealing it with difficulty.  Mr. Treffry was coughing, and when he
+talked his voice seemed to rumble even more than usual.  Greta was
+dumb, trying to catch Christian's eye; Mrs. Decie alone seemed at
+ease.  After dinner Mr. Treffry went off to his room, leaning heavily
+on Christian's shoulder.  As he sank into his chair, he said to her:
+
+"Pull yourself together, my dear!" Christian did not answer him.
+
+Outside his room Greta caught her by the sleeve.
+
+"Look!" she whispered, thrusting a piece of paper into Christian's
+hand.  "It is to me from Dr. Edmund, but you must read it."
+
+Christian opened the note, which ran as follows:
+
+
+"MY PHILOSOPHER AND FRIEND,--I received your note, and went to our
+friend's studio; he was not in, but half an hour ago I stumbled on
+him in the Platz.  He is not quite himself; has had a touch of the
+sun--nothing serious: I took him to my hotel, where he is in bed.  If
+he will stay there he will be all right in a day or two.  In any case
+he shall not elude my clutches for the present.
+
+"My warm respects to Mistress Christian.--Yours in friendship and
+philosophy,
+
+"EDMUND DAWNEY."
+
+
+Christian read and re-read this note, then turned to Greta.
+
+"What did you say to Dr. Dawney?"
+
+Greta took back the piece of paper, and replied: "I said:
+
+"'DEAR DR. EDMUND,--We are anxious about Herr Harz.  We think he is
+perhaps not very well to-day.  We (I and Christian) should like to
+know.  You can tell us.  Please shall you?  GRETA.'
+
+"That is what I said."
+
+Christian dropped her eyes.  "What made you write?"
+
+Greta gazed at her mournfully: "I thought--O Chris! come into the
+garden.  I am so hot, and it is so dull without you!"
+
+Christian bent her head forward and rubbed her cheek against Greta's,
+then without another word ran upstairs and locked herself into her
+room.  The child stood listening; hearing the key turn in the lock,
+she sank down on the bottom step and took Scruff in her arms.
+
+Half an hour later Miss Naylor, carrying a candle, found her there
+fast asleep, with her head resting on the terrier's back, and tear
+stains on her cheeks....
+
+Mrs. Decie presently came out, also carrying a candle, and went to
+her brother's room.  She stood before his chair, with folded hands.
+
+"Nicholas, what is to be done?"
+
+Mr. Treffry was pouring whisky into a glass.
+
+"Damn it, Con!" he answered; "how should I know?"
+
+"There's something in Christian that makes interference dangerous.  I
+know very well that I've no influence with her at all."
+
+"You're right there, Con," Mr. Treffry replied.
+
+Mrs. Decie's pale eyes, fastened on his face, forced him to look up.
+
+"I wish you would leave off drinking whisky and attend to me.  Paul
+is an element--"
+
+"Paul," Mr. Treffry growled, "is an ass!"
+
+"Paul," pursued Mrs. Decie, "is an element of danger in the
+situation; any ill-timed opposition of his might drive her to I don't
+know what.  Christian is gentle, she is 'sympathetic' as they say;
+but thwart her, and she is as obstinate as....
+
+"You or I!  Leave her alone!"
+
+"I understand her character, but I confess that I am at a loss what
+to do."
+
+"Do nothing!"  He drank again.
+
+Mrs. Decie took up the candle.
+
+"Men!" she said with a mysterious intonation; shrugging her
+shoulders, she walked out.
+
+Mr. Treffry put down his glass.
+
+'Understand?' he thought; 'no, you don't, and I don't.  Who
+understands a young girl?  Vapourings, dreams, moonshine I....  What
+does she see in this painter fellow?  I wonder!'  He breathed
+heavily.  'By heavens! I wouldn't have had this happen for a hundred
+thousand pounds!'
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+For many hours after Dawney had taken him to his hotel, Harz was
+prostrate with stunning pains in the head and neck.  He had been all
+day without food, exposed to burning sun, suffering violent emotion.
+Movement of any sort caused him such agony that he could only lie in
+stupor, counting the spots dancing before, his eyes.  Dawney did
+everything for him, and Harz resented in a listless way the intent
+scrutiny of the doctor's calm, black eyes.
+
+Towards the end of the second day he was able to get up; Dawney found
+him sitting on the bed in shirt and trousers.
+
+"My son," he said, "you had better tell me what the trouble is--it
+will do your stubborn carcase good."
+
+"I must go back to work," said Harz.
+
+"Work!" said Dawney deliberately: "you couldn't, if you tried."
+
+"I must."
+
+"My dear fellow, you couldn't tell one colour from another."
+
+"I must be doing something; I can't sit here and think."
+
+Dawney hooked his thumbs into his waistcoat: "You won't see the sun
+for three days yet, if I can help it."
+
+Harz got up.
+
+"I'm going to my studio to-morrow," he said.  "I promise not to go
+out.  I must be where I can see my work.  If I can't paint, I can
+draw; I can feel my brushes, move my things about.  I shall go mad if
+I do nothing."
+
+Dawney took his arm, and walked him up and down.
+
+"I'll let you go," he said, "but give me a chance!  It's as much to
+me to put you straight as it is to you to paint a decent picture.
+Now go to bed; I'll have a carriage for you to-morrow morning."
+
+Harz sat down on the bed again, and for a long time stayed without
+moving, his eyes fixed on the floor.  The sight of him, so desperate
+and miserable, hurt the young doctor.
+
+"Can you get to bed by yourself?" he asked at last.
+
+Harz nodded.
+
+"Then, good-night, old chap!" and Dawney left the room.
+
+He took his hat and turned towards the Villa.  Between the poplars he
+stopped to think.  The farther trees were fret-worked black against
+the lingering gold of the sunset; a huge moth, attracted by the tip
+of his cigar, came fluttering in his face.  The music of a concertina
+rose and fell, like the sighing of some disillusioned spirit.  Dawney
+stood for several minutes staring at the house.
+
+He was shown to Mrs. Decie's room.  She was holding a magazine before
+her eyes, and received him with as much relief as philosophy
+permitted.
+
+"You are the very person I wanted to see," she said.
+
+He noticed that the magazine she held was uncut.
+
+"You are a young man," pursued Mrs. Decie, "but as my doctor I have a
+right to your discretion."
+
+Dawney smiled; the features of his broad, clean-shaven face looked
+ridiculously small on such occasions, but his eyes retained their air
+of calculation.
+
+"That is so," he answered.
+
+"It is about this unfortunate affair.  I understand that Mr. Harz is
+with you.  I want you to use your influence to dissuade him from
+attempting to see my niece."
+
+"Influence!" said Dawney; "you know Harz!"
+
+Mrs. Decie's voice hardened.
+
+"Everybody," she said, "has his weak points.  This young man is open
+to approach from at least two quarters--his pride is one, his work an
+other.  I am seldom wrong in gauging character; these are his vital
+spots, and they are of the essence of this matter.  I'm sorry for
+him, of course--but at his age, and living a man's life, these
+things--"  Her smile was extra pale.  "I wish you could give me
+something for my head.  It's foolish to worry.  Nerves of course!
+But I can't help it!  You know my opinion, Dr. Dawney.  That young
+man will go far if he remains unfettered; he will make a name.  You
+will be doing him a great service if you could show him the affair as
+it really is--a drag on him, and quite unworthy of his pride!  Do
+help me!  You are just the man to do it!"
+
+Dawney threw up his head as if to shake off this impeachment; the
+curve of his chin thus displayed was imposing in its fulness;
+altogether he was imposing, having an air of capability.
+
+She struck him, indeed, as really scared; it was as if her mask of
+smile had become awry, and failed to cover her emotion; and he was
+puzzled, thinking, 'I wouldn't have believed she had it in her....'
+"It's not an easy business," he said; "I'll think it over."
+
+"Thank you!" murmured Mrs. Decie.  "You are most kind."
+
+Passing the schoolroom, he looked in through the open door.
+Christian was sitting there.  The sight of her face shocked him, it
+was so white, so resolutely dumb.  A book lay on her knees; she was
+not reading, but staring before her.  He thought suddenly: 'Poor
+thing!  If I don't say something to her, I shall be a brute!'
+
+"Miss Devorell," he said: "You can reckon on him."
+
+Christian tried to speak, but her lips trembled so that nothing came
+forth.
+
+"Good-night," said Dawney, and walked out....
+
+Three days later Harz was sitting in the window of his studio.  It
+was the first day he had found it possible to work, and now, tired
+out, he stared through the dusk at the slowly lengthening shadows of
+the rafters.  A solitary mosquito hummed, and two house sparrows, who
+had built beneath the roof, chirruped sleepily.  Swallows darted by
+the window, dipping their blue wings towards the quiet water; a hush
+had stolen over everything.  He fell asleep.
+
+He woke, with a dim impression of some near presence.  In the pale
+glimmer from innumerable stars, the room was full of shadowy shapes.
+He lit his lantern.  The flame darted forth, bickered, then slowly
+lit up the great room.
+
+"Who's there?"
+
+A rustling seemed to answer.  He peered about, went to the doorway,
+and drew the curtain.  A woman's cloaked figure shrank against the
+wall.  Her face was buried in her hands; her arms, from which the
+cloak fell back, were alone visible.
+
+"Christian?"
+
+She ran past him, and when he had put the lantern down, was standing
+at the window.  She turned quickly to him.  "Take me away from here!
+Let me come with you!"
+
+"Do you mean it?"
+
+"You said you wouldn't give me up!"
+
+"You know what you are doing?"
+
+She made a motion of assent.
+
+"But you don't grasp what this means.  Things to bear that you know
+nothing of--hunger perhaps!  Think, even hunger!  And your people
+won't forgive--you'll lose everything."
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"I must choose--it's one thing or the other.  I can't give you up!
+I should be afraid!"
+
+"But, dear; how can you come with me?  We can't be married here."
+
+"I am giving my life to you."
+
+"You are too good for me," said Harz.  "The life you're going into--
+may be dark, like that!" he pointed to the window.
+
+A sound of footsteps broke the hush.  They could see a figure on the
+path below.  It stopped, seemed to consider, vanished.  They heard
+the sounds of groping hands, of a creaking door, of uncertain feet on
+the stairs.
+
+Harz seized her hand.
+
+"Quick!" he whispered; "behind this canvas!"
+
+Christian was trembling violently.  She drew her hood across her
+face.  The heavy breathing and ejaculations of the visitor were now
+plainly audible.
+
+"He's there!  Quick!  Hide!"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+With a thrill at his heart, Harz kissed her, then walked towards the
+entrance.  The curtain was pulled aside.
+
+It was Herr Paul, holding a cigar in one hand, his hat in the other,
+and breathing hard.
+
+"Pardon!" he said huskily, "your stairs are steep, and dark! mais en,
+fin! nous voila!  I have ventured to come for a talk."  His glance
+fell on the cloaked figure in the shadow.
+
+"Pardon! A thousand pardons!  I had no idea!  I beg you to forgive
+this indiscretion!  I may take it you resign pretensions then?  You
+have a lady here--I have nothing more to say; I only beg a million
+pardons for intruding.  A thousand times forgive me!  Good-night!"
+
+He bowed and turned to go.  Christian stepped forward, and let the
+hood fall from her head.
+
+"It's I!"
+
+Herr Paul pirouetted.
+
+"Good God!" he stammered, dropping cigar and hat.  "Good God!"
+
+The lantern flared suddenly, revealing his crimson, shaking cheeks.
+
+"You came here, at night!  You, the daughter of my wife!"  His eyes
+wandered with a dull glare round the room.
+
+"Take care!" cried Harz: "If you say a word against her---"
+
+The two men stared at each other's eyes.  And without warning, the
+lantern flickered and went out.  Christian drew the cloak round her
+again.  Herr Paul's voice broke the silence; he had recovered his
+self-possession.
+
+"Ah! ah!" he said: "Darkness! Tant mieux!  The right thing for what
+we have to say.  Since we do not esteem each other, it is well not to
+see too much."
+
+"Just so," said Harz.
+
+Christian had come close to them.  Her pale face and great shining
+eyes could just be seen through the gloom.
+
+Herr Paul waved his arm; the gesture was impressive, annihilating.
+
+"This is a matter, I believe, between two men," he said, addressing
+Harz.  "Let us come to the point.  I will do you the credit to
+suppose that you have a marriage in view.  You know, perhaps, that
+Miss Devorell has no money till I die?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And I am passably young! You have money, then?"
+
+"No."
+
+"In that case, you would propose to live on air?"
+
+"No, to work; it has been done before."
+
+"It is calculated to increase hunger!  You are prepared to take Miss
+Devorell, a young lady accustomed to luxury, into places like--this!"
+he peered about him, "into places that smell of paint, into the
+milieu of 'the people,' into the society of Bohemians--who knows? of
+anarchists, perhaps?"
+
+Harz clenched his hands: "I will answer no more questions."
+
+"In that event, we reach the ultimatum," said Herr Paul.  "Listen,
+Herr Outlaw!  If you have not left the country by noon to-morrow, you
+shall be introduced to the police!"
+
+Christian uttered a cry.  For a minute in the gloom the only sound
+heard was the short, hard breathing of the two men.
+
+Suddenly Harz cried: "You coward, I defy you!"
+
+"Coward!" Herr Paul repeated.  "That is indeed the last word.  Look
+to yourself, my friend!"
+
+Stooping and fumbling on the floor, he picked up his hat.  Christian
+had already vanished; the sound of her hurrying footsteps was
+distinctly audible at the top of the dark stairs.  Herr Paul stood
+still a minute.
+
+"Look to yourself, my dear friend!" he said in a thick voice, groping
+for the wall.  Planting his hat askew on his head, he began slowly to
+descend the stairs.
+
+
+
+
+XV
+
+Nicholas Treffry sat reading the paper in his room by the light of a
+lamp with a green shade; on his sound foot the terrier Scruff was
+asleep and snoring lightly--the dog habitually came down when Greta
+was in bed, and remained till Mr. Treffry, always the latest member
+of the household, retired to rest.
+
+Through the long window a little river of light shone out on the
+veranda tiles, and, flowing past, cut the garden in two.
+
+There was the sound of hurried footsteps, a rustling of draperies;
+Christian, running through the window, stood before him.
+
+Mr. Treffry dropped his paper, such a fury of passion and alarm shone
+in the girl's eyes.
+
+"Chris! What is it?"
+
+"Hateful!"
+
+"Chris!"
+
+"Oh! Uncle!  He's insulted, threatened!  And I love his little finger
+more than all the, world!"
+
+Her passionate voice trembled, her eyes were shining.
+
+Mr. Treffry's profound discomfort found vent in the gruff words: "Sit
+down!"
+
+"I'll never speak to Father again!  Oh! Uncle! I love him!"
+
+Quiet in the extremity of his disturbance, Mr. Treffry leaned forward
+in his chair, rested his big hands on its arms, and stared at her.
+
+Chris!  Here was a woman he did not know!  His lips moved under the
+heavy droop of his moustache.  The girl's face had suddenly grown
+white.  She sank down on her knees, and laid her cheek against his
+hand.  He felt it wet; and a lump rose in his throat.  Drawing his
+hand away, he stared at it, and wiped it with his sleeve.
+
+"Don't cry!" he said.
+
+She seized it again and clung to it; that clutch seemed to fill him
+with sudden rage.
+
+"What's the matter?  How the devil can I do anything if you don't
+tell me?"
+
+She looked up at him.  The distress of the last days, the passion and
+fear of the last hour, the tide of that new life of the spirit and
+the flesh, stirring within her, flowed out in a stream of words.
+
+When she had finished, there was so dead a silence that the
+fluttering of a moth round the lamp could be heard plainly.
+
+Mr. Treffry raised himself, crossed the room, and touched the bell.
+"Tell the groom," he said to Dominique, "to put the horses to, and
+have 'em round at once; bring my old boots; we drive all night...."
+
+His bent figure looked huge, body and legs outlined by light, head
+and shoulders towering into shadow.  "He shall have a run for his
+money!" he said.  His eyes stared down sombrely at his niece.  "It's
+more than he deserves!--it's more than you deserve, Chris.  Sit down
+there and write to him; tell him to put himself entirely in my
+hands."  He turned his back on her, and went into his bedroom.
+
+Christian rose, and sat down at the writing-table.  A whisper
+startled her.  It came from Dominique, who was holding out a pair of
+boots.
+
+"M'mselle Chris, what is this?--to run about all night?"  But
+Christian did not answer.
+
+"M'mselle Chris, are you ill?"  Then seeing her face, he slipped away
+again.
+
+She finished her letter and went out to the carriage.  Mr. Treffry
+was seated under the hood.
+
+"Shan't want you," he called out to the groom, "Get up, Dominique."
+
+Christian thrust her letter into his hand.  "Give him that," she
+said, clinging to his arm with sudden terror.  "Oh! Uncle! do take
+care!"
+
+"Chris, if I do this for you--"  They looked wistfully at one
+another.  Then, shaking his head, Mr. Treffry gathered up the reins.
+
+"Don't fret, my dear, don't fret!  Whoa, mare!"
+
+The carriage with a jerk plunged forward into darkness, curved with a
+crunch of wheels, and vanished, swinging between the black
+treepillars at the entrance....
+
+Christian stood, straining to catch the failing sound of the hoofs.
+
+Down the passage came a flutter of white garments; soft limbs were
+twined about her, some ends of hair fell on her face.
+
+"What is it, Chris?  Where have you been?  Where is Uncle Nic going?
+Tell me!"
+
+Christian tore herself away.  "I don't know," she cried, "I know
+nothing!"
+
+Greta stroked her face.  "Poor Chris!" she murmured.  Her bare feet
+gleamed, her hair shone gold against her nightdress.  "Come to bed,
+poor Chris!"
+
+Christian laughed.  "You little white moth!  Feel how hot I am!
+You'll burn your wings!"
+
+Harz had lain down, fully dressed.  He was no longer angry, but felt
+that he would rather die than yield.  Presently he heard footsteps
+coming up the stairs.
+
+"M'sieu!"
+
+It was the voice of Dominique, whose face, illumined by a match, wore
+an expression of ironical disgust.
+
+"My master," he said, "makes you his compliments; he says there is no
+time to waste.  You are to please come and drive with him!"
+
+"Your master is very kind.  Tell him I'm in bed."
+
+"Ah, M'sieu," said Dominique, grimacing, "I must not go back with
+such an answer.  If you would not come, I was to give you this."
+
+Harz broke the seal and read Christian's letter.
+
+"I will come," he said.
+
+A clock was striking as they went out through the gate.  From within
+the dark cave of the phaeton hood Mr. Treffry said gruffly: "Come
+along, sir!"
+
+Harz flung his knapsack in, and followed.
+
+His companion's figure swayed, the whiplash slid softly along the
+flank of the off horse, and, as the carriage rattled forward, Mr.
+Treffry called out, as if by afterthought: "Hallo, Dominique!"
+Dominque's voice, shaken and ironical, answered from behind: "M'
+v'la, M'sieu!"
+
+In the long street of silent houses, men sitting in the lighted cafes
+turned with glasses at their lips to stare after the carriage.  The
+narrow river of the sky spread suddenly to a vast, limpid ocean
+tremulous with stars.  They had turned into the road for Italy.
+
+Mr. Treffry took a pull at his horses.  "Whoa, mare! Dogged does it!"
+and the near horse, throwing up her head, whinnied; a fleck of foam
+drifted into Harz's face.
+
+The painter had come on impulse; because Christian had told him to,
+not of his own free will.  He was angry with himself, wounded in
+self-esteem, for having allowed any one to render him this service.
+The smooth swift movement through velvet blackness splashed on either
+hand with the flying lamp-light; the strong sweet air blowing in his
+face-air that had kissed the tops of mountains and stolen their
+spirit; the snort and snuffle of the horses, and crisp rattling of
+their hoofs--all this soon roused in him another feeling.  He looked
+at Mr. Treffry's profile, with its tufted chin; at the grey road
+adventuring in darkness; at the purple mass of mountains piled above
+it.  All seemed utterly unreal.
+
+As if suddenly aware that he had a neighbour, Mr. Treffry turned his
+head.  "We shall do better than this presently," he said, "bit of a
+slope coming.  Haven't had 'em out for three days.  Whoa-mare!
+Steady!"
+
+"Why are you taking this trouble for me?" asked Harz.
+
+"I'm an old chap, Mr. Harz, and an old chap may do a stupid thing
+once in a while!"
+
+"You are very good," said Harz, "but I want no favours."
+
+Mr. Treffry stared at him.
+
+"Just so," he said drily, "but you see there's my niece to be thought
+of.  Look here!  We're not at the frontier yet, Mr. Harz, by forty
+miles; it's long odds we don't get there--so, don't spoil sport!"  He
+pointed to the left.
+
+Harz caught the glint of steel.  They were already crossing the
+railway.  The sigh of the telegraph wires fluttered above them.
+
+"Hear 'em," said Mr. Treffry, "but if we get away up the mountains,
+we'll do yet!"  They had begun to rise, the speed slackened.  Mr.
+Treffry rummaged out a flask.
+
+"Not bad stuff, Mr. Harz--try it.  You won't?  Mother's milk!  Fine
+night, eh?"  Below them the valley was lit by webs of milky mist like
+the glimmer of dew on grass.
+
+These two men sitting side by side--unlike in face, age, stature,
+thought, and life--began to feel drawn towards each other, as if, in
+the rolling of the wheels, the snorting of the horses, the huge dark
+space, the huge uncertainty, they had found something they could
+enjoy in common.  The, steam from the horses' flanks and nostrils
+enveloped them with an odour as of glue.
+
+"You smoke, Mr. Harz?"
+
+Harz took the proffered weed, and lighted it from the glowing tip of
+Mr. Treffry's cigar, by light of which his head and hat looked like
+some giant mushroom.  Suddenly the wheels jolted on a rubble of loose
+stones; the carriage was swung sideways.  The scared horses,
+straining asunder, leaped forward, and sped downwards, in the
+darkness.
+
+Past rocks, trees, dwellings, past a lighted house that gleamed and
+vanished.  With a clink and clatter, a flirt of dust and pebbles, and
+the side lamps throwing out a frisky orange blink, the carriage
+dashed down, sinking and rising like a boat crossing billows.  The
+world seemed to rock and sway; to dance up, and be flung flat again.
+Only the stars stood still.
+
+Mr. Treffry, putting on the brake, muttered apologetically: "A little
+out o'hand!"
+
+Suddenly with a headlong dive, the carriage swayed as if it would fly
+in pieces, slithered along, and with a jerk steadied itself.  Harz
+lifted his voice in a shout of pure excitement.  Mr. Treffry let out
+a short shaky howl, and from behind there rose a wail.  But the hill
+was over and the startled horses were cantering with a free, smooth
+motion.  Mr. Treffry and Harz looked at each other.
+
+
+
+
+XVII
+
+Mr. Treffry said with a sort of laugh: "Near go, eh?  You drive?  No?
+That's a pity!  Broken most of my bones at the game--nothing like
+it!"  Each felt a kind of admiration for the other that he had not
+felt before.  Presently Mr. Treffry began: "Look here, Mr. Harz, my
+niece is a slip of a thing, with all a young girl's notions!  What
+have you got to give her, eh?  Yourself?  That's surely not enough;
+mind this--six months after marriage we all turn out much the same--a
+selfish lot!  Not to mention this anarchist affair!
+
+"You're not of her blood, nor of her way of life, nor anything--it's
+taking chances--and--" his hand came down on the young man's knee,
+"I'm fond of her, you see."
+
+"If you were in my place," said Harz, "would you give her up?"
+
+Mr. Treffry groaned.  "Lord knows!"
+
+"Men have made themselves before now.  For those who don't believe in
+failure, there's no such thing.  Suppose she does suffer a little?
+Will it do her any harm?  Fair weather love is no good."
+
+Mr. Treffry sighed.
+
+"Brave words, sir!  You'll pardon me if I'm too old to understand 'em
+when they're used about my niece."
+
+He pulled the horses up, and peered into the darkness.  "We're going
+through this bit quietly; if they lose track of us here so much the
+better.  Dominique! put out the lamps.  Soho, my beauties!"  The
+horses paced forward at a walk the muffled beat of their hoofs in the
+dust hardly broke the hush.  Mr. Treffry pointed to the left: "It'll
+be another thirty-five miles to the frontier."
+
+They passed the whitewashed houses, and village church with its
+sentinel cypress-trees.  A frog was croaking in a runlet; there was a
+faint spicy scent of lemons.  But nothing stirred.
+
+It was wood now on either side, the high pines, breathing their
+fragrance out into the darkness, and, like ghosts amongst them, the
+silver stems of birch-trees.
+
+Mr. Treffry said gruffly: "You won't give her up?  Her happiness
+means a lot to me."
+
+"To you!" said Harz: "to him!  And I am nothing!  Do you think I
+don't care for her happiness?  Is it a crime for me to love her?"
+
+"Almost, Mr. Harz--considering...."
+
+"Considering that I've no money!  Always money!"
+
+To this sneer Mr. Treffry made no answer, clucking to his horses.
+
+"My niece was born and bred a lady," he said at last.  "I ask you
+plainly What position have you got to give her?"
+
+"If she marries me," said Harz, "she comes into my world.  You think
+that I'm a common...."
+
+Mr. Treffry shook his head: "Answer my question, young man."
+
+But the painter did not answer it, and silence fell.
+
+A light breeze had sprung up; the whispering in the trees, the
+rolling of the wheels in this night progress, the pine-drugged air,
+sent Harz to sleep.  When he woke it was to the same tune, varied by
+Mr. Treffry's uneasy snoring; the reins were hanging loose, and,
+peering out, he saw Dominique shuffling along at the horses' heads.
+He joined him, and, one on each side, they plodded up and up.  A haze
+had begun to bathe the trees, the stars burnt dim, the air was
+colder.  Mr. Treffry woke coughing.  It was like some long nightmare,
+this interminable experience of muffled sounds and shapes, of
+perpetual motion, conceived, and carried out in darkness.  But
+suddenly the day broke.  Heralded by the snuffle of the horses, light
+began glimmering over a chaos of lines and shadows, pale as mother-
+o'-pearl.  The stars faded, and in a smouldering zigzag the dawn fled
+along the mountain tops, flinging out little isles of cloud.  From a
+lake, curled in a hollow like a patch of smoke, came the cry of a
+water-bird.  A cuckoo started a soft mocking; and close to the
+carriage a lark flew up.  Beasts and men alike stood still, drinking
+in the air-sweet with snows and dew, and vibrating faintly with the
+running of the water and the rustling of the leaves.
+
+The night had played sad tricks with Mr. Nicholas Treffry; his hat
+was grey with dust; his cheeks brownish-purple, there were heavy
+pouches beneath his eyes, which stared painfully.
+
+"We'll call a halt," he said, "and give the gees their grub, poor
+things.  Can you find some water, Mr. Harz?  There's a rubber bucket
+in behind.
+
+"Can't get about myself this morning; make that lazy fellow of mine
+stir his stumps."
+
+Harz saw that he had drawn off one of his boots, and stretched the
+foot out on a cushion.
+
+"You're not fit to go farther," he said; "you're ill."
+
+"Ill!" replied Mr. Treffry; "not a bit of it!"
+
+Harz looked at him, then catching up the bucket, made off in search
+of water.  When he came back the horses were feeding from an india-
+rubber trough slung to the pole; they stretched their heads towards
+the bucket, pushing aside each other's noses.
+
+The flame in the east had died, but the tops of the larches were
+bathed in a gentle radiance; and the peaks ahead were like amber.
+Everywhere were threads of water, threads of snow, and little threads
+of dewy green, glistening like gossamer.
+
+Mr. Treffry called out: "Give me your arm, Mr. Harz; I'd like to
+shake the reefs out of me.  When one comes to stand over at the
+knees, it's no such easy matter, eh?"  He groaned as he put his foot
+down, and gripped the young man's shoulder as in a vise.  Presently
+he lowered himself on to a stone.
+
+"'All over now!' as Chris would say when she was little; nasty temper
+she had too--kick and scream on the floor!  Never lasted long
+though....  'Kiss her! take her up! show her the pictures!'  Amazing
+fond of pictures Chris was!"  He looked dubiously at Harz; then took
+a long pull at his flask.  "What would the doctor say?  Whisky at
+four in the morning!  Well!  Thank the Lord Doctors aren't always
+with us."  Sitting on the stone, with one hand pressed against his
+side, and the other tilting up the flask, he was grey from head to
+foot.
+
+Harz had dropped on to another stone.  He, too, was worn out by the
+excitement and fatigue, coming so soon after his illness.  His head
+was whirling, and the next thing he remembered was a tree walking at
+him, turning round, yellow from the roots up; everything seemed
+yellow, even his own feet.  Somebody opposite to him was jumping up
+and down, a grey bear--with a hat--Mr. Treffry!  He cried: "Ha-
+alloo!"  And the figure seemed to fall and disappear....
+
+When Harz came to himself a hand was pouring liquor into his mouth,
+and a wet cloth was muffled round his brows; a noise of humming and
+hoofs seemed familiar.  Mr. Treffry loomed up alongside, smoking a
+cigar; he was muttering: "A low trick, Paul--bit of my mind!"  Then,
+as if a curtain had been snatched aside, the vision before Harz
+cleared again.  The carriage was winding between uneven, black-eaved
+houses, past doorways from which goats and cows were coming out, with
+bells on their necks.  Black-eyed boys, and here and there a drowsy
+man with a long, cherry-stemmed pipe betwen his teeth, stood aside to
+stare.
+
+Mr. Treffry seemed to have taken a new lease of strength; like an
+angry old dog, he stared from side to side.  "My bone!" he seemed to
+say: "let's see who's going to touch it!"
+
+The last house vanished, glowing in the early sunshine, and the
+carriage with its trail of dust became entombed once more in the
+gloom of tall trees, along a road that cleft a wilderness of
+mossgrown rocks, and dewy stems, through which the sun had not yet
+driven paths.
+
+Dominique came round to them, bearing appearance of one who has seen
+better days, and a pot of coffee brewed on a spirit lamp.  Breakfast
+--he said--was served!
+
+The ears of the horses were twitching with fatigue.  Mr. Treffry said
+sadly: "If I can see this through, you can.  Get on, my beauties!"
+
+As soon as the sun struck through the trees, Mr. Treffry's strength
+ebbed again.  He seemed to suffer greatly; but did not complain.
+They had reached the pass at last, and the unchecked sunlight was
+streaming down with a blinding glare.
+
+"Jump up!" Mr. Treffry cried out.  "We'll make a finish of it!" and
+he gave the reins a jerk.  The horses flung up their heads, and the
+bleak pass with its circling crown of jagged peaks soon slipped away.
+
+Between the houses on the very top, they passed at a slow trot; and
+soon began slanting down the other side.  Mr. Treffry brought them to
+a halt where a mule track joined the road.
+
+"That's all I can do for you; you'd better leave me here," he said.
+"Keep this track down to the river--go south--you'll be in Italy in a
+couple of hours.  Get rail at Feltre.  Money?  Yes?  Well!"  He held
+out his hand; Harz gripped it.
+
+"Give her up, eh?"
+
+Harz shook his head.
+
+"No?  Then it's 'pull devil, pull baker,' between us.  Good-bye, and
+good luck to you!"  And mustering his strength for a last attempt at
+dignity, Mr. Treffry gathered up the reins.
+
+Harz watched his figure huddled again beneath the hood.  The carriage
+moved slowly away.
+
+
+
+
+XVIII
+
+At Villa Rubein people went about, avoiding each other as if detected
+in conspiracy.  Miss Naylor, who for an inscrutable reason had put on
+her best frock, a purple, relieved at the chest with bird's-eye blue,
+conveyed an impression of trying to count a chicken which ran about
+too fast.  When Greta asked what she had lost she was heard to
+mutter: "Mr.--Needlecase."
+
+Christian, with big circles round her eyes, sat silent at her little
+table.  She had had no sleep.  Herr Paul coming into the room about
+noon gave her a furtive look and went out again; after this he went
+to his bedroom, took off all his clothes, flung them passionately one
+by one into a footbath, and got into bed.
+
+"I might be a criminal!" he muttered to himself, while the buttons of
+his garments rattled on the bath.
+
+"Am I her father?  Have I authority?  Do I know the world?  Bssss!  I
+might be a frog!"
+
+Mrs. Decie, having caused herself to be announced, found him smoking
+a cigar, and counting the flies on the ceiling.
+
+"If you have really done this, Paul," she said in a restrained voice,
+"you have done a very unkind thing, and what is worse, you have made
+us all ridiculous.  But perhaps you have not done it?"
+
+"I have done it," cried Herr Paul, staring dreadfully: "I have done
+it, I tell you, I have done it--"
+
+"Very well, you have done it--and why, pray?  What conceivable good
+was there in it?  I suppose you know that Nicholas has driven him to
+the frontier?  Nicholas is probably more dead than alive by this
+time; you know his state of health."
+
+Herr Paul's fingers ploughed up his beard.
+
+"Nicholas is mad--and the girl is mad!  Leave me alone!  I will not
+be made angry; do you understand?  I will not be worried--I am not
+fit for it."  His prominent brown eyes stared round the room, as if
+looking for a way of escape.
+
+"If I may prophesy, you will be worried a good deal," said Mrs. Decie
+coldly, "before you have finished with this affair."
+
+The anxious, uncertain glance which Herr Paul gave her at these words
+roused an unwilling feeling of compunction in her.
+
+"You are not made for the outraged father of the family," she said.
+"You had better give up the attitude, Paul; it does not suit you."
+
+Herr Paul groaned.
+
+"I suppose it is not your fault," she added.
+
+Just then the door was opened, and Fritz, with an air of saying the
+right thing, announced:
+
+"A gentleman of the police to see you, sir."
+
+Herr Paul bounded.
+
+"Keep him out!" he cried.
+
+Mrs. Decie, covering her lips, disappeared with a rustling of silk;
+in her place stood a stiff man in blue....
+
+Thus the morning dragged itself away without any one being able to
+settle to anything, except Herr Paul, who was settled in bed.  As was
+fitting in a house that had lost its soul, meals were neglected, even
+by the dog.
+
+About three o'clock a telegram came for Christian, containing these
+words: "All right; self returns to-morrow.  Treffry."  After reading
+it she put on her hat and went out, followed closely by Greta, who,
+when she thought that she would not be sent away, ran up from behind
+and pulled her by the sleeve.
+
+"Let me come, Chris--I shall not talk."
+
+The two girls walked on together.  When they had gone some distance
+Christian said:
+
+"I'm going to get his pictures, and take charge of them!"
+
+"Oh!" said Greta timidly.
+
+"If you are afraid," said Christian, "you had better go back home."
+
+"I am not afraid, Chris," said Greta meekly.
+
+Neither girl spoke again till they had taken the path along the wall.
+Over the tops of the vines the heat was dancing.
+
+"The sun-fairies are on the vines!" murmured Greta to herself.
+
+At the old house they stopped, and Christian, breathing quickly,
+pushed the door; it was immovable.
+
+"Look!" said Greta, "they have screwed it!"  She pointed out three
+screws with a rosy-tipped forefinger.
+
+Christian stamped her foot.
+
+"We mustn't stand here," she said; "let's sit on that bench and
+think."
+
+"Yes," murmured Greta, "let us think."  Dangling an end of hair, she
+regarded Christian with her wide blue eyes.
+
+"I can't make any plan," Christian cried at last, "while you stare at
+me like that."
+
+"I was thinking," said Greta humbly, "if they have screwed it up,
+perhaps we shall screw it down again; there is the big screw-driver
+of Fritz."
+
+"It would take a long time; people are always passing."
+
+"People do not pass in the evening," murmured Greta, "because the
+gate at our end is always shut."
+
+Christian rose.
+
+"We will come this evening, just before the gate is shut."
+
+"But, Chris, how shall we get back again?"
+
+"I don't know; I mean to have the pictures."
+
+"It is not a high gate," murmured Greta.
+
+After dinner the girls went to their room, Greta bearing with her the
+big screw-driver of Fritz.  At dusk they slipped downstairs and out.
+
+They arrived at the old house, and stood, listening, in the shadow of
+the doorway.  The only sounds were those of distant barking dogs, and
+of the bugles at the barracks.
+
+"Quick!" whispered Christian; and Greta, with all the strength of her
+small hands, began to turn the screws.  It was some time before they
+yielded; the third was very obstinate, till Christian took the screw-
+driver and passionately gave the screw a starting twist.
+
+"It is like a pig--that one," said Greta, rubbing her wrists
+mournfully.
+
+The opened door revealed the gloom of the dank rooms and twisting
+staircase, then fell to behind them with a clatter.
+
+Greta gave a little scream, and caught her sister's dress.
+
+"It is dark," she gasped; "O Chris! it is dark!"
+
+Christian groped for the bottom stair, and Greta felt her arm
+shaking.
+
+"Suppose there is a man to keep guard!  O Chris! suppose there are
+bats!"
+
+"You are a baby!" Christian answered in a trembling voice.  "You had
+better go home!"
+
+Greta choked a little in the dark.
+
+"I am--not--going home, but I'm afraid of bats.  O Chris! aren't you
+afraid?"
+
+"Yes," said Christian, "but I'm going to have the pictures."
+
+Her cheeks were burning; she was trembling all over.  Having found
+the bottom step she began to mount with Greta clinging to her skirts.
+
+The haze above inspired a little courage in the child, who, of all
+things, hated darkness.  The blanket across the doorway of the loft
+had been taken down, there was nothing to veil the empty room.
+
+"Nobody here, you see," said Christian.
+
+"No-o," whispered Greta, running to the window, and clinging to the
+wall, like one of the bats she dreaded.
+
+"But they have been here!" cried Christian angrily.  "They have
+broken this."  She pointed to the fragments of a plaster cast that
+had been thrown down.
+
+Out of the corner she began to pull the canvases set in rough, wooden
+frames, dragging them with all her strength.
+
+"Help me!" she cried; "it will be dark directly."
+
+They collected a heap of sketches and three large pictures, piling
+them before the window, and peering at them in the failing light.
+
+Greta said ruefully:
+
+"O Chris! they are heavy ones; we shall never carry them, and the
+gate is shut now!"
+
+Christian took a pointed knife from the table.
+
+"I shall cut them out of the frames," she said.  "Listen!  What's
+that?"
+
+It was the sound of whistling, which stopped beneath the window.  The
+girls, clasping each other's hands, dropped on their knees.
+
+"Hallo!" cried a voice.
+
+Greta crept to the window, and, placing her face level with the
+floor, peered over.
+
+"It is only Dr. Edmund; he doesn't know, then," she whispered; "I
+shall call him; he is going away!" cried Christian catching her
+sister's
+
+"Don't!" cried Christian catching her sister's dress.
+
+"He would help us," Greta said reproachfully, "and it would not be so
+dark if he were here."
+
+Christian's cheeks were burning.
+
+"I don't choose," she said, and began handling the pictures, feeling
+their edges with her knife.
+
+"Chris!  Suppose anybody came?"
+
+"The door is screwed," Christian answered absently.
+
+"O Chris!  We screwed it unscrewed; anybody who wishes shall come!"
+
+Christian, leaning her chin in her hands, gazed at her thoughtfully.
+
+"It will take a long time to cut these pictures out carefully; or,
+perhaps I can get them out without cutting.  You must screw me up and
+go home.  In the morning you must come early, when the gate is open,
+unscrew me again, and help carry the pictures."
+
+Greta did not answer at once.  At last she shook her head violently.
+
+"I am afraid," she gasped.
+
+"We can't both stay here all night," said Christian; "if any one
+comes to our room there will be nobody to answer.  We can't lift
+these pictures over the gate.  One of us must go back; you can climb
+over the gate--there is nothing to be afraid of"
+
+Greta pressed her hands together.
+
+"Do you want the pictures badly, Chris?"
+
+Christian nodded.
+
+"Very badly?"
+
+"Yes--yes--yes!"
+
+Greta remained sitting where she was, shivering violently, as a
+little animal shivers when it scents danger.  At last she rose.
+
+"I am going," she said in a despairing voice.  At the doorway she
+turned.
+
+"If Miss Naylor shall ask me where you are, Chris, I shall be telling
+her a story."
+
+Christian started.
+
+"I forgot that--O Greta, I am sorry! I will go instead."
+
+Greta took another step--a quick one.
+
+"I shall die if I stay here alone," she said; "I can tell her that
+you are in bed; you must go to bed here, Chris, so it shall be true
+after all."
+
+Christian threw her arms about her.
+
+"I am so sorry, darling; I wish I could go instead.  But if you have
+to tell a lie, I would tell a straight one."
+
+"Would you?" said Greta doubtfully.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"I think," said Greta to herself, beginning to descend the stairs, "I
+think I will tell it in my way."  She shuddered and went on groping
+in the darkness.
+
+Christian listened for the sound of the screws.  It came slowly,
+threatening her with danger and solitude.
+
+Sinking on her knees she began to work at freeing the canvas of a
+picture.  Her heart throbbed distressfully; at the stir of wind-
+breath or any distant note of clamour she stopped, and held her
+breathing.  No sounds came near.  She toiled on, trying only to think
+that she was at the very spot where last night his arms had been
+round her.  How long ago it seemed!  She was full of vague terror,
+overmastered by the darkness, dreadfully alone.  The new glow of
+resolution seemed suddenly to have died down in her heart, and left
+her cold.
+
+She would never be fit to be his wife, if at the first test her
+courage failed! She set her teeth; and suddenly she felt a kind of
+exultation, as if she too were entering into life, were knowing
+something within herself that she had never known before.  Her
+fingers hurt, and the pain even gave pleasure; her cheeks were
+burning; her breath came fast.  They could not stop her now!  This
+feverish task in darkness was her baptism into life.  She finished;
+and rolling the pictures very carefully, tied them with cord.  She
+had done something for him!  Nobody could take that from her!  She
+had a part of him!  This night had made him hers!  They might do
+their worst!  She lay down on his mattress and soon fell asleep....
+
+She was awakened by Scruff's tongue against her face.  Greta was
+standing by her side.
+
+"Wake up, Chris!  The gate is open!"
+
+In the cold early light the child seemed to glow with warmth and
+colour; her eyes were dancing.
+
+"I am not afraid now; Scruff and I sat up all night, to catch the
+morning--I--think it was fun; and O Chris!" she ended with a rueful
+gleam in her eyes, "I told it."
+
+Christian hugged her.
+
+"Come--quick! There is nobody about.  Are those the pictures?"
+
+Each supporting an end, the girls carried the bundle downstairs, and
+set out with their corpse-like burden along the wall-path between the
+river and the vines.
+
+
+
+
+XIX
+
+Hidden by the shade of rose-bushes Greta lay stretched at length,
+cheek on arm, sleeping the sleep of the unrighteous.  Through the
+flowers the sun flicked her parted lips with kisses, and spilled the
+withered petals on her.  In a denser islet of shade, Scruff lay
+snapping at a fly.  His head lolled drowsily in the middle of a snap,
+and snapped in the middle of a loll.
+
+At three o'clock Miss Naylor too came out, carrying a basket and pair
+of scissors.  Lifting her skirts to avoid the lakes of water left by
+the garden hose, she stopped in front of a rose-bush, and began to
+snip off the shrivelled flowers.  The little lady's silvered head and
+thin, brown face sustained the shower of sunlight unprotected, and
+had a gentle dignity in their freedom.
+
+Presently, as the scissors flittered in and out of the leaves, she,
+began talking to herself.
+
+"If girls were more like what they used to be, this would not have
+happened.  Perhaps we don't understand; it's very easy to forget."
+Burying her nose and lips in a rose, she sniffed.  "Poor dear girl!
+It's such a pity his father is--a--"
+
+"A farmer," said a sleepy voice behind the rosebush.
+
+Miss Naylor leaped.  "Greta! How you startled me!  A farmer--that is-
+-an--an agriculturalist!"
+
+"A farmer with vineyards--he told us, and he is not ashamed.  Why is
+it a pity, Miss Naylor?"
+
+Miss Naylor's lips looked very thin.
+
+"For many reasons, of which you know nothing."
+
+"That is what you always say," pursued the sleepy voice; "and that is
+why, when I am to be married, there shall also be a pity."
+
+"Greta!" Miss Naylor cried, "it is not proper for a girl of your age
+to talk like that."
+
+"Why?" said Greta.  "Because it is the truth?"
+
+Miss Naylor made no reply to this, but vexedly cut off a sound rose,
+which she hastily picked up and regarded with contrition.  Greta
+spoke again:
+
+"Chris said: 'I have got the pictures, I shall tell her'; but I shall
+tell you instead, because it was I that told the story."
+
+Miss Naylor stared, wrinkling her nose, and holding the scissors wide
+apart....
+
+"Last night," said Greta slowly, "I and Chris went to his studio and
+took his pictures, and so, because the gate was shut, I came back to
+tell it; and when you asked me where Chris was, I told it; because
+she was in the studio all night, and I and Scruff sat up all night,
+and in the morning we brought the pictures, and hid them under our
+beds, and that is why--we--are--so--sleepy."
+
+Over the rose-bush Miss Naylor peered down at her; and though she was
+obliged to stand on tiptoe this did not altogether destroy her
+dignity.
+
+"I am surprised at you, Greta; I am surprised at Christian, more
+surprised at Christian.  The world seems upside down."
+
+Greta, a sunbeam entangled in her hair, regarded her with
+inscrutable, innocent eyes.
+
+"When you were a girl, I think you would be sure to be in love," she
+murmured drowsily.
+
+Miss Naylor, flushing deeply, snipped off a particularly healthy bud.
+
+"And so, because you are not married, I think--"
+
+The scissors hissed.
+
+Greta nestled down again.  "I think it is wicked to cut off all the
+good buds," she said, and shut her eyes.
+
+Miss Naylor continued to peer across the rosebush; but her thin face,
+close to the glistening leaves, had become oddly soft, pink, and
+girlish.  At a deeper breath from Greta, the little lady put down her
+basket, and began to pace the lawn, followed dubiously by Scruff.  It
+was thus that Christian came on them.
+
+Miss Naylor slipped her arm into the girl's and though she made no
+sound, her lips kept opening and shutting, like the beak of a bird
+contemplating a worm.
+
+Christian spoke first:
+
+"Miss Naylor, I want to tell you please--"
+
+"Oh, my dear!  I know; Greta has been in the confessional before
+you."  She gave the girl's arm a squeeze.  "Isn't it a lovely day?
+Did you ever see 'Five Fingers' look so beautiful?"  And she pointed
+to the great peaks of the Funffingerspitze glittering in the sun like
+giant crystals.
+
+"I like them better with clouds about them."
+
+"Well," agreed Miss Naylor nervously, "they certainly are nicer with
+clouds about them.  They look almost hot and greasy, don't they....
+My dear!" she went on, giving Christian's arm a dozen little
+squeezes, "we all of us--that is, we all of us--"
+
+Christian turned her eyes away.
+
+"My dear," Miss Naylor tried again, "I am far--that is, I mean, to
+all of us at some time or another--and then you see--well--it is
+hard!"
+
+Christian kissed the gloved hand resting on her arm.  Miss Naylor
+bobbed her head; a tear trickled off her nose.
+
+"Do let us wind your skein of woof!" she said with resounding gaiety.
+
+Some half-hour later Mrs. Decie called Christian to her room.
+
+"My dear!" she said; "come here a minute; I have a message for you."
+
+Christian went with an odd, set look about her mouth.
+
+Her aunt was sitting, back to the light, tapping a bowl of goldfish
+with the tip of a polished finger-nail; the room was very cool.  She
+held a letter out.  "Your uncle is not coming back tonight."
+
+Christian took the letter.  It was curtly worded, in a thin, toppling
+hand:
+
+"DEAR CON--Can't get back to-night.  Sending Dominique for things.
+Tell Christian to come over with him for night if possible.--Yr.
+aff. brother,       NICLS. TREFFRY."
+
+"Dominique has a carriage here," said Mrs. Decie.  "You will have
+nice time to catch the train.  Give my love to your uncle.  You must
+take Barbi with you, I insist on that."  She rose from her chair and
+held Christian's hand: "My dear!  You look very tired--very!  Almost
+ill.  I don't like to see you look like that.  Come!"  She thrust her
+pale lips forward, and kissed the girl's paler cheek.
+
+Then as Christian left the room she sank back in her chair, with
+creases in her forehead, and began languidly to cut a magazine.
+'Poor Christian!' she thought, 'how hardly she does take it! I am
+sorry for her; but perhaps it's just as well, as things are turning
+out.  Psychologically it is interesting!'
+
+Christian found her things packed, and the two servants waiting.  In
+a few minutes they were driving to the station.  She made Dominique
+take the seat opposite.
+
+"Well?" she asked him.
+
+Dominique's eyebrows twitched, he smiled deprecatingly.
+
+"M'mselle, Mr. Treffry told me to hold my tongue."
+
+"But you can tell me, Dominique; Barbi can't understand."
+
+"To you, then, M'mselle," said Dominique, as one who accepts his
+fate; "to you, then, who will doubtless forget all that I shall tell
+you--my master is not well; he has terrible pain here; he has a
+cough; he is not well at all; not well at all."
+
+A feeling of dismay seized on the girl.
+
+"We were a caravan for all that night," Dominique resumed.  "In the
+morning by noon we ceased to be a caravan; Signor Harz took a mule
+path; he will be in Italy--certainly in Italy.  As for us, we stayed
+at San Martino, and my master went to bed.  It was time; I had much
+trouble with his clothes, his legs were swollen.  In the afternoon
+came a signor of police, on horseback, red and hot; I persuaded him
+that we were at Paneveggio, but as we were not, he came back angry--
+Mon Die! as angry as a cat.  It was not good to meet him--when he was
+with my master I was outside.  There was much noise.  I do not know
+what passed, but at last the signor came out through the door, and
+went away in a hurry."  Dominique's features were fixed in a sardonic
+grin; he rubbed the palm of one hand with the finger of the other.
+"Mr. Treffry made me give him whisky afterwards, and he had no money
+to pay the bill--that I know because I paid it.  Well, M'mselle, to-
+day he would be dressed and very slowly we came as far as Auer; there
+he could do no more, so went to bed.  He is not well at all."
+
+Christian was overwhelmed by forebodings; the rest of the journey was
+made in silence, except when Barbi, a country girl, filled with the
+delirium of railway travel, sighed: "Ach! gnadige Fraulein!" looking
+at Christian with pleasant eyes.
+
+At once, on arriving at the little hostel, Christian went to see her
+uncle.  His room was darkened, and smelt of beeswax.
+
+"Ah! Chris," he said, "glad to see you."
+
+In a blue flannel gown, with a rug over his feet, he was lying on a
+couch lengthened artificially by chairs; the arm he reached out
+issued many inches from its sleeve, and showed the corded veins of
+the wrist.  Christian, settling his pillows, looked anxiously into
+his eyes.
+
+"I'm not quite the thing, Chris," said Mr. Treffry.  "Somehow, not
+quite the thing.  I'll come back with you to-morrow."
+
+"Let me send for Dr. Dawney, Uncle?"
+
+"No--no!  Plenty of him when I get home.  Very good young fellow, as
+doctors go, but I can't stand his puddin's--slops and puddin's, and
+all that trumpery medicine on the top.  Send me Dominique, my dear--
+I'll put myself to rights a bit!"  He fingered his unshaven cheek,
+and clutched the gown together on his chest.  "Got this from the
+landlord.  When you come back we'll have a little talk!"
+
+He was asleep when she came into the room an hour later.  Watching
+his uneasy breathing, she wondered what it was that he was going to
+say.
+
+He looked ill!  And suddenly she realised that her thoughts were not
+of him....  When she was little he would take her on his back; he had
+built cocked hats for her and paper boats; had taught her to ride;
+slid her between his knees; given her things without number; and
+taken his payment in kisses.  And now he was ill, and she was not
+thinking of him!  He had been all that was most dear to her, yet
+before her eyes would only come the vision of another.
+
+Mr. Treffry woke suddenly.  "Not been asleep, have I?  The beds here
+are infernal hard."
+
+"Uncle Nic, won't you give me news of him?"
+
+Mr. Treffry looked at her, and Christian could not bear that look.
+
+"He's safe into Italy; they aren't very keen after him, it's so long
+ago; I squared 'em pretty easily.  Now, look here, Chris!"
+
+Christian came close; he took her hand.
+
+"I'd like to see you pull yourself together.  'Tisn't so much the
+position; 'tisn't so much the money; because after all there's always
+mine--"  Christian shook her head.  "But," he went on with shaky
+emphasis, "there's the difference of blood, and that's a serious
+thing; and there's this anarch--this political affair; and there's
+the sort of life, an' that's a serious thing; but--what I'm coming to
+is this, Chris--there's the man!"
+
+Christian drew away her hand.  Mr. Treffry went on:
+
+"Ah! yes.  I'm an old chap and fond of you, but I must speak out what
+I think.  He's got pluck, he's strong, he's in earnest; but he's got
+a damned hot temper, he's an egotist, and--he's not the man for you.
+If you marry him, as sure as I lie here, you'll be sorry for it.
+You're not your father's child for nothing; nice fellow as ever
+lived, but soft as butter.  If you take this chap, it'll be like
+mixing earth and ironstone, and they don't blend!"  He dropped his
+head back on the pillows, and stretching out his hand, repeated
+wistfully: "Take my word for it, my dear, he's not the man for you."
+
+Christian, staring at the wall beyond, said quietly: "I can't take
+any one's word for that."
+
+"Ah!" muttered Mr. Treffry, "you're obstinate enough, but obstinacy
+isn't strength.
+
+"You'll give up everything to him, you'll lick his shoes; and you'll
+never play anything but second fiddle in his life.  He'll always be
+first with himself, he and his work, or whatever he calls painting
+pictures; and some day you'll find that out.  You won't like it, and
+I don't like it for you, Chris, and that's flat."
+
+He wiped his brow where the perspiration stood in beads.
+
+Christian said: "You don't understand; you don't believe in him; you
+don't see!  If I do come after his work--if I do give him everything,
+and he can't give all back--I don't care!  He'll give what he can; I
+don't want any more.  If you're afraid of the life for me, uncle, if
+you think it'll be too hard--"
+
+Mr. Treffry bowed his head.  "I do, Chris."
+
+"Well, then, I hate to be wrapped in cotton wool; I want to breathe.
+If I come to grief, it's my own affair; nobody need mind."
+
+Mr. Treffry's fngers sought his beard.  "Ah! yes.  Just so!"
+
+Christian sank on her knees.
+
+"Oh! Uncle! I'm a selfish beast!"
+
+Mr. Treffry laid his hand against her cheek.  "I think I could do
+with a nap," he said.
+
+Swallowing a lump in her throat, she stole out of the room.
+
+By a stroke of Fate Mr. Treffry's return to Villa Rubein befell at
+the psychological moment when Herr Paul, in a suit of rather too
+bright blue, was starting for Vienna.
+
+As soon as he saw the carriage appear between the poplars he became
+as pensive as a boy caught in the act of stealing cherries.  Pitching
+his hatbox to Fritz, he recovered himself, however, in time to
+whistle while Mr. Treffry was being assisted into the house.  Having
+forgotten his anger, he was only anxious now to smooth out its after
+effects; in the glances he cast at Christian and his brother-in-law
+there was a kind of shamed entreaty which seemed to say: "For
+goodness' sake, don't worry me about that business again! Nothing's
+come of it, you see!"
+
+He came forward: "Ah! Mon cher!  So you return; I put off my
+departure, then.  Vienna must wait for me--that poor Vienna!"
+
+But noticing the extreme feebleness of Mr. Treffry's advance, he
+exclaimed with genuine concern:
+
+"What is it?  You're ill?  My God!"  After disappearing for five
+minutes, he came back with a whitish liquid in a glass.
+
+"There!" he said, "good for the gout--for a cough--for everything!"
+
+Mr. Treffry sniffed, drained the glass, and sucked his moustache.
+
+"Ah!" he said.  "No doubt!  But it's uncommonly like gin, Paul."
+Then turning to Christian, he said: "Shake hands, you two!"
+
+Christian looked from one to the other, and at last held out her hand
+to Herr Paul, who brushed it with his moustache, gazing after her as
+she left the room with a queer expression.
+
+"My dear!" he began, "you support her in this execrable matter?  You
+forget my position, you make me ridiculous.  I have been obliged to
+go to bed in my own house, absolutely to go to bed, because I was in
+danger of becoming funny."
+
+"Look here, Paul!" Mr. Treffry said gruffly, "if any one's to bully
+Chris, it's I."
+
+"In that case," returned Herr Paul sarcastically, "I will go to
+Vienna."
+
+"You may go to the devil!" said Mr. Treffry; "and I'll tell you what-
+-in my opinion it was low to set the police on that young chap; a
+low, dirty trick."
+
+Herr Paul divided his beard carefully in two, took his seat on the
+very edge of an arm-chair, and placing his hands on his parted knees,
+said:
+
+"I have regretted it since--mais, que diable!  He called me a coward-
+-it is very hot weather!--there were drinks at the Kurhaus--I am her
+guardian--the affair is a very beastly one--there were more drinks--I
+was a little enfin!"  He shrugged his shoulders.  "Adieu, my dear; I
+shall be some time in Vienna; I need rest!"  He rose and went to the
+door; then he turned, and waved his cigar.  "Adieu! Be good; get
+well!  I will buy you some cigars up there."  And going out, he shut
+the door on any possibility of answer.
+
+Mr. Treffry lay back amongst his cushions.  The clock ticked; pigeons
+cooed on the veranda; a door opened in the distance, and for a moment
+a treble voice was heard.  Mr. Treffry's head drooped forward; across
+his face, gloomy and rugged, fell a thin line of sunlight.
+
+The clock suddenly stopped ticking, and outside, in mysterious
+accord, the pigeons rose with a great fluttering of wings, and flew
+off'.  Mr. Treffry made a startled, heavy movement.  He tried to get
+on to his feet and reach the bell, but could not, and sat on the side
+of the couch with drops of sweat rolling off his forehead, and his
+hands clawing his chest.  There was no sound at all throughout the
+house.  He looked about him, and tried to call, but again could not.
+He tried once more to reach the bell, and, failing, sat still, with a
+thought that made him cold.
+
+"I'm done for," he muttered.  "By George! I believe I'm done for this
+time!"  A voice behind him said:
+
+"Can we have a look at you, sir?"
+
+"Ah! Doctor, bear a hand, there's a good fellow."
+
+Dawney propped him against the cushions, and loosened his shirt.
+Receiving no answer to his questions, he stepped alarmed towards the
+bell.  Mr. Treffry stopped him with a sign.
+
+"Let's hear what you make of me," he said.
+
+When Dawney had examined him, he asked:
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well," answered Dawney slowly, "there's trouble, of course."
+
+Mr. Treffry broke out with a husky whisper: "Out with it, Doctor;
+don't humbug me."
+
+Dawney bent down, and took his wrist.
+
+"I don't know how you've got into this state, sir," he said with the
+brusqueness of emotion.  "You're in a bad way.  It's the old trouble;
+and you know what that means as well as I.  All I can tell you is,
+I'm going to have a big fight with it.  It shan't be my fault,
+there's my hand on that."
+
+Mr. Treffry lay with his eyes fixed on the ceiling; at last he said:
+
+"I want to live."
+
+"Yes--yes."
+
+"I feel better now; don't make a fuss about it.  It'll be very
+awkward if I die just now.  Patch me up, for the sake of my niece."
+
+Dawney nodded.  "One minute, there are a few things I want," and he
+went out.
+
+A moment later Greta stole in on tiptoe.  She bent over till her hair
+touched Mr. Treffry's face.
+
+"Uncle Nic!" she whispered.  He opened his eyes.
+
+"Hallo, Greta!"
+
+"I have come to bring you my love, Uncle Nic, and to say good-bye.
+Papa says that I and Scruff and Miss Naylor are going to Vienna with
+him; we have had to pack in half an hour; in five minutes we are
+going to Vienna, and it is my first visit there, Uncle Nic."
+
+"To Vienna!" Mr. Treffry repeated slowly.  "Don't have a guide,
+Greta; they're humbugs."
+
+"No, Uncle Nic," said Greta solemnly.
+
+"Draw the curtains, old girl, let's have a look at you.  Why, you're
+as smart as ninepence!"
+
+"Yes," said Greta with a sigh, touching the buttons of her cape,
+"because I am going to Vienna; but I am sorry to leave you, Uncle
+Nic."
+
+"Are you, Greta?"
+
+"But you will have Chris, and you are fonder of Chris than of me,
+Uncle Nic."
+
+"I've known her longer."
+
+"Perhaps when you've known me as long as Chris, you shall be as fond
+of me."
+
+"When I've known you as long--may be."
+
+"While I am gone, Uncle Nic, you are to get well, you are not very
+well, you know."
+
+"What put that into your head?"
+
+"If you were well you would be smoking a cigar--it is just three
+o'clock.  This kiss is for myself, this is for Scruff, and this is
+for Miss Naylor."
+
+She stood upright again; a tremulous, joyful gravity was in her eyes
+and on her lips.
+
+"Good-bye, my dear; take care of yourselves; and don't you have a
+guide, they're humbugs."
+
+"No, Uncle Nic.  There is the carriage!  To Vienna, Uncle Nic!"  The
+dead gold of her hair gleamed in the doorway.  Mr. Treffry raised
+himself upon his elbow.
+
+"Give us one more, for luck!"
+
+Greta ran back.
+
+"I love you very much!" she said, and kissing him, backed slowly,
+then, turning, flew out like a bird.
+
+Mr. Treffry fixed his eyes on the shut door.
+
+
+
+
+
+XXI
+
+After many days of hot, still weather, the wind had come, and whirled
+the dust along the parched roads.  The leaves were all astir, like
+tiny wings.  Round Villa Rubein the pigeons cooed uneasily, all the
+other birds were silent.  Late in the afternoon Christian came out on
+the veranda, reading a letter:
+
+"DEAR CHRIS,--We are here now six days, and it is a very large place
+with many churches.  In the first place then we have been to a great
+many, but the nicest of them is not St. Stephan's Kirche, it is
+another, but I do not remember the name.  Papa is out nearly all the
+night; he says he is resting here, so he is not able to come to the
+churches with us, but I do not think he rests very much.  The day
+before yesterday we, that is, Papa, I, and Miss Naylor, went to an
+exhibition of pictures.  It was quite beautiful and interesting (Miss
+Naylor says it is not right to say 'quite' beautiful, but I do not
+know what other word could mean 'quite' except the word 'quite,'
+because it is not exceedingly and not extremely).  And O Chris! there
+was one picture painted by him; it was about a ship without masts--
+Miss Naylor says it is a barge, but I do not know what a barge is--on
+fire, and, floating down a river in a fog.  I think it is extremely
+beautiful.  Miss Naylor says it is very impressionistick--what is
+that?  and Papa said 'Puh!' but he did not know it was painted by
+Herr Harz, so I did not tell him.
+
+"There has also been staying at our hotel that Count Sarelli who came
+one evening to dinner at our house, but he is gone away now.  He sat
+all day in the winter garden reading, and at night he went out with
+Papa.  Miss Naylor says he is unhappy, but I think he does not take
+enough exercise; and O Chris! one day he said to me, 'That is your
+sister, Mademoiselle, that young lady in the white dress?  Does she
+always wear white dresses?' and I said to him: 'It is not always a
+white dress; in the picture, it is green, because the picture is
+called "Spring.'"  But I did not tell him the colours of all your
+dresses because he looked so tired.  Then he said to me: 'She is very
+charming.'  So I tell you this, Chris, because I think you shall like
+to know.  Scruff' has a sore toe; it is because he has eaten too much
+meat.
+
+"It is not nice without you, Chris, and Miss Naylor says I am
+improving my mind here, but I do not think it shall improve very
+much, because at night I like it always best, when the shops are
+lighted and the carriages are driving past; then I am wanting to
+dance.  The first night Papa said he would take me to the theatre,
+but yesterday he said it was not good for me; perhaps to-morrow he
+shall think it good for me again.
+
+"Yesterday we have been in the Prater, and saw many people, and some
+that Papa knew; and then came the most interesting part of all,
+sitting under the trees in the rain for two hours because we could
+not get a carriage (very exciting).
+
+"There is one young lady here, only she is not any longer very young,
+who knew Papa when he was a boy.  I like her very much; she shall
+soon know me quite to the bottom and is very kind.
+
+"The ill husband of Cousin Teresa who went with us to Meran and lost
+her umbrella and Dr. Edmund was so sorry about it, has been very much
+worse, so she is not here but in Baden.  I wrote to her but have no
+news, so I do not know whether he is still living or not, at any rate
+he can't get well again so soon (and I don't think he ever shall).  I
+think as the weather is very warm you and Uncle Nic are sitting much
+out of doors.  I am sending presents to you all in a wooden box and
+screwed very firm, so you shall have to use again the big screw-
+driver of Fritz.  For Aunt Constance, photographs; for Uncle Nic, a
+green bird on a stand with a hole in the back of the bird to put his
+ashes in; it is a good green and not expensif please tell him,
+because he does not like expensif presents (Miss Naylor says the bird
+has an inquiring eye--it is a parrat); for you, a little brooch of
+turquoise because I like them best; for Dr. Edmund a machine to weigh
+medicines in because he said he could not get a good one in Botzen;
+this is a very good one, the shopman told me so, and is the most
+expensif of all the presents--so that is all my money, except two
+gulden.  If Papa shall give me some more, I shall buy for Miss Naylor
+a parasol, because it is useful and the handle of hers is 'wobbley'
+(that is one of Dr. Edmund's words and I like it).
+
+"Good-bye for this time.  Greta sends you her kiss.
+
+"P. S.--Miss Naylor has read all this letter (except about the parasol)
+and there are several things she did not want me to put, so I have
+copied it without the things, but at the last I have kept that copy
+myself, so that is why this is smudgy and several words are not spelt
+well, but all the things are here."
+
+Christian read, smiling, but to finish it was like dropping a
+talisman, and her face clouded.  A sudden draught blew her hair
+about, and from within, Mr. Treffry's cough mingled with the soughing
+of the wind; the sky was fast blackening.  She went indoors, took a
+pen and began to write:
+
+
+"MY FRIEND,--Why haven't you written to me?  It is so, long to wait.
+Uncle says you are in Italy--it is dreadful not to know for certain.
+I feel you would have written if you could; and I can't help thinking
+of all the things that may have happened.  I am unhappy.  Uncle Nic
+is ill; he will not confess it, that is his way; but he is very ill.
+Though perhaps you will never see this, I must write down all my
+thoughts.  Sometimes I feel that I am brutal to be always thinking
+about you, scheming how to be with you again, when he is lying there
+so ill.  How good he has always been to me; it is terrible that love
+should pull one apart so.  Surely love should be beautiful, and
+peaceful, instead of filling me with bitter, wicked thoughts.  I love
+you--and I love him; I feel as if I were torn in two.  Why should it
+be so?  Why should the beginning of one life mean the ending of
+another, one love the destruction of another?  I don't understand.
+The same spirit makes me love you and him, the same sympathy, the
+same trust--yet it sometimes seems as if I were a criminal in loving
+you.  You know what he thinks--he is too honest not to have shown
+you.  He has talked to me; he likes you in a way, but you are a
+foreigner--he says-your life is not my life.  'He is not the man for
+you!'  Those were his words.  And now he doesn't talk to me, but when
+I am in the room he looks at me--that's worse--a thousand times; when
+he talks it rouses me to fight--when it's his eyes only, I'm a coward
+at once; I feel I would do anything, anything, only not to hurt him.
+Why can't he see?  Is it because he's old and we are young?  He may
+consent, but he will never, never see; it will always hurt him.
+
+"I want to tell you everything; I have had worse thoughts than these-
+-sometimes I have thought that I should never have the courage to
+face the struggle which you have to face.  Then I feel quite broken;
+it is like something giving way in me.  Then I think of you, and it
+is over; but it has been there, and I am ashamed--I told you I was a
+coward.  It's like the feeling one would have going out into a storm
+on a dark night, away from a warm fire--only of the spirit not the
+body--which makes it worse.  I had to tell you this; you mustn't
+think of it again, I mean to fight it away and forget that it has
+ever been there.  But Uncle Nic--what am I to do?  I hate myself
+because I am young, and he is old and weak--sometimes I seem even to
+hate him.  I have all sorts of thoughts, and always at the end of
+them, like a dark hole at the end of a passage, the thought that I
+ought to give you up.  Ought I?  Tell me.  I want to know, I want to
+do what is right; I still want to do that, though sometimes I think I
+am all made of evil.
+
+"Do you remember once when we were talking, you said: 'Nature always
+has an answer for every question; you cannot get an answer from laws,
+conventions, theories, words, only from Nature.'  What do you say to
+me now; do you tell me it is Nature to come to you in spite of
+everything, and so, that it must be right?  I think you would; but
+can it be Nature to do something which will hurt terribly one whom I
+love and who loves me?  If it is--Nature is cruel.  Is that one of
+the 'lessons of life'?  Is that what Aunt Constance means when she
+says: 'If life were not a paradox, we could not get on at all'?  I am
+beginning to see that everything has its dark side; I never believed
+that before.
+
+"Uncle Nic dreads the life for me; he doesn't understand (how should
+he?--he has always had money) how life can be tolerable without money
+--it is horrible that the accident of money should make such
+difference in our lives.  I am sometimes afraid myself, and I can't
+outface that fear in him; he sees the shadow of his fear in me--his
+eyes seem to see everything that is in me now; the eyes of old people
+are the saddest things in the world.  I am writing like a wretched
+coward, but you will never see this letter I suppose, and so it
+doesn't matter; but if you do, and I pray that you may--well, if I am
+only worth taking at my best, I am not worth taking at all.  I want
+you to know the worst of me--you, and no one else.
+
+"With Uncle Nic it is not as with my stepfather; his opposition only
+makes me angry, mad, ready to do anything, but with Uncle Nic I feel
+so bruised--so sore.  He said: 'It is not so much the money, because
+there is always mine.'  I could never do a thing he cannot bear, and
+take his money, and you would never let me.  One knows very little of
+anything in the world till trouble comes.  You know how it is with
+flowers and trees; in the early spring they look so quiet and self-
+contained; then all in a moment they change--I think it must be like
+that with the heart.  I used to think I knew a great deal, understood
+why and how things came about; I thought self-possession and reason
+so easy; now I know nothing.  And nothing in the world matters but to
+see you and hide away from that look in Uncle Nic's eyes.  Three
+months ago I did not know you, now I write like this.  Whatever I
+look at, I try to see as you would see; I feel, now you are away even
+more than when you were with me, what your thoughts would be, how you
+would feel about this or that.  Some things you have said seem always
+in my mind like lights--"
+
+A slanting drift of rain was striking the veranda tiles with a cold,
+ceaseless hissing.  Christian shut the window, and went into her
+uncle's room.
+
+He was lying with closed eyes, growling at Dominique, who moved about
+noiselessly, putting the room ready for the night.  When he had
+finished, and with a compassionate bow had left the room, Mr. Treffry
+opened his eyes, and said:
+
+"This is beastly stuff of the doctor's, Chris, it puts my monkey up;
+I can't help swearing after I've taken it; it's as beastly as a
+vulgar woman's laugh, and I don't know anything beastlier than that!"
+
+"I have a letter from Greta, Uncle Nic; shall I read it?"
+
+He nodded, and Christian read the letter, leaving out the mention of
+Harz, and for some undefined reason the part about Sarelli.
+
+"Ay!" said Mr. Treffry with a feeble laugh, "Greta and her money!
+Send her some more, Chris.  Wish I were a youngster again; that's a
+beast of a proverb about a dog and his day.  I'd like to go fishing
+again in the West Country!  A fine time we had when we were
+youngsters.  You don't get such times these days.  'Twasn't often the
+fishing-smacks went out without us.  We'd watch their lights from our
+bedroom window; when they were swung aboard we were out and down to
+the quay before you could say 'knife.'  They always waited for us;
+but your Uncle Dan was the favourite, he was the chap for luck.  When
+I get on my legs, we might go down there, you and I?  For a bit, just
+to see?  What d'you say, old girl?"
+
+Their eyes met.
+
+"I'd like to look at the smack lights going to sea on a dark night;
+pity you're such a duffer in a boat--we might go out with them.  Do
+you a power of good!  You're not looking the thing, my dear."
+
+His voice died wistfully, and his glance, sweeping her face, rested
+on her hands, which held and twisted Greta's letter.  After a minute
+or two of silence he boomed out again with sudden energy:
+
+"Your aunt'll want to come and sit with me, after dinner; don't let
+her, Chris, I can't stand it.  Tell her I'm asleep--the doctor'll be
+here directly; ask him to make up some humbug for you--it's his
+business."
+
+He was seized by a violent fit of pain which seemed to stab his
+breath away, and when it was over signed that he would be left alone.
+Christian went back to her letter in the other room, and had written
+these words, when the gong summoned her to dinner:
+
+"I'm like a leaf in the wind, I put out my hand to one thing, and
+it's seized and twisted and flung aside.  I want you--I want you; if
+I could see you I think I should know what to do--"
+
+
+
+
+XXII
+
+The rain drove with increasing fury.  The night was very black.
+Nicholas Treffry slept heavily.  By the side of his bed the night-
+lamp cast on to the opposite wall a bright disc festooned by the
+hanging shadow of the ceiling.  Christian was leaning over him.  For
+the moment he filled all her heart, lying there, so helpless. Fearful
+of waking him she slipped into the sitting-room.  Outside the window
+stood a man with his face pressed to the pane.  Her heart thumped;
+she went up and unlatched the window.  It was Harz, with the rain
+dripping off him.  He let fall his hat and cape.
+
+"You!" she said, touching his sleeve.  "You!  You!"
+
+He was sodden with wet, his face drawn and tired; a dark growth of
+beard covered his cheeks and chin.
+
+"Where is your uncle?" he said; "I want to see him."
+
+She put her hand up to his lips, but he caught it and covered it with
+kisses.
+
+"He's asleep--ill--speak gently!"
+
+"I came to him first," he muttered.
+
+Christian lit the lamp; and he looked at her hungrily without a word.
+
+"It's not possible to go on like this; I came to tell your uncle so.
+He is a man.  As for the other, I want to have nothing to do with
+him!  I came back on foot across the mountains.  It's not possible to
+go on like this, Christian."
+
+She handed him her letter.  He held it to the light, clearing his
+brow of raindrops.  When he had read to the last word he gave it her
+back, and whispered: "Come!"
+
+Her lips moved, but she did not speak.
+
+"While this goes on I can't work; I can do nothing.  I can't--I won't
+bargain with my work; if it's to be that, we had better end it.  What
+are we waiting for?  Sooner or later we must come to this.  I'm sorry
+that he's ill, God knows!  But that changes nothing.  To wait is
+tying me hand and foot--it's making me afraid!  Fear kills!  It will
+kill you!  It kills work, and I must work, I can't waste time--I
+won't!  I will sooner give you up."  He put his hands on her
+shoulders.  "I love you!  I want you!  Look in my eyes and see if you
+dare hold back!"
+
+Christian stood with the grip of his strong hands on her shoulders,
+without a movement or sign.  Her face was very white.  And suddenly
+he began to kiss that pale, still face, to kiss its eyes and lips, to
+kiss it from its chin up to its hair; and it stayed pale, as a white
+flower, beneath those kisses--as a white flower, whose stalk the
+fingers bend back a little.
+
+There was a sound of knocking on the wall; Mr. Treffry called feebly.
+Christian broke away from Harz.
+
+"To-morrow!" he whispered, and picking up his hat and cloak, went out
+again into the rain.
+
+
+
+
+XXIII
+
+It was not till morning that Christian fell into a troubled sleep.
+She dreamed that a voice was calling her, and she was filled with a
+helpless, dumb dream terror.
+
+When she woke the light was streaming in; it was Sunday, and the
+cathedral bells were chiming.  Her first thought was of Harz.  One
+step, one moment of courage!  Why had she not told her uncle?  If he
+had only asked!  But why--why should she tell him?  When it was over
+and she was gone, he would see that all was for the best.
+
+Her eyes fell on Greta's empty bed.  She sprang up, and bending over,
+kissed the pillow.  'She will mind at first; but she's so young!
+Nobody will really miss me, except Uncle Nic!'  She stood along while
+in the window without moving.  When she was dressed she called out to
+her maid:
+
+"Bring me some milk, Barbi; I'm going to church."
+
+"Ach! gnadiges Frdulein, will you no breakfast have?"
+
+"No thank you, Barbi."
+
+"Liebes Fraulein, what a beautiful morning after the rain it has
+become!  How cool!  It is for you good--for the colour in your
+cheeks; now they will bloom again!" and Barbi stroked her own well-
+coloured cheeks.
+
+Dominique, sunning himself outside with a cloth across his arm, bowed
+as she passed, and smiled affectionately:
+
+"He is better this morning, M'mselle.  We march--we are getting on.
+Good news will put the heart into you."
+
+Christian thought: 'How sweet every one is to-day!'
+
+Even the Villa seemed to greet her, with the sun aslant on it; and
+the trees, trembling and weeping golden tears.  At the cathedral she
+was early for the service, but here and there were figures on their
+knees; the faint, sickly odour of long-burnt incense clung in the
+air; a priest moved silently at the far end.  She knelt, and when at
+last she rose the service had begun.  With the sound of the intoning
+a sense of peace came to her--the peace of resolution.  For good or
+bad she felt that she had faced her fate.
+
+She went out with a look of quiet serenity and walked home along the
+dyke.  Close to Harz's studio she sat down.  Now--it was her own; all
+that had belonged to him, that had ever had a part in him.
+
+An old beggar, who had been watching her, came gently from behind.
+"Gracious lady!" he said, peering at her eyes, "this is the lucky day
+for you.  I have lost my luck."
+
+Christian opened her purse, there was only one coin in it, a gold
+piece; the beggar's eyes sparkled.
+
+She thought suddenly: 'It's no longer mine; I must begin to be
+careful,' but she felt ashamed when she looked at the old man.
+
+"I am sorry," she said; "yesterday I would have given you this, but--
+but now it's already given."
+
+He seemed so old and poor--what could she give him?  She unhooked a
+little silver brooch at her throat.  "You will get something for
+that," she said; "it's better than nothing.  I am very sorry you are
+so old and poor."
+
+The beggar crossed himself.  "Gracious lady," he muttered, "may you
+never want!"
+
+Christian hurried on; the rustling of leaves soon carried the words
+away.  She did not feel inclined to go in, and crossing the bridge
+began to climb the hill.  There was a gentle breeze, drifting the
+clouds across the sun; lizards darted out over the walls, looked at
+her, and whisked away.
+
+The sunshine, dappling through the tops of trees, gashed down on a
+torrent.  The earth smelt sweet, the vineyards round the white farms
+glistened; everything seemed to leap and dance with sap and life; it
+was a moment of Spring in midsummer.  Christian walked on, wondering
+at her own happiness.
+
+'Am I heartless?' she thought.  'I am going to leave him--I am going
+into life; I shall have to fight now, there'll be no looking back.'
+
+The path broke away and wound down to the level of the torrent; on
+the other side it rose again, and was lost among trees.  The woods
+were dank; she hastened home.
+
+In her room she began to pack, sorting and tearing up old letters.
+'Only one thing matters,' she thought; 'singleness of heart; to see
+your way, and keep to it with all your might.'
+
+She looked up and saw Barbi standing before her with towels in her
+hands, and a scared face.
+
+"Are you going a journey, gnadiges Fraulein?"
+
+"I am going away to be married, Barbi," said Christian at last;
+"don't speak of it to any one, please."
+
+Barbi leant a little forward with the towels clasped to the blue
+cotton bosom of her dress.
+
+"No, no!  I will not speak.  But, dear Fraulein, that is a big
+matter; have you well thought?"
+
+"Thought, Barbi?  Have I not!"
+
+"But, dear Fraulein, will you be rich?"
+
+"No! I shall be as poor as you."
+
+"Ach! dear God! that is terrible.  Katrina, my sister, she is
+married; she tells me all her life; she tells me it is very hard, and
+but for the money in her stocking it would be harder.  Dear Fraulein,
+think again!  And is he good?  Sometimes they are not good."
+
+"He is good," said Christian, rising; "it is all settled!" and she
+kissed Barbi on the cheek.
+
+"You are crying, liebes Fraulein!  Think yet again, perhaps it is not
+quite all settled; it is not possible that a maiden should not a way
+out leave?"
+
+Christian smiled.  "I don't do things that way, Barbi."
+
+Barbi hung the towels on the horse, and crossed herself.
+
+Mr. Treffry's gaze was fixed on a tortoise-shell butterfly fluttering
+round the ceiling.  The insect seemed to fascinate him, as things
+which move quickly always fascinate the helpless.  Christian came
+softly in.
+
+"Couldn't stay in bed, Chris," he called out with an air of guilt.
+"The heat was something awful.  The doctor piped off in a huff, just
+because o' this."  He motioned towards a jug of claret-cup and a pipe
+on the table by his elbow.  "I was only looking at 'em."
+
+Christian, sitting down beside him, took up a fan.
+
+"If I could get out of this heat--" he said, and closed his eyes.
+
+'I must tell him,' she thought; 'I can't slink away.'
+
+"Pour me out some of that stuff, Chris."
+
+She reached for the jug.  Yes! She must tell him! Her heart sank.
+
+Mr. Treffry took a lengthy draught.  "Broken my promise; don't
+matter--won't hurt any one but me."  He took up the pipe and pressed
+tobacco into it.  "I've been lying here with this pain going right
+through me, and never a smoke!  D'you tell me anything the parsons
+say can do me half the good of this pipe?"  He leaned back, steeped
+in a luxury of satisfaction.  He went on, pursuing a private train of
+thought: "Things have changed a lot since my young days.  When I was
+a youngster, a young fellow had to look out for peck and perch--he
+put the future in his pocket.  He did well or not, according as he
+had stuff in him.  Now he's not content with that, it seems--trades
+on his own opinion of himself; thinks he is what he says he's going
+to be."
+
+"You are unjust," said Christian.
+
+Mr. Treffry grunted.  "Ah, well! I like to know where I am.  If I
+lend money to a man, I like to know whether he's going to pay it
+back; I may not care whether he does or not, but I like to know.  The
+same with other things.  I don't care what a man has--though, mind
+you, Chris, it's not a bad rule that measures men by the balance at
+their banks; but when it comes to marriage, there's a very simple
+rule, What's not enough for one is not enough for two.  You can't
+talk black white, or bread into your mouth.  I don't care to speak
+about myself, as you know, Chris, but I tell you this--when I came to
+London I wanted to marry--I hadn't any money, and I had to want.
+When I had the money--but that's neither here nor there!"  He
+frowned, fingering his pipe.
+
+"I didn't ask her, Chris; I didn't think it the square thing; it
+seems that's out of fashion!"
+
+Christian's cheeks were burning.
+
+"I think a lot while I lie here," Mr. Treffry went on; "nothing much
+else to do.  What I ask myself is this: What do you know about what's
+best for you?  What do you know of life?  Take it or leave it, life's
+not all you think; it's give and get all the way, a fair start is
+everything."
+
+Christian thought: 'Will he never see?'
+
+Mr. Treffry went on:
+
+"I get better every day, but I can't last for ever.  It's not
+pleasant to lie here and know that when I'm gone there'll be no one
+to keep a hand on the check string!"
+
+"Don't talk like that, dear!" Christian murmured.
+
+"It's no use blinking facts, Chris.  I've lived a long time in the
+world; I've seen things pretty well as they are; and now there's not
+much left for me to think about but you."
+
+"But, Uncle, if you loved him, as I do, you couldn't tell me to be
+afraid!  It's cowardly and mean to be afraid.  You must have
+forgotten!"
+
+Mr. Treffry closed his eyes.
+
+"Yes," he said; "I'm old."
+
+The fan had dropped into Christian's lap; it rested on her white
+frock like a large crimson leaf; her eyes were fixed on it.
+
+Mr. Treffry looked at her.  "Have you heard from him?" he asked with
+sudden intuition.
+
+"Last night, in that room, when you thought I was talking to
+Dominique--"
+
+The pipe fell from his hand.
+
+"What!" he stammered: "Back?"
+
+Christian, without looking up, said:
+
+"Yes, he's back; he wants me--I must go to him, Uncle."
+
+There was a long silence.
+
+"You must go to him?" he repeated.
+
+She longed to fling herself down at his knees, but he was so still,
+that to move seemed impossible; she remained silent, with folded
+hands.
+
+Mr. Treffry spoke:
+
+"You'll let me know--before--you--go.  Goodnight!"
+
+Christian stole out into the passage.  A bead curtain rustled in the
+draught; voices reached her.
+
+"My honour is involved, or I would give the case up."
+
+"He is very trying, poor Nicholas!  He always had that peculiar
+quality of opposition; it has brought him to grief a hundred times.
+There is opposition in our blood; my family all have it.  My eldest
+brother died of it; with my poor sister, who was as gentle as a lamb,
+it took the form of doing the right thing in the wrong place.  It is
+a matter of temperament, you see.  You must have patience."
+
+"Patience," repeated Dawney's voice, "is one thing; patience where
+there is responsibility is another.  I've not had a wink of sleep
+these last two nights."
+
+There was a faint, shrill swish of silk.
+
+"Is he so very ill?"
+
+Christian held her breath.  The answer came at last.
+
+"Has he made his will?  With this trouble in the side again, I tell
+you plainly, Mrs. Decie, there's little or no chance."
+
+Christian put her hands up to her ears, and ran out into the air.
+What was she about to do, then--to leave him dying!
+
+On the following day Harz was summoned to the Villa.  Mr. Treffry had
+just risen, and was garbed in a dressing-suit, old and worn, which
+had a certain air of magnificence.  His seamed cheeks were newly
+shaved.
+
+"I hope I see you well," he said majestically.
+
+Thinking of the drive and their last parting, Harz felt sorry and
+ashamed.  Suddenly Christian came into the room; she stood for a
+moment looking at him; then sat down.
+
+"Chris!" said Mr. Treffry reproachfully.  She shook her head, and did
+not move; mournful and intent, her eyes seemed full of secret
+knowledge.
+
+Mr. Treffry spoke:
+
+"I've no right to blame you, Mr. Harz, and Chris tells me you came to
+see me first, which is what I would have expected of you; but you
+shouldn't have come back."
+
+"I came back, sir, because I found I was obliged.  I must speak out."
+
+"I ask nothing better," Mr. Treffry replied.
+
+Harz looked again at Christian; but she made no sign, sitting with
+her chin resting on her hands.
+
+"I have come for her," he said; "I can make my living--enough for
+both of us.  But I can't wait."
+
+"Why?"
+
+Harz made no answer.
+
+Mr. Treffry boomed out again: "Why?  Isn't she worth waiting for?
+Isn't she worth serving for?"
+
+"I can't expect you to understand me," the painter said.  "My art is
+my life to me.  Do you suppose that if it wasn't I should ever have
+left my village; or gone through all that I've gone through, to get
+as far even as I am?  You tell me to wait.  If my thoughts and my
+will aren't free, how can I work?  I shan't be worth my salt.  You
+tell me to go back to England--knowing she is here, amongst you who
+hate me, a thousand miles away.  I shall know that there's a death
+fight going on in her and outside her against me--you think that I
+can go on working under these conditions.  Others may be able, I am
+not.  That's the plain truth.  If I loved her less--"
+
+There was a silence, then Mr. Treffry said:
+
+"It isn't fair to come here and ask what you're asking.  You don't
+know what's in the future for you, you don't know that you can keep a
+wife.  It isn't pleasant, either, to think you can't hold up your
+head in your own country."
+
+Harz turned white.
+
+"Ah! you bring that up again!" he broke out.  "Seven years ago I was
+a boy and starving; if you had been in my place you would have done
+what I did.  My country is as much to me as your country is to you.
+I've been an exile seven years, I suppose I shall always be I've had
+punishment enough; but if you think I am a rascal, I'll go and give
+myself up."  He turned on his heel.
+
+"Stop!  I beg your pardon!  I never meant to hurt you.  It isn't easy
+for me to eat my words," Mr. Treffry said wistfully, "let that count
+for something."  He held out his hand.
+
+Harz came quickly back and took it.  Christian's gaze was never for a
+moment withdrawn; she seemed trying to store up the sight of him
+within her.  The light darting through the half-closed shutters gave
+her eyes a strange, bright intensity, and shone in the folds of her
+white dress like the sheen of birds' wings.
+
+Mr. Treffry glanced uneasily about him.  "God knows I don't want
+anything but her happiness," he said.  "What is it to me if you'd
+murdered your mother?  It's her I'm thinking of."
+
+"How can you tell what is happiness to her?  You have your own ideas
+of happiness--not hers, not mine.  You can't dare to stop us, sir!"
+
+"Dare?" said Mr. Treffry.  "Her father gave her over to me when she
+was a mite of a little thing; I've known her all her life.  I've--
+I've loved her--and you come here with your 'dare'!"  His hand
+dragged at his beard, and shook as though palsied.
+
+A look of terror came into Christian's face.
+
+"All right, Chris! I don't ask for quarter, and I don't give it!"
+
+Harz made a gesture of despair.
+
+"I've acted squarely by you, sir," Mr. Treffry went on, "I ask the
+same of you.  I ask you to wait, and come like an honest man, when
+you can say, 'I see my way--here's this and that for her.'  What
+makes this art you talk of different from any other call in life?  It
+doesn't alter facts, or give you what other men have no right to
+expect.  It doesn't put grit into you, or keep your hands clean, or
+prove that two and two make five."
+
+Harz answered bitterly:
+
+"You know as much of art as I know of money.  If we live a thousand
+years we shall never understand each other.  I am doing what I feel
+is best for both of us."
+
+Mr. Treffry took hold of the painter's sleeve.
+
+"I make you an offer," he said.  "Your word not to see or write to
+her for a year!  Then, position or not, money or no money, if she'll
+have you, I'll make it right for you."
+
+"I could not take your money."
+
+A kind of despair seemed suddenly to seize on Mr. Nicholas Treffry.
+He rose, and stood towering over them.
+
+"All my life--" he said; but something seemed to click deep down in
+his throat, and he sank back in his seat.
+
+"Go!" whispered Christian, "go!" But Mr. Treffry found his voice
+again: "It's for the child to say.  Well, Chris!"
+
+Christian did not speak.
+
+It was Harz who broke the silence.  He pointed to Mr. Treffry.
+
+"You know I can't tell you to come with--that, there.  Why did you
+send for me?"  And, turning, he went out.
+
+Christian sank on her knees, burying her face in her hands.  Mr.
+Treffry pressed his handkerchief with a stealthy movement to his
+mouth.  It was dyed crimson with the price of his victory.
+
+
+
+
+XXVI
+
+A telegram had summoned Herr Paul from Vienna.  He had started
+forthwith, leaving several unpaid accounts to a more joyful
+opportunity, amongst them a chemist's bill, for a wonderful quack
+medicine of which he brought six bottles.
+
+He came from Mr. Treffry's room with tears rolling down his cheeks,
+saying:
+
+"Poor Nicholas!  Poor Nicholas!  Il n'a pas de chance!"
+
+It was difficult to find any one to listen; the women were scared and
+silent, waiting for the orders that were now and then whispered
+through the door.  Herr Paul could not bear this silence, and talked
+to his servant for half an hour, till Fritz also vanished to fetch
+something from the town.  Then in despair Herr Paul went to his room.
+
+It was hard not to be allowed to help--it was hard to wait!  When the
+heart was suffering, it was frightful!  He turned and, looking
+furtively about him, lighted a cigar.  Yes, it came to every one--at
+some time or other; and what was it, that death they talked of?  Was
+it any worse than life?  That frightful jumble people made for
+themselves!  Poor Nicholas!  After all, it was he that had the luck!
+
+His eyes filled with tears, and drawing a penknife from his pocket,
+he began to stab it into the stuffing of his chair.  Scruff, who sat
+watching the chink of light under the door, turned his head, blinked
+at him, and began feebly tapping with a claw.
+
+It was intolerable, this uncertainty--to be near, and yet so far, was
+not endurable!
+
+Herr Paul stepped across the room.  The dog, following, threw his
+black-marked muzzle upwards with a gruff noise, and went back to the
+door.  His master was holding in his hand a bottle of champagne.
+
+Poor Nicholas!  He had chosen it.  Herr Paul drained a glass.
+
+Poor Nicholas!  The prince of fellows, and of what use was one?  They
+kept him away from Nicholas!
+
+Herr Paul's eyes fell on the terrier.  "Ach! my dear," he said, "you
+and I, we alone are kept away!"
+
+He drained a second glass.
+
+What was it?  This life!  Froth-like that! He tossed off a third
+glass.  Forget!  If one could not help, it was better to forget!
+
+He put on his hat.  Yes.  There was no room for him there!  He was
+not wanted!
+
+He finished the bottle, and went out into the passage.  Scruff ran
+and lay down at Mr. Treffry's door.  Herr Paul looked at him.  "Ach!"
+he said, tapping his chest, "ungrateful hound!"  And opening the
+front door he went out on tiptoe....
+
+Late that afternoon Greta stole hatless through the lilac bushes; she
+looked tired after her night journey, and sat idly on a chair in the
+speckled shadow of a lime-tree.
+
+'It is not like home,' she thought; 'I am unhappy.  Even the birds
+are silent, but perhaps that is because it is so hot.  I have never
+been sad like this--for it is not fancy that I am sad this time, as
+it is sometimes.  It is in my heart like the sound the wind makes
+through a wood, it feels quite empty in my heart.  If it is always
+like this to be unhappy, then I am sorry for all the unhappy things
+in the world; I am sorrier than I ever was before.'
+
+A shadow fell on the grass, she raised her eyes, and saw Dawney.
+
+"Dr. Edmund!" she whispered.
+
+Dawney turned to her; a heavy furrow showed between his brows.  His
+eyes, always rather close together, stared painfully.
+
+"Dr. Edmund," Greta whispered, "is it true?"
+
+He took her hand, and spread his own palm over it.
+
+"Perhaps," he said; "perhaps not.  We must hope."
+
+Greta looked up, awed.
+
+"They say he is dying."
+
+"We have sent for the best man in Vienna."
+
+Greta shook her head.
+
+"But you are clever, Dr. Edmund; and you are afraid."
+
+"He is brave," said Dawney; "we must all be brave, you know.  You
+too!"
+
+"Brave?" repeated Greta; "what is it to be brave?  If it is not to
+cry and make a fuss--that I can do.  But if it is not to be sad in
+here," she touched her breast, "that I cannot do, and it shall not be
+any good for me to try."
+
+"To be brave is to hope; don't give up hope, dear."
+
+"No," said Greta, tracing the pattern of the sunlight on her skirt.
+"But I think that when we hope, we are not brave, because we are
+expecting something for ourselves.  Chris says that hope is prayer,
+and if it is prayer, then all the time we are hoping, we are asking
+for something, and it is not brave to ask for things."
+
+A smile curved Dawney's mouth.
+
+"Go on, Philosopher!" he said.  "Be brave in your own way, it will be
+just as good as anybody else's."
+
+"What are you going to do to be brave, Dr. Edmund?"
+
+"I?  Fight!  If only we had five years off his life!"
+
+Greta watched him as he walked away.
+
+"I shall never be brave," she mourned; "I shall always be wanting to
+be happy."  And, kneeling down, she began to disentangle a fly,
+imprisoned in a cobweb.  A plant of hemlock had sprung up in the long
+grass by her feet.  Greta thought, dismayed: 'There are weeds!'
+
+It seemed but another sign of the death of joy.
+
+'But it's very beautiful,' she thought, 'the blossoms are like stars.
+I am not going to pull it up.  I will leave it; perhaps it will
+spread all through the garden; and if it does I do not care, for now
+things are not like they used to be and I do not, think they ever
+shall be again.'
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+The days went by; those long, hot days, when the heat haze swims up
+about ten of the forenoon, and, as the sun sinks level with the
+mountains, melts into golden ether which sets the world quivering
+with sparkles.
+
+At the lighting of the stars those sparkles die, vanishing one by one
+off the hillsides; evening comes flying down the valleys, and life
+rests under her cool wings.  The night falls; and the hundred little
+voices of the night arise.
+
+It was near grape-gathering, and in the heat the fight for Nicholas
+Treffry's life went on, day in, day out, with gleams of hope and
+moments of despair.  Doctors came, but after the first he refused to
+see them.
+
+"No," he said to Dawney--"throwing away money.  If I pull through it
+won't be because of them."
+
+For days together he would allow no one but Dawney, Dominique, and
+the paid nurse in the room.
+
+"I can stand it better," he said to Christian, "when I don't see any
+of you; keep away, old girl, and let me get on with it!"
+
+To have been able to help would have eased the tension of her nerves,
+and the aching of her heart.  At his own request they had moved his
+bed into a corner so that he might face the wall.  There he would lie
+for hours together, not speaking a word, except to ask for drink.
+
+Sometimes Christian crept in unnoticed, and sat watching, with her
+arms tightly folded across her breast.  At night, after Greta was
+asleep, she would toss from side to side, muttering feverish prayers.
+She spent hours at her little table in the schoolroom, writing
+letters to Harz that were never sent.  Once she wrote these words: "I
+am the most wicked of all creatures--I have even wished that he may
+die!"  A few minutes afterwards Miss Naylor found her with her head
+buried on her arms.  Christian sprang up; tears were streaming down
+her cheeks.  "Don't touch me!" she cried, and rushed away.  Later,
+she stole into her uncle's room, and sank down on the floor beside
+the bed.  She sat there silently, unnoticed all the evening.  When
+night came she could hardly be persuaded to leave the room.
+
+One day Mr. Treffry expressed a wish to see Herr Paul; it was a long
+while before the latter could summon courage to go in.
+
+"There's a few dozen of the Gordon sherry at my Chambers, in London,
+Paul," Mr. Treffry said; "I'd be glad to think you had 'em.  And my
+man, Dominique, I've made him all right in my will, but keep your eye
+on him; he's a good sort for a foreigner, and no chicken, but sooner
+or later, the women'll get hold of him.  That's all I had to say.
+Send Chris to me."
+
+Herr Paul stood by the bedside speechless.  Suddenly he blurted out.
+
+"Ah! my dear!  Courage!  We are all mortal.  You will get well!"  All
+the morning he walked about quite inconsolable.  "It was frightful to
+see him, you know, frightful!  An iron man could not have borne it."
+
+When Christian came to him, Mr. Treffry raised himself and looked at
+her a long while.
+
+His wistful face was like an accusation.  But that very afternoon the
+news came from the sickroom that he was better, having had no pain
+for several hours.
+
+Every one went about with smiles lurking in their eyes, and ready to
+break forth at a word.  In the kitchen Barbi burst out crying, and,
+forgetting to toss the pan, spoiled a Kaiser-Schmarn she was making.
+Dominique was observed draining a glass of Chianti, and solemnly
+casting forth the last drops in libation.  An order was given for tea
+to be taken out under the acacias, where it was always cool; it was
+felt that something in the nature of high festival was being held.
+Even Herr Paul was present; but Christian did not come.  Nobody spoke
+of illness; to mention it might break the spell.
+
+Miss Naylor, who had gone into the house, came back, saying:
+
+"There is a strange man standing over there by the corner of the
+house."
+
+"Really!" asked Mrs. Decie; "what does he want?"
+
+Miss Naylor reddened.  "I did not ask him.  I--don't--know--whether
+he is quite respectable.  His coat is buttoned very close, and he--
+doesn't seem--to have a--collar."
+
+"Go and see what he wants, dear child," Mrs. Decie said to Greta.
+
+"I don't know--I really do not know--" began Miss Naylor; "he has
+very--high--boots," but Greta was already on her way, with hands
+clasped behind her, and demure eyes taking in the stranger's figure.
+
+"Please?" she said, when she was close to him.
+
+The stranger took his cap off with a jerk.
+
+"This house has no bells," he said in a nasal voice; "it has a
+tendency to discourage one."
+
+"Yes," said Greta gravely, "there is a bell, but it does not ring
+now, because my uncle is so ill."
+
+"I am very sorry to hear that.  I don't know the people here, but I
+am very sorry to hear that.
+
+"I would be glad to speak a few words to your sister, if it is your
+sister that I want."
+
+And the stranger's face grew very red.
+
+"Is it," said Greta, "that you are a friend of Herr Harz?  If you are
+a friend of his, you will please come and have some tea, and while
+you are having tea I will look for Chris."
+
+Perspiration bedewed the stranger's forehead.
+
+"Tea?  Excuse me!  I don't drink tea."
+
+"There is also coffee," Greta said.
+
+The stranger's progress towards the arbour was so slow that Greta
+arrived considerably before him.
+
+"It is a friend of Herr Harz," she whispered; "he will drink coffee.
+I am going to find Chris."
+
+"Greta!" gasped Miss Naylor.
+
+Mrs. Decie put up her hand.
+
+"Ah!" she said, "if it is so, we must be very nice to him for
+Christian's sake."
+
+Miss Naylor's face grew soft.
+
+"Ah, yes!" she said; "of course."
+
+"Bah!" muttered Herr Paul, "that recommences.'
+
+"Paul!" murmured Mrs. Decie, "you lack the elements of wisdom."
+
+Herr Paul glared at the approaching stranger.
+
+Mrs. Decie had risen, and smilingly held out her hand.
+
+"We are so glad to know you; you are an artist too, perhaps?  I take
+a great interest in art, and especially in that school which Mr. Harz
+represents."
+
+The stranger smiled.
+
+"He is the genuine article, ma'am," he said.  "He represents no
+school, he is one of that kind whose corpses make schools."
+
+"Ah!" murmured Mrs. Decie, "you are an American.  That is so nice.
+Do sit down!  My niece will soon be here."
+
+Greta came running back.
+
+"Will you come, please?" she said.  "Chris is ready."
+
+Gulping down his coffee, the stranger included them all in a single
+bow, and followed her.
+
+"Ach!" said Herr Paul, "garcon tres chic, celui-la!"
+
+Christian was standing by her little table.  The stranger began.
+
+"I am sending Mr. Harz's things to England; there are some pictures
+here.  He would be glad to have them."
+
+A flood of crimson swept over her face.
+
+"I am sending them to London," the stranger repeated; "perhaps you
+could give them to me to-day."
+
+"They are ready; my sister will show you."
+
+Her eyes seemed to dart into his soul, and try to drag something from
+it.  The words rushed from her lips
+
+"Is there any message for me?"
+
+The stranger regarded her curiously.
+
+"No," he stammered, "no! I guess not.  He is well....  I wish...." He
+stopped; her white face seemed to flash scorn, despair, and entreaty
+on him all at once.  And turning, she left him standing there.
+
+
+
+
+XXVII
+
+When Christian went that evening to her uncle's room he was sitting
+up in bed, and at once began to talk.  "Chris," he said, "I can't
+stand this dying by inches.  I'm going to try what a journey'll do
+for me.  I want to get back to the old country.  The doctor's
+promised.  There's a shot in the locker yet!  I believe in that young
+chap; he's stuck to me like a man....  It'll be your birthday, on
+Tuesday, old girl, and you'll be twenty.  Seventeen years since your
+father died.  You've been a lot to me....  A parson came here today.
+That's a bad sign.  Thought it his duty!  Very civil of him!
+I wouldn't see him, though.  If there's anything in what they tell
+you, I'm not going to sneak in at this time o' day.  There's one
+thing that's rather badly on my mind.  I took advantage of Mr. Harz
+with this damned pitifulness of mine.  You've a right to look at me
+as I've seen you sometimes when you thought I was asleep.  If I
+hadn't been ill he'd never have left you.  I don't blame you, Chris--
+not I!  You love me?  I know that, my dear.  But one's alone when it
+comes to the run-in.  Don't cry!  Our minds aren't Sunday-school
+books; you're finding it out, that's all!"  He sighed and turned
+away.
+
+The noise of sun-blinds being raised vibrated through the house.  A
+feeling of terror seized on the girl; he lay so still, and yet the
+drawing of each breath was a fight.  If she could only suffer in his
+place!  She went close, and bent over him.
+
+"It's air we want, both you and I!" he muttered.  Christian beckoned
+to the nurse, and stole out through the window.
+
+A regiment was passing in the road; she stood half-hidden amongst the
+lilac bushes watching.  The poplar leaves drooped lifeless and almost
+black above her head, the dust raised by the soldiers' feet hung in
+the air; it seemed as if in all the world no freshness and no life
+were stirring.  The tramp of feet died away.  Suddenly within arm's
+length of her a man appeared, his stick shouldered like a sword.  He
+raised his hat.
+
+"Good-evening!  You do not remember me?  Sarelli.  Pardon! You looked
+like a ghost standing there.  How badly those fellows marched!  We
+hang, you see, on the skirts of our profession and criticise; it is
+all we are fit for."  His black eyes, restless and malevolent like a
+swan's, seemed to stab her face.  "A fine evening!  Too hot.  The
+storm is wanted; you feel that?  It is weary waiting for the storm;
+but after the storm, my dear young lady, comes peace."  He smiled,
+gently, this time, and baring his head again, was lost to view in the
+shadow of the trees.
+
+His figure had seemed to Christian like the sudden vision of a
+threatening, hidden force.  She thrust out her hands, as though to
+keep it off.
+
+No use; it was within her, nothing could keep it away!  She went to
+Mrs. Decie's room, where her aunt and Miss Naylor were conversing in
+low tones.  To hear their voices brought back the touch of this world
+of everyday which had no part or lot in the terrifying powers within
+her.
+
+Dawney slept at the Villa now.  In the dead of night he was awakened
+by a light flashed in his eyes.  Christian was standing there, her
+face pale and wild with terror, her hair falling in dark masses on
+her shoulders.
+
+"Save him!  Save him!" she cried.  "Quick! The bleeding!"
+
+He saw her muffle her face in her white sleeves, and seizing the
+candle, leaped out of bed and rushed away.
+
+The internal haemorrhage had come again, and Nicholas Treffry wavered
+between life and death.  When it had ceased, he sank into a sort of
+stupor.  About six o'clock he came back to consciousness; watching
+his eyes, they could see a mental struggle taking place within him.
+At last he singled Christian out from the others by a sign.
+
+"I'm beat, Chris," he whispered.  "Let him know, I want to see him."
+
+His voice grew a little stronger.  "I thought that I could see it
+through--but here's the end."  He lifted his hand ever so little, and
+let it fall again.  When told a little later that a telegram had been
+sent to Harz his eyes expressed satisfaction.
+
+Herr Paul came down in ignorance of the night's events.  He stopped
+in front of the barometer and tapped it, remarking to Miss Naylor:
+"The glass has gone downstairs; we shall have cool weather--it will
+still go well with him!"
+
+When, with her brown face twisted by pity and concern, she told him
+that it was a question of hours, Herr Paul turned first purple, then
+pale, and sitting down, trembled violently.  "I cannot believe it,"
+he exclaimed almost angrily.  "Yesterday he was so well!  I cannot
+believe it!  Poor Nicholas!  Yesterday he spoke to me!"  Taking Miss
+Naylor's hand, he clutched it in his own.  "Ah!" he cried, letting it
+go suddenly, and striking at his forehead, "it is too terrible; only
+yesterday he spoke to me of sherry.  Is there nobody, then, who can
+do good?"
+
+"There is only God," replied Miss Naylor softly.
+
+"God?" said Herr Paul in a scared voice.
+
+"We--can--all--pray to Him," Miss Naylor murmured; little spots of
+colour came into her cheeks.  "I am going to do it now."
+
+Herr Paul raised her hand and kissed it.
+
+"Are you?" he said; "good! I too."  He passed through his study door,
+closed it carefully behind him, then for some unknown reason set his
+back against it.  Ugh! Death! It came to all! Some day it would come
+to him.  It might come tomorrow!  One must pray!
+
+The day dragged to its end.  In the sky clouds had mustered, and,
+crowding close on one another, clung round the sun, soft, thick,
+greywhite, like the feathers on a pigeon's breast.  Towards evening
+faint tremblings were felt at intervals, as from the shock of
+immensely distant earthquakes.
+
+Nobody went to bed that night, but in the morning the report was the
+same: "Unconscious--a question of hours."  Once only did he recover
+consciousness, and then asked for Harz.  A telegram had come from
+him, he was on the way.  Towards seven of the evening the long-
+expected storm broke in a sky like ink.  Into the valleys and over
+the crests of mountains it seemed as though an unseen hand were
+spilling goblets of pale wine, darting a sword-blade zigzag over
+trees, roofs, spires, peaks, into the very firmament, which answered
+every thrust with great bursts of groaning.  Just beyond the veranda
+Greta saw a glowworm shining, as it might be a tiny bead of the
+fallen lightning.  Soon the rain covered everything.  Sometimes a jet
+of light brought the hilltops, towering, dark, and hard, over the
+house, to disappear again behind the raindrops and shaken leaves.
+Each breath drawn by the storm was like the clash of a thousand
+cymbals; and in his room Mr. Treffry lay unconscious of its fury.
+
+Greta had crept in unobserved; and sat curled in a corner, with
+Scruff in her arms, rocking slightly to and fro.  When Christian
+passed, she caught her skirt, and whispered: "It is your birthday,
+Chris!"
+
+Mr. Treffry stirred.
+
+"What's that?  Thunder?--it's cooler.  Where am I?  Chris!"
+
+Dawney signed for her to take his place.
+
+"Chris!" Mr. Treffry said.  "It's near now."  She bent across him,
+and her tears fell on his forehead.
+
+"Forgive!" she whispered; "love me!"
+
+He raised his finger, and touched her cheek.
+
+For an hour or more he did not speak, though once or twice he moaned,
+and faintly tightened his pressure on her fingers.  The storm had
+died away, but very far off the thunder was still muttering.
+
+His eyes opened once more, rested on her, and passed beyond, into
+that abyss dividing youth from age, conviction from conviction, life
+from death.
+
+At the foot of the bed Dawney stood covering his face; behind him
+Dominique knelt with hands held upwards; the sound of Greta's
+breathing, soft in sleep, rose and fell in the stillness.
+
+
+
+
+XXIX
+
+One afternoon in March, more than three years after Mr. Treffry's
+death, Christian was sitting at the window of a studio in St. John's
+Wood.  The sky was covered with soft, high clouds, through which
+shone little gleams of blue.  Now and then a bright shower fell,
+sprinkling the trees, where every twig was curling upwards as if
+waiting for the gift of its new leaves.  And it seemed to her that
+the boughs thickened and budded under her very eyes; a great
+concourse of sparrows had gathered on those boughs, and kept raising
+a shrill chatter.  Over at the far side of the room Harz was working
+at a picture.
+
+On Christian's face was the quiet smile of one who knows that she has
+only to turn her eyes to see what she wishes to see; of one whose
+possessions are safe under her hand.  She looked at Harz with that
+possessive smile.  But as into the brain of one turning in his bed
+grim fancies will suddenly leap up out of warm nothingness, so there
+leaped into her mind the memory of that long ago dawn, when he had
+found her kneeling by Mr. Treffry's body.  She seemed to see again
+the dead face, so gravely quiet, and furrowless.  She seemed to see
+her lover and herself setting forth silently along the river wall
+where they had first met; sitting down, still silent, beneath the
+poplar-tree where the little bodies of the chafers had lain strewn in
+the Spring.  To see the trees changing from black to grey, from grey
+to green, and in the dark sky long white lines of cloud, lighting to
+the south like birds; and, very far away, rosy peaks watching the
+awakening of the earth.  And now once again, after all that time,
+she felt her spirit shrink away from his; as it had shrunk in that
+hour, when she had seemed hateful to herself.  She remembered the
+words she had spoken: "I have no heart left.  You've torn it in two
+between you.  Love is all self--I wanted him to die."  She remembered
+too the raindrops on the vines like a million tiny lamps, and the
+throstle that began singing.  Then, as dreams die out into warm
+nothingness, recollection vanished, and the smile came back to her
+lips.
+
+She took out a letter.
+
+"....O Chris!  We are really coming; I seem to be always telling it
+to myself, and I have told Scruff many times, but he does not care,
+because he is getting old.  Miss Naylor says we shall arrive for
+breakfast, and that we shall be hungry, but perhaps she will not be
+very hungry, if it is rough.  Papa said to me: 'Je serai
+inconsolable, mais inconsolable!'  But I think he will not be,
+because he is going to Vienna.  When we are come, there will be
+nobody at Villa Rubein; Aunt Constance has gone a fortnight ago to
+Florence.  There is a young man at her hotel; she says he will be one
+of the greatest playwriters in England, and she sent me a play of his
+to read; it was only a little about love, I did not like it very
+much....  O Chris! I think I shall cry when I see you.  As I am quite
+grown up, Miss Naylor is not to come back with me; sometimes she is
+sad, but she will be glad to see you, Chris.  She seems always sadder
+when it is Spring.  Today I walked along the wall; the little green
+balls of wool are growing on the poplars already, and I saw one
+chafer; it will not be long before the cherry blossom comes; and I
+felt so funny, sad and happy together, and once I thought that I had
+wings and could fly away up the valley to Meran--but I had none, so I
+sat on the bench where we sat the day we took the pictures, and I
+thought and thought; there was nothing came to me in my thoughts, but
+all was sweet and a little noisy, and rather sad; it was like the
+buzzing of the chafer, in my head; and now I feel so tired and all my
+blood is running up and down me.  I do not mind, because I know it is
+the Spring.
+
+"Dominique came to see us the other day; he is very well, and is half
+the proprietor of the Adler Hotel, at Meran; he is not at all
+different, and he asked about you and about Alois--do you know,
+Chris, to myself I call him Herr Harz, but when I have seen him this
+time I shall call him Alois in my heart also.
+
+"I have a letter from Dr. Edmund; he is in London, so perhaps you
+have seen him, only he has a great many patients and some that he has
+'hopes of killing soon'! especially one old lady, because she is
+always wanting him to do things for her, and he is never saying 'No,'
+so he does not like her.  He says that he is getting old.  When I
+have finished this letter I am going to write and tell him that
+perhaps he shall see me soon, and then I think he will be very sad.
+Now that the Spring is come there are more flowers to take to Uncle
+Nic's grave, and every day, when I am gone, Barbi is to take them so
+that he shall not miss you, Chris, because all the flowers I put
+there are for you.
+
+"I am buying some toys without paint on for my niece."
+
+"O Chris! this will be the first baby that I have known."
+
+"I am only to stay three weeks with you, but I think when I am once
+there I shall be staying longer.  I send a kiss for my niece, and to
+Herr Harz, my love--that is the last time I shall call him Herr Harz;
+and to you, Chris, all the joy that is in my heart.--Your loving
+
+"GRETA."
+
+
+Christian rose, and, turning very softly, stood, leaning her elbows
+on the back of a high seat, looking at her husband.
+
+In her eyes there was a slow, clear, faintly smiling, yet yearning
+look, as though this strenuous figure bent on its task were seen for
+a moment as something apart, and not all the world to her.
+
+"Tired?" asked Harz, putting his lips to her hand.
+
+"No, it's only--what Greta says about the Spring; it makes one want
+more than one has got."
+
+Slipping her hand away, she went back to the window.  Harz stood,
+looking after her; then, taking up his palette, again began painting.
+
+In the world, outside, the high soft clouds flew by; the trees seemed
+thickening and budding.
+
+And Christian thought:
+
+'Can we never have quite enough?'
+
+
+December 1890.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+MY FATHER
+
+
+
+A MAN OF DEVON
+
+
+I
+
+"MOOR, 20th July.
+
+.......It is quiet here, sleepy, rather--a farm is never quiet; the
+sea, too, is only a quarter of a mile away, and when it's windy, the
+sound of it travels up the combe; for distraction, you must go four
+miles to Brixham or five to Kingswear, and you won't find much then.
+The farm lies in a sheltered spot, scooped, so to speak, high up the
+combe side--behind is a rise of fields, and beyond, a sweep of down.
+You have the feeling of being able to see quite far, which is
+misleading, as you soon find out if you walk.  It is true Devon
+country-hills, hollows, hedge-banks, lanes dipping down into the
+earth or going up like the sides of houses, coppices, cornfields, and
+little streams wherever there's a place for one; but the downs along
+the cliff, all gorse and ferns, are wild.  The combe ends in a sandy
+cove with black rock on one side, pinkish cliffs away to the headland
+on the other, and a coastguard station.  Just now, with the harvest
+coming on, everything looks its richest, the apples ripening, the
+trees almost too green.  It's very hot, still weather; the country
+and the sea seem to sleep in the sun.  In front of the farm are half-
+a-dozen pines that look as if they had stepped out of another land,
+but all round the back is orchard as lush, and gnarled, and orthodox
+as any one could wish.  The house, a long, white building with three
+levels of roof, and splashes of brown all over it, looks as if it
+might be growing down into the earth.  It was freshly thatched two
+years ago--and that's all the newness there is about it; they say the
+front door, oak, with iron knobs, is three hundred years old at
+least.  You can touch the ceilings with your hand.  The windows
+certainly might be larger--a heavenly old place, though, with a
+flavour of apples, smoke, sweetbriar, bacon, honeysuckle, and age,
+all over it.
+
+The owner is a man called John Ford, about seventy, and seventeen
+stone in weight--very big, on long legs, with a grey, stubbly beard,
+grey, watery eyes, short neck and purplish complexion; he is
+asthmatic, and has a very courteous, autocratic manner.  His clothes
+are made of Harris tweed--except on Sundays, when he puts on black--a
+seal ring, and a thick gold cable chain.  There's nothing mean or
+small about John Ford; I suspect him of a warm heart, but he doesn't
+let you know much about him.  He's a north-country man by birth, and
+has been out in New Zealand all his life.  This little Devonshire
+farm is all he has now.  He had a large "station" in the North
+Island, and was much looked up to, kept open house, did everything,
+as one would guess, in a narrow-minded, large-handed way.  He came to
+grief suddenly; I don't quite know how.  I believe his only son lost
+money on the turf, and then, unable to face his father, shot himself;
+if you had seen John Ford, you could imagine that.  His wife died,
+too, that year.  He paid up to the last penny, and came home, to live
+on this farm.  He told me the other night that he had only one
+relation in the world, his granddaughter, who lives here with him.
+Pasiance Voisey--old spelling for Patience, but they pronounce, it
+Pash-yence--is sitting out here with me at this moment on a sort of
+rustic loggia that opens into the orchard.  Her sleeves are rolled
+up, and she's stripping currants, ready for black currant tea.  Now
+and then she rests her elbows on the table, eats a berry, pouts her
+lips, and, begins again.  She has a round, little face; a long,
+slender body; cheeks like poppies; a bushy mass of black-brown hair,
+and dark-brown, almost black, eyes; her nose is snub; her lips quick,
+red, rather full; all her motions quick and soft.  She loves bright
+colours.  She's rather like a little cat; sometimes she seems all
+sympathy, then in a moment as hard as tortoise-shell.  She's all
+impulse; yet she doesn't like to show her feelings; I sometimes
+wonder whether she has any.  She plays the violin.
+
+It's queer to see these two together, queer and rather sad.  The old
+man has a fierce tenderness for her that strikes into the very roots
+of him.  I see him torn between it, and his cold north-country horror
+of his feelings; his life with her is an unconscious torture to him.
+She's a restless, chafing thing, demure enough one moment, then
+flashing out into mocking speeches or hard little laughs.  Yet she's
+fond of him in her fashion; I saw her kiss him once when he was
+asleep.  She obeys him generally--in a way as if she couldn't breathe
+while she was doing it.  She's had a queer sort of education--
+history, geography, elementary mathematics, and nothing else; never
+been to school; had a few lessons on the violin, but has taught
+herself most of what she knows.  She is well up in the lore of birds,
+flowers, and insects; has three cats, who follow her about; and is
+full of pranks.  The other day she called out to me, "I've something
+for you.  Hold out your hand and shut your eyes!"  It was a large,
+black slug!  She's the child of the old fellow's only daughter, who
+was sent home for schooling at Torquay, and made a runaway match with
+one Richard Voisey, a yeoman farmer, whom she met in the hunting-
+field.  John Ford was furious--his ancestors, it appears, used to
+lead ruffians on the Cumberland side of the Border--he looked on
+"Squire" Rick Voisey as a cut below him.  He was called "Squire," as
+far as I can make out, because he used to play cards every evening
+with a parson in the neighbourhood who went by the name of "Devil"
+Hawkins.  Not that the Voisey stock is to be despised.  They have had
+this farm since it was granted to one Richard Voysey by copy dated
+8th September, 13 Henry VIII.  Mrs. Hopgood, the wife of the bailiff-
+-a dear, quaint, serene old soul with cheeks like a rosy, withered
+apple, and an unbounded love of Pasiance--showed me the very
+document.
+
+"I kape it," she said.  "Mr. Ford be tu proud--but other folks be
+proud tu.  'Tis a pra-aper old fam'ly: all the women is Margery,
+Pasiance, or Mary; all the men's Richards an' Johns an' Rogers; old
+as they apple-trees."
+
+Rick Voisey was a rackety, hunting fellow, and "dipped" the old farm
+up to its thatched roof.  John Ford took his revenge by buying up the
+mortgages, foreclosing, and commanding his daughter and Voisey to go
+on living here rent free; this they dutifully did until they were
+both killed in a dog-cart accident, eight years ago.  Old Ford's
+financial smash came a year later, and since then he's lived here
+with Pasiance.  I fancy it's the cross in her blood that makes her so
+restless, and irresponsible: if she had been all a native she'd have
+been happy enough here, or all a stranger like John Ford himself, but
+the two strains struggling for mastery seem to give her no rest.
+You'll think this a far-fetched theory, but I believe it to be the
+true one.  She'll stand with lips pressed together, her arms folded
+tight across her narrow chest, staring as if she could see beyond the
+things round her; then something catches her attention, her eyes will
+grow laughing, soft, or scornful all in a minute! She's eighteen,
+perfectly fearless in a boat, but you can't get her to mount a horse-
+-a sore subject with her grandfather, who spends most of his day on a
+lean, half-bred pony, that carries him like a feather, for all his
+weight.
+
+They put me up here as a favour to Dan Treffry; there's an
+arrangement of L. s. d. with Mrs. Hopgood in the background.  They
+aren't at all well off; this is the largest farm about, but it
+doesn't bring them in much.  To look at John Ford, it seems
+incredible he should be short of money--he's too large.
+
+We have family prayers at eight, then, breakfast--after that freedom
+for writing or anything else till supper and evening prayers.  At
+midday one forages for oneself.  On Sundays, two miles to church
+twice, or you get into John Ford's black books....  Dan Treffry
+himself is staying at Kingswear.  He says he's made his pile; it
+suits him down here--like a sleep after years of being too wide-
+awake; he had a rough time in New Zealand, until that mine made his
+fortune.  You'd hardly remember him; he reminds me of his uncle, old
+Nicholas Treffry; the same slow way of speaking, with a hesitation,
+and a trick of repeating your name with everything he says; left-
+handed too, and the same slow twinkle in his eyes.  He has a dark,
+short beard, and red-brown cheeks; is a little bald on the temples,
+and a bit grey, but hard as iron.  He rides over nearly every day,
+attended by a black spaniel with a wonderful nose and a horror of
+petticoats.  He has told me lots of good stories of John Ford in the
+early squatter's times; his feats with horses live to this day; and
+he was through the Maori wars; as Dan says, "a man after Uncle Nic's
+own heart."
+
+They are very good friends, and respect each other; Dan has a great
+admiration for the old man, but the attraction is Pasiance.  He talks
+very little when she's in the room, but looks at her in a sidelong,
+wistful sort of way.  Pasiance's conduct to him would be cruel in any
+one else, but in her, one takes it with a pinch of salt.  Dan goes
+off, but turns up again as quiet and dogged as you please.
+
+Last night, for instance, we were sitting in the loggia after supper.
+Pasiance was fingering the strings of her violin, and suddenly Dan (a
+bold thing for him) asked her to play.
+
+"What!" she said, "before men?  No, thank you!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because I hate them."
+
+Down came John Ford's hand on the wicker table: "You forget yourself!
+Go to bed!"
+
+She gave Dan a look, and went; we could hear her playing in her
+bedroom; it sounded like a dance of spirits; and just when one
+thought she had finished, out it would break again like a burst of
+laughter.  Presently, John Ford begged our pardons ceremoniously, and
+stumped off indoors.  The violin ceased; we heard his voice growling
+at her; down he came again.  Just as he was settled in his chair
+there was a soft swish, and something dark came falling through the
+apple boughs.  The violin!  You should have seen his face!  Dan would
+have picked the violin up, but the old man stopped him.  Later, from
+my bedroom window, I saw John Ford come out and stand looking at the
+violin.  He raised his foot as if to stamp on it.  At last he picked
+it up, wiped it carefully, and took it in....
+
+My room is next to hers.  I kept hearing her laugh, a noise too as if
+she were dragging things about the room.  Then I fell asleep, but
+woke with a start, and went to the window for a breath of fresh air.
+Such a black, breathless night!  Nothing to be seen but the twisted,
+blacker branches; not the faintest stir of leaves, no sound but
+muffled grunting from the cowhouse, and now and then a faint sigh.  I
+had the queerest feeling of unrest and fear, the last thing to expect
+on such a night.  There is something here that's disturbing; a sort
+of suppressed struggle.  I've never in my life seen anything so
+irresponsible as this girl, or so uncompromising as the old man; I
+keep thinking of the way he wiped that violin.  It's just as if a
+spark would set everything in a blaze.  There's a menace of tragedy--
+or--perhaps it's only the heat, and too much of Mother Hopgood's
+crame....
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+"Tuesday.
+
+......I've made a new acquaintance.  I was lying in the orchard, and
+presently, not seeing me, he came along--a man of middle height, with
+a singularly good balance, and no lumber--rather old blue clothes, a
+flannel shirt, a dull red necktie, brown shoes, a cap with a leather
+peak pushed up on the forehead.  Face long and narrow, bronzed with a
+kind of pale burnt-in brownness; a good forehead.  A brown moustache,
+beard rather pointed, blackening about the cheeks; his chin not
+visible, but from the beard's growth must be big; mouth I should
+judge sensuous.  Nose straight and blunt; eyes grey, with an upward
+look, not exactly frank, because defiant; two parallel furrows down
+each cheek, one from the inner corner of the eye, one from the
+nostril; age perhaps thirty-five.  About the face, attitude,
+movements, something immensely vital, adaptable, daring, and
+unprincipled.
+
+He stood in front of the loggia, biting his fingers, a kind of
+nineteenth-century buccaneer, and I wondered what he was doing in
+this galley. They say you can tell a man of Kent or a Somersetshire
+man; certainly you can tell a Yorkshire man, and this fellow could
+only have been a man of Devon, one of the two main types found in
+this county.  He whistled; and out came Pasiance in a geranium-
+coloured dress, looking like some tall poppy--you know the slight
+droop of a poppy's head, and the way the wind sways its stem.... She
+is a human poppy, her fuzzy dark hair is like a poppy's lustreless
+black heart, she has a poppy's tantalising attraction and repulsion,
+something fatal, or rather fateful.  She came walking up to my new
+friend, then caught sight of me, and stopped dead.
+
+"That," she said to me, "is Zachary Pearse.  This," she said to him,
+"is our lodger."  She said it with a wonderful soft malice.  She
+wanted to scratch me, and she scratched.  Half an hour later I was in
+the yard, when up came this fellow Pearse.
+
+"Glad to know you," he said, looking thoughtfully at the pigs.
+
+"You're a writer, aren't you?"
+
+"A sort of one," I said.
+
+"If by any chance," he said suddenly, "you're looking for a job, I
+could put something in your way.  Walk down to the beach with me, and
+I'll tell you; my boat's at anchor, smartest little craft in these
+parts."
+
+It was very hot, and I had no desire whatever to go down to the
+beach--I went, all the same.  We had not gone far when John Ford and
+Dan Treffry came into the lane.  Our friend seemed a little
+disconcerted, but soon recovered himself.  We met in the middle of
+the lane, where there was hardly room to pass.  John Ford, who looked
+very haughty, put on his pince-nez and stared at Pearse.
+
+"Good-day!" said Pearse; "fine weather!  I've been up to ask Pasiance
+to come for a sail.  Wednesday we thought, weather permitting; this
+gentleman's coming.  Perhaps you'll come too, Mr. Treffry.  You've
+never seen my place.  I'll give you lunch, and show you my father.
+He's worth a couple of hours' sail any day."  It was said in such an
+odd way that one couldn't resent his impudence.  John Ford was seized
+with a fit of wheezing, and seemed on the eve of an explosion; he
+glanced at me, and checked himself.
+
+"You're very good," he said icily; "my granddaughter has other things
+to do.  You, gentlemen, will please yourselves"; and, with a very
+slight bow, he went stumping on to the house.  Dan looked at me, and
+I looked at him.
+
+"You'll come?" said Pearse, rather wistfully.  Dan stammered: "Thank
+you, Mr. Pearse; I'm a better man on a horse than in a boat, but--
+thank you."  Cornered in this way, he's a shy, soft-hearted being.
+Pearse smiled his thanks.  "Wednesday, then, at ten o'clock; you
+shan't regret it."
+
+"Pertinacious beggar!" I heard Dan mutter in his beard; and found
+myself marching down the lane again by Pearse's side.  I asked him
+what he was good enough to mean by saying I was coming, without
+having asked me.  He answered, unabashed:
+
+"You see, I'm not friends with the old man; but I knew he'd not be
+impolite to you, so I took the liberty."
+
+He has certainly a knack of turning one's anger to curiosity.  We
+were down in the combe now; the tide was running out, and the sand
+all little, wet, shining ridges.  About a quarter of a mile out lay a
+cutter, with her tan sail half down, swinging to the swell.  The
+sunlight was making the pink cliffs glow in the most wonderful way;
+and shifting in bright patches over the sea like moving shoals of
+goldfish.  Pearse perched himself on his dinghy, and looked out under
+his hand.  He seemed lost in admiration.
+
+"If we could only net some of those spangles," he said, "an' make
+gold of 'em!  No more work then."
+
+"It's a big job I've got on," he said presently; "I'll tell you about
+it on Wednesday. I want a journalist."
+
+"But I don't write for the papers," I said; "I do other sort of work.
+My game is archaeology."
+
+"It doesn't matter," he said, "the more imagination the better.  It'd
+be a thundering good thing for you."
+
+His assurance was amazing, but it was past supper-time, and hunger
+getting the better of my curiosity, I bade him good-night. When I
+looked back, he was still there, on the edge of his boat, gazing at
+the sea.  A queer sort of bird altogether, but attractive somehow.
+
+Nobody mentioned him that evening; but once old Ford, after staring a
+long time at Pasiance, muttered a propos of nothing, "Undutiful
+children!"  She was softer than usual; listening quietly to our talk,
+and smiling when spoken to.  At bedtime she went up to her grand-
+father, without waiting for the usual command, "Come and kiss me,
+child."
+
+Dan did not stay to supper, and he has not been here since.  This
+morning I asked Mother Hopgood who Zachary Pearse was.  She's a true
+Devonian; if there's anything she hates, it is to be committed to a
+definite statement.  She ambled round her answer, and at last told me
+that he was "son of old Cap'en Jan Pearse to Black Mill.  'Tes an old
+family to Dartymouth an' Plymouth," she went on in a communicative
+outburst.  "They du say Francis Drake tuke five o' they Pearses with
+'en to fight the Spaniards.  At least that's what I've heard Mr.
+Zachary zay; but Ha-apgood can tell yu."  Poor Hopgood, the amount of
+information she saddles him with in the course of the day!  Having
+given me thus to understand that she had run dry, she at once went
+on:
+
+"Cap'en Jan Pearse made a dale of ventures.  He's old now--they du
+say nigh an 'undred.  Ha-apgood can tell yu."
+
+"But the son, Mrs. Hopgood?"
+
+Her eyes twinkled with sudden shrewdness: She hugged herself
+placidly.
+
+"An' what would yu take for dinner to-day?  There's duck; or yu might
+like 'toad in the hole,' with an apple tart; or then, there's--Well!
+we'll see what we can du like."  And off she went, without waiting
+for my answer.
+
+To-morrow is Wednesday.  I shan't be sorry to get another look at
+this fellow Pearse....
+
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+"Friday, 29th July.
+
+.......Why do you ask me so many questions, and egg me on to write
+about these people instead of minding my business?  If you really
+want to hear, I'll tell you of Wednesday's doings.
+
+It was a splendid morning; and Dan turned up, to my surprise--though
+I might have known that when he says a thing, he does it.  John Ford
+came out to shake hands with him, then, remembering why he had come,
+breathed loudly, said nothing, and went in again.  Nothing was to be
+seen of Pasiance, and we went down to the beach together.
+
+"I don't like this fellow Pearse, George," Dan said to me on the way;
+"I was fool enough to say I'd go, and so I must, but what's he after?
+Not the man to do things without a reason, mind you."
+
+I remarked that we should soon know.
+
+"I'm not so sure--queer beggar; I never look at him without thinking
+of a pirate."
+
+The cutter lay in the cove as if she had never moved.  There too was
+Zachary Pearse seated on the edge of his dinghy.
+
+"A five-knot breeze," he said, "I'll run you down in a couple of
+hours."  He made no inquiry about Pasiance, but put us into his
+cockleshell and pulled for the cutter.  A lantern-Jawed fellow, named
+Prawle, with a spiky, prominent beard, long, clean-shaven upper lip,
+and tanned complexion--a regular hard-weather bird--received us.
+
+The cutter was beautifully clean; built for a Brixham trawler, she
+still had her number--DH 113--uneffaced.  We dived into a sort of
+cabin, airy, but dark, fitted with two bunks and a small table, on
+which stood some bottles of stout; there were lockers, too, and pegs
+for clothes.  Prawle, who showed us round, seemed very proud of a
+steam contrivance for hoisting sails.  It was some minutes before we
+came on deck again; and there, in the dinghy, being pulled towards
+the cutter, sat Pasiance.
+
+"If I'd known this," stammered Dan, getting red, "I wouldn't have
+come."  She had outwitted us, and there was nothing to be done.
+
+It was a very pleasant sail.  The breeze was light from the south-
+east, the sun warm, the air soft.  Presently Pasiance began singing:
+
+"Columbus is dead and laid in his grave,
+Oh! heigh-ho! and laid in his grave;
+Over his head the apple-trees wave
+Oh! heigh-ho! the apple-trees wave....
+
+"The apples are ripe and ready to fall,
+Oh! heigh-ho! and ready to fall;
+There came an old woman and gathered them all,
+Oh! heigh-ho! and gathered them all....
+
+"The apples are gathered, and laid on the shelf,
+Oh! heigh-ho! and laid on the shelf;
+If you want any more, you must sing for yourself,
+Oh! heigh-ho! and sing for yourself."
+
+
+Her small, high voice came to us in trills and spurts, as the wind
+let it, like the singing of a skylark lost in the sky.  Pearse went
+up to her and whispered something.  I caught a glimpse of her face
+like a startled wild creature's; shrinking, tossing her hair,
+laughing, all in the same breath.  She wouldn't sing again, but
+crouched in the bows with her chin on her hands, and the sun
+falling on one cheek, round, velvety, red as a peach....
+
+We passed Dartmouth, and half an hour later put into a little wooded
+bay.  On a low reddish cliff was a house hedged round by pine-trees.
+A bit of broken jetty ran out from the bottom of the cliff.  We
+hooked on to this, and landed.  An ancient, fish-like man came
+slouching down and took charge of the cutter.  Pearse led us towards
+the house, Pasiance following mortally shy all of a sudden.
+
+The house had a dark, overhanging thatch of the rush reeds that grow
+in the marshes hereabouts; I remember nothing else remarkable.  It
+was neither old, nor new; neither beautiful, nor exactly ugly;
+neither clean, nor entirely squalid; it perched there with all its
+windows over the sea, turning its back contemptuously on the land.
+
+Seated in a kind of porch, beside an immense telescope, was a very
+old man in a panama hat, with a rattan cane.  His pure-white beard
+and moustache, and almost black eyebrows, gave a very singular,
+piercing look to his little, restless, dark-grey eyes; all over his
+mahogany cheeks and neck was a network of fine wrinkles.  He sat
+quite upright, in the full sun, hardly blinking.
+
+"Dad!" said Zachary, "this is Pasiance Voisey."  The old man turned
+his eyes on her and muttered, "How do you do, ma'am?" then took no
+further notice.  And Pasiance, who seemed to resent this, soon
+slipped away and went wandering about amongst the pines.  An old
+woman brought some plates and bottles and laid them casually on a
+table; and we sat round the figure of old Captain Pearse without a
+word, as if we were all under a spell.
+
+Before lunch there was a little scene between Zachary Pearse and Dan,
+as to which of them should summon Pasiance.  It ended in both going,
+and coming back without her.  She did not want any lunch, would stay
+where she was amongst the pines.
+
+For lunch we had chops, wood-pigeons, mushrooms, and mulberry
+preserve, and drank wonderful Madeira out of common wine-glasses.  I
+asked the old man where he got it; he gave me a queer look, and
+answered with a little bow:
+
+"Stood me in tu shillin' the bottle, an' the country got nothing out
+of it, sir.  In the early Thirties; tu shillin' the bottle; there's
+no such wine nowadays and," he added, looking at Zachary, "no such
+men."
+
+Zachary smiled and said: "You did nothing so big, dad, as what I'm
+after, now!"
+
+The old man's eyes had a sort of disdain in them.
+
+"You're going far, then, in the Pied Witch, Zack?"
+
+"I am," said Zachary.
+
+"And where might yu be goin' in that old trampin' smut factory?"
+
+"Morocco."
+
+"Heu!" said the old man, "there's nothing there; I know that coast,
+as I know the back o' my hand."  He stretched out a hand covered with
+veins and hair.
+
+Zachary began suddenly to pour out a flood of words:
+
+"Below Mogador--a fellow there--friend of mine--two years ago now.
+Concessions--trade-gunpowder--cruisers--feuds--money--chiefs--Gatling
+guns--Sultan--rifles--rebellion--gold."  He detailed a reckless,
+sordid, bold scheme, which, on the pivot of a trading venture, was
+intended to spin a whole wheel of political convulsions.
+
+"They'll never let you get there," said old Pearse.
+
+"Won't they?" returned Zachary.  "Oh yes, they will, an' when I
+leave, there'll be another dynasty, and I'll be a rich man."
+
+"Yu'll never leave," answered the old man.
+
+Zachary took out a sheet of paper covered with figures.  He had
+worked the whole thing out.  So much--equipment, so much--trade, so
+much--concessions, so much--emergencies.  "My last mag!" he ended, "a
+thousand short; the ship's ready, and if I'm not there within a month
+my chance is as good as gone."
+
+This was the pith of his confidences--an appeal for money, and we all
+looked as men will when that crops up.
+
+"Mad!"  muttered the old man, looking at the sea.
+
+"No," said Zachary.  That one word was more eloquent than all the
+rest of his words put together.  This fellow is no visionary.  His
+scheme may be daring, and unprincipled, but--he knows very well what
+he's about.
+
+"Well!" said old Pearse, "you shall have five 'undred of my money, if
+it's only to learn what yu're made of.  Wheel me in!"  Zachary
+wheeled him into the house, but soon came back.
+
+"The old man's cheque for five hundred pounds!" he said, holding it
+up.  "Mr. Treffry, give me another, and you shall have a third of the
+profits."
+
+I expected Dan to give a point-blank refusal.  But he only asked:
+
+"Would that clear you for starting?"
+
+"With that," said Zachary, "I can get to sea in a fortnight."
+
+"Good!" Dan said slowly.  "Give me a written promise!  To sea in
+fourteen days and my fair share on the five hundred pounds--no more--
+no less."
+
+Again I thought Pearse would have jumped at this, but he leaned his
+chin on his hand, and looked at Dan, and Dan looked at him.  While
+they were staring at each other like this, Pasiance came up with a
+kitten.
+
+"See!" she said, "isn't it a darling?"  The kitten crawled and clawed
+its way up behind her neck.  I saw both men's eyes as they looked at
+Pasiance, and suddenly understood what they were at.  The kitten
+rubbed itself against Pasiance's cheek, overbalanced, and fell,
+clawing, down her dress.  She caught it up and walked away.  Some
+one, I don't know which of us, sighed, and Pearse cried "Done!"
+
+The bargain had been driven.
+
+"Good-bye, Mr. Pearse," said Dan; "I guess that's all I'm wanted
+for.  I'll find my pony waiting in the village.  George, you'll see
+Pasiance home?"
+
+We heard the hoofs of his pony galloping down the road; Pearse
+suddenly excused himself, and disappeared.
+
+This venture of his may sound romantic and absurd, but it's matter-
+of-fact enough.  He's after L. s. d.!  Shades of Drake, Raleigh,
+Hawkins, Oxenham!  The worm of suspicion gnaws at the rose of
+romance.  What if those fellows, too, were only after L. s. d....?
+
+I strolled into the pine-wood.  The earth there was covered like a
+bee's body with black and gold stripes; there was the blue sea below,
+and white, sleepy clouds, and bumble-bees booming above the heather;
+it was all softness, a summer's day in Devon.  Suddenly I came on
+Pearse standing at the edge of the cliff with Pasiance sitting in a
+little hollow below, looking up at him.  I heard him say:
+
+"Pasiance--Pasiance!" The sound of his voice, and the sight of her
+soft, wondering face made me furious.  What business has she with
+love, at her age?  What business have they with each other?
+
+He told me presently that she had started off for home, and drove me
+to the ferry, behind an old grey pony.  On the way he came back to
+his offer of the other day.
+
+"Come with me," he said.  "It doesn't do to neglect the Press; you
+can see the possibilities.  It's one of the few countries left.  If I
+once get this business started you don't know where it's going to
+stop.  You'd have free passage everywhere, and whatever you like in
+reason."
+
+I answered as rudely as I could--but by no means as rudely as I
+wanted--that his scheme was mad.  As a matter of fact, it's much too
+sane for me; for, whatever the body of a scheme, its soul is the
+fibre of the schemer.
+
+"Think of it," he urged, as if he could see into me.  "You can make
+what you like of it.  Press paragraphs, of course.  But that's
+mechanical; why, even I could do it, if I had time.  As for the rest,
+you'll be as free--as free as a man."
+
+There, in five words of one syllable, is the kernel of this fellow
+Pearse--"As free as a man!"  No rule, no law, not even the mysterious
+shackles that bind men to their own self-respects!  "As free as a
+man!"  No ideals; no principles; no fixed star for his worship; no
+coil he can't slide out of!  But the fellow has the tenacity of one
+of the old Devon mastiffs, too.  He wouldn't take "No" for an answer.
+
+"Think of it," he said; "any day will do--I've got a fortnight....
+Look! there she is!  "I thought that he meant Pasiance; but it was an
+old steamer, sluggish and black in the blazing sun of mid-stream,
+with a yellow-and-white funnel, and no sign of life on her decks.
+
+"That's her--the Pied Witch! Do her twelve knots; you wouldn't think
+it!  Well! good-evening!  You'd better come.  A word to me at any
+time.  I'm going aboard now."
+
+As I was being ferried across I saw him lolling in the stern-sheets
+of a little boat, the sun crowning his straw hat with glory.
+
+I came on Pasiance, about a mile up the road, sitting in the hedge.
+We walked on together between the banks--Devonshire banks, as high as
+houses, thick with ivy and ferns, bramble and hazel boughs, and
+honeysuckle.
+
+"Do you believe in a God?" she said suddenly.
+
+"Grandfather's God is simply awful.  When I'm playing the fiddle, I
+can feel God; but grandfather's is such a stuffy God--you know what I
+mean: the sea, the wind, the trees, colours too--they make one feel.
+But I don't believe that life was meant to 'be good' in.  Isn't there
+anything better than being good?  When I'm 'good,' I simply feel
+wicked."  She reached up, caught a flower from the hedge, and slowly
+tore its petals.
+
+"What would you do," she muttered, "if you wanted a thing, but were
+afraid of it?  But I suppose you're never afraid!" she added, mocking
+me.  I admitted that I was sometimes afraid, and often afraid of
+being afraid.
+
+"That's nice!  I'm not afraid of illness, nor of grandfather, nor of
+his God; but--I want to be free.  If you want a thing badly, you're
+afraid about it."
+
+I thought of Zachary Pearse's words, "free as a man."
+
+"Why are you looking at me like that?" she said.
+
+I stammered: "What do you mean by freedom?"
+
+"Do you know what I shall do to-night?" she answered.  "Get out of my
+window by the apple-tree, and go to the woods, and play!"
+
+We were going down a steep lane, along the side of a wood, where
+there's always a smell of sappy leaves, and the breath of the cows
+that come close to the hedge to get the shade.
+
+There was a cottage in the bottom, and a small boy sat outside
+playing with a heap of dust.
+
+"Hallo, Johnny!" said Pasiance.  "Hold your leg out and show this man
+your bad place!"  The small boy undid a bandage round his bare and
+dirty little leg, and proudly revealed a sore.
+
+"Isn't it nasty?" cried Pasiance ruefully, tying up the bandage
+again; "poor little feller!  Johnny, see what I've brought you!"  She
+produced from her pocket a stick of chocolate, the semblance of a
+soldier made of sealing-wax and worsted, and a crooked sixpence.
+
+It was a new glimpse of her.  All the way home she was telling me the
+story of little Johnny's family; when she came to his mother's death,
+she burst out: "A beastly shame, wasn't it, and they're so poor; it
+might just as well have been somebody else.  I like poor people, but
+I hate rich ones--stuck-up beasts."
+
+Mrs. Hopgood was looking over the gate, with her cap on one side, and
+one of Pasiance's cats rubbing itself against her skirts.  At the
+sight of us she hugged herself.
+
+"Where's grandfather?" asked Pasiance.  The old lady shook her head.
+
+"Is it a row?"  Mrs. Hopgood wriggled, and wriggled, and out came:
+
+"Did you get yure tay, my pretty?  No?  Well, that's a pity; yu'll be
+falin' low-like."
+
+Pasiance tossed her head, snatched up the cat, and ran indoors.  I
+remained staring at Mrs. Hopgood.
+
+"Dear-dear," she clucked," poor lamb.  So to spake it's--" and she
+blurted out suddenly, "chuckin' full of wra-ath, he is.  Well,
+there!"
+
+My courage failed that evening.  I spent it at the coastguard
+station, where they gave me bread and cheese and some awful cider.  I
+passed the kitchen as I came back.  A fire was still burning there,
+and two figures, misty in the darkness, flitted about with stealthy
+laughter like spirits afraid of being detected in a carnal-meal.
+They were Pasiance and Mrs. Hopgood; and so charming was the smell of
+eggs and bacon, and they had such an air of tender enjoyment of this
+dark revel, that I stifled many pangs, as I crept hungry up to bed.
+
+In the middle of the night I woke and heard what I thought was
+screaming; then it sounded like wind in trees, then like the distant
+shaking of a tambourine, with the high singing of a human voice.
+Suddenly it stopped--two long notes came wailing out like sobs--then
+utter stillness; and though I listened for an hour or more there was
+no other sound ....
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+"4th August.
+
+......For three days after I wrote last, nothing at all happened
+here.  I spent the mornings on the cliff reading, and watching the
+sun-sparks raining on the sea.  It's grand up there with the gorse
+all round, the gulls basking on the rocks, the partridges calling in
+the corn, and now and then a young hawk overhead.  The afternoons I
+spent out in the orchard.  The usual routine goes on at the farm all
+the time--cow-milking, bread-baking, John Ford riding in and out,
+Pasiance in her garden stripping lavender, talking to the farm hands;
+and the smell of clover, and cows and hay; the sound of hens and pigs
+and pigeons, the soft drawl of voices, the dull thud of the farm
+carts; and day by day the apples getting redder.  Then, last Monday,
+Pasiance was away from sunrise till sunset--nobody saw her go--nobody
+knew where she had gone.  It was a wonderful, strange day, a sky of
+silver-grey and blue, with a drift of wind-clouds, all the trees
+sighing a little, the sea heaving in a long, low swell, the animals
+restless, the birds silent, except the gulls with their old man's
+laughter and kitten's mewing.
+
+A something wild was in the air; it seemed to sweep across the downs
+and combe, into the very house, like a passionate tune that comes
+drifting to your ears when you're sleepy.  But who would have thought
+the absence of that girl for a few hours could have wrought such
+havoc!  We were like uneasy spirits; Mrs. Hopgood's apple cheeks
+seemed positively to wither before one's eyes.  I came across a
+dairymaid and farm hand discussing it stolidly with very downcast
+faces.  Even Hopgood, a hard-bitten fellow with immense shoulders,
+forgot his imperturbability so far as to harness his horse, and
+depart on what he assured me was "just a wild-guse chaace."  It was
+long before John Ford gave signs of noticing that anything was wrong,
+but late in the afternoon I found him sitting with his hands on his
+knees, staring straight before him.  He rose heavily when he saw me,
+and stalked out.  In the evening, as I was starting for the
+coastguard station to ask for help to search the cliff, Pasiance
+appeared, walking as if she could hardly drag one leg after the
+other.  Her cheeks were crimson; she was biting her lips to keep
+tears of sheer fatigue out of her eyes.  She passed me in the doorway
+without a word.  The anxiety he had gone through seemed to forbid the
+old man from speaking.  He just came forward, took her face in his
+hands, gave it a great kiss, and walked away.  Pasiance dropped on
+the floor in the dark passage, and buried her face on her arms.
+"Leave me alone!" was all she would say.  After a bit she dragged
+herself upstairs.  Presently Mrs. Hopgood came to me.
+
+"Not a word out of her--an' not a bite will she ate, an' I had a pie
+all ready--scrumptious.  The good Lord knows the truth--she asked for
+brandy; have you any brandy, sir?  Ha-apgood'e don't drink it, an'
+Mister Ford 'e don't allaow for anything but caowslip wine."
+
+I had whisky.
+
+The good soul seized the flask, and went off hugging it.  She
+returned it to me half empty.
+
+"Lapped it like a kitten laps milk.  I misdaoubt it's straong, poor
+lamb, it lusened 'er tongue praaperly.  'I've a-done it,' she says to
+me, 'Mums-I've a-done it,' an' she laughed like a mad thing; and
+then, sir, she cried, an' kissed me, an' pusshed me thru the door.
+Gude Lard! What is 't she's a-done...?"
+
+It rained all the next day and the day after.  About five o'clock
+yesterday the rain ceased; I started off to Kingswear on Hopgood's
+nag to see Dan Treffry.  Every tree, bramble, and fern in the lanes
+was dripping water; and every bird singing from the bottom of his
+heart.  I thought of Pasiance all the time.  Her absence that day was
+still a mystery; one never ceased asking oneself what she had done.
+There are people who never grow up--they have no right to do things.
+Actions have consequences--and children have no business with
+consequences.
+
+Dan was out.  I had supper at the hotel, and rode slowly home.  In
+the twilight stretches of the road, where I could touch either bank
+of the lane with my whip, I thought of nothing but Pasiance and her
+grandfather; there was something in the half light suited to wonder
+and uncertainty.  It had fallen dark before I rode into the straw-
+yard.  Two young bullocks snuffled at me, a sleepy hen got up and ran
+off with a tremendous shrieking.  I stabled the horse, and walked
+round to the back.  It was pitch black under the apple-trees, and the
+windows were all darkened.  I stood there a little, everything
+smelled so delicious after the rain; suddenly I had the uncomfortable
+feeling that I was being watched.  Have you ever felt like that on a
+dark night?  I called out at last: "Is any one there?"  Not a sound!
+I walked to the gate-nothing!  The trees still dripped with tiny,
+soft, hissing sounds, but that was all.  I slipped round to the
+front, went in, barricaded the door, and groped up to bed.  But I
+couldn't sleep.  I lay awake a long while; dozed at last, and woke
+with a jump.  A stealthy murmur of smothered voices was going on
+quite close somewhere.  It stopped.  A minute passed; suddenly came
+the soft thud as of something falling.  I sprang out of bed and
+rushed to the window.  Nothing--but in the distance something that
+sounded like footsteps.  An owl hooted; then clear as crystal, but
+quite low, I heard Pasiance singing in her room:
+
+"The apples are ripe and ready to fall.
+Oh! heigh-ho! and ready to fall."
+
+I ran to her door and knocked.
+
+"What is it?" she cried.
+
+"Is anything the matter?"
+
+"Matter?"
+
+"Is anything the matter?"
+
+"Ha-ha-ha-ha!  Good-night!" then quite low, I heard her catch her
+breath, hard, sharply.  No other answer, no other sound.
+
+I went to bed and lay awake for hours....
+
+This evening Dan came; during supper he handed Pasiance a roll of
+music; he had got it in Torquay.  The shopman, he said, had told him
+that it was a "corker."
+
+It was Bach's "Chaconne."  You should have seen her eyes shine, her
+fingers actually tremble while she turned over the pages.  Seems odd
+to think of her worshipping at the shrine of Bach as odd as to think
+of a wild colt running of its free will into the shafts; but that's
+just it with her you can never tell.  "Heavenly!" she kept saying.
+
+John Ford put down his knife and fork.
+
+"Heathenish stuff!" he muttered, and suddenly thundered out,
+"Pasiance!"
+
+She looked up with a start, threw the music from her, and resumed her
+place.
+
+During evening prayers, which follow every night immediately on food,
+her face was a study of mutiny.  She went to bed early.  It was
+rather late when we broke up--for once old Ford had been talking of
+his squatter's life.  As we came out, Dan held up his hand.  A dog
+was barking.  "It's Lass," he said.  "She'll wake Pasiance."
+
+The spaniel yelped furiously.  Dan ran out to stop her.  He was soon
+back.
+
+"Somebody's been in the orchard, and gone off down to the cove."  He
+ran on down the path.  I, too, ran, horribly uneasy.  In front,
+through the darkness, came the spaniel's bark; the lights of the
+coastguard station faintly showed.  I was first on the beach; the dog
+came to me at once, her tail almost in her mouth from apology.  There
+was the sound of oars working in rowlocks; nothing visible but the
+feathery edges of the waves.  Dan said behind, "No use!  He's gone."
+His voice sounded hoarse, like that of a man choking with passion.
+
+"George," he stammered, "it's that blackguard.  I wish I'd put a
+bullet in him."  Suddenly a light burned up in the darkness on the
+sea, seemed to swing gently, and vanished.  Without another word we
+went back up the hill.  John Ford stood at the gate motionless,
+indifferent--nothing had dawned on him as yet.  I whispered to Dan,
+"Let it alone!"
+
+"No," he said, "I'm going to show you."  He struck a match, and
+slowly hunted the footsteps in the wet grass of the orchard.  "Look--
+here!"
+
+He stopped under Pasiance's window and swayed the match over the
+ground.  Clear as daylight were the marks of some one who had jumped
+or fallen.  Dan held the match over his head.
+
+"And look there!" he said.  The bough of an apple-tree below the
+window was broken.  He blew the match out.
+
+I could see the whites of his eyes, like an angry animal's.
+
+"Drop it, Dan!" I said.
+
+He turned on his heel suddenly, and stammered out, "You're right."
+
+But he had turned into John Ford's arms.
+
+The old man stood there like some great force, darker than the
+darkness, staring up at the window, as though stupefied.  We had not
+a word to say.  He seemed unconscious of our presence.  He turned
+round, and left us standing there.
+
+"Follow him!" said Dan.  "Follow him--by God! it's not safe."
+
+We followed.  Bending, and treading heavily, he went upstairs.  He
+struck a blow on Pasiance's door.  "Let me in!" he said.  I drew Dan
+into my bedroom.  The key was slowly turned, her door was flung open,
+and there she stood in her dressing-gown, a candle in her hand, her
+face crimson, and oh! so young, with its short, crisp hair and round
+cheeks.  The old man--like a giant in front of her--raised his hands,
+and laid them on her shoulders.
+
+"What's this?  You--you've had a man in your room?"
+
+Her eyes did not drop.
+
+"Yes," she said.  Dan gave a groan.
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Zachary Pearse," she answered in a voice like a bell.
+
+He gave her one awful shake, dropped his hands, then raised them as
+though to strike her.  She looked him in the eyes; his hands dropped,
+and he too groaned.  As far as I could see, her face never moved.
+
+"I'm married to him," she said, "d' you hear?  Married to him.  Go
+out of my room!"  She dropped the candle on the floor at his feet,
+and slammed the door in his face.  The old man stood for a minute as
+though stunned, then groped his way downstairs.
+
+"Dan," I said, "is it true?"
+
+"Ah!" he answered, "it's true; didn't you hear her?"
+
+I was glad I couldn't see his face.
+
+"That ends it," he said at last; "there's the old man to think of."
+
+"What will he do?"
+
+"Go to the fellow this very night."  He seemed to have no doubt.
+Trust one man of action to know another.
+
+I muttered something about being an outsider--wondered if there was
+anything I could do to help.
+
+"Well," he said slowly, "I don't know that I'm anything but an
+outsider now; but I'll go along with him, if he'll have me."
+
+He went downstairs.  A few minutes later they rode out from the
+straw-yard.  I watched them past the line of hayricks, into the
+blacker shadows of the pines, then the tramp of hoofs began to fail
+in the darkness, and at last died away.
+
+I've been sitting here in my bedroom writing to you ever since, till
+my candle's almost gone.  I keep thinking what the end of it is to
+be; and reproaching myself for doing nothing.  And yet, what could I
+have done?  I'm sorry for her--sorrier than I can say.  The night is
+so quiet--I haven't heard a sound; is she asleep, awake, crying,
+triumphant?
+
+It's four o'clock; I've been asleep.
+
+They're back.  Dan is lying on my bed.  I'll try and tell you his
+story as near as I can, in his own words.
+
+"We rode," he said, "round the upper way, keeping out of the lanes,
+and got to Kingswear by half-past eleven.  The horse-ferry had
+stopped running, and we had a job to find any one to put us over.  We
+hired the fellow to wait for us, and took a carriage at the 'Castle.'
+Before we got to Black Mill it was nearly one, pitch-dark.  With the
+breeze from the southeast, I made out he should have been in an hour
+or more.  The old man had never spoken to me once: and before we got
+there I had begun to hope we shouldn't find the fellow after all.  We
+made the driver pull up in the road, and walked round and round,
+trying to find the door.  Then some one cried, 'Who are you ?'
+
+"'John Ford.'
+
+"'What do you want?' It was old Pearse.
+
+"'To see Zachary Pearse.'
+
+"The long window out of the porch where we sat the other day was
+open, and in we went.  There was a door at the end of the room, and a
+light coming through.  John Ford went towards it; I stayed out in the
+dark.
+
+"'Who's that with you?'
+
+"'Mr. Treffry.'
+
+"'Let him come in!' I went in.  The old fellow was in bed, quite
+still on his pillows, a candle by his side; to look at him you'd
+think nothing of him but his eyes were alive.  It was queer being
+there with those two old men!"
+
+Dan paused, seemed to listen, then went on doggedly.
+
+"'Sit down, gentleman,' said old Pearse.  'What may you want to see
+my son for?'  John Ford begged his pardon, he had something to say,
+he said, that wouldn't wait.
+
+"They were very polite to one another," muttered Dan ....
+
+"'Will you leave your message with me?' said Pearse.
+
+"'What I have to say to your son is private.'
+
+"'I'm his father.'
+
+"'I'm my girl's grandfather; and her only stand-by.'
+
+"'Ah!' muttered old Pearse, 'Rick Voisey's daughter?'
+
+"'I mean to see your son.'
+
+"Old Pearse smiled.  Queer smile he's got, sort of sneering sweet.
+
+"'You can never tell where Zack may be,' he said.  'You think I want
+to shield him.  You're wrong; Zack can take care of himself.'
+
+"'Your son's here!' said John Ford.  'I know.'  Old Pearse gave us a
+very queer look.
+
+"'You come into my house like thieves in the night,' he said, 'and
+give me the lie, do you?'
+
+"'Your son came to my child's room like a thief in the night; it's
+for that I want to see him,' and then," said Dan, "there was a long
+silence.  At last Pearse said:
+
+"'I don't understand; has he played the blackguard?'
+
+"John Ford answered, 'He's married her, or, before God, I'd kill
+him.'
+
+"Old Pearse seemed to think this over, never moving on his pillows.
+'You don't know Zack,' he said; 'I'm sorry for you, and I'm sorry for
+Rick Voisey's daughter; but you don't know Zack.'
+
+"'Sorry!' groaned out John Ford; 'he's stolen my child, and I'll
+punish him.'
+
+"'Punish!' cried old Pearse, 'we don't take punishment, not in my
+family.'
+
+"'Captain Jan Pearse, as sure as I stand here, you and your breed
+will get your punishment of God.'  Old Pearse smiled.
+
+"'Mr. John Ford, that's as may be; but sure as I lie here we won't
+take it of you.  You can't punish unless you make to feel, and that
+you can't du.'"
+
+And that is truth!
+
+Dan went on again:
+
+"'You won't tell me where your son is!' but old Pearse never blinked.
+
+"'I won't,' he said, 'and now you may get out.  I lie here an old man
+alone, with no use to my legs, night on night, an' the house open;
+any rapscallion could get in; d' ye think I'm afraid of you?'
+
+"We were beat; and walked out without a word.  But that old man; I've
+thought of him a lot--ninety-two, and lying there.  Whatever he's
+been, and they tell you rum things of him, whatever his son may be,
+he's a man.  It's not what he said, nor that there was anything to be
+afraid of just then, but somehow it's the idea of the old chap lying
+there.  I don't ever wish to see a better plucked one...."
+
+We sat silent after that; out of doors the light began to stir among
+the leaves.  There were all kinds of rustling sounds, as if the world
+were turning over in bed.
+
+Suddenly Dan said:
+
+"He's cheated me.  I paid him to clear out and leave her alone.
+D' you think she's asleep?"  He's made no appeal for sympathy, he'd
+take pity for an insult; but he feels it badly.
+
+"I'm tired as a cat," he said at last, and went to sleep on my bed.
+
+It's broad daylight now; I too am tired as a cat....
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+"Saturday, 6th August.
+
+.......I take up my tale where I left off yesterday....  Dan and I
+started as soon as we could get Mrs. Hopgood to give us coffee.  The
+old lady was more tentative, more undecided, more pouncing, than I
+had ever seen her.  She was manifestly uneasy: Ha-apgood--who "don't
+slape "don't he, if snores are any criterion--had called out in the
+night, "Hark to th' 'arses' 'oofs!"  Had we heard them?  And where
+might we be going then?  'Twas very earrly to start, an' no
+breakfast.  Haapgood had said it was goin' to shaowerr.  Miss
+Pasiance was not to 'er violin yet, an' Mister Ford 'e kept 'is room.
+Was it?--would there be--?  "Well, an' therr's an 'arvest bug; 'tis
+some earrly for they!"  Wonderful how she pounces on all such
+creatures, when I can't even see them.  She pressed it absently
+between finger and thumb, and began manoeuvring round another way.
+Long before she had reached her point, we had gulped down our coffee,
+and departed.  But as we rode out she came at a run, holding her
+skirts high with either hand, raised her old eyes bright and anxious
+in their setting of fine wrinkles, and said:
+
+"'Tidden sorrow for her?"
+
+A shrug of the shoulders was all the answer she got.  We rode by the
+lanes; through sloping farmyards, all mud and pigs, and dirty straw,
+and farmers with clean-shaven upper lips and whiskers under the chin;
+past fields of corn, where larks were singing.  Up or down, we didn't
+draw rein till we came to Dan's hotel.
+
+There was the river gleaming before us under a rainbow mist that
+hallowed every shape.  There seemed affinity between the earth and
+the sky.  I've never seen that particular soft unity out of Devon.
+And every ship, however black or modern, on those pale waters, had
+the look of a dream ship.  The tall green woods, the red earth, the
+white houses, were all melted into one opal haze.  It was raining,
+but the sun was shining behind.  Gulls swooped by us--ghosts of the
+old greedy wanderers of the sea.
+
+We had told our two boatmen to pull us out to the Pied Witch!  They
+started with great resolution, then rested on their oars.
+
+"The Pied Witch, zurr?" asked one politely; "an' which may her be?"
+
+That's the West countryman all over!  Never say you "nay," never lose
+an opportunity, never own he doesn't know, or can't do anything--
+independence, amiability, and an eye to the main chance.  We
+mentioned Pearse's name.
+
+"Capt'n Zach'ry Pearse!"  They exchanged a look half-amused, half-
+admiring.
+
+"The Zunflaower, yu mane.  That's her.  Zunflaower, ahoy!"  As we
+mounted the steamer's black side I heard one say:
+
+"Pied Witch!  A pra-aper name that--a dandy name for her!"  They
+laughed as they made fast.
+
+The mate of the Sunflower, or Pied Witch, or whatever she was called,
+met us--a tall young fellow in his shirtsleeves, tanned to the roots
+of his hair, with sinewy, tattooed arms, and grey eyes, charred round
+the rims from staring at weather.
+
+"The skipper is on board," he said.  "We're rather busy, as you see.
+Get on with that, you sea-cooks," he bawled at two fellows who were
+doing nothing.  All over the ship, men were hauling, splicing, and
+stowing cargo.
+
+"To-day's Friday: we're off on Wednesday with any luck.  Will you
+come this way?"  He led us down the companion to a dark hole which he
+called the saloon.  "Names?  What! are you Mr. Treffry?  Then we're
+partners!"  A schoolboy's glee came on his face.
+
+"Look here!" he said; "I can show you something," and he unlocked the
+door of a cabin.  There appeared to be nothing in it but a huge piece
+of tarpaulin, which depended, bulging, from the topmost bunk.  He
+pulled it up.  The lower bunk had been removed, and in its place was
+the ugly body of a dismounted Gatling gun.
+
+"Got six of them," he whispered, with unholy mystery, through which
+his native frankness gaped out.  "Worth their weight in gold out
+there just now, the skipper says.  Got a heap of rifles, too, and
+lots of ammunition.  He's given me a share.  This is better than the
+P. and O., and playing deck cricket with the passengers.  I'd made up
+my mind already to chuck that, and go in for plantin' sugar, when I
+ran across the skipper.  Wonderful chap, the skipper!  I'll go and
+tell him.  He's been out all night; only came aboard at four bells;
+having a nap now, but he won't mind that for you."
+
+Off he went.  I wondered what there was in Zachary Pearse to attract
+a youngster of this sort; one of the customary twelve children of
+some country parson, no doubt-burning to shoot a few niggers, and for
+ever frank and youthful.
+
+He came back with his hands full of bottles.
+
+"What'll you drink?  The skipper'll be here in a jiffy.  Excuse my
+goin' on deck.  We're so busy."
+
+And in five minutes Zachary Pearse did come.  He made no attempt to
+shake hands, for which I respected him.  His face looked worn, and
+more defiant than usual.
+
+"Well, gentlemen?" he said.
+
+"We've come to ask what you're going to do?" said Dan.
+
+"I don't know," answered Pearse, "that that's any of your business."
+
+Dan's little eyes were like the eyes of an angry pig.
+
+"You've got five hundred pounds of mine," he said; "why do you think
+I gave it you?"
+
+Zachary bit his fingers.
+
+"That's no concern of mine," he said.  "I sail on Wednesday.  Your
+money's safe."
+
+"Do you know what I think of you?" said Dan.
+
+"No, and you'd better not tell me!"  Then, with one of his peculiar
+changes, he smiled: "As you like, though."
+
+Dan's face grew very dark.  "Give me a plain answer," he said: "What
+are you going to do about her?"
+
+Zachary looked up at him from under his brows.
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Are you cur enough to deny that you've married her?"
+
+Zachary looked at him coolly.  "Not at all," he said.
+
+"What in God's name did you do it for?"
+
+"You've no monopoly in the post of husband, Mr.  Treffry."
+
+"To put a child in that position!  Haven't you the heart of a man?
+What d' ye come sneaking in at night for?  By Gad!  Don't you know
+you've done a beastly thing?"
+
+Zachary's face darkened, he clenched his fists.  Then he seemed to
+shut his anger into himself.
+
+"You wanted me to leave her to you," he sneered.  "I gave her my
+promise that I'd take her out there, and we'd have gone off on
+Wednesday quietly enough, if you hadn't come and nosed the whole
+thing out with your infernal dog.  The fat's in the fire!  There's no
+reason why I should take her now.  I'll come back to her a rich man,
+or not at all."
+
+"And in the meantime?" I slipped in.
+
+He turned to me, in an ingratiating way.
+
+"I would have taken her to save the fuss--I really would--it's not my
+fault the thing's come out.  I'm on a risky job.  To have her with me
+might ruin the whole thing; it would affect my nerve.  It isn't safe
+for her."
+
+"And what's her position to be," I said, "while you're away?  Do you
+think she'd have married you if she'd known you were going to leave
+her like this?  You ought to give up this business.
+
+"You stole her.  Her life's in your hands; she's only a child!"
+
+A quiver passed over his face; it showed that he was suffering.
+
+"Give it up!" I urged.
+
+"My last farthing's in it," he sighed; "the chance of a lifetime."
+
+He looked at me doubtfully, appealingly, as if for the first time in
+his life he had been given a glimpse of that dilemma of consequences
+which his nature never recognises.  I thought he was going to give
+in.  Suddenly, to my horror, Dan growled, "Play the man!"
+
+Pearse turned his head.  "I don't want your advice anyway," he said;
+"I'll not be dictated to."
+
+"To your last day," said Dan, "you shall answer to me for the way you
+treat her."
+
+Zachary smiled.
+
+"Do you see that fly?" he said.  "Wel--I care for you as little as
+this," and he flicked the fly off his white trousers.  "Good-
+morning...!"
+
+The noble mariners who manned our boat pulled lustily for the shore,
+but we had hardly shoved off' when a storm of rain burst over the
+ship, and she seemed to vanish, leaving a picture on my eyes of the
+mate waving his cap above the rail, with his tanned young face bent
+down at us, smiling, keen, and friendly.
+
+...... We reached the shore drenched, angry with ourselves, and with
+each other; I started sulkily for home.
+
+As I rode past an orchard, an apple, loosened by the rainstorm, came
+down with a thud.
+
+"The apples were ripe and ready to fall,
+Oh! heigh-ho! and ready to fall."
+
+I made up my mind to pack, and go away.  But there's a strangeness, a
+sort of haunting fascination in it all.  To you, who don't know the
+people, it may only seem a piece of rather sordid folly.  But it
+isn't the good, the obvious, the useful that puts a spell on us in
+life.  It's the bizarre, the dimly seen, the mysterious for good or
+evil.
+
+The sun was out again when I rode up to the farm; its yellow thatch
+shone through the trees as if sheltering a store of gladness and good
+news.  John Ford himself opened the door to me.
+
+He began with an apology, which made me feel more than ever an
+intruder; then he said:
+
+"I have not spoken to my granddaughter--I waited to see Dan Treffry."
+
+He was stern and sad-eyed, like a man with a great weight of grief on
+his shoulders.  He looked as if he had not slept; his dress was out
+of order, he had not taken his clothes off, I think.  He isn't a man
+whom you can pity.  I felt I had taken a liberty in knowing of the
+matter at all.  When I told him where we had been, he said:
+
+"It was good of you to take this trouble.  That you should have had
+to!  But since such things have come to pass--" He made a gesture
+full of horror.  He gave one the impression of a man whose pride was
+struggling against a mortal hurt.  Presently he asked:
+
+"You saw him, you say?  He admitted this marriage?  Did he give an
+explanation?"
+
+I tried to make Pearse's point of view clear.  Before this old man,
+with his inflexible will and sense of duty, I felt as if I held a
+brief for Zachary, and must try to do him justice.
+
+"Let me understand," he said at last.  "He stole her, you say, to
+make sure; and deserts her within a fortnight."
+
+"He says he meant to take her--"
+
+"Do you believe that?"
+
+Before I could answer, I saw Pasiance standing at the window.  How
+long she had been there I don't know.
+
+"Is it true that he is going to leave me behind?" she cried out.
+
+I could only nod.
+
+"Did you hear him your own self?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+She stamped her foot.
+
+"But he promised! He promised!"
+
+John Ford went towards her.
+
+"Don't touch me, grandfather!  I hate every one!  Let him do what he
+likes, I don't care."
+
+John Ford's face turned quite grey.
+
+"Pasiance," he said, "did you want to leave me so much?"
+
+She looked straight at us, and said sharply:
+
+"What's the good of telling stories.  I can't help its hurting you."
+
+"What did you think you would find away from here?"
+
+She laughed.
+
+"Find?  I don't know--nothing; I wouldn't be stifled anyway.  Now I
+suppose you'll shut me up because I'm a weak girl, not strong like
+men!"
+
+"Silence!" said John Ford; "I will make him take you."
+
+"You shan't!" she cried; "I won't let you.  He's free to do as he
+likes.  He's free--I tell you all, everybody--free!"
+
+She ran through the window, and vanished.
+
+John Ford made a movement as if the bottom had dropped out of his
+world.  I left him there.
+
+I went to the kitchen, where Hopgood was sitting at the table, eating
+bread and cheese.  He got up on seeing me, and very kindly brought me
+some cold bacon and a pint of ale.
+
+"I thart I shude be seeing yu, zurr," he said between his bites;
+"Therr's no thart to 'atin' 'bout the 'ouse to-day.  The old wumman's
+puzzivantin' over Miss Pasiance.  Young girls are skeery critters"--
+he brushed his sleeve over his broad, hard jaws, and filled a pipe
+"specially when it's in the blood of 'em.  Squire Rick Voisey werr a
+dandy; an' Mistress Voisey--well, she werr a nice lady tu, but"--
+rolling the stem of his pipe from corner to corner of his mouth--"she
+werr a pra-aper vixen."
+
+Hopgood's a good fellow, and I believe as soft as he looks hard, but
+he's not quite the sort with whom one chooses to talk over a matter
+like this.  I went upstairs, and began to pack, but after a bit
+dropped it for a book, and somehow or other fell asleep.
+
+I woke, and looked at my watch; it was five o'clock.  I had been
+asleep four hours.  A single sunbeam was slanting across from one of
+my windows to the other, and there was the cool sound of milk
+dropping into pails; then, all at once, a stir as of alarm, and heavy
+footsteps.
+
+I opened my door.  Hopgood and a coast-guardsman were carrying
+Pasiance slowly up the stairs.  She lay in their arms without moving,
+her face whiter than her dress, a scratch across the forehead, and
+two or three drops there of dried blood.  Her hands were clasped, and
+she slowly crooked and stiffened out her fingers.  When they turned
+with her at the stair top, she opened her lips, and gasped, "All
+right, don't put me down.  I can bear it."  They passed, and, with a
+half-smile in her eyes, she said something to me that I couldn't
+catch; the door was shut, and the excited whispering began again
+below.  I waited for the men to come out, and caught hold of Hopgood.
+He wiped the sweat off his forehead.
+
+"Poor young thing!" he said.  "She fell--down the cliffs--'tis her
+back--coastguard saw her 'twerr they fetched her in.  The Lord 'elp
+her mebbe she's not broken up much!  An' Mister Ford don't know!  I'm
+gwine for the doctor."
+
+There was an hour or more to wait before he came; a young fellow;
+almost a boy.  He looked very grave, when he came out of her room.
+
+"The old woman there fond of her?  nurse her well...?  Fond as a
+dog!--good!  Don't know--can't tell for certain!  Afraid it's the
+spine, must have another opinion!  What a plucky girl!  Tell Mr. Ford
+to have the best man he can get in Torquay--there's C---.  I'll be
+round the first thing in the morning.  Keep her dead quiet.  I've
+left a sleeping draught; she'll have fever tonight."
+
+John Ford came in at last.  Poor old man!  What it must have cost him
+not to go to her for fear of the excitement!  How many times in the
+next few hours didn't I hear him come to the bottom of the stairs;
+his heavy wheezing, and sighing; and the forlorn tread of his feet
+going back!  About eleven, just as I was going to bed, Mrs. Hopgood
+came to my door.
+
+"Will yu come, sir," she said; "she's asking for yu.  Naowt I can zay
+but what she will see yu; zeems crazy, don't it?"  A tear trickled
+down the old lady's cheek.  "Du 'ee come; 'twill du 'err 'arm mebbe,
+but I dunno--she'll fret else."
+
+I slipped into the room.  Lying back on her pillows, she was
+breathing quickly with half-closed eyes.  There was nothing to show
+that she had wanted me, or even knew that I was there.  The wick of
+the candle, set by the bedside, had been snuffed too short, and gave
+but a faint light; both window and door stood open, still there was
+no draught, and the feeble little flame burned quite still, casting a
+faint yellow stain on the ceiling like the refection from a buttercup
+held beneath a chin.  These ceilings are far too low!  Across the
+wide, squat window the apple branches fell in black stripes which
+never stirred.  It was too dark to see things clearly.  At the foot
+of the bed was a chest, and there Mrs. Hopgood had sat down, moving
+her lips as if in speech.  Mingled with the half-musty smell of age;
+there were other scents, of mignonette, apples, and some sweet-
+smelling soap.  The floor had no carpet, and there was not one single
+dark object except the violin, hanging from a nail over the bed.  A
+little, round clock ticked solemnly.
+
+"Why won't you give me that stuff, Mums?" Pasiance said in a faint,
+sharp voice.  "I want to sleep."
+
+"Have you much pain?" I asked.
+
+"Of course I have; it's everywhere."
+
+She turned her face towards me.
+
+"You thought I did it on purpose, but you're wrong.  If I had, I'd
+have done it better than this.  I wouldn't have this brutal pain."
+She put her fingers over her eyes.  "It's horrible to complain!  Only
+it's so bad!  But I won't again--promise."
+
+She took the sleeping draught gratefully, making a face, like a child
+after a powder.
+
+"How long do you think it'll be before I can play again?  Oh! I
+forgot--there are other things to think about."  She held out her
+hand to me.  "Look at my ring.  Married--isn't it funny?  Ha, ha!
+Nobody will ever understand--that's funny too!  Poor Gran!  You see,
+there wasn't any reason--only me.  That's the only reason I'm telling
+you now; Mums is there--but she doesn't count; why don't you count,
+Mums?"
+
+The fever was fighting against the draught; she had tossed the
+clothes back from her throat, and now and then raised one thin arm a
+little, as if it eased her; her eyes had grown large, and innocent
+like a child's; the candle, too, had flared, and was burning clearly.
+
+"Nobody is to tell him--nobody at all; promise...!  If I hadn't
+slipped, it would have been different.  What would have happened
+then?  You can't tell; and I can't--that's funny!  Do you think I
+loved him?  Nobody marries without love, do they?  Not quite without
+love, I mean.  But you see I wanted to be free, he said he'd take me;
+and now he's left me after all!  I won't be left, I can't!  When I
+came to the cliff--that bit where the ivy grows right down--there was
+just the sea there, underneath; so I thought I would throw myself
+over and it would be all quiet; and I climbed on a ledge, it looked
+easier from there, but it was so high, I wanted to get back; and then
+my foot slipped; and now it's all pain.  You can't think much, when
+you're in pain."
+
+>From her eyes I saw that she was dropping off.
+
+"Nobody can take you away from-yourself.  He's not to be told--not
+even--I don't--want you--to go away, because--"But her eyes closed,
+and she dropped off to sleep.
+
+They don't seem to know this morning whether she is better or
+worse....
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+"Tuesday, 9th August.
+
+It seems more like three weeks than three days since I wrote.  The
+time passes slowly in a sickhouse...!  The doctors were here this
+morning, they give her forty hours.  Not a word of complaint has
+passed her lips since she knew.  To see her you would hardly think
+her ill; her cheeks have not had time to waste or lose their colour.
+There is not much pain, but a slow, creeping numbness....  It was
+John Ford's wish that she should be told.  She just turned her head
+to the wall and sighed; then to poor old Mrs. Hopgood, who was crying
+her heart out: "Don't cry, Mums, I don't care."
+
+When they had gone, she asked for her violin.  She made them hold it
+for her, and drew the bow across the strings; but the notes that came
+out were so trembling and uncertain that she dropped the bow and
+broke into a passion of sobbing.  Since then, no complaint or moan of
+any kind....
+
+But to go back.  On Sunday, the day after I wrote, as I was coming
+from a walk, I met a little boy making mournful sounds on a tin
+whistle.
+
+"Coom ahn!" he said, "the Miss wahnts t' zee yu."
+
+I went to her room.  In the morning she had seemed better, but now
+looked utterly exhausted.  She had a letter in her hand.
+
+"It's this," she said.  "I don't seem to understand it.  He wants me
+to do something--but I can't think, and my eyes feel funny.  Read it
+to me, please."
+
+The letter was from Zachary.  I read it to her in a low voice, for
+Mrs. Hopgood was in the room, her eyes always fixed on Pasiance above
+her knitting.  When I'd finished, she made me read it again, and yet
+again.  At first she seemed pleased, almost excited, then came a
+weary, scornful look, and before I'd finished the third time she was
+asleep.  It was a remarkable letter, that seemed to bring the man
+right before one's eyes.  I slipped it under her fingers on the bed-
+clothes, and went out.  Fancy took me to the cliff where she had
+fallen.  I found the point of rock where the cascade of ivy flows
+down the cliff; the ledge on which she had climbed was a little to my
+right--a mad place.  It showed plainly what wild emotions must have
+been driving her!  Behind was a half-cut cornfield with a fringe of
+poppies, and swarms of harvest insects creeping and flying; in the
+uncut corn a landrail kept up a continual charring.  The sky was blue
+to the very horizon, and the sea wonderful, under that black wild
+cliff stained here and there with red.  Over the dips and hollows of
+the fields great white clouds hung low down above the land.  There
+are no brassy, east-coast skies here; but always sleepy, soft-shaped
+clouds, full of subtle stir and change.  Passages of Zachary's
+Pearse's letter kept rising to my lips.  After all he's the man that
+his native place, and life, and blood have made him.  It is useless
+to expect idealists where the air is soft and things good to look on
+(the idealist grows where he must create beauty or comfort for
+himself); useless to expect a man of law and order, in one whose
+fathers have stared at the sea day and night for a thousand years--
+the sea, full of its promises of unknown things, never quite the
+same, a slave to its own impulses.  Man is an imitative animal....
+
+"Life's hard enough," he wrote, "without tying yourself down.  Don't
+think too hardly of me!  Shall I make you happier by taking you into
+danger?  If I succeed you'll be a rich woman; but I shall fail if
+you're with me.  To look at you makes me soft.  At sea a man dreams
+of all the good things on land, he'll dream of the heather, and
+honey--you're like that; and he'll dream of the apple-trees, and the
+grass of the orchards--you're like that; sometimes he only lies on
+his back and wishes--and you're like that, most of all like that...."
+
+When I was reading those words I remember a strange, soft, half-
+scornful look came over Pasiance's face; and once she said, "But
+that's all nonsense, isn't it...?"
+
+Then followed a long passage about what he would gain if he
+succeeded, about all that he was risking, the impossibility of
+failure, if he kept his wits about him.  "It's only a matter of two
+months or so," he went on; "stay where you are, dear, or go to my
+Dad.  He'll be glad to have you.  There's my mother's room.  There's
+no one to say 'No' to your fiddle there; you can play it by the sea;
+and on dark nights you'll have the stars dancing to you over the
+water as thick as bees.  I've looked at them often, thinking of
+you...."
+
+Pasiance had whispered to me, "Don't read that bit," and afterwards I
+left it out....  Then the sensuous side of him shows up: "When I've
+brought this off, there's the whole world before us.  There are
+places I can take you to.  There's one I know, not too warm and not
+too cold, where you can sit all day in the shade and watch the
+creepers, and the cocoa-palms, still as still; nothing to do or care
+about; all the fruits you can think of; no noise but the parrots and
+the streams, and a splash when a nigger dives into a water-hole.
+Pasiance, we'll go there!  With an eighty-ton craft there's no sea we
+couldn't know.  The world's a fine place for those who go out to take
+it; there's lots of unknown stuff' in it yet.  I'll fill your lap, my
+pretty, so full of treasures that you shan't know yourself.  A man
+wasn't meant to sit at home...."
+
+Throughout this letter--for all its real passion--one could feel how
+the man was holding to his purpose--the rather sordid purpose of this
+venture.  He's unconscious of it; for he is in love with her; but he
+must be furthering his own ends.  He is vital--horribly vital!  I
+wonder less now that she should have yielded.
+
+What visions hasn't he dangled before her.  There was physical
+attraction, too--I haven't forgotten the look I saw on her face at
+Black Mill.  But when all's said and done, she married him, because
+she's Pasiance Voisey, who does things and wants "to get back."  And
+she lies there dying; not he nor any other man will ever take her
+away.  It's pitiful to think of him tingling with passion, writing
+that letter to this doomed girl in that dark hole of a saloon.  "I've
+wanted money," he wrote, "ever since I was a little chap sitting in
+the fields among the cows....  I want it for you now, and I mean to
+have it.  I've studied the thing two years; I know what I know....
+
+"The moment this is in the post I leave for London.  There are a
+hundred things to look after still; I can't trust myself within reach
+of you again till the anchor's weighed.  When I re-christened her the
+Pied Witch, I thought of you--you witch to me...."
+
+There followed a solemn entreaty to her to be on the path leading to
+the cove at seven o'clock on Wednesday evening (that is, to-morrow)
+when he would come ashore and bid her good-bye.  It was signed, "Your
+loving husband, Zachary Pearse...."
+
+I lay at the edge of that cornfield a long time; it was very
+peaceful.  The church bells had begun to ring.  The long shadows came
+stealing out from the sheaves; woodpigeons rose one by one, and
+flapped off to roost; the western sky was streaked with red, and all
+the downs and combe bathed in the last sunlight.  Perfect harvest
+weather; but oppressively still, the stillness of suspense....
+
+Life at the farm goes on as usual.  We have morning and evening
+prayers.  John Ford reads them fiercely, as though he were on the eve
+of a revolt against his God.  Morning and evening he visits her,
+comes out wheezing heavily, and goes to his own room; I believe, to
+pray.  Since this morning I haven't dared meet him.  He is a strong
+old man--but this will break him up....
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+"KINGSWEAR, Saturday, 13th August.
+
+It's over--I leave here to-morrow, and go abroad.
+
+A quiet afternoon--not a breath up in the churchyard!  I was there
+quite half an hour before they came.  Some red cows had strayed into
+the adjoining orchard, and were rubbing their heads against the
+railing.  While I stood there an old woman came and drove them away;
+afterwards, she stooped and picked up the apples that had fallen
+before their time.
+
+"The apples are ripe and ready to fall,
+Oh! heigh-ho! and ready to fall;
+There came an old woman and gathered them all,
+Oh! heigh-ho! and gathered them all."
+
+......They brought Pasiance very simply--no hideous funeral
+trappings, thank God--the farm hands carried her, and there was no
+one there but John Ford, the Hopgoods, myself, and that young doctor.
+They read the service over her grave.  I can hear John Ford's "Amen!"
+now.  When it was over he walked away bareheaded in the sun, without
+a word.  I went up there again this evening, and wandered amongst the
+tombstones.  "Richard Voisey," "John, the son of Richard and
+Constance Voisey," "Margery Voisey," so many generations of them in
+that corner; then "Richard Voisey and Agnes his wife," and next to it
+that new mound on which a sparrow was strutting and the shadows of
+the apple-trees already hovering.
+
+I will tell you the little left to tell....
+
+On Wednesday afternoon she asked for me again.
+
+"It's only till seven," she whispered.  "He's certain to come then.
+But if I--were to die first--then tell him--I'm sorry for him.  They
+keep saying: 'Don't talk--don't talk!' Isn't it stupid?  As if I
+should have any other chance!  There'll be no more talking after to-
+night!  Make everybody come, please--I want to see them all.  When
+you're dying you're freer than any other time--nobody wants you to do
+things, nobody cares what you say....  He promised me I should do
+what I liked if I married him--I never believed that really--but now
+I can do what I like; and say all the things I want to."  She lay
+back silent; she could not after all speak the inmost thoughts that
+are in each of us, so sacred that they melt away at the approach of
+words.
+
+I shall remember her like that--with the gleam of a smile in her
+half-closed eyes, her red lips parted--such a quaint look of mockery,
+pleasure, regret, on her little round, upturned face; the room white,
+and fresh with flowers, the breeze guttering the apple-leaves against
+the window.  In the night they had unhooked the violin and taken it
+away; she had not missed it....  When Dan came, I gave up my place to
+him.  He took her hand gently in his great paw, without speaking.
+
+"How small my hand looks there," she said, "too small."  Dan put it
+softly back on the bedclothes and wiped his forehead.  Pasiance cried
+in a sharp whisper: "Is it so hot in here?  I didn't know."  Dan bent
+down, put his lips to her fingers and left the room.
+
+The afternoon was long, the longest I've ever spent.  Sometimes she
+seemed to sleep, sometimes whispered to herself about her mother, her
+grandfather, the garden, or her cats--all sorts of inconsequent,
+trivial, even ludicrous memories seemed to throng her mind--never
+once, I think, did she speak of Zachary, but, now and then, she asked
+the time....  Each hour she grew visibly weaker.  John Ford sat by
+her without moving, his heavy breathing was often the only sound;
+sometimes she rubbed her fingers on his hand, without speaking.  It
+was a summary of their lives together.  Once he prayed aloud for her
+in a hoarse voice; then her pitiful, impatient eyes signed to me.
+
+"Quick," she whispered, "I want him; it's all so--cold."
+
+I went out and ran down the path towards the cove.
+
+Leaning on a gate stood Zachary, an hour before his time; dressed in
+the same old blue clothes and leather-peaked cap as on the day when I
+saw him first.  He knew nothing of what had happened.  But at a
+quarter of the truth, I'm sure he divined the whole, though he would
+not admit it to himself.  He kept saying, "It can't be.  She'll be
+well in a few days--a sprain! D' you think the sea-voyage....  Is she
+strong enough to be moved now at once?"
+
+It was painful to see his face, so twisted by the struggle between
+his instinct and his vitality.  The sweat poured down his forehead.
+He turned round as we walked up the path, and pointed out to sea.
+There was his steamer.  "I could get her on board in no time.
+Impossible!  What is it, then?  Spine?  Good God!  The doctors....
+Sometimes they'll do wonders!"  It was pitiful to see his efforts to
+blind himself to the reality.
+
+"It can't be, she's too young.  We're walking very slow."  I told him
+she was dying.
+
+For a second I thought he was going to run away.  Then he jerked up
+his head, and rushed on towards the house.  At the foot of the
+staircase he gripped me by the shoulder.
+
+"It's not true!" he said; "she'll get better now I'm here.  I'll
+stay.  Let everything go.  I'll stay."
+
+"Now's the time," I said, "to show you loved her.  Pull yourself
+together, man!"  He shook all over.
+
+"Yes!" was all he answered.  We went into her room.  It seemed
+impossible she was going to die; the colour was bright in her cheeks,
+her lips trembling and pouted as if she had just been kissed, her
+eyes gleaming, her hair so dark and crisp, her face so young....
+
+Half an hour later I stole to the open door of her room.  She was
+still and white as the sheets of her bed.  John Ford stood at the
+foot; and, bowed to the level of the pillows, his head on his
+clenched fists, sat Zachary.  It was utterly quiet.  The guttering of
+the leaves had ceased.  When things have come to a crisis, how little
+one feels--no fear, no pity, no sorrow, rather the sense, as when a
+play is over, of anxiety to get away!
+
+Suddenly Zachary rose, brushed past me without seeing, and ran
+downstairs.
+
+Some hours later I went out on the path leading to the cove.  It was
+pitch-black; the riding light of the Pied Witch was still there,
+looking no bigger than a firefly.  Then from in front I heard
+sobbing--a man's sobs; no sound is quite so dreadful.  Zachary Pearse
+got up out of the bank not ten paces off.
+
+I had no heart to go after him, and sat down in the hedge.  There was
+something subtly akin to her in the fresh darkness of the young
+night; the soft bank, the scent of honeysuckle, the touch of the
+ferns and brambles.  Death comes to all of us, and when it's over
+it's over; but this blind business--of those left behind
+
+A little later the ship whistled twice; her starboard light gleamed
+faintly--and that was all....
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+"TORQUAY, 30th October.
+
+....Do you remember the letters I wrote you from Moor Farm nearly
+three years ago?  To-day I rode over there.  I stopped at Brixham on
+the way for lunch, and walked down to the quay.  There had been a
+shower--but the sun was out again, shining on the sea, the brown-red
+sails, and the rampart of slate roofs.
+
+A trawler was lying there, which had evidently been in a collision.
+The spiky-bearded, thin-lipped fellow in torn blue jersey and sea-
+boots who was superintending the repairs, said to me a little
+proudly:
+
+"Bane in collision, zurr; like to zee over her?"  Then suddenly
+screwing up his little blue eyes, he added:
+
+"Why, I remembers yu.  Steered yu along o' the young lady in this yer
+very craft."
+
+It was Prawle, Zachary Pearse's henchman.
+
+"Yes," he went on, "that's the cutter."
+
+"And Captain Pearse?"
+
+He leant his back against the quay, and spat.  "He was a pra-aper
+man; I never zane none like 'en."
+
+"Did you do any good out there?"
+
+Prawle gave me a sharp glance.
+
+"Gude?  No, t'was arrm we done, vrom ztart to finish--had trouble all
+the time.  What a man cude du, the skipper did.  When yu caan't du
+right, zome calls it 'Providence'!  'Tis all my eye an' Betty Martin!
+What I zay es, 'tis these times, there's such a dale o' folk, a dale
+of puzzivantin' fellers; the world's to small."
+
+With these words there flashed across me a vision of Drake crushed
+into our modern life by the shrinkage of the world; Drake caught in
+the meshes of red tape, electric wires, and all the lofty appliances
+of our civilization.  Does a type survive its age; live on into times
+that have no room for it?  The blood is there--and sometimes there's
+a throw-back....  All fancy!  Eh?
+
+"So," I said, "you failed?"
+
+Prawle wriggled.
+
+"I wudden' goo for to zay that, zurr--'tis an ugly word.  Da-am!" he
+added, staring at his boots, "'twas thru me tu.  We were along among
+the haythen, and I mus' nades goo for to break me leg.  The capt'n he
+wudden' lave me.  'One Devon man,' he says to me, 'don' lave
+anotherr.'  We werr six days where we shuld ha' been tu; when we got
+back to the ship a cruiser had got her for gun-runnin'."
+
+"And what has become of Captain Pearse?"
+
+Prawle answered, "Zurr, I belave 'e went to China, 'tis onsartin."
+
+"He's not dead?"
+
+Prawle looked at me with a kind of uneasy anger.
+
+"Yu cudden' kell 'en!  'Tis true, mun 'll die zome day.  But therr's
+not a one that'll show better zport than Capt'n Zach'ry Pearse."
+
+I believe that; he will be hard to kill.  The vision of him comes up,
+with his perfect balance, defiant eyes, and sweetish smile; the way
+the hair of his beard crisped a little, and got blacker on the
+cheeks; the sort of desperate feeling he gave, that one would never
+get the better of him, that he would never get the better of himself.
+
+I took leave of Prawle and half a crown.  Before I was off the quay I
+heard him saying to a lady, "Bane in collision, marm!  Like to zee
+over her?"
+
+After lunch I rode on to Moor.  The old place looked much the same;
+but the apple-trees were stripped of fruit, and their leaves
+beginning to go yellow and fall.  One of Pasiance's cats passed me in
+the orchard hunting a bird, still with a ribbon round its neck.  John
+Ford showed me all his latest improvements, but never by word or sign
+alluded to the past.  He inquired after Dan, back in New Zealand now,
+without much interest; his stubbly beard and hair have whitened; he
+has grown very stout, and I noticed that his legs are not well under
+control; he often stops to lean on his stick.  He was very ill last
+winter; and sometimes, they say, will go straight off to sleep in the
+middle of a sentence.
+
+I managed to get a few minutes with the Hopgoods.  We talked of
+Pasiance sitting in the kitchen under a row of plates, with that
+clinging smell of wood-smoke, bacon, and age bringing up memories, as
+nothing but scents can.  The dear old lady's hair, drawn so nicely
+down her forehead on each side from the centre of her cap, has a few
+thin silver lines; and her face is a thought more wrinkled.  The
+tears still come into her eyes when she talks of her "lamb."
+
+Of Zachary I heard nothing, but she told me of old Pearse's death.
+
+"Therr they found 'en, zo to spake, dead--in th' sun; but Ha-apgood
+can tell yu," and Hopgood, ever rolling his pipe, muttered something,
+and smiled his wooden smile.
+
+He came to see me off from the straw-yard.  "'Tis like death to the
+varrm, zurr," he said, putting all the play of his vast shoulders
+into the buckling of my girths.  "Mister Ford--well!  And not one of
+th' old stock to take it when 'e's garn....  Ah! it werr cruel; my
+old woman's never been hersel' since.  Tell 'ee what 'tis--don't du
+t' think to much."
+
+I went out of my way to pass the churchyard.  There were flowers,
+quite fresh, chrysanthemums, and asters; above them the white stone,
+already stained:
+
+        "PASIANCE
+
+        "WIFE OF ZACHARY PEARSE
+
+        "'The Lord hath given, and the Lord hath taken away.'"
+
+The red cows were there too; the sky full of great white clouds, some
+birds whistling a little mournfully, and in the air the scent of
+fallen leaves....
+
+May, 1900.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A KNIGHT
+
+
+
+TO
+
+MY MOTHER
+
+
+
+
+A KNIGHT
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+At Monte Carlo, in the spring of the year 189-, I used to notice an
+old fellow in a grey suit and sunburnt straw hat with a black ribbon.
+Every morning at eleven o'clock, he would come down to the Place,
+followed by a brindled German boarhound, walk once or twice round it,
+and seat himself on a bench facing the casino.  There he would remain
+in the sun, with his straw hat tilted forward, his thin legs apart,
+his brown hands crossed between them, and the dog's nose resting on
+his knee.  After an hour or more he would get up, and, stooping a
+little from the waist, walk slowly round the Place and return up
+hill.  Just before three, he would come down again in the same
+clothes and go into the casino, leaving the dog outside.
+
+One afternoon, moved by curiosity, I followed him.  He passed through
+the hall without looking at the gambling-rooms, and went into the
+concert.  It became my habit after that to watch for him.  When he
+sat in the Place I could see him from the window of my room.  The
+chief puzzle to me was the matter of his nationality.
+
+His lean, short face had a skin so burnt that it looked like leather;
+his jaw was long and prominent, his chin pointed, and he had hollows
+in his cheeks.  There were wrinkles across his forehead; his eyes
+were brown; and little white moustaches were brushed up from the
+corners of his lips.  The back of his head bulged out above the lines
+of his lean neck and high, sharp shoulders; his grey hair was cropped
+quite close.  In the Marseilles buffet, on the journey out, I had met
+an Englishman, almost his counterpart in features--but somehow very
+different!  This old fellow had nothing of the other's alert,
+autocratic self-sufficiency.  He was quiet and undemonstrative,
+without looking, as it were, insulated against shocks and foreign
+substances.  He was certainly no Frenchman.  His eyes, indeed, were
+brown, but hazel-brown, and gentle--not the red-brown sensual eye of
+the Frenchman.  An American?  But was ever an American so passive?  A
+German?  His moustache was certainly brushed up, but in a modest,
+almost pathetic way, not in the least Teutonic.  Nothing seemed to
+fit him.  I gave him up, and named him "the Cosmopolitan."
+
+Leaving at the end of April, I forgot him altogether.  In the same
+month, however, of the following year I was again at Monte Carlo, and
+going one day to the concert found myself seated next this same old
+fellow.  The orchestra was playing Meyerbeer's "Prophete," and my
+neighbour was asleep, snoring softly.  He was dressed in the same
+grey suit, with the same straw hat (or one exactly like it) on his
+knees, and his hands crossed above it.  Sleep had not disfigured
+him--his little white moustache was still brushed up, his lips
+closed; a very good and gentle expression hovered on his face.  A
+curved mark showed on his right temple, the scar of a cut on the side
+of his neck, and his left hand was covered by an old glove, the
+little forger of which was empty.  He woke up when the march was over
+and brisked up his moustache.
+
+The next thing on the programme was a little thing by Poise from Le
+joli Gilles, played by Mons. Corsanego on the violin.  Happening to
+glance at my old neighbour, I saw a tear caught in the hollow of his
+cheek, and another just leaving the corner of his eye; there was a
+faint smile on his lips.  Then came an interval; and while orchestra
+and audience were resting, I asked him if he were fond of music.  He
+looked up without distrust, bowed, and answered in a thin, gentle
+voice: "Certainly.  I know nothing about it, play no instrument,
+could never sing a note; but fond of it!  Who would not be?"  His
+English was correct enough, but with an emphasis not quite American
+nor quite foreign.  I ventured to remark that he did not care for
+Meyerbeer.  He smiled.
+
+"Ah!" he said, "I was asleep?  Too bad of me.  He is a little noisy--
+I know so little about music.  There is Bach, for instance.  Would
+you believe it, he gives me no pleasure?  A great misfortune to be no
+musician!"  He shook his head.
+
+I murmured, "Bach is too elevating for you perhaps."
+
+"To me," he answered, "any music I like is elevating.  People say
+some music has a bad effect on them.  I never found any music that
+gave me a bad thought--no--no--quite the opposite; only sometimes, as
+you see, I go to sleep.  But what a lovely instrument the violin!"
+A faint flush came on his parched cheeks.  "The human soul that has
+left the body.  A curious thing, distant bugles at night have given
+me the same feeling."  The orchestra was now coming back, and,
+folding his hands, my neighbour turned his eyes towards them.  When
+the concert was over we came out together.  Waiting at the entrance
+was his dog.
+
+"You have a beautiful dog!"
+
+"Ah! yes.  Freda.  mia cara, da su mano!"  The dog squatted on her
+haunches, and lifted her paw in the vague, bored way of big dogs when
+requested to perform civilities.  She was a lovely creature--the
+purest brindle, without a speck of white, and free from the
+unbalanced look of most dogs of her breed.
+
+"Basta! basta!"  He turned to me apologetically.  "We have agreed to
+speak Italian; in that way I keep up the language; astonishing the
+number of things that dog will understand!"  I was about to take my
+leave, when he asked if I would walk a little way with him--"If you
+are free, that is."  We went up the street with Freda on the far side
+of her master.
+
+"Do you never 'play' here?" I asked him.
+
+"Play?  No.  It must be very interesting; most exciting, but as a
+matter of fact, I can't afford it.  If one has very little, one is
+too nervous."
+
+He had stopped in front of a small hairdresser's shop.  "I live
+here," he said, raising his hat again.  "Au revoir!--unless I can
+offer you a glass of tea.  It's all ready.  Come! I've brought you
+out of your way; give me the pleasure!"
+
+I have never met a man so free from all self-consciousness, and yet
+so delicate and diffident the combination is a rare one.  We went up
+a steep staircase to a room on the second floor.  My companion threw
+the shutters open, setting all the flies buzzing.  The top of a
+plane-tree was on a level with the window, and all its little brown
+balls were dancing, quite close, in the wind.  As he had promised, an
+urn was hissing on a table; there was also a small brown teapot, some
+sugar, slices of lemon, and glasses.  A bed, washstand, cupboard, tin
+trunk, two chairs, and a small rug were all the furniture.  Above the
+bed a sword in a leather sheath was suspended from two nails.  The
+photograph of a girl stood on the closed stove.  My host went to the
+cupboard and produced a bottle, a glass, and a second spoon.  When
+the cork was drawn, the scent of rum escaped into the air.  He
+sniffed at it and dropped a teaspoonful into both glasses.
+
+"This is a trick I learned from the Russians after Plevna; they had
+my little finger, so I deserved something in exchange."  He looked
+round; his eyes, his whole face, seemed to twinkle.  "I assure you it
+was worth it--makes all the difference.  Try!"  He poured off the
+tea.
+
+"Had you a sympathy with the Turks?"
+
+"The weaker side--"  He paused abruptly, then added: "But it was not
+that."  Over his face innumerable crow's-feet had suddenly appeared,
+his eyes twitched; he went on hurriedly, "I had to find something to
+do just then--it was necessary."  He stared into his glass; and it
+was some time before I ventured to ask if he had seen much fighting.
+
+"Yes," he replied gravely, "nearly twenty years altogether; I was one
+of Garibaldi's Mille in '60."
+
+"Surely you are not Italian?"
+
+He leaned forward with his hands on his knees.  "I was in Genoa at
+that time learning banking; Garibaldi was a wonderful man!  One could
+not help it."  He spoke quite simply.  "You might say it was like
+seeing a little man stand up to a ring of great hulking fellows; I
+went, just as you would have gone, if you'd been there.  I was not
+long with them--our war began; I had to go back home."  He said this
+as if there had been but one war since the world began.  "In '60," he
+mused, "till '65.  Just think of it!  The poor country.  Why, in my
+State, South Carolina--I was through it all--nobody could be spared
+there--we were one to three."
+
+"I suppose you have a love of fighting?"
+
+"H'm!" he said, as if considering the idea for the first time.
+"Sometimes I fought for a living, and sometimes--because I was
+obliged; one must try to be a gentleman.  But won't you have some
+more?"
+
+I refused more tea and took my leave, carrying away with me a picture
+of the old fellow looking down from the top of the steep staircase,
+one hand pressed to his back, the other twisting up those little
+white moustaches, and murmuring, "Take care, my dear sir, there's a
+step there at the corner."
+
+"To be a gentleman!"  I repeated in the street, causing an old French
+lady to drop her parasol, so that for about two minutes we stood
+bowing and smiling to each other, then separated full of the best
+feeling.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+A week later I found myself again seated next him at a concert.  In
+the meantime I had seen him now and then, but only in passing.  He
+seemed depressed.  The corners of his lips were tightened, his tanned
+cheeks had a greyish tinge, his eyes were restless; and, between two
+numbers of the programme, he murmured, tapping his fingers on his
+hat, "Do you ever have bad days?  Yes?  Not pleasant, are they?"
+
+Then something occurred from which all that I have to tell you
+followed.  There came into the concert-hall the heroine of one of
+those romances, crimes, follies, or irregularities, call it what you
+will, which had just attracted the "world's" stare.  She passed us
+with her partner, and sat down in a chair a few rows to our right.
+She kept turning her head round, and at every turn I caught the gleam
+of her uneasy eyes.  Some one behind us said: "The brazen baggage!"
+
+My companion turned full round, and glared at whoever it was who had
+spoken.  The change in him was quite remarkable.  His lips were drawn
+back from his teeth; he frowned; the scar on his temple had reddened.
+
+"Ah!" he said to me.  "The hue and cry!  Contemptible!  How I hate
+it!  But you wouldn't understand--! "he broke off, and slowly
+regained his usual air of self-obliteration; he even seemed ashamed,
+and began trying to brush his moustaches higher than ever, as if
+aware that his heat had robbed them of neatness.
+
+"I'm not myself, when I speak of such matters," he said suddenly; and
+began reading his programme, holding it upside down.  A minute later,
+however, he said in a peculiar voice: "There are people to be found
+who object to vivisecting animals; but the vivisection of a woman,
+who minds that?  Will you tell me it's right, that because of some
+tragedy like this--believe me, it is always a tragedy--we should hunt
+down a woman?  That her fellow-women should make an outcast of her?
+That we, who are men, should make a prey of her?  If I thought
+that...."  Again he broke off, staring very hard in front of him.
+"It is we who make them what they are; and even if that is not so--
+why! if I thought there was a woman in the world I could not take my
+hat off to--I--I--couldn't sleep at night."  He got up from his seat,
+put on his old straw hat with trembling fingers, and, without a
+glance back, went out, stumbling over the chair-legs.
+
+I sat there, horribly disturbed; the words, "One must try to be a
+gentleman!" haunting me.  When I came out, he was standing by the
+entrance with one hand on his hip and the other on his dog.  In that
+attitude of waiting he was such a patient figure; the sun glared down
+and showed the threadbare nature of his clothes and the thinness of
+his brown hands, with their long forgers and nails yellow from
+tobacco.  Seeing me he came up the steps again, and raised his hat.
+
+"I am glad to have caught you; please forget all that."  I asked if
+he would do me the honour of dining at my hotel.
+
+"Dine?" he repeated with the sort of smile a child gives if you offer
+him a box of soldiers; "with the greatest pleasure.  I seldom dine
+out, but I think I can muster up a coat.  Yes--yes--and at what time
+shall I come?  At half-past seven, and your hotel is--?  Good! I
+shall be there.  Freda, mia cara, you will be alone this evening.
+You do not smoke caporal, I fear.  I find it fairly good; though it
+has too much bite."  He walked off with Freda, puffing at his thin
+roll of caporal.
+
+Once or twice he stopped, as if bewildered or beset by some sudden
+doubt or memory; and every time he stopped, Freda licked his hand.
+They disappeared round the corner of the street, and I went to my
+hotel to see about dinner.  On the way I met Jules le Ferrier, and
+asked him to come too.
+
+"My faith, yes!" he said, with the rosy pessimism characteristic of
+the French editor.  "Man must dine!"
+
+At half-past six we assembled.  My "Cosmopolitan" was in an old
+frock-coat braided round the edges, buttoned high and tight, defining
+more than ever the sharp lines of his shoulders and the slight kink
+of his back; he had brought with him, too, a dark-peaked cap of
+military shape, which he had evidently selected as more fitting to
+the coat than a straw hat.  He smelled slightly of some herb.
+
+We sat down to dinner, and did not rise for two hours.  He was a
+charming guest, praised everything he ate--not with commonplaces, but
+in words that made you feel it had given him real pleasure.  At
+first, whenever Jules made one of his caustic remarks, he looked
+quite pained, but suddenly seemed to make up his mind that it was
+bark, not bite; and then at each of them he would turn to me and say,
+"Aha! that's good--isn't it?"  With every glass of wine he became
+more gentle and more genial, sitting very upright, and tightly
+buttoned-in; while the little white wings of his moustache seemed
+about to leave him for a better world.
+
+In spite of the most leading questions, however, we could not get him
+to talk about himself, for even Jules, most cynical of men, had
+recognised that he was a hero of romance.  He would answer gently and
+precisely, and then sit twisting his moustaches, perfectly
+unconscious that we wanted more.  Presently, as the wine went a
+little to his head, his thin, high voice grew thinner, his cheeks
+became flushed, his eyes brighter; at the end of dinner he said: "I
+hope I have not been noisy."
+
+We assured him that he had not been noisy enough.  "You're laughing
+at me," he answered.  "Surely I've been talking all the time!"
+
+"Mon Dieu!" said Jules, "we have been looking for some fables of your
+wars; but nothing--nothing, not enough to feed a frog!"
+
+The old fellow looked troubled.
+
+"To be sure!" he mused.  "Let me think! there is that about Colhoun
+at Gettysburg; and there's the story of Garibaldi and the Miller."
+He plunged into a tale, not at all about himself, which would have
+been extremely dull, but for the conviction in his eyes, and the way
+he stopped and commented.  "So you see," he ended, "that's the sort
+of man Garibaldi was!  I could tell you another tale of him."
+Catching an introspective look in Jules's eye, however, I proposed
+taking our cigars over to the cafe opposite.
+
+"Delightful!" the old fellow said: "We shall have a band and the
+fresh air, and clear consciences for our cigars.  I cannot like this
+smoking in a room where there are ladies dining."
+
+He walked out in front of us, smoking with an air of great enjoyment.
+Jules, glowing above his candid shirt and waistcoat, whispered to me,
+"Mon cher Georges, how he is good!" then sighed, and added darkly:
+"The poor man!"
+
+We sat down at a little table.  Close by, the branches of a plane-
+tree rustled faintly; their leaves hung lifeless, speckled like the
+breasts of birds, or black against the sky; then, caught by the
+breeze, fluttered suddenly.
+
+The old fellow sat, with head thrown back, a smile on his face,
+coming now and then out of his enchanted dreams to drink coffee,
+answer our questions, or hum the tune that the band was playing.  The
+ash of his cigar grew very long.  One of those bizarre figures in
+Oriental garb, who, night after night, offer their doubtful wares at
+a great price, appeared in the white glare of a lamp, looked with a
+furtive smile at his face, and glided back, discomfited by its
+unconsciousness.  It was a night for dreams!  A faint, half-eastern
+scent in the air, of black tobacco and spice; few people as yet at
+the little tables, the waiters leisurely, the band soft!  What was he
+dreaming of, that old fellow, whose cigar-ash grew so long?  Of
+youth, of his battles, of those things that must be done by those who
+try to be gentlemen; perhaps only of his dinner; anyway of something
+gilded in vague fashion as the light was gilding the branches of the
+plane-tree.
+
+Jules pulled my sleeve: "He sleeps."  He had smilingly dropped off;
+the cigar-ash--that feathery tower of his dreams--had broken and
+fallen on his sleeve.  He awoke, and fell to dusting it.
+
+The little tables round us began to fill.  One of the bandsmen played
+a czardas on the czymbal.  Two young Frenchmen, talking loudly, sat
+down at the adjoining table.  They were discussing the lady who had
+been at the concert that afternoon.
+
+"It's a bet," said one of them, "but there's the present man.  I take
+three weeks, that's enough 'elle est declassee; ce n'est que le
+premier pas--'"
+
+My old friend's cigar fell on the table.  "Monsieur," he stammered,
+"you speak of a lady so, in a public place?"
+
+The young man stared at him.  "Who is this person?" he said to his
+companion.
+
+My guest took up Jules's glove that lay on the table; before either
+of us could raise a finger, he had swung it in the speaker's face.
+"Enough!" he said, and, dropping the glove, walked away.
+
+We all jumped to our feet.  I left Jules and hurried after him.  His
+face was grim, his eyes those of a creature who has been struck on a
+raw place.  He made a movement of his fingers which said plainly.
+"Leave me, if you please!"
+
+I went back to the cafe.  The two young men had disappeared, so had
+Jules, but everything else was going on just as before; the bandsman
+still twanging out his czardas; the waiters serving drinks; the
+orientals trying to sell their carpets.  I paid the bill, sought out
+the manager, and apologised.  He shrugged his shoulders, smiled and
+said: "An eccentric, your friend, nicht wahr?"  Could he tell me
+where M. Le Ferrier was?  He could not.  I left to look for Jules;
+could not find him, and returned to my hotel disgusted.  I was sorry
+for my old guest, but vexed with him too; what business had he to
+carry his Quixotism to such an unpleasant length?  I tried to read.
+Eleven o'clock struck; the casino disgorged a stream of people; the
+Place seemed fuller of life than ever; then slowly it grew empty and
+quite dark.  The whim seized me to go out.  It was a still night,
+very warm, very black.  On one of the seats a man and woman sat
+embraced, on another a girl was sobbing, on a third--strange sight--a
+priest dozed.  I became aware of some one at my side; it was my old
+guest.
+
+"If you are not too tired," he said, "can you give me ten minutes?"
+
+"Certainly; will you come in?"
+
+"No, no; let us go down to the Terrace.  I shan't keep you long."
+
+He did not speak again till we reached a seat above the pigeon-
+shooting grounds; there, in a darkness denser for the string of
+lights still burning in the town, we sat down.
+
+"I owe you an apology," he said; "first in the afternoon, then again
+this evening--your guest--your friend's glove!  I have behaved as no
+gentleman should."  He was leaning forward with his hands on the
+handle of a stick.  His voice sounded broken and disturbed.
+
+"Oh!" I muttered.  "It's nothing!"'
+
+"You are very good," he sighed; "but I feel that I must explain.  I
+consider I owe this to you, but I must tell you I should not have the
+courage if it were not for another reason.  You see I have no
+friend."  He looked at me with an uncertain smile.  I bowed, and a
+minute or two later he began....
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+"You will excuse me if I go back rather far.  It was in '74, when I
+had been ill with Cuban fever.  To keep me alive they had put me on
+board a ship at Santiago, and at the end of the voyage I found myself
+in London.  I had very little money; I knew nobody.  I tell you, sir,
+there are times when it's hard for a fighting man to get anything to
+do.  People would say to me: 'Afraid we've nothing for a man like you
+in our business.'  I tried people of all sorts; but it was true--I
+had been fighting here and there since '60, I wasn't fit for
+anything--"  He shook his head.  "In the South, before the war, they
+had a saying, I remember, about a dog and a soldier having the same
+value.  But all this has nothing to do with what I have to tell you."
+He sighed again and went on, moistening his lips: "I was walking
+along the Strand one day, very disheartened, when I heard my name
+called.  It's a queer thing, that, in a strange street.  By the way,"
+he put in with dry ceremony, "you don't know my name, I think: it is
+Brune--Roger Brune.  At first I did not recognise the person who
+called me.  He had just got off an omnibus--a square-shouldered man
+with heavy moustaches, and round spectacles.  But when he shook my
+hand I knew him at once.  He was a man called Dalton, who was taken
+prisoner at Gettysburg; one of you Englishmen who came to fight with
+us--a major in the regiment where I was captain.  We were comrades
+during two campaigns.  If I had been his brother he couldn't have
+seemed more pleased to see me.  He took me into a bar for the sake of
+old times.  The drink went to my head, and by the time we reached
+Trafalgar Square I was quite unable to walk.  He made me sit down on
+a bench. I was in fact--drunk.  It's disgraceful to be drunk, but
+there was some excuse.  Now I tell you, sir" (all through his story
+he was always making use of that expression, it seemed to infuse
+fresh spirit into him, to help his memory in obscure places, to give
+him the mastery of his emotions; it was like the piece of paper a
+nervous man holds in his hand to help him through a speech), "there
+never was a man with a finer soul than my friend Dalton.  He was not
+clever, though he had read much; and sometimes perhaps he was too
+fond of talking.  But he was a gentleman; he listened to me as if I
+had been a child; he was not ashamed of me--and it takes a gentleman
+not to be ashamed of a drunken man in the streets of London; God
+knows what things I said to him while we were sitting there!  He took
+me to his home and put me to bed himself; for I was down again with
+fever."  He stopped, turned slightly from me, and put his hand up to
+his brow.  "Well, then it was, sir, that I first saw her.  I am not
+a poet and I cannot tell you what she seemed to me.  I was delirious,
+but I always knew when she was there.  I had dreams of sunshine and
+cornfields, of dancing waves at sea, young trees--never the same
+dreams, never anything for long together; and when I had my senses I
+was afraid to say so for fear she would go away.  She'd be in the
+corner of the room, with her hair hanging about her neck, a bright
+gold colour; she never worked and never read, but sat and talked to
+herself in a whisper, or looked at me for a long time together out of
+her blue eyes, a little frown between them, and her upper lip closed
+firm on her lower lip, where she had an uneven tooth.  When her
+father came, she'd jump up and hang on to his neck until he groaned,
+then run away, but presently come stealing back on tiptoe.  I used to
+listen for her footsteps on the stairs, then the knock, the door
+flung back or opened quietly--you never could tell which; and her
+voice, with a little lisp, 'Are you better today, Mr. Brune?  What
+funny things you say when you're delirious!  Father says you've been
+in heaps of battles!"'
+
+He got up, paced restlessly to and fro, and sat down again.  "I
+remember every word as if it were yesterday, all the things she said,
+and did; I've had a long time to think them over, you see.  Well, I
+must tell you, the first morning that I was able to get up, I missed
+her.  Dalton came in her place, and I asked him where she was.  'My
+dear fellow,' he answered, 'I've sent Eilie away to her old nurse's
+inn down on the river; she's better there at this time of year.'  We
+looked at each other, and I saw that he had sent her away because he
+didn't trust me.  I was hurt by this.  Illness spoils one.  He was
+right, he was quite right, for all he knew about me was that I could
+fight and had got drunk; but I am very quick-tempered.  I made up my
+mind at once to leave him.  But I was too weak--he had to put me to
+bed again.  The very next morning he came and proposed that I should
+go into partnership with him.  He kept a fencing-school and pistol-
+gallery.  It seemed like the finger of God; and perhaps it was--who
+knows?"  He fell into a reverie, and taking out his caporal, rolled
+himself a cigarette; having lighted it, he went on suddenly: "There,
+in the room above the school, we used to sit in the evenings, one on
+each side of the grate.  The room was on the second floor,
+I remember, with two windows, and a view of nothing but the houses
+opposite.  The furniture was covered up with chintz.  The things on
+the bookshelf were never disturbed, they were Eilie's--half-broken
+cases with butterflies, a dead frog in a bottle, a horse-shoe covered
+with tinfoil, some shells too, and a cardboard box with three
+speckled eggs in it, and these words written on the lid: 'Missel-
+thrush from Lucy's tree--second family, only one blown.'"  He smoked
+fiercely, with puffs that were like sharp sighs.
+
+"Dalton was wrapped up in her.  He was never tired of talking to me
+about her, and I was never tired of hearing.  We had a number of
+pupils; but in the evening when we sat there, smoking--our talk would
+sooner or later--come round to her.  Her bedroom opened out of that
+sitting--room; he took me in once and showed me a narrow little room
+the width of a passage, fresh and white, with a photograph of her
+mother above the bed, and an empty basket for a dog or cat."  He
+broke off with a vexed air, and resumed sternly, as if trying to bind
+himself to the narration of his more important facts: "She was then
+fifteen--her mother had been dead twelve years--a beautiful, face,
+her mother's; it had been her death that sent Dalton to fight with
+us.  Well, sir, one day in August, very hot weather, he proposed a
+run into the country, and who should meet us on the platform when we
+arrived but Eilie, in a blue sun-bonnet and frock-flax blue, her
+favourite colour.  I was angry with Dalton for not telling me that we
+should see her; my clothes were not quite--my hair wanted cutting.
+It was black then, sir," he added, tracing a pattern in the darkness
+with his stick.  "She had a little donkey-cart; she drove, and, while
+we walked one on each side, she kept looking at me from under her
+sunbonnet.  I must tell you that she never laughed--her eyes danced,
+her cheeks would go pink, and her hair shake about on her neck, but
+she never laughed. Her old nurse, Lucy, a very broad, good woman, had
+married the proprietor of the inn in the village there.  I have never
+seen anything like that inn: sweethriar up to the roof!  And the
+scent--I am very susceptible to scents!"  His head drooped, and the
+cigarette fell from his hand. A train passing beneath sent up a
+shower of sparks.  He started, and went on: "We had our lunch in the
+parlour--I remember that room very well, for I spent the happiest
+days of my life afterwards in that inn....  We went into a meadow
+after lunch, and my friend Dalton fell asleep.  A wonderful thing
+happened then.  Eilie whispered to me, 'Let's have a jolly time.'
+She took me for the most glorious walk.  The river was close by.
+A lovely stream, your river Thames, so calm and broad; it is like the
+spirit of your people.  I was bewitched; I forgot my friend, I
+thought of nothing but how to keep her to myself.  It was such a day!
+There are days that are the devil's, but that was truly one of God's.
+She took me to a little pond under an elm-tree, and we dragged it, we
+two, an hour, for a kind of tiny red worm to feed some creature that
+she had.  We found them in the mud, and while she was bending over,
+the curls got in her eyes.  If you could have seen her then, I think,
+sir, you would have said she was like the first sight of spring....
+We had tea afterwards, all together, in the long grass under some
+fruit-trees.  If I had the knack of words, there are things that I
+could say."  He bent, as though in deference to those unspoken
+memories.  "Twilight came on while we were sitting there. A wonderful
+thing is twilight in the country!  It became time for us to go.
+There was an avenue of trees close by--like a church with a window at
+the end, where golden light came through.  I walked up and down it
+with her.  'Will you come again?' she whispered, and suddenly she
+lifted up her face to be kissed. I kissed her as if she were a little
+child.  And when we said good-bye, her eyes were looking at me across
+her father's shoulder, with surprise and sorrow in them.  'Why do you
+go away?' they seemed to say....  But I must tell you," he went on
+hurriedly, "of a thing that happened before we had gone a hundred
+yards.  We were smoking our pipes, and I, thinking of her--when out
+she sprang from the hedge and stood in front of us.  Dalton cried
+out, 'What are you here for again, you mad girl?'  She rushed up to
+him and hugged him; but when she looked at me, her face was quite
+different--careless, defiant, as one might say--it hurt me.  I
+couldn't understand it, and what one doesn't understand frightens
+one."
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+"Time went on.  There was no swordsman, or pistol-shot like me in
+London, they said.  We had as many pupils as we liked--it was the
+only part of my life when I have been able to save money.  I had no
+chance to spend it.  We gave lessons all day, and in the evening were
+too tired to go out.  That year I had the misfortune to lose my dear
+mother.  I became a rich man--yes, sir, at that time I must have had
+not less than six hundred a year.
+
+"It was a long time before I saw Eilie again.  She went abroad to
+Dresden with her father's sister to learn French and German.  It was
+in the autumn of 1875 when she came back to us.  She was seventeen
+then--a beautiful young creature."  He paused, as if to gather his
+forces for description, and went on.
+
+"Tall, as a young tree, with eyes like the sky.  I would not say she
+was perfect, but her imperfections were beautiful to me.  What is it
+makes you love--ah! sir, that is very hidden and mysterious.  She had
+never lost the trick of closing her lips tightly when she remembered
+her uneven tooth.  You may say that was vanity, but in a young girl--
+and which of us is not vain, eh?  'Old men and maidens, young men and
+children!'
+
+"As I said, she came back to London to her little room, and in the
+evenings was always ready with our tea.  You mustn't suppose she was
+housewifely; there is something in me that never admired
+housewifeliness--a fine quality, no doubt, still--" He sighed.
+
+"No," he resumed, "Eilie was not like that, for she was never quite
+the same two days together.  I told you her eyes were like the sky--
+that was true of all of her.  In one thing, however, at that time,
+she always seemed the same--in love for her father.  For me!  I don't
+know what I should have expected; but my presence seemed to have the
+effect of making her dumb; I would catch her looking at me with a
+frown, and then, as if to make up to her own nature--and a more
+loving nature never came into this world, that I shall maintain to my
+dying day--she would go to her father and kiss him.  When I talked
+with him she pretended not to notice, but I could see her face grow
+cold and stubborn.  I am not quick; and it was a long time before I
+understood that she was jealous, she wanted him all to herself.  I've
+often wondered how she could be his daughter, for he was the very
+soul of justice and a slow man too--and she was as quick as a bird.
+For a long time after I saw her dislike of me, I refused to believe
+it--if one does not want to believe a thing there are always reasons
+why it should not seem true, at least so it is with me, and I suppose
+with all selfish men.
+
+"I spent evening after evening there, when, if I had not thought only
+of myself, I should have kept away.  But one day I could no longer be
+blind.
+
+"It was a Sunday in February.  I always had an invitation on Sundays
+to dine with them in the middle of the day.  There was no one in the
+sitting-room; but the door of Eilie's bedroom was open.  I heard her
+voice: 'That man, always that man!'  It was enough for me, I went
+down again without coming in, and walked about all day.
+
+"For three weeks I kept away.  To the school of course I came as
+usual, but not upstairs.  I don't know what I told Dalton--it did not
+signify what you told him, he always had a theory of his own, and was
+persuaded of its truth--a very single-minded man, sir.
+
+"But now I come to the most wonderful days of my life.  It was an
+early spring that year.  I had fallen away already from my
+resolution, and used to slink up--seldom, it's true--and spend the
+evening with them as before.  One afternoon I came up to the sitting-
+room; the light was failing--it was warm, and the windows were open.
+In the air was that feeling which comes to you once a year, in the
+spring, no matter where you may be, in a crowded street, or alone in
+a forest; only once--a feeling like--but I cannot describe it.
+
+"Eilie was sitting there.  If you don't know, sir, I can't tell you
+what it means to be near the woman one loves.  She was leaning on the
+windowsill, staring down into the street.  It was as though she might
+be looking out for some one.  I stood, hardly breathing.  She turned
+her head, and saw me.  Her eyes were strange.  They seemed to ask me
+a question.  But I couldn't have spoken for the world.  I can't tell
+you what I felt--I dared not speak, or think, or hope.  I have been
+in nineteen battles--several times in positions of some danger, when
+the lifting of a finger perhaps meant death; but I have never felt
+what I was feeling at that moment.  I knew something was coming; and
+I was paralysed with terror lest it should not come!"  He drew a long
+breath.
+
+"The servant came in with a light and broke the spell.  All that
+night I lay awake and thought of how she had looked at me, with the
+colour coming slowly up in her cheeks
+
+"It was three days before I plucked up courage to go again; and then
+I felt her eyes on me at once--she was making a 'cat's cradle' with a
+bit of string, but I could see them stealing up from her hands to my
+face.  And she went wandering about the room, fingering at
+everything.  When her father called out: 'What's the matter with you,
+Elie?' she stared at him like a child caught doing wrong.  I looked
+straight at her then, she tried to look at me, but she couldn't; and
+a minute later she went out of the room.  God knows what sort of
+nonsense I talked--I was too happy.
+
+"Then began our love.  I can't tell you of that time.  Often and
+often Dalton said to me: 'What's come to the child?  Nothing I can do
+pleases her.'  All the love she had given him was now for me; but he
+was too simple and straight to see what was going on.  How many times
+haven't I felt criminal towards him!  But when you're happy, with the
+tide in your favour, you become a coward at once...."
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+"Well, sir," he went on, "we were married on her eighteenth birthday.
+It was a long time before Dalton became aware of our love.  But one
+day he said to me with a very grave look:
+
+"'Eilie has told me, Brune; I forbid it.  She's too young, and
+you're--too old!' I was then forty-five, my hair as black and thick
+as a rook's feathers, and I was strong and active.  I answered him:
+'We shall be married within a month!'  We parted in anger.  It was a
+May night, and I walked out far into the country.  There's no remedy
+for anger, or, indeed, for anything, so fine as walking.  Once I
+stopped--it was on a common, without a house or light, and the stars
+shining like jewels.  I was hot from walking, I could feel the blood
+boiling in my veins--I said to myself 'Old, are you?' And I laughed
+like a fool.  It was the thought of losing her--I wished to believe
+myself angry, but really I was afraid; fear and anger in me are very
+much the same.  A friend of mine, a bit of a poet, sir, once called
+them 'the two black wings of self.'  And so they are, so they are...!
+The next morning I went to Dalton again, and somehow I made him
+yield.  I'm not a philosopher, but it has often seemed to me that no
+benefit can come to us in this life without an equal loss somewhere,
+but does that stop us?  No, sir, not often....
+
+"We were married on the 3oth of June 1876, in the parish church.  The
+only people present were Dalton, Lucy, and Lucy's husband--a big,
+red-faced fellow, with blue eyes and a golden beard parted in two.
+It had been arranged that we should spend the honeymoon down at their
+inn on the river.  My wife, Dalton and I, went to a restaurant for
+lunch.  She was dressed in grey, the colour of a pigeon's feathers."
+He paused, leaning forward over the crutch handle of his stick;
+trying to conjure up, no doubt, that long-ago image of his young
+bride in her dress "the colour of a pigeon's feathers," with her blue
+eyes and yellow hair, the little frown between her brows, the firmly
+shut red lips, opening to speak the words, "For better, for worse,
+for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health."
+
+"At that time, sir," he went on suddenly, "I was a bit of a dandy.  I
+wore, I remember, a blue frock-coat, with white trousers, and a grey
+top hat.  Even now I should always prefer to be well dressed....
+
+"We had an excellent lunch, and drank Veuve Clicquot, a wine that you
+cannot get in these days!  Dalton came with us to the railway
+station.  I can't bear partings; and yet, they must come.
+
+"That evening we walked out in the cool under the aspen-trees.  What
+should I remember in all my life if not that night--the young
+bullocks snuffling in the gateways--the campion flowers all lighted
+up along the hedges--the moon with a halo-bats, too, in and out among
+the stems, and the shadows of the cottages as black and soft as that
+sea down there.  For a long time we stood on the river-bank beneath a
+lime-tree.  The scent of the lime flowers!  A man can only endure
+about half his joy; about half his sorrow.  Lucy and her husband," he
+went on, presently, "his name was Frank Tor--a man like an old
+Viking, who ate nothing but milk, bread, and fruit--were very good to
+us!  It was like Paradise in that inn--though the commissariat, I am
+bound to say, was limited.  The sweethriar grew round our bedroom
+windows; when the breeze blew the leaves across the opening--it was
+like a bath of perfume.  Eilie grew as brown as a gipsy while we were
+there.  I don't think any man could have loved her more than I did.
+But there were times when my heart stood still; it didn't seem as if
+she understood how much I loved her.  One day, I remember, she coaxed
+me to take her camping.  We drifted down-stream all the afternoon,
+and in the evening pulled into the reeds under the willow-boughs and
+lit a fire for her to cook by--though, as a matter of fact, our
+provisions were cooked already--but you know how it is; all the
+romance was in having a real fire.  'We won't pretend,' she kept
+saying.  While we were eating our supper a hare came to our clearing-
+-a big fellow--how surprised he looked!  'The tall hare,' Eilie
+called him.  After that we sat by the ashes and watched the shadows,
+till at last she roamed away from me.  The time went very slowly; I
+got up to look for her.  It was past sundown.  I called and called.
+It was a long time before I found her--and she was like a wild thing,
+hot and flushed, her pretty frock torn, her hands and face scratched,
+her hair down, like some beautiful creature of the woods.  If one
+loves, a little thing will scare one.  I didn't think she had noticed
+my fright; but when we got back to the boat she threw her arms round
+my neck, and said, 'I won't ever leave you again!'
+
+"Once in the night I woke--a water-hen was crying, and in the
+moonlight a kingfisher flew across.  The wonder on the river--the
+wonder of the moon and trees, the soft bright mist, the stillness! It
+was like another world, peaceful, enchanted, far holier than ours.
+It seemed like a vision of the thoughts that come to one--how seldom!
+and go if one tries to grasp them.  Magic--poetry-sacred!"  He was
+silent a minute, then went on in a wistful voice: "I looked at her,
+sleeping like a child, with her hair loose, and her lips apart, and I
+thought: 'God do so to me, if ever I bring her pain!'  How was I to
+understand her? the mystery and innocence of her soul!  The river has
+had all my light and all my darkness, the happiest days, and the
+hours when I've despaired; and I like to think of it, for, you know,
+in time bitter memories fade, only the good remain....  Yet the good
+have their own pain, a different kind of aching, for we shall never
+get them back.  Sir," he said, turning to me with a faint smile,
+"it's no use crying over spilt milk....  In the neighbourhood of
+Lucy's inn, the Rose and Maybush--Can you imagine a prettier name?  I
+have been all over the world, and nowhere found names so pretty as in
+the English country.  There, too, every blade of grass; and flower,
+has a kind of pride about it; knows it will be cared for; and all the
+roads, trees, and cottages, seem to be certain that they will live
+for ever....  But I was going to tell you: Half a mile from the inn
+was a quiet old house which we used to call the 'Convent'--though I
+believe it was a farm.  We spent many afternoons there, trespassing
+in the orchard--Eilie was fond of trespassing; if there were a long
+way round across somebody else's property, she would always take it.
+We spent our last afternoon in that orchard, lying in the long grass.
+I was reading Childe Harold for the first time--a wonderful, a
+memorable poem!  I was at that passage--the bull-fight--you remember:
+
+"'Thrice sounds the clarion; lo! the signal falls,
+The din expands, and expectation mute'--
+
+"when suddenly Eilie said: 'Suppose I were to leave off loving you?'
+It was as if some one had struck me in the face.  I jumped up, and
+tried to take her in my arms, but she slipped away; then she turned,
+and began laughing softly.  I laughed too.  I don't know why...."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+"We went back to London the next day; we lived quite close to the
+school, and about five days a week Dalton came to dine with us.  He
+would have come every day, if he had not been the sort of man who
+refuses to consult his own pleasure.  We had more pupils than ever.
+In my leisure I taught my wife to fence.  I have never seen any one
+so lithe and quick; or so beautiful as she looked in her fencing
+dress, with embroidered shoes.
+
+"I was completely happy.  When a man has obtained his desire he
+becomes careless and self-satisfied; I was watchful, however, for I
+knew that I was naturally a selfish man.  I studied to arrange my
+time and save my money, to give her as much pleasure as I could.
+What she loved best in the world just then was riding.  I bought a
+horse for her, and in the evenings of the spring and summer we rode
+together; but when it was too dark to go out late, she would ride
+alone, great distances, sometimes spend the whole day in the saddle,
+and come back so tired she could hardly walk upstairs--I can't say
+that I liked that.  It made me nervous, she was so headlong--but I
+didn't think it right to interfere with her.  I had a good deal of
+anxiety about money, for though I worked hard and made more than
+ever, there never seemed enough.  I was anxious to save--I hoped, of
+course--but we had no child, and this was a trouble to me.  She grew
+more beautiful than ever, and I think was happy.  Has it ever struck
+you that each one of us lives on the edge of a volcano?  There is, I
+imagine, no one who has not some affection or interest so strong that
+he counts the rest for nothing, beside it.  No doubt a man may live
+his life through without discovering that.  But some of us--!  I am
+not complaining; what is--is."  He pulled the cap lower over his
+eyes, and clutched his hands firmly on the top of his stick.  He was
+like a man who rushes his horse at some hopeless fence, unwilling to
+give himself time, for fear of craning at the last moment.  "In the
+spring of '78, a new pupil came to me, a young man of twenty-one who
+was destined for the army.  I took a fancy to him, and did my best to
+turn him into a good swordsman; but there was a kind of perverse
+recklessness in him; for a few minutes one would make a great
+impression, then he would grow utterly careless.  'Francis,' I would
+say, 'if I were you I should be ashamed.'  'Mr. Brune,' he would
+answer, 'why should I be ashamed?  I didn't make myself.'  God knows,
+I wish to do him justice, he had a heart--one day he drove up in a
+cab, and brought in his poor dog, who had been run over, and was
+dying: For half an hour he shut himself up with its body, we could
+hear him sobbing like a child; he came out with his eyes all red, and
+cried: 'I know where to find the brute who drove over him,' and off
+he rushed.  He had beautiful Italian eyes; a slight figure, not very
+tall; dark hair, a little dark moustache; and his lips were always a
+trifle parted--it was that, and his walk, and the way he drooped his
+eyelids, which gave him a peculiar, soft, proud look.  I used to tell
+him that he'd never make a soldier!  'Oh!' he'd answer, 'that'll be
+all right when the time comes!  He believed in a kind of luck that
+was to do everything for him, when the time came.  One day he came in
+as I was giving Eilie her lesson.  This was the first time they saw
+each other.  After that he came more often, and sometimes stayed to
+dinner with us.  I won't deny, sir, that I was glad to welcome him; I
+thought it good for Eilie.  Can there be anything more odious," he
+burst out, "than such a self-complacent blindness?  There are people
+who say, 'Poor man, he had such faith!'  Faith, sir!  Conceit!  I was
+a fool--in this world one pays for folly....
+
+"The summer came; and one Saturday in early June, Eilie, I, and
+Francis--I won't tell you his other name--went riding.  The night had
+been wet; there was no dust, and presently the sun came out--a
+glorious day!  We rode a long way.  About seven o'clock we started
+back-slowly, for it was still hot, and there was all the cool of
+night before us.  It was nine o'clock when we came to Richmond Park.
+A grand place, Richmond Park; and in that half-light wonderful, the
+deer moving so softly, you might have thought they were spirits.  We
+were silent too--great trees have that effect on me....
+
+"Who can say when changes come?  Like a shift of the wind, the old
+passes, the new is on you.  I am telling you now of a change like
+that.  Without a sign of warning, Eilie put her horse into a gallop.
+'What are you doing?' I shouted.  She looked back with a smile, then
+he dashed past me too.  A hornet might have stung them both: they
+galloped over fallen trees, under low hanging branches, up hill and
+down.  I had to watch that madness!  My horse was not so fast.  I
+rode like a demon; but fell far behind.  I am not a man who takes
+things quietly.  When I came up with them at last, I could not speak
+for rage.  They were riding side by side, the reins on the horses'
+necks, looking in each other's faces.  'You should take care,' I
+said.  'Care!' she cried; 'life is not all taking care!'  My anger
+left me.  I dropped behind, as grooms ride behind their mistresses...
+Jealousy!  No torture is so ceaseless or so black....  In those
+minutes a hundred things came up in me--a hundred memories, true,
+untrue, what do I know?  My soul was poisoned.  I tried to reason
+with myself.  It was absurd to think such things!  It was unmanly....
+Even if it were true, one should try to be a gentleman!  But I found
+myself laughing; yes, sir, laughing at that word."  He spoke faster,
+as if pouring his heart out not to a live listener, but to the night.
+"I could not sleep that night.  To lie near her with those thoughts
+in my brain was impossible!  I made an excuse, and sat up with some
+papers.  The hardest thing in life is to see a thing coming and be
+able to do nothing to prevent it.  What could I do?  Have you noticed
+how people may become utter strangers without a word?  It only needs
+a thought....  The very next day she said: 'I want to go to Lucy's.'
+'Alone?'  'Yes.'  I had made up my mind by then that she must do just
+as she wished.  Perhaps I acted wrongly; I do not know what one ought
+to do in such a case; but before she went I said to her: 'Eilie, what
+is it?'  'I don't know,' she answered; and I kissed her--that was
+all....  A month passed; I wrote to her nearly every day, and I had
+short letters from her, telling me very little of herself.  Dalton
+was a torture to me, for I could not tell him; he had a conviction
+that she was going to become a mother.  'Ah, Brune!' he said, 'my
+poor wife was just like that.'  Life, sir, is a somewhat ironical
+affair...!  He--I find it hard to speak his name--came to the school
+two or three times a week.  I used to think I saw a change, a purpose
+growing up through his recklessness; there seemed a violence in him
+as if he chafed against my blade.  I had a kind of joy in feeling I
+had the mastery, and could toss the iron out of his hand any minute
+like a straw.  I was ashamed, and yet I gloried in it.  Jealousy is a
+low thing, sir--a low, base thing!  When he asked me where my wife
+was, I told him; I was too proud to hide it.  Soon after that he came
+no more to the school.
+
+"One morning, when I could bear it no longer, I wrote, and said I was
+coming down.  I would not force myself on her, but I asked her to
+meet me in the orchard of the old house we called the Convent.  I
+asked her to be there at four o'clock.  It has always been my, belief
+that a man must neither beg anything of a woman, nor force anything
+from her.  Women are generous--they will give you what they can.  I
+sealed my letter, and posted it myself.  All the way down I kept on
+saying to myself, 'She must come--surely she will come!'"
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+"I was in high spirits, but the next moment trembled like a man with
+ague.  I reached the orchard before my time.  She was not there.  You
+know what it is like to wait?  I stood still and listened; I went to
+the point whence I could see farthest; I said to myself, 'A watched
+pot never boils; if I don't look for her she will come.'  I walked up
+and down with my eyes on the ground.  The sickness of it!  A hundred
+times I took out my watch.... Perhaps it was fast, perhaps hers was
+slow--I can't tell you a thousandth part of my hopes and fears.
+There was a spring of water, in one corner.  I sat beside it, and
+thought of the last time I had been there--and something seemed to
+burst in me.  It was five o'clock before I lost all hope; there comes
+a time when you're glad that hope is dead, it means rest.  'That's
+over,' you say, 'now I can act.'  But what was I to do?  I lay down
+with my face to the ground; when one's in trouble, it's the only
+thing that helps--something to press against and cling to that can't
+give way.  I lay there for two hours, knowing all the time that I
+should play the coward.  At seven o'clock I left the orchard and went
+towards the inn; I had broken my word, but I felt happy.... I should
+see her--and, sir, nothing--nothing seemed to matter beside that.
+Tor was in the garden snipping at his roses.  He came up, and I could
+see that he couldn't look me in the face.  'Where's my wife?' I said.
+He answered, 'Let's get Lucy.'  I ran indoors.  Lucy met me with two
+letters; the first--my own--unopened; and the second, this:
+
+"'I have left you.  You were good to me, but now--it is no use.
+          EILIE.'"
+
+"She told me that a boy had brought a letter for my wife the day
+before, from a young gentleman in a boat.  When Lucy delivered it she
+asked, 'Who is he, Miss Eilie?  What will Mr. Brune say?'  My wife
+looked at her angrily, but gave her no answer--and all that day she
+never spoke.  In the evening she was gone, leaving this note on the
+bed....  Lucy cried as if her heart would break.  I took her by the
+shoulders and put her from the room; I couldn't bear the noise.  I
+sat down and tried to think.  While I was sitting there Tor came in
+with a letter.  It was written on the notepaper of an inn twelve
+miles up the river: these were the words.
+
+"'Eilie is mine.  I am ready to meet you where you like.'"
+
+He went on with a painful evenness of speech.  "When I read those
+words, I had only one thought--to reach them; I ran down to the
+river, and chose out the lightest boat.  Just as I was starting, Tor
+came running.  'You dropped this letter, sir,' be said.  'Two pair of
+arms are better than one.'  He came into the boat.  I took the sculls
+and I pulled out into the stream.  I pulled like a madman; and that
+great man, with his bare arms crossed, was like a huge, tawny bull
+sitting there opposite me.  Presently he took my place, and I took
+the rudder lines.  I could see his chest, covered with hair, heaving
+up and down, it gave me a sort of comfort--it meant that we were
+getting nearer.  Then it grew dark, there was no moon, I could barely
+see the bank; there's something in the dark which drives one into
+oneself.  People tell you there comes a moment when your nature is
+decided--'saved' or 'lost' as they call it--for good or evil.  That
+is not true, your self is always with you, and cannot be altered;
+but, sir, I believe that in a time of agony one finds out what are
+the things one can do, and what are those one cannot.  You get to
+know yourself, that's all.  And so it was with me.  Every thought and
+memory and passion was so clear and strong!  I wanted to kill him.  I
+wanted to kill myself.  But her--no!  We are taught that we possess
+our wives, body and soul, we are brought up in that faith, we are
+commanded to believe it--but when I was face to face with it, those
+words had no meaning; that belief, those commands, they were without
+meaning to me, they were--vile.  Oh yes, I wanted to find comfort in
+them, I wanted to hold on to them--but I couldn't.  You may force a
+body; how can you force a soul?  No, no--cowardly!  But I wanted to--
+I wanted to kill him and force her to come back to me!  And then,
+suddenly, I felt as if I were pressing right on the most secret nerve
+of my heart.  I seemed to see her face, white and quivering, as if
+I'd stamped my heel on it.  They say this world is ruled by force; it
+may be true--I know I have a weak spot in me....  I couldn't bear it.
+At last I Jumped to my feet and shouted out, 'Turn the boat round!'
+Tor looked up at me as if I had gone mad.  And I had gone mad.  I
+seized the boat-hook and threatened him; I called him fearful names.
+'Sir,' he said, 'I don't take such names from any one!'  'You'll take
+them from me,' I shouted; 'turn the boat round, you idiot, you hound,
+you fish!...'  I have a terrible temper, a perfect curse to me.  He
+seemed amazed, even frightened; he sat down again suddenly and pulled
+the boat round.  I fell on the seat, and hid my face.  I believe the
+moon came up; there must have been a mist too, for I was cold as
+death.  In this life, sir, we cannot hide our faces--but by degrees
+the pain of wounds grows less.  Some will have it that such blows are
+mortal; it is not so.  Time is merciful.
+
+"In the early morning I went back to London.  I had fever on me--and
+was delirious.  I dare say I should have killed myself if I had not
+been so used to weapons--they and I were too old friends, I suppose--
+I can't explain.  It was a long while before I was up and about.
+Dalton nursed me through it; his great heavy moustache had grown
+quite white.  We never mentioned her; what was the good?  There were
+things to settle of course, the lawyer--this was unspeakably
+distasteful to me.  I told him it was to be as she wished, but the
+fellow would come to me, with his--there, I don't want to be unkind.
+I wished him to say it was my fault, but he said--I remember his
+smile now--he said, that was impossible, would be seen through,
+talked of collusion--I don't understand these things, and what's
+more, I can't bear them, they are--dirty.
+
+"Two years later, when I had come back to London, after the Russo-
+Turkish war, I received a letter from her.  I have it here."  He took
+an old, yellow sheet of paper out of a leathern pockethook, spread it
+in his fingers, and sat staring at it.  For some minutes he did not
+speak.
+
+"In the autumn of that same year she died in childbirth.  He had
+deserted her.  Fortunately for him, he was killed on the Indian
+frontier, that very year.  If she had lived she would have been
+thirty-two next June; not a great age....  I know I am what they call
+a crank; doctors will tell you that you can't be cured of a bad
+illness, and be the same man again.  If you are bent, to force
+yourself straight must leave you weak in another place.  I must and
+will think well of women--everything done, and everything said
+against them is a stone on her dead body.  Could you sit, and listen
+to it?"  As though driven by his own question, he rose, and paced up
+and down.  He came back to the seat at last.
+
+"That, sir, is the reason of my behaviour this afternoon, and again
+this evening.  You have been so kind, I wanted!--wanted to tell you.
+She had a little daughter--Lucy has her now.  My friend Dalton is
+dead; there would have been no difficulty about money, but, I am
+sorry to say, that he was swindled--disgracefully.  It fell to me to
+administer his affairs--he never knew it, but he died penniless; he
+had trusted some wretched fellows--had an idea they would make his
+fortune.  As I very soon found, they had ruined him.  It was
+impossible to let Lucy--such a dear woman--bear that burden.  I have
+tried to make provision; but, you see," he took hold of my sleeve,
+"I, too, have not been fortunate; in fact, it's difficult to save a
+great deal out of L 190 a year; but the capital is perfectly safe--
+and I get L 47, 10s. a quarter, paid on the nail.  I have often been
+tempted to reinvest at a greater rate of interest, but I've never
+dared.  Anyway, there are no debts--I've been obliged to make a rule
+not to buy what I couldn't pay for on the spot....  Now I am really
+plaguing you--but I wanted to tell you--in case-anything should
+happen to me."  He seemed to take a sudden scare, stiffened, twisted
+his moustache, and muttering, "Your great kindness! Shall never
+forget!" turned hurriedly away.
+
+He vanished; his footsteps, and the tap of his stick grew fainter and
+fainter.  They died out.  He was gone.  Suddenly I got up and
+hastened after him.  I soon stopped--what was there to say?
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+The following day I was obliged to go to Nice, and did not return
+till midnight.  The porter told me that Jules le Ferrier had been to
+see me.  The next morning, while I was still in bed, the door was
+opened, and Jules appeared.  His face was very pale; and the moment
+he stood still drops of perspiration began coursing down his cheeks.
+
+"Georges!" he said, "he is dead.  There, there!  How stupid you look!
+My man is packing.  I have half an hour before the train; my evidence
+shall come from Italy.  I have done my part, the rest is for you.
+Why did you have that dinner?  The Don Quixote!  The idiot!  The poor
+man!  Don't move!  Have you a cigar?  Listen!  When you followed him,
+I followed the other two.  My infernal curiosity!  Can you conceive a
+greater folly?  How fast they walked, those two! feeling their
+cheeks, as if he had struck them both, you know; it was funny.  They
+soon saw me, for their eyes were all round about their heads; they
+had the mark of a glove on their cheeks."  The colour began to come
+back, into Jules's face; he gesticulated with his cigar and became
+more and more dramatic.  "They waited for me.  'Tiens!' said one,
+'this gentleman was with him.  My friend's name is M. Le Baron de---.
+The man who struck him was an odd-looking person; kindly inform me
+whether it is possible for my friend to meet him?'  Eh!" commented
+Jules, "he was offensive!  Was it for me to give our dignity away?
+'Perfectly, monsieur!'  I answered.  'In that case,' he said, 'please
+give me his name and ad dress....  I could not remember his name, and
+as for the address, I never knew it...!  I reflected. 'That,' I said,
+'I am unable to do, for special reasons.'  'Aha!' he said, 'reasons
+that will prevent our fighting him, I suppose?  'On the contrary,' I
+said.  'I will convey your request to him; I may mention that I have
+heard he is the best swordsman and pistol-shot in Europe.  Good-
+night!'  I wished to give them something to dream of, you
+understand....  Patience, my dear!  Patience!  I was, coming to you,
+but I thought I would let them sleep on it--there was plenty of time!
+But yesterday morning I came into the Place, and there he was on the
+bench, with a big dog.  I declare to you he blushed like a young
+girl.  'Sir,' he said, 'I was hoping to meet you; last evening I made
+a great disturbance.  I took an unpardonable liberty'--and he put in
+my hand an envelope.  My friend, what do you suppose it contained--a
+pair of gloves!  Senor Don Punctilioso, hein?  He was the devil, this
+friend of yours; he fascinated me with his gentle eyes and his white
+moustachettes, his humility, his flames--poor man...!  I told him I
+had been asked to take him a challenge.  'If anything comes of it,' I
+said, 'make use of me!'  'Is that so?' he said.  'I am most grateful
+for your kind offer.  Let me see--it is so long since I fought a
+duel.  The sooner it's over the better.  Could you arrange to-morrow
+morning?  Weapons?  Yes; let them choose.'  You see, my friend, there
+was no hanging back here; nous voila en train."
+
+Jules took out his watch.  "I have sixteen minutes.  It is lucky for
+you that you were away yesterday, or you would be in my shoes now.  I
+fixed the place, right hand of the road to Roquebrune, just by the
+railway cutting, and the time--five-thirty of the morning.  It was
+arranged that I should call for him.  Disgusting hour; I have not
+been up so early since I fought Jacques Tirbaut in '85.  At five
+o'clock I found him ready and drinking tea with rum in it--singular
+man! he made me have some too, brrr!  He was shaved, and dressed in
+that old frock-coat.  His great dog jumped into the carriage, but he
+bade her get out, took her paws on his shoulders, and whispered in
+her ear some Italian words; a charm, hein! and back she went, the
+tail between the legs.  We drove slowly, so as not to shake his arm.
+He was more gay than I.  All the way he talked to me of you: how kind
+you were! how good you had been to him!  'You do not speak of
+yourself!' I said.  'Have you no friends, nothing to say?  Sometimes
+an accident will happen!'  'Oh!' he answered, 'there is no danger;
+but if by any chance--well, there is a letter in my pocket.'  'And if
+you should kill him?' I said.  'But I shall not,' he answered slyly:
+'do you think I am going to fire at him?  No, no; he is too young.'
+'But,' I said, 'I--'I am not going to stand that!'  'Yes,' he
+replied, 'I owe him a shot; but there is no danger--not the least
+danger.'  We had arrived; already they were there.  Ah bah!  You know
+the preliminaries, the politeness--this duelling, you know, it is
+absurd, after all.  We placed them at twenty paces.  It is not a bad
+place.  There are pine-trees round, and rocks; at that hour it was
+cool and grey as a church.  I handed him the pistol.  How can I
+describe him to you, standing there, smoothing the barrel with his
+fingers!  'What a beautiful thing a good pistol!' he said.  'Only a
+fool or a madman throws away his life,' I said.  'Certainly,' he
+replied, 'certainly; but there is no danger,' and he regarded me,
+raising his moustachette.
+
+"There they stood then, back to back, with the mouths of their
+pistols to the sky.  'Un!' I cried, 'deux! tirez!' They turned, I
+saw the smoke of his shot go straight up like a prayer; his pistol
+dropped.  I ran to him.  He looked surprised, put out his hand, and
+fell into my arms.  He was dead.  Those fools came running up.  'What
+is it?' cried one.  I made him a bow.  'As you see,' I said; 'you
+have made a pretty shot.  My friend fired in the air.  Messieurs, you
+had better breakfast in Italy.'  We carried him to the carriage, and
+covered him with a rug; the others drove for the frontier.  I brought
+him to his room.  Here is his letter."  Jules stopped; tears were
+running down his face.  "He is dead; I have closed his eyes.  Look
+here, you know, we are all of us cads--it is the rule; but this--
+this, perhaps, was the exception."  And without another word he
+rushed away....
+
+Outside the old fellow's lodging a dismounted cocher was standing
+disconsolate in the sun. "How was I to know they were going to fight
+a duel?" he burst out on seeing me.  "He had white hair--I call you
+to witness he had white hair.  This is bad for me: they will ravish
+my licence.  Aha! you will see--this is bad for me!"  I gave him the
+slip and found my way upstairs.  The old fellow was alone, lying on
+the bed, his feet covered with a rug as if he might feel cold; his
+eyes were closed, but in this sleep of death, he still had that air
+of faint surprise.  At full length, watching the bed intently, Freda
+lay, as she lay nightly when he was really asleep.  The shutters were
+half open; the room still smelt slightly of rum.  I stood for a long
+time looking at the face: the little white fans of moustache brushed
+upwards even in death, the hollows in his cheeks, the quiet of his
+figure; he was like some old knight....  The dog broke the spell.
+She sat up, and resting her paws on the bed, licked his face.  I went
+downstairs--I couldn't bear to hear her howl.  This was his letter to
+me, written in a pointed handwriting:
+
+"MY DEAR SIR,--Should you read this, I shall be gone.  I am ashamed
+to trouble you--a man should surely manage so as not to give trouble;
+and yet I believe you will not consider me importunate.  If, then,
+you will pick up the pieces of an old fellow, I ask you to have my
+sword, the letter enclosed in this, and the photograph that stands on
+the stove buried with me.  My will and the acknowledgments of my
+property are between the leaves of the Byron in my tin chest; they
+should go to Lucy Tor--address thereon.  Perhaps you will do me the
+honour to retain for yourself any of my books that may give you
+pleasure.  In the Pilgrim's Progress you will find some excellent
+recipes for Turkish coffee, Italian and Spanish dishes, and washing
+wounds.  The landlady's daughter speaks Italian, and she would, I
+know, like to have Freda; the poor dog will miss me.  I have read of
+old Indian warriors taking their horses and dogs with them to the
+happy hunting-grounds.  Freda would come--noble animals are dogs! She
+eats once a day--a good large meal--and requires much salt.  If you
+have animals of your own, sir, don't forget--all animals require
+salt.  I have no debts, thank God!  The money in my pockets would
+bury me decently--not that there is any danger.  And I am ashamed to
+weary you with details--the least a man can do is not to make a fuss-
+-and yet he must be found ready.--Sir, with profound gratitude, your
+servant,
+
+"ROGER BRUNE."
+
+
+Everything was as he had said.  The photograph on the stove was that
+of a young girl of nineteen or twenty, dressed in an old-fashioned
+style, with hair gathered backward in a knot.  The eyes gazed at you
+with a little frown, the lips were tightly closed; the expression of
+the face was eager, quick, wilful, and, above all, young.
+
+The tin trunk was scented with dry fragments of some herb, the
+history of which in that trunk man knoweth not....  There were a few
+clothes, but very few, all older than those he usually wore.  Besides
+the Byron and Pilgrim's Progress were Scott's Quentin Durward,
+Captain Marryat's Midshipman Easy, a pocket Testament, and a long and
+frightfully stiff book on the art of fortifying towns, much thumbed,
+and bearing date 1863.  By far the most interesting thing I found,
+however, was a diary, kept down to the preceding Christmas.  It was a
+pathetic document, full of calculations of the price of meals;
+resolutions to be careful over this or that; doubts whether he must
+not give up smoking; sentences of fear that Freda had not enough to
+eat.  It appeared that he had tried to live on ninety pounds a year,
+and send the other hundred pounds home to Lucy for the child; in this
+struggle he was always failing, having to send less than the amount-
+the entries showed that this was a nightmare to him.  The last words,
+written on Christmas Day, were these "What is the use of writing
+this, since it records nothing but failure!"
+
+The landlady's daughter and myself were at the funeral.  The same
+afternoon I went into the concert-room, where I had spoken to him
+first.  When I came out Freda was lying at the entrance, looking into
+the faces of every one that passed, and sniffing idly at their heels.
+Close by the landlady's daughter hovered, a biscuit in her hand, and
+a puzzled, sorry look on her face.
+
+September 1900.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+MY BROTHER
+
+HUBERT GALSWORTHY
+
+
+
+
+SALVATION OF A FORSYTE
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+Swithin Forsyte lay in bed.  The corners of his mouth under his white
+moustache drooped towards his double chin.  He panted:
+
+"My doctor says I'm in a bad way, James."
+
+His twin-brother placed his hand behind his ear.  "I can't hear you.
+They tell me I ought to take a cure.  There's always a cure wanted
+for something.  Emily had a cure."
+
+Swithin replied: "You mumble so.  I hear my man, Adolph.  I trained
+him....  You ought to have an ear-trumpet.  You're getting very
+shaky, James."
+
+There was silence; then James Forsyte, as if galvanised, remarked: "I
+s'pose you've made your will.  I s'pose you've left your money to the
+family; you've nobody else to leave it to.  There was Danson died the
+other day, and left his money to a hospital"
+
+The hairs of Swithin's white moustache bristled.  "My fool of a
+doctor told me to make my will," he said, "I hate a fellow who tells
+you to make your will.  My appetite's good; I ate a partridge last
+night.  I'm all the better for eating.  He told me to leave off
+champagne!  I eat a good breakfast.  I'm not eighty.  You're the same
+age, James.  You look very shaky."
+
+James Forsyte said: "You ought to have another opinion.  Have Blank;
+he's the first man now.  I had him for Emily; cost me two hundred
+guineas.  He sent her to Homburg; that's the first place now.  The
+Prince was there--everybody goes there."
+
+Swithin Forsyte answered: "I don't get any sleep at night, now I
+can't get out; and I've bought a new carriage--gave a pot of money
+for it.  D' you ever have bronchitis?  They tell me champagne's
+dangerous; it's my belief I couldn't take a better thing."
+
+James Forsyte rose.
+
+"You ought to have another opinion.  Emily sent her love; she would
+have come in, but she had to go to Niagara.  Everybody goes there;
+it's the place now.  Rachel goes every morning: she overdoes it--
+she'll be laid up one of these days.  There's a fancy ball there to-
+night; the Duke gives the prizes."
+
+Swithin Forsyte said angrily: "I can't get things properly cooked
+here; at the club I get spinach decently done."  The bed-clothes
+jerked at the tremor of his legs.
+
+James Forsyte replied: "You must have done well with Tintos; you must
+have made a lot of money by them.  Your ground-rents must be falling
+in, too.  You must have any amount you don't know what to do with."
+He mouthed the words, as if his lips were watering.
+
+Swithin Forsyte glared.  "Money!" he said; "my doctor's bill's
+enormous."
+
+James Forsyte stretched out a cold, damp hand "Goodbye! You ought to
+have another opinion.  I can't keep the horses waiting: they're a new
+pair--stood me in three hundred.  You ought to take care of yourself.
+I shall speak to Blank about you.  You ought to have him--everybody
+says he's the first man.  Good-bye!"
+
+Swithin Forsyte continued to stare at the ceiling.  He thought: 'A
+poor thing, James! a selfish beggar!  Must be worth a couple of
+hundred thousand!'  He wheezed, meditating on life....
+
+He was ill and lonely.  For many years he had been lonely, and for
+two years ill; but as he had smoked his first cigar, so he would live
+his life-stoutly, to its predestined end.  Every day he was driven to
+the club; sitting forward on the spring cushions of a single
+brougham, his hands on his knees, swaying a little, strangely solemn.
+He ascended the steps into that marble hall--the folds of his chin
+wedged into the aperture of his collar--walking squarely with a
+stick.  Later he would dine, eating majestically, and savouring his
+food, behind a bottle of champagne set in an ice-pail--his waistcoat
+defended by a napkin, his eyes rolling a little or glued in a stare
+on the waiter.  Never did he suffer his head or back to droop, for it
+was not distinguished so to do.
+
+Because he was old and deaf, he spoke to no one; and no one spoke to
+him.  The club gossip, an Irishman, said to each newcomer: "Old
+Forsyte!  Look at 'um!  Must ha' had something in his life to sour
+'um!"  But Swithin had had nothing in his life to sour him.
+
+For many days now he had lain in bed in a room exuding silver,
+crimson, and electric light, smelling of opopanax and of cigars.  The
+curtains were drawn, the firelight gleamed; on a table by his bed
+were a jug of barley-water and the Times.  He made an attempt to
+read, failed, and fell again to thinking.  His face with its square
+chin, looked like a block of pale leather bedded in the pillow.  It
+was lonely!  A woman in the room would have made all the difference!
+Why had he never married?  He breathed hard, staring froglike at the
+ceiling; a memory had come into his mind.  It was a long time ago--
+forty odd years--but it seemed like yesterday....
+
+It happened when he was thirty-eight, for the first and only time in
+his life travelling on the Continent, with his twin-brother James and
+a man named Traquair.  On the way from Germany to Venice, he had
+found himself at the Hotel Goldene Alp at Salzburg.  It was late
+August, and weather for the gods: sunshine on the walls and the
+shadows of the vine-leaves, and at night, the moonlight, and again on
+the walls the shadows of the vine-leaves.  Averse to the suggestions
+of other people, Swithin had refused to visit the Citadel; he had
+spent the day alone in the window of his bedroom, smoking a
+succession of cigars, and disparaging the appearance of the passers-
+by.  After dinner he was driven by boredom into the streets.  His
+chest puffed out like a pigeon's, and with something of a pigeon's
+cold and inquiring eye, he strutted, annoyed at the frequency of
+uniforms, which seemed to him both needless and offensive.  His
+spleen rose at this crowd of foreigners, who spoke an unintelligible
+language, wore hair on their faces, and smoked bad tobacco.  'A queer
+lot!' he thought.  The sound of music from a cafe attracted him; he
+walked in, vaguely moved by a wish for the distinction of adventure,
+without the trouble which adventure usually brought with it; spurred
+too, perhaps, by an after-dinner demon.  The cafe was the bier-halle
+of the 'Fifties, with a door at either end, and lighted by a large
+wooden lantern.  On a small dais three musicians were fiddling.
+Solitary men, or groups, sat at some dozen tables, and the waiters
+hurried about replenishing glasses; the air was thick with smoke.
+Swithin sat down.  "Wine!" he said sternly.  The astonished waiter
+brought him wine.  Swithin pointed to a beer glass on the table.
+"Here!" he said, with the same ferocity.  The waiter poured out the
+wine.  'Ah!' thought Swithin, 'they can understand if they like.'  A
+group of officers close by were laughing; Swithin stared at them
+uneasily.  A hollow cough sounded almost in his ear.  To his left a
+man sat reading, with his elbows on the corners of a journal, and his
+gaunt shoulders raised almost to his eyes.  He had a thin, long nose,
+broadening suddenly at the nostrils; a black-brown beard, spread in a
+savage fan over his chest; what was visible of the face was the
+colour of old parchment.  A strange, wild, haughty-looking creature!
+Swithin observed his clothes with some displeasure--they were the
+clothes of a journalist or strolling actor.  And yet he was
+impressed.  This was singular.  How could he be impressed by a fellow
+in such clothes!  The man reached out a hand, covered with black
+hairs, and took up a tumbler that contained a dark-coloured fluid.
+'Brandy!' thought Swithin.  The crash of a falling chair startled
+him--his neighbour had risen.  He was of immense height, and very
+thin; his great beard seemed to splash away from his mouth; he was
+glaring at the group of officers, and speaking.  Swithin made out two
+words: "Hunde! Deutsche Hunde!" 'Hounds! Dutch hounds!' he thought:
+'Rather strong!'  One of the officers had jumped up, and now drew his
+sword.  The tall man swung his chair up, and brought it down with a
+thud.  Everybody round started up and closed on him.  The tall man
+cried out, "To me, Magyars!"
+
+Swithin grinned.  The tall man fighting such odds excited his
+unwilling admiration; he had a momentary impulse to go to his
+assistance.  'Only get a broken nose!' he thought, and looked for a
+safe corner.  But at that moment a thrown lemon struck him on the
+jaw.  He jumped out of his chair and rushed at the officers.  The
+Hungarian, swinging his chair, threw him a look of gratitude--Swithin
+glowed with momentary admiration of himself.  A sword blade grazed
+his--arm; he felt a sudden dislike of the Hungarian.  'This is too
+much,' he thought, and, catching up a chair, flung it at the wooden
+lantern.  There was a crash--faces and swords vanished.  He struck a
+match, and by the light of it bolted for the door.  A second later he
+was in the street.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+A voice said in English, "God bless you, brother!"
+
+Swithin looked round, and saw the tall Hungarian holding out his
+hand.  He took it, thinking, 'What a fool I've been!'  There was
+something in the Hungarian's gesture which said, "You are worthy of
+me!"
+
+It was annoying, but rather impressive.  The man seemed even taller
+than before; there was a cut on his cheek, the blood from which was
+trickling down his beard.  "You English!" he said.  "I saw you stone
+Haynau--I saw you cheer Kossuth.  The free blood of your people cries
+out to us."  He looked at Swithin.  "You are a big man, you have a
+big soul--and strong, how you flung them down! Ha!"  Swithin had an
+impulse to take to his heels.  "My name," said the Hungarian, "is
+Boleskey.  You are my friend."  His English was good.
+
+'Bulsh-kai-ee, Burlsh-kai-ee,' thought Swithin; 'what a devil of a
+name!'  "Mine," he said sulkily, "is Forsyte."
+
+The Hungarian repeated it.
+
+"You've had a nasty jab on the cheek," said Swithin; the sight of the
+matted beard was making him feel sick.  The Hungarian put his fingers
+to his cheek, brought them away wet, stared at them, then with an
+indifferent air gathered a wisp of his beard and crammed it against
+the cut.
+
+"Ugh!" said Swithin.  "Here! Take my handkerchief!"
+
+The Hungarian bowed.  "Thank you!" he said; "I couldn't think of it!
+Thank you a thousand times!"
+
+"Take it!" growled Swithin; it seemed to him suddenly of the first
+importance.  He thrust the handkerchief into the Hungarian's hand,
+and felt a pain in his arm.  'There!' he thought, 'I've strained a
+muscle.'
+
+The Hungarian kept muttering, regardless of passers-by, "Swine! How
+you threw them over!  Two or three cracked heads, anyway--the
+cowardly swine!"
+
+"Look here!" said Swithin suddenly; "which is my way to the Goldene
+Alp?"
+
+The Hungarian replied, "But you are coming with me, for a glass of
+wine?"
+
+Swithin looked at the ground.  'Not if I know it!' he thought.
+
+"Ah!" said the Hungarian with dignity, "you do not wish for my
+friendship!"
+
+'Touchy beggar!' thought Swithin.  "Of course," he stammered, "if you
+put it in that way--"
+
+The Hungarian bowed, murmuring, "Forgive me!"
+
+They had not gone a dozen steps before a youth, with a beardless face
+and hollow cheeks, accosted them.  "For the love of Christ,
+gentlemen," he said, "help me!"
+
+"Are you a German?" asked Boleskey.
+
+"Yes," said the youth.
+
+"Then you may rot!"
+
+"Master, look here!" Tearing open his coat, the youth displayed his
+skin, and a leather belt drawn tight round it.  Again Swithin felt
+that desire to take to his heels.  He was filled with horrid
+forebodings--a sense of perpending intimacy with things such as no
+gentleman had dealings with.
+
+The Hungarian crossed himself.  "Brother," he said to the youth,
+"come you in!"
+
+Swithin looked at them askance, and followed.  By a dim light they
+groped their way up some stairs into a large room, into which the
+moon was shining through a window bulging over the street.  A lamp
+burned low; there was a smell of spirits and tobacco, with a faint,
+peculiar scent, as of rose leaves.  In one corner stood a czymbal, in
+another a great pile of newspapers.  On the wall hung some old-
+fashioned pistols, and a rosary of yellow beads.  Everything was
+tidily arranged, but dusty.  Near an open fireplace was a table with
+the remains of a meal.  The ceiling, floor, and walls were all of
+dark wood.  In spite of the strange disharmony, the room had a sort
+of refinement.  The Hungarian took a bottle out of a cupboard and,
+filling some glasses, handed one to Swithin.  Swithin put it gingerly
+to his nose.  'You never know your luck! Come!' he thought, tilting
+it slowly into his mouth.  It was thick, too sweet, but of a fine
+flavour.
+
+"Brothers!" said the Hungarian, refilling, "your healths!"
+
+The youth tossed off his wine.  And Swithin this time did the same;
+he pitied this poor devil of a youth now.  "Come round to-morrow!" he
+said, "I'll give you a shirt or two."  When the youth was gone,
+however, he remembered with relief that he had not given his address.
+
+'Better so,' he reflected.  'A humbug, no doubt.'
+
+"What was that you said to him?" he asked of the Hungarian.
+
+"I said," answered Boleskey, "'You have eaten and drunk; and now you
+are my enemy!'"
+
+"Quite right!" said Swithin, "quite right! A beggar is every man's
+enemy."
+
+"You do not understand," the Hungarian replied politely.  "While he
+was a beggar--I, too, have had to beg" (Swithin thought, 'Good God!
+this is awful!'), "but now that he is no longer hungry, what is he
+but a German?  No Austrian dog soils my floors!"
+
+His nostrils, as it seemed to Swithin, had distended in an unpleasant
+fashion; and a wholly unnecessary raucousness invaded his voice.  "I
+am an exile--all of my blood are exiles.  Those Godless dogs!"
+Swithin hurriedly assented.
+
+As he spoke, a face peeped in at the door.
+
+"Rozsi!" said the Hungarian.  A young girl came in.  She was rather
+short, with a deliciously round figure and a thick plait of hair.
+She smiled, and showed her even teeth; her little, bright, wide-set
+grey eyes glanced from one man to the other.  Her face was round,
+too, high in the cheekbones, the colour of wild roses, with brows
+that had a twist-up at the corners.  With a gesture of alarm, she put
+her hand to her cheek, and called, "Margit!"  An older girl appeared,
+taller, with fine shoulders, large eyes, a pretty mouth, and what
+Swithin described to himself afterwards as a "pudding" nose.  Both
+girls, with little cooing sounds, began attending to their father's
+face.
+
+Swithin turned his back to them.  His arm pained him.
+
+'This is what comes of interfering,' he thought sulkily; 'I might
+have had my neck broken!' Suddenly a soft palm was placed in his, two
+eyes, half-fascinated, half-shy, looked at him; then a voice called,
+"Rozsi!" the door was slammed, he was alone again with the Hungarian,
+harassed by a sense of soft disturbance.
+
+"Your daughter's name is Rosy?" he said; "we have it in England--from
+rose, a flower."
+
+"Rozsi (Rozgi)," the Hungarian replied; "your English is a hard
+tongue, harder than French, German, or Czechish, harder than Russian,
+or Roumanian--I know no more."
+
+"What?" said Swithin, "six languages?"  Privately he thought, 'He
+knows how to lie, anyway.'
+
+"If you lived in a country like mine," muttered the Hungarian, "with
+all men's hands against you!  A free people--dying--but not dead!"
+
+Swithin could not imagine what he was talking of.  This man's face,
+with its linen bandage, gloomy eyes, and great black wisps of beard,
+his fierce mutterings, and hollow cough, were all most unpleasant.
+He seemed to be suffering from some kind of mental dog-bite.  His
+emotion indeed appeared so indecent, so uncontrolled and open, that
+its obvious sincerity produced a sort of awe in Swithin.  It was like
+being forced to look into a furnace.  Boleskey stopped roaming up and
+down.  "You think it's over?" he said; "I tell you, in the breast of
+each one of us Magyars there is a hell.  What is sweeter than life?
+What is more sacred than each breath we draw?  Ah! my country!"
+These words were uttered so slowly, with such intense mournfulness,
+that Swithin's jaw relaxed; he converted the movement to a yawn.
+
+"Tell me," said Boleskey, "what would you do if the French conquered
+you?"
+
+Swithin smiled.  Then suddenly, as though something had hurt him, he
+grunted, "The 'Froggies'?  Let 'em try!"
+
+"Drink!" said Boleskey--"there is nothing like it"; he filled
+Swithin's glass.  "I will tell you my story."
+
+Swithin rose hurriedly.  "It's late," he said.  "This is good stuff,
+though; have you much of it?"
+
+"It is the last bottle."
+
+"What?" said Swithin; "and you gave it to a beggar?"
+
+"My name is Boleskey--Stefan," the Hungarian said, raising his head;
+"of the Komorn Boleskeys."  The simplicity of this phrase--as who
+shall say: What need of further description?--made an impression on
+Swithin; he stopped to listen.  Boleskey's story went on and on.
+"There were many abuses," boomed his deep voice, "much wrong done--
+much cowardice.  I could see clouds gathering--rolling over our
+plains.  The Austrian wished to strangle the breath of our mouths--to
+take from us the shadow of our liberty--the shadow--all we had.  Two
+years ago--the year of '48, when every man and boy answered the great
+voice--brother, a dog's life!--to use a pen when all of your blood
+are fighting, but it was decreed for me!  My son was killed; my
+brothers taken--and myself was thrown out like a dog--I had written
+out my heart, I had written out all the blood that was in my body!"
+He seemed to tower, a gaunt shadow of a man, with gloomy, flickering
+eyes staring at the wall.
+
+Swithin rose, and stammered, "Much obliged--very interesting."
+Boleskey made no effort to detain him, but continued staring at the
+wall.  "Good-night!" said Swithin, and stamped heavily downstairs.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+When at last Swithin reached the Goldene Alp, he found his brother
+and friend standing uneasily at the door.  Traquair, a prematurely
+dried-up man, with whiskers and a Scotch accent, remarked, "Ye're
+airly, man!"  Swithin growled something unintelligible, and swung up
+to bed.  He discovered a slight cut on his arm.  He was in a savage
+temper--the elements had conspired to show him things he did not want
+to see; yet now and then a memory of Rozsi, of her soft palm in his,
+a sense of having been stroked and flattered, came over him.  During
+breakfast next morning his brother and Traquair announced their
+intention of moving on.  James Forsyte, indeed, remarked that it was
+no place for a "collector," since all the "old" shops were in the
+hands of Jews or very grasping persons--he had discovered this at
+once.  Swithin pushed his cup aside.  "You may do what you like," he
+said, "I'm staying here."
+
+James Forsyte replied, tumbling over his own words: "Why! what do you
+want to stay here for?  There's nothing for you to do here--there's
+nothing to see here, unless you go up the Citadel, an' you won't do
+that."
+
+Swithin growled, "Who says so?"  Having gratified his perversity, he
+felt in a better temper.  He had slung his arm in a silk sash, and
+accounted for it by saying he had slipped.  Later he went out and
+walked on to the bridge.  In the brilliant sunshine spires were
+glistening against the pearly background of the hills; the town had a
+clean, joyous air.  Swithin glanced at the Citadel and thought,
+'Looks a strong place! Shouldn't wonder if it were impregnable!'  And
+this for some occult reason gave him pleasure.  It occurred to him
+suddenly to go and look for the Hungarian's house.
+
+About noon, after a hunt of two hours, he was gazing about him
+blankly, pale with heat, but more obstinate than ever, when a voice
+above him called, "Mister!" He looked up and saw Rozsi.  She was
+leaning her round chin on her round hand, gazing down at him with her
+deepset, clever eyes.  When Swithin removed his hat, she clapped her
+hands.  Again he had the sense of being admired, caressed.  With a
+careless air, that sat grotesquely on his tall square person, he
+walked up to the door; both girls stood in the passage.  Swithin felt
+a confused desire to speak in some foreign tongue.  "Maam'selles," he
+began, "er--bong jour-er, your father--pare, comment?"
+
+"We also speak English," said the elder girl; "will you come in,
+please?"
+
+Swithin swallowed a misgiving, and entered.  The room had a worn
+appearance by daylight, as if it had always been the nest of tragic
+or vivid lives.  He sat down, and his eyes said: "I am a stranger,
+but don't try to get the better of me, please--that is impossible."
+The girls looked at him in silence.  Rozsi wore a rather short skirt
+of black stuff, a white shirt, and across her shoulders an
+embroidered yoke; her sister was dressed in dark green, with a coral
+necklace; both girls had their hair in plaits.  After a minute Rozsi
+touched the sleeve of his hurt arm.
+
+"It's nothing!" muttered Swithin.
+
+"Father fought with a chair, but you had no chair," she said in a
+wondering voice.
+
+He doubled the fist of his sound arm and struck a blow at space.  To
+his amazement she began to laugh.  Nettled at this, he put his hand
+beneath the heavy table and lifted it.  Rozsi clapped her hands.  "Ah
+I now I see--how strong you are!"  She made him a curtsey and whisked
+round to the window.  He found the quick intelligence of her eyes
+confusing; sometimes they seemed to look beyond him at something
+invisible--this, too, confused him.  From Margit he learned that they
+had been two years in England, where their father had made his living
+by teaching languages; they had now been a year in Salzburg.
+
+"We wait," suddenly said.  Rozsi; and Margit, with a solemn face,
+repeated, "We wait."
+
+Swithin's eyes swelled a little with his desire to see what they were
+waiting for.  How queer they were, with their eyes that gazed beyond
+him!  He looked at their figures.  'She would pay for dressing,' he
+thought, and he tried to imagine Rozsi in a skirt with proper
+flounces, a thin waist, and hair drawn back over her ears.  She would
+pay for dressing, with that supple figure, fluffy hair, and little
+hands!  And instantly his own hands, face, and clothes disturbed him.
+He got up, examined the pistols on the wall, and felt resentment at
+the faded, dusty room.  'Smells like a pot-house!' he thought.  He
+sat down again close to Rozsi.
+
+"Do you love to dance?" she asked; "to dance is to live.  First you
+hear the music--how your feet itch!  It is wonderful!  You begin
+slow, quick--quicker; you fly--you know nothing--your feet are in the
+air.  It is wonderful!"
+
+A slow flush had mounted into Swithin's face.
+
+"Ah!" continued Rozsi, her eyes fixed on him, "when I am dancing--out
+there I see the plains--your feet go one--two--three--quick, quick,
+quick, quicker--you fly."
+
+She stretched herself, a shiver seemed to pass all down her.
+"Margit! dance!" and, to Swithin's consternation, the two girls--
+their hands on each other's shoulders--began shuffling their feet and
+swaying to and fro.  Their heads were thrown back, their eyes half-
+closed; suddenly the step quickened, they swung to one side, then to
+the other, and began whirling round in front of him.  The sudden
+fragrance of rose leaves enveloped him.  Round they flew again.
+While they were still dancing, Boleskey came into the room.  He
+caught Swithin by both hands.
+
+"Brother, welcome! Ah! your arm is hurt! I do not forget."  His
+yellow face and deep-set eyes expressed a dignified gratitude.  "Let
+me introduce to you my friend Baron Kasteliz."
+
+Swithin bowed to a man with a small forehead, who had appeared
+softly, and stood with his gloved hands touching his waist.  Swithin
+conceived a sudden aversion for this catlike man.  About Boleskey
+there was that which made contempt impossible--the sense of
+comradeship begotten in the fight; the man's height; something lofty
+and savage in his face; and an obscure instinct that it would not pay
+to show distaste; but this Kasteliz, with his neat jaw, low brow, and
+velvety, volcanic look, excited his proper English animosity.  "Your
+friends are mine," murmured Kasteliz.  He spoke with suavity, and
+hissed his s's.  A long, vibrating twang quavered through the room.
+Swithin turned and saw Rozsi sitting at the czymbal; the notes rang
+under the little hammers in her hands, incessant, metallic, rising
+and falling with that strange melody.  Kasteliz had fixed his glowing
+eyes on her; Boleskey, nodding his head, was staring at the floor;
+Margit, with a pale face, stood like a statue.
+
+'What can they see in it?' thought Swithin; 'it's not a tune.'  He
+took up his hat.  Rozsi saw him and stopped; her lips had parted with
+a faintly dismayed expression.  His sense of personal injury
+diminished; he even felt a little sorry for her.  She jumped up from
+her seat and twirled round with a pout.  An inspiration seized on
+Swithin.  "Come and dine with me," he said to Boleskey, "to-morrow--
+the Goldene Alp--bring your friend."  He felt the eyes of the whole
+room on him--the Hungarian's fine eyes; Margit's wide glance; the
+narrow, hot gaze of Kasteliz; and lastly--Rozsi's.  A glow of
+satisfaction ran down his spine.  When he emerged into the street
+he thought gloomily, 'Now I've done it!' And not for some paces did
+he look round; then, with a forced smile, turned and removed his hat
+to the faces at the window.
+
+Notwithstanding this moment of gloom, however, he was in an exalted
+state all day, and at dinner kept looking at his brother and Traquair
+enigmatically.  'What do they know of life?' he thought; 'they might
+be here a year and get no farther.'  He made jokes, and pinned the
+menu to the waiter's coat-tails.  "I like this place," he said, "I
+shall spend three weeks here."  James, whose lips were on the point
+of taking in a plum, looked at him uneasily.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+On the day of the dinner Swithin suffered a good deal.  He reflected
+gloomily on Boleskey's clothes.  He had fixed an early hour--there
+would be fewer people to see them.  When the time approached he
+attired himself with a certain neat splendour, and though his arm was
+still sore, left off the sling....
+
+Nearly three hours afterwards he left the Goldene Alp between his
+guests.  It was sunset, and along the riverbank the houses stood out,
+unsoftened by the dusk; the streets were full of people hurrying
+home.  Swithin had a hazy vision of empty bottles, of the ground
+before his feet, and the accessibility of all the world.  Dim
+recollections of the good things he had said, of his brother and
+Traquair seated in the background eating ordinary meals with
+inquiring, acid visages, caused perpetual smiles to break out on his
+face, and he steered himself stubbornly, to prove that he was a
+better man than either' of his guests.  He knew, vaguely, that he was
+going somewhere with an object; Rozsi's face kept dancing before him,
+like a promise.  Once or twice he gave Kasteliz a glassy stare.
+Towards Boleskey, on the other hand, he felt quite warm, and recalled
+with admiration the way he had set his glass down empty, time after
+time.  'I like to see him take his liquor,' he thought; 'the fellow's
+a gentleman, after all.'  Boleskey strode on, savagely inattentive to
+everything; and Kasteliz had become more like a cat than ever.  It
+was nearly dark when they reached a narrow street close to the
+cathedral.  They stopped at a door held open by an old woman.  The
+change from the fresh air to a heated corridor, the noise of the door
+closed behind him, the old woman's anxious glances, sobered Swithin.
+
+"I tell her," said Boleskey, "that I reply for you as for my son."
+
+Swithin was angry.  What business had this man to reply for him!
+
+They passed into a large room, crowded with men all women; Swithin
+noticed that they all looked fit him.  He stared at them in turn--
+they seemed of all classes, some in black coats or silk dresses,
+others in the clothes of work-people; one man, a cobbler, still wore
+his leather apron, as if he had rushed there straight from his work.
+Laying his hand on Swithin's arm, Boleskey evidently began explaining
+who he was; hands were extended, people beyond reach bowed to him.
+Swithin acknowledged the greetings with a stiff motion of his head;
+then seeing other people dropping into seats, he, too, sat down.
+Some one whispered his name--Margit and Rozsi were just behind him.
+
+"Welcome!" said Margit; but Swithin was looking at Rozsi.  Her face
+was so alive and quivering!  'What's the excitement all about?' he
+thought.  'How pretty she looks!'  She blushed, drew in her hands
+with a quick tense movement, and gazed again beyond him into the
+room.  'What is it?' thought Swithin; he had a longing to lean back
+and kiss her lips.  He tried angrily to see what she was seeing in
+those faces turned all one way.
+
+Boleskey rose to speak.  No one moved; not a sound could be heard but
+the tone of his deep voice.  On and on he went, fierce and solemn,
+and with the rise of his voice, all those faces-fair or swarthy--
+seemed to be glowing with one and the same feeling.  Swithin felt the
+white heat in those faces--it was not decent!  In that whole speech
+he only understood the one word--"Magyar" which came again and again.
+He almost dozed off at last.  The twang of a czymbal woke him.
+'What?' he thought, 'more of that infernal music!' Margit, leaning
+over him, whispered: "Listen! Racoczy! It is forbidden!" Swithin saw
+that Rozsi was no longer in her seat; it was she who was striking
+those forbidden notes.  He looked round--everywhere the same unmoving
+faces, the same entrancement, and fierce stillness.  The music
+sounded muffled, as if it, too, were bursting its heart in silence.
+Swithin felt within him a touch of panic.  Was this a den of tigers?
+The way these people listened, the ferocity of their stillness, was
+frightful...!  He gripped his chair and broke into a perspiration;
+was there no chance to get away?  'When it stops,' he thought,
+'there'll be a rush!'  But there was only a greater silence.  It
+flashed across him that any hostile person coming in then would be
+torn to pieces.  A woman sobbed.  The whole thing was beyond words
+unpleasant.  He rose, and edged his way furtively towards the
+doorway.  There was a cry of "Police!"  The whole crowd came pressing
+after him.  Swithin would soon have been out, but a little behind he
+caught sight of Rozsi swept off her feet.  Her frightened eyes
+angered him.  'She doesn't deserve it,' he thought sulkily; 'letting
+all this loose!' and forced his way back to her.  She clung to him,
+and a fever went stealing through his veins; he butted forward at the
+crowd, holding her tight.  When they were outside he let her go.
+
+"I was afraid," she said.
+
+"Afraid!" muttered Swithin; "I should think so."  No longer touching
+her, he felt his grievance revive.
+
+"But you are so strong," she murmured.
+
+"This is no place for you," growled Swithin, "I'm going to see you
+home."
+
+"Oh!" cried Rozsi; "but papa and--Margit!"
+
+"That's their look-out!" and he hurried her away.
+
+She slid her hand under his arm; the soft curves of her form brushed
+him gently, each touch only augmented his ill-humour.  He burned with
+a perverse rage, as if all the passions in him were simmering and
+ready to boil over; it was as if a poison were trying to work its way
+out of him, through the layers of his stolid flesh.  He maintained a
+dogged silence; Rozsi, too, said nothing, but when they reached the
+door, she drew her hand away.
+
+"You are angry!" she said.
+
+"Angry," muttered Swithin; "no! How d'you make that out?"  He had a
+torturing desire to kiss her.
+
+"Yes, you are angry," she repeated; "I wait here for papa and
+Margit."
+
+Swithin also waited, wedged against the wall.  Once or twice, for his
+sight was sharp, he saw her steal a look at him, a beseeching look,
+and hardened his heart with a kind of pleasure.  After five minutes
+Boleskey, Margit, and Kasteliz appeared.  Seeing Rozsi they broke
+into exclamations of relief, and Kasteliz, with a glance at Swithin,
+put his lips to her hand.  Rozsi's look said, "Wouldn't you like to
+do that?"  Swithin turned short on his heel, and walked away.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+All night he hardly slept, suffering from fever, for the first time
+in his life.  Once he jumped out of bed, lighted a candle, and going
+to the glass, scrutinised himself long and anxiously.  After this he
+fell asleep, but had frightful dreams.  His first thought when he
+woke was, 'My liver's out of order!' and, thrusting his head into
+cold water, he dressed hastily and went out.  He soon left the house
+behind.  Dew covered everything; blackbirds whistled in the bushes;
+the air was fresh and sweet.  He had not been up so early since he
+was a boy.  Why was he walking through a damp wood at this hour of
+the morning?  Something intolerable and unfamiliar must have sent him
+out.  No fellow in his senses would do such a thing!  He came to a
+dead stop, and began unsteadily to walk back.  Regaining the hotel,
+he went to bed again, and dreamed that in some wild country he was
+living in a room full of insects, where a housemaid--Rozsi--holding a
+broom, looked at him with mournful eyes.  There seemed an unexplained
+need for immediate departure; he begged her to forward his things;
+and shake them out carefully before she put them into the trunk.  He
+understood that the charge for sending would be twenty-two shillings,
+thought it a great deal, and had the horrors of indecision.  "No," he
+muttered, "pack, and take them myself."  The housemaid turned
+suddenly into a lean creature; and he awoke with a sore feeling in
+his heart.
+
+His eye fell on his wet boots.  The whole thing was scaring, and
+jumping up, he began to throw his clothes into his trunks.  It was
+twelve o'clock before he went down, and found his brother and
+Traquair still at the table arranging an itinerary; he surprised them
+by saying that he too was coming; and without further explanation set
+to work to eat.  James had heard that there were salt-mines in the
+neighbourhood--his proposal was to start, and halt an hour or so on
+the road for their inspection; he said: "Everybody'll ask you if
+you've seen the salt-mines: I shouldn't like to say I hadn't seen the
+salt-mines.  What's the good, they'd say, of your going there if you
+haven't seen the salt-mines?"  He wondered, too, if they need fee the
+second waiter--an idle chap!
+
+A discussion followed; but Swithin ate on glumly, conscious that his
+mind was set on larger affairs.  Suddenly on the far side of the
+street Rozsi and her sister passed, with little baskets on their
+arms.  He started up, and at that moment Rozsi looked round--her face
+was the incarnation of enticement, the chin tilted, the lower lip
+thrust a little forward, her round neck curving back over her
+shoulder.  Swithin muttered, "Make your own arrangements--leave me
+out!" and hurried from the room, leaving James beside himself with
+interest and alarm.
+
+When he reached the street, however, the girls had disappeared.  He
+hailed a carriage.  "Drive!" he called to the man, with a flourish of
+his stick, and as soon as the wheels had begun to clatter on the
+stones he leaned back, looking sharply to right and left.  He soon
+had to give up thought of finding them, but made the coachman turn
+round and round again.  All day he drove about, far into the country,
+and kept urging the driver to use greater speed.  He was in a strange
+state of hurry and elation.  Finally, he dined at a little country
+inn; and this gave the measure of his disturbance--the dinner was
+atrocious.
+
+Returning late in the evening he found a note written by Traquair.
+"Are you in your senses, man?" it asked; "we have no more time to
+waste idling about here.  If you want to rejoin us, come on to
+Danielli's Hotel, Venice."  Swithin chuckled when he read it, and
+feeling frightfully tired, went to bed and slept like a log.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+Three weeks later he was still in Salzburg, no longer at the Goldene
+Alp, but in rooms over a shop near the Boleskeys'.  He had spent a
+small fortune in the purchase of flowers.  Margit would croon over
+them, but Rozsi, with a sober "Many tanks!" as if they were her
+right, would look long at herself in the glass, and pin one into her
+hair.  Swithin ceased to wonder; he ceased to wonder at anything they
+did.  One evening he found Boleskey deep in conversation with a pale,
+dishevelled-looking person.
+
+"Our friend Mr. Forsyte--Count D....," said Boleskey.
+
+Swithin experienced a faint, unavoidable emotion; but looking at the
+Count's trousers, he thought: 'Doesn't look much like one!'  And with
+an ironic bow to the silent girls, he turned, and took his hat.  But
+when he had reached the bottom of the dark stairs he heard footsteps.
+Rozsi came running down, looked out at the door, and put her hands up
+to her breast as if disappointed; suddenly with a quick glance round
+she saw him.  Swithin caught her arm.  She slipped away, and her face
+seemed to bubble with defiance or laughter; she ran up three steps,
+stopped, looked at him across her shoulder, and fled on up the
+stairs.  Swithin went out bewildered and annoyed.
+
+'What was she going to say to me?' he kept thinking.  During these
+three weeks he had asked himself all sorts of questions: whether he
+were being made a fool of; whether she were in love with him; what he
+was doing there, and sometimes at night, with all his candles burning
+as if he wanted light, the breeze blowing on him through the window,
+his cigar, half-smoked, in his hand, he sat, an hour or more, staring
+at the wall.  'Enough of this!' he thought every morning.  Twice he
+packed fully--once he ordered his travelling carriage, but
+countermanded it the following day.  What definitely he hoped,
+intended, resolved, he could not have said.  He was always thinking
+of Rozsi, he could not read the riddle in her face--she held him in a
+vice, notwithstanding that everything about her threatened the very
+fetishes of his existence.  And Boleskey!  Whenever he looked at him
+he thought, 'If he were only clean?' and mechanically fingered his
+own well-tied cravatte.  To talk with the fellow, too, was like being
+forced to look at things which had no place in the light of day.
+Freedom, equality, self-sacrifice!
+
+'Why can't he settle down at some business,' he thought, 'instead of
+all this talk?' Boleskey's sudden diffidences, self-depreciation,
+fits of despair, irritated him.  "Morbid beggar!" he would mutter;
+"thank God I haven't a thin skin."  And proud too!  Extraordinary!
+An impecunious fellow like that!  One evening, moreover, Boleskey had
+returned home drunk.  Swithin had hustled him away into his bedroom,
+helped him to undress, and stayed until he was asleep.  'Too much of
+a good thing!' he thought, 'before his own daughters, too!'  It was
+after this that he ordered his travelling carriage.  The other
+occasion on which he packed was one evening, when not only Boleskey,
+but Rozsi herself had picked chicken bones with her fingers.
+
+Often in the mornings he would go to the Mirabell Garden to smoke his
+cigar; there, in stolid contemplation of the statues--rows of half-
+heroic men carrying off half-distressful females--he would spend an
+hour pleasantly, his hat tilted to keep the sun off his nose.  The
+day after Rozsi had fled from him on the stairs, he came there as
+usual.  It was a morning of blue sky and sunlight glowing on the old
+prim garden, on its yew-trees, and serio-comic statues, and walls
+covered with apricots and plums.  When Swithin approached his usual
+seat, who should be sitting there but Rozsi
+
+"Good-morning," he stammered; "you knew this was my seat then?"
+
+Rozsi looked at the ground.  "Yes," she answered.
+
+Swithin felt bewildered.  "Do you know," he said, "you treat me very
+funnily?"
+
+To his surprise Rozsi put her little soft hand down and touched his;
+then, without a word, sprang up and rushed away.  It took him a
+minute to recover.  There were people present; he did not like to
+run, but overtook her on the bridge, and slipped her hand beneath his
+arm.
+
+"You shouldn't have done that," he said; "you shouldn't have run away
+from me, you know."
+
+Rozsi laughed.  Swithin withdrew his arm; a desire to shake her
+seized him.  He walked some way before he said, "Will you have the
+goodness to tell me what you came to that seat for?"
+
+Rozsi flashed a look at him.  "To-morrow is the fete," she answered.
+
+Swithin muttered, "Is that all?"
+
+"If you do not take us, we cannot go."
+
+"Suppose I refuse," he said sullenly, "there are plenty of others."
+
+Rozsi bent her head, scurrying along.  "No," she murmured, "if you do
+not go--I do not wish."
+
+Swithin drew her hand back within his arm.  How round and soft it
+was!  He tried to see her face.  When she was nearly home he said
+goodbye, not wishing, for some dark reason, to be seen with her.  He
+watched till she had disappeared; then slowly retraced his steps to
+the Mirabell Garden.  When he came to where she had been sitting, he
+slowly lighted his cigar, and for a long time after it was smoked out
+remained there in the silent presence of the statues.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+A crowd of people wandered round the booths, and Swithin found
+himself obliged to give the girls his arms.  'Like a little Cockney
+clerk!' he thought.  His indignation passed unnoticed; they talked,
+they laughed, each sight and sound in all the hurly-burly seemed to
+go straight into their hearts.  He eyed them ironically--their eager
+voices, and little coos of sympathy seemed to him vulgar.  In the
+thick of the crowd he slipped his arm out of Margit's, but, just as
+he thought that he was free, the unwelcome hand slid up again.  He
+tried again, but again Margit reappeared, serene, and full of
+pleasant humour; and his failure this time appeared to him in a comic
+light.  But when Rozsi leaned across him, the glow of her round
+cheek, her curving lip, the inscrutable grey gleam of her eyes, sent
+a thrill of longing through him.  He was obliged to stand by while
+they parleyed with a gipsy, whose matted locks and skinny hands
+inspired him with a not unwarranted disgust.  "Folly!" he muttered,
+as Rozsi held out her palm.  The old woman mumbled, and shot a
+malignant look at him.  Rozsi drew back her hand, and crossed
+herself.  'Folly!' Swithin thought again; and seizing the girls'
+arms, he hurried them away.
+
+"What did the old hag say?" he asked.
+
+Rozsi shook her head.
+
+"You don't mean that you believe?"
+
+Her eyes were full of tears.  "The gipsies are wise," she murmured.
+
+"Come, what did she tell you?"
+
+This time Rozsi looked hurriedly round, and slipped away into the
+crowd.  After a hunt they found her, and Swithin, who was scared,
+growled: "You shouldn't do such things--it's not respectable."
+
+On higher ground, in the centre of a clear space, a military band was
+playing.  For the privilege of entering this charmed circle Swithin
+paid three kronen, choosing naturally the best seats.  He ordered
+wine, too, watching Rozsi out of the corner of his eye as he poured
+it out.  The protecting tenderness of yesterday was all lost in this
+medley.  It was every man for himself, after all!  The colour had
+deepened again in her cheeks, she laughed, pouting her lips.
+Suddenly she put her glass aside.  "Thank you, very much," she said,
+"it is enough!"
+
+Margit, whose pretty mouth was all smiles, cried, "Lieber Gott! is it
+not good-life?"  It was not a question Swithin could undertake to
+answer.  The band began to play a waltz.  "Now they will dance.
+Lieber Gott! and are the lights not wonderful?"  Lamps were
+flickering beneath the trees like a swarm of fireflies.  There was a
+hum as from a gigantic beehive.  Passers-by lifted their faces, then
+vanished into the crowd; Rozsi stood gazing at them spellbound, as if
+their very going and coming were a delight.
+
+The space was soon full of whirling couples.  Rozsi's head began to
+beat time.  "O Margit!" she whispered.
+
+Swithin's face had assumed a solemn, uneasy expression.  A man
+raising his hat, offered his arm to Margit.  She glanced back across
+her shoulder to reassure Swithin.  "It is a friend," she said.
+
+Swithin looked at Rozsi--her eyes were bright, her lips tremulous.
+He slipped his hand along the table and touched her fingers.  Then
+she flashed a look at him--appeal, reproach, tenderness, all were
+expressed in it.  Was she expecting him to dance?  Did she want to
+mix with the rift-raff there; wish him to make an exhibition of
+himself in this hurly-burly?  A voice said, "Good-evening!"  Before
+them stood Kasteliz, in a dark coat tightly buttoned at the waist.
+
+"You are not dancing, Rozsi Kozsanony?" (Miss Rozsi).  "Let me, then,
+have the pleasure."  He held out his arm.  Swithin stared in front of
+him.  In the very act of going she gave him a look that said as plain
+as words: "Will you not?"  But for answer he turned his eyes away,
+and when he looked again she was gone.  He paid the score and made
+his way into the crowd.  But as he went she danced by close to him,
+all flushed and panting.  She hung back as if to stop him, and he
+caught the glistening of tears.  Then he lost sight of her again.  To
+be deserted the first minute he was alone with her, and for that
+jackanapes with the small head and the volcanic glances!  It was too
+much!  And suddenly it occurred to him that she was alone with
+Kasteliz--alone at night, and far from home.  'Well,' he thought,
+'what do I care?' and shouldered his way on through the crowd.  It
+served him right for mixing with such people here.  He left the fair,
+but the further he went, the more he nursed his rage, the more
+heinous seemed her offence, the sharper grew his jealousy.  "A
+beggarly baron!" was his thought.
+
+A figure came alongside--it was Boleskey.  One look showed Swithin
+his condition.  Drunk again!  This was the last straw!
+
+Unfortunately Boleskey had recognised him.  He seemed violently
+excited.  "Where--where are my daughters?" he began.
+
+Swithin brushed past, but Boleskey caught his arm.  "Listen--
+brother!" he said; "news of my country!  After to-morrow...."
+
+"Keep it to yourself!" growled Swithin, wrenching his arm free.  He
+went straight to his lodgings, and, lying on the hard sofa of his
+unlighted sitting-room, gave himself up to bitter thoughts.  But in
+spite of all his anger, Rozsi's supply-moving figure, with its
+pouting lips, and roguish appealing eyes, still haunted him.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+Next morning there was not a carriage to be had, and Swithin was
+compelled to put off his departure till the morrow.  The day was grey
+and misty; he wandered about with the strained, inquiring look of a
+lost dog in his eyes.
+
+Late in the afternoon he went back to his lodgings.  In a corner of
+the sitting-room stood Rozsi.  The thrill of triumph, the sense of
+appeasement, the emotion, that seized on him, crept through to his
+lips in a faint smile.  Rozsi made no sound, her face was hidden by
+her hands.  And this silence of hers weighed on Swithin.  She was
+forcing him to break it.  What was behind her hands?  His own face
+was visible!  Why didn't she speak?  Why was she here?  Alone?  That
+was not right surely.
+
+Suddenly Rozsi dropped her hands; her flushed face was quivering--it
+seemed as though a word, a sign, even, might bring a burst of tears.
+
+He walked over to the window.  'I must give her time!' he thought;
+then seized by unreasoning terror at this silence, spun round, and
+caught her by the arms.  Rozsi held back from him, swayed forward and
+buried her face on his breast....
+
+Half an hour later Swithin was pacing up and down his room.  The
+scent of rose leaves had not yet died away.  A glove lay on the
+floor; he picked it up, and for a long time stood weighing it in his
+hand.  All sorts of confused thoughts and feelings haunted him.  It
+was the purest and least selfish moment of his life, this moment
+after she had yielded.  But that pure gratitude at her fiery, simple
+abnegation did not last; it was followed by a petty sense of triumph,
+and by uneasiness.  He was still weighing the little glove in his
+hand, when he had another visitor.  It was Kasteliz.
+
+"What can I do for you?" Swithin asked ironically.
+
+The Hungarian seemed suffering from excitement.  Why had Swithin left
+his charges the night before?  What excuse had he to make?  What sort
+of conduct did he call this?
+
+Swithin, very like a bull-dog at that moment, answered: What business
+was it of his?
+
+The business of a gentleman!  What right had the Englishman to pursue
+a young girl?
+
+"Pursue?" said Swithin; "you've been spying, then?"
+
+"Spying--I--Kasteliz--Maurus Johann--an insult!"
+
+"Insult!" sneered Swithin; "d'you mean to tell me you weren't in the
+street just now?"
+
+Kasteliz answered with a hiss, "If you do not leave the city I will
+make you, with my sword--do you understand?"
+
+"And if you do not leave my room I will throw you out of the window!"
+
+For some minutes Kasteliz spoke in pure Hungarian while Swithin
+waited, with a forced smile and a fixed look in his eye.  He did not
+understand Hungarian.
+
+"If you are still in the city to-morrow evening," said Kasteliz at
+last in English, "I will spit you in the street."
+
+Swithin turned to the window and watched his visitor's retiring back
+with a queer mixture of amusement, stubbornness, and anxiety.
+'Well,' he thought, 'I suppose he'll run me through!'  The thought
+was unpleasant; and it kept recurring, but it only served to harden
+his determination.  His head was busy with plans for seeing Rozsi;
+his blood on fire with the kisses she had given him.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+Swithin was long in deciding to go forth next day.  He had made up
+his mind not to go to Rozsi till five o'clock.  'Mustn't make myself
+too cheap,' he thought.  It was a little past that hour when he at
+last sallied out, and with a beating heart walked towards Boleskey's.
+He looked up at the window, more than half expecting to see Rozsi
+there; but she was not, and he noticed with faint surprise that the
+window was not open; the plants, too, outside, looked singularly
+arid.  He knocked.  No one came.  He beat a fierce tatto.  At last
+the door was opened by a man with a reddish beard, and one of those
+sardonic faces only to be seen on shoemakers of Teutonic origin.
+
+"What do you want, making all this noise?" he asked in German.
+
+Swithin pointed up the stairs.  The man grinned, and shook his head.
+
+"I want to go up," said Swithin.
+
+The cobbler shrugged his shoulders, and Swithin rushed upstairs.  The
+rooms were empty.  The furniture remained, but all signs of life were
+gone.  One of his own bouquets, faded, stood in a glass; the ashes of
+a fire were barely cold; little scraps of paper strewed the hearth;
+already the room smelt musty.  He went into the bedrooms, and with a
+feeling of stupefaction stood staring at the girls' beds, side by
+side against the wall.  A bit of ribbon caught his eye; he picked it
+up and put it in his pocket--it was a piece of evidence that she had
+once existed.  By the mirror some pins were dropped about; a little
+powder had been spilled.  He looked at his own disquiet face and
+thought, 'I've been cheated!'
+
+The shoemaker's voice aroused him.  "Tausend Teufel!  Eilen Sie, nur!
+Zeit is Geld!  Kann nich' Langer warten!"  Slowly he descended.
+
+"Where have they gone?" asked Swithin painfully.  "A pound for every
+English word you speak.  A pound!" and he made an O with his fingers.
+
+The corners of the shoemaker's lips curled.  "Geld! Mf!  Eilen Sie,
+nur!"
+
+But in Swithin a sullen anger had begun to burn.  "If you don't tell
+me," he said, "it'll be the worse for you."
+
+"Sind ein komischer Kerl!" remarked the shoemaker.  "Hier ist meine
+Frau!"
+
+A battered-looking woman came hurrying down the passage, calling out
+in German, "Don't let him go!"
+
+With a snarling sound the shoemaker turned his back, and shambled
+off.
+
+The woman furtively thrust a letter into Swithin's hand, and
+furtively waited.
+
+The letter was from Rozsi.
+
+"Forgive me"--it ran--"that I leave you and do not say goodbye.  To-
+day our father had the call from our dear Father-town so long
+awaited.  In two hours we are ready.  I pray to the Virgin to keep
+you ever safe, and that you do not quite forget me.--Your
+unforgetting good friend,  ROZSI"
+
+When Swithin read it his first sensation was that of a man sinking in
+a bog; then his obstinacy stiffened.  'I won't be done,' he thought.
+Taking out a sovereign he tried to make the woman comprehend that she
+could earn it, by telling him where they had gone.  He got her
+finally to write the words out in his pocket-book, gave her the
+sovereign, and hurried to the Goldene Alp, where there was a waiter
+who spoke English.  The translation given him was this:
+
+"At three o'clock they start in a carriage on the road to Linz--they
+have bad horses--the Herr also rides a white horse."
+
+Swithin at once hailed a carriage and started at full gallop on the
+road to Linz.  Outside the Mirabell Garden he caught sight of
+Kasteliz and grinned at him.  'I've sold him anyway,' he thought;
+'for all their talk, they're no good, these foreigners!'
+
+His spirits rose, but soon fell again.  What chance had he of
+catching them?  They had three hours' start!  Still, the roads were
+heavy from the rain of the last two nights--they had luggage and bad
+horses; his own were good, his driver bribed--he might overtake them
+by ten o'clock! But did he want to?  What a fool he had been not to
+bring his luggage; he would then have had a respectable position.
+What a brute he would look without a change of shirt, or anything to
+shave with!  He saw himself with horror, all bristly, and in soiled
+linen.  People would think him mad.  'I've given myself away,'
+flashed across him, 'what the devil can I say to them?' and he stared
+sullenly at the driver's back.  He read Rozsi's letter again; it had
+a scent of her.  And in the growing darkness, jolted by the swinging
+of the carriage, he suffered tortures from his prudence, tortures
+from his passion.
+
+It grew colder and dark.  He turned the collar of his coat up to his
+ears.  He had visions of Piccadilly.  This wild-goose chase appeared
+suddenly a dangerous, unfathomable business.  Lights, fellowship,
+security!  'Never again!' he brooded; 'why won't they let me alone?'
+But it was not clear whether by 'they' he meant the conventions, the
+Boleskeys, his passions, or those haunting memories of Rozsi.  If he
+had only had a bag with him!  What was he going to say?  What was he
+going to get by this?  He received no answer to these questions.  The
+darkness itself was less obscure than his sensations.  From time to
+time he took out his watch.  At each village the driver made
+inquiries.  It was past ten when he stopped the carriage with a jerk.
+The stars were bright as steel, and by the side of the road a reedy
+lake showed in the moonlight.  Swithin shivered.  A man on a horse
+had halted in the centre of the road.  "Drive on!" called Swithin,
+with a stolid face.  It turned out to be Boleskey, who, on a gaunt
+white horse, looked like some winged creature.  He stood where he
+could bar the progress of the carriage, holding out a pistol.
+
+'Theatrical beggar!' thought Swithin, with a nervous smile.  He made
+no sign of recognition.  Slowly Boleskey brought his lean horse up to
+the carriage.  When he saw who was within he showed astonishment and
+joy.
+
+"You?" he cried, slapping his hand on his attenuated thigh, and
+leaning over till his beard touched Swithin.  "You have come?  You
+followed us?"
+
+"It seems so," Swithin grunted out.
+
+"You throw in your lot with us.  Is it possible?  You--you are a
+knight-errant then!"
+
+"Good God!" said Swithin.  Boleskey, flogging his dejected steed,
+cantered forward in the moonlight.  He came back, bringing an old
+cloak, which he insisted on wrapping round Swithin's shoulders.  He
+handed him, too, a capacious flask.
+
+"How cold you look!" he said.  "Wonderful! Wonderful! you English!"
+His grateful eyes never left Swithin for a moment.  They had come up
+to the heels of the other carriage now, but Swithin, hunched in the
+cloak, did not try to see what was in front of him.  To the bottom of
+his soul he resented the Hungarian's gratitude.  He remarked at last,
+with wasted irony:
+
+"You're in a hurry, it seems!"
+
+"If we had wings," Boleskey answered, "we would use them."
+
+"Wings!" muttered Swithin thickly; "legs are good enough for me."
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+Arrived at the inn where they were to pass the night, Swithin waited,
+hoping to get into the house without a "scene," but when at last he
+alighted the girls were in the doorway, and Margit greeted him with
+an admiring murmur, in which, however, he seemed to detect irony.
+Rozsi, pale and tremulous, with a half-scared look, gave him her
+hand, and, quickly withdrawing it, shrank behind her sister.  When
+they had gone up to their room Swithin sought Boleskey.  His spirits
+had risen remarkably.  "Tell the landlord to get us supper," he said;
+"we'll crack a bottle to our luck."  He hurried on the landlord's
+preparations.  The window of the, room faced a wood, so near that he
+could almost touch the trees.  The scent from the pines blew in on
+him.  He turned away from that scented darkness, and began to draw
+the corks of winebottles.  The sound seemed to conjure up Boleskey.
+He came in, splashed all over, smelling slightly of stables; soon
+after, Margit appeared, fresh and serene, but Rozsi did not come.
+
+"Where is your sister?" Swithin said.  Rozsi, it seemed, was tired.
+"It will do her good to eat," said Swithin.  And Boleskey, murmuring,
+"She must drink to our country," went out to summon her, Margit
+followed him, while Swithin cut up a chicken.  They came back without
+her.  She had "a megrim of the spirit."
+
+Swithin's face fell.  "Look here!" he said, "I'll go and try.  Don't
+wait for me."
+
+"Yes," answered Boleskey, sinking mournfully into a chair; "try,
+brother, try-by all means, try."
+
+Swithin walked down the corridor with an odd, sweet, sinking
+sensation in his chest; and tapped on Rozsi's door.  In a minute, she
+peeped forth, with her hair loose, and wondering eyes.
+
+"Rozsi," he stammered, "what makes you afraid of me, now?"
+
+She stared at him, but did not answer.
+
+"Why won't you come?"
+
+Still she did not speak, but suddenly stretched out to him her bare
+arm.  Swithin pressed his face to it.  With a shiver, she whispered
+above him, "I will come," and gently shut the door.
+
+Swithin stealthily retraced his steps, and paused a minute outside
+the sitting-room to regain his self-control.
+
+The sight of Boleskey with a bottle in his hand steadied him.
+
+"She is coming," he said.  And very soon she did come, her thick hair
+roughly twisted in a plait.
+
+Swithin sat between the girls; but did not talk, for he was really
+hungry.  Boleskey too was silent, plunged in gloom; Rozsi was dumb;
+Margit alone chattered.
+
+"You will come to our Father-town?  We shall have things to show you.
+Rozsi, what things we will show him!"  Rozsi, with a little appealing
+movement of her hands, repeated, "What things we will show you!"  She
+seemed suddenly to find her voice, and with glowing cheeks, mouths
+full, and eyes bright as squirrels', they chattered reminiscences of
+the "dear Father-town," of "dear friends," of the "dear home."
+
+'A poor place!' Swithin could not help thinking.  This enthusiasm
+seemed to him common; but he was careful to assume a look of
+interest, feeding on the glances flashed at him from Rozsi's restless
+eyes.
+
+As the wine waned Boleskey grew more and more gloomy, but now and
+then a sort of gleaming flicker passed over his face.  He rose to his
+feet at last.
+
+"Let us not forget," he said, "that we go perhaps to ruin, to death;
+in the face of all this we go, because our country needs--in this
+there is no credit, neither to me nor to you, my daughters; but for
+this noble Englishman, what shall we say?  Give thanks to God for a
+great heart.  He comes--not for country, not for fame, not for money,
+but to help the weak and the oppressed.  Let us drink, then, to him;
+let us drink again and again to heroic Forsyte!"  In the midst of the
+dead silence, Swithin caught the look of suppliant mockery in Rozsi's
+eyes.  He glanced at the Hungarian.  Was he laughing at him?  But
+Boleskey, after drinking up his wine, had sunk again into his seat;
+and there suddenly, to the surprise of all, he began to snore.
+Margit rose and, bending over him like a mother, murmured: "He is
+tired--it is the ride!"  She raised him in her strong arms, and
+leaning on her shoulder Boleskey staggered from the room.  Swithin
+and Rozsi were left alone.  He slid his hand towards her hand that
+lay so close, on the rough table-cloth.  It seemed to await his
+touch.  Something gave way in him, and words came welling up; for the
+moment he forgot himself, forgot everything but that he was near her.
+Her head dropped on his shoulder, he breathed the perfume of her
+hair.  "Good-night!" she whispered, and the whisper was like a kiss;
+yet before he could stop her she was gone.  Her footsteps died away
+in the passage, but Swithin sat gazing intently at a single bright
+drop of spilt wine quivering on the table's edge.  In that moment
+she, in her helplessness and emotion, was all in all to him--his life
+nothing; all the real things--his conventions, convictions, training,
+and himself--all seemed remote, behind a mist of passion and strange
+chivalry.  Carefully with a bit of bread he soaked up the bright
+drop; and suddenly he thought: 'This is tremendous!'  For a long time
+he stood there in the window, close to the dark pine-trees.
+
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+In the early morning he awoke, full of the discomfort of this strange
+place and the medley of his dreams.  Lying, with his nose peeping
+over the quilt, he was visited by a horrible suspicion.  When he
+could bear it no longer, he started up in bed.  What if it were all a
+plot to get him to marry her?  The thought was treacherous, and
+inspired in him a faint disgust.  Still, she might be ignorant of it!
+But was she so innocent?  What innocent girl would have come to his
+room like that?  What innocent girl?  Her father, who pretended to be
+caring only for his country?  It was not probable that any man was
+such a fool; it was all part of the game-a scheming rascal!
+Kasteliz, too--his threats!  They intended him to marry her!  And the
+horrid idea was strengthened by his reverence for marriage.  It was
+the proper, the respectable condition; he was genuinely afraid of
+this other sort of liaison--it was somehow too primitive!  And yet
+the thought of that marriage made his blood run cold.  Considering
+that she had already yielded, it would be all the more monstrous!
+With the cold, fatal clearness of the morning light he now for the
+first time saw his position in its full bearings.  And, like a fish
+pulled out of water, he gasped at what was disclosed.  Sullen
+resentment against this attempt to force him settled deep into his
+soul.
+
+He seated himself on the bed, holding his head in his hands, solemnly
+thinking out what such marriage meant.  In the first place it meant
+ridicule, in the next place ridicule, in the last place ridicule.
+She would eat chicken bones with her fingers--those fingers his lips
+still burned to kiss.  She would dance wildly with other men.  She
+would talk of her "dear Father-town," and all the time her eyes would
+look beyond him, some where or other into some d--d place he knew
+nothing of.  He sprang up and paced the room, and for a moment
+thought he would go mad.
+
+They meant him to marry her!  Even she--she meant him to marry her!
+Her tantalising inscrutability; her sudden little tendernesses; her
+quick laughter; her swift, burning kisses; even the movements of her
+hands; her tears--all were evidence against her.  Not one of these
+things that Nature made her do counted on her side, but how they
+fanned his longing, his desire, and distress!  He went to the glass
+and tried to part his hair with his fingers, but being rather fine,
+it fell into lank streaks.  There was no comfort to be got from it.
+He drew his muddy boots on.  Suddenly he thought: 'If I could see her
+alone, I could arrive at some arrangement!'  Then, with a sense of
+stupefaction, he made the discovery that no arrangement could
+possibly be made that would not be dangerous, even desperate.  He
+seized his hat, and, like a rabbit that has been fired at, bolted
+from the room.  He plodded along amongst the damp woods with his head
+down, and resentment and dismay in his heart.  But, as the sun rose,
+and the air grew sweet with pine scent, he slowly regained a sort of
+equability.  After all, she had already yielded; it was not as if...!
+And the tramp of his own footsteps lulled him into feeling that it
+would all come right.
+
+'Look at the thing practically,' he thought.  The faster he walked
+the firmer became his conviction that he could still see it through.
+He took out his watch--it was past seven--he began to hasten back.
+In the yard of the inn his driver was harnessing the horses; Swithin
+went up to him.
+
+"Who told you to put them in?" he asked.
+
+The driver answered, "Der Herr."
+
+Swithin turned away.  'In ten minutes,' he thought, 'I shall be in
+that carriage again, with this going on in my head!  Driving away
+from England, from all I'm used to-driving to-what?'  Could he face
+it?  Could he face all that he had been through that morning; face it
+day after day, night after night?  Looking up, he saw Rozsi at her
+open window gazing down at him; never had she looked sweeter, more
+roguish.  An inexplicable terror seized on him; he ran across the
+yard and jumped into his carriage.  "To Salzburg!" he cried; "drive
+on!"  And rattling out of the yard without a look behind, he flung a
+sovereign at the hostler.  Flying back along the road faster even
+than he had come, with pale face, and eyes blank and staring like a
+pug-dog's, Swithin spoke no single word; nor, till he had reached the
+door of his lodgings, did he suffer the driver to draw rein.
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+Towards evening, five days later, Swithin, yellow and travel-worn,
+was ferried in a gondola to Danielli's Hotel.  His brother, who was
+on the steps, looked at him with an apprehensive curiosity.
+
+"Why, it's you!" he mumbled.  "So you've got here safe?"
+
+"Safe?" growled Swithin.
+
+James replied, "I thought you wouldn't leave your friends!"  Then,
+with a jerk of suspicion, "You haven't brought your friends?"
+
+"What friends?" growled Swithin.
+
+James changed the subject.  "You don't look the thing," he said.
+
+"Really!" muttered Swithin; "what's that to you?"
+
+He appeared at dinner that night, but fell asleep over his coffee.
+Neither Traquair nor James asked him any further question, nor did
+they allude to Salzburg; and during the four days which concluded the
+stay in Venice Swithin went about with his head up, but his eyes
+half-closed like a dazed man.  Only after they had taken ship at
+Genoa did he show signs of any healthy interest in life, when,
+finding that a man on board was perpetually strumming, he locked the
+piano up and pitched the key into the sea.
+
+That winter in London he behaved much as usual, but fits of
+moroseness would seize on him, during which he was not pleasant to
+approach.
+
+One evening when he was walking with a friend in Piccadilly, a girl
+coming from a side-street accosted him in German.  Swithin, after
+staring at her in silence for some seconds, handed her a five-pound
+note, to the great amazement of his friend; nor could he himself have
+explained the meaning of this freak of generosity.
+
+Of Rozsi he never heard again....
+
+This, then, was the substance of what he remembered as he lay ill in
+bed.  Stretching out his hand he pressed the bell.  His valet
+appeared, crossing the room like a cat; a Swede, who had been with
+Swithin many years; a little man with a dried face and fierce
+moustache, morbidly sharp nerves, and a queer devotion to his master.
+
+Swithin made a feeble gesture.  "Adolf," he said, "I'm very bad."
+
+"Yes, sir!"
+
+"Why do you stand there like a cow?" asked Swithin; "can't you see
+I'm very bad?"
+
+"Yes, sir!"  The valet's face twitched as though it masked the dance
+of obscure emotions.
+
+"I shall feel better after dinner.  What time is it?"
+
+"Five o'clock."
+
+"I thought it was more.  The afternoons are very long."
+
+"Yes, sir!" Swithin sighed, as though he had expected the consolation
+of denial.
+
+"Very likely I shall have a nap.  Bring up hot water at half-past six
+and shave me before dinner."
+
+The valet moved towards the door.  Swithin raised himself.
+
+"What did Mr. James say to you?"
+
+"He said you ought to have another doctor; two doctors, he said,
+better than one.  He said, also, he would look in again on his way
+'home.'"
+
+Swithin grunted, "Umph! What else did he say?"
+
+"He said you didn't take care of yourself."
+
+Swithin glared.
+
+"Has anybody else been to see me?"
+
+The valet turned away his eyes.  "Mrs. Thomas Forsyte came last
+Monday fortnight."
+
+"How long have I been ill?"
+
+"Five weeks on Saturday."
+
+"Do you think I'm very bad?"
+
+Adolf's face was covered suddenly with crow's-feet.  "You have no
+business to ask me question like that!  I am not paid, sir, to answer
+question like that."
+
+Swithin said faintly: "You're a peppery fool!  Open a bottle of
+champagne!"
+
+Adolf took a bottle of champagne--from a cupboard and held nippers to
+it.  He fixed his eyes on Swithin.  "The doctor said--"
+
+"Open the bottle!"
+
+"It is not--"
+
+"Open the bottle--or I give you warning."
+
+Adolf removed the cork.  He wiped a glass elaborately, filled it, and
+bore it scrupulously to the bedside.  Suddenly twirling his
+moustaches, he wrung his hands, and burst out: "It is poison."
+
+Swithin grinned faintly.  "You foreign fool!" he said.  "Get out!"
+
+The valet vanished.
+
+'He forgot himself!' thought Swithin.  Slowly he raised the glass,
+slowly put it back, and sank gasping on his pillows.  Almost at once
+he fell asleep.
+
+He dreamed that he was at his club, sitting after dinner in the
+crowded smoking-room, with its bright walls and trefoils of light.
+It was there that he sat every evening, patient, solemn, lonely, and
+sometimes fell asleep, his square, pale old face nodding to one side.
+He dreamed that he was gazing at the picture over the fireplace, of
+an old statesman with a high collar, supremely finished face, and
+sceptical eyebrows--the picture, smooth, and reticent as sealing-wax,
+of one who seemed for ever exhaling the narrow wisdom of final
+judgments.  All round him, his fellow members were chattering.  Only
+he himself, the old sick member, was silent.  If fellows only knew
+what it was like to sit by yourself and feel ill all the time!  What
+they were saying he had heard a hundred times.  They were talking of
+investments, of cigars, horses, actresses, machinery.  What was that?
+A foreign patent for cleaning boilers?  There was no such thing;
+boilers couldn't be cleaned, any fool knew that!  If an Englishman
+couldn't clean a boiler, no foreigner could clean one.  He appealed
+to the old statesman's eyes.  But for once those eyes seemed
+hesitating, blurred, wanting in finality.  They vanished.  In their
+place were Rozsi's little deep-set eyes, with their wide and far-off
+look; and as he gazed they seemed to grow bright as steel, and to
+speak to him.  Slowly the whole face grew to be there, floating on
+the dark background of the picture; it was pink, aloof, unfathomable,
+enticing, with its fluffy hair and quick lips, just as he had last
+seen it.  "Are you looking for something?" she seemed to say: "I
+could show you."
+
+"I have everything safe enough," answered Swithin, and in his sleep
+he groaned.
+
+He felt the touch of fingers on his forehead.  'I'm dreaming,' he
+thought in his dream.
+
+She had vanished; and far away, from behind the picture, came a sound
+of footsteps.
+
+Aloud, in his sleep, Swithin muttered: "I've missed it."
+
+Again he heard the rustling of those light footsteps, and close in
+his ear a sound, like a sob.  He awoke; the sob was his own.  Great
+drops of perspiration stood on his forehead.  'What is it?' he
+thought; 'what have I lost?'  Slowly his mind travelled over his
+investments; he could not think of any single one that was unsafe.
+What was it, then, that he had lost?  Struggling on his pillows, he
+clutched the wine-glass.  His lips touched the wine.  'This isn't the
+"Heidseck"!' he thought angrily, and before the reality of that
+displeasure all the dim vision passed away.  But as he bent to drink,
+something snapped, and, with a sigh, Swithin Forsyte died above the
+bubbles....
+
+When James Forsyte came in again on his way home, the valet,
+trembling took his hat and stick.
+
+"How's your master?"
+
+"My master is dead, sir!"
+
+"Dead!  He can't be!  I left him safe an hour ago."
+
+On the bed Swithin's body was doubled like a sack; his hand still
+grasped the glass.
+
+James Forsyte paused.  "Swithin!" he said, and with his hand to his
+ear he waited for an answer; but none came, and slowly in the glass a
+last bubble rose and burst.
+
+December 1900.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+To
+
+MY SISTER
+
+MABEL EDITH REYNOLDS
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SILENCE
+
+I
+
+In a car of the Naples express a mining expert was diving into a bag
+for papers.  The strong sunlight showed the fine wrinkles on his
+brown face and the shabbiness of his short, rough beard.  A newspaper
+cutting slipped from his fingers; he picked it up, thinking: 'How the
+dickens did that get in here?'  It was from a colonial print of three
+years back; and he sat staring, as if in that forlorn slip of yellow
+paper he had encountered some ghost from his past.
+
+These were the words he read: "We hope that the setback to
+civilisation, the check to commerce and development, in this
+promising centre of our colony may be but temporary; and that capital
+may again come to the rescue.  Where one man was successful, others
+should surely not fail?  We are convinced that it only needs...."
+And the last words: "For what can be sadder than to see the forest
+spreading its lengthening shadows, like symbols of defeat, over the
+untenanted dwellings of men; and where was once the merry chatter of
+human voices, to pass by in the silence...."
+
+On an afternoon, thirteen years before, he had been in the city of
+London, at one of those emporiums where mining experts perch, before
+fresh flights, like sea-gulls on some favourite rock.  A clerk said
+to him: "Mr. Scorrier, they are asking for you downstairs--Mr.
+Hemmings of the New Colliery Company."
+
+Scorrier took up the speaking tube.  "Is that you, Mr. Scorrier?  I
+hope you are very well, sir, I am--Hemmings--I am--coming up."
+
+In two minutes he appeared, Christopher Hemmings, secretary of the
+New Colliery Company, known in the City-behind his back--as "Down-by-
+the-starn" Hemmings.  He grasped Scorrier's hand--the gesture was
+deferential, yet distinguished.  Too handsome, too capable, too
+important, his figure, the cut of his iron-grey beard, and his
+intrusively fine eyes, conveyed a continual courteous invitation to
+inspect their infallibilities.  He stood, like a City "Atlas," with
+his legs apart, his coat-tails gathered in his hands, a whole globe
+of financial matters deftly balanced on his nose.  "Look at me!" he
+seemed to say.  "It's heavy, but how easily I carry it.  Not the man
+to let it down, Sir !"
+
+"I hope I see you well, Mr. Scorrier," he began.  "I have come round
+about our mine.  There is a question of a fresh field being opened
+up--between ourselves, not before it's wanted.  I find it difficult
+to get my Board to take a comprehensive view.  In short, the question
+is: Are you prepared to go out for us, and report on it?  The fees
+will be all right."  His left eye closed.  "Things have been very--
+er--dicky; we are going to change our superintendent.  I have got
+little Pippin--you know little Pippin?"
+
+Scorrier murmured, with a feeling of vague resentment: "Oh yes.  He's
+not a mining man!"
+
+Hemmings replied: "We think that he will do."  'Do you?' thought
+Scorrier; 'that's good of you!'
+
+He had not altogether shaken off a worship he had felt for Pippin--
+"King" Pippin he was always called, when they had been boys at the
+Camborne Grammar-school.  "King" Pippin! the boy with the bright
+colour, very bright hair, bright, subtle, elusive eyes, broad
+shoulders, little stoop in the neck, and a way of moving it quickly
+like a bird; the boy who was always at the top of everything, and
+held his head as if looking for something further to be the top of.
+He remembered how one day "King" Pippin had said to him in his soft
+way, "Young Scorrie, I'll do your sums for you"; and in answer to his
+dubious, "Is that all right?" had replied, "Of course--I don't want
+you to get behind that beast Blake, he's not a Cornishman" (the beast
+Blake was an Irishman not yet twelve).  He remembered, too, an
+occasion when "King" Pippin with two other boys fought six louts and
+got a licking, and how Pippin sat for half an hour afterwards, all
+bloody, his head in his hands, rocking to and fro, and weeping tears
+of mortification; and how the next day he had sneaked off by himself,
+and, attacking the same gang, got frightfully mauled a second time.
+
+Thinking of these things he answered curtly: "When shall I start?"
+
+"Down-by-the-starn" Hemmings replied with a sort of fearful
+sprightliness: "There's a good fellow!  I will send instructions; so
+glad to see you well."  Conferring on Scorrier a look--fine to the
+verge of vulgarity--he withdrew.  Scorrier remained, seated; heavy
+with insignificance and vague oppression, as if he had drunk a
+tumbler of sweet port.
+
+A week later, in company with Pippin, he was on board a liner.
+
+The "King" Pippin of his school-days was now a man of forty-four.  He
+awakened in Scorrier the uncertain wonder with which men look
+backward at their uncomplicated teens; and staggering up and down the
+decks in the long Atlantic roll, he would steal glances at his
+companion, as if he expected to find out from them something about
+himself.  Pippin had still "King" Pippin's bright, fine hair, and
+dazzling streaks in his short beard; he had still a bright colour and
+suave voice, and what there were of wrinkles suggested only
+subtleties of humour and ironic sympathy.  From the first, and
+apparently without negotiation, he had his seat at the captain's
+table, to which on the second day Scorrier too found himself
+translated, and had to sit, as he expressed it ruefully, "among the
+big-wigs."
+
+During the voyage only one incident impressed itself on Scorrier's
+memory, and that for a disconcerting reason.  In the forecastle were
+the usual complement of emigrants.  One evening, leaning across the
+rail to watch them, he felt a touch on his arm; and, looking round,
+saw Pippin's face and beard quivering in the lamplight.  "Poor
+people!" he said.  The idea flashed on Scorrier that he was like some
+fine wire sound-recording instrument.
+
+'Suppose he were to snap!' he thought.  Impelled to justify this
+fancy, he blurted out: "You're a nervous chap.  The way you look at
+those poor devils!"
+
+Pippin hustled him along the deck.  "Come, come, you took me off my
+guard," he murmured, with a sly, gentle smile, "that's not fair."
+
+He found it a continual source of wonder that Pippin, at his age,
+should cut himself adrift from the associations and security of
+London life to begin a new career in a new country with dubious
+prospect of success.  'I always heard he was doing well all round,'
+he thought; 'thinks he'll better himself, perhaps.  He's a true
+Cornishman.'
+
+The morning of arrival at the mines was grey and cheerless; a cloud
+of smoke, beaten down by drizzle, clung above the forest; the wooden
+houses straggled dismally in the unkempt semblance of a street,
+against a background of endless, silent woods.  An air of blank
+discouragement brooded over everything; cranes jutted idly over empty
+trucks; the long jetty oozed black slime; miners with listless faces
+stood in the rain; dogs fought under their very legs.  On the way to
+the hotel they met no one busy or serene except a Chinee who was
+polishing a dish-cover.
+
+The late superintendent, a cowed man, regaled them at lunch with his
+forebodings; his attitude toward the situation was like the food,
+which was greasy and uninspiring.  Alone together once more, the two
+newcomers eyed each other sadly.
+
+"Oh dear!" sighed Pippin.  "We must change all this, Scorrier; it
+will never do to go back beaten.  I shall not go back beaten; you
+will have to carry me on my shield;" and slyly: "Too heavy, eh?  Poor
+fellow!"  Then for a long time he was silent, moving his lips as if
+adding up the cost.  Suddenly he sighed, and grasping Scorrier's arm,
+said: "Dull, aren't I?  What will you do?  Put me in your report,
+'New Superintendent--sad, dull dog--not a word to throw at a cat!'"
+And as if the new task were too much for him, he sank back in
+thought.  The last words he said to Scorrier that night were: "Very
+silent here.  It's hard to believe one's here for life.  But I feel I
+am.  Mustn't be a coward, though!" and brushing his forehead, as
+though to clear from it a cobweb of faint thoughts, he hurried off.
+
+Scorrier stayed on the veranda smoking.  The rain had ceased, a few
+stars were burning dimly; even above the squalor of the township the
+scent of the forests, the interminable forests, brooded.  There
+sprang into his mind the memory of a picture from one of his
+children's fairy books--the picture of a little bearded man on
+tiptoe, with poised head and a great sword, slashing at the castle of
+a giant.  It reminded him of Pippin.  And suddenly, even to Scorrier-
+-whose existence was one long encounter with strange places--the
+unseen presence of those woods, their heavy, healthy scent, the
+little sounds, like squeaks from tiny toys, issuing out of the gloomy
+silence, seemed intolerable, to be shunned, from the mere instinct of
+self-preservation.  He thought of the evening he had spent in the
+bosom of "Down-by-the-starn" Hemmings' family, receiving his last
+instructions--the security of that suburban villa, its discouraging
+gentility; the superior acidity of the Miss Hemmings; the noble names
+of large contractors, of company promoters, of a peer, dragged with
+the lightness of gun-carriages across the conversation; the autocracy
+of Hemmings, rasped up here and there, by some domestic
+contradiction.  It was all so nice and safe--as if the whole thing
+had been fastened to an anchor sunk beneath the pink cabbages of the
+drawing-room carpet!  Hemmings, seeing him off the premises, had said
+with secrecy: "Little Pippin will have a good thing.  We shall make
+his salary L----.  He'll be a great man-quite a king.  Ha-ha!"
+
+Scorrier shook the ashes from his pipe.  'Salary!' he thought,
+straining his ears; 'I wouldn't take the place for five thousand
+pounds a year.  And yet it's a fine country,' and with ironic
+violence he repeated, 'a dashed fine country!'
+
+Ten days later, having finished his report on the new mine, he stood
+on the jetty waiting to go abroad the steamer for home.
+
+"God bless you!" said Pippin.  "Tell them they needn't be afraid; and
+sometimes when you're at home think of me, eh?"
+
+Scorrier, scrambling on board, had a confused memory of tears in his
+eyes, and a convulsive handshake.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+It was eight years before the wheels of life carried Scorrier back to
+that disenchanted spot, and this time not on the business of the New
+Colliery Company.  He went for another company with a mine some
+thirty miles away.  Before starting, however, he visited Hemmings.
+The secretary was surrounded by pigeon-holes and finer than ever;
+Scorrier blinked in the full radiance of his courtesy.  A little man
+with eyebrows full of questions, and a grizzled beard, was seated in
+an arm-chair by the fire.
+
+"You know Mr. Booker," said Hemmings--"one of my directors.  This is
+Mr. Scorrier, sir--who went out for us."
+
+These sentences were murmured in a way suggestive of their uncommon
+value.  The director uncrossed his legs, and bowed.  Scorrier also
+bowed, and Hemmings, leaning back, slowly developed the full
+resources of his waistcoat.
+
+"So you are going out again, Scorrier, for the other side?  I tell
+Mr. Scorrier, sir, that he is going out for the enemy.  Don't find
+them a mine as good as you found us, there's a good man."
+
+The little director asked explosively: "See our last dividend?
+Twenty per cent; eh, what?"
+
+Hemmings moved a finger, as if reproving his director.  "I will not
+disguise from you," he murmured, "that there is friction between us
+and--the enemy; you know our position too well--just a little too
+well, eh?  'A nod's as good as a wink.'"
+
+His diplomatic eyes flattered Scorrier, who passed a hand over his
+brow--and said: "Of course."
+
+"Pippin doesn't hit it off with them.  Between ourselves, he's a
+leetle too big for his boots.  You know what it is when a man in his
+position gets a sudden rise!"
+
+Scorrier caught himself searching on the floor for a sight of
+Hemmings' boots; he raised his eyes guiltily.  The secretary
+continued: "We don't hear from him quite as often as we should like,
+in fact."
+
+To his own surprise Scorrier murmured: "It's a silent place!"
+
+The secretary smiled.  "Very good!  Mr. Scorrier says, sir, it's a
+silent place; ha-ha! I call that very good!"  But suddenly a secret
+irritation seemed to bubble in him; he burst forth almost violently:
+"He's no business to let it affect him; now, has he?  I put it to
+you, Mr. Scorrier, I put it to you, sir!"
+
+But Scorrier made no reply, and soon after took his leave: he had
+been asked to convey a friendly hint to Pippin that more frequent
+letters would be welcomed.  Standing in the shadow of the Royal
+Exchange, waiting to thread his way across, he thought: 'So you must
+have noise, must you--you've got some here, and to spare....'
+
+On his arrival in the new world he wired to Pippin asking if he might
+stay with him on the way up country, and received the answer: "Be
+sure and come."
+
+A week later he arrived (there was now a railway) and found Pippin
+waiting for him in a phaeton.  Scorrier would not have known the
+place again; there was a glitter over everything, as if some one had
+touched it with a wand.  The tracks had given place to roads, running
+firm, straight, and black between the trees under brilliant sunshine;
+the wooden houses were all painted; out in the gleaming harbour
+amongst the green of islands lay three steamers, each with a fleet of
+busy boats; and here and there a tiny yacht floated, like a sea-bird
+on the water.  Pippin drove his long-tailed horses furiously; his
+eyes brimmed with subtle kindness, as if according Scorrier a
+continual welcome.  During the two days of his stay Scorrier never
+lost that sense of glamour.  He had every opportunity for observing
+the grip Pippin had over everything.  The wooden doors and walls of
+his bungalow kept out no sounds.  He listened to interviews between
+his host and all kinds and conditions of men.  The voices of the
+visitors would rise at first--angry, discontented, matter-of-fact,
+with nasal twang, or guttural drawl; then would come the soft patter
+of the superintendent's feet crossing and recrossing the room.  Then
+a pause, the sound of hard breathing, and quick questions--the
+visitor's voice again, again the patter, and Pippin's ingratiating
+but decisive murmurs.  Presently out would come the visitor with an
+expression on his face which Scorrier soon began to know by heart, a
+kind of pleased, puzzled, helpless look, which seemed to say, "I've
+been done, I know--I'll give it to myself when I'm round the corner."
+
+Pippin was full of wistful questions about "home."  He wanted to talk
+of music, pictures, plays, of how London looked, what new streets
+there were, and, above all, whether Scorrier had been lately in the
+West Country.  He talked of getting leave next winter, asked whether
+Scorrier thought they would "put up with him at home"; then, with the
+agitation which had alarmed Scorrier before, he added: "Ah! but I'm
+not fit for home now.  One gets spoiled; it's big and silent here.
+What should I go back to?  I don't seem to realise."
+
+Scorrier thought of Hemmings.  "'Tis a bit cramped there, certainly,"
+he muttered.
+
+Pippin went on as if divining his thoughts.  "I suppose our friend
+Hemmings would call me foolish; he's above the little weaknesses of
+imagination, eh?  Yes; it's silent here.  Sometimes in the evening I
+would give my head for somebody to talk to--Hemmings would never give
+his head for anything, I think.  But all the same, I couldn't face
+them at home.  Spoiled!"  And slyly he murmured: "What would the
+Board say if they could hear that?"
+
+Scorrier blurted out: "To tell you the truth, they complain a little
+of not hearing from you."
+
+Pippin put out a hand, as if to push something away.  "Let them try
+the life here!" he broke out; "it's like sitting on a live volcano--
+what with our friends, 'the enemy,' over there; the men; the American
+competition.  I keep it going, Scorrier, but at what a cost--at what
+a cost!"
+
+"But surely--letters?"
+
+Pippin only answered: "I try--I try!"
+
+Scorrier felt with remorse and wonder that he had spoken the truth.
+The following day he left for his inspection, and while in the camp
+of "the enemy" much was the talk he heard of Pippin.
+
+"Why!" said his host, the superintendent, a little man with a face
+somewhat like an owl's, "d'you know the name they've given him down
+in the capital--'the King'--good, eh?  He's made them 'sit up' all
+along this coast.  I like him well enough--good--hearted man,
+shocking nervous; but my people down there can't stand him at any
+price.  Sir, he runs this colony.  You'd think butter wouldn't melt
+in that mouth of his; but he always gets his way; that's what riles
+'em so; that and the success he's making of his mine.  It puzzles me;
+you'd think he'd only be too glad of a quiet life, a man with his
+nerves.  But no, he's never happy unless he's fighting, something
+where he's got a chance to score a victory.  I won't say he likes it,
+but, by Jove, it seems he's got to do it.  Now that's funny!  I'll
+tell you one thing, though shouldn't be a bit surprised if he broke
+down some day; and I'll tell you another," he added darkly, "he's
+sailing very near the wind, with those large contracts that he makes.
+I wouldn't care to take his risks.  Just let them have a strike, or
+something that shuts them down for a spell--and mark my words, sir--
+it'll be all up with them.  But," he concluded confidentially, "I
+wish I had his hold on the men; it's a great thing in this country.
+Not like home, where you can go round a corner and get another gang.
+You have to make the best you can out of the lot you have; you won't,
+get another man for love or money without you ship him a few hundred
+miles."  And with a frown he waved his arm over the forests to
+indicate the barrenness of the land.
+
+Scorrier finished his inspection and went on a shooting trip into the
+forest.  His host met him on his return.  "Just look at this!" he
+said, holding out a telegram.  "Awful, isn't it?" His face expressed
+a profound commiseration, almost ludicrously mixed with the ashamed
+contentment that men experience at the misfortunes of an enemy.
+
+The telegram, dated the day before, ran thus "Frightful explosion New
+Colliery this morning, great loss of life feared."
+
+Scorrier had the bewildered thought: 'Pippin will want me now.'
+
+He took leave of his host, who called after him: "You'd better wait
+for a steamer!  It's a beastly drive!"
+
+Scorrier shook his head.  All night, jolting along a rough track cut
+through the forest, he thought of Pippin.  The other miseries of this
+calamity at present left him cold; he barely thought of the smothered
+men; but Pippin's struggle, his lonely struggle with this hydra-
+headed monster, touched him very nearly.  He fell asleep and dreamed
+of watching Pippin slowly strangled by a snake; the agonised, kindly,
+ironic face peeping out between two gleaming coils was so horribly
+real, that he awoke.  It was the moment before dawn: pitch-black
+branches barred the sky; with every jolt of the wheels the gleams
+from the lamps danced, fantastic and intrusive, round ferns and tree-
+stems, into the cold heart of the forest.  For an hour or more
+Scorrier tried to feign sleep, and hide from the stillness, and
+overmastering gloom of these great woods.  Then softly a whisper of
+noises stole forth, a stir of light, and the whole slow radiance of
+the morning glory.  But it brought no warmth; and Scorrier wrapped
+himself closer in his cloak, feeling as though old age had touched
+him.
+
+Close on noon he reached the township.  Glamour seemed still to hover
+over it.  He drove on to the mine.  The winding-engine was turning,
+the pulley at the top of the head-gear whizzing round; nothing looked
+unusual.  'Some mistake!' he thought.  He drove to the mine
+buildings, alighted, and climbed to the shaft head.  Instead of the
+usual rumbling of the trolleys, the rattle of coal discharged over
+the screens, there was silence.  Close by, Pippin himself was
+standing, smirched with dirt.  The cage, coming swift and silent from
+below, shot open its doors with a sharp rattle.  Scorrier bent
+forward to look.  There lay a dead man, with a smile on his face.
+
+"How many?" he whispered.
+
+Pippin answered: "Eighty-four brought up--forty-seven still below,"
+and entered the man's name in a pocket-book.
+
+An older man was taken out next; he too was smiling--there had been
+vouchsafed to him, it seemed, a taste of more than earthly joy.  The
+sight of those strange smiles affected Scorrier more than all the
+anguish or despair he had seen scored on the faces of other dead men.
+He asked an old miner how long Pippin had been at work.
+
+"Thirty hours.  Yesterday he wer' below; we had to nigh carry mun up
+at last.  He's for goin' down again, but the chaps won't lower mun;"
+the old man gave a sigh.  "I'm waiting for my boy to come up, I am."
+
+Scorrier waited too--there was fascination about those dead, smiling
+faces.  The rescuing of these men who would never again breathe went
+on and on.  Scorrier grew sleepy in the sun.  The old miner woke him,
+saying: "Rummy stuff this here chokedamp; see, they all dies drunk!"
+The very next to be brought up was the chief engineer.  Scorrier had
+known him quite well, one of those Scotsmen who are born at the age
+of forty and remain so all their lives.  His face--the only one that
+wore no smile--seemed grieving that duty had deprived it of that last
+luxury.  With wide eyes and drawn lips he had died protesting.
+
+Late in the afternoon the old miner touched Scorrier's arm, and said:
+"There he is--there's my boy!"  And he departed slowly, wheeling the
+body on a trolley.
+
+As the sun set, the gang below came up.  No further search was
+possible till the fumes had cleared.  Scorrier heard one man say:
+"There's some we'll never get; they've had sure burial"
+
+Another answered him: "'Tis a gude enough bag for me!"  They passed
+him, the whites of their eyes gleaming out of faces black as ink.
+
+Pippin drove him home at a furious pace, not uttering a single word.
+As they turned into the main street, a young woman starting out
+before the horses obliged Pippin to pull up.  The glance he bent on
+Scorrier was ludicrously prescient of suffering.  The woman asked for
+her husband.  Several times they were stopped thus by women asking
+for their husbands or sons.  "This is what I have to go through,"
+Pippin whispered.
+
+When they had eaten, he said to Scorrier: "It was kind of you to come
+and stand by me!  They take me for a god, poor creature that I am.
+But shall I ever get the men down again?  Their nerve's shaken.  I
+wish I were one of those poor lads, to die with a smile like that!"
+
+Scorrier felt the futility of his presence.  On Pippin alone must be
+the heat and burden.  Would he stand under it, or would the whole
+thing come crashing to the ground?  He urged him again and again to
+rest, but Pippin only gave him one of his queer smiles.  "You don't
+know how strong I am!" he said.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+He himself slept heavily; and, waking at dawn, went down.  Pippin was
+still at his desk; his pen had dropped; he was asleep.  The ink was
+wet; Scorrier's eye caught the opening words:
+
+"GENTLEMEN,--Since this happened I have not slept...."
+
+He stole away again with a sense of indignation that no one could be
+dragged in to share that fight.  The London Board-room rose before
+his mind.  He imagined the portentous gravity of Hemmings; his face
+and voice and manner conveying the impression that he alone could
+save the situation; the six directors, all men of commonsense and
+certainly humane, seated behind large turret-shaped inkpots; the
+concern and irritation in their voices, asking how it could have
+happened; their comments: "An awful thing!"  "I suppose Pippin is
+doing the best he can!"  "Wire him on no account to leave the mine
+idle!"  "Poor devils!"  "A fund?  Of course, what ought we to give?"
+He had a strong conviction that nothing of all this would disturb the
+commonsense with which they would go home and eat their mutton.  A
+good thing too; the less it was taken to heart the better!  But
+Scorrier felt angry.  The fight was so unfair!  A fellow all nerves--
+with not a soul to help him!  Well, it was his own lookout!  He had
+chosen to centre it all in himself, to make himself its very soul.
+If he gave way now, the ship must go down!  By a thin thread,
+Scorrier's hero-worship still held.  'Man against nature,' he
+thought, 'I back the man.'  The struggle in which he was so powerless
+to give aid, became intensely personal to him, as if he had engaged
+his own good faith therein.
+
+The next day they went down again to the pit-head; and Scorrier
+himself descended.  The fumes had almost cleared, but there were some
+places which would never be reached.  At the end of the day all but
+four bodies had been recovered.  "In the day o' judgment," a miner
+said, "they four'll come out of here."  Those unclaimed bodies
+haunted Scorrier.  He came on sentences of writing, where men waiting
+to be suffocated had written down their feelings.  In one place, the
+hour, the word "Sleepy," and a signature.  In another, "A. F.--done
+for."  When he came up at last Pippin was still waiting, pocket-book
+in hand; they again departed at a furious pace.
+
+Two days later Scorrier, visiting the shaft, found its neighbourhood
+deserted--not a living thing of any sort was there except one
+Chinaman poking his stick into the rubbish.  Pippin was away down the
+coast engaging an engineer; and on his return, Scorrier had not the
+heart to tell him of the desertion.  He was spared the effort, for
+Pippin said: "Don't be afraid--you've got bad news?  The men have
+gone on strike."
+
+Scorrier sighed.  "Lock, stock, and barrel"
+
+"I thought so--see what I have here!" He put before Scorrier a
+telegram:
+
+"At all costs keep working--fatal to stop--manage this somehow.--
+HEMMINGS."
+
+Breathing quickly, he added: "As if I didn't know! 'Manage this
+somehow'--a little hard!"
+
+"What's to be done?" asked Scorrier.
+
+"You see I am commanded!" Pippin answered bitterly.  "And they're
+quite right; we must keep working--our contracts!  Now I'm down--not
+a soul will spare me!"
+
+The miners' meeting was held the following day on the outskirts of
+the town.  Pippin had cleared the place to make a public recreation-
+ground--a sort of feather in the company's cap; it was now to be the
+spot whereon should be decided the question of the company's life or
+death.
+
+The sky to the west was crossed by a single line of cloud like a bar
+of beaten gold; tree shadows crept towards the groups of men; the
+evening savour, that strong fragrance of the forest, sweetened the
+air.  The miners stood all round amongst the burnt tree-stumps, cowed
+and sullen.  They looked incapable of movement or expression.  It was
+this dumb paralysis that frightened Scorrier.  He watched Pippin
+speaking from his phaeton, the butt of all those sullen, restless
+eyes.  Would he last out?  Would the wires hold?  It was like the
+finish of a race.  He caught a baffled look on Pippin's face, as if
+he despaired of piercing that terrible paralysis.  The men's eyes had
+begun to wander.  'He's lost his hold,' thought Scorrier; 'it's all
+up!'
+
+A miner close beside him muttered: "Look out!"
+
+Pippin was leaning forward, his voice had risen, the words fell like
+a whiplash on the faces of the crowd: "You shan't throw me over; do
+you think I'll give up all I've done for you?  I'll make you the
+first power in the colony!  Are you turning tail at the first shot?
+You're a set of cowards, my lads!"
+
+Each man round Scorrier was listening with a different motion of the
+hands--one rubbed them, one clenched them, another moved his closed
+fist, as if stabbing some one in the back.  A grisly-bearded, beetle-
+browed, twinkling-eyed old Cornishman muttered: "A'hm not troublin'
+about that."  It seemed almost as if Pippin's object was to get the
+men to kill him; they had gathered closer, crouching for a rush.
+Suddenly Pippin's voice dropped to a whisper: "I'm disgraced
+Men, are you going back on me?"
+
+The old miner next Scorrier called out suddenly: "Anny that's
+Cornishmen here to stand by the superintendent?"  A group drew
+together, and with murmurs and gesticulation the meeting broke up.
+
+In the evening a deputation came to visit Pippin; and all night long
+their voices and the superintendent's footsteps could be heard.  In
+the morning, Pippin went early to the mine.  Before supper the
+deputation came again; and again Scorrier had to listen hour after
+hour to the sound of voices and footsteps till he fell asleep.  Just
+before dawn he was awakened by a light.  Pippin stood at his bedside.
+"The men go down to-morrow," he said: "What did I tell you?  Carry me
+home on my shield, eh?"
+
+In a week the mine was in full work.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+Two years later, Scorrier heard once more of Pippin.  A note from
+Hemmings reached him asking if he could make it convenient to attend
+their Board meeting the following Thursday.  He arrived rather before
+the appointed time.  The secretary received him, and, in answer to
+inquiry, said: "Thank you, we are doing well--between ourselves, we
+are doing very well."
+
+"And Pippin?"
+
+The secretary frowned.  "Ah, Pippin! We asked you to come on his
+account.  Pippin is giving us a lot of trouble.  We have not had a
+single line from him for just two years!"  He spoke with such a sense
+of personal grievance that Scorrier felt quite sorry for him.  "Not a
+single line," said Hemmings, "since that explosion--you were there at
+the time, I remember!  It makes it very awkward; I call it personal
+to me."
+
+"But how--" Scorrier began.
+
+"We get--telegrams.  He writes to no one, not even to his family.
+And why?  Just tell me why?  We hear of him; he's a great nob out
+there.  Nothing's done in the colony without his finger being in the
+pie.  He turned out the last Government because they wouldn't grant
+us an extension for our railway--shows he can't be a fool.  Besides,
+look at our balance-sheet!"
+
+It turned out that the question on which Scorrier's opinion was
+desired was, whether Hemmings should be sent out to see what was the
+matter with the superintendent.  During the discussion which.
+ensued, he was an unwilling listener to strictures on Pippin's
+silence.  "The explosion," he muttered at last, "a very trying time!"
+
+Mr. Booker pounced on him.  "A very trying time!  So it was--to all
+of us.  But what excuse is that--now, Mr. Scorrier, what excuse is
+that?"
+
+Scorrier was obliged to admit that it was none.
+
+"Business is business--eh, what?"
+
+Scorrier, gazing round that neat Board-room, nodded.  A deaf
+director, who had not spoken for some months, said with sudden
+fierceness: "It's disgraceful!"  He was obviously letting off the
+fume of long-unuttered disapprovals.  One perfectly neat, benevolent
+old fellow, however, who had kept his hat on, and had a single vice--
+that of coming to the Board-room with a brown paper parcel tied up
+with string--murmured: "We must make all allowances," and started an
+anecdote about his youth.  He was gently called to order by his
+secretary.  Scorrier was asked for his opinion.  He looked at
+Hemmings.  "My importance is concerned," was written all over the
+secretary's face.  Moved by an impulse of loyalty to Pippin, Scorrier
+answered, as if it were all settled: "Well, let me know when you are
+starting, Hemmings--I should like the trip myself."
+
+As he was going out, the chairman, old Jolyon Forsyte, with a grave,
+twinkling look at Hemmings, took him aside.  "Glad to hear you say
+that about going too, Mr. Scorrier; we must be careful--Pippin's such
+a good fellow, and so sensitive; and our friend there--a bit heavy in
+the hand, um?"
+
+Scorrier did in fact go out with Hemmings.  The secretary was sea-
+sick, and his prostration, dignified but noisy, remained a memory for
+ever; it was sonorous and fine--the prostration of superiority; and
+the way in which he spoke of it, taking casual acquaintances into the
+caves of his experience, was truly interesting.
+
+Pippin came down to the capital to escort them, provided for their
+comforts as if they had been royalty, and had a special train to take
+them to the mines.
+
+He was a little stouter, brighter of colour, greyer of beard, more
+nervous perhaps in voice and breathing.  His manner to Hemmings was
+full of flattering courtesy; but his sly, ironical glances played on
+the secretary's armour like a fountain on a hippopotamus.  To
+Scorrier, however, he could not show enough affection:
+
+The first evening, when Hemmings had gone to his room, he jumped up
+like a boy out of school.  "So I'm going to get a wigging," he said;
+"I suppose I deserve it; but if you knew--if you only knew...! Out
+here they've nicknamed me 'the King'--they say I rule the colony.
+It's myself that I can't rule"; and with a sudden burst of passion
+such as Scorrier had never seen in him: "Why did they send this man
+here?  What can he know about the things that I've been through?"  In
+a moment he calmed down again.  "There! this is very stupid; worrying
+you like this!" and with a long, kind look into Scorrier's face, he
+hustled him off to bed.
+
+Pippin did not break out again, though fire seemed to smoulder behind
+the bars of his courteous irony.  Intuition of danger had evidently
+smitten Hemmings, for he made no allusion to the object of his visit.
+There were moments when Scorrier's common-sense sided with Hemmings--
+these were moments when the secretary was not present.
+
+'After all,' he told himself, 'it's a little thing to ask--one letter
+a month.  I never heard of such a case.'  It was wonderful indeed how
+they stood it!  It showed how much they valued Pippin!  What was the
+matter with him?  What was the nature of his trouble?  One glimpse
+Scorrier had when even Hemmings, as he phrased it, received "quite a
+turn."  It was during a drive back from the most outlying of the
+company's trial mines, eight miles through the forest.  The track led
+through a belt of trees blackened by a forest fire.  Pippin was
+driving.  The secretary seated beside him wore an expression of faint
+alarm, such as Pippin's driving was warranted to evoke from almost
+any face.  The sky had darkened strangely, but pale streaks of light,
+coming from one knew not where, filtered through the trees.  No
+breath was stirring; the wheels and horses' hoofs made no sound on
+the deep fern mould.  All around, the burnt tree-trunks, leafless and
+jagged, rose like withered giants, the passages between them were
+black, the sky black, and black the silence.  No one spoke, and
+literally the only sound was Pippin's breathing.  What was it that
+was so terrifying?  Scorrier had a feeling of entombment; that nobody
+could help him; the feeling of being face to face with Nature; a
+sensation as if all the comfort and security of words and rules had
+dropped away from him.  And-nothing happened.  They reached home and
+dined.
+
+During dinner he had again that old remembrance of a little man
+chopping at a castle with his sword.  It came at a moment when Pippin
+had raised his hand with the carving-knife grasped in it to answer
+some remark of Hemmings' about the future of the company.  The
+optimism in his uplifted chin, the strenuous energy in his whispering
+voice, gave Scorrier a more vivid glimpse of Pippin's nature than he
+had perhaps ever had before.  This new country, where nothing but
+himself could help a man--that was the castle!  No wonder Pippin was
+impatient of control, no wonder he was out of hand, no wonder he was
+silent--chopping away at that!  And suddenly he thought: 'Yes, and
+all the time one knows, Nature must beat him in the end!'
+
+That very evening Hemmings delivered himself of his reproof.  He had
+sat unusually silent; Scorrier, indeed, had thought him a little
+drunk, so portentous was his gravity; suddenly, however he rose.  It
+was hard on a man, he said, in his position, with a Board (he spoke
+as of a family of small children), to be kept so short of
+information.  He was actually compelled to use his imagination to
+answer the shareholders' questions.  This was painful and
+humiliating; he had never heard of any secretary having to use his
+imagination!  He went further--it was insulting!  He had grown grey
+in the service of the company.  Mr. Scorrier would bear him out when
+he said he had a position to maintain--his name in the City was a
+high one; and, by George! he was going to keep it a high one; he
+would allow nobody to drag it in the dust--that ought clearly to be
+understood.  His directors felt they were being treated like
+children; however that might be, it was absurd to suppose that he
+(Hemmings) could be treated like a child...!  The secretary paused;
+his eyes seemed to bully the room.
+
+"If there were no London office," murmured Pippin, "the shareholders
+would get the same dividends."
+
+Hemmings gasped.  "Come!" he said, "this is monstrous!"
+
+"What help did I get from London when I first came here?  What help
+have I ever had?"
+
+Hemmings swayed, recovered, and with a forced smile replied that, if
+this were true, he had been standing on his head for years; he did
+not believe the attitude possible for such a length of time;
+personally he would have thought that he too had had a little
+something to say to the company's position, but no matter...!  His
+irony was crushing....  It was possible that Mr. Pippin hoped to
+reverse the existing laws of the universe with regard to limited
+companies; he would merely say that he must not begin with a company
+of which he (Hemmings) happened to be secretary.  Mr. Scorrier had
+hinted at excuses; for his part, with the best intentions in the
+world, he had great difficulty in seeing them.  He would go further--
+he did not see them!  The explosion...!  Pippin shrank so visibly
+that Hemmings seemed troubled by a suspicion that he had gone too
+far.
+
+"We know," he said, "that it was trying for you...."
+
+"Trying!" "burst out Pippin.
+
+"No one can say," Hemmings resumed soothingly, "that we have not
+dealt liberally."  Pippin made a motion of the head.  "We think we
+have a good superintendent; I go further, an excellent
+superintendent.  What I say is: Let's be pleasant!  I am not making
+an unreasonable request!"  He ended on a fitting note of jocularity;
+and, as if by consent, all three withdrew, each to his own room,
+without another word.
+
+In the course of the next day Pippin said to Scorrier: "It seems I
+have been very wicked.  I must try to do better"; and with a touch of
+bitter humour, "They are kind enough to think me a good
+superintendent, you see!  After that I must try hard."
+
+Scorrier broke in: "No man could have done so much for them;" and,
+carried away by an impulse to put things absolutely straight, went on
+"But, after all, a letter now and then--what does it amount to?"
+
+Pippin besieged him with a subtle glance.  "You too?" he said--
+"I must indeed have been a wicked man!" and turned away.
+
+Scorrier felt as if he had been guilty of brutality; sorry for
+Pippin, angry with himself; angry with Pippin, sorry for himself.  He
+earnestly desired to see the back of Hemmings.  The secretary
+gratified the wish a few days later, departing by steamer with
+ponderous expressions of regard and the assurance of his goodwill.
+
+Pippin gave vent to no outburst of relief, maintaining a courteous
+silence, making only one allusion to his late guest, in answer to a
+remark of Scorrier:
+
+"Ah! don't tempt me! mustn't speak behind his back."
+
+A month passed, and Scorrier still--remained Pippin's guest.  As each
+mail-day approached he experienced a queer suppressed excitement.  On
+one of these occasions Pippin had withdrawn to his room; and when
+Scorrier went to fetch him to dinner he found him with his head
+leaning on his hands, amid a perfect fitter of torn paper.  He looked
+up at Scorrier.
+
+"I can't do it," he said, "I feel such a hypocrite; I can't put
+myself into leading-strings again.  Why should I ask these people,
+when I've settled everything already?  If it were a vital matter they
+wouldn't want to hear--they'd simply wire, 'Manage this somehow!'"
+
+Scorrier said nothing, but thought privately 'This is a mad
+business!'  What was a letter?  Why make a fuss about a letter?  The
+approach of mail-day seemed like a nightmare to the superintendent;
+he became feverishly nervous like a man under a spell; and, when the
+mail had gone, behaved like a respited criminal.  And this had been
+going on two years!  Ever since that explosion.  Why, it was
+monomania!
+
+One day, a month after Hemmings' departure, Pippin rose early from
+dinner; his face was flushed, he had been drinking wine.  "I won't be
+beaten this time," he said, as he passed Scorrier.  The latter could
+hear him writing in the next room, and looked in presently to say
+that he was going for a walk.  Pippin gave him a kindly nod.
+
+It was a cool, still evening: innumerable stars swarmed in clusters
+over the forests, forming bright hieroglyphics in the middle heavens,
+showering over the dark harbour into the sea.  Scorrier walked
+slowly.  A weight seemed lifted from his mind, so entangled had he
+become in that uncanny silence.  At last Pippin had broken through
+the spell.  To get that, letter sent would be the laying of a
+phantom, the rehabilitation of commonsense.  Now that this silence
+was in the throes of being broken, he felt curiously tender towards
+Pippin, without the hero-worship of old days, but with a queer
+protective feeling.  After all, he was different from other men.  In
+spite of his feverish, tenacious energy, in spite of his ironic
+humour, there was something of the woman in him!  And as for this
+silence, this horror of control--all geniuses had "bees in their
+bonnets," and Pippin was a genius in his way!
+
+He looked back at the town.  Brilliantly lighted it had a thriving
+air-difficult to believe of the place he remembered ten years back;
+the sounds of drinking, gambling, laughter, and dancing floated to
+his ears.  'Quite a city!' he thought.
+
+With this queer elation on him he walked slowly back along the
+street, forgetting that he was simply an oldish mining expert, with a
+look of shabbiness, such as clings to men who are always travelling,
+as if their "nap" were for ever being rubbed off.  And he thought of
+Pippin, creator of this glory.
+
+He had passed the boundaries of the town, and had entered the forest.
+A feeling of discouragement instantly beset him.  The scents and
+silence, after the festive cries and odours of the town, were
+undefinably oppressive.  Notwithstanding, he walked a long time,
+saying to himself that he would give the letter every chance.  At
+last, when he thought that Pippin must have finished, he went back to
+the house.
+
+Pippin had finished.  His forehead rested on the table, his arms hung
+at his sides; he was stone-dead!  His face wore a smile, and by his
+side lay an empty laudanum bottle.
+
+The letter, closely, beautifully written, lay before him.  It was a
+fine document, clear, masterly, detailed, nothing slurred, nothing
+concealed, nothing omitted; a complete review of the company's
+position; it ended with the words: "Your humble servant, RICHARD
+PIPPIN."
+
+Scorrier took possession of it.  He dimly understood that with those
+last words a wire had snapped.  The border-line had been overpassed;
+the point reached where that sense of proportion, which alone makes
+life possible, is lost.  He was certain that at the moment of his
+death Pippin could have discussed bimetallism, or any intellectual
+problem, except the one problem of his own heart; that, for some
+mysterious reason, had been too much for him.  His death had been the
+work of a moment of supreme revolt--a single instant of madness on a
+single subject!  He found on the blotting-paper, scrawled across the
+impress of the signature, "Can't stand it!"  The completion of that
+letter had been to him a struggle ungraspable by Scorrier.  Slavery?
+Defeat?  A violation of Nature?  The death of justice?  It were
+better not to think of it!  Pippin could have told--but he would
+never speak again.  Nature, at whom, unaided, he had dealt so many
+blows, had taken her revenge...!
+
+In the night Scorrier stole down, and, with an ashamed face, cut off
+a lock of the fine grey hair.  'His daughter might like it!' he
+thought....
+
+He waited till Pippin was buried, then, with the letter in his
+pocket, started for England.
+
+He arrived at Liverpool on a Thursday morning, and travelling to
+town, drove straight to the office of the company.  The Board were
+sitting.  Pippin's successor was already being interviewed.  He
+passed out as Scorrier came in, a middle-aged man with a large, red
+beard, and a foxy, compromising face.  He also was a Cornishman.
+Scorrier wished him luck with a very heavy heart.
+
+As an unsentimental man, who had a proper horror of emotion, whose
+living depended on his good sense, to look back on that interview
+with the Board was painful.  It had excited in him a rage of which he
+was now heartily ashamed.  Old Jolyon Forsyte, the chairman, was not
+there for once, guessing perhaps that the Board's view of this death
+would be too small for him; and little Mr. Booker sat in his place.
+Every one had risen, shaken hands with Scorrier, and expressed
+themselves indebted for his coming.  Scorrier placed Pippin's letter
+on the table, and gravely the secretary read out to his Board the
+last words of their superintendent.  When he had finished, a director
+said, "That's not the letter of a madman!"  Another answered: "Mad as
+a hatter; nobody but a madman would have thrown up such a post."
+Scorrier suddenly withdrew.  He heard Hemmings calling after him.
+"Aren't you well, Mr. Scorrier?  aren't you well, sir?"
+
+He shouted back: "Quite sane, I thank you....
+
+The Naples "express" rolled round the outskirts of the town.
+Vesuvius shone in the sun, uncrowned by smoke.  But even as Scorrier
+looked, a white puff went soaring up.  It was the footnote to his
+memories.
+
+February 1901.
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of VILLA RUBEIN AND OTHER STORIES
+by John Galsworthy.
+
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